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The following is an excerpt from Word Painting Revised Edition by Rebecca McClanahan, available now!

The characters in our stories, songs, poems, and essays embody our writing. They are our words made flesh. Sometimes they even speak for us, carrying much of the burden of plot, theme, mood, idea, and emotion. But they do not exist until we describe them on the page. Until we anchor them with words, they drift, bodiless and ethereal. They weigh nothing; they have no voice. Once we’ve written the first words—“Belinda Beatrice,” perhaps, or “the dark-eyed salesman in the back of the room,” or simply “the girl”—our characters begin to take form. Soon they’ll be more than mere names. They’ll put on jeans or rubber hip boots, light thin cigarettes or thick cigars; they’ll stutter or shout, buy a townhouse on the Upper East Side or a studio in the Village; they’ll marry for life or survive a series of happy affairs; they’ll beat their children or embrace them. What they become, on the page, is up to us.

Here are 11 secrets to keep in mind as you breathe life into your characters through description.

1. Description that relies solely on physical attributes too often turns into what Janet Burroway calls the “all-points bulletin.”

It reads something like this: “My father is a tall, middle-aged man of average build. He has green eyes and brown hair and usually wears khakis and oxford shirts.”

This description is so mundane, it barely qualifies as an “all-points bulletin.” Can you imagine the police searching for this suspect? No identifying marks, no scars or tattoos, nothing to distinguish him. He appears as a cardboard cutout rather than as a living, breathing character. Yes, the details are accurate, but they don’t call forth vivid images. We can barely make out this character’s form; how can we be expected to remember him?

When we describe a character, factual information alone is not sufficient, no matter how accurate it might be. The details must appeal to our senses. Phrases that merely label (like tall, middle-aged, and average) bring no clear image to our minds. Since most people form their first impression of someone through visual clues, it makes sense to describe our characters using visual images. Green eyes is a beginning, but it doesn’t go far enough. Are they pale green or dark green? Even a simple adjective can strengthen a detail. If the adjective also suggests a metaphor—forest green, pea green, or emerald green—the reader not only begins to make associations (positive or negative) but also visualizes in her mind’s eye the vehicle of the metaphor—forest trees, peas, or glittering gems.

2. The problem with intensifying an image only by adjectives is that adjectives encourage cliché.

It’s hard to think of adjective descriptors that haven’t been overused: bulging or ropy muscles, clean-cut good looks, frizzy hair. If you use an adjective to describe a physical attribute, make sure that the phrase is not only accurate and sensory but also fresh. In her short story “Flowering Judas,” Katherine Anne Porter describes Braggioni’s singing voice as a “furry, mournful voice” that takes the high notes “in a prolonged painful squeal.” Often the easiest way to avoid an adjective-based cliché is to free the phrase entirely from its adjective modifier. For example, rather than describing her eyes merely as “hazel,” Emily Dickinson remarked that they were “the color of the sherry the guests leave in the glasses.”

3. Strengthen physical descriptions by making details more specific.

In my earlier “all-points bulletin” example, the description of the father’s hair might be improved with a detail such as “a military buzz-cut, prickly to the touch” or “the aging hippie’s last chance—a long ponytail striated with gray.” Either of these descriptions would paint a stronger picture than the bland phrase brown hair. In the same way, his oxford shirt could become “a white oxford button-down that he’d steam-pleated just minutes before” or “the same style of baby blue oxford he’d worn since prep school, rolled carelessly at the elbows.” These descriptions not only bring forth images, they also suggest the background and the personality of the father.

4. Select physical details carefully, choosing only those that create the strongest, most revealing impression.

One well-chosen physical trait, item of clothing, or idiosyncratic mannerism can reveal character more effectively than a dozen random images. This applies to characters in nonfiction as well as fiction. When I write about my grandmother, I usually focus on her strong, jutting chin—not only because it was her most dominant feature but also because it suggests her stubbornness and determination. When I write about Uncle Leland, I describe the wandering eye that gave him a perpetually distracted look, as if only his body was present. His spirit, it seemed, had already left on some journey he’d glimpsed peripherally, a place the rest of us were unable to see. As you describe real-life characters, zero in on distinguishing characteristics that reveal personality: gnarled, arthritic hands always busy at some task; a habit of covering her mouth each time a giggle rises up; a lopsided swagger as he makes his way to the horse barn; the scent of coconut suntan oil, cigarettes, and leather each time she sashays past your chair.

5. A character’s immediate surroundings can provide the backdrop for the sensory and significant details that shape the description of the character himself.

If your character doesn’t yet have a job, a hobby, a place to live, or a place to wander, you might need to supply these things. Once your character is situated comfortably, he may relax enough to reveal his secrets. On the other hand, you might purposely make your character uncomfortable—that is, put him in an environment where he definitely doesn’t fit, just to see how he’ll respond. Let’s say you’ve written several descriptions of an elderly woman working in the kitchen, yet she hasn’t begun to ripen into the three-dimensional character you know she could become. Try putting her at a gay bar on a Saturday night, or in a tattoo parlor, or (if you’re up for a little time travel) at Appomattox, serving her famous buttermilk biscuits to Grant and Lee.

6. In describing a character’s surroundings, you don’t have to limit yourself to a character’s present life.

Early environments shape fictional characters as well as flesh-and-blood people. In Flaubert’s description of Emma Bovary’s adolescent years in the convent, he foreshadows the woman she will become, a woman who moves through life in a romantic malaise, dreaming of faraway lands and loves. We learn about Madame Bovary through concrete, sensory descriptions of the place that formed her. In addition, Flaubert describes the book that held her attention during mass and the images that she particularly loved—a sick lamb, a pierced heart.

Living among those white-faced women with their rosaries and copper crosses, never getting away from the stuffy schoolroom atmosphere, she gradually succumbed to the mystic languor exhaled by the perfumes of the altar, the coolness of the holy-water fonts and the radiance of the tapers. Instead of following the Mass, she used to gaze at the azure-bordered religious drawings in her book. She loved the sick lamb, the Sacred Heart pierced with sharp arrows, and poor Jesus falling beneath His cross.

7. Characters reveal their inner lives—their preoccupations, values, lifestyles, likes and dislikes, fears and aspirations—by the objects that fill their hands, houses, offices, cars, suitcases, grocery carts, and dreams.

In the opening scenes of the film The Big Chill, we’re introduced to the main characters by watching them unpack the bags they’ve brought for a weekend trip to a mutual friend’s funeral. One character has packed enough pills to stock a drugstore; another has packed a calculator; still another, several packages of condoms. Before a word is spoken—even before we know anyone’s name—we catch glimpses of the characters’ lives through the objects that define them.

What items would your character pack for a weekend away? What would she use for luggage? A leather valise with a gold monogram on the handle? An old accordion case with decals from every theme park she’s visited? A duffel bag? Make a list of everything your character would pack: a “Save the Whales” T-shirt; a white cotton nursing bra, size 36D; a breast pump; a Mickey Mouse alarm clock; a photograph of her husband rocking a child to sleep; a can of Mace; three Hershey bars.

