Hi, I’m John Fox, and as an editor I’ve helped hundreds of authors write, edit and publish their novels. If you’re planning on writing a novel, you’ve come to the right place. Let me guide you through the process. Now, you’re probably intimidated to write a novel. You should be. At least a little. They’re […]
Although we mostly focus on writing craft here at Bookfox, sometimes I talk about other subjects, like marketing your book or technology. And recently, I did a podcast about how a new technology, NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens), can help writers. Joanna Penn of The Creative Penn interviewed me for her podcast, asking all kinds of […]
I often find action movies boring because I have the same criticism every time: More backstory. I want heroes and heroines and villainesses with complicated motives that are tied to experiences from their pasts. Without backstory, characters become puppets, their actions serving only the advancement of the plot and not their own growth and […]
Young Adult novels, or YA, has been spiking in popularity. According to Publisher’s Weekly, sales of Young Adult novels rose by 18.6% between 2020 and 2021 despite the pandemic. In addition to being an incredibly fun and innovative genre to write in, YA books can be easier to publish. Once published, they can be more […]
What are NFTs? NFTs are digital collectibles. If you remember collecting baseball cards when you were a kid, an NFT is a digital version of that card. You can also have art NFTs, video NFTs, music NFTs, and, of course, book NFTs. It’s just a digital file with the ownership recorded in the blockchain. NFTs […]
From Lord of the Rings to Star Wars, across sci-fi and fantasy, good worldbuilding is what makes genre fiction stand out. Well-constructed worlds are legendary—they capture audience’s imaginations, and they make readers want to live in the story forever. What would Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series be without the Discworld itself? What would The Wizard of […]
Every writer has to know how to create suspense. If you can’t create suspense in your book, readers will always feel shortchanged and indifferent to your story. Suspense is THE crucial technique to creating a riveting plot. Creating suspense is really about evoking an emotion in the reader, an emotion akin to happiness, sorrow, or […]
The keys to a story are the characters, and the key to characters is knowing the difference between round and flat characters. This way, you can be intentional about writing characters who make connections with your audience and also writing characters who support that connection. When building a cast, it’s important to think about the […]
Writers spend a lot of time worrying about point of view, unless they don’t, in which case they are destined to be rejected by literary agents and editors everywhere. Point of view is critical to a book’s success. It’s also one of the most common things new writers trip over, right up there with “show, […]
If you’re new to Bookfox, this post is a good place to start. It talks about the big picture decisions every writer needs to make, rather than the tactical decisions I talk about in most other posts. Basically, you need a giant, overarching plan for your writing life. When you start a business, you need […]
