World Building – is Simple ever Better?

As a sci-fi and fantasy writer, I don't write stories set in our world. Instead, my stories exist in worlds that I've made up inside my head. I'm not bound by the constraints of reality, or the technology that currently exists. I don't even need to follow the same...

The Structure of a Novel

While it may seem that each novel is completely different, most of them have an underlying structure that has a surprising number of similarities. This is the basic structure I use for my novels, so I'm going to demonstrate it using those. I'm willing to bet it would...

Deleted Scenes

Last week, I took my daughter to see the new Disney movie, Frozen, and a new fan was born. Since then, everything has been about Frozen. We've sewn an Elsa dress, and the latest fun was to download the album from the movie. We paid extra for the extended album, and...

Improving your Point of View

One of the most important things, when writing in third person point of view, is to make sure the reader knows who's head their in, preferably within the first sentence. It's no use opening a chapter with a big description of the surrounding scene, if the reader is...

Character Descriptions – How Much Should you describe?

This is one of those topics that seems to divide both readers and writers equally. From the classic “I looked in the mirror and surveyed my straight blonde hair and blue eyes critically”, to the more subtle descriptions of a character's physical traits,...