Author Archives: Mike Reeves-McMillan

Jul 12

Damon Knight, Creating Short Fiction:

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Damon Knight, Creating Short Fiction:

What to do when you’re stuck:

1. Track back through the story until you find where you went down the blind alley. Work forward again from there.

2. If a character is going off-script, either you don’t know enough about the character, or you now now enough that you realise she wouldn’t do what you originally planned. Either give her her head and see what happens, or change the circumstances until she will do what you wanted.

3. If you’re bored, scale back or eliminate the part that bores you.

4. If you’re stuck for a name, place, date or fact, put in a placeholder (marked in a way you can easily find when editing) and move on. Often, you’ll solve it shortly afterwards anyway, if you regain your forward momentum.

#shortfiction

Jul 12

Negative practice: if you know your writing has a fault, try to commit it as often as possible.

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Negative practice: if you know your writing has a fault, try to commit it as often as possible. In doing so, you are making it conscious and bringing it under your control. (It’s a psychological technique.)

– Damon Knight, Creating Short Fiction

#shortfiction

Jul 12

Six ways to think about style:

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Six ways to think about style:

1. Variety (of sentence structure).

2. Fluency. Nothing must interrupt the flow by making the reader stumble.

3. Consecutiveness. One thing must lead on to the next, so that the reader has no place to stop and bail out.

4. Precision. Use words to mean what they mean, and not something else. “If you have only a vague idea of the difference between one word and another, you are like a carpenter who has only a vague idea of the difference between a screwdriver and a corkscrew.”

5. Economy.

6. Clarity–both simplicity and avoiding vague references.

– Damon Knight, Creating Short Fiction

#shortfiction

Jul 12

“Style is the visible trace of a workman solving her problems.

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“Style is the visible trace of a workman solving her problems. Good style is the trace of a workman solving her problems with economy and grace, leaving her individual mark…. You will put your individual imprint on everything you do, whether you want to or not. What you need to learn is not individuality but skill.”

– Damon Knight, Creating Short Fiction

#shortfiction

Jul 12

“Reading a story, even a tragic story, ought to be a succession of sweet pleasures, like beads on a string–vivid…

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“Reading a story, even a tragic story, ought to be a succession of sweet pleasures, like beads on a string–vivid images, excitements, anticipations, surprises…. One almost universal fault of beginners’ fiction is that it lacks contrast.”

– Damon Knight, Creating Short Fiction

#shortfiction

Jul 03

In case anyone missed it: The Well-Presented Manuscript is available for preorder, and will publish on the 14th of…

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In case anyone missed it: The Well-Presented Manuscript is available for preorder, and will publish on the 14th of July. The link below takes you to the blog where I drafted it, so you can get a taster if you need it. There are links from there to the preorder page.

Here’s the blurb:

Do you want to be taken seriously by editors, readers or reviewers? 

Do you make errors in your fiction writing? 

This book is for you. 

Mike Reeves-McMillan is a fiction author, reviewer, and former copy editor and technical writer. He’s analysed the errors he’s found in almost 250 books, both indie and traditionally published, and written a simple, clear guide to avoiding the most common issues. 

Learn: 

– Why editors reject 90% of what’s submitted to them—and how to increase your chances. 

– How to get punctuation right every time. 

– The special conventions of dialog. 

– The most common word confusions, typos, and research errors—and how to check for and eliminate them.

http://csidemedia.com/wellpresentedms/

Jul 02

The Well-Presented Manuscript: Just What You Need to Know to Make Your Fiction Look Professional is available for…

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The Well-Presented Manuscript: Just What You Need to Know to Make Your Fiction Look Professional is available for preorder on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B010RJOAYA. Launch day is 14 July (US Pacific time).

I set out to write a gentle, accessible guide to avoiding or correcting the most common errors that fiction writers make. How do I know which ones those are? I read nearly 250 books–indie and trad-pub–and marked the errors in my Kindle, then analysed them. And who am I, anyway? I’m a fiction author, a former professional editor and technical writer, and a book reviewer.

I cover punctuation (including breaking down sentence structure and parts of speech, so you understand where the commas should go); the special rules of punctuating dialog; commonly confused words; spotting and removing typos; and even a few research problems. I also talk about submitting to short-fiction and trad-pub editors, who reject 90% or more of what they receive, and how you can increase your chances with them.

Even good writers make many of the mistakes I cover, and I mark the commonest ones for special attention.

If you’d like to improve your fiction manuscript, but find other guides confusing or too technical, give this one a try. With hundreds of examples, many drawn from real books, it’s focused on practical use, not theory.

You can see an early draft in blog form here: http://csidemedia.com/wellpresentedms (but I’ve substantially revised and expanded it for the book, and added several new chapters).