2k to 10k: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love

Make a time line. I didn't have time lines for the first 4 Eli novels and OMG did it bite me in the ass. Lesson finally learned, I now make time lines not just for the events of the novel itself, but the important bits of history before it as well. I especially make sure to note the relative ages of all my characters and how long everyone's known e

Write out who knows what, when. This is usually just a quick list where I look over my plot and jot down the flow of important information to make sure I haven’t done something dumb like have the protagonists making a decision using information they wouldn't actually know yet.

If you are not enjoying your writing, you’re doing it wrong.

The longer I wrote, the faster I wrote, and, I believe, the better I wrote.

just asking “What else can I do here?” every time you look at a scene will keep your mind open to myriad, often wonderful, possibilities.

When a plot won't move forward, it's almost always because there's something I don't know about the characters or the world or why this event is actually happening.

If I had scenes that were so boring I didn't want to write them, then there was no way anyone would want to read them. This was my novel, after all. If I didn't love it, no one would.

The point of the scene map is to be a guide, a literal scene-by-scene map of what happens in your book.

"Be excited about everything you write"

Name: Age: Physical Description: I like: I hate: More than anything, I want: