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Get Your First Novel Past Chapter Three and Keep the Draft Moving to the End

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Picture a file called Chapter Three that has been open on a laptop for nine days, with the cursor blinking after the same half-finished sentence.

Chapter three is where a first draft gets hard: the opening chapters pour out, and the moment the set-up is done, the story stalls.

The stall has very little to do with talent, and once you can see what is going on at that point in a book, you can write straight through it.

The excitement of a new idea runs out at about the same place every time

A new story idea comes with its own fuel.

You can see the opening scene, you know who your main character is, and the first pages come easily because you have been playing them in your head for weeks.

That fuel covers the setup. It gets your character through her normal life and up to the moment where something goes wrong.

Then chapter three asks a harder question. Now that something has gone wrong, what does she do about it, and what happens after that?

If you never worked out the answer, the writing slows to a crawl.

Every sentence takes ages because you are inventing the story and writing it at the same moment, and doing both at once wears anyone out.

Going back to polish chapter one feels like progress, and it quietly stops the book

When the road ahead gets foggy, most writers turn around. They open chapter one and start fixing it, because chapter one feels safe.

The story is already there, and all you have to do is make the sentences nicer.

A week later the opening is lovely and chapter three still has the same blinking cursor.

This loop is so common that many writing teachers give the same rule for it: no going back until the draft is finished.

If you think of something you want to change in an early chapter, drop a note in square brackets right where you are, like [make her sister older in chapter one], and keep writing.

Your opening will need rewriting anyway.

You can only know what chapter one should set up once you know how the book ends, so every hour spent polishing it now is an hour you will spend again later.

Writer's block in the middle of a book is usually a missing plan for the next scene

Writer's block sounds like a mystery, as if the words dried up for no reason.

In the middle of a novel it nearly always has a simple cause: you don't know what happens next, so there is nothing for the words to describe.

So stop staring at the page and plan the next scene in a few rough lines.

Ask what your main character wants in this scene, who or what is in her way, and how the scene ends.

Write the answers down before you write a single line of the chapter.

A few more habits keep a draft rolling once it is moving:

• Finish each writing session partway through a scene you know how to complete. Ernest Hemingway liked to stop for the day when he still knew what was going to happen next, so the next morning started easily.
• Keep a running page of ideas for later chapters, so a good idea never drags you away from the scene you are on.
• Set a small daily word count you can hit even on a bad day, and count the days you hit it.

Lindsay Lake spent years stuck in the first few chapters

Lindsay Lake, a romance novelist who now coaches other writers, describes this stage of her own life in a way a lot of writers will recognise.

Before she became a novelist, she says, "Just getting past the first few chapters was like a never ending struggle."

In her words, she would "spend my evenings writing, rewriting, editing and losing my patience," and "starting over became my painful routine."

Then her husband left, and she was suddenly raising her three children alone.

She says that after months of barely coping, she set out to learn what it really took to write fiction, studied how successful authors work, and pieced together a method of her own.

Lindsay says she then wrote her first novel in 14 days, and that ten weeks later it was climbing the charts.

Her best-known book is Private Seduction, part of her Hideaway of Desires romance series, and as a contract writer she says she has written over 50 more books under pen names.

Her sales letter puts it as "in as little as 14 days," and she is the first to say that how long your book takes depends on your goals and the genre you write in.

Her names for getting past the stall: the Clarity Momentum Formula and the Tidal Wave Technique

Two parts of Lindsay Lake's Hurricane Method, her program for writing a full novel, are aimed right at this kind of stall.

The first is what she calls the Clarity Momentum Formula.

On her sales page she says it "destroys writers block once and for all" and clears your mind, so the words flow from your thoughts as you write.

The second is her Tidal Wave Technique, for the moment you "hit a wall in your story that you just can't get past."

She says it floods you with ideas to move the story forward, so you know where your story and characters are heading.

She lays out how each one works, step by step, inside the program.

The Hurricane Method costs $47 as a single payment, with a 60-day money-back guarantee, and Lindsay describes the Clarity Momentum Formula on her sales page.

Before you read any further, though, there's tonight's job: plan your next scene in a few rough lines, then write it straight through without opening chapter one.