8. Description doesn’t have to be direct to be effective.

Techniques abound for describing a character indirectly, for instance, through the objects that fill her world. Create a grocery list for your character—or two or three, depending on who’s coming for dinner. Show us the character’s credit card bill or the itemized deductions on her income tax forms. Let your character host a garage sale and watch her squirm while neighbors and strangers rifle through her stuff. Which items is she practically giving away? What has she overpriced, secretly hoping no one will buy it? Write your character’s Last Will and Testament. Which niece gets the Steinway? Who gets the lake cottage—the stepson or the daughter? If your main characters are divorcing, how will they divide their assets? Which one will fight hardest to keep the dog?

9. To make characters believable to readers, set them in motion.

The earlier “all-points bulletin” description of the father failed not only because the details were mundane and the prose stilted; it also suffered from lack of movement. To enlarge the description, imagine that same father in a particular setting—not just in the house but also sitting in the brown recliner. Then, because setting implies time as well as place, choose a particular time in which to place him. The time may be bound by the clock (six o’clock, sunrise, early afternoon) or bound only by the father’s personal history (after the divorce, the day he lost his job, two weeks before his sixtieth birthday).

Then set the father in motion. Again, be as specific as possible. “Reading the newspaper” is a start, but it does little more than label a generic activity. In order for readers to enter the fictional dream, the activity must be shown. Often this means breaking a large, generic activity into smaller, more particular parts: “scowling at the Dow Jones averages,” perhaps, or “skimming the used-car ads” or “wiping his ink-stained fingers on the monogrammed handkerchief.” Besides providing visual images for the reader, specific and representative actions also suggest the personality of the character, his habits and desires, and even the emotional life hidden beneath the physical details.

10. Verbs are the foot soldiers of action-based description.

However, we don’t need to confine our use of verbs to the actions a character performs. Well-placed verbs can sharpen almost any physical description of a character. In the following passage from Marilynne Robinson’s novel Housekeeping, verbs enliven the description even when the grandmother isn’t in motion.

… in the last years she continued to settle and began to shrink. Her mouth bowed forward and her brow sloped back, and her skull shone pink and speckled within a mere haze of hair, which hovered about her head like the remembered shape of an altered thing. She looked as if the nimbus of humanity were fading away and she were turning monkey. Tendrils grew from her eyebrows and coarse white hairs sprouted on her lip and chin. When she put on an old dress the bosom hung empty and the hem swept the floor. Old hats fell down over her eyes. Sometimes she put her hand over her mouth and laughed, her eyes closed and her shoulder shaking.

Notice the strong verbs Robinson uses throughout the description. The mouth “bowed” forward; the brow “sloped” back; the hair “hovered,” then “sprouted”; the hem “swept” the floor; hats “fell” down over her eyes. Even when the grandmother’s body is at rest, the description pulses with activity. And when the grandmother finally does move—putting a hand over her mouth, closing her eyes, laughing until her shoulders shake—we visualize her in our mind’s eye because the actions are concrete and specific. They are what the playwright David Mamet calls “actable actions.” Opening a window is an actable action, as is slamming a door. “Coming to terms with himself” or “understanding that he’s been wrong all along” are not actable actions. This distinction between nonactable and actable actions echoes our earlier distinction between showing and telling. For the most part, a character’s movements must be rendered concretely—that is, shown—before the reader can participate in the fictional dream.

Actable actions are important elements in many fiction and nonfiction scenes that include dialogue. In some cases, actions, along with environmental clues, are even more important to character development than the words the characters speak. Writers of effective dialogue include pauses, voice inflections, repetitions, gestures, and other details to suggest the psychological and emotional subtext of a scene. Journalists and other nonfiction writers do the same. Let’s say you’ve just interviewed your cousin about his military service during the Vietnam War. You have a transcript of the interview, based on audio or video recordings, but you also took notes about what else was going on in that room. As you write, include nonverbal clues as well as your cousin’s actual words. When you asked him about his tour of duty, did he look out the window, light another cigarette, and change the subject? Was it a stormy afternoon? What song was playing on the radio? If his ancient dog was asleep on your cousin’s lap, did he stroke the dog as he spoke? When the phone rang, did your cousin ignore it or jump up to answer it, looking relieved for the interruption? Including details such as these will deepen your character description.

11. We don’t always have to use concrete, sensory details to describe our characters, and we aren’t limited to describing actable actions.

The novels of Milan Kundera use little outward description of characters or their actions. Kundera is more concerned with a character’s interior landscape, with what he calls a character’s “existential problem,” than with sensory description of person or action. In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Tomas’s body is not described at all, since the idea of body does not constitute Tomas’s internal dilemma. Teresa’s body is described in physical, concrete terms (though not with the degree of detail most novelists would employ) only because her body represents one of her existential preoccupations. For Kundera, a novel is more a meditation on ideas and the private world of the mind than a realistic depiction of characters. Reading Kundera, I always feel that I’m living inside the characters rather than watching them move, bodily, through the world.

With writers like Kundera, we learn about characters through the themes and obsessions of their inner lives, their “existential problems” as depicted primarily through dreams, visions, memories, and thoughts. Other writers probe characters’ inner lives through what characters see through their eyes. A writer who describes what a character sees also reveals, in part, a character’s inner drama. In The Madness of a Seduced Woman, Susan Fromberg Schaeffer describes a farm through the eyes of the novel’s main character, Agnes, who has just fallen in love and is anticipating her first sexual encounter, which she simultaneously longs for and fears.

… and I saw how the smooth, white curve of the snow as it lay on the ground was like the curve of a woman’s body, and I saw how the farm was like the body of a woman which lay down under the sun and under the freezing snow and perpetually and relentlessly produced uncountable swarms of living things, all born with mouths open and cries rising from them into the air, long-boned muzzles opening … as if they would swallow the world whole …

Later in the book, when Agnes’s sexual relationship has led to pregnancy, then to a life-threatening abortion, she describes the farm in quite different terms.

It was August, high summer, but there was something definite and curiously insubstantial in the air. … In the fields near me, the cattle were untroubled, their jaws grinding the last of the grass, their large, fat tongues drinking the clear brook water. But there was something in the air, a sad note the weather played upon the instrument of the bone-stretched skin. … In October, the leaves would be off the trees; the fallen leaves would be beaten flat by heavy rains and the first fall of snow. The bony ledges of the earth would begin to show, the earth’s skeleton shedding its unnecessary flesh.

By describing the farm through Agnes’s eyes, Schaeffer not only shows us Agnes’s inner landscape—her ongoing obsession with sex and pregnancy—but also demonstrates a turning point in Agnes’s view of sexuality. In the first passage, which depicts a farm in winter, Agnes sees images of beginnings and births. The earth is curved and full like a woman’s fleshy body. In the second scene, described as occurring in “high summer,” images of death prevail. Agnes’s mind jumps ahead to autumn, to dying leaves and heavy rains, a time when the earth, no longer curved in a womanly shape, is little more than a skeleton, having shed the flesh it no longer needs.

Thinking of starting a blog in 2015 to build your writer platform and gain a readership for your work? All the best journeys start with a bit of planning. Even if you’re not one for planning and would rather dive in right away, bear with me! In this exclusive excerpt from Blogging for Writers, Robin Houghton asks six crucial questions about your blogging goals, audience, and plan. Be honest with the answers as you write them down—they’ll serve as good reminders and motivators later on. When you’re finished, you’ll have the beginnings of a blogging roadmap that will assist you throughout 2015 and beyond.

