101 Writing Tips

How do you fix a scene that feels flat? Where should your story actually begin? Why do your characters all sound the same?

101 Writing Tips: A Daily Companion for Writers is a year of craft distilled into bite-sized, actionable lessons. Drawn from twenty-five years of teaching, each tip addresses a specific problem writers face every day - from structuring a plot to choosing the right word to knowing when to cut a scene that isn't working.

The tips are organized by category in the Table of Contents - Story Architecture, Character, Dialogue, Setting, Tension, Viewpoint, Wordcraft, Revision, Publishing - so you can jump straight to whatever you are struggling with. Or read the book as a daily companion: one tip each morning, applied to your work in progress, and in three months you will have examined your manuscript from a hundred and one different angles.

What's inside:

• Why "show, don't tell" is the most misunderstood advice in fiction - and what to do instead
• How sentence length controls what your reader feels
• The empty room test that reveals whether your setting is doing its job
• Why your antagonist should be the hero of their own story
• The two-job rule that keeps scenes from getting cut
• How to use flashbacks without killing your scene
• Why your first chapter is probably starting in the wrong place
• The midpoint shift that fixes a sagging second act

No theory. No jargon. Just one hundred and one ideas you can use today.

About the Author: Steve Alcorn is a USA Today bestselling author, engineer, and educator. In 1986 he founded Alcorn McBride, the leading maker of technology for theme park attractions worldwide. In 2001 he founded Writing Academy, where for more than 25 years he has helped over 100,000 students structure their novels - both through his own courses and through the online programs of more than 1,500 colleges and universities. He is the author of 30 books spanning fiction, nonfiction, and writing craft, and narrates many of his own audiobooks.