START THE WEEK with a writing exercise: Creating a Dark Character
AS WRITERS WE NEED people to do bad things: they create story. They may not be the heart of your writing, the central core, but they kickstart action and reaction. … Continue reading
MY BOOKS by short story writer Jamie Guiney who rereads A Christmas Carol every Christmas…
Jamie Guiney is a literary fiction writer from County Armagh, Northern Ireland. His debut short story collection The Wooden Hill is out on 30th Nov 2018…nine days time. You can order … Continue reading
MY BOOKS by a writer who was read bedtime stories about the Napoleonic Wars and who would only save a book from burning if convinced it was truly the last copy. First lines, first books, first literary loves….and more
Lizzie/Elizabeth Enfield is a writer and journalist, copious tea drinker and endless worrier. Her latest novel Ivy and Abe is a love story told over a lifetime and a series … Continue reading
MY BOOKS from time slip children’s fiction to a million copy bestseller about brotherly love…First lines, first books, first literary loves….
BY Nikki Sheehan, YA author What’s the first book that a made a big impact on you? Tom’s Midnight Garden. The timeslip idea blew my mind! What book are you … Continue reading
Literary Names (and the seductive qualities of research) Writing article number 7 from the archives
This post is really about the dangers of being seduced by research. It all started with a tiny snippet of irrelevant information on twitter telling me that a popular girl’s … Continue reading
Laughter and Good Humour are Contagious – Charles Dickens QUOTES FOR WRITERS (and people who like quotes)
It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and … Continue reading
The novel combines freedom with intimacy says JANE SMILEY Quotes for Writers (and people who like quotes)
To me as a reader, this greatest thing about the novel…is that it gives access to the mind of the writer. Our Mutual Friend is a perfect example of this: … Continue reading
Do you know where Dickens got the character Scrooge from? It was a bit of mistake actually…
It is clear from any Dickens’ novel that the great man enjoyed names. His friend and biographer, John Forster, said that Dickens made “characters real existences, not by describing them … Continue reading
Quotes about Christmas — Charles Dickens
‘I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all … Continue reading
Did You Know that Dickens’ first novel was meant to be a comic?
Pickwick Papers was commissioned as a text to accompany the illustrations not the other way around. Dickens was 24 with only a volume of sketches about London to his credit. … Continue reading
Do you know who first used the word boredom and when?
No, it wasn’t a teenager. It was a 40 year old Portsmouth man in the year King’s Cross station opened. I’ll stop teasing…the first recorded use of the word boredom … Continue reading
A is for ALL IN A DAY
We tend to think of a novel having a big landscape with a great sweep of characters and the story told over weeks, years, even centuries. But some writers have … Continue reading
BRIDGET WHELAN writer 