1. Why do you want a blog?

What appeals to you about blogging? Is it something you can see yourself getting into, enjoying, and looking forward to doing? What do you want to get out of it? Promotion? Community? Sales?

It’s important to have goals for your blog, and those goals should be linked to your goals as a writer. All the same, the more open you are to seeing the fun in blogging, the more likely you are to stick with it and have it work for you.

2. Who do you want to read it? 

An interesting question, and linked closely to your blogging goals. It’s no good saying, “I want the whole world to read it!” Of course there are ways to go viral or hijack an audience, but the most successful bloggers are in it for the long term and are interested in becoming notable rather than notorious.

So, who is your audience? Your readers and fans (actual or potential)? Your peers? Industry influencers? Prospective publishers, agents, editors, gatekeepers? Perhaps, if you write for children, it’s the parents of your readers. Perhaps you write for two different markets with very different readers. The reason for this question is to get you thinking about what your blog will be about, what it will look like, the tone of voice you will adopt, and so on.

3. What are you prepared to put into it? 

Sorry to sound harsh, but the vast majority of blogs are abandoned within the first year. Don’t let that be yours! You can blog for free, but there will be costs associated with it—some financial, but mostly in terms of your time and effort.

Do your research—check out other writers’ blogs, especially (but not exclusively) those in your genre or niche. Look at the top industry blogs and websites—the annual Writer’s Digest 101 Best Websites for Writers is a great place to start. Not only will you draw inspiration from them, but by subscribing to other blogs you’re starting the process of connecting with the blogosphere. It’s never too soon to start commenting, sharing, and engaging with other bloggers. When your blog is up and running, it’s just as important to keep engaging with others as well as nurturing your own blog community.

4. What’s your blogging persona?

A blog is unmediated—it’s you talking directly to people—so it’s worth thinking about your “persona,” or the face you present to your blog readers and anyone else who may come across your blog. Here are some considerations:

• Professional vs. Personal: Let’s say you are approaching blogging primarily as a business tool—for example, your goals might be to network with influential industry people, demonstrate your authority/ability/talent, or promote yourself to an audience of readers or potential readers. In this situation, you are presenting yourself and your work as a brand, and your blog will reflect that, both in how it looks and in the nature of its content. But this is a blog, not your author publicity page. Take advantage of that and inject your personality into it, too.
• Transparency and Consistency: Will you talk about both your successes and your failures? Not everyone wants to lay themselves bare by mentioning rejections, spats, loss of motivation, or other negative aspects of their writing life. Others revel in it and find visitor numbers and comments increase when their blog posts are at their most raw and honest.

5. What will you name your blog? 

What will your blog be called? An obvious choice might be your name, writer name, or something that incorporates your name, such as “Seth’s Blog” or “Neil Gaiman’s Journal.”

You might prefer your blog’s name to say something about the content, or its purpose, so that it’s separate from your name. This could work well if it’s not your only blog, or if you’ve already got a website with your name associated with it and the blog is in addition to that, or if you are planning to have regular guest bloggers or contributors.

Your blog’s given name or title doesn’t necessarily have to be its domain name (the address that appears in the browser bar). You may choose to register your writer name as your domain name, then call your blog something different. As a rule, you should try to register both your writer name and your blog name (if different) as domain names, even if you’re not sure you will use them right away.

6. What blogging platform will you use? 

A blog platform refers to the software that powers a blog. You could think of it as the underlying construction, like a house—is it timber-framed or brick-built? Once the house is built, you may not be able to tell. Most blog platforms do pretty much the same job. But it’s worth understanding the key differences—the choices you make at this stage will affect what you can do with your blog further down the line, so it’s worth taking the time.

The most popular blogging platforms are WordPress and Blogger, and Blogging for Writers goes into both of these in depth. Do your research and make a decision based on your needs, comfort level, and personal preferences.

Blogging for Writers by Robin Houghton is available here.

Rachel Randall is the managing editor for Writer’s Digest Books.

The nonfiction book proposal is a unique creature. It’s an essential package that you must create to attract the attention of publishers and “sell” them on your book, but most writers balk at the thought of spending weeks and even months developing and honing it.

But what if you could accelerate the process of creating your nonfiction book proposal? What if you could write a powerful proposal both quickly and professionally? Ryan G. Van Cleave shows you how with The Weekend Book Proposal, a practical, step-by-step guide to the nuts and bolts of faster, better proposal writing.

Here, Ryan shares three questions you should ask yourself as you start planning your proposal.

1. WHO ARE MY READERS?

Start with your mom, dad, spouse, and immediate family. Then expand this list to any aunts, uncles, and cousins who you can guilt-trip into buying a copy. Great—you’ve sold maybe a dozen copies to people who are buying it merely because they know you. Now the real work starts. Who else is going to be persuaded to buy the book?

Determine the Primary and Secondary Markets

Your primary audience is the ideal group of people who’d love to read your book. If your book is a Florida orchid-growing how-to, the primary audience is Floridians who grow orchids. If your book is a memoir about a forty-something using her renewed Catholic faith and positive thinking to create weight loss and overall health improvement, then the primary audience is health aficionados. But it might also be Catholic women’s groups. And perhaps priests. Most books have a clear primary audience, though books that cover a lot of ground (like the latter example) might have more.

Your secondary audiences are the groups of people beyond the obvious primary audience. For that orchid book? Secondary audiences might be gardeners in Florida or the entire Southeast. Landscapers. Organic farmers. Member groups of the American Orchid Society. Botanical garden gift shops. For that memoir? Any Catholic church. Catholic parenting groups. Fitness clubs. Fans of The Secret and The Law of Attraction. Active forty-somethings and senior citizens. And so on.

Books should always have quite a few reasonable secondary markets. Make sure to mention them, even if they seem fairly small. The primary market should be doing the heavy lifting, yet secondary markets that bring in a couple dozen or a few hundred sales add up quickly.

2. WHAT MAKES MY BOOK SPECIAL?

How are you going to convince a publisher that your book is special? Different? Noteworthy? Reader-friendly?

It comes down to being clear about your book’s features and benefits. But the way to do that is in the context of seeing what’s already available in print—your competitors.

Determine the Existing Titles That Compete with Yours

It’s best to start by gathering the information already out there, so early on in your proposal, include a list of the top four to six books that in some way compete with yours. Don’t be scared to admit that similar books already exist. Editors expect that. In fact, if you can’t find any books that are similar to yours, editors will be leery of taking your book on. The assumption is, if it’s a viable market, someone would’ve already tapped into it. So find and name your main competitors.

