Hello all you writerly people, and welcome to About This Writing Thing, a weekly podcast about living the writing life. I'm your host, Sayword B. Eller, novelist, short story writer, and podcaster.
Today I'm talking about pacing. Why? Because I like to talk about my weaknesses. How else do we get stronger, right?
First, let's talk about what pacing actually is. "Pacing is a tool that controls the speed and rhythm at which a story is told" (Carpenter 2012). In other words, it's how fast or slow you make things happen in your narrative. The pacing in my first drafts (referred to some as the zero draft) is always at lightspeed. Things happen fast and then the book is done. This is why I'm always 30k-40k words under industry standard. I guess my first draft is really my outline. My very in-depth outline. It takes me 3 - 4 drafts before I have the pacing and story just right.
Last term my professor commented on my outline that I don't have enough action in Act II of my historical fiction/thesis novel. If you look at my work through the eyes of someone who writes plot-driven narratives you will always believe that my pacing is too slow. That's because I don't write plot-driven or action-driven narratives. I focus on conflict and characters. In other words, I don't have a ton of physical action in my stories.
"Now, hold on there, missy," you might be saying. "Conflict is pacing. It drives it."
You would be right. If you were saying that. Also, don't call me missy.
With great conflict comes swifter pacing, at least for that scene. You're raising the stakes for your character, putting them in the hot seat and making them squirm, and if you're very good at it you're making your readers squirm too.
K.M. Weiland says, "writers who are in control of their pacing are writers who are in control of their stories" (Weiland 2017). If this is the case, I am not a writer who is in control of my stories. My problem… I don't seem to be very adept at pacing scenes that are high action. I'm too wordy.
Last term my class had a discussion wherein we were supposed to write two scenes and one of them needed to be fraught with conflict and high in action. Here's what I turned in:
Scene 1
The air was thick, sticking to her skin as she rushed through the trees that spread out before her. Heart pounding and air coming out in dripping gasps, Kyla dashed through the thickets, wincing when a bare foot would land on a twisting root. The naked fingers of trees just waiting to die scratched her bare arms and tried to become entangled in the long tendrils bouncing in her wake. She stopped, her head jerking left, then right. The air was pressing harder, making her gasps come out quicker. She was alone in a sea of trees. She tried to begin again, to find her way out of the succession of naked and full trees, but her legs wouldn’t move. Falling to the ground, she rolled onto her back, her hands going to her throat, and her mouth posed to scream for help, but all air was gone.
Here's what my professor said:
In this assignment, your own style has gotten in your way. What do I mean by that? I mean that you have a certain pace and sentence structure that appears to be pretty natural in your writing. I think that voice is so strong that you fall into that rhythm without even noticing.
As a result, both of these pieces are almost the same pace. Your action piece should be more disjointed. Short. Clipped. Instead, your sentences are about the same length and offer the same type of information as in the second paragraph.
Suggested rewrite: The air was thick. Her shirt stuck to her as she rushed through the thicket. Her heart pounded. Her breath became dripping gasps. One bare foot landed on a twisted root. She winced. Kept going.
She has said in 7 sentences what it took me an entire paragraph to convey. The difference between us, I think, is that she is a more experienced writer and she writes in a different genre. She doesn't like writing in the women's fiction genre and instead prefers writing book club fiction. You may think they're the same, but they aren't. Book club fiction has to appeal to a broader audience, must like commercial fiction. More on that in a later episode.
So my problem with pacing is that I slow things down too much. I think this has a lot to do with the fact that I overthink everything, and because I have very little experience with anything. This is one of my greatest weaknesses as a writer and human. I've always heard we should write what we know, but the things I know through experience are very limited. I'll be working on both of those in the future.
What do I do about this little problem of mine then?
As always, I've scoured the internet and my bookshelves to find some awesome tips.
Noah Lukeman says that "Pacing and progression are the most cumulative, most far-reaching elements of writing and thus demand the greatest long-term concentration" (Lukeman 187). It's delicate and unbelievably strong all at the same time. Think dynamite.
Two things stand out to me in Lukeman's book as things that are affecting my own pacing: my stakes aren't high enough or plentiful enough and too much description. Though he's speaking specifically of telling in the narrative, I'm harkening back to what my professor said, my sentence length is too rambly. Too long. For conflict-driven scenes where the stakes are high and the action is amped up the sentences need to be short, disjointed, and constantly keep readers on their toes. We want them to be just as out of sorts as our characters.
