Monday Motivation

Richard is flat on his back after a small operation, and can’t sit up to type. A sad state of affairs for any writer. So instead of a fresh Monday […]

I’ve made much over the years of a writer’s peculiar capacity to imagine himself into the consciousness of another human being, to share his feelings, to be able, in a […]

Much is made of the psychology of winning. An immense army of sports psychologists now earns its living advising and counseling both teams and individuals as they prepare for their […]

Why do we read fiction? There’s a range of obvious answers – we love intimate encounters with strangers who pose no danger to our cosy view of the world (although […]

We’re tethered to a bollard on a jetty that sticks out into the centre of our lake here in Bedford. Across a stretch of water that we call Swan’s Way […]

This is a story about how a gauzy attachment to a stereotype was shattered by the facts. On our travels on the canals and rivers of England, we have encountered […]

Writing is rewriting. The first idea is not necessarily the best idea. Your protagonist must want something – badly. Writing is not the best way to prepare financially for old […]

How do writers improve? They write. They read. This is not contentious. It’s how writers have worked since the stylus was invented and the first papyrus scrolls hammered into existence. […]

Unmotivated action is unbelievable and erodes the relationship between writer and reader. If, as a reader, you don’t believe that a character is capable of a given act, then you […]

Let me develop a scenario, beginning from what really happened and then inventing elements that might turn it into a story, along the lines, you might have guessed from a […]

Recently, preparing for a webinar on the role of humour in stories, I totted up the number of television comedies I’ve written. It comes to somewhere in the region of […]