Characters are the most important part of any story - without your characters, there is no story! Use the resources on this page to build your own character, and start to think about their strengths and flaws! Download and print out this worksheet to help you plan your character. Appearance Ask yourself some questions: What... Continue Reading →
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 →
(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 →
Those of you who have been following this blog from the beginning will know that the relationship between character and plot is one of my favourite subjects. The way the two run together, informing and supporting each other, is what makes brilliant writing. In a recent post I mentioned that I had a run-in between... Continue Reading →
The rather extraneous title of today's post serves to illustrate the feeling all writers get when their characters start running away from them in new and often unwanted directions. It sounds clichéd, but it really is true: your characters will come to have a life of their own. Hopefully this post will help you corral... Continue Reading →
Matthew Wainwright, Children's Author 