KILLER WOMEN WRITING ADVICE
Three Cheers for Bitch Lit: A Fictional Top Ten
In 2013, American novelist Meg Wolitzer commented that ‘One thing I’ve noticed that’s a kind of disturbing trend is fiction about and by women who the reader is meant to feel ‘comfortable’ around – what I call slumber party fiction – as though the characters are...
Women’s lives tend to run in cycles so why should the publishing cycle be any different?
People who know me well can tell how I’m progressing with my lastest book by my size. Though I haven’t officially weighed myself in years (40th birthday present to self) I am, by now, very familiar with the cycle of expanding and contracting, the tightening and...
In Which I Fail the Bechdel Test
What has come to be known as the Bechdel Test first appeared in 1985, in Alison Bechdel’s comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For. In order for a film or other work of fiction to pass the test, it must contain the following: (1) At least two female characters,...
Learning to Love Unlikeable Characters
Today I hit a sweet spot, the sort of which has been rare of late. I was elbow deep in plot, the cogs of my mind whirling and spinning, throwing out ideas faster than I could write them down. I was getting somewhere, and it felt buzzy and good. Then, I heard a...
5 Ways to Tell You’re In The Wrong Genre
Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train, reveals how she knew it was time to switch tracks In another life, under another name, I wrote books with (relatively) happy endings; books about love and friendship. Two of the four ‘Amy Silver’ novels were...
Write a novel in an hour
Alison Joseph raids her kitchen drawers to demonstrate how to knock up a bestseller in 60 minutes... The heading of this blog is taken from a writing workshop I run, called exactly that. Write a novel in an hour. So, can you? people ask. Obviously, the short answer...
How to be both
Anya Lipska wonders why literary cross-dressing gets us so hot under the collar... There’s a great moment in the movie As Good as it Gets when a breathless fan-girl buttonholes Jack Nicholson, playing the curmudgeonly writer Melvin Udall. ‘How do you write women so...
5 Do’s and Don’ts of Co-Writing
Louise Voss, who has co-authored several thrillers with Mark Edwards, gives her advice on how to create the perfect writing partnership DO find the right person to work with. Most of the other writing teams around, especially in the crime-writing world, are...
Anti-social media?
Erin Kelly asks: Are Facebook and Twitter killing writers' careers? I never thought I had an addictive personality. Cigarettes, alcohol, gambling? Water off a duck’s back. And then along came social media. A novelist’s life is pretty isolating; I spend up to eight...
Is The Psychological Thriller Dead?
Tammy Cohen asks if it’s a genre running out of steam… Hands up who can work out this formula. Main character (flawed but decent) + dodgy event + limited number of other characters (ideally with something to hide) + suspicious glances across the breakfast table +...