Finish Your First Draft With a Quick Outline That Stops You Rewriting Chapter One

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In most unfinished novels, chapter one is the best-written part of the whole file.

It has been rewritten more times than its author can count, while the rest of the book is a few scenes and a lot of blank space.

The way out takes about an afternoon of planning, and it starts at the end of the book.

Chapter one can't settle down until you know how the book ends

An opening chapter has a big job. It introduces the people, the place and the problem that the rest of the book will pay off.

If you don't know what the payoff is, you can't tell whether the setup is right.

So the opening never feels finished, and you keep going back to tweak it.

Every rewrite feels useful because the sentences really do improve.

Meanwhile the book stays the same length, and a few months later the excitement that started it has gone.

Plotters, pantsers and the short outline in between

Writers love to argue about planning.

Plotters map out the whole book before they write, and pantsers (who write "by the seat of their pants") make it up as they go.

Both camps finish books.

For a first novel, though, a short outline saves a lot of pain, because you don't yet have the experience to feel where a story is heading without one.

A useful outline is also much smaller than most people imagine. It fits on a stack of index cards.

A quick outline you can build in one afternoon

1. Write the story in one sentence. Say who wants what, and what stands in the way. For example: a widowed baker wants to save her shop, and the man trying to buy it is the first person to make her laugh in years.
2. Decide the ending. Does she get what she wants, and what does it cost her? You can change your mind later, but you need something to aim at now.
3. Pick the big turns. These are the four or five moments where the story changes direction, such as the event that kicks it off, a point of no return, a surprise in the middle, the darkest moment and the final choice.
4. Put one scene on each card. Write a single line for each: who is in it, and what changes by the end of it. Lay the cards out in order and look for the gaps.
5. Note what each main character wants. When two people in your book want different things, you will never run short of scenes.

That is enough to start writing.

With the cards in front of you, you always know which scene to write today. And because you already know the ending, chapter one can wait until the draft is done, when you'll know exactly what it has to set up.

When a better idea turns up halfway through, add a card or move one and carry on.

An outline is there to keep you writing, so change it whenever the story finds something stronger.

Why Lindsay Lake credits her outline for a 14-day first draft

Lindsay Lake is an Amazon.com top selling author, best known for Private Seduction in her Hideaway of Desires romance series, and she has her own outline method that she gives a lot of credit to.

Before she was a novelist, she says she "had a head full of stories" but couldn't seem to get them down on paper.

Once she found herself raising three children on her own after her husband left, she made up her mind to work out how real novelists get a book finished.

On her sales page she calls her outline method the Fruition Tree technique, and says she uses it "to quickly whip up a kick-ass novel outline."

She also says it helps you avoid "the one deadly mistake that most authors make when trying to plan their novels."

What that mistake is, she keeps for the program itself.

She goes further and calls the Fruition Tree "the single-handed reason" she was able to complete a whole first draft in just 14 days.

Her words are that a novel can be done "in as little as 14 days," and she adds straight away that the real time depends on your goals and the kind of book you write.

A tight romance and a giant fantasy world are very different jobs.

The Fruition Tree is one part of Lindsay Lake's Hurricane Method, her complete novel-writing program, which also covers characters, dialogue, writer's block and getting published.

It costs $47, paid once, with a 60-day money-back guarantee, and Lindsay explains the Fruition Tree in her own words on her page.

Whatever you decide about the program, do this before you touch chapter one again: write your whole story in one sentence, then write your ending.

Write Your Novel Fast and Actually Finish It: Why a Quick First Draft Gets Genre Books Done

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"Many writers will disagree with me that writing can be fast."

That line sits on the front page of romance author Lindsay Lake's Hurricane Method, right under the word Warning.

She is talking about writing a full novel in a matter of weeks, and she knows plenty of writers will hate the idea.

I'm on her side.

For a lot of genre fiction, a fast first draft is the reason the book gets finished at all, and you can see why once you look at what happens to a draft that is written slowly.

Lindsay's full warning about writing fast

"This method is controversial. Many writers will disagree with me that writing can be fast. It will depend what your goals are. Writing a 'Harry Potter' novel, takes a lot longer than a 'romance' novel, just as an example (I write those in under 14 days)..."

I like that she says this out loud. A writer building a seven-book magic world with its own maps and history needs time.

