Columns: Tag – Publish
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Writing Quips and Tips
Publish your love story
We need your short stories and novels! A story without a reader is like a horse with no rider. Or a romantic without love.
Writing Quips and Tips
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Writing Quips and Tips
Writing Romance - Five Tips
Many people think Romance writing is a bit like knitting. There’s a pattern to follow and, even if you’re a bit clumsy at first, you can knock off a finished product in a few afternoons while the kids are out playing.
Writing Quips and Tips
Writing Romance - Five More Tips
Good Romance relies on good characters. We need to believe in them. They should be strong and complex enough for us to identify with them.
Writing Quips and Tips
Romance – Why People Read It
People write romance for all kinds of reasons. But if you’re considering starting your first love story, it’s a good idea to know why people read them.
Writing Quips and Tips
Romance - Why Write It
If you think Romance is a lesser form of fiction, go off immediately and read Pride and Prejudice.
There are many kinds of genre fiction, but nobody accuses Ian Rankin or Ruth Rendell of being lesser writers – simply because they write Crime. Genre fiction has certain expectations and constraints. But what else you do with it is up to you – and your talent.
Writing Quips and Tips
Writer’s Block - Managing those pesky writer’s blues
I don’t believe in writer’s block.
Every day I ever sat down to write, I thought I wouldn’t be able to do it. I always sit down sweaty-palmed, wondering if I’ll be able to get a word on paper.
That’s why I believe writer’s block is another way of saying “fear”. And it’s just another excuse for not pushing through it.
Writing Quips and Tips
Characters and how to lift them beyond the cardboard cut out
A friend of mine is a fine writer, whose first book was a great success.
His characters were beautifully drawn and tugged us into a poignant memoir. But he had always longed to write a novel. I couldn’t wait to see it.
When he showed me a draft, I couldn’t believe it. The characters were cardboard stereotypes.
Writing Quips and Tips
Dialogue is real speech but better
Everyone recognises good dialogue when they see it. But few people can write it. So here’s a quick guide to really good dialogue:
Writing Quips and Tips
Writing dynamic dialogue
You’ve written a really crucial dialogue that will end your characters’ marriage. It should be dramatic and poignant, but instead it seems flat, unreal or, worst of all, dreary.
What’s wrong with it? It will change your characters’ lives. Why doesn’t it affect the lives of your readers?
Here are a couple of quick hints that will lift a plain or dreary dialogue and give it dynamism:
Writing Quips and Tips
Show, Don’t Tell and how to use detail effectively
His desk was bare, but for a human skull, with a cigar clamped firmly between its grinning teeth.
Immediately, we know a huge amount about this person, without anything having to be explained.
By now, the concept of “showing” rather than “telling” is pretty much accepted. But in numerous writing workshops, it’s become clear that people may accept the concept, but they’re often unsure how to to put it into practice.
Writing Quips and Tips
Book research is like make up
Research is like good make-up. It should make you look better, without drawing attention to itself.
As a writer, you have to do far more research than you’ll every use in your book. But once you’ve done it, you’re tempted to show it off. Resist the temptation.
Writing Quips and Tips
Romance, Lesbian vs Straight
Both straight and gay Romance writing is about love. Both involve the intensity that we long for in our humdrum lives. They make us believe – that great love is possible, and that Romance is alive and well.
Writing Quips and Tips
Writing Sex and how it can change your life
Every scene, even a sex scene, should take the story forward and develop your characters. Before your characters have sex, ask yourself why. Sound familiar? Probably because it sounds like your mother: “Before you leap into bed, dear, ask yourself why on earth ...”
Watch a novel grow
A blog about writing a novel
This is the start of a blog that I’m hoping will be done and dusted in five or six months. It is a blog about writing a novel, in which I will entrust you with my thoughts, my hopes and my doubts regarding the book-under-construction.
Writing Quips and Tips
Writing a book - the secret
I sometimes imagine all the unfinished novels in drawers. All the characters who will never finish their journeys; the stories that will never draw to an end.
Perhaps that in itself could be the starting point for a story. (Just an idea.) But why is it that so many people start out on their first novel with such enthusiasm, put so much effort and time into it, and then …?
Writing Quips and Tips
Characters - beyond the cardboard cut-out
A friend of mine is a fine writer, whose first book was a great success.
His characters were beautifully drawn and tugged us into a poignant memoir. But he had always longed to write a novel. I couldn’t wait to see it.
When he showed me a draft, I couldn’t believe it. The characters were cardboard stereotypes.
“But where are the kind of characters you had in your first book?” I asked.
“But that was non-fiction. This is a novel. I have to make them up.”
But you see, you don’t. You can, but you don’t have to. If you work from real life, think of a real character and … lie. Change them to suit your story.
Writing Quips and Tips
How fear shuts us down
Why do we feel that, if we’re successful at writing, it ought to flow all the time? It won’t, you know.
Last week I wrote about writers’ block and how it is experienced by different writers. I’ve been thinking about it since and thought it worth another word or two.
People pounce on the word “blocked” to explain the unexplainable: the inability to continue writing. Part of the fear associated with it comes from the mysterious nature of writing.
Writing Quips and Tips
Writing Sex (and how it can change your life)
7am – 1pm: Sex
2pm: Emails and admin.There’ve been a number of days when my diary has looked like this. Let nobody tell you writers don’t have a tough life.
If some future archaeologist excavates my diaries, he’ll write: “The ancients were an insatiable people …”
Writing Quips and Tips
Journals for Writers
Oh, I know you kept a diary when you were fourteen.
Your awful brother probably picked the lock and read steamy passages to his friends. But even so … a journal kept properly can help your writing in many ways. A journal is a safe place to expose yourself, explore your own responses and to be vulnerable and honest. No-one will see it and no-one can judge you on it.
My mother once told me that I shouldn’t use my diary for teenage venting. “What happens if someone publishes it when you’re dead, like Anne Frank.”
But I believe that’s quite the wrong way of looking at a journal. Don’t imagine an audience – it makes you self-conscious. You can demand that all your journals be burnt upon your death. Or write as illegibly as I do – then no-one will ever decipher a word.