One of the tasks I have been putting off for some time is a limited re-edit of my debut novel, Collision. After its release in 2012, I noticed some irritating typos had crept into the final proof. Well, as you can see it's taken me quite some time to get around to doing it. But …
Category: For newbie authors
Daydeam Believer
Not many people are old enough to remember Daydream Believer. It was a single released by the Monkees in 1968 with lead singer Davy Jones and headed the US charts for four weeks. It's a catchy tune, with cryptic lyrics about a daydream believer and his homecoming queen. But I can still remember the chorus. …
Structure and character arc
Some writers don't like the idea of story structure and reject it on the grounds that any such approach would be too rigid for them. Structures like the Hero's Journey, the Three-Act structure, and the Sequence Method may appeal to some writers, but not all. But even if you don't like to write in a …
Heroes and Villains
After the Christmas break, it's been difficult for me to get back into a writing routine again. Not that I ever switch off completely from the writing process -- I'm always thinking about my current novel and where the story is heading. And that's just as important as time spent at the keyboard. But one the …
Story structure
In recent months, I have done far more reading than writing, much to the detriment of progress on my latest novel. Nevertheless, I have enjoyed catching up on the works of other Sci-Fi writers from whom I can learn a lot, and I have enjoyed re-reading some of the technical screenwriting material on the subject …
Editing — my tools and techniques
In the first of my previous blogs on editing, I looked at the lessons that I had learnt a long time ago from the world of business book publishing. In the second blog I looked at what I had to learn more recently to adapt to publishing fiction. In this blog I want to look …
Story Shapes and Emotional Arcs
Kurt Vonnegut was the author famous for his novels including Slaugherhouse-Five and Cat's Cradle. But he was also famous for his for his concept of story shapes, which was the subject of his rejected Master's Thesis in Anthropology. He called his story shapes his prettiest contribution to culture. In simple terms, Vonnegut believed the shape …
Amazon eBook offers
Those of you that regularly follow my blog will realise most of my blog content is dedicated to the art of storytelling and my own learning adventures into the realms of story development. Occasionally I use this blog to bring news about my own books, and on this occasion I am unashamingly promoting two of …
Conflict, Tension and Audience Participation
Novel writers can learn a lot about story development from the screenwriting industry. In my previous blog, I dealt with how screenwriters use Story, Plot, Arc and Theme to develop a story. This month I want to look at how screenwriters use Conflict, Tension and Audience Participation to grip an audience. The essential elements of …
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Story, Plot, Arc and Theme — how they work together
Any new writer might well be confused by some of the terms used in writing such as story, plot, arc and theme. Aren't they interchangeable terms? It's easy to see why the terms might be confused. The first person to distinguish story from plot was E. M. Forster in Aspects of the Novel (1927). Forster wrote …
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JMJ Williamson 