I know, you want to write the next Lord of the Rings, or possibly the next Game of Thrones. So do I, to be honest. But I also want to read as many more epic fantasies as can be brought to the bookshop table, and sometimes I go looking for them in the Kindle shop….
Okay, so we’ve talked about the equipment you need to write your novel, about finding time and space for writing. We’ve considered structure, setting, characters and plot plans, and we’ve done as much research as we need to do to get to the stage where we feel it’s possible to write about this setting. If…
Last week, I started to talk about the structure of stories. At its most basic level it’s true to say that a story has a beginning, a middle and an end. But there are other things that you might want to think about before you start to make a plan for how to write your…
So, you have an idea for a story. You’ve asked yourself lots of questions and you know you have a central situation in which one or two main characters find themselves, which they don’t like and want to change. The essence of any story is to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. In…
Sorry about this. I normally write my ‘Write on’ post on Sundays in readiness for the Monday coming, but was ill over the weekend, and still am, so I wasn’t able to. I will catch up as soon as I can put one word infront of another again and have them make sense. In the…
Getting Started – the tools of the trade. Hoards of people want to write a novel. Just as doctors find that everyone they meet tells them about their ailments, authors find that everyone tells them about the novel they intend to write. Authors generally nod politely, say “oh, how interesting!” and go home secure in…
So, I noticed that nobody had posted on The Macaronis for a while, and thought that the blog post I was going to post today here would be probably much more useful to readers of that blog. (Because I’m sure all my friends are already perfectly aware of how to start a fire.) But then…
Being too mean and/or poor to buy new books, I went over to Amazon’s kindle store yesterday and downloaded a large variety of free fantasy and mystery novels. All of these appeared to be book one of a series, which made a lot of marketing sense. The risk of liking a free book so much…
I’ve held out for a long time against all this advice (indeed against the downright assumption) that all writing ought to be done in scenes. “But I write in chapters!” I cried. “Why should I bother with fiddly little bits of scenes when I can see the whole chapter in one lump and just work…
I had a great time at the UK Meet this year, though the intense (and wonderful) experience of being in a room with 40 odd other people who are all buzzed and happy and excited at being with kindred spirits did lead to me being utterly exhausted the next day. There have been several write-ups…
