Writer Resource Library

Hi ,

If you're in despair over this book idea that is beating at you from the inside, if you're surrounded by kids, dishes, co-workers, guys in the locker room, or whatever other distraction is hounding you...yes, you can finish your book.

Writing your first book is a monumental undertaking. Sometimes you can't plan it. Sometimes it plans YOU.

If you feel like giving up, don't! Take a step backwards and look at what you've done and think about what you can do. Here's a short guide that may help.

Hey, ,

If you keep trying to write a novel but somehow never managed to finish it, you're in the right place. My name is Maya Rushing Walker, and I'm the founder and creative director of Apollo Grannus Books. I'm also a trained developmental editor. I can help you to get inspired and get to work.

As a developmental editor, one of the things I do is to read complete manuscripts to give feedback on whether the story "works."

What does this mean? How do we know if something "works?"

One of the worst things a beta reader or editor can do is to tell you that something is "off" but not why. This is why I use Shawn Coyne's method of "the 6 Cs" to deconstruct a completed manuscript. This will tell you what is missing or weak, as well as whether the story is properly "balanced." A little further on in the process, an editor might put the manuscript through a complete spreadsheet analysis to see if there are individual scenes that can be strengthened, but when I read a manuscript for the first time, I am looking for overall story structure, not details.

So one of the most instructive things a writer can do is to examine a well-written example of their genre. These masterworks can show you empirically how a skilled author abides by the conventions of the genre, and how she or he can lead the reader through the story. Take a look at the examples in this module. You can apply the same analysis to your own work, but it's much easier after you've done it on books that definitely "work."