Welcome to Smooth Draft

Smooth Draft can write, edit, or proofread your fiction or non-fiction. We’ll take your rough draft and smooth it out.  Whether you’re a published author, a self-published author, aspiring to have your first work published, or an academic, we have the skills and...

Speech tags speak loude...

That should probably be “more loudly,” (assuming speech tags could speak) but I’ll stick with the well-known phrase even though it’s got some grammatical issues, anthropomorphizing aside. The Basics Speech tags. We’ve all seen them, even if we didn’t...

Character and Setting

We’ve talked a lot about developing layers for your characters, building the character arc and using supporting characters to increase the conflict in a story. Today I’ll discuss how setting can bring in yet another layer to your characters. Setting encompasses time period,...

Building a Character We...

All writers know that you need conflict and tension to drive to story forward, and to engage readers so they want to keep reading. In a thriller, writers can rely more on plot because the reader is anxious to see what happens next. In romance the reader wants to know what happens to the...

Building Characters: Wh...

In a previous post I discussed the concept of starting out with a character with issues and how the plot action affects the character, creating the character arc. Character x Plot = Ending Let’s rewrite that a little bit Starting Character x Plot = Ending Character Today’s...

A fun and useful tool f...

I’m not sure who first told me about Write or Die, but I didn’t pay any attention to them. It took two or three other people mentioning it before I took a look at the website, and I have to say I’m very glad I did. [Time for a disclaimer: I am not associated in any way...