Recent content by The Dark One

I'm sure it's possible to have an interesting life but also be a lousy writer. The opposite is certainly true - plenty of decent memoirs where not much happens but the writing is exquisite.

It is masterfully written but very, very far from PC. Flashman was a cad and a bully (as depicted in Tom Brown's Schooldays), but also funny and urbane. He's a faithful representation of a C19 English gentleman: privileged, snobbish, a deceitful womaniser, racist, both bully and coward and just...

I loved the Flashman books (have reread them several times) but sincerely doubt they'd be published these days.

You may want the reader to know something (about the world / situation etc) which the MC doesn't know yet. Prologues or first chapters without the MC can be very handy for this and that special knowledge the reader has - which the MC does not - can be profitably used to inspire...

None of those feel like over-showing to me. What you want is to immerse the reader in your story and tiny visual tags like those don't hurt unless they somehow draw attention to themselves through overuse or being somehow anomalous enough to jolt the reader out of the flow.

Never force it. About two thirds of the way through the draft the title will simply appear in a flash of genius and you'll feel it was kinda obvious all along.

Put yourself in King Charles' shoes. At the time his mum died he would have been sad, but a part of him must have been thinking: "At bloody last!"

Yes... every one of my first chapters starts with the status quo but everything has changed by the end of that chapter. I've had six books published and yet I'm still learning. Excellent.

How fascinating. I've never heard of this principle, but looking back over all my published works, that's exactly what I've done. Goes to show you pick up a lot about storytelling just by reading because no-one ever taught me that. I must've been absorbing the idea since I started to read.

Enigma by Robert Harris - brilliant. Absynthe by someone whose name I couldn't be arsed remembering - less than brilliant.

I understand that fantasy readers like really long books which probably necessitates some padding but I just can't write like that. There is no padding in my work. Every scene must achieve certain things which add to the plot or deepen the characters or both. If a scene doesn't do that it is...

I have a possible solution for you... Some years ago I was looking at scenes from the Bayeux Tapestry. In scene IV a young chap in a green tunic is walking down the stairs after a feast, preparing to take ship with Harold. Who are you? I wondered. What was your story? Instantly a story...

You might also find that only one of your stories is ever finished and published (maybe after mining some ideas from the ones that wind up on the cutting room floor). Problem solved.

Did you ever read the sequel? Of Cats and Bears... extremely violent and rightly banned in most countries.

Here's something I prepared earlier... https://adriandeans.wordpress.com/2014/01/18/the-secret-of-being-funny/