Determine Your Book’s Features and Benefits

Here’s the tricky part. Now it’s on you to think through what features or benefits your book has that the competing books don’t (or at least the ones they haven’t done as effectively as you will). Here are a few possible ideas:

• Thoroughness: If your book is the most comprehensive, authoritative book on a certain topic, you’re in great shape.
• Timeliness: Think about all the Y2K books or 2012 Mayan prophecy books that flooded the shelves before a specific calendar date. Dealing with the context of your book—the place and time—can help persuade your audience.
• Access: If your book provides special access to something or someone people want to know more about, that’s a real value.
• Skills: Are you teaching something useful, like how to safely shed two pounds a week by doing yoga in your office chair at work? I wouldn’t know how to do that without reading your book (and perhaps getting more flexible—ouch!).
• Knowledge: Are you making readers more knowledgeable? Are you promising to raise their IQ? Despite having no evidence to support the idea that they raised the intelligence level of children, the Baby Einstein DVDs sold like crazy when they came out. Why? Every parent wanted their kids to be as smart as Albert Einstein.

3. WHO AM I TO WRITE THIS BOOK?

Even if you have an amazing idea and a dynamite book proposal, you might still lose the deal if you don’t present yourself as the single best candidate to do the job. You’ll need to discuss the following in your proposal:

Your Writing Background

If you have previous training in writing or some of your writing has been published somewhere—anywhere—awesome! That’s terrific information to include. Having something you wrote that’s been published says a few things:

• You can complete a written piece.
• You can edit/proofread it to a professional standard.
• You understand how to submit work to a publisher.
• You have worked successfully with a publisher in the past.
• You take yourself seriously as a writer.
• You’re building a writing career.

All of these seem like valuable things to communicate to a prospective publishing partner, no?

If you don’t have professional writing credentials, you might decide to take a bit of time to generate some. Considering how many print and online opportunities there are these days, it’s easier than ever to get something accepted for publication. Begin with local publication opportunities to start racking up credentials.

Your Education

Here’s where you say you went to Stanford (unless, like me, you didn’t!). If you went to a number of different colleges and universities, don’t give the entire laundry list. Give the last one and/or the most prominent. If your education stopped at high school or before, leave that out entirely. Now calm down—I’m not saying you’re a dud because you didn’t go to college. People like John D. Rockefeller, Richard Branson, Bill Gates, Dave Thomas, and Henry Ford all did quite well without college, I realize. But it’s just too easy for an editor who’s never met you to have a negative reaction to your not having what’s considered to be the bare minimum of education. (If your book is about succeeding without a college degree, however, by all means, lead with that fact.)

A word of warning: Academic writers are trained to write stuffy, dense, reader-unfriendly works. So if you have advanced degrees, make sure that your entire proposal reads like you’re writing for actual people versus Socrates. Keep the massive, convoluted sentences and exotic vocabulary to a minimum. You’re writing for the twenty-first-century audience, not William Shakespeare.

Education, though, is more than just degree programs. Consider beefing up this area of your bio by taking classes at the local community college. You can find first-rate online classes through Writer’s Digest University (www.writersonlineworkshops.com), Stanford University Continuing Studies (continuingstudies.stanford.edu/courses/onlinewriters.php), and the Gotham Writers’ Workshop (www.writingclasses.com). If you go any of these routes, they’re worth mentioning.

Relevant Background Information

You might be inclined to add that you raise Yorkshire terriers or that you hold three Guinness Book of World Records records relating to bubble gum blowing. Good for you. Just don’t put it in your author bio because it’s not relevant (unless, of course, your book is on raising/hoarding dogs or bubble gum blowing, or if it’s a memoir on your life quest to get as many world records as humanly possible).

If you truly think something is interesting albeit a bit off the topic of your book, fine; just include no more than one of those factoids to give your life a little color. Such an addition might make you stand out from a slew of other authors’ proposals. It also might make sense if you don’t have much to say by way of education or writing background. You have to say something, right? I get that. Just don’t go overboard with hobbies, interests, and skills. This isn’t a job résumé or dating profile, after all.

If you choose to add a nice detail for flavor, see if it can also—on some level—suggest something that might help your cause as a writer. For instance, if you’re a freelance web designer, then you must be pretty creative and industrious. You also probably know how to use the Internet to promote yourself and your book. And if you say you get in at least three rounds of golf a week at the best country club in San Jose (Silicon Valley), it’s reasonable to assume you might have an in with high-tech innovators and dot-com entrepreneurs. If you’re writing a book about the dot-com bubble bursting, then this is crucial information to share.

–

Looking for more ways to boost your proposal-writing skills and increase your chances of publication? The Weekend Book Proposal is jam-packed with proven strategies, sample queries and proposals, interviews with publishing experts, and “Hit the Gas” tips for speeding up the proposal process. Whether you’re proposing a nonfiction book, memoir, anthology, textbook, or novel, you’ll learn how to succeed and prosper as a writer—and sell your books before you’ve even written them!

Rachel Randall is the managing editor of Writer’s Digest Books.

October conjures up images of crackling fires, shivering leaves, the grinning teeth of a jack-o-lantern … and, if you’re a fan of classic horror, that iconic, fanged master of the night, Count Dracula. We feel there’s no better time than October—National Dracula Month—to share some writing tips and techniques that authors can learn from Dracula and apply to their own horror stories.

As you read this excerpt from chapter one of Dracula, try reading Bram Stoker’s text first, and then go back and read it again, this time pausing to digest the annotations from Mort Castle, in red.

Thirsty for more? Writer’s Digest Annotated Classics: Dracula, by Bram Stoker with annotations by Mort Castle, is available now! More than just an annotated version of the novel, this edition presents sharply focused, valuable techniques for writers who want to learn more about the techniques Bram Stoker used—and why he applied them.

—

JONATHAN HARKER’S JOURNAL

(Kept in shorthand) [1]

[1] That Harker’s diary is kept in “shorthand” immediately reveals something of the man’s personality: With shorthand, he can record his impressions rapidly. Even a modern, ultra-fast-paced, totally plot-driven thriller has to have some characterization by finding small ways to provide “a bit of character” such as this.

3 May. Bistritz.—Left Munich at 8:35 P.M., on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; [2] should have arrived at 6:46, but train was an hour late. Buda-Pesth seems a wonderful place, from the glimpse which I got of it from the train and the little I could walk through the streets. I feared to go very far from the station, as we had arrived late and would start as near the correct time as possible. The impression I had was that we were leaving the West and entering the East; the most western of splendid bridges over the Danube, which is here of noble width and depth, took us among the traditions of Turkish rule. [3]  

[2] Stoker, had he been writing in our era, might well have launched Dracula far later into the story at a much more dramatic moment, giving us, perhaps, Harker’s escape from Castle Dracula.

Television and films frequently use a technique called in medias res, starting “in the middle of things” (from the Latin) in order to hook the audience. Then, with the hook set, the writer fills in, usually via flashback, what readers need to know to get back to “the middle of things.” (More about flashbacks later.) Modern fiction writers have latched onto this technique. Beginning writers often begin way before the true beginning of the action. It is a typical flaw. What Stoker gives us here is almost in medias res; while there is no great dramatic action, Harker is placed in a physical location at a specific time. We know he is a traveling man, and we sense that he is a man on a mission. After all, he is concerned about the trains running on time. He has, we sense, places to go, people to see, things to do.

The narrative arc of the story has just about commenced.

[3] Observe, writer, an absolutely masterful transition. Transitions get characters (and readers) from “there” to “here,” from “then” to “now.” It is easy to mess up transitions by thinking it necessary to detail every moment/movement between “there” and “here” and “then” and “now.” That is simply not so.

