Welcome back. You have three characters you’ve been writing about – the child, the grown-up and the person in disguise. Perhaps you based them on people you know. Or maybe you made them up from scratch but have been getting to know them better just through writing about them. In this Lesson I’m going to […]
In this Lesson we’re going to look at how suspense works. This isn’t because you’re going to be writing super-tense genre fiction – although perhaps you will be. This is because suspense of some sort is useful in all storytelling, and it’s best to have an idea how it works. Most stories play with different […]
Welcome back. I have already given you my definition of a story – A story is about someone who is somewhere they shouldn’t be. Or: A story is about something that is somewhere it shouldn’t be. And you have begun writing the nothing draft of a story. You have two characters who have found something. […]
You can go straight to Lesson 5.Writing dialogue is something many beginning writers either avoid or rush. It can be hard to see how you can rewrite dialogue. If a character has something to say, don’t they just say it? And if you – the writer – change how they say it, isn’t that cheating? […]
Welcome back. Very often, people start writing stories but find they end or stop after a page or two. There’s nothing wrong with that if what’s been told is a complete story. There are different types of short story that are very short. You can find them online if you look up ‘flash fiction’. The […]
Exceptions In all these Lessons, I’m going to make some very strong statements about what stories need and how they work. There are exceptions. I know this. There are always exceptions. And you can spend your time trying to think of those exceptions. ‘But what about…?’ Or, you can take my statements on trust. You […]
Welcome to the Starting to Write Course. Thank you for at least taking a look at it. The aim of this Course is to get you writing and reading with energy, to help you avoid some painful mistakes, and to show you how you can rapidly improve your short stories. I always tell my students […]
Just so I have it all in the same place, I have compiled an incomplete list of former students on the Birkbeck Creative Writing MA (some taught by me, some not) and what they’ve gone on to write: Annalie Grainger: author of Captive, Simon & Schuster, 2015, In Your Light, Simon & Schuster, 2018. Abi Dare: author […]
The Passion According to G.H. by Clarice Lispector My rating: 5 of 5 stars I’m late to this, but – Clarice Lispector is the most interesting, probably the best, writer I’ve discovered in the last five years. When I read Agua Viva, I was really startled. She was writing a distillation of something. I wasn’t […]
Do you want to learn about writing? You’re in the right place. Maybe you’ve thought about taking a Creative Writing MA, but seen how much it costs. Or perhaps you’d like to go to a local writing group, but there isn’t one, or it meets at a time you can’t make. Or perhaps you just […]
