Writing and Editing
How to write descriptions your readers won't want to skim... We know it when we see it. A character enters a room and spends paragraphs noting the location of each piece of furniture. Pages devoted only to describing every dish at a feast. The dreaded purple prose. We’ve all come across excessive, unnecessary or just …
Juliet never set out to be a spy, she just, sort of… fell into it. Surrounded by secrets, monitoring the movements of Fascist sympathisers, Juliet is glad to leave both the boredom and the fear of her wartime experiences behind her at the end of her years of work. A decade later though, Juliet finds …
This time last week I was flying home from Kuala Lumpur, the final stop on our epic Honeymoon adventure. I’ve been fortunate enough to do quite a bit of travelling with my family before I left home, but this was definitely the most involved trip I had ever taken. Lewis had exclusively travelled within Europe, …
Sometimes you meet somebody and you know, within moments, that this person is meant to be in your life. The connection is just instant, and perfect, and in next to no time you can’t imagine your life without them. That’s how Jack King feels when he meets Kate, and what follows is a whirlwind romance …
If you discovered a secret that could tear your family apart, what would you do? What if keeping the secret could cause as much pain as revealing it? This is the choice Cecilia is faced with when she opens a letter from her husband labelled to be opened only in the event of my death. …
A little while ago I wrote about the dangers of head-hopping in writing, and mentioned that it’s a technique (or, depending on how you look at it, a mistake) often confused with the third-person omniscient point of view. Which kind of begs the question: what is the third-person omniscient perspective? And is it something you …
Tom Sherbourne and his wife, Izzy, have very different outlooks and attitudes. It’s one of the things that drew them together, each attracted to the mystery of the other. When a boat washes up on the shore of their remote lighthouse island, carrying only a dead man and a crying baby, the choice that they …
I’ve been eating almost entirely vegetarian for a few months now, and haven’t prepared a single meat-containing meal at home in almost half a year. I wouldn’t call myself by any means an expert in vegetarian cooking – I’m a decidedly average cook by all accounts – so I’m not sharing meal ideas because I …
There’s a dark force lurking beneath the surface of Sarum Vale. When a young girl is found pregnant and bleeding in the woods, it is the beginning of a series of dark events which will force teenager Jamie Harper to make some difficult choices in order to protect himself and the people he loves. The …
Head Hopping (verb) – The practice of moving from one character’s perspective to another in the middle of a chapter or scene. Widely considered to be poor writing practice, although it does have some staunch defenders out there as well. If you’re thinking that it sounds a lot like a third-person omniscient perspective, you’re not …
