Reddit mentions: The best writing skills reference books

Always follow the gut. :D If the trope is dominant male focused or more appealing to women, then you want the guy on the cover. If the trope has crossover male appeal or is a body-oriented fetish (hucow, fetish clothing such as corsets/stockings etc, feet) as well as lesbian, PI or MILF, you want the scantily clad woman.

Suave, gorgeous Latin lover seems to be stuck in-between BUT if you follow the romance tropes -- Meet Cute, Instant Attraction with Sexiness, Issue Arises, Pining Happens, Issue Resolved, Super Sexy Happily Ever After, you can use the Latin lover aspect as a nice twist, even for a 25K novella.

I highly recommend How to Write a Brilliant Romance for a great quick recipe of how to write romance novels/novellete.

Out of the ballpark this week with two! Also super stoked I'm #1 on Amazon New Releases in Erotica Fiction Writing Reference (Ok. So I'm the only one there. But still!) Well, here you go authors. Enjoy :) Feel free to ask me anything about it all!

Breaking Your Sales Cap

This is a no-holds-barred how-to guide for publishing erotica. Many authors feel they have reached a “wall” when self-publishing erotica. This guide aims to help those authors break past their wall and look at things in a new light with concepts, step by step instructions and professional advice from an already successful author.

This is not a guide for beginners, but for authors that wish to further increase the value of their stories beyond simply just publishing more. This guide will teach you the approximate amount you should be earning with your current catalog and breaking past that maximum amount. This guide assumes you have already read Publishing Erotica: How to Make Your First $1,000, which focuses upon creating a successful foundation for your catalog. From here, I will teach you how turn that $1,000/month catalog into a $10,000/month catalog!

This guide gives away all of my secrets. This is an unrestrained how-to guide for publishing erotica. As always, my name is Write2LiveFree on Reddit and I am always available for any questions you may have!

“The breaking point is a common issue that frustrates authors even though they are doing everything correctly!”

$2.99 Amazon | Smashwords


24 Hours to 5k Rankings

How to break into sub 5k rankings on Amazon within 24 hours.

It’s a known fact well ranking stories on Amazon receive additional exposure. Amazon promotes stories that do well. This guide will help any author, with a focus on erotica authors, to get their stories to rank very well, very quickly. I focus on ways to get a story into the ~5k rankings for every published work within the first 24 hours of launch.

I can almost guarantee if you follow this guide when publishing your next stories, each will rank at or under 5,000 on Amazon. If you already have a following and know what you are doing, expect a much better ranking. These aren’t “cheap tricks,” or “black-hat” methods. These are real ways that when done correctly will skyrocket your stories ahead of everyone else and into the eyes of the readers.

This guide assumes you have read "Publishing Erotica: How to Make Your First $1,000" and "Publishing Erotica: Breaking Your Sales Cap." Without reading and employing the tactics within my first and second guide, this one will only work so well.

Trust me – I can’t even tell you how many messages and emails I receive every day from readers of my guides that have “finally made it” or been able to quit their day job because of the things they’ve learned.

$2.99 Amazon

>Write to market but keep your voice. So so so many people start out in romance writing split POV with snarky/sarcastic protagonists because that's what's popular. I'm always telling people to go with the market, not against it, but if your voice doesn't fit that and you struggle to write in that style then DON'T. I promise you people will still read your books even if your FMC isn't pulling out whitty remarks fast enough to give a reader whiplash. Romance can be fluffy, angsty, saccharine sweet, or a thousand other things. Figure out what your style is and own it.

If you can't find your voice or don't know what yours is, I strongly recommend Finding Your Voice to help you. It's in KU for 90 days (and probably 20 or so days into those 90 days). Definitely worth a grab. Plus it pairs well with Romancing the Beat. (Both authors write Romance and I would categorize them as contemporaries of Gwen Hayes.)

> Anyone have tips for formatting?

Oh boy do I! Honestly, for the first few months of shorts, I just did things on Google docs then uploaded a docx file to Amazon. That worked fine and looked okay and let me focus on what was important: writing more shorts.

If you want to get fancy there's a bunch of way to go: you can use Scrivener, apparently, as you're doing. If you have a Mac and want them to look really pretty you can get a program called Vellum (there are ways to get it on your PC, too, by simulating a Mac, if you really want Vellum). The two programs I've heard mentioned for Windows (or Mac) are Jutoh and Sigil.

