by Ali | Mar 14, 2024 | Craft
Six Practical Ways to Handle the Passage of Time in Fiction This post was originally published in February 2016 and updated in March 2024. Whether you’re writing a short story or an epic novel series, fictional time is going to pass during it. Obviously enough,...
by Ali | Mar 8, 2024 | Writing
How to Write When … You’re Not Making Any Money Yet This post is part of my ongoing “How to Write When…” series. All writers will go through a stage where they’re writing (or wanting to write) but they’re not yet making any money from it. That’s perfectly normal, and...
by Ali | Mar 1, 2024 | Fiction
How and Why Unanswered Questions Draw Readers Through Your Story What grips readers and keeps them reading? As a reader, there are lots of reasons why I might get really into a book … but one big factor is unanswered questions. One of the times I notice this most is...
by Ali | Feb 22, 2024 | Freelancing
Seven Useful Tasks to Tackle as a Freelancer When You’re Waiting for More Client Work As a freelancer, you’ll occasionally have a dry spell without much client work. This doesn’t happen to me often these days – for a good 90% of 2023, I had all the work as I could...
by Ali | Feb 15, 2024 | Fiction
Why Readers Might Not Make it Past Your First Few Pages: Five Reasons (and Five Fixes) Have you ever started reading a novel and given up within the first few pages? Unless you’re a particularly tenacious (or stubborn!) reader, you probably have. It’s often clear...
