Write Your Novel
Step by Step


By Melanie Anne Phillips
Creator of StoryWeaver

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For Story

Structure


Story Structure

Library


Videos on

Structure



For Story

Development


Writing

Tips

Library


Articles on Writing






Read the Science Fiction Thriller

From the founder of Storymind

Man Made follows a mysterious force as it sweeps around the globe erasing anything man made - from buildings, vehicles, and technology to medicines, clothing, and dental work.

Governments stagger under the panic, religions are at a loss for an explanation, scientists strive for any means to stop or divert the phenomenon, and the world’s population from families to individuals struggle to prepare for The Event, which will drive humanity back beyond the stone age.

The Event is coming.

Are you prepared?

Copyright Melanie Anne Phillips


Storymind

Free Writing Resources

~ Step 10 ~


Smoothing Out the Bumps


In Step 9 you integrated all your new material into your existing synopsis to create an all-inclusive description of your story’s world.  In this step you’ll move things around and reword them so that your revised synopsis reads like butter.


You’ve come a long way. And, you’ve just completed a lot of hard work messing around with intangible ideas.  Time to get literary again for a refreshing break.


Your job in this step is to reread your synopsis as it stands, not for content but from the standpoint of word play.  For a moment, put story aside and think about how things are said rather than what is said.  See if you can come up with a more interesting way to express the very same thing.


Don’t feel you have to get too stylistic or come up with memorable ways of phrasing things – brilliant lines of soaring prose that sweep the reader off their mundane little feet.


Nobody is going to see this final plot revision but you.  The purpose is not yet to create a finished work.  Rather, you just want to iron out the wrinkles, trim the jagged edges, and smooth out the bumps for a pleasant flowing read.


So, crank open the stop-cocks of verbiage and pave a way through the telling of your story.


In Step 11, we’ll fluff up your newly washed and folded story synopsis and see if we can shake some characters out of it.