Category: Writing tips

First draft precious ideas

First draft precious ideas

I’m not a plotter, but I think about my story for a long time knowing the key moments before I begin to write. I know what’s going to happen at the end even though when I get there that might change. So how do I get those ideas that make up the major part of the story if I haven’t plotted the entire manuscript?

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Have you noticed anything about many well-established authors?

Have you noticed anything about many well-established authors?

I have. And I often find it frustrating, but it’s not the author’s fault. Let’s take Kate Moreton as an example. If you’ve read her first, The House at Riverton where Grace worked as a servant for the Hartford family back in the 1920s when a suicide occurred in their mansion, I’m sure you were as riveted as I was to this mystery. Then came The Forgotten Garden that is one of my favourites of Moreton’s where a child arrives on the Australian docks unclaimed and doesn’t even know her name. A childless couple adopt her. Only some sixty years later does she try to unravel her past and work out how she ended up in Australia from England. My other favourite was Secret Keeper where Dorothy’s daughter Laurel witnesses her mother kill a man she’s never seen before, and she has no idea why.

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The Avenue Bookstore

The Avenue Bookstore

This is a must visit bookstore each time I’m in Melbourne. There are three stores in Melbourne’s inner suburbs but the one I go to is just up from Albert Park Library and through the coffee drinking patrons seated by tables on the sidewalk. It has substantial fiction and non-fiction sections for both adults and children.

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MacLeod’s Books

MacLeod’s Books

MacLeod’s is my go-to bookstore once I’ve finished researching on-line but still can’t find all the fine details I need to begin the first draft on my latest book idea. I’ve never once been there and not found something that fits what I’m currently researching. MacLeod’s, in downtown Vancouver on West Pender, is easily located on a Google map and has been around for over fifty years.

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