![]() ![]() Chapters that limp to a wishy-washy ending.īefore you start with the weed whacker, make a file into which you can paste everything you cut.Whose book is this? The good guy? The bad girl? A wandering POV will mean wandering attention from your reader. Spongy scenes with no clear reason for existing.Lengthy paragraphs detailing a character’s inner thoughts and feelings.Meanwhile, to start you off on your clean up, here’s a hit list: Just as skillful pruning will cause a garden to grow back strongers and more beautiful, the delete button, aka Stephen King’s 10% rule, will produce the same results.Ĭutting through the tangled undergrowth and overgrown paths will help you find your way back to a cleaner, clearer manuscript. Get out the Pruning Shears (but be sure to Create an OutTakes file.) Remember whether it’s a blurb or an elevator pitch: Sell the sizzle!Īnd, right now, most of all to yourself! 2. What about your elevator pitch? Is it pulling its weight? Can it help inspire your blurb? #SCAPPLE BOARD THEME HOW TO#Have you used some of the same words and phrases? Or can you do some creative - uh - “borrowing?”įour editors dish the details about how to write a selling blurb including standout examples from Lee Child, Diana Gabaldon and Nicholas Sparks. List the phrases and words other writers use to position their book to appeal to the same readers you hope to seduce. Read blurbs for top selling books in your genre. What’s the headline? What’s the hook? What about a grabby ending? Maybe it’s OK, but maybe it could be better. Write - or Rewrite - your Blurb or Elevator Pitch. (What!? You think you’re the only one who ever faced this?) 1. ![]() Here are a few ideas based on what’s worked for me. ![]() What steps do you need to take to get back on track? You need to rethink and reorganize, but where to start? You’re completely uninspired, absolutely out of gas and you need to recapture the spark. You’ve forgotten why you wanted to write the damn thing. We’re facing chaos, but, even though it’s our baby, and even though we began with high hopes and the best of intentions, sometimes we get so lost, we don’t even know what the eff we had in mind in the first place. We made it and, according to the gospel of Moms everywhere, it’s up to us to clean it up. Maybe Marie Kondo could help, but she’s not available. Perhaps you’ve been here before and abandoned the poor thing to gather cyber cobwebs in some dank, dark back alley of your computer. Your book (or whachamacallit) is in deep doo doo, and, because you’re not in deep denial, you recognize that there is work to be done. It’s obvious that double applications of the Quicker-Picker-Upper, Fantastic and Tidy-Bowl aren’t going to get the job done. So Now What? How do we Fix this Endangered Book? What we’ve written is an endangered book. ![]() More often than we might wish, the answer is yes. You’re asking yourself: Did I write that?
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