Here is an interesting page-turner technique. James Patterson (www.jamespatterson.com), author of numerous best-selling books, has released the latest installment of the Young Adult series.
In this book (titled School’s Out Forever) there are 142 chapters (yes, 142!). There are only 406 pages. Some chapters are three or five pages; others are only a paragraph or two.
Each scene gets a chapter break. You end up with a lot of white space, but I think this is on purpose. My theory is that by having each scene be a mini-cliff-hanger, and requiring …

Need some help creating some character names? Check out these useful sites that have very interesting tools to generate names and do research on names:

20000-names.com
seventhsanctum.com/index-name.php
lowchensaustralia.com/names/generators.htm
rinkworks.com/namegen

Trying to recall a magical quote from your favorite book? Wondering who else has used the character name ‘John Hoggins’? Google’s new Book Search feature allows you to do this and more.
Try it out at Google Book Search

A great resource for any writer. Common English language mistakes or misconceptions are included in detail. Some examples:

oversee/overlook
palate/palette/pallet
ran/run
sail/sale/sell
taken back/taken aback

Much of the content is online here: Common Errors in English

Lot’s of practical tips on becoming a writer, such as:
Stop talking about your novel or short story ideas and start writing. Get in the habit of writing for at least an hour every day, no matter what. One strategy is to get up an hour earlier than you have to, make yourself a cup of coffee and completely focus on your writing.
Read more at 52 Projects

Doing your writing on a Mac? Learn some of these shortcuts to boost your productivity:
Text
?A move to beginning of paragraph
?B move one character back
?D delete character to right
?E move to end of paragraph
?F move one character forward
?K delete text to end of paragraph
?N move to next line
?O insert newline
?P move to previous line
?T transpose characters
?? delete word to left
?? delete word to right
Text Field
?? move one word left
?? move one word right
?? move to beginning of line
?? move to end of line
Text View
?? move up one page
?? move down one page
?? move to beginning of line
?? move to end of line
?? move to beginning of view
?? move to end of view
Read other …

Reading Shrunk’s Elements of Style will quickly showcase how concise writing leads to easier reading. This Plain English Campaign link has a list of words to avoid, including:

consequently (so)
ensure (make sure)
forward (send)
in accordance with (under, keeping to)
in excess of (more than)

And remember, 2nd Draft=1st Draft - 10%!
Read full list at Plain English Campaign: How to write in plain English

Full screen text editing seems to be all the rage for NaNoWriMo writers.
In preparation for NaNoWriMo, as well as connected to my recent explorations of emacs and general Terminal goodness, I’ve done some investigating of what options are available for creating a full screen writing environment.
The author reviews the freeware options, then moves on to newer solutions:
So much for the free options. The rest of the candidates are newer writing programs such as MacJournal, CopyWrite, Jer’s Novel Writer, and Ulysses. These are $29.95, $29.99, free (until version 1.x), and ~$120 …

Wouldn’t it be great if you could somehow automatically take a snapshot of your Scrivener novel’s content and automate daily or weekly back-ups from your Mac to another location? Using Automator, it’s actually really easy.
Preparation
The following example assumes you have Panic’s Transmit ftp software, which integrates well with Automator, to do backups to an FTP server. You can actually use Automator to backup files anywhere you want though — another directory, your iDisk, you name it.
Open Automator
Launch Automator (find it in your Applications folder), scroll down the left column …

Looking at submission guidelines from a variety of CBA publishers at the Faith, Hope & Love website, it looks like 90,000 words is a good all-around target for a novel length. But you have to write more than 90k words to get 90k words.
I like Steven King’s axiom for 1st draft versus 2nd draft word counts:
2nd Draft = 1st Draft - 10%
So, to target 90,000 final draft words, write 100,000 words!