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    Writing A Page-Turner
    Writing A Page-Turner
    Writing A Page-Turner
    Ebook47 pages31 minutes

    Writing A Page-Turner

    By Mark J Dawson and Elizabeth Bailey

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    About this ebook

    Elizabeth Bailey presents the five editing maxims you need to know to create a page-turner:

    •    Cut to the chase

    •    Stay in the character’s head

    •    Leave out the waffle

    •    Keep it simple

    •    Trust your reader

    In this essential guide for new authors, Bailey and Dawson set out the hard truths that will make your book better and save you money and time on editing.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSPF Books
    Release dateJun 22, 2017
    ISBN9781386139836
    Writing A Page-Turner

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      Book preview

      Writing A Page-Turner - Mark J Dawson

      Introduction

      What’s it all about?

      So what makes a page-turner? Let’s back up a bit. What is a page-turner in the first place?

      I’m sure you’ve had the experience of picking up a book that catches your attention with the premise. You read the first line and you can’t help reading on to finish the paragraph, and then the whole page. Before you know it, you’re deep into the story and you know you’re supposed to be doing something else – like going to sleep – and you tell yourself just one more chapter. In other words, you can’t put the book down. That’s a page-turner.

      Simple, right? All you have to do is write in a way that hooks in your reader and keeps them glued to the story so they keep turning the pages. Now I bet you think I’m going to say there’s more to it than that. I’m not. It really is that simple. Once you know the tricks and can manipulate the text, there’s no reason why you can’t

      do

      it

      .

      I use manipulate advisedly here. A skilled author uses words to control the reader’s emotions. Just as a skilled film-maker uses images, sound and dialogue to make the viewer feel different emotions. The writer’s job then is to weave the story in such a way that the reader becomes so deeply involved emotionally they can’t

      let

      go

      .

      Frankly, there are few authors who can do this first time out and not have to edit. It gets easier to write closer to it in first draft the more writing you do, but the best of us still need an editor. Whether you need a full script doctoring approach by a developmental editor, or just a copy editor to check anomalies and grammar, depends on how good an editor you are yourself.

      Learning to edit your own work at the development stage cuts down the help you need to tell you what to do to fix it - not to mention cash spent for hours of editing. You may still need a second pair of eyes to pick up what you missed, but you can do the meat yourself if you know what to

      look

      for

      .

      What is going to turn your story into a page-turner?

      There are five points to think about that we’re going to call maxims:

      Cut to the chase

      Stay in the

      character’s

      head

      Leave out the waffle

      Keep it simple

      Trust your reader

      Why these five maxims work to create your page-turner

      One of the most frequent difficulties authors encounter is the problem of keeping the momentum of the story

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