• How House of Cards can improve your writing in 2016!

    February 13, 2016 Blog

    Now that we’re in 2016, there will be an awful lot of writers walking around with a spring in their step, believing this will finally be their year. While I applaud the enthusiasm, I am also fully aware of how many writers I’ll meet over the next year that will feel the industry hasn’t given them a fair shot.

    Nobody is more sympathetic to this view than me. I have honestly felt ready to “make it” …

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  • 5 steps to writing a great villain

    August 24, 2015 Blog

    A couple of notes before you read this article:

    *I’ve referred only to films and not books in this blog because I feel it’s easier to make an example of characters whose arcs take shape over just 90-pages.

    *In the off-chance you haven’t yet seen some of these films, there are potential spoilers for The Rock, Rocky IV, Star Wars, Warrior, The Impossible, The Dark Night, 8mm, Unbreakable and X-Men.

    Now, let’s begin.

    To be truly absorbed in a story, we need …

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  • Writer Jody Medland takes questions about writing

    Author Q&A with Jody Medland

    August 21, 2015 Blog

    Right after Jody read the prologue to his debut novel, The Moors, he sat down and took a selection of questions from somebody who knows him incredibly well, his older sister, before taking further questions from the audience.

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  • How to beat writer’s block

    August 19, 2015 Blog

    Whenever I speak to somebody who has deep rooted aspirations of becoming a writer, it’s never long before they ask me this question and I’m going to be quite a little controversial here.

    I don’t believe in writer’s block.

    This isn’t me trying to be clever or insinuating that I have a stronger creative mind than those who claim to suffer from the dreaded “block of writing.” Far from it!

    I simply feel that “writer’s block,” as a …

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  • 10 steps to writing a marketable story

    August 12, 2015 Blog

    Before you say anything, I don’t personally believe there is a definitive list of 10 simple tricks to make you write the next best-selling book or blockbuster hit.

    So much goes into every book and screenplay that each finished story is invariably unique in some way, so you can never escape the fact that the hard work and determination needed to write a great story has to come entirely from the writer.

    However, I’ve been in the industry long enough now to have …

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