People always talk about stand-up comedians and their timing – but you seldom hear people comment on the excellent timing of writers. And yet timing is essential to making a piece of writing work.

You need to know when to hold back, and when to continue, when to pause and when to stop altogether. You need to sense when to set something up and when to pay it off (rather like the comedian’s punch line.) When you reach the exact point you should pull the curtain on a scene, you should feel it somewhere deep in your gut.

I think the best way to learn timing is to read a great deal. When I read this recently, I was struck by the great timing, and how it forced me to turn the page. It stops at a point where a good couple of questions still hang in the air. Nothing has been answered.

It’s just the perfect place to end this scene. Isn’t it great?

I’ve taken it from Maggie O’Farrell’s The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, Iris has just received a telephone call from a man she doesn’t know, who says he’s calling from a hospital – she doesn’t catch the name. He informs her that she is the contact family member for a Euphemia Lennox, someone Iris has never heard of. He confirms that she has power of attorney for her grandmother, who is in full time nursing care, then tells her that Euphemia is her grandmother’s sister:

Iris is really cross now. ‘She doesn’t have a sister.’

There is a pause in which Iris can hear the man moving his lips over his teeth.

‘I’m afraid I must contradict you,’ he says eventually.

‘She doesn’t. I know she doesn’t. She’s an only one, like me. Are you telling me I don’t know my own family tree?’

‘The trustees of Cauldstone have been trying to trace…’

‘Cauldstone? Isn’t that the…the…’ Iris fights to come up with a word other than looney-bin ‘…asylum?’

The man coughs. ‘It’s a unit specialising in psychiatry. Was, I should say.’

‘Was?’

‘It’s closing down. Which is why we’re contacting you.’

***

Click here for our 2016 dates.

My 2016 blogs will continue to try to uncover the secrets behind the practice of good writing.

Please join the discussion and if you have discovered something that has made a great difference to some aspect of your writing, please send it to me. I’ll share it on the blog and we can discuss it.

Each blog will deal with a secret that may have occurred to me through reading or mentoring other people’s work. Or they may  be lessons hard learnt through five of my own books. Many will be applicable to fiction and non-fiction, while some might refer to one or the other.  When you tackle a piece of writing, you always have a vision of the perfect work it will be. As you write, you become increasingly aware of how it falls short of the perfection you wish for it. Writing (and rewriting) is the process of trying to bring it as close as you possibly can to that vision. Here, I will try to share those little gems which should bring all our writing one step closer to the perfect piece of writing – one blog at a time. Some might tackle the process of writing or how to keep writing, while some will look at language, characterisation or story. Some might be more general, while others will be very specific. But each will be a piece of advice that I believe in and that I hope will help make us all into better writers.

Say you’ve set up a mystery in your novel. All through her life, a young woman has tried to get her father to talk about her long-lost mother. He has resisted and she has lived with the mystery.

Then one day, she pops round to see the old guy in his dotage and he says: “Okay, I’m ready to tell you now. Here’s the reason I’ve never spoken about your mother.”

It doesn’t wash, does it?

It’s anti-climactic. We’ve been waiting and waiting for this revelation and then, suddenly, by complete co-incidence, he chooses this particular Monday – with nothing special about it – to tell her.

Something has to trigger that revelation. He must be forced to it by circumstances. We must see that something has changed.

The same goes for people suddenly behaving differently or out of character. If he never swims, but then decides to swim on that particular day, we want to know why.

Something must happen which makes him wish (or forces him) to change the habit of a lifetime. Or, we simply won’t believe it.

***

Click here for our 2016 dates.

My 2016 blogs will continue to try to uncover the secrets behind the practice of good writing.

Please join the discussion and if you have discovered something that has made a great difference to some aspect of your writing, please send it to me. I’ll share it on the blog and we can discuss it.

Each blog will deal with a secret that may have occurred to me through reading or mentoring other people’s work. Or they may  be lessons hard learnt through five of my own books. Many will be applicable to fiction and non-fiction, while some might refer to one or the other.  When you tackle a piece of writing, you always have a vision of the perfect work it will be. As you write, you become increasingly aware of how it falls short of the perfection you wish for it. Writing (and rewriting) is the process of trying to bring it as close as you possibly can to that vision. Here, I will try to share those little gems which should bring all our writing one step closer to the perfect piece of writing – one blog at a time. Some might tackle the process of writing or how to keep writing, while some will look at language, characterisation or story. Some might be more general, while others will be very specific. But each will be a piece of advice that I believe in and that I hope will help make us all into better writers.

