Emma Robinson

An author’s hypocrisy, offensiveness, crassness or general liverish misanthropy doesn’t normally put me off reading them. It depends what the benefits might be. Good writing, insights I might otherwise not acquire, my own curiosity – all are reasons to go ahead. There are some blocks, and adding money to the Roald Dahl estate is one of them.…[Read more]

There are also examples in art – Paul Gauguin, Picasso and Freud, for example, were not particularly nice folk, it seems.
If a writer’s work doesn’t reflect his obnoxious views, does that make it OK? Or if his views are expressed in a work of fiction and not an educational piece?
Some very good people write fiction that contains extreme views, but…[Read more]

A good question though, John.

No problem @Libby, it was a flippant remark on my part, not intended to be taken seriously.

Many thanks, @daedalus.

Having thought about it a bit more, I’m going to restrict entries to one per person.

Although lots of competitions allow multiple entries I think that as the Den monthly competitions are small, double entries would skew the chance of winning too much in a double entrant’s favour. If several people were likely to post two…[Read more]

Personally I think that would be fine, John. I can’t see anything in the rules against it. I don’t think you’d need a pseudonym either.

But before you go ahead I’ll check with a higher authority. @daedalus – over to you, please!

I have two pieces nearly done but I don’t now which of them to enter. Maybe I’ll enter both, one under a pseudonym. Would that be cheating?

Thanks @KazG. Your thoughts on this are comforting. I was worried if I had to pull back and simplify more I might lose the voice, but I wanted to know if I needed to do a major edit on this aspect or not. I’ll stop worrying about it now.

But, as always, the feedback has been great at throwing up some other issues, so I shall get to work on Pix’s…[Read more]

I had a sticky scene that wasn’t working Squidge, and after some time away from it I reread and thought D’oh, of course she wouldn’t react like that. She’d be angry. It’s funny how the characters become real people in our heads.

Thanks for the heads up about Kingstone. I shall go take a look.

It’s still possible to get in close, even using third person. It’s a bit of a knack, to get into your character’s head in this way – I often find myself rewriting complete paras when editing, because by the end of the book I’m so familiar with my character I can tell how they’re going to react, what they’re feeling or thinking. It’s a weird place…[Read more]

I did a bit of googling and everybody says something different. Apparently in 2014 there were more first person than third, so I guess it just varies.

I shall attempt to find more subtle ways of placing my characters, as you suggested. Thanks for all the help. I’ll keep it all in mind as I go in for the next round of edits.

That’s a really good point Sea. I took a look at my MG books and they’re all third person! Thanks for the Jess Butterworth one – I shall take a look. I’ll also try and do some investigating into first/third. (And possibly have a cry over my keyboard at the thought of rewriting into third. :D)

Thanks @seagreen, this is all great. I’ll have a think about the save the cat moment and ramp up the fear a bit as a few people have mentioned that. I’ll weed out some of the description as well.

Re the being in the character’s head, and the explanations like ‘standing next to me’, I think you’ve cut to the heart of my question re YA vs MG…[Read more]

Thanks @bella – it was fun to write.

Perfect @squidge, that’s great to know it’s about right. I was worrying it was a bit densely packed but maybe I just have to be careful of too heavy descriptions. I shall tweak as suggested.

Hi Kate, it’s pitched about right, I think.

I wondered about the amount of description initially – and where it just touches on backstory/info dump when your MC says she’s never been there before. Can you rework something along the lines of ‘In all my sneaking around, I’d never managed to see inside, and I wasn’t disappointed on this, my first…[Read more]

Well done Libby, excellent. Good job, Jane.

Thank you, @Janette !