Tips for Writers

How self-aware should your fictional characters be? It’s a decision that needs some consideration, since it’s part of your protagonist’s make-up and personality. There is no short answer either. [...]

This is a counter-intuitive piece of writing advice.  After all, you want to get your writing out there, I know that. You do want to be read, even if only by family and friends. But I believe the [...]

We tend to associate research with non-fiction writing, and imagination with fiction. But in fact, both are required for both forms of writing. They’re closer than you might think. As writer [...]

Yes, yes, you’ve heard this before. Be observant. Listen to interactions in the world, to the way people speak. That goes without saying. But your listening practice should go deeper. Listen to [...]

We all know the old writing truism: never tell when you can show. But I’ve recently come to realise that many people misunderstand what it means to “show”. I’ve come across those who believe that [...]

Back in the misty dawn of time when I was a working journalist, two jokey truisms were common currency among hacks. “I love being a journalist. You meet so many interesting people … and they’re [...]

When I taught young journalists, I told them to stop halfway through their story and ask themselves: Am I bored? Last week I suggested a couple of questions you could use to interrogate a story [...]

When I trained as a journalist, I was taught to ask: So what? It’s an important question. You’re boggled by reporting on a large and complex event, trying to get all aspects of it down on your [...]

So you’ve worked out a story, and you think you’re ready to start. Only, there’s one decision you haven’t made: from whose perspective should you tell the story? There’s often not an easy answer [...]

“So there’s this woman, see? And she has a child from a previous relationship, but the father didn’t know he had a child. The mother of the child struggled as a single mother, but now the father [...]

Reading an unpublished memoir, sent to us for assessment recently, I was initially beguiled by an entertaining anecdote, with vivid characters. Ah, so far so good, I thought. But then we moved to [...]

“Everybody who writes fiction draws from their own life, but if it ended there, it would be very boring,” says writer, Judy Blume. I came across her advice the other day and it chimed with me [...]