As fun, and as liberating, as writing fragments can be, there comes a point where you have to focus to finish your writing project. Even if you feel like you’ve hit a wall. Especially if you feel like you’ve hit a wall. If you abandon every story you start, then all you’ll ever have are […]
How do you actually use writing advice?
Writing advice is pretty much everywhere in these glorious days of Google. Even before the advent of the internet, you could guarantee being able to find manuals that would provide you with all manner of writing advice. I even made a list of my favourite how-to books for writers. But given it’s now available in […]
How do you make dialogue more natural?
Do you look at your writing and wish you knew more ways to make the dialogue more natural? Or do you read what you’ve written and wished that you could tell characters apart so that you didn’t have to rely so heavily on dialogue tags? This week’s post aims to give you two techniques you […]
How to use your dialogue to show, not tell
That legendary director and master storyteller Alfred Hitchcock is often quoted as saying “Drama is life with the dull bits cut out”. Believe it or not, but the same applies to your dialogue. In books, you don’t often get those small and polite but relatively pointless exchanges of “Hi, how are you?” “I’m okay, how […]
Use Personality Quirks to Make Characters Pop
Think of someone you know. What’s the first thing that springs to mind? Chances are, it’s not what they do for a living. It’s probably not where they live or what colour their hair is. It’s probably a personality quirk. Something that makes them…them. Those little quirks, or foibles, are what takes a character from flat […]
7 Tips for Submission Success
Short fiction, be it flash fiction or longer ’short stories’, is a good way to learn dialogue, characterisation and structure. They are by no means “easy” to write, but they’re less daunting than a novel! Once you’ve amassed a few stories, you might want to get them published. Be aware there are hundreds, if not thousands, […]
