The first building block: structure, plot and story (part three)

Rewiting your first draft might seem daunting, but, says James McCreet, it’s where you have the chance to really make your writing shine So you’ve finished the first draft. The story lies ‘finished’ b

…and they all lived happily ever after? It’s such a great feeling, isn’t it, when we are able to type The End after the last sentence of even the very first draft of a novel? We’ll start to hope that

Middle-grade protagonists are usually aged between 11 and 13 years old – an age when they are testing their limits, pushing their boundaries and learning about independence. In many middle-grade novel

This month’s story, ‘Futures’ by Han Ong, is set in the world of tennis. It invites us to look, not just at the game, but at the darker side of being part of that world. As always, you will get the mo

Horror is a remarkably flexible genre – one that can take all sorts of forms. From the subtleties of the ghost story all the way through to the flat-out grossness of body horror, along with its mallea

DRAWING IS GENERALLY where your practical artistic journey begins. A pencil or pen and a sheet of paper is all you need to doodle away. Outlines clarify information, making it easy to access the infor