Courtney Carpenter lists 7 literary devices that can be used to keep your pacing where it needs to be:
Action - keep them active (duh), have few distractions, little description, and limited transitions.
Cliff Hangers - keep your readers guessing.
Dialogue - Rapid fire with reactions and descriptions kept to a minimum.
Prolonged Outcomes
Scene Cuts or Jump Cuts
A series of incidents in rapid succession - a whirlwind!
Short chapters and scenes - I used to see these all the time. One page chapters or half page chapters. They really did keep me turning pages.
Keep these scenes active and use potent verbs to keep your scene moving forward.
The really important thing is gaining the control over your story mentioned earlier by K.M. Weiland. The most disappointing thing to me, as a reader, is a big build up with no pay off. In other words, pacing that falls flat or fails to produce anything at all. Don't drag me through a narrative at warp speed and leave me with nothing. It's disappointing and frustrating.
Weiland has a few tips for both speeding up and slowing down our pacing. I guess I don't need much help slowing down, but you might, so I won't leave them out.
For speeding up:
Reduce the number of characters - I usually only have 2 characters in a scene, so I'm good there.
Minimize sequel scenes - these are your "follow up" scenes. A big break up followed with the equivalent of a movie montage of your character going through life aimlessly without their one true love.
Add a ticking clock - A deadline your character must reach in order to avoid dreadful consequences. Think Jason Statham in Crank (those movies are pointless, BTW. Well, except for the Jason Statham parts).
Raise the stakes - This is the one for me. I never feel like the stakes are high enough in my stories. Gonna keep working on that.
For slowing down:
Complicate your sentence structure.
Skew the scene.
Add more internal narrative.
Focus on descriptive details.
I'm going to be experimenting with these tips while working through my WIP. It's contemporary women's fiction, of course, but there are some highly emotional moments where the stakes will be high and I'll need the pacing to be just right. Wish me luck.
What are some of your tips for handling pacing in your own work? Send me a email or message. I'd love some additional tricks to getting my pacing just right.
That's all I've got for you this week. If you enjoyed this episode please like and share. If you haven't subscribed to my monthly email list, and you'd like to, you can visit my website and sign up to see what I'm reading, what I've got coming up, and (of course) what's happening with About This Writing Thing.
If you want to know what I'm up to between shows, you can find me on Instagram and Twitter as @saybeller or you can find this podcast on Twitter (@WritingThingPod) and Instagram (About This Writing Thing). You can also go to my website saywordbeller.com.
Next week I'll be chatting about some of my favorite literary devices. Thanks for listening. Have a great week and stay safe!
Resources
Carpenter, Courtney. 7 Tools for Pacing a Novel & Keeping Your Story Moving at the Right Pace. Writer's Digest, April 24, 2012. https://www.writersdigest.com/improve-my-writing/7-tools-for-pacing-a-novel-keeping-your-story-moving-at-the-right-pace
Kieffer, Kristen. How to Create Strong Pacing for Your Story. Well Storied, December 3, 2017. https://www.well-storied.com/blog/how-to-create-strong-pacing-for-your-story
Lukeman, Noah. The First Five Pages. Fireside, 2000.
Weiland, K.M. Learn How to Pace Your Story (and Mind-Control Your Readers) in Just 8 Steps. Writers Helping Writers, February 20, 2017 https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/8-ways-master-storys-pacing/
Show notes from Episode 25 of About This Writing Thing. Available on Podbean, iTunes, iHeartRadio, and Spotify.
Hello, and welcome to About This Writing Thing, a weekly podcast about living the writing life. I'm your host, Sayword B. Eller, novelist, short story writer, and podcaster.
This week I'm talking about procrastination. I am, as I'm sure you guessed, a major procrastinator. I've struggled with it for years, but this week's episode has helped me to put it into perspective. I hope it does the same for you.
First, though, I want to update you on my query progress. There is none. I am still awaiting feedback on my revise and resubmit from May. This process takes a LONG time, y'all. I'm not even kidding. I've also submitted queries to a few more agents and even a small publisher. I'm sad to report, sad and a little annoyed, that one query was rejected in just under an hour. This lets me know the agent didn't make it to my sample chapters because my query still sucks. I'm going to be talking specifically about queries in an upcoming episode, so look for that.
