I have had quite a good week this week and I will be going into that some more in a Substack newsletter coming on 1st April so lookout for that. You can sign up for my newsletter by clicking on the button below, and this will ensure you get all my news and information about upcoming workshops and courses. I will make sure you don’t miss a thing.

In my daily social posts this week, I have been talking about setting. Setting is often treated as background; something to sketch in before the story gets going. But in stronger writing, setting isn’t something the story sits on. It’s something the story grows out of.

Place shapes behaviour. A conversation in a quiet library unfolds differently from one in a crowded café. I know I am a different person in each of those places – in truth, I am probably more unpredictable in the quiet setting. Lots of people are like that, noisy when they are supposed to be quiet, and quiet when they are allowed to be noisy! A character returning to their childhood home will notice things a stranger wouldn’t. Setting is never neutral; it’s always influencing what happens.

This means we don’t need to describe everything when we are writing a scene in a story. Instead, we should focus on what matters in the moment. What does your character notice first? What do they avoid? Which detail carries emotional weight?
Setting can also do the work of emotion. Rather than explaining how a character feels, let the environment reveal it. A cluttered room is maybe the sign of a mind too over-crowded and pre-occupied. A too-bright kitchen might indicate a character is over-compensating for something dark in their life. A long empty road might be a metaphor for a difficult journey or truth a character has to face. Filter everything through perspective, because no two characters experience the same place in the same way.

And don’t forget that setting can shift. Light fades, weather turns, a space empties. These changes can mirror or even drive what’s happening within the scene. The key is restraint. A few precise details will always carry more power than a full inventory.

Take one of your scenes. What single detail could you change or add to make the setting more meaningful? This will work if you are stuck and finding it hard to just put words down. Take a breath, do this exercise (let’s call it for fun!) and see what comes out. Let me know in the comments what you discovered and whether it helped you.

​Until next time, Happy Scribbling! 

​Weekends really come around fast these days – there is hardly enough time to do anything. I have had another couple of nice story acceptances though, more details of which I will post in due course when I get around to updating my story page on this website. You can read all the stories I have so far using the menu above.

Before I talk about Writers Reading on Thursday night, I just wanted to talk briefly about characters in stories, since that has been my theme this week on my social media posts.

Characters are far more interesting if you give them contradictions. No one is all good, or all bad. Think of the characters you love in books, films and even in real life. That woman who brings you cakes every week might also be fiddling her taxes. The man who sells weed from his flat might also be looking after a sick loved one. Giving your characters layers makes them multi-dimensional and more believable as people (and more interesting to go on a journey through your story or novel with).

Give them some meaningful backstory, but don’t dump a lot of info on the reader. We don’t need to know their whole life story from birth until now, but maybe a reference to a job they really loved but were fired from, or a bad relationship that hurt as it broke up might explain why they are cynical and maybe aggressive now. 

Reveal their character through the decisions they make. A person who is a health fiend, but who chooses the biggest cream cake on the plate might be displaying an inner struggle, or a "sod it" attitude, and your reader will want to know why.

Think about a character you are writing about currently. What is one contradiction that makes them interesting? Let me know in the comments box – maybe we can start a discussion.

WRITERS READING – Thursday 19th March

I want to thank everyone who came on Thursday to support the readers, who were all absolutely fabulous. Despite some technical and sound issues – and our featured reader dropping out permanently because of a massive outage where she lives in Chile – we had an amazing night as always. You can watch the video at the link below and can choose which view you watch in. 

Juanita Ozamiz, the planned featured reader, will be back next time, on June 18th, so book your ticket now at the link below, to ensure you don't miss her!

Until next time, happy scribbling.

I trust everyone’s week has started well. We just had Mothers’ Day in the UK so I had my mum and brothers over and a total day off writing or even thinking about it. 

I got right back to work yesterday updating my submissions spreadsheet – I am up to 75 submissions this year so am well on target. I will be sharing my few successes with you soon on this website. Just as soon as Writers Reading is out of the way this week. Don’t forget it is on Thursday 19th at 7pm UK time on Zoom. You can click on the button below to go to the ticket link – it is free but I just need to know you are coming so you need to register.

My head has been firmly in novel mode lately. As well as writing my own novel, I am working on some first chapter and synopsis assessments for writers who have entered a competition. I really love this kind of work. It can be enormously helpful to look at how some people write novels (particularly the beginning) well, and how some do it not so well. 

The difference between the good and the bad ones is almost always down to the character that is introduced and the way in which they are introduced. I want to know right away whose story I am about to read, and why I am going to find it both important and entertaining. If everything is vague and I don’t know what their motivation is, then I don’t have any motivation of my own to continue. 

Desire drives story. It’s what keeps readers turning the pages. And, whilst you don’t have to reveal deep desires right away, you do have to give the character something to want on every page, so the reader is aware of it and can either get behind them, or set against them – but in both cases care whether they get it or not.

Getting to an important meeting on time; receiving a phone call with anticipated news; or, as Kurt Vonnegut suggests, even something as simple as a drink of water. 
What comes next is you putting obstacles in the way, but that’s for another time. For now, character is key. 

