<span class="vcard">Chris Wallace</span>
Chris Wallace

You Need To Try Writing Sprints! 

My recent introduction to writing sprints I’ve been writing my entire life. And some of that has included writing very fast for short periods of time. I used to write a 1,500 word article on poker strategy and applied game theory for a magazine every month in less than an hour. But I had never tried an organized writing sprint until a few weeks ago. It was amazing!  I joined Adam’s writing sprint along with another member named Ari. We did three 20 minute sprints, talked about what we were working during the rest periods, and the last any of...

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Improve Your Writing With AI Tools

Aspiring authors have a powerful new tool at their disposal: AI-powered writing tools. These aren’t just grammar checkers; they’re sophisticated assistants that can accelerate the improvement of your craft, helping you polish your manuscript and connect with readers faster than ever before. For self-published authors, time is precious. You’re juggling writing with marketing, cover design, research, ad campaigns, and everything else that goes into bringing a book to market. AI tools can streamline the editing process, allowing you to focus on the creative aspects of your story, but more important is how fast you can learn from the suggestions these...

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Ellis Prybylski Talks Editing

We had a great talk with our old friend Ellis Prybylski this week. Ellis has been a writer and editor for sixteen years, has written multiple books on the subject, and is the head of multiple industry associations. His insight into the world of editing and self-publishing is amazing and we’re lucky to have him as a member here on Written Well. You can find Ellis and most of his fiction work on Amazon at his author page. His books on writing and editing are How To Write The Damn Book and How To Publish The Damn Book Ellis is...

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Kindle Trends Review

Summary: Interesting data service with innovative visualizations and some truly useful info. Limited number of categories minimizes its usefulness. Cost: $15/month, or $10/month with coupon code INDYAUTHOR (if it’s still active). Kindle Trends is a fairly new service that sends weekly newsletters to your email with in-depth data about a number of genres. If it covered all the genres, it would be an immediate recommend, as you get a lot of data for the price, though as with most things data-oriented, it takes a fair amount of knowledge and work to massage that data into actionable plans. However, currently it...

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The 27 Chapter Structure

The 27 Chapter structure is kind of a recursive version of the Three Act Structure, breaking down the three parts of each act into three chapters so that there are twenty-seven chapters. But the form of the three-act is still in there with the inciting incident, the plot twist, the midpoint, all falling in roughly the same spot as the three-act. It’s a good structure to reference if you’re lost or running out of ideas in the middle of the book. It can help you understand a little better how to move through the three-act structure — or any structure....

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Buying a Premade Cover

So, you need a cover for your book. It’s a big decision. You want something that you are proud of, but what you need is something that will sell. Assuming you have done your research (link to cover research video) and know what you are looking for, you might be ready to start looking at premade covers. But don’t forget, it’s not that hard to learn to DIY your cover (link to my making a cover with Canva video). Let’s start with the big question: Should I buy a premade book cover? If you aren’t going to design it yourself,...

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Novelitist

Welcome to my review of Novelitist. I’m actually writing it in the software itself, which just tagged the word ”Novelitist” as a spelling error. Other than that, the site works really well. So well, in fact, that I’m considering using it for some of my writing in the near future. What Is Novelitist? It’s a writing tool for novelists. It also has short story and a few other formats, but it’s primarily designed for writers of long form fiction. Novelitist lives in the cloud, so you can log in from anywhere and get right to work on your next book,...

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Do I Really Need an ISBN Number?

Do you need an ISBN number to sell your book? This question comes up constantly. The answer is, unfortunately, it depends.  An ISBN number is a unique number, attached to a barcode, assigned to a book that identifies it for SKU systems for inventory tracking. If you want your book to be sold “wide” meaning that it’s available everywhere, you might need one. Maybe.  If you just want to sell your book on Amazon, they will provide a unique ISBN that only works on Amazon, and they won’t charge you anything for it.  If you want to sell your book...

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