by John | Sep 15, 2025 | How Is It Going?, On Writing
The setting of your novel is as much a character as any of the actors in your story. It drives the action just as they do. It deserves at least as much attention from the writer. Well, I think so. The word “setting” covers many things. If you are writing...
by John | Aug 11, 2025 | How Is It Going?, On Writing
It’s a nice scene. It takes place at dawn, when the grasses are thick with dew. Under a cedar tree two sisters are discussing things that have happened, and why their world is as it is. We learn a bit about one of the sisters from the way she reacts. It It’s...
by John | Aug 4, 2025 | How Is It Going?, On Writing
“She was young to know such of life, and how to end it.” Does that work? As a first line, is it intriguing, or just pompous? Does it pull the reader in or put them off? To hell with it! What I have written, I have written: the first edit of my second...
by John | Jul 7, 2025 | How Is It Going?, General, On Writing
The End. I’ve written those words again. I’ve unwound the thread of my story all the way to its finish. The next thing is to look it over to see what more needs doing, and what needs doing differently. It’s a mental adjustment. I’ve been living with this thing for...
by John | Apr 14, 2025 | How Is It Going?, On Writing
My heroine is feeling her way through woods at night. So am I. She knows where she is. She knows where she needs to get to. The way is dark. She is groping with her fingers and toeing forward with bare feet. The path is muddy, stony, brambly. It leads downhill. Her...
by John | Apr 7, 2025 | How Is It Going?, On Writing
Marite, a student in Mexico, once asked me if I went through an endless chain of emotions while writing. I don’t know. Do I? Surely I do! I am an artist! I should be endlessly consumed by the emotions! I should be a seething, nay, gibbering mass of creativity, my...
by John | Mar 31, 2025 | How Is It Going?, General, On Writing
All right, I admit it. I did. I stole from someone else’s novel. I had been reading a retelling of the Arthur story. I wasn’t thinking a great deal about it, except the usual “I wouldn’t have done it like that” thoughts that authors often think when reading someone...
by John | Mar 17, 2025 | How Is It Going?, On Writing
In an earlier post I saw two approaches to planning our story: either we do or we don’t. Let’s develop that further. The two ways were: A. We get an exciting idea, jump on its back, shout ‘Yee-hah!’ and gallop off blindly in whatever direction it takes...
by John | Mar 10, 2025 | How Is It Going?, On Writing, WE
My near-future Science Fiction novel WE had reached the copy-editing stage. It was time for a last check on all the technical detail that I had written into its pages. . I’d done my best with this. I’d ploughed the pages of Wikipedia, talked with teachers, doctors...
by John | Mar 3, 2025 | How Is It Going?, On Writing
You are writing a historical novel. How much research do you do? I would say that you must show enough for the reader to believe, but no so much that it burdens your pages. When do you do it? Before, during or after you write your first draft? Different writers will...
by John | Feb 24, 2025 | How Is It Going?, On Writing
‘Books are like autumn leaves’ my father said. ‘They lie on the ground, and maybe they are beautiful. But they are soon hidden beneath the layers that come after them.’ There’s a melancholy thought! Books should last, shouldn’t they? Especially the ones we...
