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Details are magical. Use them well and they can conjure us to another time and place. They can also transport us into the state of mind and emotions of the characters. The way a character sees [...]

I had a long conversation with a breadmaker last night. It was the occasion of a friend’s seventieth birthday party, and the tables groaned beneath a range of dishes too various and numerous to [...]

I was listening to a podcast the other day about two guys who’ve created an app which generates inspirational messages from random phrases. First they fed it vast numbers of inspirational [...]

It strikes me that discussions of political correctness are somewhat risky affairs, since it’s so easy in tippy-toeing around the sensitivities of others, to avoid debating a real and substantial [...]

I’m a great one for fooling myself, because so much about writing can make you sad. Saying goodbye to a great idea because it doesn’t carry your current story forward, or fit the personality of [...]

I think I might indulge myself and write a little meditation on prejudice, judgement and forgiveness both in life and in literature. What prompts this? Well, it was a piece I recently read in the [...]

Want to see your name in lights? We launch our first Screenwriting Crash Course of 2019 in a week’s time. It is, we think not quite modestly, a really good course, both practical and inspiring. [...]

Should you allow your characters to run off with the story? I was asked this again recently while teaching a Summer School course on fiction writing at a local university. It’s a romantic idea [...]

We launch our first Screenwriting Crash Course of 2019 in a week’s time. It is, we think not quite modestly, a really good course, both practical and inspiring. The question is: why learn to [...]

The winners of our December-January Writing Challenge are…  We had a great sheaf of entries for our Challenge which went like this: Describe a seaside holiday house, from the perspective of a [...]

You’re sitting opposite someone on a train. She is deeply engaged in a book and you take the liberty of examining her closely. She’s attractive and you enjoy your silent interrogation of her [...]

All About Writing’s latest writing challenge offers the winner a literary assessment on 5000 words of writing worth R 2750 or a voucher to the same value to use on one (or more) of our courses or [...]