Fire Up Your Fiction An Editor's Guide to Writing Compelling Stories

Fire up Your Fiction - An Editor's Guide to Writing Compelling Stories, has won two awards to date under its previous title, Style That Sizzles & Pacing for Power. This popular writing guide received a Silver Medal in the Florida Authors & Publishers President's Book Awards for 2013 and an Honorable Mention in the Writer's Digest Self-Published E-Book Awards for 2013.
"What a wonderful resource for writers at any stage of their career I wish I had this book when I first started writing. ... I can't think of anything important that you haven't addressed succinctly and clearly. ... This should be on the booklist for Master's Programs in Writing for Publication. ... You must be a wonderful editor to be able to write such a readable, but comprehensive book."
- Judge, Writer's Digest Self-Published e-Book Awards, January 2014
Fiction writers - if you're looking to hone your style, bring your scenes to life, tighten up your writing, add tension, pick up the pace, and develop a more authentic, appealing voice, this guide to the indispensable style elements of writing a popular novel is for you. This book is chock-full of excellent tips to help you learn to write like the pros and create a compelling novel that sells. Not only that, but if you apply these tips to your manuscript, you'll save a lot of money on editing costs.
Topics include: hooking readers in on your first pages, writing compelling action scenes, style blunders to avoid, showing instead of telling, streamlining cluttered sentences and paragraphs, avoiding repetitions, choosing words that nail it, varying your pacing, avoiding info dumps, smoothing out awkward structures, writing natural-sounding dialogue, expressing thoughts, showing character reactions, avoiding melodrama, finding your authentic voice, and more.
"This book is packed with good advice on how to spot and fix weaknesses in your fiction writing. It summarizes the combined wisdom of the last century or so of fiction teachers into one handy volume." - Randy Ingermanson, bestselling author of Writing Fiction for Dummies
"A handy checklist and self-editing guide that will get any fiction writer to a stronger, well-told tale." - James Scott Bell, bestselling author of Revision & Self-Editing, Plot & Structure, and The Art of War for Writers