The Creative Writing Blog

Here's how to create a story:

1. Know it

An experience or circumstances of which you have direct knowledge as a participant or an outsider looking in

2. See it

Translate it - to a...

Kiss your darlings!

Grab your tote bag, and fill it with books then head off in pursuit of your literary dreamboats to salute them and get the book signed. One of our members, who undertook...

It's hard to know for sure when you've reached the end of a novel. You're battle-weary. You can't see the wood for the trees. It's the forty-fifth draft...

_{By Louise Dean.}

The story makes...

If a novel is one person's moral journey towards acceptance of their place in the universe, then the plot is contrived to give them a gift or gifts to help them on their way to which he or she...

Every novel presents such new challenges, it seems one has never written a novel before. An irksome and bewildering amnesia. Yet again,  your judgement and taste exceed your...

The Telegraph 10th June 2019.

"Marshwood Manor in the Vale of Marshwood, close to Bridport and Dorset’s Jurassic coast, is the venue for a series of creative writing retreats from The...

"It really is a very odd business that all of us, to varying degrees, have music in our heads." Oliver Sacks.

In Musicophilia, Sacks tells some very moving stories about those with...

Know the purpose of every character in your novel.

Each and every character in a story has a single purpose for the storyteller - and that is their role or agency vis a vis the moral development of...

Wherever you are with your novel, here's something which could help you see the big picture of plot fast. 

On my fourth draft of a novel, and so mired in the material, I needed a...

Immersive writing and insight are intimately related and inextricably so.

This is what Tolstoy shows us. It's what makes Tolstoy a great writer.

Following on from the last blog on the...

In the 1870's Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (1828 - 1910) experienced a profound moral crisis. During the writing of Anna Karenina, he went through a personal metamorphosis from sensualist to ascetic....

Sally Rooney is my writer of the year. 'Conversations with Friends' - my book of the year.

At just halfway through the year, and with Ms Rooney just 26, you may think this is a moment of...

The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913

How to become a published author? Get good at taking criticism.

Louise Dean.

As author of four published novels now, I remember the step-change in my writing came back in the beginning when...