CLARENDON HOUSE PUBLICATIONS

As writers, we have probably heard the advice ‘Show, don’t tell’. It’s worth closely examining why this advice is prevalent and why it is so popular. We might also discover why it doesn’t always apply.   We can imagine a spectrum with pure ‘Telling’ at one end and pure ‘Showing’ at the other.   If you want to communicate information to a reader ‘telling’ is a quick, efficient way to do that in a short amount of time. Relaying information is sometimes part of what story-tellin

In How Stories Really Work , the term ‘Irony’ is used to describe a whole genre of fiction. It has very particular characteristics in comparison to the other three basic genres, Epic, Tragedy and Comedy, and knowing what these attributes are is a powerful thing when it comes to understanding fiction as a whole.   Irony, though, is also used as a a specific writing technique within its own and other genres. It is a storytelling tool used to create contrast between how things s

Independently publishing your book can be a daunting process, but there is hope. Of all the data and requirements you’re bombarded with, about 85% of it is now possible to handle very easily through online publishing, as you will discover. Though you are entering a marketplace in which literally millions of books are published in various formats around the world each year, the good news is that there is plenty of good news.   The job of a publisher, though, is to turn a good

In finishing your story, you are trying to do two basic things:   1. Make the ending seem like the consequence of everything that has...

If you are really serious about wanting to make a living from writing, there are five hard-hitting bits of advice that you probably need...

There is a hyper-critical situation which comes before all others for writers, and that is that, though you desperately want to be a...

Markets of various kinds all around the world have been transformed by the rise of the internet, and the world of publishing is no...

I've always been fascinated by fiction -what it is, why it works, why we read it. ​ I wanted to know why certain books appealed to me,...

1. Core Ideas   At the heart of whatever it is you want to communicate as a writer is a core, whether that’s a very definite idea that...