Was That With An "S" or Not?

Werkin' the Words...

So I'm chugging away on the second book in my trilogy and I'm finding all these little things I SHOULD know off the top of my head...but don't.

Place names, most of which are original, sometimes get spelled differently. Placement of rooms or battle grounds. Does mech-hand have a hyphen or not?

What about dirigible...zeppelin...blimp...Aero Squad? Was there a space in between there?

So I started to really rely on my style sheet. Especially the one I made for The Tremblers (1st book in the series). Sooo glad I did this. If you'd like to look into using one, I suggest a great post by The Editor's Blog called Style Sheets, The Set Up and Benefits.

I'm also finding that its a challenge to weed through scenes that I absolutely LOVE just because they were fun to write or they read especially well. I'm entranced with my own lyricism...whatever. The problem is sometimes the scene is genuinely cool, but serves no actual purpose in your story.

For this I've been using the Scene-by-Scene Outlining Template. This beauty came to my attention via Twitter.  C. S. Lakin over @LiveWriteThrive is a handy blog for authors. I encourage you to take a gander.

I'm not sure what other helps are out there, but if you have any favorites please let me know. I'ts always nice to add another tool to my arsenal. I may add your suggestions to my upcoming post in the "Writing Helps" series.

Until next time...Go Write!

+Raquel Byrnes