Novels - Fiction

Coming up the idea for a story can come in many forms. 

​

Inspiration from what has come before is undeniable in any creative process, I believe. It helps to shape your style, what you like and don't like and, more importantly, how original and authentic your resulting concept may or may not be.

​

Ideas have come to me in many forms. I've been inspired by listening to music and watching things like movie trailers and music videos. I would then create my own story to go along with them.

​

Some books have started from one seed of an idea, like one key moment in the story that I would either work forward or backwards from.

​

​

Structure

 

We are all familiar with the basic three act structure that we learn about at a young age. The basics of a beginning, a middle, and an end. There are variants and even more complex methods of structure out there, but it all depends on preference.

​

I have only written one book where I set out a complete structure guide to follow. I feel it greatly impacts the creative process and makes it less rewarding as well as constrictive. To me, it felt like joining predetermined dots with no variance, therefore taking away any surprise or compromise.

​

​

​

Formatting

​

Some like to do this after the editing stage, but I prefer to do it as I go along as it makes a second reading much easier. It also gives me a more accurate page count and makes it easier to navigate the narrative if I need to track back or find a certain paragraph.

​

Formatting a book correctly was another skill I had to learn, just as I learned how to correctly format a screenplay which gave it its correct shape and flow.

​​

​

​

Editing and Proof Reading

​

A very important and crucial part of making any piece of writing creditable is the editing stage. For writers, this can be an expensive stage of the process as professional editorial fees are sometimes an expensive cost to producing the book, especially when you don't have the funds to cover it.

​

Most publishers are great at handling this stage and will work with the author to make sure the book is water tight for grammar, spelling and other things such as inconsistencies within the story and plot holes.

When I started out, I relied on my own skills as well as reaching out to other writers, friends and family as "beta readers" in order to gather feedback and help me with avoiding tunnel vision.

​​

​

​

Cover Design

​

I come from an artistic background and originally wanted to be a professional artist when I was young so when it comes to cover design, I always have a vivid idea of what I would like to see on the cover.

​

I have designed some covers on my own.

For those where I didn't create them myself, I was heavily involved in consulting on the design to the designer which always resulted in surpassing my original idea and vision which is a credit to the skills of the professional designers.