Sin#5: Crap at foreshadowing Foreshadowing is one of my favourite literary devices, which means it really pisses me off when people get it wrong. For those who don’t know, foreshadowing is the technique of hinting at events yet to unfold…
Sin# 4: Get em’ wet then leave em’ dripping A really bad ending can turn a great book into a disaster. In my opinion it’s one of the worst of all of my twenty-five deadly sins of writing. I can’t…
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…
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…
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…
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…
I’m hitting that dreaded point again… The trough of doom…no that doesn’t sound right. The depression of depression? The low of lowness? Ok, sod it I’m sticking with The Trough of DOOM™ You know how it is being a writer…
Zombies, zombies everywhere and not a brain to chew… Thank you to everyone who had commented on my blog this week, it was great to get some feedback on certain elements on the zombie worlds…and now for something really boring!…
Animal zombies! Cheesy or just harmless fun? Well I suppose a zombie bear would be pretty scary, but a zombie tortoise would just be plain funny. Imagine an already painfully slow creature struck down with stiff bloodless limbs. It would…