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The art of writing flat characters
While the main aim in telling a story might be to include round, complex characters in your story, it’s also equally important to include flat characters. In fact, some novels even contain a main flat character. An example of this is Agatha Christie’s Hercules Poirot’s detective mysteries. Poiro...
March 25th, 2024
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Exploring the structure of Freytag's Pyramid
Storytelling is at the heart of our human interactions. We tell stories when we talk to each other, explaining what has happened in our lives. We also pay money to consume stories in the form of movies, theatre, books and so on. So many stories use the Freytag’s Pyramid (or Triangle) method, and...
March 18th, 2024
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What is literary fiction? How to develop a literary voice
What is literary fiction? Literary fiction explores subtleties and complexities of language, theme and symbolism. It often tends to be character-driven rather than plot driven. Read a definition plus tips on how to develop literary writing style. How do you define literary fiction? If you ...
March 11th, 2024
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How to write a scene: Nailing purpose and structure
Understanding how to keep a scene interesting is a crucial skill for writing a novel or screenplay. Scenes are the basic building blocks of a chapter or act. Read on for tips on how to write a scene, plus analysis of story scene examples What is a scene exactly? The word scene broadly mean...
March 4th, 2024
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Fantasy book writing: 7 tips for captivating high fantasy
The fantasy genre endures for many reasons. It transports us to other worlds, stimulating the imagination. It draws on powerful archetypes and symbols. Fantasy is part of the larger category of speculative fiction, and is a massive genre. Read 7 tips for writing captivating high fantasy: Why ...
February 26th, 2024
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How to write your life story: 7 tips to start
Aspiring autobiographers often mail us asking, 'how can I write my own personal story?' How can I craft a compelling narrative?' It can seem like a daunting task writing and researching your life experiences. It can be a challenging writing project, but a valuable and creative one. It's a...
February 4th, 2024
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How to describe clothing in a story (with examples)
The clothes a person wears tells us many things: their status in life, for example, or their cultural affiliation or identity. They can tell us what era they live in, and even a person's current state of mind or intent. Understanding how to describe clothing in a story well will help y...
January 29th, 2024
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5 ways to start a story: Choosing a bold beginning
Great authors show us there are many ways to start a story. You could begin a novel with a narrator/character introducing himself, like Salinger's Holden Caufield or Dickens' David Copperfield. Or you could begin in the thick of action, as Ray Bradbury's does in his classic novel, Fahrenhei...
January 21st, 2024
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Decoding the Hero's Journey
Whether you're a fan of mythology or simply interested in the art of storytelling, let's delve into the world of the Hero's Journey. What is the Hero's Journey or the monomyth? The Hero’s Journey is a widely recognised pattern of storytelling and is essentially a circular storytelling ...
January 15th, 2024
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Top blog posts for 2023
1. Writing productivity hacks The word ‘productivity’ sounds dry and technical, like something that belongs in a boardroom. Yet writing productivity – being able to create with the least possible stress and struggle – is what divides prolific from occasional authors. This post takes a look a...
December 17th, 2023
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Fate deals the cards: a review and interview with romance writer Romy Sommer
Like taking a trip to Italy Reading Romy Sommer’s seventh romance novel, My Fake Italian Marriage, is like taking a trip to Italy. It’s a novel richly redolent of the landscape, food, smells and sensibilities of Tuscany, around the hilltop medieval town of Montalcino. The novel is set on an ...
December 10th, 2023
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Making dialogue sound natural
Whether you’re writing a novel or a short story, you are going to want to make your dialogue natural and true to real life, as it’s spoken in the real world. How do you go about achieving this, when ‘natural dialogue’ can be boring to read if you write it verbatim? As to why you should make y...
December 3rd, 2023
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