Here’s a randomly generated short story I created using Plot Generator – a site that lets you input various details and then creates a random story with your settings. You can use it to get inspiration or just to mess about and have a laugh. The results are proof that creative writing involves a little… Continue reading Proof that robots will never be authors
In this fascinating interview, Philip Pullman talks about His Dark Materials and some of the ideas in the books, including: loss of innocence, religion, William Blake, the oral tradition and why fairy tales differ from novels, plus a little dig at CS Lewis and Tolkien. Recorded at the Durham Book Festival in October this year.… Continue reading His Dark Materials: interview with Philip Pullman
Visionary Fiction became a recognised fiction genre around the turn of the millennium, but stories using visionary elements have always existed. In fact, Visionary Fiction (VF) might be the oldest genre of storytelling. I first heard of VF when I was trying to decide which genre my debut novel fell into. Addled: Adventures of a… Continue reading Visionary Fiction: stories for growing minds
“Every single time you sit down to write – a story, a poem, an essay, a novel – it will be a brand-new experience. No formula works. The mystery that solved your previous story doesn’t speak the same language as your current story. The key that unlocked the sonnet of yesterday won’t work today. Accept… Continue reading Writing Isn’t Like Making a Peanut Butter & Jelly Sandwich
Every writer gets stuck once in a while, but suffering from writer’s block takes stuckness to a whole new level. It’s said that the difference between writers and would-be writers is that writers write. They actually put the words down and keep putting the words down – regardless. So what happens when you’re a writer… Continue reading The Real Cause of Writer’s Block and How to Overcome It
“I keep remembering this strange little story I heard in Sunday school when I was about the size of a fire hydrant. It takes place in China or Korea or someplace like that. It seems there was this old farmer outside a village in the hill country who worked his farm with only his son… Continue reading David Foster Wallace on Writing & an old Chinese Tale
There are loads of exercises you can do that use acrostics to give your writing brain a work out. These kind of word games rarely produce anything useful but they can help you to get unstuck if you don’t know what to write. They’re also good for encouraging you to think of a variety of… Continue reading Writing Exercise: Fun with Acrostics!
This exercise uses a newspaper headline as a starting point for a piece of writing. It’s not about trying to write something perfect or even interesting, just take a headline from a newspaper or online and see what ideas it triggers. Allow your pen to go with the flow of whatever comes up and write… Continue reading Writing Exercise: Newspaper Headline
This writing exercise is a way to challenge yourself and have fun at the same time. The idea is to pick three random words, the more disconnected from each other the better, and then add an emotion. Then you write for ten minutes and incorporate all the words in a way that conveys the emotion… Continue reading Writing Exercise: Random Story Generator
Another writing exercise to get the juices flowing! This time we’ll explore five of our favourite words – these could be any word you like or whatever is rattling around inside your head at the moment. Try to choose words that are concrete rather than abstract, words that point to something real, not an idea.… Continue reading Writing Exercise: Five Favourite Words
I’m preparing to rewrite my second novel (again) so thought I’d limber up with some writing exercises, get the old fiction juices flowing. I’ll share the instructions for each exercise and the results, and you can ‘write along’ with me, if you like. Note: I’m doing these exercises longhand and then typing them up –… Continue reading Writing Exercise: What’s in a Word?
We end my Newcastle Writing Conference notes with the afternoon sessions. After lunch there were more workshop choices: meet another agent with Jo Unwin, developing your online presence, postgraduate writing courses, and non-traditional publishing routes. I went for the latter because I thought it might be interesting and I wasn’t disappointed. Who needs a publisher… Continue reading Writing Conference Notes: Part 3 – Non-Traditional Publishing
Jessica Davidson 