10 More Writing Tips from J A Konrath

As promised in my last post, here are 10 more writing and publishing tips from J A Konrath's amazing book, "The Newbie's Guide to Publishing (Everything A Writer Needs To Know)." 

11. Give your character flaws. Ask the following: “What personal, internal problem will get in the way of the hero reaching his/her goals? Addiction? Illness? Disability? Neuroses? Readers don't want characters to be happy. They want them to be tortured for 90,000 words, and then happy at the end. Maybe. That's the essence of a page-turner."

12. Ask yourself: “Who will make a worthy opponent for your protagonist?”

13.  Create a strong adversary. “Good vs. Evil is conflict in its purest form, and any sports fan can tell you that competition is a lot of fun.”

14.  “Conflict is the main ingredient for successful fiction. The question of ‘What happens next?’ is what keeps your audience glued to the page. Not pretty description. Not clever phrasing. Not cute dialogue. The motor that drives the story is conflict. The central plot of any story should be centred around a conflict. The sub plots should introduce more conflict. There should be conflict on every page, and even in every paragraph.”

15. Write what you like to read.

16. If you want to be a writer you have to make writing a priority.

17. Rewriting and editing is where you take a good book and make it great by cutting out all of the fat, exposition, and unnecessary action and dialogue.

18. When writing dialogue, make it sound natural. “People talk differently than they write. Writing is slower, more deliberate, and more thought goes into it. Speaking is looser, freer, less constricting, and less precise. Record some dialogue in natural settings—at the mall, on the phone, on the radio. Then transcribe what you heard. You’ll notice a big difference between the spoken word and the written word.”

19. Read everything out loud. You can find a lot of errors when reading using your voice, rather than your mind, because your mind tends to see things as you wrote them, not as they appear on the page.

20.  Get the scissors. Sometimes the words are there, but in the wrong order. Don't be afraid to switch sentences, paragraphs, and even chapters.

I'll be back next time with 10 more writing tips from J A Konrath.