Scoops are loosely defined as items of news which are investigated and reported by one reporter before any other journalist or media organisation has a clue what is going on.
Every November, aspiring authors all over the world put on their thinking caps and encourage the cogs in their brain to start whirring.
National Novel Writing Month, otherwise known as NaNoWriMo, encourages people of all writing abilities to push themselves to develop a novel within one month.
The aim is to keep motivated and creative with writing, with participants pushing to write the minimum number of words for a novel, a mammoth 50,000 (1,667 words per day!)
The event started life as a small writing project in 1999, with only 21 people participating, but has grown year on year, with over 400,000 participants in 2013.
If you are joining in with this years’ event, or just want to learn how to improve your writing skills, check out the following tips from our Creative Writing Diploma!
- Develop Conflict
A character tends to become beloved by an audience if they face a series of challenges throughout the books – whether these be physical challenges, mental challenges or social challenges is up to the author. Readers aren’t interested in a character who seems to have the perfect life, with no worries whatsoever, as this means that there is nothing in the story line to create an element of danger – leading to a very boring book!
- Combating writer’s block
If you are suffering from the dreaded curse that plagues authors from time to time, forget about writing a specific paragraph, chapter or even line of your book. An exercise recommended to tackle those time when you can’t seem to write a part of a story is to just write anything. Start writing anything, whether it be related to your book or not, whether it makes sense or not or even if it is in note form rather than full sentences. This helps writers to overcome their mental block, and get their creative cogs whirring!
- Read it out
Reading through your own work to check for errors is always a difficult task, as it is often difficult to be critical of a piece of writing that you have created. Similarly, you may not want to show your work to anyone until you are finished and proud of it. You may love one of the characters that you have created, or you may be really proud of a specific chapter. However, the parts you like may not always be the best way of moving forward with your book, or they may not even make sense. A good way to check your work thoroughly, without having to involve someone else, is to read the work out loud. By doing this, you are more likely to spot your errors, or discover that certain sections should be removed or replaced.
If you would like to study more about writing, why not check out our Creative Writing Diploma and Fiction Writing course?
Nick Cooper
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