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...
This month I started teaching Creative Writing at the Australian Writers’ Centre. The premise of the course is ‘There’s no right way to write.’ Of course, there isn’t. Anyone who tells you to do it their way is misguided. Nor is there any right way to plan...
I’m a great one for New Year’s resolutions. Starting or re-starting a writing project in the first quarter is sensible. You have the rest of the year to get it done. And if you have the right systems in place, you can complete a non-fiction book...
I’m deep into writing a company autobiography about the Kensington Colleges at the moment. The deadline is fast approaching and there’s still too much to do. When you have a big writing project it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Here are some techniques and tools I find...
No-one likes rejection. But every writer faces it. Martin Green from Pantera Press recently wrote, ‘Virtually every best-selling author was rejected by every publisher they contacted except the one where they found their eventual home.’ I thought those words were worth repeating. Except in the rare...