If you haven't subscribed to my email list yet, I hope you will, especially if you like this show. Subscribers get a first look at what shows I'll be recording for the month. You can sign up at my website, saywordbeller.com
Now, let's talk about procrastination.
It should come as no surprise that I procrastinated recording this podcast. Late last week I was consumed with school work and writing, and then I decided - for whatever reason - to take a three-day weekend, so I didn't really work on anything Monday. Then Tuesday, as is apt to happen to those of us working at home, I had visitors and didn't get to record, so here I am bright and early on Wednesday morning recording the episode you will listen to in a few short hours.
A few months ago I would've chided myself for not getting this done last week, but today I'm okay with it. Maybe it's because I'm the boss and I'll record my podcast when I damn well please, but it's most likely because I am embracing my procrastination.
So, why do we procrastinate and is it exclusive to us creative types?
The good news is, no, we are not the only ones who procrastinate. The bad news, it might be something that was ingrained in our psyches at a very young age. This is why I tend to agree with Julia Hess's philosophy, just go with it.
As an undergrad I procrastinated on assignments. I would wait until the day before, or the day, a paper was due and hurry through it so that I could turn it in and not be penalized. Sometimes, my procrastination was so bad that I would have to ask for an extension. There's a term for the kind of procrastinator I was in college. More on that in a bit. Upon entering graduate school I decided I wouldn't be a procrastinator. No way, not me.
And the lie detector test determined, that was a lie!
I think in grad school I just got a little better at procrastinating. Well, better at managing it. Let me tell you, it's dangerous being a procrastinator as a history major. All that research! Phew! I would do my research but still wouldn't begin my paper until the day before it was due. I was so mean to myself. Especially when I flunked out of grad school, which had very little to do with my procrastination and more to do with the fact that my heart just wasn't in history. I wanted to be a writer. Sure, I was good at history, but I wasn't good enough and that bothered me. I'd always been good at English, always been good at writing. I wanted to do what I was great at, and so I failed at what I was merely good at.
If the question of procrastination were to appear on Family Feud, the number one answer would be "Fear of Failure". Everyone says it. Alain de Botton says, "work finally begins when the fear of doing nothing exceeds the fear of doing it badly." For me, I think this was my problem in grad school. I didn’t feel like I was as good as my peers and I certainly didn't think I was worthy of attention from my professors. I wanted the history degree, but I didn't feel like I deserved it.
I didn't realize it fully then, but Megan McArdle was spot on when she wrote the reason we procrastinate is because "we were too good in English class" (McArdle 2014).
I don't think that clicked for me until 2018 when I transferred from the history program (which I was excelling in) at SNHU to their creative writing MFA program. In the history program I was overwhelmed. It was exhilarating to be so challenged in the history program. I was, after all, good at it. However, I was great at writing and English. When I started the program I was overthinking every single assignment because it seemed too easy. I mean, I went from turning in 8-page papers every week to being required to turn in 2-4 paragraphs.
So my procrastination returned with a vengeance. I was (and often am) waiting until the day my assignments are due to even write them. Two of my best short stories were written in under an hour for class. So when I read McArdle's statement that we were too good in English class, it clicked. When I was a student of history I procrastinated because I was afraid of failing. I didn't feel worthy. But now I procrastinate because I know I've got this. I've always been great at English.
Not grammar, though.
So why else do we do it? UNC-Chapel Hill has a handout for their student-procrastinators that lists 9 contributing factors:
Fear of failure (always #1).
Fear of success.
Fear of losing autonomy.
Fear of being alone.
Fear of attachment.
Because we expect ourselves to be perfect.
Because we don't like our writing.
Because we're too busy.
Because it works.
Stanford psychologist, Carol Dweck, links procrastination to "fixed mind set" and "growth mind set". Those with a fixed mind set believe talent is a fixed thing, so they dislike challenges because they don't feel like they'll learn anything. Those with a growth mind set love challenges because they feel like they can grow and learn from them. They don't believe talent is inherent, they believe it can be cultivated and nourished and only get better. I don't know if I totally buy this hypothesis, though. What if it really is just a fear of failure or success?
It took Camp NanoWriMo in July 2020 for me to really get my new project started. I'd been thinking about it and considering where to go with it for months, but hadn't quite had that moment where it was clicking. I didn't feel connected to it. Maybe it's because I'm still in limbo with my previous project. I'm querying Catching Fireflies and I don't want to have to stop in the midst of my new project to make edits to my old one. I need to be in the right headspace for the projects I'm working on. So I kept smacking into this brick wall with this new project because the old one is unfinished. It was so bad that I thought maybe I don't have another novel in me. I was afraid of failing before I even began.
