During one particular rewrite of Dead Ringer, I felt like I’d tied myself up in knots. My protagonist was breaking up with her boyfriend, but he seemed to be taking it too well. I couldn’t figure out what he was thinking or feeling during the scene. So I decided to write the entire novel from…
You might assume this is a philosophical or motivational blog post, and I’m going to tell you there’s no such thing as “can’t”. Or that the word “failure” is a lie and should be reframed as a challenge. Nope. This is a post about the word “walked”. I really, really, really hate the word “walked”….
Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl defined and popularised the psychological suspense genre. These days, the crime fiction shelves are packed with tales of marital discord turned murderous and psychopaths hiding in suburbia. I first read Gone Girl the year it came out, in 2012. Eight years on, when I decided to re-read it, I wondered whether…
Dead Ringer started life as a third-person novel, until my agent suggested I make it first-person. This was a big change, but it made the protagonists’ voices much clearer. The reader gets to sit in their heads, hear their thoughts. This, I think, is the superpower of novels (versus TV or movies). You get to…
I’ve recently put in place a simple new motto and it’s amazing what a help it’s been, in terms of getting more work done, feeling more balanced, and fighting social media addiction. What is that motto? “No internet before lunch, no social media before dinner.” How is it working for me in practice? Switching the…
‘Growth mindset’ might sound like one of those annoying buzzwords, but it describes an attitude shift that has helped me immensely. What is growth mindset? It’s a term that comes from Carol S Dweck’s book, Mindset, which is a study of how children learn. This is a simplification, but in her study, Dweck observed two…
In life, I’m a risk-averse person. I always weigh up my options and try to act prudently. In novels, I’ve found that prudent characters make for boring protagonists. Dead Ringer got immeasurably better when I added in a second narrator, Jem. She’s reckless and rebellious and will always throw herself into the fray. For this…
Whether you’re starting out in creative writing or looking to fine-tune your writing craft, there are a wealth of reference books out there. Here are five that I find invaluable: Self-Editing for Fiction Writers – Renni Browne and Dave King The first time I flicked through Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, I was unimpressed. A chapter…
“What’s it like to see your book in print?” is a question I’ve been asked a lot recently and the only answer I can come up with is: surreal. A huge part of that, I think, is I’m acutely aware of the alternate-universe version of events. Three years ago, another me put this book away…
One of my favourite pieces of feedback I’ve got on Dead Ringer is: “I stayed up past my bedtime reading it.” During one of my later re-drafts of the book, I did something bold. I re-cut all the chapters. I made them shorter and I changed the places where the chapters ended. My purpose (and…
I recently read a prominent author’s top three writing tips and one of them was that old chestnut, “don’t use adverbs.” Top three! Out of all the writing tips in the world: adverbs. It got me thinking: do adverbs really make such a big difference? (Look, I just used one in that sentence. *sweats profusely*…
There’s little more frustrating than picking up a book and realising it’s BAY-AD. The characters are cardboard cut-outs. The action is melodramatic or unbelievable. It breaks every rule in your well-thumbed writing craft books. “How did this get published??” you wonder. If you’re a writer yourself, you might follow it up with: “If this can…
I’ve spent a lot of my writing life harbouring under the delusion that my first draft needed to be perfect. Or close enough, anyway. If my first draft was a disaster, I was a failure. I still struggle with this perfectionism, but it’s good to remind myself that my first draft of Dead Ringer was…
Looking to download an audiobook, but not sure where to start? Here are five of the best I’ve listened to. They score highly both on story and on performance. Many even have narrators you’ll have heard of… The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Muriel Spark (read by Miriam Margolyes) – literary fiction Not every…
I’ve been doing a few radio and virtual interviews recently to promote Dead Ringer and I’ve made plenty of mistakes along the way. Here are 5 things I’ve learned to help you rock your next radio/podcast interview: Smile Yes, doing interviews is nerve-wracking. Yes, you might be struggling to think of what to say. But…
I’ve been using cashback websites like Topcashback and Quidco for a couple of years now. Here are my experiences – the good, the bad, and (most importantly) how much I’ve actually earned. How they work In case you’re not familiar with cashback websites, they work like this: When you want to make an online purchase,…
