It’s that time of year again! Gird your loins, and pick up your pens. You’re about to embark on the ride of your lives.

1. You’re not supposed to take it too seriously.


If you only learn one thing about NaNoWriMo, ever from anyone, learn this: it’s meant to be fun. It’s meant to be creative. It’s meant to be about stretching your wings. It is not meant to destroy your life. That’s what writing a real novel is for.

• If it’s not a novel, it’s a novella.
  And if it’s not a novella, it’s a short story.
  And if it’s not a short story, it’s flash fiction.


Truly, don’t worry about the length. You’re not done when you’ve cranked out a set number of words or chapters or pages. You’re done when you’ve finished telling your story. And if you finish it and you’re still rarin’ to go, use that story as the Hook for yet another story. . .

• If it’s an epic narrative, you might have a problem.


On the other hand, if your story goes on for a thousand pages and includes most of the cast of Cats, you might have a runaway slime mold on your hands. Not that that’s a bad thing, fictionwise. But I hope your spouse won’t mind when it takes over your entire house.

2. Certain things honestly don’t count.


You know how some people cheat shamelessly on those exercises in which you’re supposed to write an entire piece in one sentence, littering their ’sentence’ with semicolons until you want to pass a federal law against gratuitous punctuational crimes? Be aware, people.

• Gratuitous repetition doesn’t count.

Her hand moved slowly, slowly moved her hand across the window pane, in a long, slow motion, moving slowly across the window pane of doom.

Repetition, unless used incredibly rarely and with only the most specific intent, puts readers to sleep. And the whole point of writing a novel is. . .to keep your reader awake!

• Excruciatingly dull action doesn’t count.

And then I swung a left. And a right. And a left. And a right. And my foot came forward. But only a little bit. And the rail rose up in front of my eyes until it was against the sky and I was flat on my back against the steps and the porch was all around me, and I had to shift my hips to avoid him tripping over me. Then I swung another left.

Action is fast. That’s why action films are called action films. You had better be able to fly your reader through that scene at top speed, or it’s not going to read like action anymore.

• Meaningless dialog doesn’t count.

“Good morning. How are you?”
“I’m fine. How are you?”
“I’m fine. Did you get my email?”
“Yes, I got your email. Did you get my answer?”
“Yes, I responded.”

You know what your reader wants to know? WHAT WAS IN THE EMAIL. That’s all.

• Rambling, inspecific, cliche description doesn’t count.

The dinner party was alight with gaiety and mirth, medium-sized, very attractive guests mingling with their voices murmuring in everybody’s ears, and the candles were lighting the room up.

One telling detail is better than ten details just anybody could have used. Two telling details are better than twenty. Three telling details will sketch an entire, three-dimensional image in the reader’s eye more powerfully than infinite paragraphs of nothing-special.

And once you’ve put an image into the reader’s eye, your novel will live on without any more words.

• Interior dialog reiterating action and exterior dialog doesn’t count.

I couldn’t believe I’d just watched them run down that slope and jump into that water. I could see them still splashing. Yes, she still wore the headdress. Yes, he was still singing “Tea for Two.” I wondered what they would do next. They really were all wet.

Interior dialog is almost always dull as ditchwater. Give that character something to do and record them doing it.

• Explanatory exposition doesn’t count.

They had finished eating the dinner they’d started earlier, and he wanted to know why she’d said she’d been run out of town on rails. Could it have something to do with what she was talking about when she whispered behind her hand that time that there were knots within knots? He was filled with euphoria and also despair.

You know why you don’t have to explain to the reader what just happened? Because they were there! Unless they were asleep. In which case nothing you can say now matters.

And abstractions are exposition gone horribly wrong. Just don’t use them.

3. Certain other things count enormously.


You know why genre fiction—’the people’s fiction’—grew up past so-called literary fiction over the last hundred years, until it took over the entire world of fiction like the Borg? Because people reading for entertainment rather than attitude don’t waste time. They want excitement, they want it big, and they want it now. You can write pretty much anything so long as you give your readers that.

