This week on the blog, I thought I’d talk a bit about tension. This topic isn’t entirely of a coincidence- it’s been a pretty dramatic twenty-four hours for me! Yesterday evening, I along with much of the rest of the world watched the football. England reached the final of a competition since 1966. Tension ran high as Italy and England battled it out neck-and-neck before Italy finally won on penalties. Then, my emotions ran much higher this morning when our dog
I thought it was about time for another blog in my ‘writing craft’ series – this week, we’re thinking about plot twists. Plot twists can be a great tool for writers to hook readers. It’s great when they leave readers shocked and on the edge of their seats wanting more. However, can they ever be overdone? I was watching a series on Netflix recently – I won’t name it, as then you will expect a massive twist! The series starts out
This week on the blog, I thought I’d talk about trying new genres, or writing different genres. From posts I’ve seen in the #writingcommunity on Twitter, writing in different genres seems a bit controversial. Some writers say the more genres the merrier, whereas others say it is good for an author to have one focus and one way to build up your market audience. It seems to be a mixed bag, too, for whether publishers will accept an author’s work in
This week on the blog, I thought I’d talk about the ‘murky middle’. If you’ve not heard the term, you can probably guess what it means. It’s talking about when you might start to run out of steam or lose your in the middle of your novel. Things can get a bit, well, murky. It can happen to everyone, whether you’re writing or editing, whether you’re a plotter or a pantser (head here if you’re not sure what this distinction means!).
This week on the blog, I’m thinking about antagonists. Why are they needed? What makes a good antagonist? Do they have to be the villain, or even a character in your novel? It’s a topic I’ve been thinking about for a couple of weeks. Mainly since I’ve started plotting, researching and writing what I hope to be the 4th novel in my historical fiction series. My main character (MC)/protagonist, Imogen, is a different character from my first three books. After spending
This week on the blog, I thought I’d discuss points of view (POV). This is probably one of Obi Wan Kenobi’s most famous quotes, talking to Luke Skywalker about *that* particular spoiler. It’s a fascinating example of how much storytelling can differ, depending on who is telling it. So, what are the different types of POV and how might you decide which POV is best for telling your story? 1. First person POV This is one of the most common narrative
For this week on the blog, I thought it might be time for another post about the writing craft – this time talking about dialogue. What makes ‘good’ dialogue in writing? It can be a tricky balance of things to achieve. Aptly, the subject of dialogue sparks much debate. Should ‘said’ be used after most dialogue, or is mixing up better (eg muttered, murmured, replied, asked answered, etc)? How much should writers use ‘action beats’? These are lines describing an action
For this week’s blog post ‘Where in the World?’ I thought it would be fun to discuss worldbuilding. To put it simply, worldbuilding is the construction of the world that characters inhabit. Depending on the genre, this might be another realm or a different planet, or it could be a small village in the south of England. Wherever you put your characters, developing that world means building the space that they live and breathe and interact with one another. Here are
It’s been a while since I last shared a blog post about writing, so I thought I’d do one today about character development. This is quite handy timing, as I am about to start thinking properly about prep for NaNoWriMo (affectionally named by participants as Preptober). If you’ve somehow not heard me talk about Nano before, it stands for National Novel Writing Month and it is an organisation inviting writers to try to have a 50K novel written in 30 days.