 (A guest column by literary agent (and author) Mike Nappa of Nappaland Literary.) To become a master at anything—basketball, rock-n-roll, fiction writing, even crime—takes about 10,000 hours of practice.[1] So, while you’re putting in (roughly) ten years of rehearsal toward your mastery of fiction, use these skill-builders help you: PLOT SKILL BUILDERS: 1. Play with a Child What you’ll learn: To plot with imagination. In Anika’s play-world, she’s a magical queen—so obviously that corner lamp is trying to dethrone her! Anything is possible in Anika’s self-story, and everything acts according to her imaginative worldview. A smart writer knows that Anika’s play-time is really uninhibited story plotting. Are you a smart writer? Then jump in and practice plotting with her! Make sound effects, crawl through swamps, turn yourself into a toad. Pay attention to plot decisions your child-mentor makes, and ask why. When you’re done, you’ll be exhausted—and ready to create something wonderful. 2. See the Song What you’ll learn: To visualize a story. Play this game anytime there’s music and a few minutes of unallocated time in your life. First, pause and listen—really listen—to the music. Imagine you’re hearing the score of a new movie, then set your mind loose to see the story happening in front of the song. Is it a romantic encounter? Clowns in a park? A lonely girl, caught in rain? Visualize it in detail. Afterward, if you like it, write the story as a short for an upcoming Writer’s Digest competition! DIALOGUE SKILL BUILDERS: 3. Tweet a Bank Robbery What you’ll learn: Economy of impact (fewer words = more power). The real power of dialogue lies in its ability to communicate a lot, using only a little. When characters economize conversation, they tell a fuller story because then every word matters. You can practice this economy of impact by writing a story told completely in Twitter dialogue. In your mind, create four or five Twitter identities, then “tweet” the events of a bank robbery—start to finish. Remember, every tweet is dialogue, and every line must be 140 text characters or less. Go!  77 Reasons Why Your Book Was Rejected: And How to Be Sure It Won't Happen Again! by Mike Nappa Buy the book HERE. Discover the tips and tricks to avoiding the rejection pile. You've done it! You've written the next "must have" book and everyone you know who reads your manuscript agrees ? it's guaranteed to be a bestseller. So why can't you find a publisher for it? For some reason (maybe even more than one) editors and agents alike keep rejecting your proposal. So what are you doing wrong? Discover 77 of the most common reasons why thousands of book proposals are rejected every year, and find out what you can do to make your proposal stand out from the rest. Working as an author, editor, and agent from more than 20 years, publishing industry veteran Mike Nappa knows the most frequent mistakes authors make in their proposals and then simple steps you can take to avoid catching a ride on the train to Rejection-ville. 4. Table-Read Your Words What you’ll learn: Whether your dialogue works (or doesn’t). Bad writers never read aloud what their characters say. That intentionally-deaf approach to dialogue is like throwing darts blindfolded. Sure, you might hit the target—but mostly you’ll just poke holes in the bar. Borrow from the film industry to avoid that mistake. Gather friends and family, assign characters, and hold a table-read of your manuscript. Pay attention to where people stumble or get confused, and to dialogue that comes through with clarity and power. If your dialogue works out loud, it also works in print—and that might get you published. CHARACTER SKILL BUILDERS: 5. Personality-Test Your Stars What you’ll learn: To make characters real. Once, I happily signed Jefferson Scott to a three-book deal. In response, he bought a psychology book about human personality. Next, he gave each of his main characters a “personality test” until he knew them inside out—their motivations, their unique perspectives, strengths, weaknesses, emotional triggers, and more. Needless to say, Jeff wrote great novels for me, full of real, believable characters. You’d be smart to practice character-building the same way Jefferson Scott did. A few books to help you are Jeff Gerke’s Plot Versus Character and David Keirsey’s Please Understand Me II. 6. Facebook Your Stars. What you’ll learn: To make characters 3-dimenional. Facebook is great for fiction writers. Here’s why: Everyone who creates a full Facebook profile must think deeply about his or her unique self. When it comes to practicing character development, you can use this to your advantage! Go ahead and profile each of your lead characters on Facebook. What pictures belong on your hero’s wall? What’s your villain’s life philosophy? Activities and interests of Johnny Q. Loverboy? Likes? You get the idea. Time spent creating profiles in Facebook will pay off later with 3-dimenional characters in your book. CREATIVE THINKING SKILL BUILDERS: 7. Spend a day without speaking. What you’ll learn: Creative perspective. Good writers help us see our world in ways we would never have imagined, drawing from their personal experiences with creative, divergent perspectives. If you’re ready to experiment with creative perspective, then try this: Take a vow of silence. How will you get through a day if you can’t speak? What obstacles, and adjustments, will you discover at work? At Starbucks? When you want whisper sweet nothings in your lover’s ear? Make notes during your silent hours, then apply what you learn toward a creative perspective in your fiction. Who knows? You might like it. 8. Use every fifth word in this article. What you’ll learn: Creative adaptation. As a writer, it’s your job to collect and organize words for maximum reader impact. Let’s practice that right now, shall we? First, highlight every fifth word in this article, then list them all (about 160 or so) in a computer file. Now, write a compelling story that uses every single word on that list at least once. Be creative—and have fun! [1]Malcolm Gladwell. Outliers. (New York: Little, Brown, and Co., 2008.) 40-42. This article is © Nappaland Inc. and was first published on Nappaland.com. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission. Visit us on the web at: www.Nappaland.com.  MIKE NAPPA is an award-winning theologian, as well as a bestselling and award-winning author. His highlight reel includes VeggieTales comics, the bestselling Coffey and Hill series of suspense novels (endorsed by the legendary Lois Duncan!), and the bestselling devotional book, Reflections for the Grieving Soul. He writes “coffee-shop theology” books, children's books, and lots of articles on random topics such as pop culture, grief, data intelligence, biblical studies, the publishing industry, and pretty much anything he finds interesting at the moment. Mike is proud to be a person of color (Arab-American) active in the publishing industry. Plus, he once met Stan Lee for 45 seconds, so you know, he's got that going for him too.  Pitch Agents at a Writers Conference in 2026:
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