WHY Sitting. Sitting on the Esplanade. Sitting and waiting. Waiting for what? If I knew the answer to that question I wouldn’t be here, I’d be far, far, away, beyond those blue hills I can see when I turn my head and look back towards the town; beyond the edge of that straight horizon directly […]
How to hook a reader, plot or character?
My dog got a lovely gift this Christmas, hope you do too! Happy Writing. Be it people or animals, if I suddenly care what happens to them I become interested in the story itself. It is arguably the key reason ‘Homeland’ spawned three series; the plot is terrorism the watchability is Carrie and Brody. Plot […]
Five Minutes of Flame. – When Nigella’s Twinkly Lights Go Out.
Nigella Lawson; as divisive as Marmite on a good day, but at the moment her once revered culinary abilities and the poetic descriptions of her creations are the last things on anybody’s lips. So where did it all go wrong? How could our love affair with the twinkly-lit muted scenes of conviviality turn sour overnight? […]
Mind the Gap, NLP and Me
Guest blogger Andrea Myers is a certified master practitioner of NLP and her blog focuses on mind maps and filters. Before you dismiss this as “pseudo science with quack factor stats” remember this, we learn, read and write in different ways. If we can increase our readership, or inject credible characterisation from looking at how […]
The Wonderful World of Foreign Rights
The guest blogger this week is Sam Curtis and her mission, which she chose to accept for thirteen years, was Foreign Rights. Over to you Sam Foreign Rights WHAT IS IT? Foreign rights is a specialised field of publishing, whereby the translation rights for a specific title or project are sold in another language. I […]
‘Silence’ – Stream of Consciousness
An example of the literary technique ‘stream of consciousness’ by SW member Emma Wilson that illustrates the benefit of free-flow writing. Getting down what comes into your mind without interruption can be a powerful stimulus that can help to kick-start the creative process and help you get inside the mind of a character. Silence I […]