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So you’re writing the first pages of your novel and want to set up the fact that Linda is as happy as she could ever hope to be with her new boyfriend Marvin. It’s important to your story because [...]

It’s an old story oft told but one worth telling and retelling: simple is best, clear is most beautiful. It’s true that writing requires artifice and contrivance. Threaded through even the [...]

We recently advised one of our mentoring programme participants that a protagonist “lacked oomph”. The character ran away from problems and relied on others to rescue her. I didn’t respect her as [...]

Start every morning with a little strenuous exercise. Well, of course it would be good for you to walk around the park, or swim twenty lengths, but I’m actually not talking about that kind [...]

Remember just this one magical point, and you’ll be an infinitely better writer for it. There’s great power in specific details. I was recently asked: “But surely some specific details, about [...]

Two workshops in two towns – as removed as winter is from summer All About Writing split itself in two this past week to offer writing advice on different continents – and in two towns [...]

Let us consider all the things that dialogue can do: It enables us to elicit and transmit information: “What’s the time?” “It’s a quarter to four.” That but information can consist of any one of [...]

Hey ho, to the winner’s podium we go for the April/May Writing Challenge. (Here are the details on our June/July Flash Fiction Challenge). What we asked you to do, if you remember, is “write a [...]

Let’s look beyond the obvious in the old tenets of writing advice. We all know that “showing” is supposed to be better than “telling”. We know, for instance, that we should use all our senses [...]

All About Writing’s latest writing challenge offers the winner a literary assessment on 5000 words of writing worth R 2750 / £ 150 or a voucher to the same value to use on one of our courses or [...]

Mishaps happen all the time in writing. Most of them are little niggles, easily erased during a light edit. In one chapter the stable boy has a shock of blond hair; in the next he’s a girl with a [...]