The price of success as a sequel seed
At the end of your story, your protagonist and their friends should have achieved some elements of success. As readers, we celebrate with the characters and the story ends. Only now, the readers are begging for a sequel. What do … Continue reading The price of success as a sequel seed
The power of what if
The most powerful tool a writer has is the line of questions that begin “what if…?”. For example: What if you could see ten minutes into the future? What if they banned being smart? What if ghosts were real and … Continue reading The power of what if
Thanet Creative online events
Thanet Creative have started to experiment with online meetup formats. This COVID-19 thing seems unlikely to go away any time soon. As mentioned before, we are taking every precaution to keep participants safe. This has meant not restarting in-person meetings … Continue reading Thanet Creative online events
Some books should not have sequels
Some books should stand alone. Once the story has been told, to revisit the characters would rob the narrative of the depth of meaning. For such stories, sequels spoil them by diluting what made the first one great. A good … Continue reading Some books should not have sequels
Dialogue and dialogue tags
Today we will take a look at dialogue and dialogue tags to answer some common questions. How often should we writers follow dialogue with descriptions of reactions of the speaker? How much is safe to leave to the reader’s reasoning … Continue reading Dialogue and dialogue tags
Writing competition Hi 2020
Happy London Press are running a nationwide writing competition for unpublished writers. Clare Newton of Happy London Press told me that the idea behind the competition is to give UK new writers a chance to get their story published. Winners … Continue reading Writing competition Hi 2020
Writers explore research for fiction
Fiction is, by its very nature, something you make up but that does not mean that research cannot play a part in your preperation. Why research for fiction? Before we look at researching for fiction, we need to first understand … Continue reading Writers explore research for fiction
The challenges of first-person perspective
Thanks to Jason for this suggestion, we are going to take a deeper dive into the complexities and questions that arise from using the first-person perspective with the past tense. The problems and possible solutions to them. This is a … Continue reading The challenges of first-person perspective
Story endings good and bad
I have been challenged to write about story endings. Which, if I am honest, I do not feel so confident writing about. I know when endings are good. I can try and work out why I feel an ending is … Continue reading Story endings good and bad
How to create three-dimensional characters
In this post, I am going to try and cover all of the suggested topic “how to create three-dimensional major characters, versus two-dimensional minor characters”. Thanks to Allan for suggesting this topic. I am not confident I can do this … Continue reading How to create three-dimensional characters
The use of tenses and narrative viewpoints
For reasons I am going to explain, today we take a dive into tenses and narrative viewpoints. I recently asked in our Facebook group for topic ideas to write about. One of the requests was for an article about tenses … Continue reading The use of tenses and narrative viewpoints
Thanet Creative Skills Centre
Thanet Creative is proud to announce its online writing skills learning centre. Free form writing (free) Modelled around the way we run in-person sessions, our first course is a self-directed collaborative learning space. We might not be able to meet … Continue reading Thanet Creative Skills Centre