Creating an effective cover, indie author bestsellers and the evolution of romance writing
What’s happened in the book world this week?
Telling vs. Showing When Emotions Are at Work
By Angela Ackerman Show, Don’t Tell is one of those writerly phrases thrown out often enough that many writers can’t help but roll their eyes when…
10 Ted Talks to Inspire You to Start Your Novel
10 great TED talks to inspire you to start writing!
Writing Tips, Marketing Advice and Book News: What’s Happening This Week?
By Joni Di Placido It’s a new year and we’re bringing this feature back: a place to share the most interesting book news and author tips…
The Best of the KWL Blog 2018
Happy New Year from us all at Kobo Writing Life! As we leave 2018 behind, let’s take a moment to celebrate and revisit some of the…
10 Steps to a Bestselling Novel
By Sierra Delarosa Are you aiming for your next book to become a bestseller? Why do some books become more popular than others? While there’s no surefire…
To Swear or Not To Swear: Where Are Your Boundaries As An Author?
How do you feel about swearing in your books? Hard no, or appropriate when the narrative calls for it?
4 Steps to Starting Your Novel
By Signe Pike “I’m working on a novel” If you’ve ever uttered these words you are most likely acquainted with the particular horrors of trying to…
Ready, Set, WRITE! NaNoWriMo 2018 is kicking off!
NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) began today! Wishing all you NaNoNovelists a fantastic month of writing!
NaNoPlanno: Tools for NaNoWriMo Prep
NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month: a frenzy of writing with the goal of producing a 50,000-word novel during the thirty days of November.
Writer in residence: Learning the Difference Between a café and a cabin
By Vannessa Barnier After working 9-5 for six months, I was itching to get into the woods and wash my hair with dirt. I organize poetry…
How I Found My Story and Made Sense of My Early Drafts
By Mackenzie Belcastro For eight months, my novel went through a series of identity crises. My high fantasy morphed into magical realism, as I killed my…
How to Revise Your Novel
True revision, in which a writer takes apart a book and puts it back together again, terrified me. How could anyone pull it off?
I’ll tell you how: step by step, little by little, just like you wrote the book.
Ten Great First Lines
The opening of the novel is so important. It’s your pick-up line; you need to catch your reader’s attention, and hold it.
KWL Podcast – Ep 110 – Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant
KWL EP 110 – Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant Join Chrissy and Stephanie as they sit down with Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant, the…
How I Became an Author in Retirement
by Michele Sabad We define ourselves in various ways, depending on time, mood, inclination. Many of our identities are stable throughout life. I am a woman.…
Looking For Inspiration?
This week we’re announcing our upcoming takeover of the Reedsy short story contest!
The 5 Traits That All Successful Authors Share
Great authors are seldom born; instead they’re moulded, sculpted and polished over time.
Play Time: Fun and Pain in Characterization
A character in a story is an action figure . . . a fun, functional component necessary to a story. Just like literal toys, characters have pieces and joints, edges and options, a fixed appearance and range of motion that begs to be played with
The Queer Eye: LGBT+ Voices in Fiction
When I’m asked why on earth I write gay and bi protagonists, the answer’s really very simple. I’m bi, I grew up around a lot of LGBT+ people, and the majority of my close circle are LGBT+, so I’m doing what writers are told to do again and again—I’m writing what I know.
20 Quirks & Strange Habits of Writers
Do you have any quirky writerly habits? Share yours in the comments!
Eight Tools That Will Help You Start Your Novel
By Joni Di Placido Sometimes the biggest challenge in writing is finding the time and the focus to just sit down and do it. Between the…
Hyphens
By Mignon Fogarty Today’s topic is hyphens. Recently a friend was watching the cable channel CNBC and called me over to the TV because the hosts…
Renowned KWL author K.L. Slater shares tips for twisty tales
Everybody loves a twist, right?
A great twist is an enticing prospect for many readers in choosing their next read and it is my view, this is never more important than in the psychological thriller.
5 Ways to Make Your Editor Think You are Awesome
By Lisa Lepki As the Editor of ProWritingAid’s blog, I am constantly reading submissions from writers, and few things irk me more than common technical gaffes…
An Editor Is Your Novel’s Best Friend
By Carrie D. Miller If you’ve taken the self-published route, you have a little more than a hint of control-freak in you. I know I do.…
‘Suffragette,’ ‘Editrix,’ ‘Actress,’ and Other Gender-Specific Nouns
Which gender-specific nouns do you still use?
How Going Wide Helped Me Quit My Day Job
by Tracy Cooper-Posey Here’s a question for you: Why did you get into indie publishing?