• Straight-forward unexplained action counts.

He stopped painting his toenails when the flowers fell off. Sparkly little sprinklers scattered all over the carpet, lifting and fluttering every time he’d almost caught a handful and shimmering out of his reach on the peculiarly warm breeze that blew in under the door. When she slammed in through the window, she hit the chandelier so hard it stopped the clock down the hall.

Honestly, nobody cares what happens. All they care is that it’s vivid, detailed, and unexpected. The more unexpected it is, the more potential for further plot developments.

• Surprising, inexplicable dialog counts.

“It wasn’t your bottle in the first place.”
“But there are eggs everywhere!”
“Besides which, bottles are outside the Law of Possession.”
“Listen, my Uncle Eunice threw up in that bottle.”
“What kind of name is Uncle Eunice?”

Characters speaking at cross-purposes drive each other crazy. And that’s how readers like them—chocked to the eyeballs on tension! When you can’t think of anything else to write, write inexplicable dialog. It will give you tons of material for up-coming scenes.

• Swift, specific description counts.

The stars made her ears ring. When she landed on her knees, the mud was cool and reassuring, and rising mist filled the meadow with the bitter scent of crushed acorns.

What does it mean? Who knows? But it’s clear, it’s concrete, and the reader can experience those details through their own senses. And fiction is nothing but an experience for the reader.

• A single line of original, unexpected exposition is worth 100,000 words.

Even waxed wings couldn’t help him now.

If you don’t have a story to go with it, it doesn’t matter. The reader’s mind can conjure the story or an infinite number of stories—it’s the spark of epiphany that feeds your reader’s soul.

4. It doesn’t need to make sense. It just needs to be exciting to read.

This is the honest truth: readers are only interested in one page at a time. Make each one a page worth reading—load it with tactile experiences, visceral action, thought-provoking dialog—and they’ll be happy.

Keep a notebook at hand where you can record particularly exciting developments as they occur to you (he remembered crossing the Atlantic on the Ile de France in a past life! she tore out her kitchen cupboards because the gnomes were drunk and singing all night! they once got trapped on the rotating floor at the top of the Space Needle by effeminate gunmen!) and bring them back up later whenever you run out of inspiration. Writing this novel will NEVER get old.

5. It’s waaaaay easier if you plot it out ahead of time.

Of course, if you want a novel you can turn into something you’ll be able to sell, you’ll need it to make sense. But that’s not hard. Just throw together a simple plot and give yourself milemarkers to aim for at regular intervals, a series of main episodes you know ahead of time will all hang together in the end.

6. It’s really about making friends.


And when it’s all over and done with, and December first has rolled around once more, you’re going to be so tired of that manuscript you’ll probably put a match to it as your Solstice present to yourself, anyway. Either that or you’ll love it so much you sew it into your pillowcase. Whichever one—it’ll be out of the way.

But the people you meet during NaNoWriMo, the camaraderie of comparing wordcounts, the late nights checking in with each other to make sure you’re not the only person out there teetering on the brink of word-induced madness, the congratulations and shared pain and encouragement and empathy. . .

That’s what it is. Long after you’ve come to grips with everything you can (and did) do wrong trying to write a novel way too fast with way too little preparation, gotten over the shock, pulled yourself together, and started on your next novel—your REAL novel—it’s the NaNoWriMo community that’s going to make your writing life a better place to live.

The Art and Craft of Fiction: A Practitioner’s Manual
by Victoria Mixon

The Art and Craft of Story: 2nd Practitioner’s Manual
by Victoria Mixon

And if you need some help identifying the basic building blocks of plot—and then figuring out what the heck to do with them—I spent the month of October prepping you for this very moment. You bet!

