The Creative Writing Blog

At The Novelry we like to tell our writers there are no rules, only tools. Then we give them the tools. One by one, day-by-day. Use them, try them, pick them up, put them down. Do not consider...

I see breakthroughs weekly in my writers' work and I thought I'd share some of the signs with you of a step-change in the quality of the work, from good to bloody brilliant. (Next stop...

There comes a time when every writer has to face the awful thought that they may have to kill their manuscript.

 “Often when I sat down to work,” wrote Michael Chabon about a...

“I want to write something new - something extraordinarily beautiful and simple and intricately patterned."

That was The Great Gatsby, which Fitzgerald began in the wake of wild times...

Shame and Sacrifice: the modern novel, when it's great, turns these sad old tricks beloved of its forbears.

When I was reading Sally Rooney's Conversations with Friends, I was struck by the name of...

Sometime back in the 2000's literary became a dirty word, writes our founder, Louise Dean.

My first book was published in 2004. My work was hailed as 'the opposite of chick lit' and...

Philip Roth. Never mediocre.

Humbling, yet humble. A combination that made Philip Roth great.

His books were like knives we couldn’t put down despite them cutting our hands.

This is an...

'Why haven't you done anything with the book you wrote last year?' My son asked me.

'Because it's not important. I needed to write it but the world doesn't need it.'

'I would read it.'

'You can't...

Any tale of any kind told to humans by humans is and has ever been a morality tale.

'There was a man who... ' This person has a flaw, a failing, either moral (a tendency that will bring them and...

Coelho wrote his 45,00 word 'The Alchemist' in two weeks, as it was 'written in his soul.' It is 'a fable about following your dream.'

As those taking the Classic course know, what you write can...

We are storytelling animals. We are raised in a nursery of fairy tales, and they teach us how stories work.

In our storytelling foundation course to help you come up with a...

Playtime as children, is partially a rehearsal for growing older, for trying on lives. As children, we put on the clothes -  the ties and high heels - of our parents and try them for size. We...

So you're in the middle of a novel and it's all gone a bit saggy. Here are 3 reasons why.

First of all WELL DONE for creating so much material. Hats off and I'm betting you’ve struggled...

We all like peering over writers' shoulders to see whether we are in any way 'normal'! I write hundreds of thousands of words to reduce down to the 80k or so for a novel. This is a fool's...