Monthly Archives: October 2009

Learning is an often painful process. You have to leave the comfortable and familiar behind in order to gain new experiences and that often means admitting mistakes and adopting new methods. Generally speaking, we don’t like doing either of those … Continue reading →

There are countless mistakes, traps and pitfalls waiting for the unwary novice writer but with a little time and effort many of them can be avoided. Listed below are what I consider to be the top four. There are more, … Continue reading →

Fictional dialogue is a strange beast. It has to sound real and natural in the reader’s mind, but in reality it’s nothing like the live, everyday dialogue that we all use. For a start, much of the talking that people … Continue reading →

Readers demand living, breathing, suffering characters. And rightly so. We read stories for a variety of reasons; for escapism, for an insight into the workings of the world, to mentally interact with people whose problems we can identify with, to … Continue reading →

…or why critting is good for your writing! When you join a critique group what’s your reason? In my experience most writers join critique groups because they want some feedback on their writing. There are a few who only want … Continue reading →