HOOK: 5 Ways to Make Your Novel Inescapable

DEVELOPMENT: 5 Ways to Make Your Novel Helplessly Addictive

CLIMAX: 5 Ways to Make Your Novel Unforgettable

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Never doubt that thoughtful committed citizens can change the world; indeed it is the only thing that ever has.—Margaret Mead

We’ve backed up through your novel ala E.L. Doctorow’s taillights in the past few weeks, starting with the key to the best possible CLIMAX, followed by the key to the best possible DEVELOPMENT. Guess where we are now? Yep. That’s right.

How do you design a HOOK that gets your reader’s imagination in a half-nelson and simply won’t let go?

1. Surprise

You recognize that one, don’t you? Of course you do!

Curiosity killed the cat, and it will kill your reader, too, and they won’t care. That’s how good your surprise has to be: worth trading their life for. Because they actually are giving up a piece of their life to you, hours of time they could spend on something else, and they will never get that piece back again.

Make it worth their while.

What on your first page was the reader not expecting to see there? Don’t try to gross them out—surprise will be quickly superceded by repulsion, and that’ll be the end of THAT. But what have they never seen on a first page before? This is called “fresh” and “new,” and it is the Golden Egg all agents and acquisitions editors spend their lives hunting.

Even further, what about the whole point of your HOOK—which is the climax you’re going to reach, approximately 1/8-1/6 of the way into your novel, the whole point shows just how dreadful of a pickle your protagonist has gotten themself into? How is it a real, head-spinning surprise? What does your reader simply not see coming? What is the anti-thesis to the expectations they’ve kind of been building ever since that first page gave them a whirl for their money?

First page: Point.

HOOK climax: Counter-Point.

These are the two main threads running through your novel. The tension between them, which must be as powerful as humanly possible, is what keeps your reader on the edge of their seat. And the moment at which Point and Counter-Point finally collide is going to be—way, way, way down the line at the CLIMAX of your novel—the whole reason you’re writing this.

2. Mystery


The thing about curiosity is the reader doesn’t know what the heck is going on. And they love that! Amateur critiquers are always telling each other, “I don’t understand what’s going on here.” OF COURSE YOU DON’T. That’s why you have to keep reading!

Ever wonder why thrillers and mysteries are the highest-selling genres out there? Because curiosity is the single greatest motivation for reading that has ever existed. Thrillers are stories in which the reader doesn’t know what’s going on (oh, why do those people in black keep trying to kill the protagonist I adore?) but are intensely emotionally motivated to find out (fear! excitement! more fear!). While mysteries are stories in which, well, the story itself is a mystery.

What on your first page poses a question the reader desperately wants the answer to, but can’t get without turning the page?

And what about the climax of your HOOK is an even deeper mystery the reader now can’t live without solving, but can’t solve without following your protagonist into the full exploration of their fictional nightmare?

Point. And Counter-Point. The climax of your HOOK is the moment when your protagonist first becomes aware of the existence of both threads at once, making the danger that they might collide suddenly extremely real indeed.

3. Conflict


Which, of course, leads us straight to conflict, the essence of fiction. Your reader isn’t reading to find out how things are always just ducky for everyone concerned. Your reader is reading to find out what to do when all hell breaks loose.

What on your first page sets up conflict? It doesn’t have to be the single, overriding conflict that’s going to fuel this novel. That comes out of your Point and Counter-Point, which aren’t fully realized in contrast to each other until the climax of your HOOK. But it’s best in all ways if the conflict on page one can be some microcosm or symptom of that single, overriding conflict. This is part of holographic structure.

Is it the bottle of whiskey in which your protagonist’s loved one will drown themself in the end? The bare feet that will trigger the silent escape that destroys your protagonist’s plans? The cat that runs in front of the car that veers off the road and puts your protagonist in traction right when their dreams are about to be realized?

In this miniscule dew drop is reflected the whole world of your characters’ hell.

