Good Advice

Hey check out my blog’s new home. This is much better. I came across blogspot through reading the blogs of others. I always give a tweet-out to the ones I like.
My writing is already richer for having sampled just a smattering of the vast repository of literary advice which is available out there in the bloggosphere. By the time I have finished my first attempt at a novel I shall owe a considerable debt to those who have had some success in writing and are now passing on their hardwon nuggets of knowledge to us mortals still struggling to get out of the mire of mediocrity. Sometimes the tips I pick up are so obvious that I feel like an utter muppet for not having applied them already.  Some are more subtle.
To give just one example I read that one should try to write not just from the point of view of the character’s thoughts but from their imagination, to get deeper into their psyche. When I applied this to my current project Fall of Empires, I ended up giving one of my principle characters; The Emperor Heraclius, visions of angels at critical moments in the plot, taking his sense of religious mission to a higher plane altogether. This fits in quite well with his eventual unhingement under the stresses of his office.
I’ve just finished reading Cyril Mango’s (what a splendid name) Byzantium – Empire of the New Rome, which gives great insight into the Byzantine mindset. Angels were believed in quite literally and envisaged as forming a kind of celestial civil service, modelled on the Imperial Court. Even heaven has its bureaucracy!
 http://pinterest.com/justice4love/mysteria-dei/