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Book: 25 essential writing tips - Guide to writing good fiction by Alana Woods

categories: Book, Fiction Writing Guide, Self Help, Writing Skills, Learning to Write, Essential Writing Tips, Writing Fiction, How To Write, Writers Reference, Authorship, Author, Creative Writing

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Alana Woods

about this book: I'm an editor. Have been for most of my career.

I've worked almost exclusively in the government sector in publishing departments. I've worked on documents as small as one page flyers to reports and other tomes hundreds of pages long. In every instance what the author wanted was a crystal clear message said brilliantly and as succinctly as possible. It was my job to make sure that happened.

I've also always been a writer, both in my professional career and at home plugging away at short stories and novels. When my first novel AUTOMATON was published I began to receive requests from readers asking if I would comment on their work and that has continued to the point where the amount of fiction I look at equals the non-fiction.

After a while I noticed weaknesses that writers had in common and I compiled a tips sheet to hand out. Recently I decided to publish the tips as a guide. The sheet itself was only two pages so in the guide I've expanded on each tip and included examples from my own and other authors' work to illustrate the points I'm making.

My advice to authors? Don't be in a hurry to publish. Make sure your story is as good as it can possibly be. That means examining every word for its usefulness and placement, and examining the structure and placement of every sentence and paragraph. It means making sure dialogue is real and necessary. It means keeping descriptions short but descriptive. It means all of those things and much more. 25 ESSENTIAL WRITING TIPS: GUIDE TO WRITING GOOD FICTION shows and tells you how.