Write Your Novel with David Allan-Petale David Allan-Petale

Re-writing gives you the opportunity to truly write your story and make sure that it’s telling a tale in a deeply engaging way.While re-writing your novel can be frustrating at times, it’s an essential part of the novel writing process.The best part about re-drafting your novel is that it gives you a chance to really get to know your characters and understand their motives.Re-writing is often not particularly covered in writing courses, but the process is vital in order to produce a p...

Dialogue is one of the most challenging parts of writing - or is it?After all, we all talk. But when it comes to writing dialogue, sometimes all we hear is crickets. In this week's episode of the Write Your Novel podcast, I break down my process for writing dialogue, from the nuts and bolts of setting it out on the page to what words I choose to put in which characters' mouths. --------- If you took something from this episode, I would love for yo...

The path to publication can be long and twisted. It certainly was for me, with scores of rejections, setbacks, and false hopes. In this week's episode of the Write Your Novel podcast, I tell some stories from the road both good and bad on what it took to get my debut novel Locust Summer published. What got me through - in the end - was strictly separating the submission process and anything to do with publishing from my writing. So, let's dive into h...

Developing your own voice as a writer means writing until the story emerges. Writing what you know helps too. But taking this a bit further, what are you interested in? Inspired by? How do you see and understand the word? Looking back, my earliest interests and inspirations were all to do with mechanical engineering. And I've found a way to incorporate this into my writing style. In this episode, I'll share how the design of a jet engine influenced the...

Every now and again in our writing practice, we can get into deep waters where the swimming becomes compulsive.Work flows.The days pass swiftly.And the word and page count builds and builds. This is a good thing. But it's also got some wicked snares to watch out for. Last week's episode was all about what to do when you get stuck - but on the flipside, this week's episode is all about what to do when you are in a good groove with writing; how to keep the mom...

Getting stuck is a normal, natural, and entirely frustrating part of writing anything. There's a galaxy of charted and uncharted reasons for why that happens. But I think it can be boiled down to problems in the story, turbulence in our life, or shadows in our mind. In this week's podcast, I share some of my stuck moments and how I got out of them, plus a bunch more that are also nicely presented in a downloadable workbook, which you can access below. Because ...