Jumping through Hoops
The modern writer has plenty of hoops to jump through if they want their novel to be successful. Writing it is the easy part. After that there’s editing, both by yourself and by someone else (preferably a professional editor). Then, once your book has been accepted for publication, there’s all the preparations, rewrites, adjustments, etc. […]
Why is it easier to ‘tell’ rather than ‘show’?
I don’t know if other writers struggle with this, but sometimes I struggle to write in the ‘showing’ style, rather than the ‘telling’ style. For those of you who don’t know, this is ‘telling’: John and Mary were married in a beautiful ceremony. Gary was John’s best man for the day, and everyone thought Mary […]
I hate the word ‘very’ very much!
It may be a hangover from my journalism days, but I’m no fan of the word ‘very’. No, I don’t think it is a hangover from that. I know other editors who frown on words like ‘very’ as well. While some might have a bugbear about words that end in ‘ly’, ‘very’ is my pet […]
Talking Writing with Writers
Yesterday I spoke to a writers’ group. It was great fun. There were about eight of them, and we sat around chatting for a couple of hours. Well, if I’m honest, I did most of the talking, but that’s why they asked me to go. I talked about how to get a book published. Because […]
To outline or not to outline
Do authors need to write an outline when they are about to write a novel? I’d be interested to know whether or not my author friends do this. As far as my own writing goes, I have never bothered to do an outline, not even when I was at school. I always considered them a […]