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Successful Fiction Writing = Organizing + Creating + Marketing

Best Practices in Fiction Writing

Being a novelist requires three skills:

• Organizing
• Creating
• Marketing

You can be lousy at any two of these and still succeed if you are world-class in the third. But that's the hard way, if you ask me. By all means, try to be world-class in one of these. But shoot for basic competence in ALL of them.

This page is about stealing as many ideas as possible from the smartest people possible so you can do your job as well as possible with the least effort possible. The competition is too tough for you to do things the hard way. Life is too short for you to figure everything out all by yourself.

This page is about using the "Best Practices" available to help you organize, create, and market your work. This page is new as of November, 2007. The topics below are ones that have been suggested by my blog readers. I will blog about each of these and then post an article here to summarize results. If you have a request for a topic or if you know of a "Best Practice" that should go on this page, send me an email.

Please remember that Best Practices often require extensive training. I won't give you that here. What I'll do is POINT you to the resources that I consider to be Best Practices so you can go there and get the training you need. Some of these are free and some aren't, but they are always going to be what I consider the best bang for the buck.

"Best Practices" for Organizing Your Writing

1. Time Management for Writers
• Simple Time Management
2. Designing Your Novel
• A Structured Approach Using the Snowflake Method
• An Unstructured Approach Using the Puzzle Method
3. Developing Your Skills
4. Developing Your Brand

"Best Practices" for Creating Your Writing

1. Editing Your Work
• Self-Editing
2. Choosing a Title
3. Developing High Concepts
4. Researching Setting
5. Story Brainstorming
6. Plotting
7. Beginning Your Story
8. Ending Your Story
9. Constructing Characters
10. Creating Villains
11. Handling Theme
12. Developing Your Voice
13. Balancing Rules vs Creativity
14. Creating Mystery in Your Novel
15. Writing an Action Scene
16. Increasing Your Daily Wordcount
17. Cutting a Book
18. Tracking Story Details

"Best Practices" for Marketing Your Writing

1. Attending a Writing Conference
2. Writing a Proposal
3. Finding an Agent
4. Promoting Your Novel
5. Getting Great Publicity