4. Charm


This is the final layer: you need to take up residence in your reader’s brain and never move out again. You’re not just surprising. You’re not just mysterious. You’re not even just chock-o-block full of bone-breaking conflict and an endless series of quite intelligent and forceful attempts to resolve those conflicts.

You’re fun to hang out with!

Push your reader away with shock, fear, anxiety, mystery. Pull them in with reassurance, strength, entertainment (humor, if you can!), answers. Be secretive—be honest. Be twisted—be straight-forward. Be subtle—be heartrendingly naked. Push-pull push-pull.

This is charm, people. This is addictive charisma.

5. Resonance


And don’t forget this detail. You’re going to need it later.

The Art and Craft of Fiction: A Practitioner’s Manual
by Victoria Mixon

“The freshest and most relevant advice you’ll find.”
—Helen Gallagher, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

“Wonderfully useful, bracing and humorous. . .it demystifies the essential aspects of the craft while paying homage to the art.”
—Millicent Dillon, five time O.Henry Award winner and author of the PEN/Faulkner-nominated Harry Gold

“Teeming with gold. . .will make you love being a writer if only because you belong to the special little club that gets to read this book.”
—KM Weiland, author of Outlining Your Novel

The Art and Craft of Story: 2nd Practitioner’s Manual
by Victoria Mixon

“Opinionated, rumbunctious, sharp and always entertaining. . .lessons of a writing lifetime.”
—Roz Morris, best selling ghostwriter and author of Nail Your Novel

“As much a gift to writers as an indispensible resource. . .in a never-done-before manner that inspires while it teaches.Highly recommended.”
—Larry Brooks, author of four bestselling thrillers and Story Engineering

“I wish I’d had The Art & Craft of Story when I began work on my first novel.”
—Lucia Orth, author of the critically-acclaimed Baby Jesus Pawn Shop

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How many times have you screwed up your writing? Once? Twice? A hundred times? A thousand times? Counting all the times you’re screwing up this very instant and the times you intend to screw up in the future. . .infinity?

EVERYONE SCREWS UP. This should be printed in big, bold letters at the top of every sheet of paper, every typewriter, every keyboard, every pencil and pen. It should be something all writers sit and stare at all day long as they mull over their novels. It should be something you could get tattooed on the insides of your eyelids so every time you start thinking you’re the only hopeless loser in history to fail so abysmally at the impossibly simple task of writing what you know needs to be written—all you have to do is close your little eyes.

But until that particular tattoo becomes a realistic possibility, let’s talk about the lessons to take away from your ghastly, nightmarish, soul-destroying facility with failure. Shall we?

1. Writers get to erase.


Why, yes. Yes, we do. And we leave no trace. Painters don’t get to do this. Neither do sculptors, woodworkers, theater actors, live musicians, or jugglers. Not to mention dentists, surgeons, emergency rescue teams, air traffic controllers, pilots, deep-sea divers, venomous snake handlers, stuntpeople, firewalkers, or bungie-jumpers. You know what job I do not want? The guy who has to dangle off a wire from a helicopter to save some window jumper from a tall building when a bug flies into the pilot’s eye. Now THAT job would suck.

But in writing I get to make all the mistakes I like. I can write a zillion words based on a complete fallacy, I can make my characters wooden imbeciles, set stories on a moronic cartoon set, make the action about as swift and decisive as custard pie. I can be simply atrocious at this!

And so long as I learn from my mistakes before I get around to trying to publish, nobody will eeeeeeeeever know.

2. Nobody can tell how many times you’ve erased.


Not only do I get to hide my mistakes, but I get to do it an infinite number of times. Screwed up my protagonist’s personality? Fine. I’ll fix it. Made it even worse? Fine. I’ll fix it again. Made it even worse? Fine. I’ll fix it again. Wound up with a half-witted three-armed ignoramus bully with delusions of racial superiority who owns far too money, which they use solely to support the sweatshop and advertising industries, and signed them up for a red herring political organization for brainless gorms that accidentally managed to name itself after a particularly vivid sexual innuendo?

