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“He was a gentleman with red whiskers who always went first through a doorway.” This is how Guy de Maupassant described a character in one of his stories. Its details are so vivid and particular [...]

We like to say that the best beginning – of a book or short story – should contain a hook and a promise. Hook your reader, and promise them more. That’s fine in theory, posed one of our [...]

I am constantly exhorting writers to avoid adverbs, but to use instead “strong verbs”. And they respond by saying, “Okay, but what is a strong verb, and how do we recognise it when we see it?” At [...]

My daughter is named for a feisty Jane Austen character. My son is called Joshua – largely, I have to admit, because I fell in love with Mordecai Richler’s Joshua Shapiro and spent years trying [...]

It’s your job, as a writer, to care about every level of your narrative. It’s not just about the plot, or the characters and their words, actions and reactions. Those are all important, but in [...]

What is a “darling” anyway, and why should it be murdered? I was asked this in a workshop recently, and it brought me up short. We are used, as writers, to being told to murder our darlings, but [...]

Let’s talk about writing at its most granular level, where the choice of words writers make affects our experience as readers on a second-by-second basis. Take a passage like this, for instance: [...]

Richard is on a much-deserved break, so here’s a re-post of one of our earlier Monday Motivations, from 2016. Doubt sits at the right hand of all writers. We spend a day at work, struggling [...]

Readers are clever. They pick up the subtlest clues and don’t need the point hammered home for them. Last week I spoke about the subtle way Barbara Kingsolver leaves a trail of clues for us to [...]

A woman in her late 40s has lived for some time entirely alone in a forest hut as a conservation ranger. A man travels through her area of the forest, one she is ambivalent about, but is [...]

The world, our institutions, and our so-called opinion-makers, speak a great deal about facts v. fiction, about fake news v. the truth. But where does the writer of fiction stand when it comes to [...]

If you’ve been trying to write, you will no doubt have been challenged to adhere to the holy trinity of writing advice: write what you know, find your voice and show rather than tell. The first [...]