My Courses

“There are two kinds of writer: those that make you think, and those that make you wonder.” – Brian Aldiss “A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer.” – Karl Kraus “To achieve lasting literature, fictional or factual, a writer needs perceptive vision, absorptive capacity, and creative strength.” – Lawrence Clark…

For novice and unpublished writers, questions often are more important than answers. What are your writing goals? What skills do you need to achieve that goal? How can you learn those skills you don’t have? ______________ My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of…

You always have great book ideas, but whenever you sit to type, you just can’t get comfortable enough for the words to come out. In a short while, your eyes are burning and your wrists aching. You’re wondering if you’re really cut out to be an author, even though you enjoy writing a lot. The problem…

One of the best way to sell your books is through Back of Room sales. This occurs when you give a presentation and have copies of your book(s) for sale on a table nearby – usually at the back or side of the room or just outside it. Back of Room sales work because those attending…

Good stories center on the clashing of characters’ goals and motivations. Sometimes a character’s goals and motivations arise from desiring what another has, especially in a relationship. Here are four writing prompts for stories that center on jealousy. Man vs. natureWhat if the antagonist’s jealousy leads him to banish a loved one to a wilderness. How…

Among the many words whose spellings appear to be changing is babysitter, confusing many a little firecracker of smartness. Is it one word, two words, or hyphenated? Older editions of dictionaries tend to hyphenate the word. Increasingly, though, newer editions are lopping off the hyphen and spelling it as one word, as in: We asked Jane…

In every story, there comes a turning point or an ultimate moment in which the situation has become so intolerable that the main character must take a decisive step and emerge victorious. This scene is known as the climax. Also called a “final obstacle,” the climax comes at the end of the story’s rising action. The…

“It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.” – William Faulkner “My characters are fictional. I get ideas…

You may feel the reason your writing time isn’t productive is because you don’t have a way to measure it. If so, consider setting a goal each day for writing – word count, percentage of a page, number of paragraphs, or some other way of showing success. ______________ My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional…