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We met Michelle properly on July 15th 2015, when she attended the book launch of our first paperback, The Moors. That this is where we met is a testament to Michelle’s tenacity as she is forever attending events about publishing to learn more about the industry. Also, she’s so personable when dealing with fellow authors that it’s no surprise her guest blogs are growing in both quality and quantity, and we’re delighted to have Michelle …
Whilst making my annual jaunt to the London Book Fair this year, I met a writer who told me that once he has started a project, new ideas become completely unwelcome to him. In fact, to try and stop new thoughts interrupting his flow, he would completely shut himself away, creating a tunnel vision effect that allowed him to reach the finish line without distraction.
Although I get the sentiment, this is in many ways the …
If you know me, or read my blog, you’ll be fully aware of how passionately I believe in character development and story structure. I feel they are both integral to the creation of a great story, and it can take a lot of time and effort to write a book or a screenplay in what I consider to be the right way.
If you agree with me and you’ve spent months or years of your life …
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” …
Of all the questions I receive, this has got to be the most common and so I thought I’d write an article I can usher people towards in the future.
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Whether you’re writing books, plays, musicals or screenplays, it’s vital that you master the fundamentals of a scene. I mean, that does without saying, right? After all, your work is essentially a long list of scenes, so if your individual scenes have something missing, how will your finished product be any different?
There’s one small problem. Writing a noteworthy scene is incredibly difficult. If you pull someone off the street and ask them to write a …
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 …
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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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 …
There’s writing screenplays, and there’s being a screenwriter.
The difference is that anybody can write a screenplay. I learnt my craft by writing dozens of them. However, they never went anywhere because they were rife with errors and not in any way industry friendly.
Being a screenwriter is more about the art of knowing who you are writing for and having a clear, concise, realistic plan of how you intend to get it to them. The difference …