The Creative Writing Blog

The mystique of the elusive hero-figure is one of Louise Dean’s favourite forms. It’s a ‘bystander’ narrative, often first-person, concerning a mysterious...

Been rejected by literary agents? You could be over-writing. Here’s how to avoid it!

The ailment of over-writing afflicts most first drafts. It is the writer’s common cold. It’s...

Revise, revise!

The value of revision becomes manifestly abundant over the course of our very intense weeks on retreat at The Novelry, with writers taking prose through rounds of work towards...

A nebulous but exciting mission you’ll embark on as a writer is the quest to find your voice. We hear much about distinctive authorial voices, and can all recognise our favourites’ in a...

If you're about to write a novel, start with the midpoint. That's the place to build your world around.

The midpoint is the point of no return in the story, where the character undergoes a crisis,...

We all learn to write. If you're serious about something, generally you will want to learn how to do it well. I wonder why some writers feel they need to look down on aspiring writers...

Book ideas don’t often come to you whole and complete, writes founder of The Novelry, Louise Dean. But that doesn’t mean fretting over story ideas should be an obstacle to starting to...

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...