Finally, if you want to invest a fair amount of time learning stuff, don't get frustrated very easily, and want complete control over your books, you can do something called hand formatting. That's where you go in and use HTML to make your manuscript look nice. I just learned how to do this and find it quiet satisfying. Check out A Filthy Book in a Fancy Dress by Cooper Kegel and Zen of eBook Formatting by Guido Henkel. Henkel also has a series of blog posts if you want a quick overview of what you're getting into. Both of the books are free to read with Kindle Unlimited though, I believe, and you can get a free month of KU if you're not already signed up. It's quite useful for doing market research anyway.

But, anyway, if your just getting started I'd say: just make it look nice in a Word doc and upload that.

P.S. I don't really know what I'm talking about. Just repeating what I've learned so far.

Hi dan

Facebook ads have only kept getting more expensive since I've made that post, and I hardly ever use them anymore.

I get my best results from amazon ads and ad stacking with book promotion websites now.

This book is one of the best resources for amazon ads.

This article is a great resource for book promotions. Also if you sign up to his email list you'll get another file with the top ROI websites.

The basic idea is to stack as many ads on consecutive days as you can during a launch or kindle countdown deal for a ranking spike, then using optimized keywords and product page to continue selling organically.

I also run a facebook group with about 200 horror/supernatural authors trying to help each other improve and market their work. Publishers are always popular, and it's a great place to swap ideas and promotions.

Cheers,

Well, first you must learn to edit yourself.


I'm the prose guy in my writing group, mostly due to the fact I write short stories, while my friends write longer works. You can't use "I'll edit it when I finish it" excuse when your story is 20 pages.

What helped me was listening to a few courses of Brandon Sanderson's lectures as well as Writing Excuses podcast, but while both are worthwhile, they aren't time-efficient (although free!).

What is time efficient, though, is the Little Book of Editing for Writers. I like this book a lot, because it's so concise. Not only it gives you advice, but also offers examples, allowing you to decide whether you agree with the reasoning or not on your own. And for the most part you'll end up agreeing, because the advice really is on point.

When you make the book as good as you can (which often takes several drafts and even rewrites), well, at that point you'll need to find a real editor, but maybe that's something someone else can help you with.

As a general advice, though, think about every word and what function it performs in the story.

So far, this is the best ebook example of an adult CYOA I've seen: https://www.amazon.com/Adventures-Whatley-Tupper-Choose-Your-Path-Novel-ebook/dp/B00408ASO6/

There are several online sites for collaborative CYOAs, but this is the best known one. http://editthis.info/create_your_own_story/Main_Page I'll admit though: I don't love them.

The original series is a lot better than people give them credit for. Even though they're geared for kids, they're sophisticated enough for adults to enjoy too. (I think I have located a copy of every single title so far).

By the way, Karen Woodward has written a good kindle short about the CYOA genre.

I'm writing one such book at the moment...

​

​

I actually wrote a couple publishing handbooks for Amazon and Smashwords... if you are new, you should check them out! It's free on the Amazon. They are basic and will get you publishing right away! When you are publishing, try to go with the biggest vendors such as Amazon, Smashwords, and Direct2Digital. If you can get your book/story in all of them, you'll be much better off!


Smashwords and Direct2Digital are both distributors. They distribute your book to many other vendors, which saves you time. Doing just a bit of research will save you a rediculous amount of time! Try checking out other guides on Amazon and join in Kindle Unlimited right away. You will find a wealth of knowledge from already successful authors!

​

I'm excited for you! Self publishing is an amazing career.

Depends on what was said. If it's the same thing, not enough depth, not connecting with the characters, poor prose then read some books on craft not just your typical craft books. This book is awesome, simple and FREE right now, https://www.amazon.com/Show-Dont-Tell-descriptions-characters/dp/3955337502/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=show+don%27t+tell&qid=1567056908&s=gateway&sr=8-1

This guy is great https://www.amazon.com/Verbalize-bring-stories-writer-guides-ebook/dp/B07B63CTKX/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=damon+suede&qid=1567056792&s=gateway&sr=8-2

​

There are youtube videos galore on writing, watch a few maybe pay for the Masterclass and watch everyone from David Baldacci to Judy Blume, even David Mamet looks good playwrite is even better to watch for a writer.

