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How to improve our writing – part 14
The Ten commandments of writing scenes. Here is the fourth commandment. 4. Keep a story plausible. Perhaps the writers’ most difficult task is to create stories which, although mostly fictional, yet feel true. What matters to the reader is not whether the story is...
Don’t Let Go! By Michel Bussi – book review
A holiday can be paradise itself, but at other times it can deteriorate into a murderous adventure. Martial and Liane spend their holidays in an idyllic environment on the island of Réunion. For the couple and their six-year-old daughter, these are the days and...
How to improve our writing – part 13
The Ten Commandments of writing scenes. Here is the third commandment. 3. Avoid dead-ends When we are writing a scene in a novel, we should not forget that we have to get from one point to another. We can't start and finish a scene at the same place. If the action...
Anders Roslund: Knock-Knock/Three Days – book review
It was a great pleasure to discover Anders Roslund's crime story among the summer novelties of 21st Century Publishers (orig. 21. Század Kiadó). So far, I have read all three of his books that have been published in this country, and all three were outstanding...
How to improve our writing – part 12
The Ten commandments of writing scenes. The first and second commandments: 1. Respect the law of cause and effect. If, in a film, the camera zooms in on something, you can be quite sure that it will be of importance in the story later on. If it turns out that the...
Emily Gunnis: The Girl in the Letter – book review
Decades ago. An unwed teen mother locked away from the world. A mystery to be solved. When Ivy Jenkins falls pregnant, she is sent in disgrace to St Margaret's, a dark, cruel brooding house for unmarried mothers, to hide her shame from the eyes of the world. Her baby...
How to improve our writing – Part 11
The four stumbling blocks of concluding a novel: 1. The dead end I once read a manuscript where the protagonist visits a deserted island in Thailand with his friends, after lying to his parents that he has taken up work in Germany. The novel is full of surprises and...
How to improve our writing – part 10
The art of conclusion Lots of beginner writers manage somehow to struggle their ways to the end of their novels, through countless sleepless nights and downing hundreds of litres of coffee only to find they can't provide a conclusion to the work. They hang around the...
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