Drafting in Layers

Writing Tips

By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraigNevada 2014

I had a question on Twitter last weekend from mystery writer K.B. Owen.  She was interested in finding out more about how I draft a story in layers.

The layering of my drafts started out as an almost procrastination.  There are parts of stories that I’m not as fond of writing as others.   I especially dislike writing descriptions of characters and settings and found that I’d put off working on my book sometimes because I didn’t want to write it. As a work-around, I decided that I would add all description in a separate draft and in one “layer” as I was working on my second draft.

After using this technique for a while, I found it was very helpful for a variety of different things.  For one, it helped me weave my subplots through the main plot in a more thoughtful way.Continue reading

Twitterific Writing Links

Twitterific

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

Twitterific writing links are fed into the Writer’s Knowledge Base search engineBlog (developed by writer and software engineer Mike Fleming) which has over 30,000 free articles on writing related topics. It’s the search engine for writers.

My blog readers are being offered a special discount on author and editor CS Lakin’s Targeting Genre for Big Sales course, now open for enrollment. It launches March 1, and if you register before March 15, you’ll get $100 off the regular course price of $397 by clicking here or by entering TARGET22 as your code.  This looks to be a good course for writers who are looking to optimize keywords, product description, etc. on their Amazon book page for reader discoverability. 

Creative Work is Performance. Assess Your Creative Health Now: http://ow.ly/X9JVD @DanBlank

10 Ways You Can Find Time To Write In 2016:  http://ow.ly/X9Kuf @10MinuteNovelists

Tips on How to Pitch Magazines Successfully:  http://ow.ly/X9JQy @FinishedPages      Continue reading

Kindle Preview Embed

Business of Writing

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraigKindle Preview 4

Do you read your newsletters from Amazon?  I’ll admit that I haven’t for years…not until the final couple of newsletters arrived in my inbox.  I’m not much of a newsletter person, usually.  This may explain why it pains me to send out newsletters to my readers. I feel as if I’m bothering them, even though they signed up for the thing.

This last email from Amazon had an interesting note about Kindle Preview (not Kindle Previewer, which is how we all proof our mobi files before hitting publish).  Kindle Preview is a bit of code that we can embed on our website to allow readers to see a preview of our book or purchase the book (from Amazon, naturally) without leaving our site.Continue reading

Writing Solo after Being Collaborative

Business of Writing

By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraigquilt trip

For the first time, I’m writing one of the Southern Quilting mysteries on my own.  I got the rights to my characters back from Penguin Random House last year.

Although I was excited to keep writing the characters and their adventures, it’s been a bit unsettling. I wasn’t expecting to feel unsettled since this is the second series that I’ve gotten my rights back for.

But the first series had only one book traditionally published before I started self-publishing the rest.  This series had a good five books in it.Continue reading

Twitterific Writing Links

Twitterific, Writing Tips

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

Twitterific writing links are fed into the Writer’s Knowledge Base search engineBlog (developed by writer and software engineer Mike Fleming) which has over 30,000 free articles on writing related topics. It’s the search engine for writers.

Looking Into a Killer’s Eyes to Bring a Character to Life:  http://ow.ly/WR4HI @emilyross816

Writing the Hard Stuff:  http://ow.ly/WR4Mk @suddenlyjamie

4 Tactics to Create Your Novel’s Perfect Last Line:  http://ow.ly/WR4A8 @sacha_black               Continue reading

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