You’re invited: Stow-on-the-Wold Writing Weekend
Explore the mysteries and the craft of creating story with a group of like-minded souls in that most charming of Cotswold market towns, Stow-on-the-Wold. Far from our everyday preoccupations and [...]
Monday Motivation: Notes on writing complex characters
We’re tempted to write characters who have a single, focused goal: they want to triumph over their enemies; they want revenge, they want X, or Y, or Z to the […]
An early bird gift to keep your writing from “sagging in the middle”
A year is much like a book. It’s easy to begin with enthusiasm. More difficult to keep your writing goals from “sagging in the middle” of the year. Our flagship […]
Writing Secrets: The one word you should not be using
I saw spots before my eyes as I was struck over the head by yet another “as” construction. I fully admit it, I’m an as-ist. I have developed an aversion […]
Monday Motivation: How not to write the bits that readers skip
Elmore Leonard said: “Don’t write the bits that readers’ skip.” One reader* asks the obvious question: What are the bits that readers skip? On the face of it, it’s obvious: […]
Writing Secrets: Why you shouldn’t be using dialogue tags
One of our mentoring participants had a thorny problem with speech tags the other day – which we were able to solve with examples from the work of another. A […]
Monday Motivation: Ruminating on writing from a hospital bed
I’m in bed in Section1, Room 4:1 of a large hospital not far from home. I’ve just been sedated and had a probe inserted down my throat to enable a […]
Writing Secrets: The “folksy” language debate – should you be using slang in your writing?
At a book launch I attended recently, the author was questioned about the great use he’d made of local slang, which embedded his new novel firmly in a time and […]
April Newsletter: We’d like you to ask you two questions
We’d like to ask you two questions We like to say that we’re in the business of dreams. Our aim has always been to help you make your writing dreams […]
Monday Motivation: How empathy helps you create better characters
Writing fiction requires that you deliberately trigger out-of-body experiences. You create characters whose consciousness you attempt to inhabit, so that you might the better be able to describe, [...]
Announcing the winners of our February/March writing challenge
Remember our February/March writing challenge? We imagined that someone in his or her final year of school is tempted to forego the path laid out by a parent and instead […]
April/May 2019 Writing Challenge: Working with subtlety
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 […]