It will keep the story moving to simply write the equivalent of: He took the bus across town. This is Stoker transitioning a la “took the bus across town,” and it offers something more than a movement between locales: It shows Harker’s journey from the familiar Western European locales to the exotic East.

We left in pretty good time, and came after nightfall to Klausenburgh. Here I stopped for the night at the Hotel Royale. I had for dinner, or rather supper, a chicken done up some way with red pepper, which was very good but thirsty. (Mem. get recipe for Mina.) [4] I asked the waiter, and he said it was called “paprika hendl,” and that, as it was a national dish, I should be able to get it anywhere along the Carpathians. I found my smattering of German very useful here, indeed, I don’t know how I should be able to get on without it.

[4] It is with Harker’s little note to self that he begins to really come alive. This little note of domesticity reveals much of just who Husbandly Harker is. We start to like him because we are getting to know him.

A well-developed fictional character is someone who is every bit as alive and just as unique an individual as anyone we know—really well—out here in RealityLand. When a character is well done, we get to know the character so well that we like or dislike, love or hate him.

Having had some time at my disposal when in London, I had visited the British Museum, and made search among the books and maps in the library regarding Transylvania; [5] it had struck me that some foreknowledge of the country could hardly fail to have some importance in dealing with a nobleman of that country. I find that the district he named is in the extreme east of the country, just on the borders of three states, Transylvania, Moldavia, and Bukovina, in the midst of the Carpathian mountains; one of the wildest and least known portions of Europe. I was not able to light on any map or work giving the exact locality of the Castle Dracula, as there are no maps of this country as yet to compare with our own Ordnance Survey Maps; but I found that Bistritz, the post town named by Count Dracula, is a fairly well-known place. I shall enter here some of my notes, as they may refresh my memory when I talk over my travels with Mina.

[5] Time to bring it out, this Ancient Commandment for All Writers: Write what you know.

You might be thinking: But Bram Stoker never visited Transylvania.

And if a writer doesn’t know it, he or she must conduct research. We must therefore assume Stoker, like Harker, did serious research—research on a deeper level than might be provided even by that respected canon of our time, Wikipedia. It’s credibility that is at stake. (At stake … sorry. Can’t help it!) You never want your reader to think that you, the author, do not know what you are writing about.

In the population of Transylvania there are four distinct nationalities: Saxons in the South, and mixed with them the Wallachs, who are the descendants of the Dacians; Magyars in the West, and Szekelys in the East and North. I am going among the latter, who claim to be descended from Attila and the Huns. This may be so, for when the Magyars conquered the country in the eleventh century they found the Huns settled in it. I read that every known superstition [6] in the world is gathered into the horseshoe of the Carpathians, as if it were the centre of some sort of imaginative whirlpool; if so my stay may be very interesting. (Mem., I must ask the Count all about them.)

[6] With the derisive word superstition, Harker reveals himself again as a sober and reasonable man. He’s preparing us for his becoming royally unhinged not so long from now. This is foreshadowing, albeit done in a subtle manner.

Effective foreshadowing can give readers the feeling of “uh-oh” long before a character has any such feeling. It can therefore contribute to the mood of a scene and build suspense.

I did not sleep well, though my bed was comfortable enough, for I had all sorts of queer dreams. [7] There was a dog howling all night under my window, which may have had something to do with it; or it may have been the paprika, for I had to drink up all the water in my carafe, and was still thirsty. Towards morning I slept and was wakened by the continuous knocking at my door, so I guess I must have been sleeping soundly then. I had for breakfast more paprika, and a sort of porridge of maize flour which they said was “mamaliga”, and egg-plant stuffed with forcemeat, a very excellent dish, which they call “impletata”. (Mem., get recipe for this also.) [8] I had to hurry breakfast, for the train started a little before eight, or rather it ought to have done so, for after rushing to the station at 7:30 I had to sit in the carriage for more than an hour before we began to move. It seems to me that the further east you go the more unpunctual are the trains. What ought they to be in China?

[7] Queer dreams = Foreshadowing again. These are unusual dreams, somewhat disconcerting dreams, strange dreams … they are not horrible dreams that bring on sweats and shrieks. Were Harker to be in such an elevated emotional state at this early point in the narrative, it would be nearly impossible to build to the sustained claustrophobically smothering terror that falls upon him when he becomes the Count’s guest/prisoner.

[8] A fundamental writing rule: Show, don’t tell. If your words put a picture on the reader’s mental movie screen, you are following the rule. If you evoke a sensory response in the reader, you engage the reader.

Author David Morrell advises in any significant scene—that is, one meant to be memorable and not just “something happens”—that it’s a good idea to come up with three sensory triggers.

All day long we seemed to dawdle through a country which was full of beauty of every kind. Sometimes we saw little towns or castles on the top of steep hills such as we see in old missals; sometimes we ran by rivers and streams which seemed from the wide stony margin on each side of them to be subject to great floods. It takes a lot of water, and running strong, to sweep the outside edge of a river clear. At every station there were groups of people, sometimes crowds, and in all sorts of attire. Some of them were just like the peasants at home or those I saw coming through France and Germany, with short jackets, and round hats, and home-made trousers; but others were very picturesque. The women looked pretty, except when you got near them, but they were very clumsy about the waist. They had all full white sleeves of some kind or other, and most of them had big belts with a lot of strips of something fluttering from them like the dresses in a ballet, but of course there were petticoats under them. The strangest figures we saw were the Slovaks, who were more barbarian than the rest, with their big cow-boy hats, great baggy dirty-white trousers, white linen shirts, and enormous heavy leather belts, nearly a foot wide, all studded over with brass nails. They wore high boots, with their trousers tucked into them, and had long black hair and heavy black moustaches. They are very picturesque, but do not look prepossessing. On the stage they would be set down at once as some old Oriental band of brigands. They are, however, I am told, very harmless and rather wanting in natural self-assertion.

It was on the dark side of twilight when we got to Bistritz, which is a very interesting old place. Being practically on the frontier—for the Borgo Pass leads from it into Bukovina—it has had a very stormy existence, and it certainly shows marks of it. Fifty years ago a series of great fires took place, which made terrible havoc on five separate occasions. At the very beginning of the seventeenth century it underwent a siege of three weeks and lost 13,000 people, the casualties of war proper being assisted by famine and disease. [9]

[9] One more splendid transition. There is not a wasted word here, yet Harker and readers travel from 8:30 in the morning until past twilight, from Klausenberg to Bistritz.

Count Dracula had directed me to go to the Golden Krone Hotel, which I found, to my great delight, to be thoroughly old-fashioned, for of course I wanted to see all I could of the ways of the country. I was evidently expected, for when I got near the door I faced a cheery-looking elderly woman in the usual peasant dress—white undergarment with a long double apron, front, and back, of coloured stuff fitting almost too tight for modesty. When I came close she bowed and said, “The Herr Englishman?” “Yes,” I said, “Jonathan Harker.”

She smiled, and gave some message to an elderly man in white shirtsleeves, who had followed her to the door. He went, but immediately returned with a letter—

“My friend.—Welcome to the Carpathians. I am anxiously expecting you. Sleep well tonight. At three tomorrow the diligence will start for Bukovina; a place on it is kept for you. At the Borgo Pass my carriage will await you and will bring you to me. I trust that your journey from London has been a happy one, and that you will enjoy your stay in my beautiful land.

