Writing course

Endings to stories: don’t make them too long. Once the goal has been reached and the purpose of your story fulfilled, tie off loose ends quickly or simply leave them to your readers’ imaginations. You know the story of Cinderella?

Are you in the process of writing a Christian book for children? Once you have decided on your protagonist’s key goal, work towards strengthening everything that takes them there (one conflict after another), and avoiding/removing anything that doesn’t serve to move

I have been working my way through a pile of unsolicited manuscripts over the last week or so. Some have a lot of potential! However, many have one major flaw; the lack of “showing” and lots of “telling”. It’s a shame, because stories where readers are simply

Christmas is a great time to people watch, and get some tips for when you are creating characters for your novel. This Christmas, if you are meeting with family and friends, take a few moments to observe tell-tale signs that

If you write novels for 8-14s, do you need to include quotes from Shakespeare plays, make a passing reference to the Spanish Inquisition, and have your protagonist quote Scripture? We all use passing references to people, places and events we are familiar with

I think I may have mentioned something like this before in a writing tip, but it’s worth mentioning again as it’s a common problem I see in unsolicited manuscripts: when writing for this age group (8-14s) you need to start

Wordiness is one of the most common problems I see in unsolicited manuscripts – there are many ways of tightening up a story and improving the pace; here are 3 of them. Cut out unnecessary polite conversation in dialogue. Too much