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Fiction

Fictional Obituary

Write your main character’s obituary. Obituaries often follow a set form, including details about where the subject was born (and to…

Chrissie Manby
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Inspiration from the Dead

A couple of years ago (when my enthusiasm for writing romantic comedy was severely dented by several personal challenges) an editor…

Chrissie Manby
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Using Your Writing Persona

Visualise a version of you that is unbound, unplugged, footloose and fancy free, with all the attributes you might be too…

Fred D’Aguiar
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Growing Your Writing Persona

The idea of a shadow self that follows you everywhere you go, and watches over you as you sleep, sounds a…

Fred D’Aguiar
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Fiction

Creating Dialogue

Write out a verbatim dialogue between your characters. No ‘he said’s or ‘she said’s: just the things they say, however mundane….

Patrick Gale
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Fiction

Dialogue in Prose

Dialogue is notoriously difficult for novelists to write well, and there are several reasons for this.
Pacing is one of them….

Patrick Gale
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Poetry

Language Love Letter

Vernacular words, which have their roots firmly in spoken language, can be overlooked treasures. In this exercise we’ll reach into our…

Liz Berry
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Poetry

Textures of Vernacular Language

I adore vernacular language and regional words as they can make magical things happen in poetry. Words like donny …

Liz Berry
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Beginning Your Story

‘Where do you get your ideas from?’ is probably the one question authors get asked more than any other. But a…

Steve Voake
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Character Buckets

When we’re writing stories it’s easy to become so involved with our plot that we sometimes forget about the objects that…

Steve Voake
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Exercises

Fiction

Wonder in Familiar Places

Choose a building that has a particular function. If it’s a real one that you actually know, so much the better….

Zoe Gilbert
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Fiction

Two Ways to Create Wonder

Surprise and wonder are magic ingredients in fiction. I love to be surprised when reading; surprise can come in the form…

Zoe Gilbert
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Fiction

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Poetry

The Cliché Amnesty

When you’re writing about places you know well – particularly landscapes – it can be daunting. You worry about producing work…

Helen Mort
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Fiction

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Poetry

Places That Talk

I love novels, poems and plays where the setting feels like a character as much as any of the people who…

Helen Mort
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The Venn Diagram of Agent Love

When I was first looking for an agent, I came up with a research plan to help me narrow the field…

Laura Barnett
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Finding the Right Agent

We all tend to go on about how busy we are these days. Complaints like ‘goodness, I’m just so busy, I…

Laura Barnett