This Itch of Writing

Itchy Bitesized 26: What You Need To Know About Commas

So many writers are uneasy and unconfident about how to use commas, but thought the humble comma has several different jobs, when you separate them out none is really very complicated. And commas really are crucial in helping you to say what you want to say and have the effect on your reader that you want to have.  So here's a whistle-stop tour through the main ways that commas are used and useful, Read more →

Itchy Bitesized 25: Beware of Hidden Metaphors

True headline as of a few days ago, in an advert on Facebook: Our Most Glorious Knickers Yet Have Dropped. And I found myself thinking, "Glorious, perhaps, but couldn't they make them with stronger elastic?" Metaphors are powerful, but because the comparison is only implied, it's easy to miss that, by definition, a metaphor is made of something which is not physically and literally in the scene. Read more →

Itchy Bitesized 21: Three Thoughts About "Breaking the Fourth Wall"

Blog-reader and blogger Mark Harbinger emailed me to say one comment he gets from alpha-readers "is them dinging me for 'breaking the fourth wall'," when he goes for "meta-narration in first person": i.e. a internal narrator, telling a story which includes themselves, who sometimes talked directly to the reader. Read more →

Itchy Bitesized 19: How Not To Commit Writerly Adultery

One of the most common difficulties that writers bring to our mentoring meetings is that they find it hard to see a project through to completion, so here are some quick diagnostic pointers which should help you to keep going - or give you confidence that you really shouldn't. Read more →

Itchy Bitesized 18: Three Things About Chapters Breaks

This new blog in the Itchy Bitesized series is about how to make best use of chapter-breaks. I know writers who work in chapters right from the start; writers who just intuit when it's time for a break; writers write several drafts before they decide where the breaks go. A chapter-break affects the reader's experience. Read more →

Itchy Bitesized 17: Writing Course or Festival Finished? What Now?

Every author I know has their story of a turning-point moment, but when writers have finished a terrific course, or reeled home from the overload of a big festival stuffed with agents and editors, they can be full of the buzz and the new energy to get going, and still feel overwhelmed. This Itchy Bitesized post is about what to do next. Read more →

Itchy Bitesized 16: Three Things About Saggy Middles

If you've been told your novel or creative non-fiction has a saggy middle - or you've a nasty suspicion of your own - you are absolutely not alone. It's a perennial problem, because writing a novel may simply be a matter of "beginning, muddle and end", as you discover every time you download an unabridged audiobook of a full-sized novel, novels are very long, and so the middle muddle is also very long. Read more →

Itchy Bitesized 15: Three Things About Point-of-View

Point-of-view is one of the chief tools you have for controlling your reader's experience of the story, and their reaction to it. So I have blogged about it a good deal, mostly in the four posts in the Point-of-View and Narrators series. This Bitesized series post is a quick check-in with a few of the questions which crop up most often. 1) Readers don't only get involved with the viewpoint characters and no one else. Think about it: there's no equivalent of point-of-view in films and plays - everyone is seen from the outside - any more than there is... Read more →

Itchy Bitesized 14: "Effect" vs "Affect"

One of the most common word confusions I see, even in writers who aren't easily confused, is between "effect" and "affect". It's very understandable - both can be a verb, and both can be a noun - and sorting it out is a bite-sized job, so here goes. Read more →

Itchy Bitesized 13: Artist's Dates Don't Have to be About Art

It was Julia Cameron who started the idea of the "Artist Date",* in her book The Artist's Way. The idea is that any creative work draws on a well - or a larder is a more useful image, I think - and if you don't want to run out of creative food and therefore fuel, you have to fill the larder and keep refilling it. But how do you fill it? Read more →

Itchy Bitesized 12: Don't Pull Your Writing's Teeth

Another thing I frequently find myself writing on students' work is "Don't pull its teeth!". Here, "it" is a scene, a sentence, a character's thought, or a character's action, which has all the ingredients to be compelling, but somehow falls flat. Read more →

Itchy Bitesized 11: "Who Says This?" Make sure the reader knows who's talking.

One of the most frequent things I find myself writing on students' manuscripts is "Who says this?" I did a big post on writing dialogue a couple of years ago, so this is a round-up of solutions to this specific problem of making sure the reader knows which character says what. Read more →

Itchy Bitesized 10: Ten Reasons to Read Your Work Aloud

You know there are no rules for which words get on the page, nor for how you should set about putting them there. But there are tools - and one of the sharpest and most universal is reading your work aloud. What's more, it applies to any kind of writing, from poetry and fiction to your doctoral thesis. I'm not talking here about preparing reading for events or reading at events, but about reading aloud, to yourself, as part of the editing process. Here are some reasons why it's such a good tool, and some things to help you wield it. Read more →

Itchy Bitesized 9: Three Things About Filtering (a.k.a. HD for your writing)

Writers very often use phrases which get between the reader and a straightforward representation and evocation of what's happening, without adding anything else to the experience. Getting rid of filtering is one of the simplest ways to make your writing more vivid and engaging, and I've blogged more fully about it, so this is just a quick look at the issues that most often arise when I'm teaching how to wrangle it. Read more →

Itchy Bitesized 8: Six Things About Second Novel Syndrome

Not only is Being Published distinctly weird, now you've got to write another book. Maybe it's under contract, or maybe it's just that everyone's expecting you to write another. So why is it being so difficult? Read more →

Itchy Bitesized 7: What You Need To Know About Comma Splices

Comma splices are probably the punctuation mistake I see most often, and it's frequently in writing by people who otherwise know why punctuation matters, and use it very well. But what is a comma splice, why do they matter, and what do you do about them? Read more →

Itchy Bitesized 6: Which Viewpoint Character Should You Be Using?

Even when you've got your head round how point-of-view and narrators work, you're left with the question of which of the available characters should be the viewpoint character for this page, this scene, this chapter or this novel. This post explores the possibilities. Read more →

Itchy Bitesized 5: Sixteen Things You Need to Become a Writer (and twelve things you don't)

When I meet someone who says they'd love to be a writer but they've never studied Creative Writing, or they can't spell, or they always got bad marks in English at school, I say, with truth, that you don't need any of those things. So, first, let's be clear: Read more →

Itchy Bitesized 4: Three Things About Writing Synopses

The problem with synopses is simple: if you could have written your story in 300-500 words, you would have, but you couldn't, so boiling your 70-130,000 words down feels as impossible (with apologies for mixing my metaphors) as catching a waterfall in a cup. But it can be done – and it can, actually, become a really useful tool in your tool-kit. Read more →

Itchy Bitesized 3: Ten Unapologetic Ways to Ask to be Paid

From festival appearances to funeral poems, writers get asked to work unpaid all the time. Taking ourselves more seriously as paid professionals means learning to ask for money without apology or embarrassment from events organisers, broadcasters, schools, magazines, alumni organisations and anyone else. Read more →