Author: Vincento

Many aspects form a novel – plot, pace, voice, character arc, setting, backstory, etc. But a novel wouldn’t be anything without characters. And readers want to get to know the main players. Among other things, they want to discover what they look like. And that, in turn, means they want to see their faces. I’m not good…

I’ve come to a point in my story where Silvanus engages in heart-searching exchanges with his wise old mentor, Cerbonius. They don’t do much. They talk. This, I realize, can quickly become boring for the reader, who is hoping for more excitement. What’s the solution? Well: Look how others do it! At the moment, I’m (re-)reading Brian…

I’ve already mentioned how I like to use Google Drive for writing the chapters of my book. I can think of three good reasons why (or four): I can access it from anywhere where I have Internet connectivity It automagically keeps earlier versions of a document It has a built-in dictionary/thesaurus function (see the Research…

As an aspiring author, I’ve read several books on the art and craft of writing. They confused me. I didn’t even understand the terminology, let alone the principles they advocated. There’s nothing better than jumping in the deep end and getting feedback from more experienced authors. My hesitant attempts at posting individual chapters of my…

Every author stresses how important revision is. The trouble is, one easily overlooks one’s own weak points, omissions and errors. The solution sounds easy: Get a good Critique Partner for reciprocal manuscript correction. But how? There aren’t that many budding English-speaking authors in Oberlunkhofen! I tried several online author sites which offer some facility for…

“Look around where you are right now. Describe this setting – but do so in the words your viewpoint character would use.” This was the exercise I was set in the book I’m currently reading. So I tried, in the words and from the point of view of a 6th century peasant boy from Elba! Here…

Don’t you sometimes make a major change to a chapter – delete a whole section and rearrange the sequence of events – only to have a nagging thought that perhaps that wasn’t such a good idea and in a week or two you’ll want to revert to the old version?  Google Drive knew that was…