Or, The oddness of characters. Characters are funny old things. We dream them up, give them lives, names, faces,bodies, likes, dislikes, all manner of mannerisms, friends, families, wants, desires, needs, passions; and yet, for all that, they can remain stubbornly two-dimensional, trapped in the words on the page, struggling to come to life. This is... Continue Reading →
What’s in a name? that which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet; So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d, Retain that dear perfection which he owes Without that title. Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, scene ii The above lines from Romeo and Juliet are often taken by writers... Continue Reading →
It’s official. I want a divorce. Not from my wife, of course. She’s the loveliest creature on this good earth, and no matter how hard things get in this marriage the D-word is one that will never come up. No, I would like a divorce from this novel. I have hit a period in the... Continue Reading →
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsPfpQuBpmE Welcome to my first ever video blog, in which I take you through my Google Docs setup and explain my thought processes behind re-drafting 'The Singularity'. I don't actually do any writing in this video — although I may upload a video later in which you can watch me struggling with a draft. Apologies... Continue Reading →
Writing a synopsis is, for most writers, nothing more and nothing less than an interminable, howling chore. I speak from experience, having struggled endlessly to condense my 150,000 word epic fantasy into 500 words or less. It was, needless to say, a low point in my creative process. Then I came upon this very helpful... Continue Reading →
As promised, here's a little peek at my process of writing. I'm just doing this in case anyone was curious. At the moment I'm doing my continuity edit on Coals of Fire: Ash, so this is a nice little interlude for you fine folk to have something slightly different. I'm also attempting to write some... Continue Reading →
The end of the first draft, for me, is always something of a cathartic experience. The ideas that have been boiling in my head for months (and, in the case of some scenes, years) are 'on the page': I've pinned them down, given them substance, made them physical. In the case of the more abstract... Continue Reading →
Well, I promised you a new Lifting the Lid, so here it is. Today I want to spend some time going over my actual process of writing; that is, the nuts and bolts of what happens when I sit down with my laptop or iPad and just write. So I'm assuming at this point that... Continue Reading →
(Slowly) making my way through sort-of second draft edits on Coals of Fire: Ash at the moment. It's interesting, the difference between writing fantasy and thrillers. I've never written a thriller before, so the experience is a new one, and I'm learning every day. One of the main lessons I've learned can be boiled down... Continue Reading →
I. It's the smallest word in the English language, yet it has the biggest implications. As writers we are concerned with the idea of self: what it means to be a human being, how people grow and develop, how we cope with problems and how we overcome adversity. Of all the viewpoints in which we... Continue Reading →
Matthew Wainwright, Children's Author 