Scookie Reviews

Today I’ve reached 21 years of bobbing along on this planet. I’m somewhat hung-over from my party last night (if 'somewhat' means 'very'), and I’m spending the day learning how to use an eye-tracking machine for my third year project at university. The eye-tracker is worth £30,000 and you can break it by touching its mirror... Don’t touch the mirror. Anyway, as it’s my birthday, I’m going to give you guys a mini present. Have you heard of a competition called ‘Pitch Wars’? Anyone who has a completed manuscript can choose 4 out of 47 writing mentors to send their pitch to. These writing geniuses will pick one novel each to help polish up before submitting it participating agents. So basically, there’s a chance to have your novel looked at by someone who knows how to make it perfect, and then a chance to test out the polished novel.  Fancy a go? The best bit is that it’s not for another month. If you’re novel isn’t quite there, then spend the whole of November re...

Hands up if a critic has told you ‘show don’t tell’ (SDT). Keep that hand up if you found it rather unhelpful at the time or if that critic didn’t elaborate much. Yes, it’s a pesky phrase. Showing rather than telling can be a pretty powerful tool, and here's what it really means: Showing brings your words to life, creates imagery, and lets the reader know exactly what’s going on. It doesn’t tell you facts explicitly, but builds an idea in your head so that usually you understand it in far more detail than you would have. Good writing makes you realise a fact without being told it straight. As a writer it forces you to explore your imagination further really think about your story and your characters. It adds depth. *But showing is not always better than telling.* Telling adds pace. It moves the story along and sums up ideas that may be unclear if let to just showing. It doesn’t try to add detail to a relatively boring fact. It lets you know what piece of information is imp...

Last month I posted up a competition to find an amazing opening chapter. I can tell you now, there were some strong contestants. I definitely wasn’t expecting to read something as polished as A Song Of Steel by Alyssa Carlier. Title: A song of Steel: I, Players and Pieces Username: Queen of Starlight Site: Figment I have yet to read more chapters, but the opening is well crafted, intriguing, and you can tell it was written with passion and edited a thousand times. I won’t give too much away, but if you like the sound of an assassin story that dives straight into the action, then take a read of this. The best feature is definitely the main character, Serilda. I love a dark character, someone who is far from average and has a unique view on life. I want a character to think differently to me, to act in ways that challenge my expectations, and ultimately entice me to read what they will do next. Serilda is exactly that. I will definitely be reading more soon. Here’s the li...

Sometimes it because of a blind spot. Other times, it because your typing-brain want to make you look silly. Either way, be aware of different words which sound similar (homophones), especially in your internal monologue which lets you know what to type.  It’s hard to write a first draft without having at least one of these hiding in that particular chapter. The aim of the game is to spot it before anyone else does. Here are a few that are commonly written but not commonly spotted, or so it seems: Dessert – A tasty pudding. Desert – A not so tasty vast area of sand and heat and sand... Wary – Concern, worry, cautiousness. Weary – Tired from physically activity or lack of sleep. Storey – A level in a building, like your bedroom is probably on the second storey. This is a British preference. Story – A wonderful tale. Perhaps take a read of my newest story, The Clearing ? No? Well, I tried. Compliment – A polite, usually positive comment. Complement – A positive a...

I’m having to point out how to format taglines on a regular basis now, especially when the dialogue takes the form of a question. I thought I’d throw together a quick guide in hopes that everyone who was unaware will see this and instantly understand... Or even just one person. “I fancy a biscuit,” said Samantha. – And I do (how could you tell?) although that’s not the point. My point is you need a comma after biscuit and ‘said’ is in lowercase because the following words form a tagline. It’s a tagline because it refers to how the dialogue is said or who says it. “I fancy a biscuit.” Samantha grabbed the tin. – There’s no tagline. Therefore you need a full stop and to start a new sentence. “I fancy a biscuit.” She smiled. – This doesn’t refer to how the speech is said. Therefore you need a full stop. “Where are my biscuits?” shouted Samantha. – You need lowercase into the tagline. Think of it as part of the sentence. “My biscuits!” she cried. – Again, lowercase. Whether...

I have learnt a new word! Somehow it has been nestled in my blind spot, although luckily the concept hasn’t avoided me. It refers to saying the same thing twice but with different words. It reiterates an idea which you’ve just explained... see what I did? And it does so without adding anything more to the point or force. You’ll wanna avoid tautology. Make sure that every sentence – every word – adds to the description or point. If it doesn’t add, then you don’t need it. Remove it from your paragraph and either replace it with something that brings the piece to life or keep the space free so that the pace can increase. Sometimes this can relate to modifiers. For example, ‘he sprinted quickly’ has a sense of tautology to it. You don’t need to say both ‘sprinted’ and ‘quickly’. It’s superfluous description (another great word). The raw, basic form of the sentence is much stronger that the one with that extra word of description, although it’s not always felt immediately. That’s no...

Writing is subjective. There’s no way around that. Even if someone really loves your story, they may not agree with every decision you’ve made, and that can be frustrating. Here’s a few more points to consider when deciding what to do when a critique ruffles your feathers: Dissonance is that uncomfortable feeling you get when I tell you I don’t like your favourite line in your book. If you think you’re a grammar ninja, yet I pull out a list of mistakes as long as a rattlesnake, then you’ll feel dissonance. It’s a psychological process that helps protect your self-esteem and gets in the way of being objective. If you feel upset by someone’s comment, don’t make any decisions straight away. You’re likely to get defensive and will be unable to make changes that could possibly help you. Return to it once the dissonance has settled. Some critics will bunch together. ‘I agree with bookrighter046 that Tom is a pointless character’. The fact that two of them have missed the subtleness of Tom ...

The votes are in. It turns out you guys want to know more about when it’s okay to ignore critics. This is probably because we've all had bad reviews. If you've only had love for everything you write, chances are you haven’t faced the right audience yet.  However, this article is a much about when to listen to a critic as it is to ignore them. You can’t please everyone.   You’re not even meant to please everyone. A critic once told me to only listen to people who didn’t like my genre, didn’t like the first chapter, and wouldn’t have read the book after reading the blurb. This angered me because I worried she might have told others to do this too. At first, I wanted to rant back at her how absurd that was - you write for an audience, a subsection – but then I realised she’d learn that in her own time or suffer the consequences. Sure, some books are loved by all. Harry Potter is a good example. It was originally aimed at a young audience, yet it...

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...