Tag: writing tips
On Openings
After digging deep into the recesses of my mind and pouring out of ideas on a blank page or screen, what next? The gestation period is not completely over. I continue to create characters and plot as I write. That continual creative experience is vital to the way I work. For many writers, after this […]
Talking Yourself Down and Talking Yourself Up (aka: Fighting the Two-Headed Dragon of Insecurity)
Insecurity, covered with writhing, glinting scales, is a dragon – a truly frightening creature. But here’s the worst part: the dragon has two heads. The battle against the beast begins the moment you put your fingers to the keyboard with serious intent. Your intent is to be a writer. A writer in the wool-stocking, coffee-gesturing, […]
Finding the Courage to Write About My Abusive Marriages
When people think of courage, mountain peaks and raging rivers usually come to mind. But memoir writing can be one of the most courageous acts anyone ever does. I began to write my memoir after years of keeping silent about the abuse in my two marriages – except for writing in my journals. Compulsive journal […]
Is There Any Hope For Qualifiers?
Very, quite, really, pretty, a bit, just, fairly, rather, amazingly, almost, nearly, obviously, clearly… such naughty words! Or are they? Placed directly in front of adjectives or adverbs they are a shorthand method of qualifying the meaning of that adverb or adjective. Sometimes they flounce around by themselves only accompanied now and again by a […]
From Screenwriter to Novelist
I first wanted to become a novelist because I wanted to find out how it was done. I remember as a teenager being gobsmacked when I read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s last novel, Tender Is The Night, in an edition that explained how two different versions had been published, the second re-arranging the chronology of the […]
The Art of the “Difficult” Female Protagonist
Gone With the Wind, published in 1936, was extraordinary for many reasons. For me, the real genius of Margaret Mitchell’s work was her creation of Scarlett O’Hara, a rich, challenging, and difficult character. She’s spoiled, self-centered, scheming, and her family is on the wrong side of history. In spite of all that, we turn the […]
5 Mistakes I Made Writing My First Novel
I began writing my first novel thinking I’d get it done in a year. It ended up taking me four. Sure part of this was due to my full time job, and propensity to procrastinate, but if I had known then what I know now I probably could have made it happen. Here are the […]
Whose Point of View is it Anyway?
When I started writing my debut novel, The Other Mrs Walker (Mantle, 2016) I kept getting transported back to 1944. Not literally, of course (though that would have helped with research) but through the eyes of one of my characters.Then another. Then another after that. Sometimes this would happen within the same page. Sometimes within […]
The Cinderella Complex – Waiting For Mr. Write
How many of us have secretly hoped that we will be ‘discovered’ by some hot new literary agent or plucked from writer obscurity by a medium to large publishing house who will alter the course of our writing careers F-O-R-E-V-E-R? Go on, admit it. We’ve all day-dreamed about being the writing world’s equivalent to Kate […]
How To Create Tension
It’s all a bit tense… You might think of tension in a novel as being obvious ‘edge of your seat action’: the FBI agent running down the rabid serial killer, the guy dangling by his fingernails off a window ledge. In fact, all great novels are powered by tension of some kind or another. It […]
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