Exciting events don’t make a story.

I know this sounds counter-intuitive, but it’s a point that struck me forcibly when assessing a manuscript recently.

You might have the greatest premise for a novel. A coup in a small African country escalates into World War III. Great.

So you begin by showing the military plotting, then perhaps move to a scene in which we see the president eating chocolates and practising his fiddle. Then we move to the White House, where the US president is being briefed by his aides about the situation in some remote African country. (The president says, “Where is this Africa…” Only kidding.) Then perhaps we move to Russia, where…

Huge events, filled with drama, guaranteed to fill us with shock and awe, right? Actually, we are more likely to yawn and put the book down. We don’t really care about huge events unless we feel concern for someone caught up in them.

That’s why newspapers will always try to find a character affected by a dramatic event. We care more about an earthquake in our home town than we do about an earthquake across the world. That’s because we might know someone involved and we imagine how easily we ourselves might have been there.

So, writing about the earthquake for countries across the world, journalists will find a family whose house disappeared into a giant sinkhole and who are the only surviving members of their neighbourhood.

We’ll empathise, gasp in sympathy … and hey presto, we care about an earthquake across the world.

The same applies to stories. We don’t care a stuff about a coup, nor a huge war, unless we know someone affected by it. Give us a protagonist who is trying to prevent the coup, whom we get to know and care about. The coup, and the huge war, will affect him deeply … unless he can stop it. Oh my God, will he make it in time?

It’s his story we’re following. We care about his life … and suddenly we care about the coup.

***

Click here for our 2016 dates.

My 2016 blogs will continue to try to uncover the secrets behind the practice of good writing.

Please join the discussion and if you have discovered something that has made a great difference to some aspect of your writing, please send it to me. I’ll share it on the blog and we can discuss it.

Each blog will deal with a secret that may have occurred to me through reading or mentoring other people’s work. Or they may  be lessons hard learnt through five of my own books. Many will be applicable to fiction and non-fiction, while some might refer to one or the other.  When you tackle a piece of writing, you always have a vision of the perfect work it will be. As you write, you become increasingly aware of how it falls short of the perfection you wish for it. Writing (and rewriting) is the process of trying to bring it as close as you possibly can to that vision. Here, I will try to share those little gems which should bring all our writing one step closer to the perfect piece of writing – one blog at a time. Some might tackle the process of writing or how to keep writing, while some will look at language, characterisation or story. Some might be more general, while others will be very specific. But each will be a piece of advice that I believe in and that I hope will help make us all into better writers.

Like love, drama can’t be hurried.

As she walked into the apartment, a bomb exploded in the lounge, killing its three occupants and causing carnage.

Okay, as I showed a couple of weeks ago, the construction: “As she walked into the apartment” needlessly dilutes the power of rest of the sentence. It may be the subordinate clause, but it’s what we notice first.

We are focused on her entering the apartment and the bomb exploding feels as though it’s tacked on the end. Would it make a difference if we turned it around? “A bomb exploded as she walked into the apartment.” Yes it would. We focus first on the bomb and only vaguely register the walking in part.

However, there’s a much more important point at play here. You can’t hurry drama.

I find that new writers do this a lot. Perhaps they believe that getting it out quickly packs more punch. The opposite is true.

Allow us to experience it, step by step, with the character who enters the apartment.

She closed the door behind her. The apartment was silent. Where was everyone? A creak sounded from the lounge. No music, though. That was strange.

She dropped her bag on the side table and started for the door. A flash exploded across her eyes, blinding her. Something punched her full in the gut, forcing the air from her lungs and smashing her against the far wall. A boom reverberated against her eardrums, before all sound died.

She lay crumpled against the wall. Brick and plaster dust swirled in the air. A pile of kindling lay where the side table used to stand. The door to the lounge was gone.

We haven’t even got to the dead people yet, but we will, as soon as she can rise. This is, of course, a matter of showing rather than telling. Don’t “tell” us that a bomb exploded, killing three people (unless you’re a journalist writing a hard news story).

When we’re reading a book, we don’t want the news upfront, before we finish our cereal. We want to experience it ourselves, at the same rate as the character does. We want to be shown. Like her, we don’t yet know if a bomb exploded, or if there was a gas leak.

