T.W. Iain's Blog, page 4

The state of play (what’s up with this ‘new’ project?)

It’s time to take stock. I’ve been working on this new project for a while. Before continuing it feels right to take a moment and see how things stand.

First, this is taking far longer than I anticipated. I started writing seriously back in 2015, and since then I’ve published nineteen novels and various shorts and novellas. That equates to roughly two novels a year‌—‌not fast by some standards, but not too shoddy. But the last book I released was the final ShadowTech novel, back in June last ...

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Learning what I dont like through reading

I recently read Neal Asher’s World Walkers. I’ve read a few of Asher’s books before, and remember enjoying them, but World Walkers left me cold.

I’m not saying it’s a bad book. It simply wasn’t for me.

As I often do after finishing a book, I took a look at reviews, and it’s received quite a mix of opinions. It seems I’m not alone in being disappointed by World Walkers.

But, as a writer, I can still learn from this book. So I started analysing why it didn’t gel with me.

The first ...

There’s a thin line between inspiration and despondency

One of the many things that encouraged me when I first got into writing seriously was reading books and thinking ‘I could do better than that’. It wasn’t that the books I read were bad‌—‌many of them were fantastic, far better than anything I could’ve written overall. It was more that I’d spot a plot hole, or come up with a different (and, to my mind, better) solution to a problem the characters faced. Or I’d read a clunky paragraph, or a section of dialogue that didn’t sound right, or was too o...

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The work never stops, even when it does

About a month ago I wrote about figuring out names for my new series, something I always struggle with. But these aren’t the only names I need to work on. Stories use names all the time‌—‌for characters, for places, for companies and businesses, and (especially in tales that don’t take place in our contemporary world) for different objects. These names need to work in the story-setting, too. They can’t be so outlandish that they’re hard to read (unless that’s the point of them, in which case the...

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Searching for names

About a month ago I wrote about figuring out names for my new series, something I always struggle with. But these aren’t the only names I need to work on. Stories use names all the time‌—‌for characters, for places, for companies and businesses, and (especially in tales that don’t take place in our contemporary world) for different objects. These names need to work in the story-setting, too. They can’t be so outlandish that they’re hard to read (unless that’s the point of them, in which case the...