Theme: The Secret to Finding Your Novel’s Soul

by Lewis / January 29, 2019 / Editing, Story Structure

No matter how polished or well-written your novel is, it can still lack soul.

While structure and prose are essential to a successful story, often a story’s true soul is found in a less obvious element of the writing craft—theme. Your story’s theme is rooted in more than perfectly timed story beats and fancy words, because it’s about the cohesive feel and energy of your novel. Ultimately, this theme is what makes your story feel real.

Unfortunately, theme isn’t easy to pin down. If your plot and characters are perfectly structured, your prose elegant, and your concept compelling, what more can you do? How can you uncover your novel’s theme?

The Basics of Scene Structure: Action and Reaction

by Lewis / January 22, 2019 / Story Structure

Even with the perfect plot and characters, your story can still be on life support.

We’ve all felt it before—you’re editing your latest draft and something feels wrong. Your story is disjointed and flat, even though its structure looks perfect on paper. You look back over your outline, tweaking a few characters, bolstering a few plot points, but nothing seems to help.

What you don’t realize is that story structure isn’t the only key to a strong novel. No matter how great the blueprints are for your house, you need quality bricks to build it with. Your story is no different, and that’s where another type of structure comes in: scene structure.

Do You Want to Be a Novelist?

by Lewis / January 15, 2019 / Inspiration, Other

We all make New Year’s resolutions with the best of intentions.

This year, my resolution was to go running every day… Yeah, you can imagine how that’s worked out, and we’re only two weeks into the New Year!

Unfortunately, I’m not the only one who struggles to keep up with their resolutions. A few weeks into January, most of us will have given up. Life will have gotten too busy and our motivation too sparse to keep going. We start making excuses; perhaps it’ll be too hard to achieve our goals. Maybe it isn’t worth the effort. We can just try again next year, right?

The 8 Best Novel Smithy Resources of 2018

by Lewis / January 8, 2019 / Other

Happy New Year and welcome to 2019!

With 2018 officially behind us, now seemed like the perfect time to look back at some of The Novel Smithy’s best (and most popular) blog posts from the past year. We covered a lot the last few months, but I’ve done my best to pick the perfect articles to help you get in the novel writing groove as 2019 begins!

Of course, there will be lots of new stuff to cover this year too. I’ll be welcoming some exciting guest authors to the site, starting an new article series about genres, and launching some new resources for The Novel Smithy Resource Library. In fact, I’m convinced this year will be one of the best years ever for finishing your novel!

The 2018 First Chapters Writing Contest Winners

by Lewis / December 22, 2018 / News

The winners have been chosen!

Throughout December I’ve received so many great submissions for the 2018 First Chapters Writing Contest. From epic treasure hunts to dark assassinations, there’s been an amazing variety in the chapters you’ve sent me!

Of course, the contest had to close eventually. This morning it was time to pick the winners and deciding was no easy task! With so many great submissions the winners had to stand above the rest to succeed.