“Your friend,

“Dracula.” [10]  

[10] Here Stoker chooses to use subtle irony. Whatever Dracula is, he is no friend to Harker. As a writer, you can do a lot with irony. For example, how many patients likely heard Hannibal Lecter say he wanted to help them?

Rachel Randall is the managing editor of Writer’s Digest Books. Her favorite holiday is Halloween.

The 2015 Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market, now in its 34th year, is hot off the presses, and today I’m sharing ten pieces of advice from the contributors to this year’s edition. NSSWM features articles on fiction craft, getting published, and marketing and promotion, as well as more than 400 pages of listings for novel and short story writers, including literary agents, book publishers, magazines, and contests that are interested in your work. This year’s edition also features access to an exclusive webinar from best-selling author Cheryl St.John, on exploring emotional high points in fiction.

To celebrate the release of the 2015 NSSWM, I’m giving away two copies to two lucky winners who comment in the post below! I’ll announce the winners on October 22. 

10 FICTION-WRITING TIPS FROM NSSWM

1. On writing an exceptional short story:

“Outline, even if it’s the most rudimentary way. It leads to inspired deviations. … [Don’t] think too hard about ticking off [your] boxes in advance. A good story—long or short—will provide them by virtue of its being good.” —Andrew Pyper, in Jennifer D. Foster’s article “Anatomy of a Successful Short Story”

2. On writing dialogue within a scene: 

“Rich dialogue can animate and drive a scene. But good dialogue doesn’t act in isolation. The point of view of the stakeholders in the matter at hand must be provocative or interesting in some way. There must be conflict—conflict important enough to make the reader care. And then, driven by this conflict, the characters must come alive, revealing their needs, desires, flaws—their basic humanity. The dialogue itself must be distinctive and original. When it’s not working, it tends to sound clunky and artificial.” —Jack Smith, “Writing Strong Scenes”

3. On finding ideas for magic realism: 

“Ever since I began writing, I’ve been a collector. Not of things—shells, stamps, figurines, stuffed monkeys, autographs, etc.—but of possibilities. Odd happenings and images from around the world and in my dreams that could—and often do—make their way into my writing. While many might be considered mundane observances, paired with the right character in the right situation, I know they’ll make terrifically fantastic occurrences. —Kristin Bair O’Keeffe, “Making Magic”

4. On getting through the mid-draft slump: 

“A mid-draft slump is a symptom, which calls for a diagnosis before you can effectively treat it. Believing you can write your way out of this mess, that you can rescue the middle with a strong closing act, is a seductive trap, because your reader may never make it that far. When that reader is an agent or an editor, this assumption becomes a fatal one.” —Larry Brooks, “Stuck in the Middle”

5. On developing a distinct point of view and voice: 

“Practice makes perfect, and the best way to practice is by writing short stories. Flash fiction (telling a full story in 1,000 words or less) is a great training tool.” —J.T. Ellison, in Janice Gable Bashman’s interview “Capturing Readers’ Interest”

6. On Twitter “pitch parties”: 

“As informal as social media can be, Brenda Drake emphasizes that writers need to treat pitch parties as professionally as any other submission. ‘Your manuscript should be completely polished. It has to have been through your beta readers and critique partners, and you should have revised it a few times,’ she says.” —Diane Shipley, “It Started With a Hashtag”

7. On what impresses literary journal editors: 

“I’m impressed by a writer who takes our theme, shakes it around, and throws it back at us in a way we were not expecting. Catching us off guard with good writing is rewarding. We all know what we want, but when we come across something we didn’t expect, something that cuts in a new and exciting way, that is a great way to attract attention.” —Todd Simmons, in James Duncan’s roundtable “What Literary Journals Really Look For”

8. On how to choose a small press to submit to: 

“Evaluate the content. If a small press is consistently putting out quality writing, chances are it has a solid editorial team. The amount of time it’s been in existence and its general reputation are helpful indicators, too.” —Robert Lee Brewer, “Sizing Up Small Presses”

9. On hybrid publishing: 

“Diversity means survival. That’s true in agriculture. It’s true in our stock portfolios. It’s true on our dinner plates. And it’s true in publishing. Survival as a writer means embracing diversity from the beginning. And that means thinking of yourself as a “hybrid” author. … The hybrid author takes a varied approach, utilizing the traditional system of publishing and acting as an author-publisher (a term I prefer to self-publisher because it signals the dual nature of the role you now inhabit).”  —Chuck Wendig, “Best of Both Worlds”

10. On organizing a virtual book tour: 

“You may find it helpful to assemble an ‘online media kit,’ a section of your website where you can provide photos and other relevant information, such as a video trailer and press release, in one location. This way, you can give your hosts a single link instead of inundating them with attachments … .” —Erika Dreifus, “10 Tips for Your Virtual Book Tour”

You can find the articles these tips came from, as well as hundreds of listings for book publishers, literary agents, magazines, contests, and writing conferences, inside the 2015 Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market.

To celebrate the release of the 2015 NSSWM, I’m giving away two copies to two lucky winners who comment in the post below! I’ll announce the winners on October 22. 

From Sylvia Day’s Bared to You to Jamie McGuire’s Beautiful Disaster, new adult fiction has arrived—and it’s hotter than ever. But there’s more to this category than its 18- to 26-year-old characters: The success of your story depends on authentically depicting the transition of your young protagonists from teenhood into adulthood.

With Deborah Halverson’s Writing New Adult Fiction, you’ll learn how to capture the spirit of freedom, self-discovery, and romance that defines the new adult experience. To celebrate the book’s release, Deborah has organized a blog tour that runs through the end of the month—complete with book giveaways and prizes! If you’re curious about writing a novel for the new adult category, you’ll want to join in on the fun and learn more about crafting a story that’s fresh, unique, and wholly new adult!

Here’s what authors and reviewers are saying:

“This book is more than a marketing guide, more than a writing manual, more than a compilation of stories about successful authors. For the writer who wants to become a new adult author, or the new adult author who seeks to enrich her craftsmanship and stand out from the herd, this book has an abundance of information.” —Tammara Webber, New York Times best-selling author of Easy and Breakable

“With her conversational, engaging style, Halverson demystifies the process of plotting, writing, and marketing a NA novel…. If you’re serious about writing a NA novel you can be proud of, one that is also marketable, you’ll add this indispensable title to your permanent reference shelf.” —Blogcritics

Deborah is offering a FREE FULL MANUSCRIPT EDIT to one lucky blog tour participant. The more stops you make on the tour, the more chances to win! 

October 6: Christy Herself!

October 7: Country Gals Sexy Reads

October 8: Writing Belle

October 9: Book Bumblings

October 10: Prone to Crushes on Boys in Books

October 13: My Book Fairy

October 14: A One-click Addict’s Book Blog

October 15: A Book Addict’s Delight

October 16: The Phantom Paragrapher

October 17: deal sharing aunt

October 20: Hot Guys in Books

October 21: Julie Hedlund

October 22: Short and Sassy Book Blurbs

October 23: NA Alley

October 24: akiiKOMORI reading

October 27: KIDLIT411

October 28: eBook Addict

October 29: Pretty Girls Read Books

October 30: Coffee and characters

October 31: Quirk And Quill

October 31: Book Worms and Couch Potatoes

Rachel Randall is the managing editor for Writer’s Digest Books.

