Do Writers Really Need to Know Theory?

How theories of writing can help fiction writers.

Source: Do Writers Really Need to Know Theory?

Plot Structure–A Worksheet

Author Unpublished

With the absence of my computer over the last few weeks, I’ve spent a lot of time working on my various writing projects lately. One of those projects has been working on the plot structure/outline for one of my newer novels, The Night Parade. I’ve spent the better half of the last week researching different plot structures in an attempt to make up plot structure worksheet that will work for any of the various novels I’ve been working on, and after hours of ironing things out, I think I’ve finally gotten something reasonable to work with. So, I now present to you, my plot structure worksheet—I hope it proves useful to you. I’ve pulled the information/structure of this plot outline worksheet from multiple different sources across the internet as well as from my own experiences, so there is a lot of information contained within it, but hopefully it’s not too…

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How to Get Page Numbers to Start in Chapter One for CreateSpace

Lit World Interviews

Getting the page numbers and book title in the headers starting on the correct page for CreateSpace can have you pulling your hair out in bunches sometimes. You can download an already formatted template from CreateSpace and copy and paste your manuscript into that rather than going for the bald look, or you can make a nice clean template of your own.

Trying to reformat a couple of hundred pages of an already otherwise formatted Word document sometimes causes strange things to happen, so after many trial and errors along the way, I finally figured out that the easiest thing to do was to type my manuscripts without any formatting at all, and then copy and paste them into my own template before working on paragraphs, margins, and styles for CreateSpace. It’s wonderfully simple to do.

Open a new word document. Hit Enter twice, and then go to Page Layout…

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Six Facebook Cover Creators

Self-Published Authors Helping Other Authors

If you have a facebook profile, then you’ve seen the facebook “covers” -aka the banners at the top of you profiles, pages, clubs, groups, and events:

If you have some graphic skills you can make your own in any art program (paintbrush, GIMP, paint shop pro, etc.) The best size to make them is 856 x 317 pixels. To upload you just go to your page, event, etc. and click on the cover image (or lack of cover image) and choose to upload your creation.

But what if you have no graphic skills? What if you don’t know how to use an art program? Never fear, there are some cool online generators you can use for free! I’m going to showcase six of them.

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Fun Photo Box

This generator has some really cool templates you can use – though to do this you need a photo of your own to…

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From the Master’s lips

Mad Genius Club

I thought I’d try something different this morning.  Rather than inflict more of my mental machinations on you, here’s the Master himself, J. R. R. Tolkien.  These two clips were filmed by the BBC in 1968.  I find them fascinating as a glimpse into so creative a mind, and a clue as to how he could take the most ordinary, mundane circumstances, filter them through his prodigous imagination, and transform them into something magically mysterious that’s kept the world entertained for more than half a century.

I suppose that Tolkien was the single most important formative influence on me as a young reader, far more so than classic science fiction authors like Asimov, Clarke and Heinlein (whom I didn’t discover until my late teens). I remain an unabashed fan, and still regard his ‘The Hobbit’ and ‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy as the benchmarks against which I measure anything calling…

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