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A hundred years ago, there were hardly any resources to teach you how to write a novel. You had to work everything out from first principles and forge your own path. These days, things look very different. There are hundreds, even thousands, of books, courses and other resources, all claiming to hold the secrets to writing a…

Wondering what’s the most effective way to start your novel? The first few lines and pages of your novel are critical to get right. There’s a lot for you to achieve. From hooking the reader to establishing your story world to setting up the ending — in this article we’ll look at why it’s so…

This is a guest post by Rhiannon Elton, author of the Wolflock series.A personal account from an author who has battled her demons and come out on top. Introduction to the Protagonist’s World I was born with a galaxy of libraries in my eyes. But it took a long time to transform them into the words…

This is a guest post by Krystal N. Craike, the Writing Pirate Congratulations! You’ve finished the first draft of your novel. Pat yourself on the back. Open a bottle of champagne. You deserve it! But the work isn’t over. Now you need to edit the darn thing. And editing is a word that can strike fear…

On a basic level, there are two kinds of pace. On the large scale there is story pace. This is controlled more by the balance of different types of prose sections in the larger story structure. On a smaller scale, there’s the pace of a particular paragraph. This is the pace controlled by things like the sentence length…

Writer’s block can be incredibly frustrating – here are some ideas for smashing through! Writer’s block can present itself in different ways. We may be struggling for inspiration and ideas. We may be paralysed by the desire for perfection or the fear of not being good enough. We may be stuck on a particular point…

When considering Christmas promotions recently, we were inspired by the B1G1 – Business for Good initiative. – it seems like the perfect time of year to be grateful for what we have – such as the education, resources and freedom to express ourselves through writing. So instead of offering a Christmas discount, we’ve decided support the charity Room…

This is a guest post by Rebecca Armstrong of McGowan Transcriptions It’s every writer’s dream to build a legacy that transcends time, and to create work that still resonates with readers decades or even centuries after their death. With this in mind, it’s fascinating to see how the works of classic authors like William Shakespeare, Jane…

Plough on, keep looking forward, don’t hesitate By far the most important piece of advice you can follow when writing the first draft of your novel, is to plough on through, and not hang around editing, polishing and tweaking. It can be tempting to redraft the first few chapters several times before you have even…

It’s hard. You probably won’t make any money. Your heart will be stabbed with a thousand tiny rejections. Give up writing now. Read on for more reasons to throw your manuscript out the window – but just before you do… make sure you read to the end. It’s hard If I had a penny for each…