A Writing Tip for Novelists

I don't know about you, but I'm always on the look out for a writing tip or two.

Here's one from me.

I don't want anything slowing me down when I'm in the zone and the words are flowing and the ideas and twists and plot points and great dialogue are going down onto the page at a rate of knots.

That's why speech marks and other punctuation can wait until a later draft. All I'm concerned about early doors is getting the words down.

And stopping to insert speech marks unnecessarily slows down that process. So I don't bother with them.

Not until my story is virtually finished do I bother going back over the manuscript and inserting them.

It enables me to concentrate on what's important - getting my story as good as I can get it.

No one gets to see how my story looks without speech marks except me.

I'll put them in when I'm good and ready.

"Yeah!"