Who says Christmas can’t be twisted? I’m thrilled to say I had two entries accepted into the latest of the Twisted50 series of ghost horror stories, Twisted Ghosts of Christmas. The writers seem to have added a whole new meaning to ‘Christmas spirit’ in their warped imaginations. Also thrilled to be included in a group […]
How To Make Our Screen Stories Compelling Viewing
Here in blighted Blighty we started a new lockdown. What to do? Many writers, being hermits, won’t notice until exasperated family or friend drags them outside when it’s all over. I thought I’d run through some of my favourite recent Netflix UK viewing and work out how I might be able to apply their successful […]
Cartography for Writers
World building is a big thing for writers today. Readers and viewers like to escape to the familiar, fantasy or unknown worlds where our characters dwell. As we embark on designing our new world, we’re thinking landscape and orientation, key features and markers. An important part of cartography for writers is referring to what’s already […]
New Normal
What is the New Normal? I cut my hair with kitchen scissors today. Some of you mutter, “That’s not normal.” Which was deliberate on my part, because now I can ask you, “What is normal?” The old one has gone and none of us has any idea what’s coming in its place. None of us […]
Art Is Never Finished…
…only abandoned. When IS my screenplay finished? Every time I don’t finish a script, I think of this observation attributed to Leonardo da Vinci. It’s partly the nature of the beast. You keep tweaking, until somebody takes it away from you. Should the screenplay complete its metamorphosis to movie it will be finished, because by […]
Writer’s Learning Curve
2019: Context, Focus, and Distraction I’ve travelled my latest learning curve in what has been a strange year for me and for most Brits, I think. I won’t be sorry to see the back of it, although things can always get worse. What writer was ever an optimist? Politics worldwide have become increasingly dystopian. The […]
Peak Performance
I can’t believe it. We’re almost halfway through 2019. Feels like I haven’t done much these past few months, but I try to measure writing progress in more than output. Thinking time is also writing time, although a working writer needs it on the page. Deadlines help, but if you’re writing on spec you have […]
Format Matters
I Hear You, I See You To begin a discussion about why format matters in screenwriting, I’m going to start with an amazing story. In 1977, NASA launched two exploration vehicles into space, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. They were programmed to explore around Jupiter and the outer reaches of our solar system. Voyager 2 […]
My 2018
The Helsinki Bus Station Theory If any writer’s roller-coaster emotional journey could be plotted on a graph, it would probably look like a sin wave, or like the knee-jerk stock-exchange pic I’ve attached to this post. Writer, do you ever feel like one of those air-filled man-balloons dancing crazily outside gas stations? Yeah, probably all […]
Flat Squirrel Book
It’s out! FLAT SQUIRREL My new book for middle graders, and for grown-ups who never grew up. I had a lot of fun writing it, although there were the tough bits of nailing the story logic and making the prose readable. You’ll find it in the Troubador Bookshop and on Amazon dot com and dot […]