catebaum

After the SPR Book Awards each year we get together and analyze the judges’ comments. Here are 2019’s most common author mistakes that you might be able to learn from next time you take the plunge and enter a book contest.

1. Info Dumping

By far the most common issue this competition.

Too much dialogue

The biggest problem this year was the amount of dialogue used to tell a story. Pages of it, like a movie screenplay. You cannot tell a story without character development. This means we need to experience situations and know how characters feel about what […]

Let’s not talk about the c-word. Here’s a list of happy literary stuff online to help you get writing indoors again. If you do all of these now, you’re going to be writing tonight, guaranteed.

SPR – Success Stories

Read how famous self-publishers hit the big time in our blog series. Be inspired!

Free Online Writing Courses

Open Culture has curated a massive list of brilliant, properly taught courses for writers including videos and audio tracks on subjects such as Shakespeare, writing about the Civil War, fairies, Japanese culture, and Lord Of The Rings.

Zadie Smith on Writers Dancing

What […]

A silver lining for all writers out there stuck without transport, concerts, sporting events, shopping malls, and parties?

We’re told to stay at home, not travel, stop seeing each other, and wait for the plague to pass over our roofs…so without all the distractions of weekend barbecues, Little League games, and the TV sports you were going to watch, why not bury those procrastinations you always use and open that Word file and crack on?

Why Now?

Without much else better to do, people are flocking to Amazon to dig into new reads. Take this opportunity and finally get around […]