Rob Parnell's Writing Academy Blog

New Year's Day - funny how everyone wants to make plans for a better life during this one part of the calendar. There are writers making promises to themselves - and us - on Facebook as we speak.  I'm in contact with several new writerly and sales focused people who are all launching themselves, and their new ventures, today or some time this week.  I bet even you too are making resolutions to create a more effective version of yourself in 2016. Why do we do this?  Why is the turning of the clock from one year to the next so important to us? It's about personal accountability - and the changing of the final digit from 5 to 6 means we're compelled to assess our progress.  Did we achieve what we set out to last year?  Probably not!  We get so wrapped up in life that we don't seem to be able to move forward.  Our dreams are often on hold while we deal with the ordinary stuff of living. This is why I created my latest course - "...

It's here - finally! Get access to this life changing course HERE  for less than a fifth of the retail price! Have you ever wanted to make money from freelance writing? Here's your chance. My classic Easy Cash Writing course has been brought to life - with 60 lectures over 20 modules. Start your first year as a freelance writer Submit your writing to paying markets all over the world Live a life of fun, independence and fulfillment Plan a new career outside of the nine to five Write in all kinds of categories for profit Students should have a basic grasp of English and be attracted to writing. No particular skill or qualifications are necessary, although enthusiasm and the ambition to become a freelance writer will be helpful. The course may also be useful to freelance writers who have yet to experience much success - because this course will change that for you! Fiction authors may also benefit if they are not sure...

Quick reminder that my new video course on writing short stories that sell is again available at a discount. The first batch of 100 discount places ran out on the 31st of last month. I have therefore released a second batch of discount places that are now available - but only until the 30th of October. Go get your spot now HERE for a quarter of the list price! Keep Writing. Rob Parnell Your Success Is My Concern easywaytowrite.com Finding Your Unique Voice A writer friend recently said to me, "When I read, I find I'm influenced by other authors. Depending on who I'm reading, my writing style is either playful, deep sounding or whatever. How can I stop writing like other writers and find my own voice?" (She also added that I might want to write an article based on my response - hence what you're reading right now!) Before we get on to practical tips, we should cover some basic preconceptions about voice. First of all, your voi...

As I often do, I'm responding to a subscriber query recently about the type of writing advice I offer in my courses and Kindle books. First of all I should state - again - for the record, that I believe the most surefire way of improving your writing is simply to write. Studying is one thing. I try my hardest to offer good advice on genre requirements and writing style to make it easier for the writer to compete in the marketplace and get published. What I don't do is force you to study other writers and how they go about what they do. I think to focus too heavily on how a particular author or three get their results is to slightly misunderstand the point of studying writing. If you take a tertiary degree in order to study writing, you will be presented with lots of theories as to how writers go about creating stories and all the options available to a w...

Dialogue is one area in which many new writers seem to struggle. I'm not sure why. I think it has to do with the faulty notion that literary fiction has to be formal, which can lead to your characters having very unnatural speech patterns. It surprises me, too, whenever I see dialogue without liberal use of contractions - as if people say 'I am going to leave this place. I bid you farewell,' as opposed to, 'I'm off. See ya.' Convincing dialogue is about having your characters sound 'natural'. Studying dialogue in movies and TV can go a long way in helping you define what is regarded as 'natural sounding.' Unfortunately, listening to real people talk is not going to help you. In real life, people speak aimlessly without particular regard to sentence structure, punctuation, or even sense sometimes. If you've ever tried t...

The great Chinese ruler, Mao Tse Tung, once said,  'In order to break the rules of a system, one must first learn and understand them.'  (Okay, I paraphrase - he was actually talking about Communism.) But so it is with POV in fiction.  Learn the rules first, then you can break them. I get so many emails from writers asking how they should deal with point of view that I thought it might be interesting to discuss the subject here. The truth is, there's no right or wrong way to do things - but there are guidelines that, if you adhere to them, will mark you out as a good and competent writer.  Similarly, if you ignore them (without understanding what you're doing) then you'll most likely come across as an amateur. Before we go on, let's make sure we know the terms of reference. For most fiction, you have 4 basic alternatives. 1. First person, where everything is told from the limited POV of the protagonist - the classic '...

(According to Google this is my most popular article - something short I wrote back in 2003. It's reproduced in over 160 places on the Net and even gets a reference on Wikipedia as a qualified information source. Cool!) “Murder your darlings” was a phrase first coined by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (or Fitzgerald or Faulkner or Nabakov or even Stephen King, depending on who you believe). They're all referring to what you might call your “best bits.” The “bits” you should edit out of your work. As Elmore Leonard once said, “If I come across anything in my work that smacks of ‘good writing,’ I immediately strike it out.” The theory is that writing you’re particularly proud of is probably self-indulgent and will stand out. You might think this is good. Wrong. You will most likely break the “fictive dream.” (This is the state of conscious...

I was asked this question by an esteemed subscriber this week and thought it might make an interesting article. In the publishing and movie industry the terms theme and premise are bandied around liberally - and it's assumed that writers know the difference, even if agents, publishers, and marketing people are not so up on the precise meanings. Basically the premise to a story is your starting point, the idea behind it - its reason to be. I've heard members of writer's groups ask the question: "Can you write a story without a premise?" I would have to say you could try - but fairly soon you'd run out of things to say. You need a premise to give a story legs. Besides which, most writers are able to sum up what their story is about - or going to be about - in a short sentence of two. So what makes a premise? Mostly an intriguing idea...