Phil was one of the first people we reached out to when we contemplated updating the book, and as the editor who worked with him, I must say I was highly impressed with his knowledge and passion for fantasy and science fiction, and also highly entertained by his advice and observations! Here are a few more questions I threw Phil’s way, and if you like what he has to say, you’ll find his contact information below, and you can read all about the newest, most exciting developments in the fantasy and science fiction genres in his chapter in Writing Fantasy and Science Fiction

Writer’s Digest: What are some of the things that an apprentice writer within the genres of science fiction and fantasy typically “gets wrong,” or at least gets under your skin? Or, to put a positive spin on the question, what should a padawan scribe focus on if he or she wants to “get it right” when it comes to speculative fiction?  

Philip Athans: Your own rules you must follow, young Skywalker!

In terms of the SF and fantasy genres in particular, consistently applied internal logic is absolutely essential. Genre readers want to believe, and your readers are happy to suspend their disbelief while your characters travel through hyperspace or battle the twenty-headed liger, but where they’ll start to turn on you and begin to complain that your SF and fantasy is “unrealistic” is when your characters spend three days in hyperspace to travel eight light-years in chapter one then get home again in fifteen minutes in chapter nine. You’ve established that the trip takes three days, how can they suddenly go faster and why didn’t they do that before? Now our entirely created FTL drive is “totally unrealistic.”

And beyond the SF, fantasy, or horror genres, I continue to advise authors of ANY genre to spend real effort learning the CRAFT of writing. I’ve seen some manuscripts come across my desk that have interesting characters, unique settings, and creative original ideas, but the author obviously has no idea how to punctuate a sentence, the manuscript is riddled with run-on sentences and/or sentence fragments, and spelling and style rules are out the window. And honestly, there are very few (read: NO) editors and agents willing to wade through a sea of errors to discover the heart of your story. Read newer published books with an eye toward where the commas go, where the quotation marks come in and out, or better yet, find a good English class either at your current school or at your local college’s continuing education program. A lot of the rules of English grammar and usage are “made to be broken” but there’s a big difference between intentionally bending or even breaking a rule, and just not knowing the rule in the first place.

WD: If given the power to greenlight a summer blockbuster, what unrepresented or “unknown” (to the mainstream, at least) science fiction or fantasy book or series would you love to see on the big screen?

PA: In honor of the great Frederik Pohl, who just recently passed away, I’d love to see a $200 million dollar version of his classic novel Gateway, but that’s hardly “unknown.” In general I think that in the same way that special effects have finally caught up to the vision of the comic book writers and artists, there’s now a huge backlist of classic SF and fantasy novels just begging to be filmed. I could probably rattle off a hundred off the top of my head. But as for the more obscure or older titles, I’d love to see a TV series that mines the classic Ace SF Doubles for Twilight Zone-style episodes. Tonight’s episode… “Gunner Cade”!

Get goin’ Hollywood!

WD: Which speculative theme do you feel is the most played out at this point: zombies, vampires, or superheroes? Or do you think these still have a leg to stand on?

PA: To some degree, every trope is equally played out or fresh. I’ve been saying for almost twenty years that we need a ten-year moratorium on vampires, but then there’s 30 Days of Night and Let Me In, and I think, okay, THOSE were fantastic, but the rest are … whatever. Zombies had lost it for me, too, until The Walking Dead hit AMC. I’m starting to see an awful glut of minimally-creative post-apocalypse stories now, but again, it’s not the fault of the genre or the sub-genre but the author. If all you’re doing is assembling Teen Vampires vs. Zombie Apocalypse in a ‘one from column A, one from column B’ sort of way, then you’re going to end up with a lifeless blob of text. But if you have something original to say and use those archetypes in a fresh, creative way, nothing is ever entirely out of style or off limits.

WD: Who is the greatest science fiction or fantasy villain who has yet to become a household name in mainstream pop culture? Do you think this dog will have its day?

PA: The bigger mainstream audience has yet to be really effectively introduced to the drow of the Forgotten Realms world. With Hasbro now a force in the movie business post-Transformers, there’s more reason to hope for a Drizzt movie now more than ever, and I think that’ll be what it takes to make the drow, and in particular characters like Matron Baenre and Malice Do’Urden, into pop culture icons beyond the Salvatore/Forgotten Realms/D&D fan communities. These are smart, sexy, powerful, and Evil (with a capital E) women that, if portrayed correctly, will knock people’s socks off.

WD: What is the first book you read that made you think, “I have got to write something like this someday!”

PA: I had this great illustrated SF anthology when I was a kid and in it was a short story by Harlan Ellison called “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” that literally made my head spin. That single short story took me from a kid who loved space opera entertainment and wrote and drew his own comic books to someone absolutely obsessed with the full spectrum of the genre. Harlan Ellison didn’t just raise the bar for writers of speculative fiction, he stole the bar, used it to beat people up, then jammed it into the genre sideways to permanently prop it open.

WD: Are there any new books or authors in science fiction or fantasy (or both!) have you excited? What are you reading right now?

PA: I’m always reading multiple books, jumping back and forth from five or six, and one of them tends to be some classic, golden age SF novel like Edgar Rice Burroughs’s John Carter of Mars, which I’m reading, and loving all over again right now. On the other end of the spectrum, I think Paolo Bacigalupi might save science fiction. If you haven’t read The Windup Girl, consider this an assignment. On the fantasy side, I’m eagerly awaiting the third book in J.M. McDermott’s Dogsland Trilogy and I will read anything by Catherynne M. Valente.

WD: Any new projects of your own around the corner?

PA: I’m hard at work on The Guide to Writing Monster & Aliens, a follow-up to The Guide to Writing Fantasy and Science Fiction that’ll concentrate on monsters (of course). I love monsters of all genres and media, and I’m having a ball putting this together. My other current work-in-progress is a dark high fantasy that I have high hopes for. It’ll be full of demons, and I plan to take all my own advice on creating great monsters, and get as much additional advice as I can from some friends and associates, too. Writing the novel and the monster guide at the same time should make both of them better!

–

Philip Athans is the New York Times best-selling author of Annihilation and more than a dozen other books including The Guide to Writing Fantasy and Science Fiction, and the recently-released How to Start Your Own Religion and Devils of the Endless Deep. His blog, Fantasy Author’s Handbook, (http://fantasyhandbook.wordpress.com/

In the search for story-worthy ideas, most writers are sidelined by occasional bouts of creative myopia. When it sets in—when your field of inspiration narrows—it’s easy to convince yourself that your luck has run out and all the good ideas are taken. But finding exceptional writing ideas isn’t a matter of luck. Waiting passively for creativity to strike won’t put words on the page, either. The secret to cultivating writing inspiration is to go out and hunt it down—in unexpected places.

“Curiosity, attention, a little bravado, and a willingness to break routines lead to great writing ideas,” says writing coach Don Fry. “You lurk, listen, ask questions, and find experts. You can prowl the Internet, but the best writing ideas come from face to face interaction with people.”

