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We went to the opera last week – one of those productions live-streamed from the stage of the Met Opera in Kennedy Centre, New York. It was one I wasn’t familiar with: Verdi’s La Forza del [...]

One of the themes I keep returning to in these Monday meditations is that of motivation – motivating your character, that is. Your character is, let us say, a mild-managed middle-aged man who in [...]

Attend, class! Today we’re going to build a character from the ground up. Our Monday Writing Motivation: The quirkful character will help you build a character fit for your fiction. Let’s start [...]

We’ve often quoted a guru who urged writers to use details that were “specific, accurate and honest”. The use of that last adjective has always puzzled me. How can a detail be “honest”? I’ve come [...]

We’ve often quoted a guru who urged writers to use details that were “specific, accurate and honest”. The use of that last adjective has always puzzled me. How can a detail be “honest”? I’ve come [...]

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 word, to see the universe [...]

I want to talk about names. Names we give our characters, names we give our houses and – our narrowboats. And what they can communicate about the meaning stitched through our stories. We’ve just [...]

Santa Maria del Rosario, on the Giudecca canal in Venice, is noted chiefly for its classical façade – enormous Corinthian pilasters support a heavy triangular pediment. It is an imposing presence [...]

How do you go about developing a character? I think every major character must have certain aspects to their personality in order for them to become real in my mind, and hopefully the minds of my [...]