World building: Water

World building: Water

Water is the universal solvent, enabling life on Earth, and dissolving the hardest rock to soil over time. It can be the lightest mist, a cloud scudding across a sky so blue it hurts your heart. A mighty torrent of

World building : Animals, plants and evolution

World building : Animals, plants and evolution

Designing a new world with its own creatures and plants is a lot of fun. There are so many resources available online that research can be a bottomless pit. However, this depth of knowledge will shine through in your writing.

World building: Creation

World building: Creation

Writing is quite a personal thing, with authors each having their own idiosyncrasies and quirks to help them imagine and get the words on the page. Books may start in a dream, but like anything worth doing, take days that

Writing up a storm

Writing up a storm

Everyone always complains about the weather – do your characters? Or do they sail through the pages in blissful ignorance of the climate? Weather conditions can be a big part of a scene, adding impact in many different ways, from

Fantastical Fiction Sounds

Fantastical Fiction Sounds

Crafting descriptions that involve the senses is an important job for a writer. For a reader it helps them to fully immerse in a book, to feel like they have entered a new world – from the creak as a

Crom! There’s a louse in my ale.

Crom! There’s a louse in my ale.

Insects are all around us, from spiders living in your hard drive and the corners of the room, silverfish eating your precious books, beetles clicking, butterflies fluttering…you get the idea, I don’t have to get all poetic. Insects outweigh us

Quest for Fire

Quest for Fire

Reading is easy. We sit in a comfortable chair, perhaps by a warm heater with cat on lap/dog at feet and a hot drink. That’s often why we read, to share vicariously the bad times and good with characters while