writing
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Writing advice from Arnold Bennett
I haven’t read a ton of writing manuals (it shows, Ed.), but I have a small shelf’s worth at home, and I’m always on the look-out for something that doesn’t go over the same old ground of adverbs (bad), showing not telling (good), and inciting incidents (necessary). Continue reading
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The almost incredible
Anyone who admires Patricia Highsmith’s fiction will forgive her this fondness for the ‘almost incredible’ and will find these coincidences perfectly believable in the settings and atmospheres she conjures. Coincidences are stitched into the fabric of life and we have all experienced them, though perhaps not as frequently and significantly as the inhabitants of fictional worlds. Continue reading
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Portraits in words
A couple of novels I read recently got me thinking about character descriptions. From my own reading, admittedly a small sample size, I have the impression that fiction writers are making their character descriptions much more frugal than used to be the case. Continue reading
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Beginning a fiction series: form and structure
The novella has never been a very popular form. It’s usually seen as a kind of in-between fiction, neither long enough to allow for satisfying character development and plotting of the novel, nor brief enough to provide the concentrated impact of the short story. Continue reading
About Me
Writer. Londoner. Wayfarer on the rolling English road.
the other place
I write about British places and history at theseislands.blog.