One: “Don’t be ‘a writer’ but instead be writing. Being ‘a writer’ means being stagnant. The act of writing shows movement, activity, life. When you stop moving, you’re dead. It’s never too soon to start writing, as soon as you learn to read.” (from an interview excerpted in The Daily Princetonian, 1958) Two: “Don’t write for money but for pleasure. It should be fun. And it should be exciting. Maybe not as you write, but after it’s done you should feel an excitement, a passion.” (from an interview excerpted in The Daily Princetonian, 1958) Three: “There is no mechanical way to get the writing done, no shortcut. The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory. Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error.” (from a 1956 interview with The [...]

It’s common knowledge that successful screenwriters have several hard and fast rules they try to adhere to, in the hope of success. If you are starting to write a novel, there’s a great deal you can learn by exploring these rules. And if you have already written a novel, testing your work against these rules is a great way to identify structural problems with your story. Enter a scene at the last possible minute, and get out as soon as you can. I know from my work as an editor that as writers, we have a tendency to amble towards story, and we are also not the best judges of when to bring a story to an end. Apply this rule to your scenes, chapters [...]

Writer Elmore In July 2001, the crime fiction writer Elmore Leonard wrote a short piece for The New York Times on his ten rules for writing. This was eventually adapted into a book. I’ve shared his rules many times with writers on our retreats, so I thought it might be useful to outline them here. In the preface to his book, Leonard says: These are rules I’ve picked up along the way to help me remain invisible when I’m writing; to help me show rather than tell what’s taking place in the story. Now, here are his rules: Never open a book with weather. If it’s only to create atmosphere, and not a character’s reaction to the weather, you don’t want to go [...]

In so many novels, landscape is a driving force. Characters behave the way they do because of the world they inhabit. The landscapes they long for impact the way they behave. The ones they live in shape their destiny. Being lifted from the landscape they belong in can unleash elemental forces in a character. It can lead them to murder, suicide or revenge. A character transplanted often fails to thrive; the result can be not only conflict but tragedy, too. Wuthering Heights is a great example. Not only was Emily Bronte shaped by the raw and beautiful moorland scenery she lived in, but her character, Catherine Earnshaw, is too – only she fails to recognise it, and on choosing to leave its wildness for the [...]