A romance, a cosy mystery or a thriller lives on pace and feeling, and those books reward a writer who gets the whole story down while it is still hot.

A slow draft gives the critic in your head months to talk you out of the book

When you write slowly, every session starts with rereading. You look at yesterday's pages, spot the clumsy sentences, and fix them before you go on.

That sounds sensible.

But every reread gives the critic in your head another chance to say the whole thing isn't good enough, and over six months that voice gets a lot of chances.

Writing fast takes care of that, because you are moving too quickly for the critic to keep up, and by the time it catches up, you have a finished story in front of you.

Writing quickly keeps the whole story alive in your mind

Write a novel over a year and you forget things.

A character's eye colour changes, a clue from chapter four never pays off, and the energy of the opening has faded by the middle.

When the whole draft takes a few weeks, you still remember the promise you made in chapter two by the time you reach chapter twenty, so the threads tie up far more naturally.

Genre readers notice this.

They want a story that keeps pulling them forward, and a draft written in one long rush of energy carries that pull onto the page.

Quality comes from the rewrite, and you can only rewrite a finished draft

Fast first drafts are messy, and that is fine, because almost every good novel is made good in the rewrite.

Once the draft is done, you can see the shape of the whole book.

You can cut the slow scene, sharpen the ending, and go back to chapter one knowing exactly what it has to set up.

None of that is possible while the book is still half written.

So you don't have to choose between speed and quality. Get the story down quickly first, then make it good on the second pass, when you can see the whole book in front of you.

A few rules make a fast draft much easier to keep up:

• Pick a daily word count and a finish date before you start, and tell someone the date.
• Reread only the last paragraph from yesterday before you start writing.
• When you hit a fact you don't know, like the name of a street or a medicine, type XX and keep going. Look it up when the draft is done.

How Lindsay Lake came to write a novel in two weeks

Lindsay didn't start out fast.

Before she was a novelist she wrote in the evenings around a day job, and she says she would sit staring at a blank screen, wondering if she could ever write 120,000 words people would want to read.

Everything changed when her husband left her to raise their three children on her own.

She says that was the push she needed to find out what made successful authors tick, and the method she pieced together became the Hurricane Method.

She says her first novel took 14 days to write. Ten weeks after that, it "flew up the top seller charts," as she puts it.

Today she writes the Hideaway of Desires romance series, which includes Private Seduction, and she has also written a long list of books under other names as a contract writer.

Her own wording is "in as little as 14 days," and she is clear that the time your book needs will depend on what you are writing and what you want from it.

Who should write fast, and who should take their time

If you want to write romance, mystery or thrillers, and especially if you have a drawer of half-finished drafts, I'd tell you to try a fast first draft on your next book.

If your dream is a sprawling saga or a fantasy world the size of Hogwarts, expect it to take longer.

Lindsay says exactly that in her own warning.

Either way, she says the program teaches "the psychological skills behind writing a highly addictive story, without getting stuck too deeply in 'writers block'."

It is a single payment of $47, and you have 60 days to ask for your money back.

Lindsay makes her full case for fast writing, warning and all, in her own sales letter.

Write Dialogue Readers Enjoy: How to Make Every Conversation Move Your Story Forward

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What should a woman say when she walks into her sister's kitchen and finds divorce papers on the table, half hidden under the fruit bowl?

If your answer is "Are you getting divorced?", the scene is over in one line.

A stronger first line keeps it alive for two more pages, and we will come back to that kitchen once you have the tools to write it.

Give the two people in every conversation different goals

Dialogue gets dull when both characters want the same thing. They agree with each other and pass information back and forth, and before long the reader starts skimming.

Give each person a goal before they open their mouth. In the kitchen, the sister who found the papers wants the truth.

The sister who owns them wants to keep it quiet until after their mother's birthday on Sunday.

Now every line is a small push or a dodge.

Nobody has to explain the situation to the reader, because the tug between the two sisters does it for you.

Cut the hellos, the goodbyes and the talk about the weather

Real conversations are full of padding. People say hello and ask how the drive was before they get anywhere near the point.

On the page, that padding drains the life out of a scene.

Start as late as you can, ideally partway into the argument, and leave as soon as the important thing has been said.