He offers these great writing tips and more from his new book Writing Your Way (Writer’s Digest Books):

 6 Surprising Ways to Find Writing Ideas

“The best ideas are subjects that other writers haven’t written about, or haven’t noticed. The following writing techniques work because they dynamite you out of your routine ways of thinking and dealing with the world. They make the world ‘strange’ so you can see it fresh.

 1. Explain Common Things

Ask experts to explain how ordinary things work, preferably things invisible to the public. For example, how does your town’s water-purification system work? What happens to recycled plastic? How do wine aerators work? What do lifeguards look for? What makes chocolate taste good?

 2. Mine Your Emotions

If something bothers or puzzles you, find out why by interviewing people with similar reactions. You’ll discover you’re not alone in never changing your passwords, buying lottery tickets, or your fear of high bridges. I’ve always wondered if my parents are really my parents, which turns out to be a fairly common doubt.

 3. Follow Alternative Paths

Take alternate routes to your normal destinations, and try out different types of transportation, especially slower ones that let you see more. Leave your car at home and walk to work, or ride a bike. Climb stairs instead of taking elevators, take the service elevator, or enter through back doors.

 4. Cultivate Weirdos

Your mother taught you never to talk with strangers. Good advice for children, bad advice for writers. Strike up conversations with people you don’t know, even cultivating weirdos. Introduce yourself to airplane seatmates, to people carrying a sign or wearing a name tag.

 5. Lower Your Standards

Accept any piece of paper handed to you on the street. Read junk mail. Watch awful TV shows and ask why they appeal to anyone. Buy TV gadget offers, test them, and try to get your money back.

 6. Make Yourself Into Somebody Else

Role-play the lives of people with viewpoints different from yours or your readers’. I once spent half a day in a wheelchair and learned about hazards I never imagined. Bob Graham, the former governor of Florida, did manual labor one day a month to understand the public.

All of these writing techniques jar you out of your normal vision, because that’s where the writing ideas are, invisible in plain sight.”

Purchase a copy of Writing Your Way from WritersDigestShop.com

Thinking of self-publishing? Find out how Abbott Press (a division of Writer’s Digest) can help you achieve your goals.

Find more writing inspiration and ideas in

If you’d like to quickly amass content for a book—without the pressure of actually having to work on one—consider blogging a book. Blogging is a fast and simple way to generate a body of targeted content and build your platform, which are key components of landing a book deal in today’s competitive marketplace.

When writing blog posts with the intention of creating a blogged book, be sure to:

• Develop each post as a stand-alone unit with a beginning, middle and end so readers can “pick up” your book at any point;
• Create flow from one post to the next by teasing readers to keep “turning pages”;
• Link related posts to form a cohesive body of work.

In addition to creating cohesive and relevant content (as noted above), optimizing your blog, and utilizing best SEO practices, it’s important to write with passion in an authentic voice, says author and expert blogger Nina Amir in How to Blog a Book (Writer’s Digest Books, 2012):

“Successful blogs have at their helms bloggers who write with passion and purpose, who feel inspired and who every day show up as nothing less than their true selves with all their colors flying,” says Amir. “Almost every blogger I interviewed (for the book) who landed a book deal attributed his or her success to feeling passionate about the subject of the blog and being authentic while blogging. If you feel the need for inspiration, read their blogs.”

Here are more blogging tips from the book to inspire you:

 Top 10 Blogging Tips for Blogging a Book

1. Read other blogs on your topic—and comment on them.
2. Get involved in groups and forums on your subject.
3. Read books on your topic.
4. Set up Google Alerts on your topic or on additional keywords related to your topic (and be sure to open the alerts and read the pertinent posts).
5. Ask some experts to write guest blog posts for you so you get a break.
6. Take a brief blogging vacation (tell your readers you are, in fact, on vacation for two or three days).
7. Do research on your topic.
8. Talk to other people who are interested in your topic or who are experts in your subject area.
9. Explore the possibility of using multimedia on your blog—audio and video.
10. Interview experts in your subject area and post the information or the interview; you can even post it as an audio clip, podcast, or video.

Purchase How to Blog a Book.

Purchase the “Creating an Author Blog” on-demand webinar taught by literary agent Meredith Barnes.

Learn how to start a blog. Register for Blogging 101 workshop with Dan Blank.

Joe Ponzio on Going from Blog to Book: F Wall Street

Although Joe Ponzio started his blog to draw platform to the book he was planning to write (not necessarily blog), like many blog-to-book success stories he feels “ the book and the blog go hand-in-hand.” In the case of Fwallstreet.com, both the blog and the subsequent book, F Wall Street, Joe Ponzio’s No-Nonsense Approach to Value Investing for the Rest of Us, focus on explaining common sense, long-term value investing in plain English.

“Readers understand one better if they also read the other,” says Ponzio.  “Both have separate content, but there is a small amount of duplication. I’d say that 90 percent of the website is completely new, original content, which is crucial because readers come back to your site looking for more answers, more explanations, and those tidbits that your editor cut out but that you felt were important.”

Adams Media released F Wall Street in June 2009.

1.     Why did you begin blogging?

I launched FWallStreet.com in June of 2007 to accompany the book. I had written a majority of the book at that point, though I didn’t yet have a publisher, and wanted to have an online resource for people to visit and host discussions after reading the book.

I didn’t plan on advertising the website or letting the world know it was out there until the book was published. Still, the website took off. By the end of 2007, just six months after its initial launch, FWallStreet.com had more than one million hits.

2.     How did you choose your topic?

The book actually started as a “how-to” guide for my children, then three and soon-to-be-born. It was a simple, 80-page manual on how to think about investing for the long-term and how to evaluate companies and stocks.

I chose investing because that’s what I do for a living. It’s what I’m passionate about. And there is so much bad information out there that only a small percentage of the population ever hear about, learn about, and stick with value investing. I wanted to make sure that my children would be in that select group if I wasn’t around to teach them personally.

3.     What, if any, market research did you do before beginning your blog?

None. I didn’t think that hard about it when I started, and I figured my blog would be lost in the sea of constantly-updated, keyword-rich, go-go-go stock market blogs. Readers ended up visiting FWallStreet.com, became curious by the design, and stayed for the content. And…they told their friends about it! Most of my early visitors did not come from link exchanges or advertising (I did none) but from emails from other visitors. People would see FWallStreet.com, email it to a friend, and voila!―another visitor.

One thing I learned over time is that content truly is king. If you produce good content, people will want to come and read it. The only way to produce good content is to blog about something you love.

My advice to aspiring bloggers: Stick with topics you truly know and about which you are passionate, and catch the visitors right away with a good design. Content is king, but you have to present it (via a solid design) in a way that makes them want to meet the king.

4.     Did you think you were writing a book, did you plan on blogging a book, or were you simply blogging on your topic? (In retrospect, would doing one or the other have made it easier to later write your book?)

I knew I was writing a book. Rather, I had written a book and knew that the blog was a key part of supporting the book if it were to get picked up by a publisher.

In retrospect, I would have done things the exact same way. I would have written the book (or a majority of it) and then

The protagonist's conflict with an opposing force—usually in the form of another character—is the essence of every novel. Read more