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If your life is going well, you probably don’t have much firsthand knowledge about being arrested. That can make it difficult to write convincing crime or thriller fiction, but worry not; I’m here to help. If, on the other hand, you’ve pursued legal studies or have been on the receiving end of the long arm of the law, this post isn’t for you. You know enough, friend! For those of you who are …
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If you’ve been following our blog closely (and if not, why not?), you’ll remember our recent post on using the Myers-Briggs personality types to build your characters and influence the decisions they make in your plot. Now, that’s all well and good, but Myers-Briggs is just one of dozens of personality tests designed to sort people into different groups or types. Far, far older than Myers-Briggs …
[Read more...] about How Blood, Phlegm, and Bile Can Produce Compelling Characters
Few writers working in today’s America are as well known and respected as Baltimore’s Anne Tyler. Celebrated for her humanistic, domestic, and gorgeously observed novels about Baltimore’s middle- and working-class families, Tyler is the kind of single-minded writer who has found her niche and writes it very, very well. Indeed, much of Tyler’s success as a novelist (she’s won a whole host of …
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Way back in the mist-shrouded past (that is, 2014), we published ‘The Top Ten Books On Writing That’ll Make You A Better Writer.’ Well, to mark the five-year anniversary of that post, I’m here to offer five more books that I think will make even the most confident writer pause for thought. This article, and indeed the last one, come as responses to the fact that while writing advice is …
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A character’s ‘arc’ describes their internal journey over the course of a story, generally occasioned by the external events they encounter as it unfolds. If the person they are when they begin the book is where they ‘launch’ and the person they are at the end is where they ‘land’, then the path from one to the other is their ‘arc.’ Every fictional character worth their salt, from Harry Potter to …
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P.D. James was arguably one of the last great crime novelists working within the distinctly British ‘gentleman detective’ genre. Her famous detective, Adam Dalgliesh, turns up in fourteen celebrated novels including Cover Her Face, Shroud for a Nightingale, and Original Sin. On top of these, she’s known for The Children of Men, a dystopian novel closer to George Orwell, J.G. Ballard, and John …
[Read more...] about 5 Ways P.D. James Can Help You Improve Your Writing
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