When I started writing my first novel, I knew exactly what I was letting myself in for. During my career as an accountant, I had published a number of books albeit of a technical nature. I knew it took perseverance to produce the first draft of any book. But it doesn’t stop there. It can …
Story structure and story beats
In some of my previous blogs I've talked about the importance of story structure. It's a subject that's fascinated me since I first started writing fiction. Some great writers ridicule the idea of an underlying story structure as being too formulaic. They say it's based too much on the 'hero's mythical journey' or it's not …
There’s no such thing as writer’s block
That’s what I thought until a young writer contacted me recently asking for ideas of how to get around writer’s block. She had had some success as a writer and was finding it hard to get started again. That very success seemed to be the cause of her anxiety, and that was holding her back …
Holding back the backstory
To make your characters come to life, you need to understand their lives before your story begins. Part of fun in writing is getting to know your characters. One of the ways is to prepare character sketches of the main characters. This should be more than just a a visual description of the height, weight, …
Cutting out the boring bits
One of the mistakes a newbie writer can make is to assume that a story is an unbroken series of actions all of which have to be conveyed to the reader. Instead, the writer should try to think more like a screen writer, and regard the story as sequence of scenes and transitions, where only …
What is a ‘story’ anyway?
Recently I was thinking about the essence of what a story was about, and what made the story good or bad from the reader’s perspective. My starting point was various dictionary definitions of story. The best I could find was ‘an account of imaginary or real people and events told for entertainment’. Well it’s a …
Bad guys aren’t necessarily all bad
Unless you’re dealing with satanic supernatural characters, an easy mistake for new authors to make is to assume that the antagonist has to be the epitome of all evil. In practice, the bad guy may well think he’s his own hero. He just sees things differently from the good guy. Like the hero, he has …
How many types of plots are there?
According to Christopher Booker's 'The Seven Basic Plots' most stories can be categories under one of seven basic structures. For example, Jaws, Alien and Beowulf would all fall under the 'Overcoming the Monster' category. 'Lord of the Rings' and 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' fall under the 'Quest' category. Booker is not the only one to …
Making the main character likeable
All great books and movies seem to have a great lead character that the reader or audience can identify with and root for. How do authors and screenwriters do it? Think about the books and movies you love. What aspects of the lead character’s character did you like, and what attracted you to them? Were …
Plot and character – the chemistry
So what type of stories do you write: character-driven or action-driven? When thinking about your story ideas, do you start by imagining an interesting character, or do you start with some interesting ‘what if’ events and then consider the character? It doesn’t really matter where you start, but you need both character and plot to …
JMJ Williamson 