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Tips & Exercises

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Tips

Fiction

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Short Story

Noticing the Words Around You

Walking around London during the summer – between the first and second Coronavirus lockdowns – I became interested in how much…

Nicholas Royle
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Fiction

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Short Story

Environmental Constraints

Now, take a walk. You could either just go out and wander, flâneur style, or you could do as I did…

Nicholas Royle
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Exercises

Fiction

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Science Fiction

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Speculative

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Writing for Children & YA

Creating a Bible for your Magic System

Whether you are still planning, drafting, editing, or have a finished manuscript: use one of those nice notebooks you’ve been saving…

Anna James
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Tips

Fiction

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Science Fiction

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Speculative

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Writing for Children & YA

Making Your Own Magic

Fantasy often grows from a core concept that everything else sprouts from. For my series of children’s fiction, Pages &…

Anna James
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Exercises

Fiction

Working With Two Ideas

Try and bring two possibly disparate ideas together to form the skeleton of a single story.
Begin by writing down ten…

Lara Williams
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Tips

Fiction

You Need a Second Idea

In Patricia Highsmith’s Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction she talks about having an idea for a murder plot in…

Lara Williams
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Tips

Film & TV

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Theatre

Characters Can Surprise You If You Let Them Hide

Building characters is one of my favourite things to do as a writer. Figuring out their drives, their fears, their favourite…

Vinay Patel
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Exercises

Film & TV

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Theatre

What Wouldn’t Happen Next?

Sometimes when I get stuck or, worse, feel like I’m going through the motions, I know that it’s because my brain…

Vinay Patel
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Tips

All

Dealing with Rejection

These are tough times, we know about the need to look after ourselves because of COVID but what about the need…

Katrina Naomi
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Exercises

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Poetry

Going for the Positive

Many of us seem to find it easier to write gloomy poems/fiction/plays etc than positive ones. I’m not sure why that…

Katrina Naomi
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Exercises

Fiction

Breaking Free From Clichés

Part 1 – Say what you see
Several times a day, look up from where you are, and make…

Leone Ross
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Tips

Fiction

Clichés

Once in a blue moon, I see a first draft without clichés. These unoriginal words and phrases (and ideas and plots)…

Leone Ross
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Fiction

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Film & TV

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Radio

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Short Story

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Theatre

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Writing for Children & YA

Ten Brilliant Things

A few years ago, I was working on a stage play called Dragon with a director who was incredibly…

Oliver Emanuel
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Tips

Fiction

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Film & TV

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Radio

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Short Story

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Theatre

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Writing for Children & YA

Getting Stuck

I’m not a planner. I’m not one of those writers who draws meticulous maps of character arcs, story beats and reveals….

Oliver Emanuel
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Tips

Fiction

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Short Story

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Speculative

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Writing for Children & YA

Motivation, Motivation, Motivation

As writers, we usually think we know what makes our main character tick, what motivates them to act in the way…

Lucie McKnight Hardy
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Exercises

Fiction

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Short Story

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Speculative

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Writing for Children & YA

Making Characters Unique

Think about the things which make your protagonist unique. These could be psychological, emotional or physical aspects which make them an…

Lucie McKnight Hardy