Drafting Archives - Robin Catling

Five First Draft Mistakes

Robin Catling / February 3, 2025

There are more than five first draft mistakes you can make in a novel. But I read through editor Ellen […]

Robin Catling / October 23, 2023

First-page speed-dating; full of nervous anticipation you sit down knowing nothing about the ‘date’ in front of you. Will your

Working hard to complete Book Three, I’m building on the foundations of a Dirty Draft. But what exactly do I

A question or an obsession; how do I write a strong opening chapter? How do I hook the reader and

Navigating a path from start to finish of a novel can be hard for both plotters and free-writers; enter the

Never mind that I’m 65% through editing and still don’t know if the novel is any good: do I have

Robin Catling / January 29, 2022

How many drafts does it take to get out of the edit toward a published book? Book One is still

While I don’t use Fictionary‘s software tool itself, I’ve learned to construct the grandmother of spreadsheets to track their editing

Outlining a book? Why not? Sixty, seventy, eighty thousand words or more. That’s your typical novel. Somehow you have to

There are many ways to start writing a book, both fiction and non-fiction. Without a first draft, you don’t have