Writing

What Immediately Matters?

What Immediately MattersWhatever the genre, the author has to decide what immediately matters. What’s the emotional core of the story?

Hold back on the world-building. Cancel the info-dump. Readers don’t care about your world unless you give them characters to care about first. This is how story works. Pile on the world-building before the characters and what you have is a setting, not a story. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Middle Earth, St Mary Meade or Pemberly.

The Skeleton Draft

The Skeleton DraftNavigating a path from start to finish of a novel can be hard for both plotters and free-writers; enter the Skeleton Draft.

The Skeleton Draft is an idea-dump. Maybe you outlined the novel using a story structure such as the Hero’s Journey or any of the five, seven, seventeen or twenty-four point methods. Or maybe you have a scant clue of your story without a real structure in mind. The Skeleton Draft is a means to dive into the story and explore characters, conflicts and events without getting hung up on prose before you really have the idea worked out.