I would also read, read, read, read. Do you want to be the next Stephen King binge Stephen King, or is John Le Carre, then binge him. Read then kind of pick it apart, what is it about the author and their writing most appeals to you and how can you mimic that in your own way?

​

Then maybe join a critique group in your area or even on Facebook there are dozens out there.

Good luck

I'd like to nominate myself. I'm a single mother, and this last year has been very hard for me. I finally went onto antidepressants last November, which has made a slow improvement. I've had relationship difficulties (international long distance isn't easy), and my daughter has had surgery (tonsils and adenoids out) which has been followed by ongoing and severe reflux issues. It's been a rough year, and I know that the only way I get anything for Mother's Day is if I give my daughter some money to buy something at the Mother's Day stall at school. It would be nice to have another gift. My daughter tells me I'm the best mum in the universe and that she loves me all the time, which I love. Sometimes it's nice to get a little reward, though.

I would love this book, but with shipping it will be over $15. If that's not feasible, then these ebooks (1, 2, 3, and 4) would be great.

A lot of people ask me if I’ll ever write a book on marketing or publishing…the answer is I hope I never do. The reason is while I’m glad to dispense what I know (or think I do) for free, I don’t want to take money from authors…I want the exchange to flow the other way. The other reason why I won’t write one, is there are plenty of people who have already written books that are just as good as anything I would do – so you can just read those.

Here are some that I recommend:

• [Quit Your Day Job, A Guide for the Self Published Author] (http://www.amazon.com/Quit-Guide-Published-Author-ebook/dp/B005FM7P7E/ref=sr_1_20?ie=UTF8&qid=1335100306&sr=1-20) $5.99 by H.P. Mallory
  
  
• Goodreads for Authors
  
  
• Smart Self-Publishing: Becoming an Indie Author $4.95 by Zoe Winters
  
  
• Let's Get Digital: How To Self-Publish, And Why You Should $3.99 by David Gaughran
  
  
• We Are Not Alone: The Writer's Guide to Social Media $4.99 by Kristen Lamb
  
  
• [Write It Forward: From Writer to Successful Author] (http://www.amazon.com/Write-It-Forward-Successful-ebook/dp/B005ERY8Q6/ref=pd_sim_kstore_6?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2) $4.99 by Bob Mayer
  
  
• [Dollars & Sense: The Definitive Guide to Self-publishing Success] (http://www.amazon.com/Dollars-Sense-Definitive-Self-publishing-ebook/dp/B00584MJF2/ref=pd_sim_kstore_4?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2) $2.99 by Carolyn McCray, Amber &
  Rachel Thompson
  
  
• Let's Get Visible: How To Get Noticed And Sell More Books^1
  
  ------------
  
  ^1 This is the only book I’ve not read, but based on this guys blog, and his other book (which I have read) I think he definitely knows his stuff and I expect it to be an excellent resource
  

Hmmm... depends on exactly what you are looking for... (you may also want to pose this question in /r/writing).

Start with these if you're looking for fiction writing help: The 10% Solution by Ken Rand

The Elements of Fiction series (I personally liked Nancy Kress's: Beginnings, middles & ends.

Immediate Fiction I haven't read it yet, but it looks pretty good.

There are a hundreds of other books out there, and a couple that focus more specifically on style, but Elements covers the majority of the subject fairly well. This one might be a little closer to what you're wanting.

Hope this helped.

You can take the GMAT as many times as you want. Many schools, including the top-ranked ones, take the score that you designate... in other words, you get to choose which score the school sees.

Also, GMAT scores are good for five years, so it's never too early to start.

That being said, there's no reason you should not have a stellar GMAT score. All I did was go through the official practice book, and I got a 97% (I didn't even review the essay portion until two hours before the exam, in the parking lot).

The test is extremely "logical"... I don't know how to describe it other than that. Cheating like this article implies doesn't really help the students at all, since it's not based on memorization.

One last thing. At least for top-ranked schools, a high GMAT score won't get you IN, but a low GMAT score quite possibly might keep you OUT.

Essays are the most important part of the application process. Develop a "story" with your essays, and emphasize a united goal. I highly recommend giving this book a read.

Good luck!
Anderson '10

Go and buy these three books: The Language Construction Kit, Advanced Language Construction (don't worry, it's not that advanced), and The Conlanger's Lexipedia. And if your conlangs are designed for made-up worlds, then get [The Planet Construction Kit] (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Planet-Construction-Kit-Mark-Rosenfelder/dp/0984470034/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_3?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=W79ND56BKPK8EKXT2VQZ) too. If you want to make cultures that are not European then I'd also suggest The China Construction Kit!

