These are all the posts I think I mentioned at Arvon Lumb Bank, when M C Scott and I had the pleasure of spending a week talking about writing historical fiction with fifteen writers who are rash enough to want to join us - and then wrote some truly fantastic stuff. We also had a splendid evening with Robert Low, ex-Para, ex-journalist and current Viking.
If you were there, and remember me mentioning a post or a book or a topic which I haven't put here, do say so in the comments, and I'll do my best to dig it up. If you've been digging in the Tool Kit section of the blog, quite a few of these will be familiar, but some may not.
And I distinctly remember mentioning Sarah Stovell's novel The Night Flower, as a great example of first-person historical voices working in parallel, because it wasn't at that point published (it is now). And also Linda Buckely-Archer's children's time-slip trilogy Gideon The Cutpurse (calle Time Quake in the US). I know there were others, obviously, so let me know if I mentioned anything else you haven't been able to track down.
READING LIKE A WRITER:
AN EDUCATION IN WRITING: in which I dissect 100 words of Elizabeth Bowen's The Heat of the Day. Just watch those verbs...
BOOKS FOR WRITERS : all the books I mentioned should be on this list, including The Seven Basic Plots, and if you remember one that isn't, mention it in the comments here.
CRAFT:
SHOWING AND TELLING: the basics : even though you know this stuff...
PSYCHIC DISTANCE: what it is and how to use it : the examples will be familiar...
CHARACTERISATION-IN-ACTION : some of these will be familiar from our Arvon week, but there's more
MORE ON CHARACTERISATION : which comes more naturally to you: thinking about characterisation from the outside inwards, or from the inside outwards?
HOW TO MAKE A GOOD QUIET MAIN CHARACTER ENGAGING
PROLOGUES : why you probably shouldn't, why occasionally you should.
POINT-OF-VIEW AND NARRATORS SERIES:
POINT OF VIEW & NARRATORS 1: the basics : what point of view is, what a narrator is, and why it matters
POINT OF VIEW & NARRATORS 2: internal narrators : character-narrators who narrate in first person
POINT OF VIEW & NARRATORS 3: external narrators : limited, switching and privileged point of view in narrators who narrate in third person
POINT OF VIEW & NARRATORS 4: moving point of view and other stories : how to work with a moving point of view, second-person narrators and other stuff
DESCRIPTION : how to stop your descriptions being slabs of scene setting, and turn them into storytelling
6 QUESTIONS TO ASK YOUR DESCRIPTION : more on the how and why of evoking places, people and everything else
FLASHBACKS AND BACKSTORY : how to handle the stuff from Before The Story Starts.
SIXTY-PLUS WAYS OF ARRANGING THE SAME 11 WORD SENTENCE ; yoga for writers, in other words
SENTENCE STRUCTURE AS STORYTELLING: how the order of the elements in your sentence can make such a difference
HOW THINKING ABOUT GRAMMAR can help your prose to sing
PROCESS:
THE COMMON SCAFFOLD: all the things which get into your first draft for good reason, but then need fishing out again
CLUSTERING : as a way of finding material, with a picture of the clusters I worked to develop a story.
WRITING SEX : now everyone's blushes have subsided. And this one is about the sex/p**n divide
TWELVE TOOLS (NOT RULES) OF WRITING : just what it says on the tin
THE THIRTY-THOUSAND DOLDRUMS : somewhere between 20k and 40k, and decided that the whole thing's a disaster? You are not alone.
SCRIVENER SOFTWARE : why I'm a complete convert to the only writing software real writers use, whether they're pantsers, planners, or imaginers-on-paper.
THE SYNOPSIS: Relax! : the synopsis won't make or break your novel's fate, but it can help to give it the best chance. Here's how.
