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The Art of Writing No. 18
Read more: The Art of Writing No. 18A 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
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The Art of Writing No. 17
Read more: The Art of Writing No. 17What 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
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The Art of Writing No. 16
Read more: The Art of Writing No. 16Let 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
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The Art of Writing No. 15
Read more: The Art of Writing No. 15The 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
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The Art of Writing No. 13
Read more: The Art of Writing No. 13More 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
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The Art of Writing No 12
Read more: The Art of Writing No 12It 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
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The Art of Writing No 11
Read more: The Art of Writing No 11What I have found useful in developing plot lines is as follows. Given that in these blogs I crudely dichotomise writers into two camps, lego and clay, let me look at how narratives are developed in each. Plot lines of the clay type writer are a little more mysterious than those of the lego. For… Know More
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The Art of Writing No 10
Read more: The Art of Writing No 10Having a writer’s block is like having a terrible on-going organic ailment to the writer, particularly to the artist whose self-value is almost totally and inextricably tied up with the need to express himself or herself in words. How we live and how we die is a conundrum we try to solve (or evade) throughout… Know More
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The Art of Writing No 9
Read more: The Art of Writing No 9How do you leave your writing each day? Have you a tendency to writer’s block? In Zen and the Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance by Pirsig there is a great vignette in which a student is unable to write, set the task of describing a building. The teacher tells the student to focus on a… Know More