You can explore who you character is and what they might want by asking these three questions – of them, not yourself. 1. What do you want right now. 2. What are you afraid might happen. 3. What would you never admit out loud.

Try it, and if you like, you can post the answers you come up with – or just tell me if the exercise unearthed anything interesting – in the comments below.

I would also be interested to know if, when you are writing, your character arrives fully formed, or if you discover them as you write? 

If you want to delve deeper into an idea you might have for a novel, I am running a 6- Zoom course (one every 2 weeks)  called “Grow Your Novel” – and the booking link is below. It starts on June 13th and all the sessions will be Saturday 3pm to 4pm.
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Thanks for reading.

Another week has started and we are fully into March now. Mothers’ Day at the end of this week, then the next thing to look forward to is the springing forward of clocks which takes us firmly into spring and towards summer – always a happy time for me.

The first thing I did this week was take stock of my submissions so far this year… I have sent out 71, had 2 acceptances, 30 declines, and still have 39 out there. There are some stories out from last year too, but I am not counting them as I am only counting this year’s. As you can see, the declines way outnumber the acceptances, but I would never have had the acceptance if I had not started subbing. So it’s a necessary evil.

I have been looking at my folder where I keep all my new an “in development” stories and it is looking rather empty, so I need to get started on that. I have a project in mind (aside from the novel I am trying to get finished) that will require a certain degree of soul and memory searching. That’s always a daunting thing. But as I have been saying in my posts, you need to be honest in order to create an authentic story.
 
Honesty creates the strongest writing, because it will sound and feel real. Don’t worry about revealing too much of yourself. Honesty and confession are two different things, and to be honest doesn’t mean you have to reveal your own deepest, darkest secrets. Skew and warp those moments from your life and give your reaction and emotions around them to a character, who can deal with it the same way you did, or in a different way. And, start with small truths instead of big, dramatic ones.

Try this exercise (and you can post the result in the comments): Write one paragraph about something ordinary that happened today, but write it truthfully.

And a question to leave you with (again, you can put the answer in the comments): Do you find it easier to write honestly about small moments or big experiences?

One of the biggest problems we face as writers is being authentic, because the truth can sometimes be scary. Even though we are fiction writers and are making stories up, those stories must contain real emotion, because if they don’t have that, they will have no resonance. They will feel flat, and have no substance, and the reader will not be moved. If we stay safe, our stories stagnate.

Emotions come in all shapes and sizes, and the character in your story can feel any one or more of a number of them. Anger, sadness, lust, grief, happiness… the trick is to project those feeling onto the character from your own history and life experience. But – and this can often be the tricky part  - this can trigger feelings and traumas in us. So you need to be gentle and know the issues that you have to tread gently around.  Be gentle, but brave. The payback will be worth it. 

If there is a particular topic you fear writing about, create a character (just for this exercise) and start writing by asking the questions: What does my character fear dealing with and why? Once you have the answer to the why, ask “What if (???) changed?” And then ask how he might approach it then. Asking “why” questions in a character study where you have projected the emotion or situation onto a character can bring up very interesting revelations. But they are all so valuable on the page.
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I find it really useful to read the work of writers I admire, who are putting their emotional output into the world one way or another. Reading widely in your genre and style is a good way of seeing how someone else did it. Look at the work that moves you, at sentence level. How did they do it? What rhythm or format did they use? Emulate it.

At Time to Write, my twice-daily writing group, we use the Wednesday evening session for dissecting great stories (and some not so great, because it is important to see how those were constructed, too). This is always such a fascinating thing to do and really does give you food for thought. You can join us if you like by clicking on Courses and Events in the menu bar above. All details are there.

Two things to ask you about – and you can reply in the comments below - Is there something you’ve been circling but not quite writing yet? And… do you read much in your genre, and do you think it improves your own writing? I would love to know…
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Until next time…

I have really tried to change the way I think about writing this year and have been focussing daily on reacting differently to what I call my creative practice. I have not been able to write any new flash fictions or short stories for a good while, and I was bothered about that. But then I realised I haven’t exactly been resting on my laurels, so why should I be worried? 

I am working in a creative field (even if not always creating new work myself) and helping others by editing and feeding back on their work. I am doing some work for a publisher who runs competitions, and clients who have requested assessments and received them from me have given their own feedback – that my advice and notes have really helped them a lot. 

Looking at stories and novels written by other people, with the intention of drilling down into the words, the sentences, the paragraphs, and helping them be the best they can, is wonderful therapy for your own work. So – for now I am happy to be involved in something creative, and in the meantime, my brain is formulating my own new stories. Like I said last week, some people write whole novels in their heads before they even make them concrete on paper or screen, and I believe that thinking about writing counts as writing. 

If you free your mind from all the distractions that are keeping you away from writing, it will make it easier for you to settle when the time comes for you to start weaving the magic. Distraction is the enemy of depth, so when you do knuckle down, make sure you pour your all into it. So use that notebook, make those notes, do the weekly shop, and then you will have the creative space to make something really wonderful.
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I would love to hear more about your creative practice, any issues you might come up against and how you overcome them. And… what have you noticed lately that might end up in a story? Drop a comment below. And don’t forget to check out the rest of my website, and do join in some of my classes and events if you ever need encouragement and accountability.