Jason Arnopp's Blog: Jason Arnopp's Blog, page 9

how to be a safe pair of hands: PART TWO

Okay, so in Part One of this post, my agent Oli Munson offered his thoughts on determining whether an author is a safe pair of hands, when reading their work. In this part, I’ll give you my own views. What makes me shut a book on page two? What makes me keep my eyeballs glued to the pages, all the way to the end?

To sum it up: what makes me place my wholehearted confidence in a writer and commit to their book, despite life being short? And how can we writers inspire that confidence in others?

F...

TOBY WHITHOUSE CHAT IN THE NEW DOCTOR WHO MAG

The new issue of Doctor Who Magazine is a 100-page monster, with countless Daleks on the cover from various eras of the show. As you'd expect, it's full of exciting stuff to read, including my first piece of writing for the magazine since my two-part interview with the director Rachel Talalay earlier this year.

As the Doctor Who Magazine page of my site testifies, I love writing for this magazine, which leads right back to my childhood. I just don't get as much time as I might lik...

HOW TO BE A SAFE PAIR OF HANDS: PART ONE

Oli Munson and I, drinking in public. Pic: Scott K AndrewsSo. I had this idea for a post about how, as a writer, to come across as a safe pair of hands. How to communicate, as quickly and clearly as possible, the following message to your reader, like a subliminal mantra intoned from beneath the actual text: "Don't worry, it's going to be all right. You can trust me to tell you this story. You're going tolove it, you lucky lucky reader, you."

It's easier said than done. I know I often close a...

the magic of draft zero

One of the many mistakes made by new writers and indeed some not-so-new writers, is showing their work to people too soon.

That initial urge to share your work ASAP is only natural. Until other people absorb your stuff into their brains, it exists in a vacuum. Might as well not exist. If a script sits on a hard-drive with no-one around to read it, does it make a difference? No. Only to you, at this point in time, unless you have an agent or editor badgering you to finish it, or at least waitin...

One Blog Closes, Another Blog Opens

Hello!

I have a brand new website and so, as of August 2015, will blog there instead.

The new site contains most of what once lived here, but looks nicer and works better across different platforms.  It also contains plenty of new words and pictures.  I'll transfer over selected posts from Bloggery Pokery, which will remain here in its entirety as an archive of all the nonsense I squawked between 2007 and 2015.

Check out the new site here.

John Higgs: 20th Century Boy

Hey, you.  There's a great new non-fiction book out today.

It's entitled Stranger Than We Can Imagine: Making Sense Of The Twentieth Century and has been written by the twisted genius that is John Higgs.

You may well already know John's work from his hilarious and emotive head-fuck fiction (The Brandy Of The Damned and The First Church On The Moon) and/or his mesmerising non-fiction (The KLF: Chaos, Magic And The Band Who Burned A Million Pounds and I Have America Surrounded: The Life Of T...

JOHN HIGGS: 20th Century boy

Hey, you. There's a great new non-fiction book out today.

It's entitled Stranger Than We Can Imagine: Making Sense Of The Twentieth Century and has been written by the twisted genius that is John Higgs.

You may well already know John's work from his hilarious and emotive head-fuck fiction (The Brandy Of The DamnedandThe First Church On The Moon) and/or his mesmerising non-fiction (The KLF: Chaos, Magic And The Band Who Burned A Million PoundsandI Have America Surrounded: The Life Of Timothy Lea...

treat your script reader as a viewer

There’s a script note I’ve given rather a lot over the years – to myself and other writers – and yet it doesn’t get talked about all that much (except for this week, when a post by the mighty James ‘Sitcom Geek’ Cary reminded me to write this).

Since launching myScript Analysisservice a few months back, I’ve applied this note to a fair number of the varied and splendid TV and film scripts I’ve received.

Don’t tell the script reader things which the viewer won’t see or hear onscreen.

It’s easy to...

The Week In Genre Books - August 21 2015

Yes, it's the second in this series of irregular posts.  Whenever I feel like it and have enough time in any given week, I'll list some new genre (fantasy, horror, SF) releases out that day.  For the sake of simplicity, I'm focusing solely on 'trad-published' novels and, even then, the list will be far from exhaustive: mainly stuff on my radar.  Please feel free to quack about any egregious trad-pub genre omissions in comments!  Let's go: what's out this week?

ZER0ES - Chuc...

blind dates and dialogue writing

I enjoy the Guardian Weekend magazine. Well, about 63 per cent of it, which is pretty good going on their part. Lately, I've noticed a trend in one of the mag's regular features, which can unexpectedly inspire fiction writing and dialogue in particular.

The Blind Date feature sends two strangers for an evening in a restaurant, then quizzes them individually about the experience, placing their answers in two columns side by side. One of the questions is What Did You Talk About?, and it's this o...