Whatever story you are writing you start with a certain amount of capital, and that capital is your readers’ attention span. If you spend it well, on getting your readers to buy into what you need them to buy into, then you’ll get an almost unlimited supply in return. But you have to spend your [...]

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The next meeting of West Lothian Writers will be on Tuesday 4th of October from 7-9 pm at the usual location: South Barn Nether Dechmont Farm Fells Rigg Carmondean Livingston EH54 8AX If you are not sure where you are going either type the above post code into your sat nav or follow the map [...]

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It the start of the week so let’s go for an article about five things you should do in the first three paragraphs of a story. Taken from her blog, Cat Rambo suggests you should do the following: Engage the senses - You don’t have to hit every sensory stop – but it sure helps. Vivid [...]

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Here is the third author in the The Guardian‘s list of Ten Rules For Writing Fiction. Unlike Diana Athill, Margaret Atwood  does provide us with ten rules. They are listed below. Margaret Atwood is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic and essayist. She is considered to be one of the most-honoured authors of fiction in recent history [...]

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Around 2004 the BBC did a series of programmes looking at Scottish literature. One of the off shots from this series what a website called Writing Scotland. Part of the website was a section called Writers’ Corner where famous Scottish writers offered tips. Now while the Writing Scotland website and not been updated since 2004, [...]

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Bookings are now open for the Scottish International Storytelling Festival. Taking place between the 21st and 30th of October, this year the unites the Scottish Isles with the magically and myth filled lands of the Mediterranean. This is your chance to discover the cultures and traditions through tales based around Odysseus’ Odyssey alongside traditional Greek dance [...]

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A while back Mslexia, the magazine for women who write, gave out some writing advice alongside one of their competitions. The advice was called “Give Your Story A Facelift” and here are all six points in full: Have you started too early? Or ended too late? – There is no space in a short story for [...]

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The blurb of a book is one of the most important selling points. Alongside the front cover it is the piece of information most looked at. With most blurbs being between 100 and 250 words, how do you get all the important information in there?   Luckily the good people over at Indie Author Community [...]

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Poets Irene Brown and Anna Dickie are launching their new collection Imprint. All the collection has a town and country theme and to celebrate this they are having two separate launches, one in the countryside – on the 6th of October at Haddington Library at 7pm – and one in the town –  on the [...]

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 As many of us will agree, one of the best bits of writing is when it all just seems to have natural. The words just pour out of our fingers and onto the page (or computer screen!) Over at Tor.com, Jon Sprunk shares his experiences of The Flow (as he calls it) and talks about [...]

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