Are You “Shoulding” on Yourself? An Author’s List of Shoulds
As authors we are constantly under pressure to do so much that we’re left with little time to actually write. How to find that balance and use our time wisely?
Grammar Girl’s Editing Checklist
by Mignon Fogarty Some time ago, Grammar Girl distributed an editing checklist that turned out to be so popular we decided to make it widely available. Go…
Grammar Girl’s Top 10 Language Myths
by Mignon Fogarty We have a special top-10 post to celebrate the end of the year, and—before you argue—read the whole explanation about why each of…
How to Use Attributives
Dialogue is hard to write and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Getting characters to have individual voices has caused more sleepless nights than too much coffee late in the day. Once the dialogue sounds right and reads right on the page, there is the problem of attributives.
Writing Fiction in the Present Tense
By Mignon Fogarty Should you write your novel in present tense? I usually deal with topics that can be widely applied to fiction and non-fiction writing, but…
Kobo Writing Life Podcast – Episode 098 – Rachel Amphlett
In Episode 98, Mark Lefebvre interviews bestselling Australian thriller author Rachel Amphlett, who came to Kobo HQ during her international author tour. Rachel, her husband Nick, and Mark sat down to talk about how she finds inspiration, never giving up, sticking to a schedule, and more
4 Ways Good Stories Move Us
What’s your favourite book and why? Share in the comments!
How To Avoid Clichés in Your Writing
Clichés can be a writer’s worst enemy, and the reader usually doesn’t like clichés much either. Writers from Jonathan Swift to George Orwell have ranted against the cliché like it was the Devil tempting an innocent seminary student.
KoboWriMo Update: #TheStruggleIsReal
By Joni Di Placido I got a lot of dark glares when I asked the Kobo team for updates this week. Everyone is all out…
Kobo Writing Life Podcast – Episode 097 – James Alan Gardner & Spider Robinson
Mark Lefebvre interviews James Alan Gardner and Spider Robinson, co-editors of the Tesseracts Twenty: Compostela anthology. The stories in this anthology in their own way tell the tale of futuristic travelers who journey into the dark outer (or inner) reaches of space, searching for their own connections to the past, present and future relics of their time.
Apostrophe Catastrophe
It’s no wonder that people are confused about apostrophes, because new uses were introduced in the 1600s and again in the 1700s, and it wasn’t until the mid-1800s that people even tried to set down firm rules.
Team KoboWriMo 2017: Fifteen Days In
Today, I wanted to know where everybody has set their novels, and what inspired them to choose that setting?
Tips and Tools to Help You Complete NaNoWriMo (or any writing project)
You’re down to the wire. The deadline for NaNoWriMo (or another writing project) looms on the horizon. But you’re behind. You’re afraid you’re not going to make it. You simply don’t have enough time to write the requisite number of words at your typical writing pace. Or the words just won’t come. Or both. What’s a writer to do?
Active Voice Versus Passive Voice
Today’s topic is active voice versus passive voice. Many people believe they should avoid the passive voice, but fewer people can define it or recognize it.
Team KoboWriMo 2017: Seven Days In
So how’s it going so far? I wanted to find out the challenges and triumphs our writers have experienced over the past week.
Kobo Writing Life Podcast – Episode 096 – Pep Talks from NaNoWriMo’s Grant Faulkner
It’s day 8 of National Novel Writing Month, which is perfect timing to listen to some excellent inspiration from Grant Faulkner, Executive Director of NaNoWriMo. He…
Using Triggers to Poke at a Character’s Emotional Wound
When it comes to acknowledging what hurts us, the old saying, Deny, deny, deny! comes to mind. It’s no different with our characters, and in both cases, refusing to deal with wounding events carries a steep price.
What Is a Comma Splice?
By Mignon Fogarty How to Use Commas Commas are always tricky because there are so many different ways you can use them, but one of the most…
Team KoboWriMo 2017
Aaaaand the big day is here at last! Here at Kobo we have an intrepid team of fifteen staff members (our biggest yet!) attempting the…
Fighting the Demon of Self-Doubt
By Eve Langlais When Kobo approached me for an article I jumped on it because how cool is that, to be asked to write something to…
Word Power: Boring Words & What To Use Instead (Feel)
The folks at Custom-Writing have gathered 28 of the most common words that are often too boring to use and have selected a number of alternatives you may be able to use instead to make your prose a bit more specific or perhaps just varied, rather than using the same words repeatedly.
The Five Stages Of Revising Your Novel
You’ve finished a first draft of your novel. Now what?