Guest post by Zena Shapter Picture this: I was twenty-four, it was my first day working for a top London law firm, and I already knew I’d made the biggest mistake of my life. I blame Tenerife. Two years prior, my housemate and I had flown to the Canary Islands [...]
Guest post by Chris Andrews Eleventeen years ago (clearly too many to count) I decided on a brilliant Get Rich Quick Scheme, or GRQS for complexity. It involved writing a Number-One International Bestselling Novel and retiring before I’d left my teens. To a kid without any real-world experience it seemed [...]
by Zena Shapter (writing at zenashapter.com) The writing process is how a writer (consciously or subconsciously) sets about writing what they do. Every writer has their own process, and I’ve talked before about the similarities and differences between writing as a pantser or as a planner (see here). Still, while [...]
We've added a couple of new pages to the website, which you can see in the menu above. Short stories - for free! Brings together in one place links to members' short stories that are available to download or read online for free. Everything We Know About Storytelling We Learned From… A [...]
The Fellowship of EWKASWLFLOTR: Nine Rules for the Kings of Men written by Ian McHugh, on behalf of the CSFG Hivemind Earlier in 2014, we had a discussion at CSFG about the storytelling lessons we collectively learned from The Lord of the Rings (both the books and the movies). Parts [...]
by Simon Petrie (writing at simonpetrie.wordpress.com) We’ve all done it, at some point in our lives: driven a typesetter into a berserker rage; convinced an editor to disrobe down to his / her loincloth (and why editors will persist in wearing such things, one can only speculate) and to race [...]
Recently at CSFG, we floated the idea of turning last year's Everything I Know About Storytelling I Learned From Star Wars blog post, discussion and sequel into an irregular series in our meetings and on our blog. Inspired by that idea, Tim Napper, writing at www.nappertime.com, has posted his Blade Runner response: [...]
CSFG member and novelist Nicole Murphy has resumed her Monday Musings on Writing blog. The latest instalment is on the choreography of sex scenes. The previous instalment was on the sensuality of sex scenes. The one before that was on 'the what and the why' of sex scenes. The one [...]
by Ian McHugh (writing at ianmchugh.wordpress.com) So, having an idea for a story and having a story are two different things. “Well, duh,” you might say. But the difference between the two isn’t just words. Having a notion that the world is round is an idea. A story is like [...]
Guest post by Marcus Amann As a full-time writer in the IT industry by day and a comedy writer by night, I take my writing tools seriously. With all the writing I have to do, I have to maximise my productivity. I’ve learned that to achieve my writing goals, I [...]