Readers fill in the greetings on their own.

Let characters talk around the thing that matters

People rarely say exactly what they feel, especially when it hurts. They change the subject or pick a fight about something smaller.

Writers call this subtext, and it is where dialogue gets its power.

Back in the kitchen, the first sister picks up the papers and says, "You never told me Daniel was moving to Denver."

Her sister turns to the stove and says, "Did you eat? There's soup."

Neither of them has said the word divorce. The reader understands everything anyway, and leans in because the two sisters won't say it straight.

Small habits that make dialogue easy to read

• Use "said" for most dialogue tags. Readers' eyes slide right over it, while words like "exclaimed" and "retorted" pull attention away from what was said.
• Swap some tags for small actions, so the reader sees who is talking and what they are doing at the same time: She turned the fruit bowl a quarter turn. "There's soup."
• Give each character their own way of talking. One speaks in short bursts, another never finishes a thought, and a third gets formal when nervous. Cover the names and you should still know who is speaking.
• Read the scene out loud. Anything you stumble over, or that no real person would say, gets rewritten.
• Keep speeches short. When a character talks for a whole paragraph, have someone interrupt.

Lindsay Lake's Seesaw Dialog Technique

Lindsay Lake teaches dialogue in her novel-writing program, The Hurricane Method, under the name the Seesaw Dialog Technique.

Her sales page says the technique "shows you how to relate emotions, story and conflict throughout the dialogue you choose for each of your characters, so that they vividly come to life."

She adds that your characters build a depth readers love, whatever kind of novel you are writing.

Emotion, story and conflict are exactly what the kitchen scene runs on.

When a line carries feeling and conflict at the same time, the story moves forward with it, and Lindsay has built a whole technique around writing lines like that.

Lindsay came to her method the hard way: her husband left her to raise their three children alone, and it was then that she began studying how successful novelists work.

Her first novel, she says, took 14 days, though she points out that a 'Harry Potter' style novel takes a lot longer than a romance, and that your own goals change the timeline too.

She wrote Private Seduction, part of her spicy Hideaway of Desires series, and she says that after her first novel took off, readers began writing to her blog asking for tips and mentoring.

The Hurricane Method is $47 for the whole program, paid once, with a 60-day money-back guarantee, and the Seesaw Dialog Technique is one of the parts she lists in her letter about the program.

Meanwhile, try this on a scene you have already written: check whether the two people talking want different things, and if they don't, change one goal and rewrite the scene.

How to Write an Ending Readers Keep Thinking About Long After They Close the Book

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It's well past midnight, the bedside lamp is still on, and a man is reading the last chapter of a novel while his wife sleeps beside him.

He told himself an hour ago that he would stop at the end of the chapter.

Whether he shuts that book with a happy sigh or a shrug comes down to a handful of choices the author made, and most of those choices were made long before the final chapter was written.

Endings are where a lot of writers get stuck, sometimes for months.

Lindsay Lake, the romance author behind a novel-writing program called The Hurricane Method, tells the story of a fantasy writer who was stuck on his ending for over two years.

An ending has to answer the question your first chapter asked

Every story asks a question in its first few chapters.

In a romance, the reader wants to know if these two people can find their way to each other, and in a thriller she wants to know if anyone will stop the danger in time.

Your ending has to answer that exact question.

When an ending answers some other question, readers feel cheated, even if they couldn't tell you why.

They've been waiting for one thing the whole time, and you handed them something else.

So before you write your last chapter, write down the one question your book has been asking since page one.

Stick it next to your screen and check every ending scene against it.

Plant the payoff early so the ending feels earned

The endings people remember tend to surprise them and still feel like the only way things could have gone. That feeling comes from setup.

If your heroine saves the day by sailing a small boat through a storm, show her handling that boat in an early chapter, back when it looked like a bit of colour about her childhood summers.

When the big moment arrives, the reader remembers that earlier scene and gets a little jolt of pleasure.

She feels clever for noticing, and she gives you the credit for setting it up.

This matters even more for twists.

The best twist makes the reader want to flip back and reread the early chapters, because the clues were sitting there the whole time.

Once your draft is done, go through each big moment in your ending and find the page where you planted it.

