6 Great Resources For Writing Your Novel

When I first started writing my debut novel, Our Dreams Were Waking Up, I had listened to a passive income podcast that talked about how Amazon Kindle can make serious money. I knew I was a good storyteller and thought “Hey this could be a quick money spinner…”

I wasn’t going to write under my name, and I was just going to pump out cheap love stories.

Then I started writing and I realised I love it, and more importantly I cared about it.

So I started my apprenticeship in writing stories that matter. It took three years (mostly of procrastination), but the things I found and lessons I learnt in that time made me even more hungry to be successful in this self-publishing world.

If you’ve got stories to tell - which we all do, I wanted to share six resources that I use now, and were most instrumental in developing me to the stage of feeling confident in publishing a book.

The Self Publishing Show

This podcast was the find that propelled me into the world of self pub. The weekly episodes will get you caught up on the lingo, proven strategies and success stories that will really get you moving.

Listen here.

Save The Cat Writes A Novel

We've all read stories, but do you know how to tell them? Save The Cat is the ultimate storytelling handbook. It unpacks the basic structures of every genre in a step by step, but thoroughly explained way.

Get it here.

Plottr

I thought I was going to be a "write it on the fly" guy. I did that once and wasted so much time. Plottr helps you build your characters, plan your plot and outline your series in a flexible, intuitive format.

Get Plottr here.

20Booksto50k FB group

This flourishing, encouraging group of new and seasoned authors from around the world are unafraid to share tips, tricks, experiences and, most importantly, encouragement with anyone who needs it.

Join the group here.

Scrivener

Writing in Word, Google Docs or Pages is fine but when you're 40,000 words in and need to refer to dialogue from a scene you now can't find it gets messy.

Scrivener is designed for writing long form (particularly books). It gets out of the way when you're writing, but provides a simple bird's-eye view and easy access to important info.

Get it here.

ProWritingAid

A grammar and spellcheck app that also generates reports deep diving in on your writing and enhancing its readability. You'll still need another set of editing eyes, but the standard ProWritingAid will polish your work to is impressive.

Get it here.