FlashPIC #30: How thirsty are you
Do you know how it feels to be thirsty? Really thirsty? Your mouth is dry so your lips are gummed together, the insides of your cheeks cling to your teeth. Your sharp-edged teeth cut into your tongue....
View ArticleHow Gail Honeyman writes
Gail Honeyman “I thought it was important that Eleanor was never self-pitying, because I think as a reader that is when you lose sympathy for a character. Even if [a character] has been through...
View ArticleGreat Opening Paragraph…109
“Honora sets the cardboard suitcase on the slab of granite. The door is mackereled, paint-chipped – green or black, it is hard to tell. Above the knocker. There are panes of glass, some broken and...
View ArticleFlashPIC #31: clock at Waterloo station
Time marches onwards. What if you could stop it… for a minute, for an hour? Here is a writing tip from the Writers’ BLOCKbuster series. Try this picture to kickstart a flash fiction story or a decision...
View ArticleGreat Opening Paragraph…110
“There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs Reed, when there was no company, dined early)...
View ArticleFlashPIC #32: cutting down trees for firewood
During the Second World War the Tiergarten, Berlin’s popular inner city park, was made unrecognisable as the trees were chopped down and used for firewood. Here is a writing tip from the Writers’...
View ArticleFamous writers, reading… William Faulkner
Double-Pulitzer prizewinner William Faulkner looks comfortable, reading The Silver Treasury of Light Verse. This book was published in 1957 in America by New American Library and the photograph of...
View ArticleHow Jeffrey Archer writes
Jeffrey Archer “I am not a writer, I am a storyteller.” [address to students in India, in November 2016] Archer’s writing regime is ruthless. “I rise at 05.30 every morning and I write from six until...
View ArticleGreat Opening Paragraph…111
“A woman, not yet fifty-seven, slight and seeming frail, eats carefully at a table in a corner. Her slices of buttered bread have been halved for her, her fried egg mashed, her bacon cut. ‘Well, this...
View ArticleFlashPIC #33: feet beneath the table
Two pairs of feet, and knees, and legs. Unidentified. Anonymous. Gender undetermined. What is happening here? This is a writing tip from the Writers’ BLOCKbuster series. Try this picture to kickstart a...
View ArticleHow Philippa Gregory writes
Philippa Gregory “What is so wonderful about fiction, especially if you write it as I do, in the first person, is that you are there. In a sense it’s not as though I’ve taken the history and given it...
View ArticleGreat Opening Paragraph…112
“3 August 1873. I was never so frightened as I am now. They have left me sitting in the dark, with only the light from the window to write by. They have put me in my own room, they have locked the door...
View ArticleI agree with… Allison Pearson
With ‘How Hard Can It Be?’ the follow-up to bestseller ‘I Don’t Know How She Does it’ about to be published in 2017, novelist Allison Pearson said: “I gave the first book the wrong ending. She goes and...
View ArticleMy Porridge & Cream read: @janedavisauthor #books #literaryfiction
Today I’m delighted to welcome novelist Jane Davis. Her ‘Porridge & Cream’ read is The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy. “My list of favourite novels may change, but it is always topped by Pat...
View ArticleFlashPIC #34: is it red or is it orange
Two people. Two opposing views. Consider a pair of lovers, a marriage, or two lifelong friends. Each has one strong conviction, which the other hates. So far apart are their views on this subject that...
View ArticleHow George Saunders writes
George Saunders “My room is flooded with family photos, there’s a desk, a printer and two guitars that I play when I’m stuck in a paragraph. I work with an obsessive quality, but I’m wary of the...
View ArticleHow Lee Child writes #amwriting #writetip @LeeChildReacher
Lee Child “I love beginnings… Everything I do, I base on what I love as a reader,” he says when asked about his approach to writing. “I write one book a year, but read about 300. I’m more of a reader...
View Article#FlashPIC 35 Leaves on the Footpath #writingprompt #amwriting
Imagine being an alien, a foreigner in a strange land. Forget what you know. Open your mind to the new. This is a writing prompt from the Writers’ BLOCKbuster series, designed for all writers of...
View ArticleGreat Opening Paragraph 113… ‘A Good Man in Africa’ #amwriting #FirstPara
“‘Good man,’ said Dalmire, gratefully accepting the gin Morgan Leafy offered him. ‘Oh good man.’ He presents his eager male friendship life a gift, thought Morgan; he’s like a dog who wants me to throw...
View ArticleFamous writers, writing… Rose Tremain
When I first saw this photo I spent a little while trying to read the spines of the books on the shelves behind Rose Tremain. Pictured here at home in Norwich, her shelves look reassuringly normal: A4...
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