We’ll discover in due course, as she does. In the meantime, it raises questions in our minds, which adds to suspense. And documenting each step into the apartment, slowing it down, adds to the drama.

***

Click here for our 2016 dates.

My 2016 blogs will continue to try to uncover the secrets behind the practice of good writing.

Please join the discussion and if you have discovered something that has made a great difference to some aspect of your writing, please send it to me. I’ll share it on the blog and we can discuss it.

Each blog will deal with a secret that may have occurred to me through reading or mentoring other people’s work. Or they may  be lessons hard learnt through five of my own books. Many will be applicable to fiction and non-fiction, while some might refer to one or the other.  When you tackle a piece of writing, you always have a vision of the perfect work it will be. As you write, you become increasingly aware of how it falls short of the perfection you wish for it. Writing (and rewriting) is the process of trying to bring it as close as you possibly can to that vision. Here, I will try to share those little gems which should bring all our writing one step closer to the perfect piece of writing – one blog at a time. Some might tackle the process of writing or how to keep writing, while some will look at language, characterisation or story. Some might be more general, while others will be very specific. But each will be a piece of advice that I believe in and that I hope will help make us all into better writers.

In one of his books on writing, author and writing mentor John Gardner made a tiny point, but I am struck again and again by the impact it has on writing.

I mentioned this briefly last week, but thought it worth expanding on. Don’t needlessly filter sensory experiences by telling us who is observing, hearing or smelling them.

“She saw the policeman punch the onlooker”, or “I heard the seagulls mewing”: the effect of what is being seen and heard is diluted, as is the sense of what is being smelled in: “I could smell her hair burning”.

“The policeman punched the onlooker” is far stronger because it’s more direct. “Seagulls mewed” works more powerfully on the reader’s senses, as does “the stench of burning hair made it difficult to breathe”.

This relates, of course (as perhaps most things do, in the end) to my favourite subject, point of view. When you write: “I saw the ship hit the iceberg”, it is entirely unnecessary even to mention the fact that the narrator “saw” this event.

The narrator either saw it happen or she’s relating something she heard or learnt. Either way, it will be obvious to the reader. If she’s standing on the deck of the Titanic, she saw it happen. If she’s teaching a class of thirteen-year-olds in 2016, she’s relating what she has learnt. Either way, we won’t be confused.

If the narrator “I” was in her cabin when the ship struck the iceberg, she can’t possibly narrate: “I saw the ship strike the iceberg”, nor “The ship struck the iceberg”. We are limited to what she experiences.

In that moment, she has no idea the ship has struck the iceberg, but only that a muffled boom vibrates through her cabin.

So, logically, if your narrator is a passenger on the Titanic, you have no need to tell us “I saw” or “I heard”. If the fact is being related to us at all, “I” must either be seeing the ship strike, or hearing the boom.

Equally, when we use the third person “he” or “she” nowadays, we are most commonly showing the reader the world from the perspective of that character. As readers, we are limited to what the character sees, hears, smells, tastes and feels.

This means that the same point applies. “She saw the ship strike the iceberg” is less effective, because it dilutes the power and drama of what is happening. It is also entirely unnecessary. If, as readers, we are told: “The ship struck the iceberg”, then the character, “she”, must have seen it happen, otherwise we wouldn’t be told of it.

Instead we’d be told: “A boom echoed through the ship. The cabin shuddered. A glass rattled on the shelf.” She experiences it and, therefore, we (as readers) do too. It’s less effective, and utterly unnecessary, to tell us: “She heard a boom echo through the ship. She felt the cabin shudder and saw the glass rattle…”

If you happen to be using a particularly god-like narrator, you are able to tell us what’s happening everywhere on the ship, since you’re looking down on your characters, rather than showing us the world through what they experience.

You are able to tell us: “The ship struck the iceberg. A boom echoed through the ship, causing every cabin to shudder, rattling the glassware on every shelf.”

Aha, you might say, but in that case, you might need to tell us that Janet was on deck at the time and actually witnessed the ship make contact. – that “Janet saw”.

It may be necessary, but it is still less effective. Better to separate the experiencing from the experience itself. In other words, “The ship scraped its length along the iceberg. Metal screeched. Janet gasped and held her breath.”

***

Click here for our 2016 dates.

My 2016 blogs will continue to try to uncover the secrets behind the practice of good writing.

