Advice to make your writing better
Could your writing be better? Of course. Same goes for all of us. Here are links to ten pieces of sage writing advice. Since we are celebrating story this month they’re all about aspects of [...]
Writing Secrets: We don’t always need the “where and when”
It’s Tuesday afternoon. Jo-Anne is in her study, working on her blogs. Imagine that as the start of a scene. Okay, it tells you what I’m doing, and when. It’s clear enough, isn’t it? But does it [...]
Writing Secrets: Take the leap – we’ll leap with you
We don’t need to follow your character into the bathroom. Her brushing and flossing routine don’t do it for us – or even for your story. If, however, she enters the bathroom to eye the razor [...]
Writing Secrets: Verbs are not always “doing” words
Verbs, we were taught at school, are doing words. We began to think of all verbs as busy little words, virtuous and strong. We never learnt that some verbs are busier than others, and some just [...]
Writing Secrets: What is your writing addiction?
My name is Jo-Anne and I’m a dash-aholic. When you mentor a number of manuscripts each month, you begin to notice that every writer has certain habits – little tics which begin to irritate the [...]
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Writing Secrets: It’s not boring to write “small”
One of the participants in our Creative Writing Course responded to a dialogue exercise recently with a scene containing a domestic argument between newlyweds. It was riveting – and raw. One half [...]
Writing Secrets: Don’t neglect the most evocative of the senses
When new writers are “using all their senses” to show us a person or landscape, they often neglect smell. And yet, it’s the most evocative of our sensory experiences. Emotions and memories are [...]
Writing Secrets: The case for showing, rather than telling
There’s been a great deal of discord about showing and telling in recent years. It’s a truism of good writing that we should always show, rather than tell. Recently, though, there’s been a [...]
Writing Secrets: What do reading and magic carpets have in common?
Specific details are magical. That was the gist of my blogs over the past couple of weeks: give us just one or two specific details, and we’ll be transported to another time and place. That [...]
Writing Secrets: It’s good for you – and it’s fun
Reading fiction is good for us – and that’s not one writer’s opinion, but the conclusion of neuroscientific research. Studies have shown that the language of fiction: imaginative metaphors, [...]
Writing Secrets: It might feel magical – but it’s not a mystical process
“Wow, that was like watching a movie.” This was the response of a participant in my Creative Writing Course to the writing of a fellow – and it came as a revelation to her. They all wrote [...]
Writing Secrets: The power of the specific
Use specifics to draw us in. That’s the key to writing well. Give us the particular, we’ll expand it, if necessary, to visualise the whole. I find this type of paragraph in a great many [...]
