Kate Hudson

I like character questionnaires but I don’t do them slavishly. If there are questions where I don’t know the answer and I don’t care, I leave them. However other questions may provoke a stream of thoughts that go off on a tangent and I follow them. I find they are a useful tool (and that is all) when I want to work on a particular character and…[Read more]

I once tried out a character questionnaire from Emma Darwin’s blog on a principal character of mine, and my answer to seven out of twenty-one questions was ‘Dunno’ and/or ‘Does it really matter?’ Some of the other answers were pretty vague. But while writing the story I never had any difficulty in imagining what she’d say or do.

Everybody has their own way of working; mine is very like Tony’s above. The important thing, I believe, is to find out which way suits you best, and not put yourself in a creative strait-jacket by blindly following some ‘rule.’ What works for some people may not work for you.

For example, we keep hearing ‘cut, cut, cut’ when it comes to editing,…[Read more]

Am I allowed to agree with all of you? When a writer like Stephen King just says something and it works, it’s because he is utterly confident with his voice. I’m not his biggest fan, but I have read a lot of his work and I do appreciate the extraordinary flow of his prose. I’m willing to bet he’s not on the heavy side when he edits.

I’m terrible.…[Read more]

I’m not sure you can, or should, avoid perfectionism. Yes, by all means, when you are scribbling down your first draft, avoid it certainly. But not when doing your major edit. (You said ‘revising’ so maybe you’re not editing yet.) But when you are, it’s the perfect word or phrase that you’re searching for and nothing less should satisfy.
Those…[Read more]