What if you could write faster without sacrificing quality?In the indie publishing world of rapid release and blistering words-per-hour, it’s easy to end up burnt out, creating subpar work, and losing your enjoyment of your craft.There’s a better way.In How to Write Fast, Platt and Silver show you how to shift your approach to writing to increase your natural speed, while tapping into your inner storyteller and releasing mo...

What if you could generate creative ideas for your writing on demand and never had to stare at a blank screen again?Books require ideas. From the initial idea for a novel or series, right down to the objects in a scene and words in a sentence. In a single project you may need hundreds or even thousands of ideas. If you rely on lightning to strike or ideas to simply "come to you," you could be left waiting until they are shoveling in the dirt on top of you.I...

End the frustration and learn dictation in just 15 minutes a day.Sean M Platt spent over a decade trying to learn dictation, without success. He ended up frustrated and giving up after every attempt. After a sudden insight one day he made a few tweaks to his approach to dictation and has used dictation every day sinceIn 15-Minute Dictation Platt and Silver show you how to adjust your approach to dictation to leave behind frustrating starts and stops and fin...

This isn’t a book full of rules on How You Should Write Your Book.First off, I don’t even know all the rules to writing, at least not in any instructional sort of way. For every rule identified by an expert, you can easily find someone else who did the exact opposite and somehow managed to create a kick-ass story.This is a book about how I understand darkness, its place in story, and how I make dark fiction that people enjoy reading.I'll show you my...

Fewer words. Sharper stories. Bigger impact.Stuck in prose that drags? Worried readers are skimming past your descriptions to get back to the story? Time to say F*ck the Details and write fiction that moves.Description doesn't have to be a speed bump. Used right, it disappears — and the story keeps moving. Used wrong, it grinds everything to a halt, and your reader puts the book down.Sawyer Black has spent years st...

There is a storyteller in you.She doesn't care how old you are. She doesn't care if you're retired, semi-retired, nearing retirement or just over it. She doesn't care if you used to be a repairman, or an accountant, or a rodeo clown. She doesn't care how sure you are that it's too late to start something new.There is a storyteller in you. And it's time you started listening.My name is Ninie Hammon and I'm 72 years old. (If you say 72 years young, I ...

The reason most writing careers stall isn't talent. It's the decisions made in the dark.Sean Platt has spent the last decade-plus making a living writing fiction and watching plenty of writers chase the same dream into wildly different outcomes. The ones who thrive aren't the most talented. They're the ones who notice what every yes costs them, and decide on purpose.A Tale of Two Authors is the parable about that. Alexa and Pete chase the same indi...

Forget the hustle and grind. The career-author difference is compounding.Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant have spent over a decade running Sterling & Stone — millions of words published, dozens of titles, hundreds of authors mentored along the way. They've watched plenty of talented writers quit. And they've watched plenty of less-talented writers build careers that last.The difference, almost every time, comes down to mindset. Not the cheesy kind. The compo...

Most book covers fail. Yours doesn't have to.Readers really do judge books by their covers. A great story with the wrong cover sells like a bad one. A beautiful cover in the wrong genre sells worse than a plain one.The difference between a cover that converts and a cover that gathers dust isn't art. It's design strategy — and most authors have never been taught what that means.Dan Van Oss has designed thousands of book covers for indie authors across every major gen...

There's no luck in a fiction career that lasts. There's a formula.Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant have written more than a hundred fiction books between them at Sterling & Stone, the indie publishing operation they built from scratch. They didn't get there on instinct. They got there with a formula, refined over a decade of writing, publishing, and watching what actually works.The Fiction Formula is the fiction-specific companion to Write. Publ...

What will take your fiction from good to great? From decent to dazzling? From lackluster to blockbuster?Characters who "jump off the page."Of course plot matters. So does conflict, and scenes, and every other aspect of the fiction craft. But without unforgettable characters, your books will always be less than they could be.Don't let that happen.In WRITING UNFORGETTABLE CHARACTERS you'll learn:How to lay the foundation for a me...

Theme Is What Your Story Is Really AboutTheme—the mysterious cousin of plot and character. Too often viewed as abstract rather than actionable, theme is frequently misunderstood and left to chance. Some writers even insist theme should not be purposefully implemented. This is unfortunate, because in many ways theme is story. Theme is the heart, the meaning, the point. Nothing that important should be overlooked.Powerful themes are never in...