Blog
Competition time…
Hiding in Plain Sight Eoghan Egan CHAPTER 1 Monday, 7 January 2019 Afternoon Just before afternoon coffee break, the art dealer decided to kill Roberta Lord. He compressed a tennis ball, gazed out of the corner office window, and watched another heavy snow shower...
10 takes … on Taglines.
Question: What’s the difference between taglines, tags, end lines, straplines, baselines, shout lines, loglines, attention grabbers, pay-offs and signatures? Tag lines, tags and attention grabbers are U.S. terms for taglines. In the UK, end line, shout line and...
12 writing tips
Use a pencil when editing a printed manuscript; pen ink blots out essential notes. If I go off-tangent, lose the plot, or back myself into a corner, I retrace my steps to the place I went wrong. Then I veer down another path and switch the character, change the tense...
10 questions I ask and answer while writing.
Does the hero/heroine lead the action? Is he/she proactive at every stage and fired up by a desire or goal? Is the hero’s journey starting as far back as it needs, to see an arc of emotional growth by the end of the novel? Are characters talking the plot? Telling the...
What I’ve discovered… about writing
I didn’t begin writing decent material until draft 3. The previous outlines and fifty per cent rubbish, but I thought each one was my finished novel. Persistence made me better. Gradually. There are no shortcuts. Creativity, in any form, is difficult and needs...
12 reflections on this writing life.
1. Patience, passion and persistence are essential if you intend to become a published writer. Perseverance is as important as talent. These ingredients will take you from impossible to inevitable. 2. The literary world’s a small place. The person starting as a junior...
10 tips on writing 1st drafts.
The 1st draft is a commitment, a promise to write/type that short story/novel/memoir you’ve been thinking about for years. It’s the first of many steps and by far the most important. Tell your family and friends what you’ve decided. Yes, in six months they’ll annoy...
What I’m learning… about editing.
The more I edit, the more I rewrite I find my novel is growing as I edit. Cutting paragraphs that slow down the story forced me to drill deeper and develop the remaining characters. This reduction is helping me expand and improve the work, without compromising the...
Neither age nor occupation are barriers in your writing life.
In fact, age is an advantage; it allows the writer to build up a bank of experience. Harriet Doerr published her first novel aged 74, and Laura Ingalls Wilder published Little House on the Prairie in her mid-sixties. 66-year-old Frank McCourt published Angela’s Ashes...