Ack.  I misplaced my weekly list of article ideas.  If you’d like to suggest any, I’d appreciate that.  Here are some of the questions we’ve previously answered.

• How long should I wait to introduce my main character?
• How do I know if my accents are awful?
• How can I write a good opening?
• What sort of things make a fight scene good?

OK.  We’re writing a rough draft of Superhero Nation for National Novel Writing Month.  If you’d like to beta-review our novel synopsis, we’d really appreciate that.  If you’ve already left an email or comment asking to be a beta-reviewer, we have also e-mailed this synopsis to you.

If you’re not sure what to write about, here are a few sample questions that may help you do a beta-review.

• What do you think about the characters?  How might we make them more interesting, likable and/or dramatic?
• Is the plot coherent?  How might we make it smoother?
• What are some ways we could draw the plot out without making it feel padded?

UPDATE: I’ve made a diagram showing plot-links between the characters.

National Novel Writing Month starts in two days.  We’re going to finish our first novel manuscript.  We need beta-reviewers.

What this would entail: We’ll give you our novel’s outline, 2-3 pages describing what we envision happening throughout the book.  Over the course of the month, we will write chapters to bring that synopsis to life.  We’d like you to read these chapters and offer advice.  That might look like any or all of the following.

1. Suggest where we might go from there.  Do you have any ideas about what the next few chapters might look like?
2. Mention any glaring weaknesses in our story, characters, dialogue, plot, etc.
3. Suggest any possible improvements.

So, what’s in it for you?

1. Authorial networking. On any given day, I get between 30 and 40 manuscripts, comments and emails.  That’s on top of my writing, studying and thesis research.   So my time is really stretched.  However, if you help beta-review our work, I will assuredly make time for you.
2. Altruism. We really need the help.
3. Marketing. Your publisher may ask you to get other authors to review your work so that you can place favorable blurbs on the inside cover.  I’m not very fond of tying my credibility to other people’s work, but I’ll make an exception for a skilled author that has helped me in the past.

If you’re interested, please either leave a comment or e-mail us at bmckenzie05–at–gmail–dot–com.

In the four weeks since we’ve added the Recent Comments widget, our comment-traffic is up about 800%.

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Unfortunately, work is crazy this week and I haven’t had time to think of any writing articles.  If you have any writing questions or topics, this would be a great place to post them.  For example, some of the questions we’ve answered before are…

• What’s an easy way to make an interesting character?
• How can I write a plausible origin story?
• How can I write believable male characters?

1.  We usually respond to comments within a day.  If you think that we’ve forgotten about your comment, you can post another comment as a reminder, but please do not remind us more than once per day.

2.  No drama, please.  Also, please criticize ideas rather than people.  Something like “your dialogue was weak” is far more helpful and civil than “you suck.”

3.  We will delete useless comments, like “first!”  No one cares that you posted the first comment.   Congratulations?

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Our main goal is to provide a venue for comments that are civil, intelligent and useful.

If you’d like to compile your comments into an easily readable document, please let us know.  We can do that very easily.