See you after December

It turns out you have to work pretty hard at your last year of uni. I really should have seen this coming, but I don't think I'll be able to keep blogging until late December. I may post here and there if I do manage to squeeze some time out, otherwise I'll be back at Christmas with more tips, featured novels, and lots of free critiques!

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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...

Dialogue Marks and Taglines

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...

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...

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