Ann McTaggart Characters Concept and plot Dialogue Elaine Graham-Leigh News about BGBW members Pacing Point of view Susie Helme Techniques Women Writing
Writing advice blog: One hundred wonderful metaphors
Susie Helme Susie shares her favourite metaphors from literature and film. Which will inspire you to craft some wonderful metaphors of your own? shuddered as if something multi-legged and primal had stalked across his spine[1] a man of low birth whom Providence has thrown like dice[2] feels the soft, warm parts of herself being removed…
Writing advice blog: Editorialising and qualifiers
Susie Helme When I worked as a journalist, we were taught never to Editorialise (express personal opinions or feelings). Our readers want to know Who, What, When, Where and How. They don’t care about what I think or feel about it. If I was lucky and they liked the piece, they’d look at my byline…
Writing advice blog: Writing wondeful metaphors
Susie Helme A metaphor is a literary device, a comparison between two dissimilar things, using descriptive or figurative language, for rhetorical effect. Metaphors are a great way to add colour to your descriptions and spice up your writing. By using symbolism, they tell us more about the subject than a literal description. They create a…
Writing advice blog: Writing aliens
Elaine Graham-Leigh One of the trickiest but most interesting aspects of writing fiction, I find, is writing alien characters. How do you show your reader the differences between the alien culture and ours? While it’s only in science fiction that you might find yourself writing actual alien characters, this is a challenge you’ll face as…
Writing advice blog: Second person point of view
Susie Helme The second person could be the most difficult point of view to use in a novel because it ‘can feel trite or gimmicky’, requiring a Voice which is ‘hard to sustain for the length of a novel’.[1] It’s a very effective point of view (POV) to use in how-to nonfiction, of course, as…
Writing advice blog: Zooming in, zooming out
Susie Helme The Reedsy blog How to Write a Closer (or More Distant) Point of View, is all about psychic or narrative distance, where the narrative (and therefore the reader) stands in relation to the character. I was intrigued by the statement: ‘The furthest you’re going to go in terms of Point of View is…
Writing advice blog: Dialogue – learning from the best
Susie Helme and Elaine Graham-Leigh Last week, we looked at some tips for how to write great dialogue. Now we’ll see how they can be put into practice with some examples from literature from 1813 to 2020. Literary style and conventions change over time, but the need for great dialogue remains the same. Pride and…
Writing advice blog: Writing great dialogue
Susie Helme Dialogue is crucial to make your plot and characters come alive, but how do you get it right? See some of my top tips for effective dialogue below, then next week, Elaine and I will be analysing some of our favourite bits of dialogue to see how they work. Tips for writing great…
Writing advice blog: Padding
Susie Helme I have edited or reviewed so many novels that feature a lot of ‘padding’. As a trained journalist, I’ve been schooled to cut out as much of that as possible (though I still err). You want: Who, What, When, and Where, and maybe How and Why. Then you need to stop. If you’re…
Writing advice blog: the basic concept
Susie Helme The most important aspect of a novel is the Basic Concept, your novel’s Unique Selling Point. It’s a marketing tool; this is where you sell your novel. You gotta have a good idea. If the idea isn’t good enough, you could either waste years of your life writing something that never sees the…
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