In-Depth Articles About ... Fiction

I’m doing NaNoWriMo this month – maybe you are too? (For the uninitiated, “NaNoWriMo” stands for National Novel Writing Month. It happens every November, where people all over the world try to write a 50,000 word novel in a month.) This is the eight book-length piece of fiction I’ve

Novels are tricky. There’s so much to juggle that no-one gets it quite right the first time round … and most authors end up doing wholesale rewrites, rather than just making a few editorial tweaks. I’ve come to accept that rewriting is just part…

If you’ve been in any writing groups, read any writing books or blogs, or hung out in any writing-related forums online ... you’ve probably come across these three words of advice: “Show, don’t tell.” It’s a very commonly quoted writing “rule”. There’s...

You’re probably known by several different names in your life. I’m “Alison Luke” when I fill in a form. I’m “Mrs Luke” to my bank and to cold-callers. I’m “Mummy” to my kids, occasionally “Mum” (they’re not convinced that I even have another name). I’m...

Last week, I gave you four pieces of bad – even dangerous – advice that writers all too often hear. Today, I’ve got even more bad advice! Most of this is aimed at fiction writers, though the final two could apply to any type of writing. Bad Advice #1:...

Any writing-related advice that says you should always or never do something can generally be taken with a very large pinch of salt! I’m sure you’ve heard lots of poor writing advice over the months, years or even decades that you’ve been writing. Here are some that I...

Over the years, I’ve entered a fair few short stories into competitions. I’m a novelist by inclination, and so most of my fiction writing has been on much longer projects ... but I’ve found short stories a great way to try out different techniques, to...

I’ve got a particularly bad writing habit – and I suspect I’m not the only person who does this... All too often, I leap straight into the next scene with very little thought about where exactly my characters are located. If I was writing something...

A couple of weekends ago, I headed off on an overnight writing retreat and started work on a new fiction project. This is the first time in more years than I care to count (nine, yikes) that I’ve been working on a long piece of fiction other than my...

I’ve written a fair amount about dialogue over the past few years ... partly because I love writing dialogue! And I figured it was about time I collated those posts in one place. Whether you enjoy dialogue too (and want to make yours even better) or whether it’s...

Whether you’ve written any fiction yet or not, you’re probably extremely familiar with how dialogue appears on the page: it’s surrounded by quotation marks. Even if you’re not quite confident with all the finer details of formatting spoken words on the page, it’s...

Have you ever told yourself something like this: “Once I have a bit more time, I’ll start work on that novel.” “Once life is less manic, I’ll get back to my novel.” “If only I could take a year off work, I could finally write my novel.” A novel is a major undertaking....

Image from sxc.hu by tatlin. You want to write a novel. It’s been your New Year’s resolution more times than you want to admit. And you might well have been day-dreaming about it or scribbling notes about it for months or years. But you’ve never quite...

I’ve not been to nearly as many workshops and classes this year, due to a certain little person taking up a lot of my time... But my friend and fellow writer and blogger Lorna Fergusson of fictionfire runs inspiring Saturday afternoon “Focus Writing...

For the uninitiated, NaNoWriMo is short for (inter)National Novel Writing Month. It takes place every November. Across the world, tens of thousands of writers sign up to the challenge of writing a 50,000 word novel in just one month. (That’s 1,667 words...

Image from Flickr by adrperez Is your novel looking a little bloated? Do you have a sneaking feeling you’ve repeated yourself a few times? Are some of your scenes really just unnecessary padding between episodes of action? Believe me, I’ve been there. I...

Maybe you’ve been working on your novel for months, or even years. (Or maybe you’ve not started yet, because you’re waiting for a chunk of free time to come along.) Life is busy. You’d love to have all day, every day, to write, but of course you don’t....

Image from Flickr by Andrew Morrell Photography  One common mistake that fiction-writers make with point of view is head-hopping while writing in the limited third person. In case that sounded like gobbledygook, let’s get some definitions pinned down:...

Kitty at one month. If you’ve been following Aliventures for a while, you’ll know that my husband and I have a baby daughter. She’s two months old now and, over the past weeks, I’ve come to realise that although parenting is an exciting new adventure,...

I've been blogging for a little over three years. I've been writing fiction since ... well, pretty much since I could write. My blog posts are read by thousands of people. Only 1% of the fiction I've ever written has been published. Fiction is incredibly...