If you can't find one, add a short scene or a line of dialogue earlier in the book.

Let your main character's choice decide the climax

The weakest endings are the ones where something outside the hero fixes the problem.

The cavalry rides in, a lucky storm sinks the enemy ship, or a long-lost uncle leaves a will that solves everything.

Readers want to watch the person they've followed for three hundred pages make a hard choice and live with what it costs.

In a romance, that might be the moment she risks her pride and tells him how she feels first, knowing he could still walk away.

The cost is what makes it stick. If the choice was easy, the ending will be forgotten by breakfast.

A simple way to find your climax is to ask what your character wanted at the start of the book and what she needs by the end.

The climax is the moment she can only have one of them, and she has to pick.

Give the reader a quiet page after the big scene

Once the climax is over, don't slam the book shut.

Readers have spent days with these people, and they want a page or two to see what life looks like now.

Keep it short.

One quiet scene is enough, and it's even stronger when it echoes something from the opening, like the same kitchen table or the same walk down to the harbour, with everything changed.

That last picture is often what the reader carries into sleep.

It's the bit the man under the lamp will still be turning over in his head when he finally switches it off.

The fantasy writer who spent two years on one ending

That fantasy writer from the start has a name in Lindsay's sales letter. She says that once she had put her program together, she tested it by sharing it with a few of the people who had asked her for help.

One of them was Jackson. She says he had struggled for over two years to come up with the perfect ending to his fantasy novel.

In Lindsay's account, Jackson used a part of her program she calls the Twisted Climax Technique, and within three days a vision came alive in his mind and he created the perfect ending for his novel.

You can read the full story on Lindsay Lake's Hurricane Method page.

The same program has a part she calls the Fiction Frame Technique.

She describes it as the difference between a novel falling flat and a novel that people talk about long after they read the last page, which is the very thing every writer wants from an ending.

What Lindsay Lake's program covers beyond the last chapter

Lindsay's own novels sell on Amazon.

She writes romance, including her novel Private Seduction from her Hideaway of Desires series, and she has also worked as a contract writer, publishing under different pen names.

The Hurricane Method is her step-by-step program for writing a novel, from the first idea right through to the final climax, and then getting it published.

It comes as a downloadable e-book with a full audio edition and three bonus reports.

It costs $47, one payment, and it comes with a 60-day money-back guarantee.

The advice above will carry your ending a long way on its own.

To find the technique Lindsay says got Jackson past his two-year wall, look inside Lindsay Lake's Hurricane Method, and give your own reader a reason to keep that lamp on.

How to Put Your Romance Novel on Kindle and Write a Blurb That Pulls Readers In

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Amazon lets anyone put a book on Kindle for free, and the whole setup happens on one website called Kindle Direct Publishing, or KDP for short.

The upload itself is simple. Near the end, though, comes a small text box under your cover that deserves far more time than most people give it.

Get these ready before you sign in to KDP

You sign in to KDP with an ordinary Amazon account, and it costs nothing to publish.

The setup goes much faster when you have these ready first:

• your finished, edited manuscript, saved as a Word file or an EPUB
• a cover image (KDP has a free Cover Creator, but romance readers judge a book by its cover, so a designer is worth paying)
• your title, and the name you'll publish under
• a book description, which is your back-cover blurb
• a short list of the phrases a reader might type to find a book like yours

The name on the cover doesn't have to be your real one.

KDP lets you publish under a pen name, and lots of romance authors do.

Lindsay Lake, the romance author whose program I come back to further down, has worked as a contract writer, publishing books under different pen names.

Filling in the details page, from series name to description

The first screen asks for the language, title, subtitle if you want one, author name and description.

There's also a place for a series name and a book number.

If you plan more than one book set in the same world or with the same family of characters, fill it in.

Amazon then links the books together, so a reader who finishes book one can find book two straight away.

Romance readers love a series, and Lindsay's own novel Private Seduction is part of her Hideaway of Desires series.

Lower down the same page you choose your categories and keywords. These decide which shoppers see your book when they browse or search.

Choosing categories and keywords romance readers search for

Romance is a big shelf with lots of smaller shelves inside it, such as historical romance, romantic suspense and small-town romance.

Pick the categories that match the book you actually wrote, even if a busier one looks tempting.

