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I tend to advise new writers against using the god-like omniscient point of view when they start writing. Using a distant narrator who comments on all the characters, and can see and understand [...]

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 [...]

We don’t always have another willing eye to judge our writing dispassionately. It’s a big ask. Your friends will hate you for it, and your partner is usually the wrong person altogether. A [...]

So you’re writing the first pages of your novel and want to set up the fact that Linda is as happy as she could ever hope to be with her new boyfriend Marvin. It’s important to your story because [...]

It’s an old story oft told but one worth telling and retelling: simple is best, clear is most beautiful. It’s true that writing requires artifice and contrivance. Threaded through even the [...]

We recently advised one of our mentoring programme participants that a protagonist “lacked oomph”. The character ran away from problems and relied on others to rescue her. I didn’t respect her as [...]

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 [...]

Two workshops in two towns – as removed as winter is from summer All About Writing split itself in two this past week to offer writing advice on different continents – and in two towns [...]

Let us consider all the things that dialogue can do: It enables us to elicit and transmit information: “What’s the time?” “It’s a quarter to four.” That but information can consist of any one of [...]

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 [...]

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? [...]

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 [...]