D is for deus ex machina
Sin #3: Writer cop out! Even if you don’t know what the term deus ex machina means, I can still guarantee you’ve come across this technique in a book or film many times in your lifetime. Deus ex machina translates…
Category advice
C is for conflict
Sin #2: No conflict! It is one of the most important rules of fiction writing, one that is universal for all books regardless of genre or scope or audience: A character must grow through conflict. I’ve lost count of the…
B is for back story
Sin #1: Incorrect use of back story Unless your book opens with a birth scene then your character will most definitely have a back story. They’ve been around longer than five minutes and will have done and seen a lot of…
A is for Aggggggghhhh!!
For every looming deadline, missed target, failed word count, grammatical error and even that bloody time when you just can’t think of another word for “…..”. Aggggggghhhh!! It’s the best way to explain that overwhelming sensation when you feel like…
Thursday of the dead
Back to the mechanics of my novel today and a little rant about plot vs. characters. I never really liked the idea that a book was character driven OR plot driven. It’s a common idea in the writing community but…
Zombies love Mondays
So zombies…grr…brains…and other assorted tropes. That’s right, I said it! TROPES! And stereotypes and clichés and axioms. I’ve mentioned the unmentionable in the zombie community, whispered the unspoken truth that breaks the code of zombie lovers worldwide (that’s people who…
Starting from scratch
This post was in response to a question on Writer’s Talkback forum about how to get started with a story, but I thought it might be useful for other people to read it here if they wanted to: If you’ve…
Losing passion for a project
I’m sure we’re all guilty of this, or at least I hope it’s not just me! You start a writing project, it’s all going swimmingly and then a couple of weeks or months down the road you start to get…
The Devil is in the details
How much detail to put in your novel? What a pain in the arse that one is! I remember in school, teachers ranting and raving about detail being king. If your story/essay wasn’t crammed full of insignificant details then you…