Your basket is currently empty!
There is a very appropriate zen tale of the centipede who is asked how he manages to coordinate all those legs and promptly falls into a ditch. Like the centipede we do a hundred things without ever questioning them. It is very difficult and takes a great deal of diligence and practice to refashion your… Know More
There is a much discussed cliché concerning writing. This relates to the difference between a hard day’s slog and a seemingly purple day’s outpouring. The received wisdom is that the dufference is too minimal to make a case for inspiration providing greater quality than perspiration. A good friend and well known writer once said to… Know More
The convenience of an alerts list at the bottom of your growing draft novel is not to be underestimated. Take this note I placed there while writing Azimuth. I had just conjured it up in an early part of the narrative and was so taken with it I copied it for later reference: Find the… Know More
A reader has pointed out that my dichotomy of clay and lego to crudely divide approaches to writing are somewhat patronizing and imbalanced. That was not the intention. By clay I meant organically developed narratives where the writer is only one step ahead of the reader in understanding what is going on, while by lego… Know More
What I ended up doing in the last blog, was show how complexity in characters’ profiles provides a springboard for a book to go in many directions. We can demonstrate this by looking within the action of your own tale. You have three characters. If each displays only one characteristic (thus being a cipher) then… Know More
Let me pursue this question of character complexity. What I said in the last blog was that those that people our pages, to be life-like, have to have shades of dark and light. There is a unique moral colour chart for everyone and it includes sin and evil. What is revealed it is a consequence… Know More
The question of having characters as ciphers or as complex human beings who beguile, infuriate, seduce, anger, irritate and illuminate the reader in turns is crux. In much of fast food literature, written to formula whether bodice rippers, blood rippers, space trippers or crime grippers, women may be depicted in short authorial shrift. They fulfill… Know More
More nuts and bolts about sex, if that is not being too euphemistic! And euphemisms, metaphors and similes are often at the heart of scenes of physical intimacy. Having discussed people sneering at hyperbole in the last blog, it may help in the writing of sex scenes to consider two steps. First, determine whether such… Know More
It seems like a lot of you are now following these meandering blogs about writing. I have spent most of my life as a writer, both academic and fictional and there is much to pass on, be it idiosyncratic and personal. However, there must be much that is generalisable, should you take it and extrapolate… Know More