Of all of these I'd suggest that you definitely buy The Language Construction Kit and see how you get on. I'd also suggest buying some grammar books of languages you're interested in, and even go so far as to learn a second language if you don't speak one. Having knowledge of at least one other language will help you a great deal.

Language building and world building go hand in hand in my opinion. The world, its geography, history, politics, culture, flora and fauna, all and more inspire uniqueness in languages.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0984470034/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_op7Pub04GQYCT

This is a book I got for christmas. It's a fantastic read for conworlding.

I highly recommend you read parts one, two, three, and four of a review of Janice Hardy's Understanding Show, Don't Tell (And Really Getting It).

This will take you through some great guidelines on show vs tell and touches on how that interacts with various POV's. I read through that whole review and promptly bought the actual book, which is even better. It goes into greater depth about POV distance and show vs tell and it has tons of meaningful examples.

Whatever saves to Word format is fine. Doesn't matter what you use, really. Remember that both mobi and epub are very stripped down - you can't have a lot of formatting in there.

So don't worry about what you're writing in (honestly, just use whatever's most comfortable - I've used Evernote, Google Docs, Word, and others, depending on where I am working).

Things like text justification and hyphenation don't matter much. In ebooks, the reader decides things like font size and font formatting. What you DO have to worry about are:

• Headings and other styles
  
  
• Page breaks
  
  
• Non-breaking spaces, hyphens, etc.
  
  
• Centering
  
  If you want to get serious about getting your formatting right, let me recommend the book I refer to most often for these questions: Zen of Ebook Formatting by Guido Henkel. His blog is worth checking out too.
  
  Or wait till I give another webinar on the subject. :)

This isn't specific to romance, but Rivet Your Readers with Deep Point of View has been immensely helpful in shifting my writing from shorter "tell" style of smutty shorts to more immersive "show" style of better written novellas/novels.

As a bonus, "showing" instead of "telling" will also explode your word count!

Well the most important thing is to just have fun with it. After all, it's your world.

You don't need to fully understand every aspect of a world in order to create one. Just have a general idea. Also you can ask any questions you may have and the community here will be sure to help you out. And if something is really stressing you, just take a break from it for a while. Work on something else and an idea may come to you.

That said I found this book to be incredibly helpful when I started out with world building, and it still is.

Bless your heart, darling. That's it.

I was going through the comments and didn't see much about where to find an editor or how to edit.

Here are my offerings:

http://www.the-efa.org/dir/search.php Type in a genre or place and see what the search finds you.

Self-editing how-to books:

[Savvy Self Editing](http://www.amazon.com/Savvy-Self-Editing-Developing-Editing-Process/dp/1418437964
/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=2Y6K8TCM225QI&coliid=I557WJNM4C04M) This is the one my own developmental editor (who cost me $1500.00 on a 100,000 word story, BTW) recommended. You absolutely can get a less-expensive editor, but I chose to work with someone who's been editing since 1988.


Wired for Story

Edit Yourself

Revising and Self-editing

And something quick, short, and cheap, but very useful (Kindle only):

$3.00 Little book of Self-Edit

Try out the 10% editing technique. The idea is to cut out 10% of your word count--to tighten up the prose. Search one-by-one for each of these and question their usage; delete if possible; be sure to turn them from passive voice to active voice if you must keep them.

• ly
  
• of
  
• that
  
• was
  
• were
  
• by
  
• very
  
• about
  
• ing
  
• And or But (at the beginning of a sentence)
  
• like
  
• ion
  
• felt
  
• hear
  
• smell
  
• saw
  
• taste
  
• touch
  
  For more explanation on what to do with these troublesome words, see Ken Rand's The 10% Solution. He got the idea of trimming 10% from Stephen King and made it actionable.
  
  Best part about this approach: it can be done non-linearly. There's no need to load up the whole plot into memory just to tighten up this sentence. In tightening up sentences the thought behind them usually becomes keen.
  
  What other words or word fragments do you guys search for?

The only one I've read so far is 100 Successful College Application Essays by The Harvard Independent. It's pretty much what the title says it is - a collection of essays from kids who got accepted into Ivy colleges. There was some commentary from counselors and such. I learned a lot from the book and would recommend it.


