This is K.M. Wyland and you are listening to the 230th episode of the Helping Writers Become Authors podcast.

Writers Digest University has asked me to do another webinar this year

so I've been hard at work this week getting that ready.

This one will be on how to structure the overall plot of your novel.

And what we've presented live on March 6th at 11 o'clock Eastern Standard time.

I don't yet have a link where you can sign up but that should be available soon.

If you'd like to attend but can't make that date, you can still sign up and listen to the presentation later on but live attendance is

always great since it allows you to ask questions and me to answer them on the spot.

We had a lot of fun with my webinar on outlining last year, so I hope

you can join us for this one. Has your protagonist gone MIA? The latest post in the video series on my blog talks about a sure way to keep readers

from investing in your story and how you can bring your protagonist back on stage in time to hook readers. To watch it,

visit my website at helping writers become authors.com. New videos are

posted every Wednesday. And now I hope you enjoyed this week's podcast entitled Most Common Writing Mistakes,

Stories that Begin Too Early.

If there's one thing you don't want readers saying when they pick up your book, it's get to the point already.

Stories have lots of ground to cover in their openings, and authors can often feel as if they have to open early enough to give readers time

to gather all the essential facts before the action really heats up.

But stories that begin too early often suffer from their own set of problems, including

tedium, verbosity, and info dumps.

Stories that begin too early are problematic primarily in the fact that they're flat out watching do dissipate

in real time boring.

As Captain Hook says, skip the prologue.

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