When I was writing and re-writing my travel memoir Last Seen in Lhasa, the author Patrick French gave me some advice. 'Go into a bookshop and visualise your book on the shelves. Which section would it be in? Which books would it be between? Imagine it...
Scenes are what make writing visual. They create a moment-by-moment experience for the reader. Here are 10 ways to make yours work harder. Follow the screenwriter’s mantra: arrive late and leave early. This means you start the scene with the action not the lead up and...
It’s always sobering when I meet a well-known journalist who once earned a decent salary tell me he’s really struggling. For many in the field, regular writing gigs have dried up and the rate per word has gone down. Or it hasn’t gone up in...
It’s literary festival season again. At the same time as Sydney Writers' Festival opens, Hay-on-Wye – UK’s biggest gathering of writers – kicks off. Yesterday I heard Alice Walker talk about writing and activism; today David Malouf revealed what’s at the heart of his novels. Despite all...
How believable is the world of your characters? How can you make it feel more real? © paulbriden This week I’ve been thinking about world building in preparation for my new two-day workshop, The Screenwriter’s Toolbox with a Novelist’s Craft at the Sydney Writers' Festival. I’m doing...
You can teach a lot about the craft of writing but style is very personal. It comes through practice. It’s about getting familiar enough with words, the rhythm of how they fit together and the overall shape of a narrative. Even though I’ve been writing...
We read because we want to feel what it’s like to be another person and experience another reality. We watch films for the same reason. When a movie or a story is gripping it is because the emotions that we’re seeing on the page or...
Good grammar is the bricks and mortar of writing. If you want to communicate clearly in an email, a report, an article or a full-length book, it’s important to get your grammar right. Some writers I know rely on the squiggly green lines in Microsoft Word...
When I started off as a journalist I was fortunate enough to work alongside Mick Brown, a brilliant writer and long-time journalist at London’s Daily Telegraph. He’d read my stories and say, ‘Claire, Cut to the chase here.’ What he meant was, get rid of the...
What’s most important in your writing is to get the reader to care – about the main character, the story, the idea. In fiction you don’t necessarily need to like the protagonist but you do need to care about him or her. That’s what keeps...