Here's an Amazon link.

The Planet Construction Kit is a great resource for worldbuilding, covering almost all aspects of society and general setting from cosmology to biology, history, culture, religion, technology, map making...

http://www.amazon.com/Planet-Construction-Kit-Mark-Rosenfelder/dp/0984470034/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1286906911&sr=1-2

Its companion book, the Language Construction Kit, is an invaluable resource for creating conlangs if that was of any interest to you as well.

http://www.amazon.com/Language-Construction-Kit-Mark-Rosenfelder/dp/098447000X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1268637297&sr=1-1

This one and this one (which is the one you recommended to me). I really love how Henkel explains a lot of the reasoning behind some of the code used (which is totally my thing). The first one was great for introducing me to the basic concepts and is a quick/clear/concise how-to guide. Plus, it has some neat tricks for setting up macros and templates, which cuts down on time for future projects.

/r/conlangs !!!

Here's a good podcast.

Book from the guy that created Dothraki (he's also on the podcast every now and then) about constructing languages

The language construction kit. Gives you a general overview of how languages do things and how you construct languages

Second part of the LCK. Highly optional

After you're done with either the podcast or the fist LCK, you might as well get into the grammar of other languages instead of using language construction things.

Don't do auxlangs, though.

Edit: There's also a planet construction kit in case you want to get straight into world building as well

Screenwriter's Bible is a must read. Super informative and also just fun to read. Lots of humor that helps you get through some of the text about formatting and script nuances.

This blog post has a pretty good rundown of some of the better ones: 5 Books on Screenwriting

This one also isn't specifically for pilots, but is fundamental reading for any storyteller.
The Art of Dramatic Writing

I try to think about what state I want my characters to end up, then think of their current state-of-mind and develop an arc that can dramatically get them from current to future state and throw in both internal obstacles (like self-doubt) and external obstacles (like an event that causes a set back).

For example I was working on a story where a character becomes a henchmen (think stormtrooper or Cobra Viper from G.I. Joe) because his life was aimless. He realizes his organization is evil and has to rise up and bring them down. I knew the end of the journey was him finding his voice and inner strength and I had to start him at a point where he didn't value his own beliefs and he faced challenges that forced him to make moral choices, those challenges defined his character arc.

I recommend getting an old copy of The Art of Dramatic Writing to thumb through. And as you consume fiction, like movies, TV and books, think about where the character landed at the end and how different were they from the beginning. Examples from couple of well-known movies:

Black Panther

Beginning: As a new king, T'Challa was concerned with being worthy enough to honor the tradition of the Wakandan kings that came before him.

End: T'Challa learned to forge a his own, different path as king by opening up Wakanda to benefit the entire world.

Arc: He faced internal obstacles such as self-doubt, conflict from of B'aku who thought the status quo needed changing, Nakia who thought Wakanda can do more to help the world, and Killmonger who took his throne with a plan to abuse its power. He had to win these people and through that learned that keeping his power secret serves no one.

The Empire Strikes Back

Beginning: Lando Calrissian sees himself as a neutral party that just wants to do what's best for his city.

End: He joins the Rebel Alliance

Arc: Being neutral meant betraying an old friend and making a deal with the Empire, along the way they kept changing the terms of the deal, which further imperiled his friends and Cloud City's autonomy. Once he realized Vader couldn't be trusted, he picked a side at great risk to his city and personal fortune.

Your library should have or can order any of these for you:

Accepted! 50 Successful College Admission Essays
Gen Tanabe

100 Successful College Application Essays
The Harvard Independent

There really isn't much difference between third person/first person except the use of I/She/He and how much you're allowed to reveal to readers. One thing you want to avoid (I find it easier to look for this in editing so that I'm not slowing down on my first draft) is to keep an I out for the words -I think/thought, I feel/felt, I see/saw, ect. Anytime you have these words are similar, it's telling.
Ex. I felt a shiver run up my spine vs. A shiver ran up my spine. Those words tend to draw the reader out of the book, disconnecting them.