Keywords work like the words a reader types into the Amazon search box. Think like a reader looking for her next book late at night.

She might type "second chance romance" or "small town romance with a single dad".

Use phrases that describe your story's tropes, setting and mood.

Amazon's rules don't allow keywords that mislead shoppers, such as other authors' names, so keep every phrase true to your book.

Uploading your manuscript and cover, then checking every page

The second screen is where you upload your manuscript file and your cover.

If formatting worries you, Amazon has a free program called Kindle Create that turns a Word file into a tidy e-book.

Then open the online previewer to see your book on e-readers, tablets and phones.

Flip through every chapter, because a stray page break or a missing scene marker looks much worse on a small screen.

If you also make a paperback, KDP lets you order printed proof copies before the book goes on sale.

Opening that box and holding your own novel for the first time is a moment writers don't forget.

Setting your price and deciding on KDP Select

The last screen covers pricing.

You choose where in the world to sell, pick a royalty option and set your list price, and KDP shows you what you'd receive per sale as you go.

You'll also be asked about KDP Select, which is optional.

While your e-book is enrolled, you sell it only through Amazon, and in return readers who subscribe to Kindle Unlimited can read it as part of their subscription.

Think about where your readers like to buy their books before you decide.

When you press publish, Amazon reviews the book before it goes live, which usually takes a few days.

Why the back-cover blurb deserves a whole evening

On Kindle, that small text box is your book description. It does the job of the blurb on the back of a paperback, and shoppers see it right below your cover and price.

Lindsay asks a simple question in her sales letter: what do you write on the back of your book?

She calls it often overlooked, and says that for many browsers it's "the single biggest reason that they buy a novel".

A romance blurb that pulls readers in does a lot in a small space.

It introduces the heroine and what she wants, brings in the person who turns her plans upside down, and ends on the question of whether they can make it work.

Leave the ending out, because the reader's curiosity is the whole reason she'll click.

Let the trope and the heat level show early as well, so the right reader can tell straight away that this book is for her.

Write five versions and read each one out loud. Use the one that makes you want to read the book yourself.

Where Lindsay Lake's Kindle and romance bonuses fit in

Romance is Lindsay's own genre and her personal favourite.

Her program, The Hurricane Method, covers writing a novel from the first idea to the final climax, and then publishing it.

The program includes what she calls a Blurb Generator, which she says will make your novel stand out on the shelf.

It also has her Publishing Power Pack, which she calls a closely guarded secret and critical to your success as a novelist.

Two of its four bonuses suit romance authors heading for Kindle.

One is a report called How To Make Money On Kindle Self Publishing, which she says also covers how to market your book.

The other, Sensual Storytelling, is about how to plan and "dial up" the passion and romance in your writing.

Lindsay says she wrote her own first novel in 14 days and that it reached the charts ten weeks later.

She adds that how fast anyone writes comes down to their goals and their genre, and that a book like Harry Potter takes a lot longer than a romance.

You can read her whole story in Lindsay Lake's sales letter.

The program is $47, one payment, with a 60-day money-back guarantee.

Before you fill in that last little box, see everything in the package on her page, whether your romance is ready for Kindle or still half written.

How to Find Your Writing Voice So Your Fiction Sounds Like You and Nobody Else

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Print out one page of your fiction, stand up in an empty room, and read it out loud at the speed you'd normally talk.

Somewhere on that page your tongue will trip.

A sentence will come out stiff, or you'll hear yourself say a word you'd never use in real life.

Mark those spots with a pen, because they point straight at the thing writers call voice.

Your voice is the way you'd tell the story to a friend

Voice is the feel of your writing.

It lives in the words you pick, the details you notice, the jokes you make and the things you leave out.

Give two writers the same story about a woman leaving her husband, and you'd know within a paragraph which one wrote which page.

You already have a voice. You use it every time you tell a friend about your day.

The work is getting that same voice onto the page.

Most of us stiffen up the moment we sit down to write fiction, and we start writing the way we imagine a real author would.

The lines you trip over are usually borrowed

Go back to the spots you marked. Nearly every time, the stiff lines are the ones where you were writing like somebody else.

It might be a habit from school essays, an author you admire, or a fancy word you reached for because it sounded more literary.

