That one? I'll add it to to the resource list!
Yep! Techniques of the Selling Writer by Dwight Swain is kind of the granddad to these books but it is long and meandering in its text, I think someone just transcribed his lectures in college. For sci-fi fantasy authors / those who like Him Butcher books, Debra Chester wrote The Fantasy Fiction Formula and Fiction formula Plotting, they say formula but they are more a survey of the Elements of Writing series squeezed into a more modern book. Distilled I guess. And last off because the thought has occur me, K M. Weilands Writing Character Arcs /writing archetypal character arcs really helped me understand and get to know my main character beyond the sense of fuzziness and wanting to fill out the vague character interview style dossier we have seen on the web, now I actually know what his deal is and how to portray him grow as a character, not just as a human to a dragon.
Anyways back to Elements. Setting, Scene and Structure, Conflict and Suspense admire my favs. Character by Orson Scott Card is good but it didn't stand out to me as being revolutionary to my writing craft like the others did, probably just because I had already read the Debra Chester books. Beginnings Middles and Endings, Theme, Description, they were at least to me forgettable though I like having read them and have the ability to skim through them when I need specific copy advice.
The fact of the matter is I am a super outliner so before I write a draft (this will be like my 12th draft, my book has to stand up to my ridiculously high standards so I can know it's worthy to be traditionally published even though I don't expect it to because it does not have enough Diverse Points to do so with the be publishing houses to get debut published), so those books are sitting until they are needed.
Wanna write the book for me? Here's the pitch SPOOC Debra Chester teaches you to do.
When his home is invaded and his king is killed and he himself unexpectedly transformed into a dragon, Edin wants nothing more than to stop the invaders so he can somehow reverse this transformation and go home to his comfy human life. But can he do that when Kerkyon, the dragon leading the invading army, targets his friends for destruction?
So a clunky pitch, that's why it's not done. But it fulfills the goal of a dragon being in the cover and the book actually being about dragons, not just being on the cover to sell the book, then inside it's just a flying horse or appears for a single scene then is gone, or is "so powerful" it spends all of the book in overbearingly prideful human form (not that I'm bitter about buying books with dragons on the cover only to be disappointed for various reasons or anything senpai).
How do you find motivation to write? I started writing a story and around 20,000 words and three chapters I suddendly lost motivation. It's like I never find time to do so, with work and family and all that.
I also wrote a novel back in 2010 in my native language which I'm trying to translate to English and republish, but again, it's hard to find time and willpower to do so.
Like the other author said, Morning pages are great ( though I do 3 pages in my journal, not 30 minutes of copy). The biggest thing is a set appointment for yourself where you are in the mode to write, writing can sometimes mean you are researching characters or outlining, but for whatever time, you do the writing thing. For a long time I had the appointment with the London writers salon writers hour series, that really helped me move fast and I fell off because of return to office but I have been meaning to return to that because that is what really drives the forward progress is incremental progress each day, not solving all your problems in moments of inspiration.
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