Recent content by Miles Lacey

When writing for teenagers keep the violence to street fight in alleyway level rather than sadistic/graphic levels of violence and keep the sex at Mills & Boon/Harlequin level rather than Fifty Shades of Grey or Eyes Wide Shut level. As for swearing and curse words? My attitude towards...

S I never use the f-word to describe sex in anything I write or say because it is seen in the same light as public displays of affection, adult virginity or, worst of all, holding hands in public where I live. In short, a sign of such moral depravity I count myself lucky we don't have...

Poor people swear. My story is about the working poor. I am one of the working poor (dishy in an Italian restaurant). Thus, there is swearing in what I write. If you write about poor people and do not have swearing you deserve to be smacked into next week (metaphorically, not literally). I...

I'm reminded of what a certain famous American writer wrote about the reality of writing: "Don’t get discouraged because there’s a lot of mechanical work to writing. There is, and you can’t get out of it. I rewrote A Farewell to Arms at least fifty times. You’ve got to work it over. The first...

I went for a calendar of 13 months of 28 days each which equalled 364 days and a stand alone day for New Year's Day. Every fourth (leap) year an additional day was added to New Year's Day. It was a simple calendar created because my maths sucks.

You know you've done too much world building when investors from the United Arab Emirates ask to invest in your (imaginary) country. That actually happened to me!

As my work in progress will be somewhere between 8000 to 10,000 words I don't have the luxury of in-depth world-building. I just want to let the reader know that it's set on a tropical island, the island's port is a major trading port where anything and anyone can be bought or sold, dragons are...

I just borrow words from Maori, Tahitian, Hawai'ian and Tongan. The island the story I'm writing is set in is Pounamu. Pounamu is the Maori word for greenstone. The enchanted magical rock the island is famous for is called pounamu and the indigenous people are called the Pounamu. The highest...

I do about 95% of my reading sitting on the toilet. I would conservatively guess about three thousand books over a lifetime. These days my eyesight isn't great so I don't read as much now.

The idea for this law was inspired by this: https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-demand/video/jimmy-kimmel-blasts-bill-englishs-pizza/ I used to work for politicians in the New Zealand Parliament. I incorporated a lot of the more "unorthodox" behaviours of those politicians into my work in progress.

I work in an Italian restaurant so I am well and truly cured of any desire to see, eat or read about pizza in any way, shape or form but I can't see any reason why you can't have pizza in your novel. I eat quite a lot of Indian food because I work next door to an Indian takeaway that makes...

It is possible that AI has come up with better story ideas than the original poster but it's not who - or what - comes up with a better story idea that matters. It's how those story ideas are executed that matters. Your imagination and storytelling skills will bring those story ideas to life...

To me AI is a tool, nothing more. Like any tool it can be used for good or bad. A hammer can be used to hammer nails or pull them out. It's also good for bashing things with, including people. I did write a 15,000 word story using AI not so long ago. It was to see what it came up with. It...

I had a calendar that had 13 months made up of 28 days, divided into four weeks of 7 days and a stand alone day for New Year's Day. Every four years there was a second New Year's Day that was called something along the lines of Leap Day. The day(s) of the New Year was marked by major...

Keep it simple. Only add detail if something deviates from what would be expected, it's vital to the story that we have those details or if it's the observation of a character during a quiet period.