Nathan Bransford - The Forums

i suggest you cut out "Haily was simply just there." It is just repeating what has been said already. Otherwise...I much like. I agree and the alteration was actually made before you posted this. As soon as I started a new polish of the manuscript, I realized the redundancy of that line. ...

Sure, why not?

"Hailey stood motionless in a dark, humid place, having no clue where she was or how she got there: Hailey was simply just there."

Oh yeah, it also plays into my ongoing theme of the novel's flow mimicking the stages of life.

I would say initial action and suspense depend largely on the genre. Obviously if you're writing a lighthearted romance story, better judgment urges against an overblown intro sequence incorporating an average Joe on a walkie-talkie with the bomb squad trying to determine whether the blue or red wir...

Here's my post on Word Count: http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2008/02/novel-word-count.html To expand on that, in my experience, at least 95% of the manuscripts I see that are over 120,000 words don't really need to be over 120,000 words, and the writer needs to rein in the manuscript. Often there ...

Thank you for the feedback, I do very much appreciate it. I really and I mean really despise the thought of sending off a manuscript nearing 900 pages. Perhaps my feelings are silly and unreasonable but for serious, I'm going to need five billion stamps to send it. The postal service will likely inv...

-Hola, here's a rehashing of the question I sent via email. I couldn't find anything on your blog specifically addressing my conundrum. I went about my often merry way and wrote a novel, so I've been doing my research as to how I can turn my little bundle of joy into a real, living, breathing novel....