Recently, I searched for a writers group. I wanted one with writers more experienced than me, and I now meet monthly with a group that includes two screenwriters with three decades of experience each, and a published non-fiction author. I submitted the first two chapters of my current WiP for review. I hate anyone reading …
Thoughts on ‘Strangers On a Train’ by Patricia Highsmith
This is not a book review. It's about what I learnt from reading this classic novel and has some elements of critique in it. A month ago I posted a blog about how anything you read influences your work in progress. My current project is written in third-person. All but one of my published works …
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The cliff hanger
Do you round up your chapters or add a cliff hanger? This was a question posed by someone using the #writingcommunity hashtag on Twitter. My answer is that I initially rounded up chapters until an editor made me stop. Her reasoning was that if you round up your chapters into neatly self contained stories, then a …
Plotting love affairs and break ups
One WIP has been submitted, one is on the back-burner and one I've just started plotting. I'm taking my time with this. With my other two works in progress I found I plotted too quickly, then went back and tried to expand them. One of them paces well, so I changed my mind and submitted …
Starting a new novel
I'm at the ideas stage. A couple of months ago I wrote a blog about the research I'll do for this. You can find it here, but basically it's a story set in the 1990's and centres around a group of friends. My husband and I have been casting people we know as characters and …
I’m Pantstering a Bit More!
My religion has changed a little. I used to be a devout Plotter. My love for working out what would happen chapter by chapter happened with my second novel, Drama Queens and Adult Themes. Two worlds are described in that story and characters from one realm, the Afterlife, interfere with the lives of an unsuspecting …
Plotter or Pantser?
I was asked this question for an author interview recently and had to look it up, even though I worked out what it meant without quite knowing how pantser worked into the concept. For those still uninitiated, a plotter plots their books before they type a single letter, and a pantser flies by the seat of …
kevin klehr - author 