Andrew Wille

Yes, it was a bit of a million candlepower searchlight moment. In a sense, it’s not that the MC doesn’t try to change, he just completely misinterprets the kind of change he needs. He (and I) had been thinking it was one thing, and it was actually almost the opposite.

Well done, Daeds, a star is born!

Thanks all! This is my second TV credit, but the first was only for archive materials and this is definitely my first proper TV appearance. I don’t think I did too badly, though no doubt a lot of editing was required!

Wooooah! I’ve just had a massive revelation about my MC. I thought that he accepted the necessary change, but it just turned out badly. I actually think he got completely the wrong idea about what change was needed, spectacularly FAILED to change…and that’s what ends badly.

Darn. It does seem to be UK only, I’m sorry to say

ooh, hark at you, the hotshot expert!! 🙂 Well done, Daeds, this is fabulous. Exciting to be a part of, I imagine?

That’s interesting @elle. Is it that level of tutor contact in all the online courses?Sounds like it runs the risk of being a bit hit and miss. I did think the London based courses looked a lot more in depth and directly tutored. And they have a great reputation .. But they are A LOT of money, and yanno, in London. Sigh.

I’ve never started a piece of fiction knowing the ending. I like to start with a scene, put a character into it, and see where it goes. I enjoy the ride.

INteresting question. Funnily enough, sometimes the first thing I get is the setting. I’m very into the atmospheric setting & its role in the story, so that’s definitely there before I start any planning or research or even think about characters! The other thing though is a pretty formless idea of some sort of ‘issue’ I want to explore. Not big…[Read more]

Wow, well done, Alan. That’s a major bit of validation, and those courses look great. I’ve eyed them a few times, but never bitten, so will be really interested to hear how you get on.

Yes, sorry, meant to congratulate the worthy winner – great, unsettling and dreamlike tale that owns the innate silliness of the tiny guitar and the bizarre phenomenon of the vast ukulele band. Great stuff, and thanks Sea for a challenging and fun competition

Oh, well done, @alanr! That’s fantastic. So which course are you going for?

That’s great Alan, well done. The courses sound superb

AAARRRGGHHH! (as it used to say in my comics)

Up with the count. Resisted the temptation to count the 2500 “seed” words that I had before the start. I think I’ll have a couple of hundred more to do before I give up tonight. Remarkable difference in the way I feel about making myself write at this pace which, honestly, isn’t that high a word…[Read more]

@KazG & @emmad – oooh, I like the phrase ‘thinker on paper’! That sounds a lot closer to what I do. For all my love of graphs and themes and character outlines, and more graphs, very little of the detail gets decided until I’m in the story. I think it’s a little like my old self’s data analysis process – first you gather all the plethora of…[Read more]

Last day to put in an entry for the Den monthly competition, people… 🙂

Well, I’m feeling a tad more apprehensive than in previous years. There’s a certain investment in succeeding this time – for me. Well, succeeding in writing the requisite number of words anyway. My record is one complete children’s story, one block of 50K words that I eventually deleted, two failures.

Very interesting blog. I, too, have listened, enthralled, to Craig’s lectures on this, and have read an enormous amount of stuff about structure. I’m struggling rather with it now, at the almost-finished-the-second-draft-of-my-novel-stage. I don’t know if my struggle is because I’ve read too many different models/descriptions and have become…[Read more]

Good article, Daeds. I might try to hunt down the Twitter thread to see what else was said.

I saw someone (Hellie Ogden I think) say that 60% of her submissions either fail to meet the submission criteria (format, genre, basic spell checks etc) or are clearly at way too early a draft to be sent out. I was so guilty of this last with my first…[Read more]