Roz Morris's Blog, page 51
February 25, 2016
‘Those immortal days we might have enjoyed if we’d known better’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Tim McDonald
My guest this week is a true hybrid of the two Undercover Soundtrack disciplines – music and writing. He’s primarily a musician with the indie rock band Broken Poets, but he traces his songwriting to a profound childhood loss – the death of his best friend at age 13. He decided he had to write […]
February 21, 2016
Three diagrams to make your plot a page-turner
I’ve had this question from Elizabeth Lord: I have just finished your book Nail Your Novel and found it extremely helpful for the rewrite phase of my novel. You mention graphs as a way to see where plots are plodding and character arcs intertwine – do you have any examples? What a good question! Diagrams […]
February 14, 2016
Have you missed an important scene out of your story?
We’ve probably all had a note in a critique that tells us we’ve failed to include an important scene. Eg – ‘We know these characters well and have seen their lives in close detail. When the cousins died in that boating accident, where was the funeral scene? What about the period where the family adjusts […]
February 11, 2016
‘Shadows of the past’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Meg Carter
My guest this week has written a psychological thriller in which two former school friends confront a life-changing event from their past. To create their teenage years in the 1980s, the author delved into her own archives, discovering old mixtapes and an Elvis Costello LP whose sleeve contained a lyric sheet written out by a […]
February 7, 2016
Keep the faith: a mindset to put criticism in perspective… and a tip to stay inspired through multiple revisions
The students at my Guardian masterclasses always keep me on my toes with great questions and suggestions. (I teach advanced self-editing for fiction writers aka ‘put your book through the wringer and feel great afterwards’.) Here’s a discussion that I thought was too good to keep to ourselves. Question: how to take criticism One writer […]
February 5, 2016
Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff … under discussion at Literary Roadhouse book club!
This book is being read everywhere, apparently! Or it is in the USA, which is home of Literary Roadhouse. They invited me to be part of their book club podcast, where we spent a good hour getting our teeth into Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff. Some of us adored it. Some of us grumbled […]
February 4, 2016
‘When I’m most lost, a song will show the way’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Ryan W Bradley
My guest this week says that music is the key to most of his work. The title of his short story collection, Nothing But The Dead and Dying, came from a line in a Simon and Garfunkel song. All the stories are bound by the landscape of Alaska, where he worked for a while in […]
January 31, 2016
Found in translation: three literary translators share tips and secrets
A few months ago I mentioned in one of my newsletters that I was submitting my novels to Amazon Crossing, and one of my Undercover Soundtrackers, Alison Layland, sent me a ‘good luck’ note. But I didn’t know that Alison is herself a literary translator – and that made me think it would be fun […]
January 24, 2016
Evidence and verdicts: a simple way to understand show not tell
If there’s one major issue I find writers struggle with, it’s the difference between showing and telling. In every developmental report I write for a debut author, I find numerous instances where they would improve drastically by grasping this principle. This week I found myself explaining it again, and as I’ve been watching How To […]
‘The emptiness of being outside a perfect romantic scene’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Dan Gennoe
Oh my! Do you know what I forgot to do? There hasn’t been an Undercover Soundtrack for a few weeks, and now there is I forgot to publish the teaser post. How easily we forget our own routines. Even more heinous, I’ve been adding the tracks to the soundtrack for my own WIP, greedily enjoying […]