No problem! I can keep nothing but the character’s name. In fact—I can even throw out the name.

And I never, ever, ever erase all the way through the paper.

3. Plots are endlessly adjustable.


Yes, but what if it’s my plot that sucks? What if I started off with a mind-numbingly boring first chapter I didn’t know was supposed to be a hook, switched gears to backstory that makes mind-numbing look interesting, rambled on for five chapters covering my cliche-ridden survivalist manifesto, filled the next twenty chapters with rude observations about my reader’s personal hygiene, and ended lamely on nothing in particular when I realized I don’t know how to write a novel?

It’s okay! All I have to do is think of what story I’m really, super-duper interested in telling. Then I ask myself, ‘Yes, but what’s the point?’, backtrack from there a few major steps, and launch into it at a random startling place.

And if it turns out I’m not all that interested in telling that story after all? So what?! I can go out on the back porch, scratch my heinie on a post, hawk a loogie in the rhodies, and belt out Don’t Cry for Me, Agentina until the neighbors throw shoes. Then I can come back indoors and turn it into the story of how I totally humiliated myself at the rodeo that time, only I can say it was my sister who did it, not me.

It doesn’t matter! Plots are made of unbreakable elastic.

4. Characters can’t rat you out.


And those characters I used the first time—well, the first dozen times—while I was trying to figure out what story I really wanted to tell? The only creatures on earth who know the truth about all this?

Completely mute except for the words I put into their mouths myself. Hear that incoherent screeching in the distance? Hear how it gets all mumbley when I put my hand over it?

Yeah, that’s me. Stifling my characters. Even in a court of law, they can’t bear testimony against me.

5. Settings always look as good as new.


You know, I used to set all my stories in invisible settings. I was too lazy to go find out what those places actually looked like, so I just set my characters down wherever I wanted and let them start talking. I let them do things, too, so long as it didn’t rely on anything in the setting. And I didn’t even know I was imitating Hemingway!

But even when I made my settings ridiculously impossible—they call it an “anarchronism” when you let your Druids smoke cigars—and even when I went out later and found out how impossible it was, I still got to take out the impossible stuff and insert the correct details later, and it looked like I’d done it that way in the first place.

Sometimes I still do it that way, just to amuse myself.

6. Dialog gets more interesting as it gets more disjointed.


And sometimes I wrIte and rewrIte the same dialog over and over again, trying to get it right, taking it apart and putting it back together again, hammering it to bits, until it sounds like the characters are having totally different conversations all in the same room at the same time over the same table.

Hey, you know what I’ve discovered? Dialog sounds a whole lot better that way!

7. Actions are always replaceable.


I even leave out the actions. Randomly. Whenever I’m too sleepy or bored or preoccupied clipping my fingernails to think up anything worth writing down. Or, worse, sometimes I use actions I know perfectly well are trite and unbelievable (never “hips that beckon,” but sometimes pretty darn close), just to fill up the space.

Then when I feel like it I go back later with a thesaurus and try out different words in different orders without even considering what might work best—”slapped/kicked/slid across ice/fingered greasily/dashed past and back again/yodeled like a Swedish tenor/baked in a steak-&-kidney pie.” Sometimes I do it with my eyes closed. That’s how little attention I feel like paying.

That’s also how the characters in my stories wind up doing things that really make each other sit up and do a double-take!

8. In imaginary space, no one can hear you scream.


You have total and complete freedom to vent the frustrations of writing on your story. Go ahead and take out on it everything that’s ever happened or not happened to you, tear out its heart and jump up and down, savage it like a bulldog.

Try it. Yeah. Nobody made a peep, did they?

I love this craft.

No matter how badly you screw up your manuscript, it’s okay! So long as you’re one of those 6 Personality Types Who Will Succeed as Writers.

