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Great post. Your topic reminds me of the book 'How Not to Write a Novel.' https://www.amazon.com/Write-Novel-Them-Misstep-Misstep-ebook/dp/B00166YCBU

From its Amazon page: 'Many writing books offer sound advice on how to write well. This is not one of those books. On the contrary, this is a collection of terrible, awkward, and laughably unreadable excerpts that will teach you what to avoid—at all costs—if you ever want your novel published.'

Stephen King - I actually love On Writing, but most, not all, but most, of his books I think have interesting premises and then I just don't feel the writing backs them up. I liked Carrie but everything else is just frustrating for me to read. I want to like him but I don't.

> I have the basic idea but can't seem to find a good, not to pricey, app to plan and organise the idea out into characters, chapters etc, any recommendations are appreciated!

There's a bit of a learning curve involved, but GNU Emacs with Org mode is free as in beer, free as in speech, and incredibly powerful once you get used to it. Org mode is built-in, so you can use it right away, and it allows you to outline your novel any way you like in future-proof plain text.

And when you're ready, you can export from Org to Word's docx format with a few keystrokes. :)

I've been very happy with TreeSheets for the last few weeks. It looks very basic, but it's really just very flexible. I was able to outline my story, add new rows or columns with just a click and then color code the cells for rising tension. It really does a lot. Like a lot of free programs the web page doesn't make it look sexy, but if you look at the screenshots page you get a better idea for what you can do with it. I did all the planning for my article and you can even export to html to have it handy somewhere like Google Docs.

I've run it on Linux and OS X with not problems, and it has a Windows version as well.

For the punctuation, just get a style guide and learn the rules. The Elements of Style is a good, cheap option.

I wouldn't worry about spelling. The computer can fix that stuff. Actually, lots of great writers were horrible spellers.

And, yes, you can pay an editor to fix all that stuff later, but it's pretty expensive.

You'll want to keep the Emacs survival card handy. Incidentally, Emacs uses "kill and yank" instead of "cut and paste".

You might find the Org reference card handy, too.

Hah, organise? Wat is dat?

When I do organise, I use either a mindmap platform like mindmeister or just bullet points. Get enough bullet points in your outline and you can start organising them by chapter or whatever.

I also used a whiteboard but, alas, I sold it when I moved and I have nowhere to put one at the moment.

Xmind it is.

Last year I became dissatisfied with the progress I'd been making in my fiction, and I conducted a survey online, asking over 1,000 writers how they improve their writing (I posted in r/writerchat, and you guys were kind enough to share your thoughts :D ). I then started reading about "expertise science" in a variety of books, studying how talented people got that way. Next I surveyed big time bestsellers like Andy Weir, Jodi Picoult, and Gregg Olsen about their writing processes. And finally, I put it all my findings into a FREE ebook on Amazon called <em>How to Improve Your Writing</em>.

The book centers on the seven main ways to improve your writing, as suggested by writers (like y’all) in the survey. I call them the “7 Drills”.

1. Write
2. Read
3. Get Feedback
4. Study
5. Edit
6. Enjoy Art
7. Live

I explain the drills in the context of deliberate practice (the secret sauce to maximizing the efficiency of your writing time), and I give examples of each drill from my own practicing. I explain how I “read like a writer” with Ender’s game, how I “studied the craft” through Brandon Sanderson’s YouTube series, and so on, giving a step-by-step guide for how to convert your knowledge into effective habits. You *can* be a great writer. All you need is the right practice regimen.

With your answers in the survey, you gave me this system for free. Now, I’m giving it freely back. I hope it helps.

Thanks for the post! I've read On Writing, and this is very good advice (and if you haven't read this book, I'd highly recommend it). Another piece of advice which you touch on from that book is to read lots of different things (like you did, read outside your genre). Read newspapers, magazines, fiction, non-fiction, anything that is interesting to you.

I've been out of college for awhile now, but I found that the biggest slump in my reading life was during college. It probably had a lot to do with how many textbooks I was reading (so I wasn't exactly not reading), but I found it really hard to read for pleasure during parts of college. That aspect improved after graduation, so if anyone else finds themselves in that situation, it does get better.

I just self published a scifi/apocalypse novel: "Da Vinci on the Lam." I created a cover myself, but I am no artist and I am sure plenty of folks can do better. If you want to take a crack at it, I'm all eyes. Or feel free to offer a critique of the current cover and I can see how to improve it with future variations.

It's on Kindle Unlimited and I am planning to run a free promotion, hopefully this weekend. So if you or anyone else here is interested in checking it out, I should be able to get you a free copy.

https://www.amazon.com/Vinci-Lam-One-week-chance-ebook/dp/B0B3LMLQB4/

Back Cover Blurb: One week. One chance. Earth is dying as a fungal ‘grit’ and dust storms smoother crop lands and destroy the oceans. The rich flee into space, leaving the poor to die off. If gunslinger Artis Quinn delivers a priceless da Vinci artwork to an offworlder hub on the other side of the country, his kids get tickets off-world. But he’ll have to fight his way through the ruthless Onyx Group and a civilization-ending grit storm to succeed.

I'd love to see your work/portfolio either way and happy to provide feedback. And thanks a ton for offering help to the community.

My first collection of poetry was just published, and I am SO EXCITED about it! The poems are all in the style of magical realism. 🖤

https://www.amazon.com/Pentimento-Michael-Alan-Herman/dp/0996121129

This is the link for anyone interested

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https://www.amazon.com/Black-Umbrella-Burhanulhaq-Brula-ebook/dp/B08D6YZ8ZY/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&amp;qid=1595195657&amp;refinements=p_n_feature_twenty_browse-bin%3A13054657011&amp;s=books&amp;sr=1-3

I can't underestimate the value of this book—but I'm not alone, it's the book everyone that knows what they're talking about recommends. I just read Stephen King's book "On Writing," (I'm not a SK fan, but everyone loves his book on writing—it's a very highly rated book). And Stephen King skips talking about writing style almost completely because "The Elements of Style" exists.

Nothing compares to this one, tiny little book. It gets updated every ten years or something but it looks like this.

Every time you read this, your writing will become more and more bullet-proof against writing criticism. When people say "know the rules" before you break them, this little book is a list of those rules.

I can't underestimate the value of this book—but I'm not alone, it's the book everyone that knows what they're talking about recommends. I just read Stephen King's book "On Writing," (I'm not a SK fan, but everyone loves his book on writing—it's a very highly rated book). And Stephen King skips talking about writing style almost completely because "The Elements of Style" exists.

Nothing compares to this one, tiny little book. It gets updated every ten years or something but it looks like this.

Every time you read this, your writing will become more and more bullet-proof against writing criticism. When people say "know the rules" before you break them, this little book is a list of those rules.

Oh so much this!

Don't tell me about me about your book. Tell me why I would want to read it.

If you use Amazon Author Central, you can go to your book listing and add bold/italics/bullet points to your blurb (which you can't initially do when listing it in the Kindle Store). See here for an example with italics.

I agree, I've read some great short fiction over the years, and I don't even read much short fiction. I think part of the problem is the value proposition. Take one of your examples, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and compare with say Game of Thrones.

They cost the same, but GoT is only a bit short of 10 times the size.