Part VII of the 8-Part BRING YOUR NOVEL TO LIFE Series Over the last six lessons, you've figured out your theme, and you've worked out at least one and possibly several subthemes You've learned how to use blended scenes, intercuts, and cliffhangers to work both themes and subthemes into your work

Part VI of the 8-Part BRING YOUR NOVEL TO LIFE Series When you're writing a book, you want every page to drag the reader to the next one, even if she's late for work, even if it's two o'clock in the morning and he needs to be up at six, even if the plane has landed and your weary traveller really must get bags in hand and get off the plane

Part V of the 8-Part BRING YOUR NOVEL TO LIFE Series By now, you have a solid grasp of the importance of having a theme for your story, of keeping it personal and hidden (to avoid writing the dreaded Message Book), and of hanging on to the courage of your convictions in writing it the way you need to, knowing that you cannot ever please everyone, nor should you try

Part IV of the 8-Part BRING YOUR NOVEL TO LIFE Series And now we come to the hard bit You've got your theme, and you've figured out how to bury it so that it's there for you, and SOMETHING meaningful is there for your reader

Part III of the 8-Part BRING YOUR NOVEL TO LIFE Series In the first two articles, we've explored how essential it is to have a theme to give your novel direction, and how to find those themes that will resonate with you You'd think that once you have a theme, you could just sit down and write your book about that, and you'd bring powerful emotions and passionate storytelling and compelling, page-turning action to your tale---but it just ain't so

PART II of The 8-Part BRING YOUR NOVEL TO LIFE Series The best novels you've ever read---the ones that stuck in your mind and kept you going back to re-read them, that made you think, that made you feel, maybe that scared your socks off---were not about what they were about Sound cryptic

PART I of The 8-Part BRING YOUR NOVEL TO LIFE Series You've read through what you've written---your first few scenes, your first chapter, your completed novel---and you've discovered that your words don't move you They don't make you want to keep reading