Please join the discussion and if you have discovered something that has made a great difference to some aspect of your writing, please send it to me. I’ll share it on the blog and we can discuss it.

Each blog will deal with a secret that may have occurred to me through reading or mentoring other people’s work. Or they may  be lessons hard learnt through five of my own books. Many will be applicable to fiction and non-fiction, while some might refer to one or the other.  When you tackle a piece of writing, you always have a vision of the perfect work it will be. As you write, you become increasingly aware of how it falls short of the perfection you wish for it. Writing (and rewriting) is the process of trying to bring it as close as you possibly can to that vision. Here, I will try to share those little gems which should bring all our writing one step closer to the perfect piece of writing – one blog at a time. Some might tackle the process of writing or how to keep writing, while some will look at language, characterisation or story. Some might be more general, while others will be very specific. But each will be a piece of advice that I believe in and that I hope will help make us all into better writers.

You can’t use just anyone as a brainstorm partner.

This is a precious relationship and should be treated with respect. Choose them with as much care as you choose a life partner – and it’s usually not the same person.

Last week I spoke about the danger of talking indiscriminately about your ideas and draining their power. But this doesn’t mean you can’t choose one person, whom you trust absolutely, to bounce ideas off or with whom to brainstorm a niggling point that won’t come right. For me it’s my writing course partner Richard rather than my life partner, Fred.

Life partners don’t automatically make for the most ideal bouncer-offers. They’re too intimately bound up with you. They fear for you. They feel every potential humiliation or setback too deeply.

Richard, on the other hand, isn’t that intimately connected to me. Yet he understands the delicacy of new ideas. He knows how silly they can sound when they’re new and unformed.

When I’m stuck, I feel safe to bounce an idea around with him and will often come away with a solution. Not because he’s cleverer or more creative (though he may try to dispute that) than I am, but because we’re both cleverer and more creative within that space. Instead of shrivelling, as it might under a less sympathetic gaze, my idea seems to expand and develop.

My life partner, Fred, is also a writer. We don’t show each other our works in progress, but I do trust his judgment. Because of that, and the honesty it implies, a book has to be close to completion before I can face showing it to him.

It’s not easy to find the perfect person to bounce your writing ideas off. Richard and I can bicker and niggle with the best of them. But when we set aside time for brainstorming, either his work or mine, it becomes a sacred time. Both of us understand this. None of our small rivalries or friendly resentments may enter that space.

In our writing classes, we try to create a safe space for exactly this: harnessing the communal creativity of a small, mutually vulnerable group. Each member is as exposed as the next, in a non-competitive environment. We encourage each member to find the best in each other’s writing, rather than to break it down. It’s good for their own writing, as well as their partners’, to learn to recognise why something works.

***

Click here for our 2016 dates.

My 2016 blogs will continue to try to uncover the secrets behind the practice of good writing.

Please join the discussion and if you have discovered something that has made a great difference to some aspect of your writing, please send it to me. I’ll share it on the blog and we can discuss it.

Each blog will deal with a secret that may have occurred to me through reading or mentoring other people’s work. Or they may  be lessons hard learnt through five of my own books. Many will be applicable to fiction and non-fiction, while some might refer to one or the other.  When you tackle a piece of writing, you always have a vision of the perfect work it will be. As you write, you become increasingly aware of how it falls short of the perfection you wish for it. Writing (and rewriting) is the process of trying to bring it as close as you possibly can to that vision. Here, I will try to share those little gems which should bring all our writing one step closer to the perfect piece of writing – one blog at a time. Some might tackle the process of writing or how to keep writing, while some will look at language, characterisation or story. Some might be more general, while others will be very specific. But each will be a piece of advice that I believe in and that I hope will help make us all into better writers.

A couple of weeks ago I had coffee with another writer, who said he found it odd that some would-be writers talked indiscriminately about their writing. “Funny,” he said, “because it’s the last thing I want to talk about.”

I agree, and it’s something I feel strongly about. Don’t tell all and sundry about your idea. It’s not that I think they’ll pinch it. It’s that your idea will be defused if you talk about it too much. My first book lived in my head for a couple of years before I gathered the courage to start writing it. It probably wasn’t a bad thing.

It brewed and percolated until it bubbled over when I lay in bed at night. I had to crawl to the bathroom, crouch on the floor and scribble notes on whatever was at hand to avoid losing its detail.

