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Creative writing The Good Reader

How much does it cost to write a novel? Part 1: The writer’s workspace

How much does it cost to write a novel? Surely, writing costs nothing more than time and something to write with, whether that’s pen and paper, a computer, or a secretary to take your dictations (if you’re Barbara Cartland). Right? Wrong! Most successful novelists employ editors and readers at different stages. That’s particularly important for […]

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Creative writing writing tools

Planning tools for writing novels: Scrivener, Scapple, Xmind, Aeon Timeline, Trello, Plottr

How do you turn a collection of story ideas into a coherent 100,000-word novel? Novel planning was one of the most daunting tasks I faced as a first-time novelist. As a journalist, I’d got used to writing a few hundred words without an outline, or jotting down a few ideas for a thousand-word article or […]