The Art and Craft of Fiction: A Practitioner’s Manual
by Victoria Mixon

“The freshest and most relevant advice you’ll find.”
—Helen Gallagher, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

“Wonderfully useful, bracing and humorous. . .it demystifies the essential aspects of the craft while paying homage to the art.”
—Millicent Dillon, five time O.Henry Award winner and author of the PEN/Faulkner-nominated Harry Gold

“Teeming with gold. . .will make you love being a writer if only because you belong to the special little club that gets to read this book.”
—KM Weiland, author of Outlining Your Novel

The Art and Craft of Story: 2nd Practitioner’s Manual
by Victoria Mixon

“Opinionated, rumbunctious, sharp and always entertaining. . .lessons of a writing lifetime.”
—Roz Morris, best selling ghostwriter and author of Nail Your Novel

“As much a gift to writers as an indispensible resource. . .in a never-done-before manner that inspires while it teaches.Highly recommended.”
—Larry Brooks, author of four bestselling thrillers and Story Engineering

“I wish I’d had The Art & Craft of Story when I began work on my first novel.”
—Lucia Orth, author of the critically-acclaimed Baby Jesus Pawn Shop

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Books break the shackles of time.—Carl Sagan

Last week I did a post on 5 Ways to Make Your Novel Unforgettable. That was basically all about the CLIMAX, which many people astutely figured out.

But before your reader gets to the part that’s unforgettable, you have to make them turn all 250 other pages. All of them. And guess what? Two hundred and fifty are a whole lot of pages to turn. You don’t want your reader to do it half-heartedly, either. You don’t want to write a “pity-page-turner.” You want full-contact addiction.

You know what’s the best kind of book to write? The kind that gets little rips in the bottoms of the pages from readers turning the pages too fast.

On every single page:

1. Make something exciting happen.
   
   Not just anything—no tooth-brushing, people—but something really unexpected but fascinating. Plot twists!
   
   You know what nobody wants to read? A novel about people being boring. Maybe a big figure in New York publishing can write a novel in which the entire first chapter is taken up by a boring character failing to do anything about being boring. And maybe they will even be awarded a Pulitzer Prize for it. But you are not best friends with the New York City cocktail crowd, so you’re not going to win any Tavern-on-the-Green popularity contests.
   
   You’re going to have to write a novel that’s actually thrilling and entertaining in order to get attention. A novel your reader is not going to have to force themself to read just so they can form an opinion on it because, I don’t know, it’s their job or something. A novel your reader reads because they can’t help themself. And because they can’t help calling up everyone they know and bending the ear of everyone they don’t know about how those guys simply won’t be able to help themselves either.
   
   A novel that’s helplessly addictive.
   
2. Give one of your main characters something brilliant, insightful, hilarious, heart-breaking, or completely baffling to say or do or see happening.
   
   Does it take you five pages to get through a transition scene, just characters sitting around the kitchen table drinking coffee and trading meaningless banter until Jeb comes back from the barn? Do your characters have a tendency to say, “Hi! How was it?” “Fine. How was yours?” and exchange lots of information about their kids that has nothing to do with your plot? Do their arguments about side issues tend to go on for-freaking-ever?
   
   Something needs to happen on every page to make your reader’s eyes open wider. She said what? He did what? There was a what? What came through the door?
   
   Weave in a new subplot thread (this is what subplots are for—to give you material to keep surprising your reader), mention a significant detail, write a fabulous line of dialog, give someone an exciting action, or introduce a fascinating technical subject. John D. MacDonald teaches the reader how to live on a boat off the Florida coast. Dorothy Gilman teaches random retirement-age New Jersey housewife expertise adapted for espionage. John Gardner teaches cocktail party shenanigans of ancient Greece.
   
   Then subtly shape the page around that eye-opener.
   
3. Give your other main character a completely unexpected response.
   
   And just when your reader thinks they know what you’re driving at, throw them off-balance by linking it back to the interaction of the characters.
   
   He said what in response? She took it how? The what caused what to happen?
   