I found the book Rivet You Readers with Deep POV to be helpful. The last book in the chapter is dedicated to first person, though, like I said, most of third person show vs tell applies.

https://www.amazon.com/Rivet-Your-Readers-Deep-Point-ebook/dp/B007PUMQ1O/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1494940914&sr=8-2&keywords=deep+pov

Hi there! Don't get downhearted! I was in a similar position but noticed a jump in sales once I made my first bundle. This was helped by improving my keywords (which I then went back and re-did all my books and saw a difference). The advice in this guide really helped me:

https://www.amazon.com/Publishing-Erotica-Complete-Collection-Guides-ebook/dp/B07H6N6158

It's also available as smaller books depending on what bit of knowledge you need to know-I bought the set 'cos I like to plan ahead!

Also! Don't spend too long editing and promoting too much and concentrate on getting more stories written (I'm my own worst enemy for this one, mind you...)

Good luck!

I guess it depends on whether or not you want the program to do the formatting for you.

For example I plot and write in Scrivener but then I strip the story out into a plain text file and format it manually. (It really doesn't take long once you've learnt the basics of html etc.) Once the formatting is done, I shove the html file into Calibre and convert it to epub and mobi.

It sounds like a crazy way to do it, but I don't get any weird formatting issues in my files at all. Check this page out if you think this is the route for you. That guy also has a book - Zen of eBook Formatting which is just a clean version of his blog posts.

HTH :)

I just bought and read This book. Short, concise, and really practical advice. It also includes a checklist you can flip to (and a link to a printable version) for each step the book goes over.

The book doesn't claim to be 12 years of English classes. It claims to allow you to deliver a manuscript that has been ironed out a bit more. Waging a step by step war on a lot of the common, mechanical issues. It has helped me right away and I pull my printed checklist out before I allow the editor in the room. While it's just a basic coat of polish, I was surprised to see how many things can be cut and how stories become a little more lean and powerful in a few minutes. At 4.99 not a huge investment but I needed to improve on every little thing the book covered. I have been edited before and this system allows me to produce changes similar to those I've gotten back from editors, but were never really explained to me all that well.

It's being so inside the character's head that the author or narrator disappears. Deep POV can be in either first or third person. Generally, to get deep POV, an author would remove tags and all references to the narrator, even in first person. There tends to be a lot of tagless inner dialogue, and it's more fragmented in style. In third person, the dialogue isn't italicized, has no tags, and feels first person. Many authors will pull in and out of deep POV, depending on how they want their readers to feel about the situation at the time. It's extremely popular with current readers and many publishers.

The go to book for this is Rivet Your Readers With Deep POV by Jill Nelson.

These are a bit oversimplified, but here are some examples:

I saw the sun. (First person, distant/narrator POV)

Pinpricks of heat clawed. What is this explosion of light? (First person, deep POV)

"Is it morning?" she said. (Third person, distant/narrator POV)

The shutters bounced against the vinyl siding. Heat wrapped her face in a fleece blanket. Hello sun, old friend. (Third person, deep POV)

The 10% Solution is amazing. I started selling stories right after I started using the Solution to crunch my prose down, and even now it's the final step in my process.

And a lot of other writers have told me the same thing.

If you’re trying to write to trend, then you may want to consider the “accepted” standard for the genre you’re writing in. For example, paranormal romance tends to be third person and generally two alternating POVs (the h/H...and potentially the villain as the third). Urban fantasy, on the other hand, although similar to PNR, tends to be mostly first person (it appears to be shifting to 3rd person, 1 POV).

The biggest error I see with third person POV is making the POV too omniscient or all knowing. You should strive to write in deep POV and stay in your character’s head, regardless of whether you’re writing 1st or 3rd.

Of course, at the end of the day, you can do what you want. Writing is an art, after all.

Good luck

ETA: when I refer to 3rd person, I’m referring to 3rd person limited

ETA: i forgot you asked for resources/link. Rivet your reader with deep POV - https://www.amazon.com/Rivet-Your-Readers-Deep-Point-ebook/dp/B007PUMQ1O

You can read the author going over the basics in the preview

I highly recommend the book "Violence: A Writer's Guide" by Rory Miller. Rory was, among other things, a correctional officer in Oregon for 17 years and a civilian advisor to the Department of Justice in Iraq. Needless to say, he knows his stuff.