Your reader hears that shift as well, even if she has no word for it. The page suddenly sounds like a different person is talking.

Rewrite each marked line the way you'd say it out loud. Keep the meaning and use your own words, then read the whole page again.

It will sound more like you, and it will almost always read faster too.

Write down the details only you would notice

A big part of voice is what you choose to look at.

When your heroine walks into her mother's kitchen, one writer mentions the smell of fresh bread.

Another notices the calendar still turned to March and the dead plant on the windowsill that nobody has had the heart to throw out.

Both work, but the second one tells us something about this family, and it sounds like one particular person is telling the story.

Carry a notebook for these.

Write down the odd things you see and hear, like the phrases people use in the queue at the shop or the way your neighbour waves with two fingers.

Those little scraps turn into the details that make a page sound like yours.

Copy a writer you love by hand, then put the book away

Reading is still how most writers learn rhythm. Pick a page from an author you love and copy it out by hand, slowly.

You'll feel how long their sentences run and where they put the punch.

Then close the book and write a scene of your own on a completely different subject.

Some of that rhythm will rub off on you, and the subject stays all yours.

Do this with several authors over a few weeks.

Your voice ends up as a blend of everything you've loved, shaped by your own way of seeing the world, and that's how the writers you admire found theirs.

Stop sanding your voice off when you edit

Editing can flatten a voice faster than anything else.

Writers smooth out every odd phrase and cut any line that feels a little too personal.

When you edit, fix anything a reader could misunderstand, and be slow to touch the lines that simply sound like you.

If a sentence breaks a school grammar rule but sounds exactly like your narrator, keep it.

Readers fall for a narrator's quirks, and those quirks are usually the first thing a heavy edit removes.

Some of your best lines will turn up on a walk

Voice grows with practice, and a surprising amount of that practice happens away from the desk.

A walk has a way of shaking loose the line you couldn't find sitting down.

Take a small notebook with you.

When a phrase pops into your head, write it down in the exact words it arrived in, before you tidy it up.

Walks are also a good time to listen.

Hearing a story read aloud trains your ear, and after a while you start to notice what sounds natural and what sounds forced in your own pages.

Lindsay Lake's Spider Method for finding your voice

Lindsay Lake, the romance novelist behind Private Seduction, puts a lot of weight on voice.

In her words, "when you write, you can create your OWN world... your OWN story... in your OWN voice".

Her novel-writing program, The Hurricane Method, includes something she calls the Spider Method.

She describes it as a method that "spins a web of authenticity to your writing and helps you find your unique voice".

Lindsay Lake's Hurricane Method page lists the Spider Method alongside the other techniques in the program.

The program also comes with the Hurricane Method Complete Audio Edition, in 15 parts.

Lindsay says you can save the audio files to your phone, an mp3 player or even your car stereo, and go through the program wherever and whenever you like.

That turns your walks into study time, with the notebook in your pocket for whatever lines turn up along the way.

The whole package is $47, one payment, and you're covered by a 60-day money-back guarantee.

Pick up that marked page and read it out loud one more time, and when you're ready to go further, see what's inside the Hurricane Method.

The Hurricane Method Review: What's Inside Lindsay Lake's Novel-Writing Program

This post contains affiliate links. I may earn a commission if you buy through my link, at no extra cost to you.

Buy The Hurricane Method and the download page gives you one e-book, three bonus reports and fifteen audio files that run from an introduction through to chapter fourteen.

Before you pay for any of it, it's worth knowing about a short warning Lindsay Lake puts on her own home page.

It tells you a lot about who this program is really for.

I'm an affiliate for The Hurricane Method, which means I earn a commission if you buy through a link on this page.

Lindsay Lake, the romance author behind the program

Lindsay Lake describes herself as an Amazon.com top selling author.

Her best-known book, she says, is Private Seduction, part of her romantic and spicy Hideaway of Desires series.

She also says she has written over 50 other bestsellers under different pen names as a contract writer, and that she works as a writing coach.

Her story starts before any of that: she says she was working a job she hated and writing on the side when her husband left, and suddenly she was supporting her three children alone.

After months of getting by, she set out to learn what successful authors do and pieced together her own method.

