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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...
Suspense: A Clever Author's Huge Gift to Eager Readers
A critical aspect of any novel is suspense. Suspense creates questions in readers' minds and triggers the problem-solving part of the brain to anticipate possible answers. Your reader will continue reading to find the answers and see if any possibilities they've imagined were correct. The...
5 Evocative Ways to Introduce a Character
A strong opening in storytelling requires you to present a character. Every character is created out of specific details and both writers and readers should be able to identify those details the first time they meet a character. And in introducing a character, you need...
Applying The 5 Ws of Journalism to Storytelling
Both new and experienced writers are afraid of a blank page. It is no small feat to climb the mountain of starting a new story, and when you consider what goes into the initial stages of writing a fictional narrative, you might wonder how many...
3 Ways Fictional Characters are NOT Real People
In creating compelling characters, you need to draw inspiration from people in the real world. The aim is always to make your characters as realistic as possible so that readers can create a bond with them. But fictional characters are not real people, and knowing...
3 Essential Purposes of Dialogue in Storytelling
Every component of narrative fiction must be there to serve a purpose. Nothing is included just for the heck of it. The setting, the description, the exposition and even the most minor character should be necessary to further the plot. And this rule of necessity...
Understanding the 3 Third Person Narration Style
Despite the unique abilities of the first-person narrator, there are still limitations to what they can reveal and how they can be used to advance a story. And some stories just need a third-person perspective to efficiently deliver the desired effect. Ironically, some third-person narration...
4 Types of the First-Person Narrator
Achieving first-person narration in fiction writing is not easy. For a character to evoke himself and other characters and at the same time give an engaging account of a series of events is no small feat. To use a first-person narrator for your story, you...
3 Simple Reasons Why Writers Should Write by Hand
With technology now readily available for most people, you would reckon many writers will write directly on their computers. But as a book blogger, I occasionally come across writers who proclaim that they still write their novels by hand. Although you may think this is...
The 4 Points of View Fully Explained
In storytelling, you have to make a lot of choices, and the success of your story depends greatly on making the right ones. And one of the choices you must make is deciding what perspective you intend to use to tell your story. This will...
The Golden Rules of Dialogue and Dialogue Tags in Storytelling
Dialogue is essential in narrative fiction because it gives readers the chance to hear what your character sounds like. And it also advances the plot with vivid, memorable, focused, and coherent speeches. To write interesting dialogues, you first need to understand the guidelines which they...