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Book Review & Contest Insights from Real Reviews and Submissions
What separates great books from the rest? Below are articles with insights from real reviews and contest submissions—what works, what doesn’t, and how to improve your book. You’ll also find a wide range of articles covering writing, publishing, marketing, and more. Each article has a Comments section so you can read advice from other authors and leave your own.
Why Some Books Win Awards (And Most Don’t) — Insights From Real Contest Submissions New!
What separates award-winning books from the rest? After evaluating contest submissions across a wide range of genres, certain patterns become clear. Some books consistently rise to the top. Others, even with strong ideas and clear effort behind them, fall short. The difference is rarely dramatic—it...
What We’ve Learned From Reviewing Hundreds of Thousands of Books (And Why Most Don’t Stand Out) New!
After reviewing and evaluating books across thousands of submissions over the past two decades, certain patterns become impossible to ignore. Some books immediately stand out to reviewers. Others—even well-intentioned ones—fade into the middle or fall short. The difference is rarely luck. It comes down to...
Understanding the History of Social Psychology
In my article "The Need for Psychology Understanding,” I discussed how fiction writers need at least a basic understanding of psychology in order to write realistic content, dialogues, characters, and relationships. One such area of psychology that many fiction writers and some nonfiction writers should...
Understanding Fundamental Attribution Error
In my article "The Need for Psychology Understanding”, I discussed how fiction writers need at least a basic understanding of psychology in order to write realistic content, dialogues, characters, and relationships. One such psychological concept is the fundamental attribution error. The fundamental attribution error was...
The Beauty of Childhood Memories
Oftentimes, writers will draw from personal experiences that inspire them to continue writing, whether that be from a failed date, or a bad day, or even a crush that refused to return our feelings. One of the most powerful muses writers have in their arsenals...
Careers in Creative Writing
When you ask new writers what they want to be, many of them will say an author. More often than not, the reason why they say this is because they might not know any other career aside from writing. In fact, they might not know that...
Writing Romance Novels – Effective Tips That Work Impressively Well
The market for romance novels is ripe throughout the year. There is no season when readers don’t want to read romances at the moment. While this is great at creating better opportunities for romance authors, it does put pressure on them to make it click...
Tips for Making Your Novel Evergreen
The best and the biggest names in literature have the honor of writing classics that will forever remain fresh in the minds of readers for centuries to come. From Shakespeare to Stephen King, many authors have left an impact on the minds and souls of...
Tips for Perfecting Writing Multiple Points of View in Your Novel
Readers these days seem to enjoy fast-paced novels with multi-faceted and well-developed characters. Novels that have multiple points of view have been seen as more successful than the others. Although this cannot be applied to each and every novel in the market, the general consensus is...
Writing Horror Fiction – Tips for Making Your Monster Scary
Writing horror fiction is not easy. There is a lot that goes into writing horror; authors have to consider what is horror and what is simply a bogus attempt at making something work that clearly doesn’t want to. Before any author starts writing horror, they...
The Need for Psychology Understanding
Almost all fiction writers need at least a basic understanding of psychology in order to write realistic content, dialogues, characters, and relationships. Without this basic understanding, readers are often left confused about characters and why the characters made the choices that they did. A lack...
Understanding Groupthink
Groupthink is a concept that many writers are unaware of which makes it harder for fiction writers to write realistic content. Especially if the writer is writing about any sort of group working together or problems solving. Janis (1972), defined groupthink as a "mode of thinking that...