But one thing I never did was tell it to people. Firstly, the most brilliant idea can sound remarkably fatuous if you try to explain it to someone, particularly if that person doesn’t care either way and is impatient to discuss their love affair / marital problems / new kitchen.

And secondly, the more you tell it, the more it loses its power. If it sits in your head, it gains strength. It builds and grows in drama as you become desperate to release it. If you’re always describing it, you grow used to it and you will write it with less dramatic tension as a result.

So, as a friend of mine said when I mentioned (enigmatically) that I had a story to write … shut up and write the bloody thing.

***

Click here for our 2016 dates.

My 2016 blogs will continue to try to uncover the secrets behind the practice of good writing.

Please join the discussion and if you have discovered something that has made a great difference to some aspect of your writing, please send it to me. I’ll share it on the blog and we can discuss it.

Each blog will deal with a secret that may have occurred to me through reading or mentoring other people’s work. Or they may  be lessons hard learnt through five of my own books. Many will be applicable to fiction and non-fiction, while some might refer to one or the other.  When you tackle a piece of writing, you always have a vision of the perfect work it will be. As you write, you become increasingly aware of how it falls short of the perfection you wish for it. Writing (and rewriting) is the process of trying to bring it as close as you possibly can to that vision. Here, I will try to share those little gems which should bring all our writing one step closer to the perfect piece of writing – one blog at a time. Some might tackle the process of writing or how to keep writing, while some will look at language, characterisation or story. Some might be more general, while others will be very specific. But each will be a piece of advice that I believe in and that I hope will help make us all into better writers.

There’s one thing we always say at the start of our writing classes: we’re not precious about writing.

We intend it to put people at ease; to show that we’re not going to peer down into their quivering creative souls and find them wanting.

But I think it’s a good way to view writing at any time. Of all the problems would-be writers cite, I think self-consciousness is the most common. People freeze their creativity by worrying about what people will think, or what they themselves think, or whether it will ever be good enough.

It will never be good enough. Get used to that. It’s not your job to write the best prose on the planet. No matter how good you are, there’s always someone better.

Your job, for your first draft anyway, is to get something down. That’s just the beginning, though. Because writing is a craft, you can hone it and make it better. You can do this as many times as you like.

Your job on subsequent drafts is to bring it as close as you possibly can to the vision you had for it. Rather than paralysing yourself trying to be the best, simply try for the best you can be now, on this particular draft. And if you keep writing and keep honing, next year you’ll be better.

Writing is a craft like any other. Don’t be afraid of it. Get over yourself and get writing.

***

Click here to sign up for our newsletter and click here for our 2016 dates.

My 2016 blogs will continue to try to uncover the secrets behind the practice of good writing.

Please join the discussion and if you have discovered something that has made a great difference to some aspect of your writing, please send it to me. I’ll share it on the blog and we can discuss it.

Each blog will deal with a secret that may have occurred to me through reading or mentoring other people’s work. Or they may  be lessons hard learnt through five of my own books. Many will be applicable to fiction and non-fiction, while some might refer to one or the other.  When you tackle a piece of writing, you always have a vision of the perfect work it will be. As you write, you become increasingly aware of how it falls short of the perfection you wish for it. Writing (and rewriting) is the process of trying to bring it as close as you possibly can to that vision. Here, I will try to share those little gems which should bring all our writing one step closer to the perfect piece of writing – one blog at a time. Some might tackle the process of writing or how to keep writing, while some will look at language, characterisation or story. Some might be more general, while others will be very specific. But each will be a piece of advice that I believe in and that I hope will help make us all into better writers.

Do we care if your character tidies the linen cupboard or stirs a pot? Hmm, well, let’s look at these trivial actions and see.

Okay, so we probably all know that showing involves dropping your reader into the moment and using all your senses, particularly if you read my blog last week.

But it occurred to me that it goes further than that. Good writing is about being specific and vivid. So … no one would point and laugh at you for writing: “She stirred the pot” or “He tidied the linen cupboard”.

In each case, you’re giving us some basic information. But who really cares and would anyone miss those statements if they weren’t there at all?

Yet, think how your writing would change if you were specific, and perhaps used figurative language to help us create an image in our minds:

“She crouched over the pot, peering through the steam to stir a mixture which bubbled like a witch’s cauldron.”

