Perfecting Your Story

By Susan Palmquist

Have you finally finished your manuscript?

Has your manuscript been rejected?

Looking to polish the story you completed during NaNoWriMo?

Or maybe you’re thinking about writing a story and need some tips on how to make yours close to perfection?

In this easy to follow book, author and writing coach, Susan Palmquist, offers you a chapter by chapter break down on all the essentials of writing a great book-

Character
Plot
Dialogue
POV
Narration and Pacing
Conflict and Emotion

There are even chapters on self-editing and checking for accuracy in your storyline.

Each one offers you a series of checklists to help guide you through the process of making your story the best it can be.
It's almost like having your own writing coach sitting beside you as you work.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Susan Palmquist
• Release date: Feb 5, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310692277

Susan Palmquist

An Adams Media author.

Book preview

Perfecting Your Story

A Step by Step Guide

Published by Coldstream Publishing at Smashwords

Copyright 2016 Susan Palmquist

Smashwords Edition, License Notes.

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

If you enjoyed this book, please return to Smashwords.com to discover other works by this author.

Thank you for your support.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Thank You

Social Networks

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Chapter 1

I created this e-book with three types of writers in mind. One, for the writer who has completed their manuscript but now wants a step by step guide as to how to perfect it before they submit it to a publisher, agent, or even enter it in a contest. Second, someone who’s submitted their manuscript but received a rejection and has no idea what’s wrong with their story. And finally, this is for a writer who who took part in NaNoWriMo and now wants to polish the story they created for it.

I’ve designed this e-book in a simple format by offering you a series of checklists to work through. Maybe you need to work on all of them or maybe you need to work on something specific like dialogue or your characters don’t seem real. Either way, this system allows you to focus on a particular chapter and its corresponding checklists.

Each checklist will cover elements of a story that either ones that require a major overhaul, but just some tweaking. While others might be larger problems and the reason your story got a rejection letter.

After each chapter, you’ll work get to work on perfecting a different element which includes-

Plot

Characters/characterization

Dialogue/internal thoughts

POV/deep POV

Conflict and Emotion

Narration and Pacing

Self-editing, consistency, and fact checking

Let’s get started…

Let me begin this chapter with a question for you?

What is your story about?

You’ve heard of the elevator speech…telling a stranger about your business in just one two sentences. Could you do the same thing with your story? Whatever your response, this will be the first thing to do on your checklist. Write it down and keep it handy.

As you work through all the chapters think about whether or not you’ve kept to your basic premise and plot. (This is also going to make putting together your