What are the ways we procrastinate?
Ignore the task.
Over or under-estimate the degree of difficulty the task involves.
Minimize the impact that your performance may have on your future.
Substitute something important for something really important (i.e. cleaning instead of writing your paper).
Let a short break become a long one (hello, Netflix!).
Focus on one part of the task at the expense of the rest.
Spend too much time researching (UNC-CH).
So maybe it's because we were too good in English class, maybe it's because we're afraid of failure, maybe we're afraid of succeeding, or maybe it's every single one of those things. But what if it's something else?
Julia Hess credits Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird with her epiphany that procrastination is an integral part of her process. She happily admits that she puts off the act of actually writing her articles until the last minute. Hess breaks procrastinators down into two categories: active procrastinators and passive.
Active procrastinators are people who thrive under the pressure of upcoming deadlines. They choose to procrastinate because they know it will help them produce better writing. Something I found particularly profound was when she said that the active procrastinator's awareness of how they lack self-regulation means they often have stronger decision making and time management skills than they realize.
Did you hear that, my friends?
As an active procrastinator, I appreciate knowing this. We're so often told that we must be lazy (that's passive procrastinators, BTW) and that's why we put things off until the last minute. I have to tell you, though, the rush that comes with finishing a 27 page paper you started 12 hours before mere minutes of a deadline is difficult to explain. You're not berating yourself for waiting until the last minute anymore. You're elated that you beat it. You won. The feeling returns when you get an A or B on said last-minute paper. Yes, I actually did this for my senior seminar as an undergrad.
There are all kinds of tricks and tips for managing your procrastination. The Mind Tools Content Team lists 8 Anti-Procrastination Strategies:
Forgive yourself for procrastinating in the past.
Commit to the task: focus on doing not avoiding.
Promise yourself a reward.
Ask someone to check up on you.
Act as you go: complete tasks as they come up instead of putting them off.
Rephrase your internal dialogue.
Minimize distractions.
Do least appealing or most daunting task first. They call this "eat an elephant beetle". Sounds yummy, huh?
This morning I made my bed first thing. I find that when I do that I'm more likely to get things done throughout the day. It's weird that beginning the day with a task does that, but who am I to question my brain?
For me, an active procrastinator, I only do the last three things in the above list. I no longer tell myself I suck for not doing a task immediately. When I have tasks that need to be completed, I think about the time I need to do them and proceed from there. Especially when my day or week looks like this one. I prioritize the tasks and work on them one at a time. My homework will, no doubt, be done on Saturday or Sunday, but I know the discussion post has to be posted tomorrow, so I'll get on that tomorrow morning. I absolutely minimize distractions while working. I put my phone on silent or DND and place it facedown, but I don't scold myself for taking small breaks to check social media or email. I do recommend tackling the most annoying task first. Get it over with and move on, that way you can focus on the less annoying tasks without it eating away at your peace of mind.
I'd love to know some of the ways you manage your procrastination, if you have to. Leave me a comment or send me a message and let me know your best practices.
That's all I've got for this week. I hope you'll join me next week when I talk about a major writing weakness for me, pacing.
Do you have a topic you'd like for me to cover? Send me an email: sayword@saywordbeller.com
If you enjoy this podcast, please rate and subscribe or follow. I'd greatly appreciate it if you shared me with your writing friends. The more the merrier in this crazy writing life.
If you'd like to know what I'm up to between shows you can find me on Instagram and Twitter: @saybeller. You can also find this podcast on Instagram (@AboutThisWritinThing) and Twitter (@WritingThingPod).
Thank you for listening. Take care and keep writing!