I have some but depends on what you want

About planets:
http://www.amazon.com/Planet-Construction-Kit-Mark-Rosenfelder/dp/0984470034/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1286906911&sr=1-2

About languages:
http://www.amazon.com/Language-Construction-Kit-Mark-Rosenfelder/dp/098447000X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1268637297&sr=1-1

i dont know about it too much but heard its good:
http://www.amazon.com/Maps-Imagination-The-Writer-Cartographer/dp/1595340416

This is THE deal:
http://www.amazon.com/How-Write-Science-Fiction-Fantasy/dp/158297103X

Another helpfull thingy:

http://www.amazon.com/Strata-Terry-Pratchett-ebook/dp/B003NX6Y6U/

Amazon (AMS) ads are a great place to start. If you haven't already, check out Brian Meeks book on AMS ads (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072SNXYMY)

Start with a small daily budget, monitor your ads daily and see how they convert. Ignore the current suggested bids as they can really be out to lunch.

The problem may not be your ads at all, they could be with your blurb, your cover, your price or your look inside.

Use AMS ads to set a baseline, then if they aren't converting as well as you would like (1 in 10) then consider tweaking each of the above, one at a time, leaving enough time between changes to monitor the impacts. That way you can see if the changes are having a positive impact. It takes a while, but it is worth it to have measurable results.

Absolute best book I’ve found on the topic. Show, Don't Tell: How to write vivid descriptions, handle backstory, and describe your characters’ emotions (Writers’ Guide Series) (Volume 3) https://www.amazon.com/dp/3955337502/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_iWRQCb4XW2BHT

I recommend these highly.

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CWGH46I/ref=oh_aui_d_detailpage_o04_?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00U5GIGGY/ref=oh_aui_d_detailpage_o03_?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I'd recommend you pick up two books to read that will go much further in depth than anything here:

https://www.amazon.com/Writers-Guide-Weapons-Practical-Reference-ebook/dp/B0108VCP9E/ref=as_li_ss_tl

and

https://www.amazon.com/Violence-Writers-Second-Rory-Miller-ebook/dp/B00CWGH46I/ref=pd_sim_351_1

That being said, you might like "Zen of eBook Formatting" by Guido Henkel.

http://www.amazon.com/Zen-eBook-Formatting-Step-step-ebook/dp/B00KJAH4HS

You may want to read the Planet Construction Kit by Mark Rosenfelder.

https://www.amazon.com/Planet-Construction-Kit-Mark-Rosenfelder/dp/0984470034/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1286906911&sr=1-2

Here is the mobile version of your link

There's always Mark Rosenfelder's The Planet Construction Kit

Henkel has a book that describes his tutorial + more. https://www.amazon.com/Zen-eBook-Formatting-Step-step-ebook/dp/B00KJAH4HS

Have yet to get it but I use his online tutorial every time.

While not completely on topic, I feel that I can't miss the opportunity to warmly recommend this insightful guide to violence in general.

For me coding is less hard than forcing myself to do a boring thing lots of times! The process goes like this:

1.) Google something like what I want to do. (Hope someone already did something similar.)

2.) Copy it. Make the changes to apply to my particular situation.

3.) It does something. Not what I wanted it to do. Cry. Swear.

4.) Google something slightly different and splice in the new information.

5.) Does it work? If so, yay! If not, go to 3. Repeat until forever.

Here's the little bit I stared at for 30 minutes until I figured out what I was doing wrong (and therefore what was right):

line = re.sub(r'<p>','<p class=first>',line)
line = line.replace('</span>','')
splitstring = line.partition('<span>')
line = splitstring[0] + '<span class=fletter>' + splitstring[2][0] + '</span>' + splitstring[2][1:]

which basically takes a line of the document which is encased in <p><span>[words]</span></p> tags and moves the span with my first letter class around the first letter.

It is simple and silly and dumb and I yelled at it and I sent my partner angry unicorn .gifs about it and when it worked at last I got up out of my chair and did a small dance in the middle of the room.

Hat tip to "Zen of Ebook Formatting" and "A Filthy Book in a Fancy Dress", the latter of which I can never ever search for ("A Naughty Book in a Pretty Dress"? "A Dirty Book in a Classy Dress"? "A Slutty Book in a Lovely Dress"?) and end up searching for BOOK DRESS FORMATTING DAMMIT until I find it.

https://www.amazon.com/Filthy-Book-Fancy-Dress-Formatting-ebook/dp/B00WIPMMEC

https://www.amazon.com/Zen-eBook-Formatting-Step-step-ebook/dp/B00KJAH4HS/

EDIT: to add a closed paren. you might think I would be on the lookout for that stuff after coding all day but APPARENTLY NOT