I recently had a week’s break in the beautiful Lake District, in the north of England. Arthur Ransome set many of his Swallows and Amazons novels there, which I read and re-read as a child, always hoping the next one in the series would be . . .

How many goodies and baddies does your story have? You need some great baddies so you have a story! You also need your protagonist to be essentially inspiring, so your readers will root for them.

But what about . . .

Good morning Christian writers! Here’s a writing tip on theme – could you write a story on a particular issue young people are facing?

One thing we do in the Write for a Reason course is a bit of research into the background of our target readers. Some of the questions we ask potential readers are: What do they . . .

Is daily writing a realistic goal?

Some habits are good for us. It’s good to read the Bible and pray every day, to clean our teeth morning and evening, to have breakfast, to be punctual, to go to church, to spend time with our family, to exercise . . .

Have you ever attributed human emotions/thoughts to an inanimate (or at least a non-human) object? Personification is a useful way to add atmosphere to . . .

Do you follow us on facebook? If you do, you may have noticed a recent question from Caitlin. She asks, “If a character speaks another language, is it OK to use some words in their language then refer to what it means?” That’s an excellent question . . .

If you have a deadline for your writing, you will get your project finished, even if you have to ask for an extension.

If you don’t have a deadline, you are more likely to procrastinate. A self-imposed deadline can help, but having someone . . .

I have already mentioned that one of our former Write for a Reason students, Lucy, won first prize in a writing competition recently. It’s called “Mrs Zebedee’s . . .

As writers, we can so easily get carried away with our own plot (and concentrating, rightly, on not getting involved in irrelevant side issues), that we can forget what would be happening to our characters in the real world. You might think it would be impossible . . .