How do I get the
idea for my novel?
I finished my second novel, Dead Moon, two weeks ago. My wife is reading it. She hasn’t fired me yet. My first novel, Vile, has spent the last four
months with an editor. Goodness knows if
it will ever emerge again. So, here I
am, starting a new novel again. But where will I find the idea? And how do I know it’s the right idea? And what sort of ideas make the best
foundations for your novel?
In this article I’m going to talk about putting together those first ideas that will launch your new novels. Ideas so strong, that at times they’ll feel they are writing it for you.
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How do you avoid writing a boring, uninteresting play?
I read more than 300 play submissions during our 2018 Little
Wonder Radio Play competition and there were an astonishing number that fell
into one of the three types:
Some has an interview and discovers it isn’t what it seems!
Someone is in a strange place and discovers they are/were
actually dead!
And worst of all…
Someone is waiting for something… but nothing happens!
But there have been some great plays like this!
All three of these story formats can (and have) be very successful – but they’re also very dangerous. In this article I’m going to talk about why your play about something waiting to be interviewed to get into somewhere only to discover they are actually dead is BOOOORING, and what you can do to avoid writing it again.[i]
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Today I’m lucky to be able to share an interview with author and playwright Kai Maristed. An experienced reviewer and critic, her short stories have been published in many of the magazines of note and she has taught writing in the US. In this interview, we talked about her latest project – translating Wedekind’s controversial Lulu Plays into English – and how working in different languages and mediums changes the way that you write.
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The exceptionally talented and handsome Oliver Warren is a screenwriter, director, and one of the judges in our Little Wonder Radio Play competition. Watch this space because in the not so distant future he’s going to be a big deal (we just slipped in before the feeding frenzy!)
In this short interview Oliver talks about his experiences as a writer/director, how the roots of storytelling can be found in everything from a script to a fashion shoot, and gives some advice on how to survive the tough old world of writing.
Click on “more” to get to the good stuff!
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Metaphors are more complicated than you think (oh boy!)
What are metaphors? What happens in a reader’s head when they see a metaphor? How do we use this knowledge to improve our writing? In this post I discuss the research of Gibbs RW and Matlock T into how readers understand metaphors by mentally simulating the activity, and what understanding the cognitive process of interpreting metaphors teaches us at writers. Don’t worry, I’ll try throw in some jokes.
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