

Emotional Commitment
Let’s say that you have a work jam-packed full of powerful ideas, bristling with exciting and recognisable characters, and filled with...


Attractive Power
Whether or not you have good ideas and working characters, the trick underlying everything is to be able to attract readers . Â This is a...


The Universe That 'Turns'
Of all of C. S. Lewis’s vast contribution to literature and to thought in the Twentieth Century, it is his last book, The Discarded Image...


'Characters' and Your Fiction
There can hardly be a work of fiction without this thing called a ‘character’. But there is a great deal of false and misleading...


The Character of Shakespeare's Richard III
Shakespeare’s Richard the Third  is an example of the first kind. Richard is an interesting example of a constructed figure: there is...


Ideas in Fiction
Ideas underpin any piece of fiction. They make the difference between the book that doesn’t get sold and the bestseller; they also make...


Larkin: An Overview
Philip Larkin has been called the other English poet laureate, though he is widely read in Europe and in the United States. Larkin’s idea...


The Difference Between Prose and Poetry
Classically, prose is defined as a form of language based on grammatical structure and the natural flow of speech. It is normally...


7 Things To Keep In Mind About Writing
A simple search on Google will give you a glimpse of the many thousands of books and blog posts that there are on writing. And on this...