Character Backgrounds This week, I would like to talk about character development. As an author, you should know your characters inside out, everything about them and all the skeletons in their closet. The best way to write genuine, believable characters is to make sure you know them inside out. For today, we’re going to look…
Sensitivity readers and controversy. Like any other famous person who has become a household name, controversy is almost an inevitability. Being so well known means that every single word and action that is made public, is available for scrutiny and criticism. Roald Dahl is no different to many other authors. He has been accused of…
One thing I mentioned on Monday was about how some of the subject matter of Roald Dahl’s work is a little dark. Even in the children’s books, he didn’t shy away from showing that not everything in the world is sunshine and rainbows. The other giants in the BFG literally eat children. Miss Trunchbull threw…
A Childhood Favourite Roald Dahl, a childhood favourite. I’ve always been a big reader. As a child, I consumed so many books. Like many people my age, my first foray into the horror genre was the Goosebumps books by RL Stine. My particular favourite author was Roald Dahl. I’ve certainly read every children’s book he…
How To Format Dialogue You’ll remember that before we talked about breaking the rules of grammar within dialogue. That’s totally okay to do but when it comes to how we format and punctuate the dialogue itself within the text, there are important rules that must be followed. This is essential for making sure your dialogue…
When you’re writing fiction, dialogue is an essential part of it. It is also an area that a lot of writers will struggle with. Often the dialogue is written too correctly, or there’s just simply too much of it. Writers can be prone to excessive adjectives, trying to avoid using ‘said’ too much and overcompensating….
There’s always someone telling you how you should write, that you must follow these steps and this routine to succeed as a writer. Then you find other people who tell you that these rules are utter nonsense. It can be difficult to know who to believe. As with any creative pursuit, writing has lots of…
Part 3 Of Understanding Verbs In the first part we discussed verbs, what they are and the different kinds of verbs you might come across. In part 2 we covered the different tenses and forms of verbs., In this part we are going to cover the use of verbs within the sentence. Subject-verb agreement is…
Part 2 of Understanding Verbs Welcome back to understanding verbs. This is part two, where we will be covering irregular verbs, reflexive verbs, linking verbs and helping verbs. There are a lot of different kinds of verbs. So hopefully I can make this more straightforward to understand. Last time, we covered what verbs are, how…
Verb Tenses – Conjugation How to understand verb tenses and verb conjugation. I know, I know. The word ‘conjugation’ brings up memories from school, especially if you ever studied a language other than your native language. I remember memorising verb conjugations in French in high school. I don’t remember any of the verb conjugations from…
Writer and Cat Lady