Jo-Anne Richard’s blog

Unlock gripping stories by understanding the power of what your character wants! Jo-Anne Richards shares essential writing craft tips for fiction & memoir to create compelling characters and [...]

Here's why observation is the secret weapon of successful storytellers: A book doesn’t simply consist of plot, or even character. You want to spirit your readers into another world: make them [...]

Had you met me in my first year of school, you would never have pegged me as a future writer. Besides my awkwardness and social difficulties, I could not learn […]

I’m not sure that anything I’ve ever resolved to do at the start of the year has come to fruition. Something about the demands made by new year’s resolutions, the […]

We're thrilled to invite you to a free short story webinar with acclaimed writer, editor and publisher Joanne Hichens from Short.Sharp.Stories

I’ve been having that feeling again. The sense that you exist on another plane from other people. That there’s no one on earth who can truly understand where you are […]

Our Author Q and A series celebrates All About Writing community members. We hope this blog will inspire you to write, help motivate you to get to the finish line, […]

Our Author Q and A series celebrates All About Writing community members. We hope this blog will help motivate you to get to the finish line, offer support to the […]

Don’t feel guilty for focusing on your creative needs – your life may depend upon it My mother was raised a Calvinist, so I was taught that time taken for […]

I love being able to do this – it’s like offering you a magic carpet, and transforming you into a Venetian writer, practising your craft in a 16th century palazzo. Now […]

There’s a flat, yellow rock I swim out into the ocean to touch each day. It’s where I acknowledge what I have, give thanks … and beg favours of the […]

How did we get to December? Surely it was only last week that the other Joanne (Hichens) and I were swimming at sunrise beneath the towering cliffs of the Tradouw […]