The Only Bit of Writing Advice You’ll Need in 2016
Adrian Faulkner
If you’re anything like me then every time an interview with an author is posted, you’ll find yourself scanning it for information about their writing process. It doesn’t matter whether…
writing advice
Why Characters Play Their Parts: Human Identity in Storytelling
Steff Humm
The exploration of human nature has been a writer’s responsibility since the dawn of the word. Storytellers are accountable, whether or not they aim to be, for a representation of…
Writing The Other Other
Aaron Miles
Writing the other can be a challenge, it’s often difficult to convincingly portray a character that greatly differs from your experiences. Without a personal frame of reference the writer is…
Writer’s Den: Describing the Indescribable
Thomas A. Knight
Hoglers don’t exist. You’ve never heard of them, and I’ve certainly never heard of them. As an object of the imagination, they defy description. This is a challenge that faces…
What To Do In December Now NaNoWriMo Is Over
It’s done. After 30 solid days of eye-bleeding writing NaNoWriMo is over. You step into December blinking, the ordeal over and your life strangely empty. After frantically trying to spend…
In Defence of the Chosen One
Victoria Hooper
One of fantasy’s most commonly mocked tropes is the chosen one. This makes sense; it’s also one of fantasy’s most recurring tropes, and there are a lot of very good…
What Photography Teaches Us About Writing
Nick Clark
Before a photographer takes a photo, a lot of considerations run through her mind: composition, metering, white balance, light sensitivity, aperture size. She does this because she knows it will…
How Writing Is A Lot Like Fighting – Part 1: Introduction
Overlord
I recently read The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson and there was a lot to like about it. With this in mind, I’ve been keeping an eye on the…
Lessons Learned from the Gollancz Festival for Writers
Chris Fagan
On Sunday, 18th of October, prolific SFF publisher Gollancz held the Gollancz Festival for Writers, as a sort of addendum to the already sold-out Gollancz Festival 2015. It had a…
A Look At Secondary Characters
It’s often said that characters are the heart of the story, and most of the time people are referring to the central protagonists when they say this. It’s only natural;…
The Hybrid Writer – Guest Blog by Gail Z. Martin
Gail Z. Martin
Once upon a time, you wrote a book, sent it to a publisher, and lived happily ever after. Now, it’s complicated. There are traditional, big publishers like the Big 5…
10 Things They Never Told You About NaNoWriMo
November, the month of charity moustaches and writing productivity, is upon us and no doubt, many of you are partaking in the annual NaNoWriMo event to write 50,000 words in…