The Creative Writing Blog

'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...

Many writers have questions about how to write the middle of a story. It can be a really exciting section to write; your characters are developed, your protagonist is beginning to transform, and...

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...

"We should stop going around babbling about how we're the greatest democracy on earth, when we're not even a democracy. We are a sort of militarised republic." Gore Vidal.

In 2008, I was invited to...

Some tips for writing better books from our founder, Booker listed, award-winning author of literary and historical fiction, Louise Dean.

1.  At the core of every good concept is a paradox....

Our founder, Louise Dean, describes how she got started as a writer and shares the advice she sought in person from the writers she admired.

When I was living in New York in the late 1990's, in my...

James Baldwin was an essayist, playwright and novelist regarded as a highly insightful, iconic writer with works like The Fire Next Time, Giovanni's Room, Another Country and Just Above My Head as...

I read Disgrace by JM Coetzee in the year 2001 when I was living in New York. I had written two books; flops. Disgrace focused my intentions. It became apparent to me that there were heights almost...