Category: Articles

Written in the Stars: Is the chase for 5 star rating sucking us into a black hole?

The rating system has become a kind of Publishing Relativity, with the fewer the stars, the slower the sales. Let’s be clear, left to honest opinions only; even Shakespeare would not always score so high! Because not every book will…

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Developing a story card with Michelle Artistry

I am doing a set of story cards for my next collection of stories. These will appear in the book itself (‘One Beautiful People’), and also be used to advertise and hopefully get a few people excited. I think the…

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Picture this: Writers working with artists like Michelle

Anything in the field of creative art should come from a human soul. All artwork in this article by Michelle Walls As a registered Control Freak, I have always taken on the design duties for my book covers. This was…

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A further perspective

Surprisingly to some, there is more than one way of writing in the ‘third person’ and many writers draw clear dividing lines between the approaches. In a previous article, A matter of perspective in storytelling, I took a quick look…

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Authors, Mothers, characters, daughters and all their imaginary friends

Minds of their own To begin with, writing requires the ability to disassociate oneself from true reality and go with the version that is inside one’s own head. We often call this imagining of other worlds and non-existent people ‘fantasising’,…

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The wonder of naming your characters

Naming a character is the author’s act of creation, of giving a soul to a concept born from the ‘DNA’ made of a chain of her words. Introduction Characters can’t breathe until they have a name that you believe in,…

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Award system for struggling authors

If you write, then you deserve credit. Every word counts. So do you.

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A matter of perspective in storytelling

What are the advantages of writing in either 1st or 3rd person perspectives and should we be able to use either when we want or even switch between perspectives within a story? What do we mean by ‘perspective’ in a…

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Does sex in fantasy stories have to be fantasy sex?

All sex scenes in creative literature are fantasy! As writers, we are not here to offer our readers boring encounters. Who on Earth needs that? We have to engage imagination and passion. Pump up the excitement. Guild it with magical romance. This…

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