As fulfilling as the Christian genre is, the road to a satisfying story--and publication--is filled with hard work. But take heart. The Art & Craft of Writing Christian Fiction can help make the journey easier. Inside, author Jeff Gerke provides page after page of insightful instruction and encouragement.
First impressions are vital and the opening scenes of a novel are crucial if the reader is going to stick around until the story's end. This guide walks writers through the tasks their first 50 pages must accomplish in order to avoid leaving the reader disoriented, angry, or, worse.
Discover Your Voice and Enthrall Readers!The craft of writing is filled with various Should I include a prologue? Should I delete all adverbs from my manuscript? Just how much backstory--if any--can I include in my story? These questions--and their often-contradictory answers--can cause confusion, frustration, and even paralysis in the writer.The Irresistible Novel frees you from the limits of so-called "rules" and instead provides you with a singular You must engage your readers from beginning to end. Filled with down-to-earth discussions on the various debates of writing, as well as innovative research on neuroscience and reader response, this book shows you how • Navigate the various debates on writing fiction--showing versus telling, purple prose, outlining, writing description, and more--to decide what kind of novelist you want to be. • Hack your reader's brain to hook her interest and trigger emotional engagement from the very first page. • Incorporate enduring elements of storytelling from masters like Joseph Campbell, Aristotle, and Carl Jung.Readers want to be swept away by your stories. When you eschew the rules and focus on your readers' desires, you're free to write truly irresistible fiction.
Helps readers learn how to create layered characters, develop a character's emotional journey and tie it to the plot's inciting incident, construct a three-act story structure that can complement and sustain a character arc, reveal character backstory to accentuate plot points, and more.
One of these days, I'm going to sit down and write that novel.... Everyone thinks about doing it, yet most people who do start a novel end up stalling after a few chapters. Where do these would-be novelists go wrong? Are the characters dull and cliched? Did the story arc collapse? Did they succumb to a dreaded bout of "writer's block"? Or maybe it was all just taking too long? These problems used to stop writers in their tracks, but nothing will get in your way after reading Write Your Novel in a Month. Author and instructor Jeff Gerke has created the perfect tool to show you how to prepare yourself to write your first draft in as little as 30 days. With Jeff's help, you will learn how to organize your ideas, create dynamic stories, develop believable characters, and flesh out the idea narrative for your novel--and not just for the rapid-fire first draft. Jeff walks you through the entire process, from initial idea to the important revision stage, and even explains what to do with your novel once you've finished. Whether you are participating in National Novel Writing Month or you're simply hoping to complete a draft over winter break or your vacation, this book covers the entire scope of writing a novel and lays out exactly what you need to know to get it done fast and right.