For readers:

• Alphabetical list of authors, you can also search the site for an author
• Alphabetical list of books, you can also search the site for a book
• Monthly contests
• List of books reviewed by 65 nationally broadcast radio and television programs, from the Colbert Report to This American Life
• Daily book reviews and author posts

fushigi yuugi forever

For authors, Fresh Fiction offers several promotion and advertising services, from managing your Web 2.0 presence, holding contests, inclusion of your author page on their website, and banner graphics to a spot in their newsletter which reaches 125,000 readers weekly.

Fresh Fiction is a website worth visiting on a regular basis. And if you want to help contribute to their incredible amount of content, check out the current open positions.

Elena Gilbert: Dear Diary, today will be different. It has to be. I will smile, and it will be believable. My smile will say, “I’m fine, thank you. Yes, I feel much better.” I will no longer be the sad little girl that lost her parents. I will start fresh, be someone new. It’s the only way I’ll make it through.
- Vampire Diaries, “Pilot”, 1.1

you decide

Read
There is a whole acre of written words out there to help you. This includes books, blogs, articles, and even entries on Twitter. Read your favorite fiction once to enjoy the story and again to understand the plot points and the character arc. Read non-fiction about the craft of writing and anything else that strikes your fancy for story ideas lurk everywhere waiting for discovery. Read the blogs of authors and agents and learn from their experience. Read the tweet and then click through to read the article it referenced.

Write
Your second novel will be better than your first, your tenth better than your fifth. But you’ll never know and feel that kind of progress and accomplishment unless you write your stories through to the end.

Listen

• To the panelists at conventions
• To the audience’s questions
• To conversations around you in a public venue
• To your characters
• To yourself

DCI Gene Hunt: Well you better get started then.
- Ashes to Ashes, 2.7

perfectionism

Most writers can read much faster than they can speak. Translating the black markings on the page into audible vibrations takes more effort and more mental processing time than if you just read silently to yourself in your head. Each word gets a little more attention and suddenly you find some of them aren’t what you meant them to be.

The spellchecker of your word processing program will catch the obvious typos, but other kinds of oops can slip through.

Did you mean though instead of thought? Their instead of there? Its instead of it’s? When he put his hand on his arm and his hand on his shoulder and there are two males in the room, do you really understand who did what to whom?

You may also find that a certain brilliant arrangement of words on paper makes your tongue stumble when read aloud. In that case, a subtle shift in layout is needed.

I have heard this advice from multiple people at multiple writing conferences and conventions. When I finally decided to listen to it, it made a world of difference in how much smoother my writing became and how many errors I was able to find and eradicate.

For an added level of thoroughness, have someone else read your writing, out loud, to you. You know what you wrote, have heard that dialog in your head many, many times. Hearing it voiced by someone else will give you insight as to how a reader will see, and interpret, your words. And sometimes it’s not the way you thought it would be. Then you have to decide what to do about it.

Words should flow, both in the mind and spoken out loud to the world.

Hawkeye: Read it out loud, I love the sound of my own skullduggery.
- M*A*S*H