It has been a long while since I made a post. To start off with, a had long period where an error by BlueHost made my site innaccessible. After that it was difficult to pick up the habit again. Then it became self-fulfilling – the longer I went without posting, the harder it was to […] The post Do authors need a webpage? appeared first on About Writing ..read more

A ghost walks the halls of his old manor house, accompanied by that of the serving girl he pushed down the well. Can they move on from their past? And is there a place from the here in the present? Jane – Stephanie Campion Nathanial – Roger Surridge Successful author and all round bloody good […] The post LW Radio Plays: Walking the Halls by Toby Frost appeared first on About Writing ..read more

Amazon, Price: £7.99 Jamie is a little boy who has lost his mother and his memory, but is lucky enough to find a home in the household of David, a wealthy widower whose own wife and son died in an accident. Tillie, Jamie’s mother, has been released from prison – where she was sent for […] The post Rigby A, “Looking for Jamie”, Historical Fiction/Romance, (Indie 2019) appeared first on About Writing ..read more

Elena Ivanovna Popova is a grieving widow – perhaps grieving a little too hard. Grigory Stepanovitch Smirnov is an army officer looking to call in a debt from her dead husband. But will this unlikely couple find more than they bargained for? Elena Ivanovna Popova – Sonia Backers Grigory Stepanovitch Smirnov – Nick Calderbank Luka […] The post LW Radio Plays: The Boor by Anton Chekhov appeared first on About Writing ..read more

The other day I came across something called the “What the Hell” effect in a cognitive therapy-ish app called “Fabulous.” It struck a chord with me, so I did some reading. Today I’m going to talk about how struggling with strict targets can lead to a complete failure to meet your goals, particularly when trying […] The post Writing and the “What the Hell” Effect. appeared first on About Writing ..read more

Emotion is the engine of fiction. Emotion is the medium of story. Now, we’ve talked about showing emotions through action rather than declaring them in text. However, before you can show emotions, you have to know what they are. You need to know how your characters feel, and what. What would make them happy? What […] The post Lesson 12: Emotion is the Engine of Fiction appeared first on About Writing ..read more

You read that right. Happiness should be used sparingly, precisely, and deliberately. In this essay I’m going to talk about the structural components of happiness: how and where you use it in your story. Desire is the most fundamental of feelings. We all want things. We all want things that we can’t have. Showing our […] The post Lesson 11: Happiness is Boring (and this is how you use it) appeared first on About Writing ..read more

Eventually you’ll finish your first draft. Now you must sit and read your work. Maybe you’ll think “this is fantastic, it does exactly what I want!” Great! Correct spelling/grammar mistakes and move on. Your readers can disillusion you later. Sometimes the manuscript will feel okay but not great. This is a very difficult situation, because […] The post Lesson 10: Self-Editing appeared first on About Writing ..read more

Link :Amazon, Goodreads. Price: £6.29 When Jude is 7 years old her parents are murdered and she and her sisters stolen away to live in the High Court of Faerie by the true father of their oldest sibling. Faerie is a cruel and dangerous place at the best of times, especially for mortals, but by […] The post Black H, “The Cruel Prince (The Fold of the Air Book 1)”, Romance, (Little, Brown Young Readers: 2018) appeared first on About Writing ..read more

Emotion is the principal vehicle for storytelling, and we only feel the story through the experience of the protagonist: we feel what they feel, and if we don’t know what they’re feeling then we don’t feel anything at all (except, perhaps, bored). Thus, the reader must always know how the characters or feeling. Lets look […] The post Writing Lesson 9: Showing and Telling appeared first on About Writing ..read more