She says she wrote her first novel in 14 days, and that ten weeks after she finished it, the novel "flew up the top seller charts".

She adds that the time it takes comes down to your goals and what kind of book you are writing.

She says she has since taught the method to hundreds of others.

The named techniques inside, in Lindsay's own words

Here is each named part of the program as the sales letter describes it:

• Clarity Momentum Formula: she says it "destroys writers block once and for all".
• Fruition Tree: a technique "to quickly whip up a kick-ass novel outline".
• Addiction Seed: for a story "that switches on every emotional hot button in a reader's mind".
• Character Design Pyramid: for characters so memorable they leave "an unforgettable lasting imprint" on a reader's mind.
• Seesaw Dialog Technique: shows you how to relate emotions, story and conflict through the dialogue you give each character.
• Page Popper Technique: brings your words to life "from the very first line".
• Tidal Wave Technique: for when you hit a wall in your story and need ideas to move it forward.
• Universal Captivation Secret: makes it easy to write across all genres and appeal to any audience.
• Fiction Frame Technique: what she calls the difference between a novel falling flat and a novel people talk about long after they read the last page.
• Easy Refining Template: makes the tough job of editing "as close to done for you as possible".
• Spider Method: "spins a web of authenticity to your writing and helps you find your unique voice".
• Twisted Climax Technique: she says a fantasy writer called Jackson used it to find, within three days, the ending he had struggled with for over two years.
• Publishing Power Pack: what she calls "a closely guarded secret" and critical to your overall success as a novelist.
• Blurb Generator: for what you write on the back of your book, so your novel stands out on the shelf.
• Celebrity Guest Authors: award-winning author friends of hers who share their knowledge of sci fi, crime and fantasy writing.

She says this isn't even half of what's inside.

The four bonuses that come with it

1. The Hurricane Method Complete Audio Edition: the program as audio files for your phone, mp3 player or car.
2. Sensual Storytelling: how to plan and "dial up" the passion and romance in your writing.
3. How To Make Money On Kindle Self Publishing: a report that Lindsay says also covers how to market your book.
4. How To Create Dynamic & Engaging Characters: a separate report on creating characters.

Format, price and the 60-day guarantee

Everything is digital and downloads straight away to use on a phone, tablet or computer. The download page holds:

• the main Hurricane Method program as a PDF e-book
• the audio edition in 15 parts, an introduction plus chapters 1 to 14, which you can also download all in one go
• the three bonus reports as PDFs

The price is $47, one payment.

ClickBank is the retailer, and the sales letter offers a 60-day money-back guarantee: if you're not satisfied, you email for a refund within the 60 days.

You can see the full offer on the official Hurricane Method page.

Lindsay's own warning about writing a novel fast

The warning sits right under the home page headline, which offers a method for writing and publishing a novel "in as little as 14 days".

Here is what Lindsay writes there:

"Warning: This method is controversial. Many writers will disagree with me that writing can be fast. It will depend what your goals are."

She goes on to say that a Harry Potter novel takes a lot longer to write than a romance, and that she writes her romances in under 14 days.

I'm glad she says it so openly.

It tells you the 14 days is her pace for romance and her goals, and that a big, complex novel will take longer whatever method you use.

Who will get the most from it

• people who have always wanted to write a novel and never got past the first few pages
• romance readers who'd love to write one, plus fans of sci fi, crime and fantasy, which her guest authors cover
• anyone sitting on a half-finished draft, because several parts deal with getting unstuck, finding an ending and editing
• people curious about publishing on Kindle, thanks to the Kindle report, the Publishing Power Pack and the Blurb Generator

Who should skip it

If you want a slow, careful literary-fiction course where you spend a month on one chapter, this isn't built for you.

Lindsay's whole approach is about writing fast, and she says herself that many writers disagree with that.

It also won't suit someone who wants a live teacher.

The package is a download of PDFs and audio, with no classes or personal feedback on your pages.

Is $47 fair for what's in the package?

For one payment of $47 you get the program as an e-book and as audio, plus three bonus reports.

The 60-day guarantee also gives you time to try the techniques on your own story before you decide to keep it.

Lindsay Lake's full sales letter lists everything in the package and is the best place to judge whether it suits the novel you want to write.