Tips for Writers

It’s a perennial question – and it came up again on the webinar we hosted last week in The Hero’s Journey. What is more desirable: that you plan your story […]

Whatever creative narrative you’re writing, the challenge is to establish a balance between character and story. Readers are happy if the writer uses story simply as the washing line on […]

The most successful drama series of the year in the UK offers us a number of insights into the variety of means writers have at their disposal whenever they need […]

The cygnets of Priory Marina Lake are learning to fly. Every day for the past week or two, seven of the offspring of our resident swans have taken to flapping […]

In life, we prefer to avoid conflictual situations, ducking out of confrontations, avoiding arguments, generally seeking peaceful co-existence with our fellows. In fiction, by contrast, where [...]

Life is a narrative composed of multiple overlapping stories. This is true for every one of the eight billion or so there are of us. Each of those stories can […]

We sometimes throw around words like “truthful” and “honest” when we’ve been particularly impressed by a novel or short story we’ve read. We say of James Joyce’s Ulysses that it […]

A quick word on a trick to hurdle that bane of all writers: self-consciousness. It came in an article in the Guardian about writing as “truthfully” as one can. I’ll […]

  World-building is a literary activity most closely associated with science fiction or fantasy. If you’re going to imagine a universe in which technologically advanced societies have [...]

You’re the Time Master, able to manipulate it with ease. You can put your foot on the accelerator and speed it up, whizzing past temporal landmarks in a blur; or […]

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 […]