Roz Morris's Blog, page 60

‘Demons, frustrations and betrayal’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Scott D Southard

My guest this week is making a return appearance to the series. Last time he wrote about how he���d driven his wife bonkers by playing certain albums that evoked the souls of his characters. This good spouse will surely be donning the earplugs again as his musical choice for his current novel is a striking […]

Lessons learned from making a contemporary fiction box set – guest post at Jane Friedman

How do you organise seven time-strapped authors to collaborate on a project? Who does what, especially the tedious jobs like proof reading? How do you decide on an image, a price,�� a name, a thrust for the publicity campaign, how much to spend on advertising? Indeed, how do you get seven individuals to agree on […]

Two days of writer���s block unlocked a character���s secret

I’ve spent the last couple of days blocked about a scene in Ever Rest. Solving it became a bit of a saga – and an unexpected and rather important answer. The first symptom I noticed was irritation. A character in a scene I was revising was annoying me. I quickly figured out why. In previous […]

‘Music for the Revolution’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Debbie Moon

My guest this week is a master of many storytelling disciplines ��� including screenwriting and radio as well as prose fiction. She���s currently writing an action-adventure screenplay set during the Russian Revolution, with a decidedly spooky twist. Her soundtrack includes Holst, the romantic 20th century composer George Butterworth and a haunting, melancholy piano piece she […]

Clumsy dialogue – your mission statement for a subtle scene

I was editing a manuscript and came across a confrontation scene. It was well set up so that we understood the stakes, the context and why this encounter would sizzle. We were about to watch a protagonist face a mischief-maker and warn them off. Except the dialogue was painfully obvious. Realistically, the characters should have […]

‘Men, women, flirtation and heartbreak’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Chris Hill

My guest this week describes his novel as a romantic comedy about a young man���s attempts to find love through an internet community. Despite its thoroughly contemporary setting, he says it was sparked by a song from the early 1960s, by a band who have long faded into obscurity. Other songs joined it, to represent […]

What keeps you resilient as a writer?

The life of a writer is a kind of madness. We have the pressure to produce. The expectations of ourselves and, if we���re lucky, our readers. We have, usually, the feeling that we can never do enough – can���t write enough words or books, can���t be in enough online places, can���t sell enough copies. We […]

‘I heard a song being played in an electrical store’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Glynis Smy

I���m particularly pleased to welcome this week���s guest as I seem to have known her for all the time I���ve been zipping about the internet. When I was first blogging, and launching the original Nail Your Novel, she was writing and blogging too. Now she���s got five novels to her name, and one of them […]

Can writing be taught? And what do writing teachers teach?

The other night I was watching The Rewrite, in which a Hollywood scriptwriter reluctantly becomes a writing teacher. In the early part of the film he asserts that writing can���t be taught. In some ways, I agree. But wait, you might say. And you might brandish a kettle at me, or a pot as black […]

How do we label ourselves as writers? Guest spot at Dan Holloway – and the box set is available NOW!

Forgive the capitals in the title. That’s the problem of being in a group of seven, rather excited writers who’ve been working towards this moment since November. Our ebook collection, Outside The Box: Women Writing Women, went live yesterday. If you pre-ordered it, it will have arrived on your ereader. If pre-orders aren’t your thing, […]