Or: He huffed and tutted, scattering towels about the room, then refolded each into a precise square and replaced it with its pair on a newly labelled shelf.

Each of these examples allows us to form an image of how the action is carried out, which surely gives a reason for it to be used at all. So to answer the initial question: yes, it’s nice to know what a character is doing – it grounds them in their world and their reality. But we would probably skip over the general statements, barely seeing them.

On the other hand, the way each action is carried out gives us a clear picture of it, while adding insight into the character responsible for it.

***

Click here to sign up for our newsletter and click here for our 2016 dates.

My 2016 blogs will continue to try to uncover the secrets behind the practice of good writing.

Please join the discussion and if you have discovered something that has made a great difference to some aspect of your writing, please send it to me. I’ll share it on the blog and we can discuss it.

Each blog will deal with a secret that may have occurred to me through reading or mentoring other people’s work. Or they may  be lessons hard learnt through five of my own books. Many will be applicable to fiction and non-fiction, while some might refer to one or the other.  When you tackle a piece of writing, you always have a vision of the perfect work it will be. As you write, you become increasingly aware of how it falls short of the perfection you wish for it. Writing (and rewriting) is the process of trying to bring it as close as you possibly can to that vision. Here, I will try to share those little gems which should bring all our writing one step closer to the perfect piece of writing – one blog at a time. Some might tackle the process of writing or how to keep writing, while some will look at language, characterisation or story. Some might be more general, while others will be very specific. But each will be a piece of advice that I believe in and that I hope will help make us all into better writers.

Everyone who has tried their hand at writing knows the dictum: show, don’t tell. But because it’s been part of creative writing lore for so long, there are those who think it’s passé.

Bernard Markovits, for example, wrote in the London Review of Books recently about creative writing programmes. They produced, he said, certain standard pieces of advice he had mixed feelings about. One of these was the “show don’t tell” mantra which, he felt, produced a certain kind of fiction and ruled out others.

Yet, he acknowledged, it nonetheless “works pretty well”.

“Not many writers are good at telling – their explanations are not always that interesting. George Eliot does good explanation. Philip Roth does good explanation. But good explanation is hard to teach: it involves having a sophisticated worldview and finding the moments when that worldview has something specific to say, about psychology, or economics, or the weather.

“It’s easier to say to a student: let’s cut all that out, stick to the facts, tweak the sequence of events to make it more plausible, prune the dialogue and leave out all the inner thought stuff, which gives the game away, delay the moment of drama, tone it down a little, too, and let’s keep a lid on the hero’s motivations, so we don’t know whether to trust her or not.”

I hope that we judge writing on whether it works, rather than on strict rules. I believe it’s important to accept “show don’t tell” as a principle, but not one that can never, ever be broken on pain of creative banishment.

There is a place for “telling”. Some writers can tell us things most entertainingly. The passages in which they run us rapidly through a period of time in a character’s life can be lyrical or funny. If a character is engaging and amusing, he can keep our attention while he holds sway on any subject at all.

But it is also true to say that most beginning writers use explanation in a way that doesn’t necessarily hold the attention. Explanation is easier. It’s simpler to give us a paragraph which explains exactly who and what a character is than to think of ways in which to reveal this character information through the way they behave, what they say and how they see the world.

Easier isn’t necessarily better. So, as a general rule, I still say you should show rather than tell. Use “telling” for effect but, if you do, make sure you do it well.

***

Click here to sign up for our newsletter and click here for our 2016 dates.

My 2016 blogs will continue to try to uncover the secrets behind the practice of good writing.

Please join the discussion and if you have discovered something that has made a great difference to some aspect of your writing, please send it to me. I’ll share it on the blog and we can discuss it.

Each blog will deal with a secret that may have occurred to me through reading or mentoring other people’s work. Or they may  be lessons hard learnt through five of my own books. Many will be applicable to fiction and non-fiction, while some might refer to one or the other.  When you tackle a piece of writing, you always have a vision of the perfect work it will be. As you write, you become increasingly aware of how it falls short of the perfection you wish for it. Writing (and rewriting) is the process of trying to bring it as close as you possibly can to that vision. Here, I will try to share those little gems which should bring all our writing one step closer to the perfect piece of writing – one blog at a time. Some might tackle the process of writing or how to keep writing, while some will look at language, characterisation or story. Some might be more general, while others will be very specific. But each will be a piece of advice that I believe in and that I hope will help make us all into better writers.