Randomize ME

25 essential writing tips: guide to writing GOOD fiction.

I’ve been a professional editor for most of my career and over the years I’ve critiqued a lot of budding authors’ manuscripts. Over time I noticed recurring weaknesses that most everyone had so put together a tips sheet they could keep. The guide builds on those tips. It covers everything from the opening hook, the author’s voice, characterisation, story and character building, point of view, using the right words, how to end and more.

The entire guide is close to my heart. Indie authors are coming in for a lot of criticism for not presenting a polished end product. I think I’ve helped a few over the years and I hope I can help more with this guide.

If the reviews it has already received are anything to go by, it’s not only aspiring authors who are finding it useful.

I’m an editor. It was my career when working full time and still is now that I have become a contract editor. It very obviously has affected my writing; I scrutinise other authors’ work day in day out and I try very hard to apply how I approach their work to my own. As for the publishing process, my jobs have been in the publishing area so I’m fortunate in knowing what’s involved.

I’m turning my attention now to my third thriller, although I’m not happy with the label ‘thriller’. I prefer to think of my novels as literary fiction. The first, ‘Automaton‘, my debut award winner that became a best seller I call literary legal suspense fiction. My second, ‘Imbroglio‘, I call literary espionage suspense suspense fiction.

My third has a corporate crime theme. It’s based on my years working with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and is about a dodgy merger.

If you like John Grisham, you’ll probably like my novels too.

When I was trying to find a publisher for Automaton some years ago PanMacmillan commented that I could be Australia’s answer to John Grisham. Several book reviewers have said they thought it ‘better than Grisham’.