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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

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)

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...

Do Writing Workshops Help to Improve Your Writing?

Writing workshops seem to be extremely popular with both the established and new writer, however, do they help to improve your writing and help to perfect those skills that you already have? You certainly have nothing to lose by attending a writing workshop. By definition they...

Ticking Clock Vs. Option Exhaustion: Best Way To Build Up Your Climax

These are two popular methods to create tension in the plot and drive it towards the climax. An author is free to use either one or both methods as he wishes, depending on the type of story. The Ticking Clock This is a common feature in action-based...

How To Avoid The Sagging Middle Syndrome In Your Novel

This is one of the most common problems that novelists have to deal with when writing. Luckily for them, this problem can be remedied or avoided altogether. The ‘sagging middle’ syndrome is when the body of the novel fails to hold readers’ interest as it...

How To Avoid Passive Voice

Passive voice is to be avoided unless an author has a very specific effect in mind. Active voice should be used as much as possible. Distinguishing the two voices can sometimes be confusing, hence a little explanation is in order. By using active voice, a writer...

Specificity: The Key to Descriptive Writing

Painting a picture in readers’ minds is one of the most powerful techniques that an author can use to tell his story. Any author who masters this technique can have readers wrapped around his little finger as he takes them on an extraordinary journey that...

Understanding External Conflict And Internal Conflict

In popular fiction, external conflict used to be the norm. However, as literary works matured, heroes began to change, grow, and question themselves more. Traditionally, heroes of fiction knew they were better people than the villains, hence they had no reason to question themselves. Tension...

How To Write An Outline For Your Novel

Writing an outline for a novel is the final stage of preparation before an author starts to write a novel. It is notoriously difficult to write a decent first draft unless you have thought about every possible aspect of the novel. An outline can help...

10 Quick Ways to Improve Writing Skills

There are many people who call themselves writers but not many of them take writing seriously enough that they strive to improve their skills daily. It takes more than reading journals, magazines, books, newspapers, etc. to improve your writing. You have to become completely immersed...

How To Choose A Theme For Your Novel

The theme is one of the most discussed topics in the literary world. The reason why themes are very important is that they deal with the wisdom, the lessons, and the moral of stories. Surprisingly, some writers don’t believe in themes and they don’t like...

How Do You Choose Your Novel’s Setting?

Setting is one of the most important things in a novel. Writers, especially fiction writers, must choose a setting carefully. First, you have to define what setting is in order to figure out how to use it in your story. Setting vs. structure Many theories about stories...