A freebie, a new book, and an update

The Freebie

If you click the image to your left, you’ll download a copy of the Plot Clinic Intro.

The Intro is 54 pages long, and contains:
Introduction: What Is Plotting (And Why Is It So Hard?) 3

• Plot Is… 3
• Where Plots Are Born 4
• A word of warning on dealing with the subconscious 6
• How Plots Grow 7
• The Seven Basic Plots (Plus A Mermaid) 9
• Plotting Is A Process, Not An Act 10
• How To Use This Book 12
• Order of Use 13
• What You’ll Need 15
• My Assumptions 18

Section I: Plotting Before Writing 20

• Structures 22
• How Many Plot Cards Will I Need? 22
• Usual Novel Word Counts 23
• Figuring Average Scene Length Wordcounts 23
• The Number of Scenes You’ll Need Is… 23
• The Three-Act Structure 24
1. Pros 27
2. Cons 27

• Character Structure, Single POV 28
1. Pros 28
2. Cons 28

• Character Structure, Multiple POV 29
1. Pros 30
2. Cons 31

• Cliffhanger Structure 31
1. Pros 32
2. Cons 32

• Organic Structure 32
1. Pros 33
2. Cons 33

• Timeline Structure 34
1. Pros 36
2. Cons 36

• Mixing It Up 36

Section II: Tools—When Things Are Going Well 38

• Plot Tools, and Why There Are So Many 39
• Tool 1: Question 41
1. The Good Question 42
2. Exercise: Question 45

• Tool 2: Twist 46
1. Doing the Twist 46
2. Exercise: Twist 49

It’s a good-sized chunk of the book and should let readers know whether the Plot Clinic is something that would help their writing or not. However, it’s also branded with the username of the HollyShop Affiliate who’s giving it away–in this case, that fun-loving guy, Sample Affiliate–and each link in the e-book links to an affiliate link. If you’re an affiliate, you can use the affiliate software to download your personalized e-book with your links inside to give away as a free download on your site or from your weblog. These take a lot of time for me to make (for you, they’ll take about ten seconds to download), so I’ll be adding new ones slowly. This one is ready to go, though.

If you want to give away this ebook, login to your affiliate account, then go to Affiliate Tools –>Viral PDFs.

The New Book

I’m delighted to note that I’ve added a new book to the site: Ann Angel’s Freedom, by Katarina Gerlach and Anke Waldmann. This is a very good English translation done by the German authors—excellent historical fiction, wonderfully researched and beautifully written. I highly recommended the book some time back, and am delighted to be able to sell the e-book version through Shop.HollyLisle.com. I’ve also linked to the print versions.

I hope you’ll pick up a copy in one version or another. You’ll love the story.

The Update

Finally, for the rest of this week, and (because of the second phisher mess requiring me to rearrange a great deal of the site today to prevent a recurrence) probably some of next week, I’ll be adding advertising to the affiliate program. No writing for me.

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