Do you always fall into the same writing habits? The same tone, the same phrases? You’re in good company. At my lovely Creative Writing class yesterday I was explaining how writers have tics – not facial ones, although perhaps we have them too – the ones...
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...
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...
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...
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 week I’ve been out bush in the Northern Territory. Out in the heat (36 degrees), in the gritty red dirt, feeling the sun’s bristling rays. For 9 days I unplugged – no phone, no internet: bliss. The first couple of days I was exhausted in...
The first question a journalist asked me last week was why I made the decision to write my new book as fiction. Why I made the leap. Although Last Seen in Lhasa is a travel memoir, I used fictional techniques — creating character, plenty of dialogue...