Quick Tip #1: Plan Your Scenes

Here's an exercise that will make your novel draft better.

Most writers plan their novel, but they don't plan their individual scenes. So they sit down with an outline of plot points and no clear idea what actually happens to get from one to the next. 

Here's the fix. Before you write any scene, answer three questions.

One: What does your POV character want in this scene? Not in the whole book. In this scene, right now.

Two: What gets in the way?

Three: What is different by the end of the scene?

That's the Scene Intention technique. Intention, obstacle, change. A scene with all three is already alive before you write a word.

Do that for every scene before you sitdown to write your first, and you start with scenes that already have a life of their own instead of blank pages.