Resources for episode:
McArdle, Megan. Why Writers Are the Worst Procrastinators. The Atlantic, February 12, 2014: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/02/why-writers-are-the-worst-procrastinators/283773/
UNC-Chapel Hill. Procrastination. https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/procrastination/
Hess, Julia. How Procrastination is Actually Part of Your Writing Process. Craft Your Content, April 20, 2017. https://www.craftyourcontent.com/procrastination-part-of-writing-process/
Mind Tools Content Team. How to Stop Procrastinating. https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newHTE_96.htm
At this point we all know Stephen King’s golden rule, “while to write adverbs is human, to write he said or she said is divine,” but how many of us actually use it (King, 128)? Not even “the king” used it in his 1986 novel, IT. The use of adverbs in the text was so overwhelming, I tapped out less than a quarter of the way through. However, I hold no grudges and shan’t dare to point fingers. This is the writing process. We make mistakes, we grow in our craft, and then we tell others they shouldn’t make the same mistakes we have in their work. Hence, why I’m telling you today that sometimes a beat is better than a tag.
The first time another writer said the word “beat” to me was in 2014. I was in a critique group with a hodgepodge of writers. One wrote women’s fiction, two of us were writing historical fiction, one was writing inspirational fiction, and one was writing her second mystery novel. The mystery writer was the most experienced amongst us, having won a St. Martin’s Press prize the year before and having previously been published in both the true crime genre and inspirational. Needless to say, I looked up to this writer bigtime. We all did. These meetings were totally old school. Printed submissions were handed out to each member every month and the next month we returned to discuss the submission, critique notes handwritten in red (GAH!) on our once pristine pages. Okay, not everyone used red. You get my point. Flipping through the critique from my mystery writing pal, two words stood out to me: beat here.
I stared at the words for a few minutes. The implication was clear, but I’d never considered using something before dialogue and nothing after. Is that what the great writers did? Certainly not the ones from the 1990s, and most assuredly not the ones from the 1950s and before. I had a serious thing for mid-century writing at the time. Needless to say, there were a lot of adverbs, my friends. I didn’t know it at that moment, but those two words would change everything for me. Yes, sometimes to write he said or she said is divine, but other times it’s even more powerful to leave them out altogether. In fact, there are some writers that believe you shouldn’t use end tags at all. I’m not completely on board with that. I enjoy Cormac McCarthy but trying to acclimate myself to no quotations and very few dialogue tags in The Road was an exercise in patience. I’m not team “no tags” but I’m absolutely team “use them sparingly”.
Before we get into the meat and potatoes of which is better to use, let’s talk a little about what they are. A dialogue tag is that delightful little indicator at the end of dialogue that lets you know who’s speaking. “What did you think of the concert?” Emily asked. Some people believe the end tag for this particular piece of dialogue would be redundant because the question mark indicates that a question has been asked. However, there’s a little problem of identifying the speaker without it. This is where a beat can be super helpful. Often called action beats or story beats, they are descriptions used before, between, and after dialogue that provide movement to a conversation. We don’t sit still when we’re talking to friends, and we’re especially not stoic during an argument or high stress time, so dialogue – in order to remain true to life – shouldn’t be either. To quote Noah Lukeman, “Characters are not to be quoted, but to speak for themselves” (Lukeman 80). Yes, it is divine to write he said or she said, but it is glorious to show their actions instead.
There are plenty of arguments for the use of story beats. Personally, I think they make a story flow better. This isn’t to say that dialogue tags should never be used. I mentioned my trouble with The Road, right? And McCarthy used about a handful of them in the narrative. No tags is a very stylized choice and it isn’t for every reader. I prefer a tag to no tag, but something tells me that the father/son post-apocalyptic story wouldn’t have had the same impact if I’d been reading he said, she said after every bit of dialogue. Let’s look at this passage from Mary Ellen Taylor’s Winter Cottage:
He lowered his head and cleared his throat. “I went to sea right away. I’ve not been back much since.”
“We needed you.”
He shoved his hands in his pockets. “You were best to live somewhere else. There was no life here without your mother. I wasn’t enough.”
“You were.” (179).
From this passage we know an estranged father is speaking to his child, we know the child must be older now, possibly an adult, and we know this moment is fraught with tension. It’s evident in the way he lowers his head, clears his throat, and shoves his hands in his pockets, and it’s more than evident by the pleading in his child’s short, impactful statements. Would this passage have the same affect if each piece of dialogue was followed by he said or she said? I don’t think so.
Story beats give our characters a chance to move while they’re talking. They can shift, roll their eyes, roll out dough for the pie they’re going to make, whatever, and we – the readers – get to experience those movements with them. This, I think, is why so many of us prefer beats to end tags. Yes, you can still have that movement after a dialogue tag, but as Brian Shawver points out, “[w]e can only handle so much of he said, turning to the senorita and cackling in that distinctive way of his before we see the prose as mannered or repetitive” (Shawver 35). Your characters and their situations are supposed to feel real to the reader. They should see the scene playing out before them and a scene without movement won’t be jumping from any page.
