writing
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Make your reader smile Ideas for humorous letters, fillers, articles and stories are everywhere. Something your granddaughter said which left you in stitches can make an ideal anecdote for a reader’s letter. Likewise, an experience abroad, be it braving the kamikaze streets of Rome or trying to make friends with a camel in Egypt, can…
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Here is the final instalment of my Harrogate Festival journey. Click for parts one, two, three and four if you missed them. Here is the final instalment of my Harrogate Festival journey. Sunday morning dawned and we were due to set off for home. The Crime Festival still had half a day to go, but…
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I’m almost at the end of my Harrogate Crime Festival trip. Click for parts one, two and three if you missed them. Last week, I left you with thoughts of another encounter with Harlan Coben. Well, it really hadn’t been enough that he’d spoken to me on the Friday and asked me how I was…
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Perfect Paragraphs If you’re writing an article or story for a magazine, think about your paragraph lengths. When you send your work out, your pages are A4 size. The lengths of your paragraphs may look short on a page that size but imagine them in a newspaper or magazine. You can fit about 16 words…
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If you missed parts and one and two of my Harrogate Crime Writing Festival journey, please click here and here. As we seemed to have settled into the habit of missing all or part of the events we’d booked, we were determined to be right at the front (well, nearish) of day two’s first event.…
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Last week, I gave some background detail as to how my partner and I first came to attend the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival back in 2017. If you missed it, click here. Part two follows on from last week. I hinted that there was a little bit of drama meaning we missed the first event…
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A story written in the first person can be very effective in creating a sense of atmosphere and making your readers feel as if they are part of the story, seeing and experiencing everything along with that character. Take the following example: I looked at the garden, at the weeds weaving their way towards the…
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Two years ago, my partner and I attended the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival at The Old Swan Hotel in Harrogate. Writing friends had recommended it so, for our first one, we thought we’d just go along and see what it was all about. One of the first sights we saw was Lee Child,…
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Here’s part five in my writing dialogue series. If you missed part one, click here. For part two, click here. For part three, you’ll find it here and for part four, here. Now for part five: If you’re using lots of dialogue, add in some action. What are the characters doing as they’re saying their…
Esther Chilton 