Rob Parnell's Writing Academy Blog

Once you know your premise, it will make writing your story much easier and quicker. Using a premise as a starting point is about creating a CONCRETE idea that will not allow you to drift and wallow in self-indulgence. A premise is a rudder and a steering wheel. It’s a road map for your fiction writing. Let me explain why in terms easier to understand. In the visual arts, that is: TV and the movies, the premise is EVERYTHING. People will give you millions of dollars for a great premise for a show BUT it must be specific and compelling. Think about the TV shows you love and then summarize them. A bestselling author and a female New York cop investigate murder mysteries and their relationship deepens over time. CASTLE A Smithsonian anthropologist and an FBI agent investigate murder mysteries and their relationship deepens over time. BONES An ex Baseball player and a private eye investigate murder mysteries and their relationship deepens over time. PRIVATE EYES Notice any ki...

Writing is not a race. Nobody wins it by getting something out there first. The work that succeeds is often not the most original. It is the work that is finely honed to perfection before it gets released. There's really only one duty writers owes to themselves and their readers - and that is to constantly strive to improve. Ask any seasoned writer and they'll tell you that getting better at the craft is probably the most fulfilling aspect of writing. Because you are effectively getting better at communicating your ideas - and placing your worldview into the minds of others. To me, this is an almost magical concept. So - constant improvement - how does one achieve it? Here are nine tips: 1. Read Like it's Going Out of Fashion You've heard it a million times before. You can't love writing without first loving to read. Read a lot. Read everything. Analyze writing and writers. Study what works, what doesn't, wonder why and learn from it. Realize too that the pu...

  When writing fiction, writers are forced to consider the protagonist and his or her agenda. We need to ask what our hero's goals are and where they want to end up as people. Now usually, there is an antagonist whose desire to thwart the hero's goals is at least as strong, if not stronger than the hero's. But what about writers? Who is our main antagonist? Alas - usually ourselves. When it comes to writing, there's that little guy inside your head who wants to criticize - endlessly. His voice reminds you constantly that you have no special talent, that your writing is average at best, and that you should never, ever show your work to anyone because, well, it's crap. Helpful little fella. And to think, he lives inside of us! Suppressing the inner critic is a necessary part of the writing process. If we couldn't silence the little rascal, we'd never write anything. Indeed many writers get stuck on page one be...

A writer friend asked me the other day,  "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 now!) Before we get on to practical tips, we should cover some basic preconceptions about voice. First of all, your voice should never be some affectation you acquire or work on. I think you know what I mean. When we're at school or in the office, we're told there's a way to say things - a style we must adopt to conform to the medium. Many novice writers think the same applies to fiction - that there is perhaps some predetermined mental attitude and/or demeanor one should adopt - usually a 'superior, more learned' version of ourselves - to sound more authoritative when tell...

Many new authors assume that only romance writing is formulaic. This is not true. Almost  all  genre writing is formulaic. Indeed, it must be. Not because authors are at a loss to sustain originality but because  unless  genre fiction adheres closely to its own conventions, readers will often regard the work as unsuccessful. This rule applies to movies too. Unless a big budget movie contains the usual genre conventions, it will invariably do badly at the box office. However, if the standard conventions  are  systematically dealt with in the movie-making process, the final result will almost always do well. So entrenched are we as a species in our desire, our  need,  for formulaic writing in books, movies, and episodic TV, that we inevitably regard writing that does not exactly fulfill our pre-conceived expectations as somehow lacking. I use this inescapable fact of life as a starting point for my genre-writing courses. While there is...

After the cover, the next port of call for the potential buyer of your book is your book description. And like an elevator pitch, your book blurb needs to be punchy, upbeat, a breeze to read and intriguing enough to make the reader want more. Set aside an afternoon to write a 500 to 800-word book description. First, you're NOT writing a synopsis of your story.  Imagine you're in a bar with a friend and you want to get them to read a book you've just finished. You don't want to give away the ending - and you don't want to bore them with names and locations and character interactions that aren't immediately pertinent to their understanding of the overall story. You want to give them the best hook you can think of first - and then only details if their interest in piqued.  This is where you need to start: The hook. A less than 50-word sentence that describes what the story is about in general terms. It's perfectly acceptab...

Once upon a time you could spend money on promotion and see positive results. Like actual sales. Doesn’t work so much anymore. Ask any reputable advertiser and they will tell you promotion is good for creating “customer awareness” but is now hopeless for selling stuff. These days I don't recommend authors spend any money on their marketing, their websites, their book covers, adverts, anything at all – at least at first. It's simply not worth it - until you have some followers and/or some subscribers. Why? Because there's simply no point investing in a brand or a concept, even a single product like a novel - unless you know the thing is working. Until it sells WITHOUT any help. This is something I learned when I was signed as a singer with EMI Music. Recording companies only promote music that is ALREADY selling. Publishing companies, too, only promote books that are ALREADY SELLING. That's why we too, as independent authors and entrepreneurs, must do the same - only ...