Writing Fiction: What's the Point? Part One
What’s the point of writing fiction? If you said to create an effect on people, you’d be right. That’s the ultimate goal. No arguments...
Reading Fiction and the 'Little Black Box'
As human beings, we all carry around with us a ‘little black box’ which physically we know as the amygdala and mentally the primitive...
Creating an Imperfect World
I hope that you can see that perfect worlds and perfect characters are the bane of good stories. Devise a paradise in which all desires...
Creating a 'Second Nature'
Sometimes, writers assume that the reader understands their fictional world completely. The writer has “lived” in that world for so long,...
Crafting Effective Characters Part Four
At the lowest level of the Character Development Chart, created figures almost by definition begin to lack life of their own. Here,...
Crafting Effective Characters Part Three
The Comic Companion plays a pivotal role in many, many successful tales. Scout in the beginning of To Kill a Mockingbird , Bilbo at the...
Crafting Effective Characters Part Two
Master authors through the centuries have already devised guidelines for thousands of successful characters, firmly grounded in a range...
Crafting Effective Characters Part 1
Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counsellors, and the most patient of...
A Word About Fan Fiction (and Fiction Itself)
I recently watched Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker and it prompted me to consider a few things about the way fiction works, including...