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It’s Time to Realise You’re a Talentless Hack
During the course of one’s career as an author, writer, scribbler, whatever you want to call yourself, there are peaks and troughs. Sometimes, it all works. You can do no wrong. Others, it’s the...
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Everyone talks about process
Famously, the internet is full of cats. Also – I am given to understand – pornography, but it’s the cats that I find, everywhere I look. Cats, and writers talking about their process. Sometimes I do...
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Post: Structuralism
Screenplay is structure, they tell me. I tell them that it’s lucky I don’t write screenplays then, but this makes no difference, apparently. They tell me that even novelists need to be aware of the...
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Rules of the Written Road
Kurt Vonnegut came up with eight rules for writing fiction, nicely referenced in an interview with Andrew O’Hagan, and noted there by O’Hagan as: “His rules for good writing are entirely bogus – he...
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Talking Heads
Recently, I’ve been critiquing with several other authors for the purpose of learning more about craft. They are staunch proponents of making dialogue do the work of carrying the story. Some time back,...
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Making Word(s) Count #2: Playing the Trump Card
Action and suspense sequences and scenes with high emotional content (as in romantic situations) are probably the most important type of scene that can be sabotaged by excess verbal baggage or...
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Don’t Crush That Writer (Hand Me the Duct Tape) – Two
There are two parties involved in critique: the critiquer and the critiquee. Okay, I just made those words up. So, let’s say there is the giver of the critique and the recipient of the critique. This...
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Practical Magic
Arthur C. Clarke posited long ago that any significantly advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. I’d like to turn that aphorism on its head and suggest that any significantly advanced...
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New Writers Ask: Can’t Craft Be Learned?
Whut? I’ve had a number of writers I’ve mentored or critiqued ask me some form of this question. Sometimes it’s a plaintive wail expressing the writer’s earnest hope that they can overcome their...
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