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How to fight your way out of a writer’s block: Free, live webinar  Douglas Adams, whose star shines brighter today than ever, is famous among writing and publishing communities for [...]

In 1953, a writer submitted a dog-eared manuscript to Faber and Faber. It was the seventh publisher he’d approached and he was not optimistic that it would be taken up. The writer was by all [...]

Remember just this one magical point, and you’ll be an infinitely better writer for it. There’s great power in specific details. I was recently asked: “But surely some specific details, about [...]

Let’s look beyond the obvious in the old tenets of writing advice. We all know that “showing” is supposed to be better than “telling”. We know, for instance, that we should use all our senses [...]

Mishaps happen all the time in writing. Most of them are little niggles, easily erased during a light edit. In one chapter the stable boy has a shock of blond hair; in the next he’s a girl with a [...]

I recently read a book called Moneyland, in which Oliver Bullough explores the many and ingenious ways in which the world’s superrich hide their wealth and avoid paying taxes. It’s as if the [...]

The instant we meet people, we start computing. We take in cues, without even realising it, and come to conclusions. Some of these we’ll adjust with time. Others we’ll confirm. It’s the same with [...]

Common threads run through many of humanity’s endeavours. Analysis in one field turns out to be startlingly appropriate in another. Artists seize on some of the more bizarre findings of quantum [...]

You answered our questions – and we’ve come up with a new free service Last month we asked you to participate in our survey and to answer two questions. Well, what were your answers? [...]

Behind every great story is a great idea. Trouble is, great ideas are not low-hanging fruit. They’re not the sort of things that occur to you every day while you’re brushing your pearlies. But if [...]

We’re tempted to write characters who have a single, focused goal: they want to triumph over their enemies; they want revenge, they want X, or Y, or Z to the exclusion of all else. They are, in a [...]

Elmore Leonard said: “Don’t write the bits that readers’ skip.” One reader* asks the obvious question: What are the bits that readers skip? On the face of it, it’s obvious: they skip the boring [...]