   It’s not just that Travis McGee knows how to fix a broken sump-pump and gets himself heck of filthy doing it for a friend. It’s that his friend’s face is grey with fear when he comes in to check on McGee’s progress. It’s not just that Mrs. Pollifax knows what can be accomplished with a bobby pin and a seriously rebellious attitude. It’s that, even though she succeeds, the people she needs to escape come back early. It’s not just that Agathon gets drunk and plays hanky-panky with the wrong political opponent’s wife. It’s that when he does he discovers she’s got a secret agenda.
   
   Every choice, on every single page, turns out differently from what you’ve lead your reader to believe. Surprise!
   
4. Give your reader an experience they don’t want to forget.
   
   This is why exotic thrillers are so popular, so some really incredibly lame authors continue to make huge money with impossibly limp stories. Experiences.
   
   If you happen to know a lot about living someplace other than where your target audience lives, that’s wonderful. Do your research and organize your notes. Meet lots of interesting people and watch them carefully to learn what makes them tick. Then on every page, make it detailed. Make it authentic. Make it real.
   
   But if you happen to live pretty much exactly the same life as your reader, that’s still wonderful. Think long and hard about what it’s like to live that way. Go around taking lots of notes about it. Interview your friends about what it’s like for them. Stay up late at night drawing unexpected links between your experience of it and your friends’ experiences, links you’ve never seen before, links nobody but you could ever notice.
   
   Then on every page, make it detailed. Make it unexpected. Make it authentic. Make it different from what your reader thinks it is.
   
   Every single page: make it real.
   
5. End the page with something to make your reader curious.
   
   Now, you ought to notice something about these ways to make your novel addictive: it’s a whole lot to pack into a single page. Why, if you did all this on every single page, you’d never have room for anything else! None of the other stuff you’ve written, none of the extra description, the unimportant actions, the insignificant dialog, the explanatory exposition, the filler. . .
   
   Yep, there it is. The lightbulb.
   
   And you ought to notice something else about all this, too: each one of these ways either pushes the reader away (what just happened? why would that character react like that?), or pulls the reader in (that’s amazing that character did that! I love this experience!).
   
   However, at the bottom of the page you don’t want your reader satiated, satisfied, sighing with fulfillment. No, you certainly do not. That all goes on the very last page. After satiation, you know. . .you’re done.
   
   For every single page leading up to that last one, you need your reader desperate to satisfy their curiosity.
   
   Where is all this heading? What are these characters all about? Why does the weaving in-&-out of the subplot threads feel so threatening, so promising, so intriguing, so inevitable? Push-pull. Push-pull. What’s your POINT?
   
   That curiosity is why they simply can’t stop themself turning the page.
   
   Helpless addiction.

(And to round out this series, 5 Ways to Make Your Novel Inescapable is all about your novel’s HOOK.)

The Art and Craft of Fiction:
A Practitioner’s Manual
by Victoria Mixon

“The freshest and most relevant advice you’ll find.”—Helen Gallagher, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

“Wonderfully useful, bracing and humorous. . .demystifies essential aspects of craft while paying homage to the art.”—Millicent Dillon, five time O. Henry Award winner and PEN/Faulkner nominee

“Teeming with gold. . .makes you love being a writer because you belong to the special club that gets to read this book.”—KM Weiland, author of Outlining Your Novel

The Art and Craft of Story: 2nd Practitioner’s Manual
by Victoria Mixon

“Opinionated, rumbunctious, sharp and always entertaining. . .lessons of a writing lifetime.”—Roz Morris, best selling ghostwriter and author of Nail Your Novel

“As much a gift to writers as an indispensible resource. . .in a never-done-before manner that inspires while it teaches. Highly recommended.”—Larry Brooks, author of four bestselling thrillers and Story Engineering

“I wish I’d had The Art & Craft of Story when I began work on my first novel.”—Lucia Orth, author of the critically-acclaimed Baby Jesus Pawn Shop

Subscribe: