I started writing fifteen years ago. I had completed and submitted ten manuscripts over seven years to many publishing houses before I ever sold a novel. As a New York Times Bestseller, I can tell all aspiring writers that although there is no magic formula, there are some things that are necessary for you to learn in order to get published and to succeed:

I started writing fifteen years ago. I had completed and submitted ten manuscripts over seven years to many publishing houses before I ever sold a novel. As a New York Times Bestseller, I can tell all aspiring writers that although there is no magic formula, there are some things that are necessary for you to learn in order to get published and to succeed:

The book has to end happy.

The last chapter has to end happy.

The others? They don't.

In fact, they shouldn't. Because a chapter that ends with everything happy is a great reason to put down the book with a sigh of contentment, turn out the light and go to sleep.

So how should a chapter end? For that matter, how should every scene end?

Some tips by author Julie Rowe on how to edit.

There are about as many ways to write a novel as there are writers. Some plot extensively, some write with no idea where the story is going at all. Some use story boards or index cards or even dartboards.

I write multiple drafts.

If the first rule of writing is Show, Don't Tell, the second should be Keep It Active. Active voice is what puts us in the middle of the action and allows us to feel. Passive voice is what gives us the feeling that someone is telling us a story that happened once upon a time.

Ah, February. The shortest month of the year. Yet, its twenty-eight days are chock-full of events. There are groundhogs, cupids, and presidents to celebrate. February is Black History Month, Children’s Dental Health Month, Library Lovers’ Month, and yes, even Grapefruit Month. Within its mere four weeks, you can celebrate Burn Awareness Week, Consumer Protection Week, Friendship Week, Cardiac Rehabilitation Week, and Pancake Week. Even the days are special: Kosciuszko Day is February 4th , Super Bowl Sunday on the 5th in 2006, Clean Out Your Computer Day on the 15th (must write that one down’), and Banana Bread Day on the 23rd .

There’s a lesson for writers in all those events. How do you give your reader all the information necessary, in the shortest amount of space, without garbling your prose? 

The title here is pretty self-explanatory! How do we go about adding emotional depth to scenes without doing two pages of looooong flashbacks (or, as someone from my last workshop put it, "whining and pining") about the past, or what the hero, my mother or so-and-so did to me 5 or 25 years ago?

Today's publishing industry is cut-throat and difficult to break into. A good editing plan can make the difference between 'sold' and 'shelved'.

In this article, Nina Davies gives you a 3-step plan for editing your novel.

Recently, I finished a book, after seven months of toiling with it. It was one of those "every word wrung from me with tears" books, and so hard to write. I had to force myself to get on the chair and write some days (and to stop playing pinball or sending emails). Imagine my horror when this book, which I'd almost begun to hate, came up 15,000 words short!  

read on to discover how Melissa James solved this problem.