Liz Monument

A short while ago, my good friend and writing buddy Dr Petra McNulty wrote a guest article for this Top Tips page. The subject was how to transition from writing the short story to writing a novel. You can read…

The internet is literally bursting with the writing routines of best-selling authors. But these writers already make a living from the craft. This seems a world away from the aspiring debut author, who’s running a day job/looking after dependents whilst…

Modern storytelling spans many different platforms. Film, TV, music video, advertising, gaming, and social media are continual presences in the lives of all us writers, which makes it surprisingly difficult to filter out their influence, and to write using novelistic…

Novelistic conversation is generally pared-back, focused and to the point, so it’s unlike real-life chat or TV-script-style talking. Anywhere your conversation reads like ordinary blow-by-blow chit-chat, or is incredibly detailed and contains lots of explanation, or goes on for a…

Feedback from clients has shown me that it isn’t widely understood why or how a professional reader would make suppositions about a full MS, without having read it in its entirety. 

The reason that agents ask for a synopsis plus…

This month, I asked friend and colleague Petra McNulty about the challenges involved in transitioning between short and long forms of fiction (or vice versa). To follow is Petra's article, which provides valuable insight into the differences between the forms…

World-building is great fun for us writers, but if we put too much of it on the page, it can get a little bit heavy for readers. Readers want to connect with a vibrant story set in the world a…

This article supports ‘Voice & Style’ month for the international Ultimate Novel Writing Programme, Jericho Writers. 

Genre is a terrific tool for labelling fiction. It’s vital to publishers’ marketing strategies, and it also helps us writers understand what to deliver…

Three places where the prose slows down: love, death, and magic.

Editorial is often about paring things back. It might mean removing unnecessary words, sentences or even paragraphs which seem to slow a story down. It could mean reducing dialogue…

Feedback from clients tells me that while ‘show don’t tell’ is something of a writer’s mantra, it can be tricky to find specific information relating to the mechanics. Here are some brief examples, with explanations: 

Showing – this is anything…