Getting into (someone else’s) character

Novels, for me, have come from somewhere I wasn’t looking. In my twenties I was carrying an idea about a woman wandering around Ireland on a quest she didn’t understand and I sat in the Reading Room o

We have wandered many months through this land of Building Blocks. It is time for a break. Learning is a weary trek. And writing is not all about learning. Writing is about, well, writing. The doing o

This month’s story, ‘A School Story’ by M.R. James, is a ghost story within a frame narrative. It offers a number of interesting features, and, as always, you will get the most out of this masterclass

Oh, you want to hear about fairy-tale retellings? You want to know the secret of why I write them? Is that it? Fine. Come a little closer. These aren’t some enchanted beans I’m selling, this is the re

Fantasy author JRR Tolkien’s mythological Middle Earth takes inspiration from a number of places in Gloucestershire and the West Midlands. Tolkien frequently visited the Forest of Dean and its tempera

When I first self-published The Complete Article Writer: How To Write And Sell Magazine Articles, most editors still wanted freelance material submitted by post. Who remembers enclosing a stamped addr