Graham H. Miller's Blog, page 4

Editing strategy

Everything I’ve read about editing suggests that you should write lots and then cut out the superfluous words to create tighter, leaner prose. I think Stephen King aims to lose at least 10% on the first draft rewrite. I have … Continue reading →

Writing a page-turner

As I mentioned in my last post I’ve read On Writing by Stephen King, and while I don’t agree with many of the points he makes one thing really stuck with me. If you want your writing to be exciting, … Continue reading →

Solitary profession

A quick update on where I am now. I’ve done the bulk of the writing on the Fifth Warrior and am now leaving it off to one side for the moment. I was feeling a bit odd about it as … Continue reading →

Milestones

Following on from my previous post where I realised that I have become a "proper writer" I thought I'd look back at some milestones in my career as a writer. I was thinking over this and realised that I started … Continue reading →

The life of a writer

I seem to be getting into a pattern here. While I'm planning out some writing I am capable of keeping up with my author platform – blog posts, tweets and Facebook updates. But then, I get an outline all sketched … Continue reading →

Travelling through history

Many historical stories feature travelling from one place to another. Actually, a real journey is a common enough plot device as it can easily mirror the characters' internal journey. But when this applies to historical fiction, whole legions of problems … Continue reading →

Language in historical novels

Something my editor said a while back struck a chord with me. She saw a short excerpt and questioned my use of the word "cute" as the piece was set in the Roman Empire and it was too American. Since … Continue reading →

History and accuracy

Time to own up – I've been reading a lot about building an author platform and how to use social networking for self promotion. While I don't take it all on board, one thing that did resonate was advice about … Continue reading →

#amwriting but #nottweeting

I've spent a lot of time skipping through Twitter posts about how to build an author platform and generate a loyal base of readers. I do have a Goodreads account but it isn't one of my regular 'sites that I … Continue reading →

Learning from published authors

I was lucky this morning, I caught John Grisham being interviewed on BBC Breakfast. The initial focus of of the interview was the fact that he'd sold 275 million copies of his books. But for an author, he gave some … Continue reading →