Now Novel co-founder Bridget McNulty’s book, The Grief Handbook: A guide through the worst days of your life is being published internationally (in the UK, US and South Africa) this week. Here are her two best tips on how to publish a memoir:
Author: Bridget McNulty
Bridget McNulty is a published author, content strategist, writer, editor and speaker. She is the co-founder of two non-profits: Sweet Life Diabetes Community, South Africa's largest online diabetes community, and the Diabetes Alliance, a coalition of all the organisations working in diabetes in South Africa. She is also the co-founder of Now Novel: an online novel-writing course where she coaches aspiring writers to start - and finish! - their novels. Bridget believes in the power of storytelling to create meaningful change.
Learning how to write romantic novels requires understanding the key ingredients of a great love story. Read 9 insights from 10 top romance novels that show how to write romance that is marketable and affecting:
How does an author establish mood in a story? The mood of a story develops out of multiple story elements: Setting, description, dialogue, and pacing. Read a definition of mood in literature, then 6 simple tips to craft your own novel’s mood and atmosphere better:
Many people talk about wanting to write a book “someday.” Anyone who has written a novel knows the enormous effort involved. Here are seven reasons to persevere:
Dialogue rules aren’t set in stone but help us create believable characters who have distinct, memorable voices. The best dialogue gives insights into characters and their motivations. Getting dialogue punctuation right is important, as is keeping dialogue entertaining. Here are 7 dialogue rules for writing conversations worthy of eavesdropping:
There are many options for getting help with writing online. Here are 6 tips to get the maximum benefit from writing critiques:
The elements of setting – time, place, mood, social and cultural context – help to make a novel feel real and alive. Read more about using the ingredients of setting to make your story more vivid:
Fiction is full of villainous characters who readers love to hate (and, sometimes, hate to love). Learning how to write a villain that your readers can understand as a complex human being (as opposed to a cardboard cutout) can give your novel depth. How do you write a villain who feels human; real (though not necessarily sympathetic)? Here are 7 tips:
Character backstory – the past events and formative experiences that shape who your characters are – is key to creating characters of breadth and depth. Here are tips to weave backstory into your story believably: