09 June 2021
About three or four weeks ago lockdown appeared to have suddenly hit me. For a strong Yorkshire Lass like me, it felt strange. It wasn’t that I was suffering from Covid, it was just that, with the potential of our slowly starting to return to some form of normality, I began to wonder …..
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05 May 2021
Recently I completed recording the fourth interview in the Mentoring Writers ‘In Conversation With…’ series of interviews which I feature on my website and YouTube channel. The author I spoke to was a 2020 Mentee of Mentoring Writers, a debut novelist, and a member of Alli – the Alliance of Independent Authors. She spoke generously about her experience…..
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23 Apr 2021
I’ve talked about pet hates for book covers so in reverse I am going to give you some top tips for creating a good book cover. Knowing and understanding the constituent parts of a book cover can help you make the best marketing decisions when you design …
Tips for Good Book Cover Design
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07 Apr 2021
Have you often wondered how to get the best from using YouTube? Well, there are lots of people who will offer you tips to help you find out, but whether or not they are workable has to be down to the individual. It isn’t often we make the following disclaimer, but as…
YouTube Ranking & Discoverability
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02 Apr 2021
I have previously talked about showing not telling, and points of view and tenses. All these are useful elements to be aware of, and to get right, especially when writing dialogue. Writing something such as …
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04 Mar 2021
Good storytellers differentiate between a crisis (an emergency, such as a car crash or an illness) and conflict (a clash of wills, a difficult moral choice, or an internal mental struggle). Beginning authors often focus on the exciting crisis rather than the conflict …
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11 Feb 2021
We think of writers having an effect on TV but don’t often find that this works in reverse. Yes we know TV scripts have been created by writers but, when they set out their ideas it isn’t to influence …
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27 Jan 2021
As a reviewer and editor I have to say that sometimes writers do get the words in their sentences muddled up. However, they are not the only ones. People tend to write signs without….
Proofreading Isn’t Really Dead