Write Up North 2024

  In our last post we looked at how to start a story by thinking of where it should take place. When you introduce a new scene into your story, you should always take a little time to describe it so your reader can visualise, in their mind, where your main character is (and create their very own home film of the story). Bringing in characters can add to this. You only need one, but most stories will have at least two. Without a character, nothing of interest will happen in your story. Characters – usually people but it can also be animals, toys, robots or aliens - are the driving force of any story.   Their story can be told via their thoughts, memories and interactions with others. You are human and your readers are human too. Readers like to know what happens to another person, whether they be heroic and super brilliant or whether they are just a normal everyday person, who they can identify with or look up to. Perhaps this character is placed into an extraordinary pos...

  In this post we look at how to set scenes in stories. Everyone’s story must start somewhere. Some start with a hook, some start straight into a bit of action – or at least – something exciting. All well and good. However you start your story, you must think about setting the scene as soon as you can to allow your readers to picture it and settle in before the main action starts (indeed, some stories simply start with a description of where the story begins). We need to remember that readers could be anywhere: a bus, in their home, on holiday or simply in a library. It could be sunny, rainy, warm, or freezing.   They could feel happy or sad, relaxed or worried. Setting the scene can take their imagination away from wherever they are, whatever their feelings and get them prepared for your story. When people read books they, through their imagination and memory, create a home film / movie of the story. Setting scenes can be an excellent way of starting this (and you want to...

  Finding Inspiration for a Story Before we look at the writing process itself, we need to understand where we can find inspiration for our story. As authors we want our stories to connect to readers through our characters and what happens to them. We are all unique but, at the same time, we can share similar attributes with others. There is saying that we should write what we know about (which is probably only partly true). As an example,  Ian Fleming’s most famous character, James Bond, works for MI6 and was previously in the Royal Navy.  Fleming himself worked in Naval Intelligence during World War Two and used that experience to create the character of 007 and some of the stories in the books. Inspiration can come from your own life or from what you see in the world today and in its past. Reading factual and fiction books can also help a great deal. Below are examples of how writers find ideas for a story. Help from the Classics Some of these stories could have be...