Writing Festival 2018: Round Up

Well, that's it for another writing festival. I hope you've all enjoyed the mix of posts.

A huge thanks to all the contributors. I'ts been a pleasure working with all of you and reading all of your writing tips and experiences.

Below is the full list of fabulous article, interviews, and other bits and bobs. Also, the two book giveaways will be running to the end of April, so hop on over and enter if you're interested!

Articles
What does it mean to be a writer? by Jason P. Crawford
How to Send a Manuscript in a way that gets you Read by R.A. Black
Liar Liar Pants on Fire by Kathryn Hewitt
Combating Sadness with Creativity by N.M. Mac Arthur
How not to Murder your Writing Partner by John Gunningham
Success as an Author by J.P. Jackson

Author Interviews
Milo Maia
Minusfractions
Ryan Eric

Giveaways, books to read, open critiques
Beta-reader classifieds
Open Critique: Obscurity
*Daimonion by J.P. Jackson Giveaway
*A Slip of the Keyboard by Terry Pratchett Giveaway

*The giveaway close midnight on the 30th of April!

Comments

Your Best Character: Quiz and Contest

The best characters are put through hell and yet can still carry the story forward on their broken shoulders. Your plot will fall flat if your characters are one dimensional and strong characters can make a cliché story really shine; characterisation takes work and thought. The key to character development is to ask questions. Maybe spend time thinking about the scenarios that have happened to your character which won’t make the final cut of the novel. The questions below are designed to test that (to some degree). [NOW CLOSED, REVIEWS PENDING] Answer at least 5 of these in a comment with a link to your story and I’ll give you an in-depth review. Reviews are approximately 1000 words and take me well over an hour, so if you’re looking to polish up your manuscript then don’t miss out. Also, the opening chapter with the most interesting and well-developed character will be featured on this blog! Feel free to write about anyone as long as they feature in the same story. You can ans...

Book Review: Children of Blood and Bone

CHILDREN OF BLOOD AND BONE by Tomi Adeyemi 5 Stars Verdict: So good it hurts. The night magic died, Zélie watched her mother's murder as the Maji were slaughtered. Now Zélie has a chance to bring back magic. With the help of her brother and a rogue princess, she must outrun the crown prince and battle her self-doubts to restore magic to the world. This West-African inspired fantasy is powerful and all round awesome from start to finish. The writing is emotive and imaginative, the pacing is as perfect as it gets, and the characters are real with flaws and charm. I hardly know what to say. A brilliant book like this tells the editor in me to shut up and enjoy the ride, so I'd need to read it again to offer more of a critique. If every book was as good as this one, I would never be able to stop reading. The struggles, anger, and pain are carved into this book so deeply that the desires bleed through the pages and the triumphs feel earned. The emotion in this book is ...

Psycho Bites: Metaphors and Similes

I’m a psychology undergraduate doing my final year project on figurative language. If I find something interesting or relative to writing (the whole reason I picked a psycholinguistic project) then I’ll post it on here for you to read. Do we have a deal? I'll start with the psychological difference between a metaphor and a smile. A simile compares two concepts using ‘like’ or ‘as’ to. A metaphor is very similar except it states that the concepts are the same despite the reader knowing they’re not. It turns out metaphors are more powerful because we can read them faster. This was discovered by measuring how long it took for a person to read a sentence written in a metaphorical form (‘jobs are jails’) compared to how long it took to read as a simile (‘jobs are like jails’). Metaphors were read faster! They also provide different types of imagery. Similes provide more basic links which are true for both items where as metaphors seem to open your mind up to further possibilitie...

Scookie Reviews

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