I’m not trying to be down on dialogue tags. Every writer should use them. Seriously. But they should be used sparingly. Especially those nifty little additions new (and seasoned) authors like to use. You know what I’m talking about. Yes, those pesky adverbs! What did “the king” say about them? Oh yes, to write them is only human. In The Elements of Style, William Strunk, Jr. calls the use of adverbs “cluttery and annoying,” and goes on to say “inexperienced writers […] do this, apparently in the belief that the word said is always in need of support, or because they have been told to do it by experts in the art of bad writing” (Strunk 75). Ouch. He’s not wrong. Take a look at these pieces of dialogue:
“Do you understand me?” Olivia asked questioningly.
The addition of questioningly to the end tag is wrong for so many reasons, the first of which is that it is redundant. To say someone asked something questioningly after using a question mark in dialogue is a lot like saying someone shouted after using an exclamation point in dialogue. We know, we know. Not to mention the fact that in this particular instance we’ve driven home the fact that Olivia asked three different times, once with the question mark, once by using asked, and finally by adding questioningly. If that isn’t repetitive, I don’t know what is.
“How could you do such a thing,” John scolded angrily.
“Because it’s my life and I’ll live it as I please!” Pepper retorted.
The use of scolded and angrily in the same tag is also redundant. People don’t ordinarily scold someone when they’re happy. The use of the word scolded would be more than enough if we were okay using the end tag, but as Allison Amend warns, “It can be dangerous to veer too far from the said paradigm. It’s tempting to […] have your characters utter, express, state, announce [etc.], but overuse will provide a trampoline effect, making it seem as though all of your characters are springing five feet in the air when they speak” (Gotham 134). With that piece of advice in mind, I think using a story beat during an argument is much more compelling than using end tags, and they also keep the scene moving in a more fluid way.
In the first example the repetition of the end tag can be eliminated with the use of a story beat.
Olivia dropped her head to the side, brows knitting together. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”
We can see Olivia’s trepidation in the way that she drops her head to the side and knits her brows together. We know she’s silently urging them to get what she’s saying.
How about that second example:
John’s eyes were ablaze, his lips trembling. “How could you do such a thing!”
Equally ablaze, Pepper met his glare, jaw clenched. “Because it’s my life and I’ll live it as I please!”
I’m not a huge fan of using too many exclamation points in a narrative. Too many and it seems like your characters are in a perpetual state of excitement or befuddlement. But here, in this highly emotional moment, it stands to reason that both characters will be shouting. Remember, when it comes to highly dramatic instances in your narrative, less is more. If there’s a tragedy or fight in every scene your readers may become overwhelmed and too exhausted to keep reading. In addition to that, too many highly dramatic outbursts by your main character(s) may signal that they are underdeveloped and need to be fleshed out a bit more. As the queen of shallow, one-dimensional characters, trust me on this. Thank goodness for multiple drafts!
If story beats aren’t your thing there’s no need to despair, no one says you have to use them. I mean, it would be beneficial, but using end tags won’t kill your narrative, just like the occasional tell won’t. The thing to remember is that these elements should be used with a delicate balance. Too many instances of he said/she said in your narrative will become just as distracting as too many unnecessary adverbs. Find your balance, writers, and you’ll find your readers. At least I hope so, for my own sake if nothing else.
Resources
King, Stephen. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. Scribner, 2000.
Lukeman, Noah. The First Five Pages. Simon & Schuster, 2000.
Shawver, Brian. The Language of Fiction: A Writer’s Stylebook. Hanover & London, 2013.
Strunk, William & White, E. B. The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition. Longman, 2000.
Steele, Alexander. Gotham Writers' Workshop: Writing Fiction: The Practical Guide from New York's Acclaimed Creative Writing School. Bloomsbury, 2003.
Taylor, Mary Ellen. Winter Cottage. Montlake Romance, 2018
Further Reading
Brooks, Larry. Story Engineering: Mastering the 6 Core Competencies of Successful Writing. Writer’s Digest Books, 2011.
Oliver, Laura. The Story Within: New Insights and Inspiration for Writers. Alpha, 2011
McCarthy, Cormac. The Road. Vintage International, 2006.
