Rob Parnell's Writing Academy Blog

The author John Braine once said, "A writer is someone who counts words." Do you? You should - because it's a sure fire way of getting around writer's block -and a good way of keeping yourself on track. Having specific word counts to aspire to, will keep you writing more - and for longer.  You'll have more to show for your efforts, more to submit, and consequently more work coming in.  Your writing success is directly correlated to your word count. Last night I was talking to a writer - well, someone who wanted to be a full time writer - and she told me she'd taken a year to get to her manuscript to where it was now.  I asked, casually of course, how many words she'd written so far. "Four thousand," she said.  Four thousand!   G'ah - that's less than eleven words a day - what's she doing, I thought, chiseling them in stone? By stunning contrast, Robyn held the whip to me yesterday (metaphorically speaking) and...

Let me ask you a question. Do you avoid / dread / loathe writing the big scenes in your fiction? Over the years I've noticed one of two things. One, the writer is so nervous about writing the big important scenes that they will subconsciously avoid them by taking ages over getting to them. Here's how it goes. There's a crucial scene in the story where there's a confrontation or a climactic event - and the writer is creeping up towards it, filling the pages with exposition and preparatory dialogue - only to freeze just before 'the big scene' and put off writing anymore - sometimes for months or, in some cases, years. The other scenario involves glossing over that part of the story. You'll often see writers fill pages with the run up to the big event - all good showing instead of telling and yet, when it comes to 'the big scene' it's told from a distance or from an uninvolved point of view or, most commonly, in retrospect, after the ...