Roz Morris's Blog, page 76

Social media: a message in a bottle

You’ve seen this week’s Undercover Soundtrack? I want to tell you how I met its author, Dave Newell. He emailed me out of the blue because he’d run across a comment of mine on a blog written by Nathan Bransford. It was a post about the difficulty of self-publishing literary fiction, and Dave – whose […]

‘Horrific stories beautifully told’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Dave Newell

I’m delighted that this week’s guest has included Olafur Arnalds’s album Living Room Songs in his Soundtrack. I discovered it from another guest here, and it got me like a snakecharmer’s pipe. While I’ve been mainlining it to brainstorm The Mountains Novel, my latest guest has been using it to create an environment of conspiracy, […]

7 ways to cut a novel without losing anything important

‘Help, an agent has told me I need to cut 25,000 words from my novel!’ I get a lot of emails like this – from writers understandably wondering where on earth to start. What is too long? In commercial publishing there are accepted lengths for books, ranging from 70,000 to 100,000 according to genre and […]

‘Music to reshape the world’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, William Alexander

My guest this week sets his novels in a place that is playful and unsettling – a dark, broken place full of clang and clamour. Most suitable for this spooky time of year. He credits this atmosphere to the influence of two musicians – Zoe Keating and Tom Waits. Music seeps through the book’s pores: […]

Dialogue special part 3: subtext

In part 1, I discussed how to get into the mental zone for writing dialogue. In part 2, I talked about the non-talking and action elements that also make a dialogue scene come alive. Which brings me to the natural conclusion of this trilogy of posts on dialogue – subtext. What is subtext? Put simply, […]

‘Whistling past the graveyard’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Joni Rodgers

My guest this week is another old-timer on The Undercover Soundtrack. She returns with a playful story about a dishonoured cop and a pulp fiction writer who investigate a series of murders. Her soundtrack is sassy, full of fun and energy, but also undershot with an awareness of the tragic and macabre. She is Joni […]

Dialogue special part 2: dialogue is more than talking

Last time I discussed ways to make dialogue scenes easier to write. But dialogue is more than just what characters say. Dialogue is action Dialogue is a kind of action scene. Although the conversation is the main focus, the characters are more than just mouths. Make the characters respond to each other There should be […]

‘Music ignites my drive to write’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Ben Galley

My guest this week says he’s always been particularly sensitive to music. Watching a film, the soundtrack won’t be background, but a commanding force. He spent two years studying at the Academy of Contemporary Music, hoping for a career as a performer. When that didn’t pan out, he returned to his other creative love, writing […]

Dialogue special part 1: how do we get characters talking?

This weekend I guested on John Rakestraw’s Google writing hangout. He sent me a bunch of questions about dialogue, and I wrote so much in preparation that I got an epic post. Then when we got nattering on air with his co-conspirators, we delved off into other questions anyway. So I thought I’d run a […]

Faith in writing … because Chila asked

It’s funny the things you get asked to do. Chila Woychik, proprietor at Port Yonder Press, likes to set her clutch of columnists a provocative topic. This time it’s faith in writing. ‘But I’m not religious,’ I said. ‘So what?’ she said. And then I remembered a story I read as a teenager that greatly […]