Not Your Mum. Not Your Milk

Last week, after going to the cinema, I was looking around for a good place to eat, and I stumbled across a place called No Moo Burgers.

It was a completely vegan cafe that had a huge range of burgers, so I went in for a healthy meal.

While I was sitting and enjoying my food (which was really delicious) I was looking around the place and noted that they really had a strong brand which was evident in everything around me.

For a start, the place was called No Moo Burgers which immediately told me that their burgers contained nothing from a cow.

The staff were wearing T-shirts which loudly proclaimed, Not Your Mum. Not Your Milk.

And every bit of writing on the menus, the walls and the front of the counter, was all about plant-based food, healthy diets and saving the planet.

They really had a strong brand and knew exactly what they stood for.

And as I ate I thought about how so many writers fail because they don’t know what their brand is.

They ‘wander' aimlessly not knowing what kind of a writer they want to be, so end up not doing much writing.

So what should they do?

The answer is to try a bit of every kind of writing to see what ‘floats their boat.’

If this is you, try it too. Try everything including freelancing, blogging, client work, books, ebooks, fiction, and non-fiction. 

One of them is bound to create a “Hell yeah!” moment.

And once you know what you want to write, just like No Moo Burgers, build your business around your best writing.

https://ruthiswriting.com/links/quickcash.html

Read my latest article about building a strong work ethic at 

https://ruthiswriting.com/articles/2019/freddy-mercury.html

What Drives A Great Novel?

We’ve all done it. Read a book and thought, “That was brilliant.”

And do you know what it usually is that makes a book great?

It’s a great character.

Novels are character driven.

This is because whatever is happening in a story is based around a main character and several other characters too.

Even in movies that seem to be action driven, there is always a character’s personal life to care about. Even in Batman there is Bruce Wayne and in Spiderman everyone wants to know what is happening to Peter Parker.

And it’s the same with a novel.

Readers don’t even have to like your characters but they do have to care what happens to them.

That’s why it’s important for you to know your characters intimately before you put them in your next novel. You need to write out a complete bio for each of them including their life history, their looks, their fears, their goals, their age, their families, their likes and dislikes, and everything else about them so that they seem real.

Then make sure that everything that happens in your novel affects them in some way.

Then readers will finish your book and think, “That was brilliant.”

And then they’ll be eager to read your next book.

Read more about writing a novel at How To Write A Novel When You Don’t Know How Or Where to Start.

-------

See my latest romance novel at mybook.to/TWIC

---------------

Start Writing Your Book Today
http://ruthiswriting.com/links/writequickly.html

From Blank Page to Manuscript

Writing fiction is fun. But sometimes it can be hard to know what to write about and where to find ideas.

So what you need is to have a workflow for this kind of writing.

You need to have a way of coming up with story ideas or knowing where to find them.

Next, you need to know how to take your idea and turn it into a novel.

I work by taking just one idea and expanding it by asking questions about where it will happen, why it will happen and who it will happen to.

Then I get my chapter ideas and figure out how one will flow into the other so that they all end with a hook to keep the reader turning the pages.

But I usually start with just one idea and I write it on my blank page.

Then I let the creative juices in my marvellous monkey mind get to work and before I know it, I’m filling page after page with settings, plot lines and characters.

And I’ve written about it in my latest article, How To Write A Novel When You Don’t Know How Or Where to Start

http://ruthiswriting.com/books/WB.html