What do you think the ‘story’ might be from these examples? Give each one a rating out of TEN and explain why. Remember the more you recognise the effects that writers use to create compelling openings, the more easily you can employ such techniques in your own writing. I cheated sli

Tell me a story to soothe my head. Tell me a January ghost story, please. So this is what she heard more or less. A ghost story in January, the month of new beginnings.   The house was on the second row at the beach. Not as extravagant as some, but still beautiful and spacious, i

Here’s a fun creative writing exercise. It involves Free writing and caged lifts! This exercise  works best if you write using a timer. Working against the clock liberates your mind from overthinking and perfectionism, both the dangerous enemies of creativity!  Writing freely is

I must say a few words about NaNoWriMo. It has boosted my writing productivity enormously and is great fun too!  NaNoWriMo is the worldwide,  motivational competition to write a 50000-word novel in the month of November. You just sign up and log in to your proposed novel title (and no

Coup de Grace. The woman smiled at the tiny plasticine figure sprawled on the passenger seat. “You enjoy yourself there whilst you can.” She nudged his head with her finger so that it lolled on his shoulder. “So sorry about all your friends.” The woman took a moment to check her bag (

Phoenix writers met for a critique session last week, before the summer break. I wrote this in my sunny yard, trying to make a conversation between two people carry an undercurrent of menace. Nora may be rather more than a biographer and the apparent villain, Dominica, may have her ow

The writer Ann Caldwell delivered an excellent session last week about dealing with time in narratives. She gave us several exercises and prompts. I tried ‘ I thought I heard a noise’ and played a little with time!Are we ever in the present at all?    The Amber Collec

The cul de sac prompt at Phoenix Writers’ Group a few weeks ago brought up a vivid recollection of being ill as a child; specifically being ill with pneumonia. The story grew, and for some unknown reason a doppelganger, ‘Hyde’ character appeared entangled in my prota

  Today, following on from Anne’s unicorn on the bus, we are going to create another extraordinary story world.   This world will be shaped around an AVENUE or CUL DE SAC, probably in the past, where an extraordinary, magical neighbour lives at number 9!   You’re going to explore the

  Pictures can provoke writing in many different ways. Last week we enjoyed a fascinating session using old photographs including this one which is apparently the old Co-Op in Bolton town centre. For some reason the huge store reminded me of the closing down Beales, also in Bolto

Writing a story or an analysis essay can feel very difficult.  You look at a  blank screen or a blank page and feel the ticking of the clock.   You feel stuck.    Writing  can feel very intimidating and no matter how much you have thought about what you want to write, or how

I am currently enjoying an excellent Creative Writing Course (Online) with Stephen Carver and the UnThank School of Norwich. It is inspiring and very well constructed. Excellent support from Stephen Carver as tutor. I can thoroughly recommend.  One exercise asked us to consider charac

Last week at Phoenix Writers, we had a session on endings. I realised after I wrote this piece,  that it would serve rather better as an opening,  though I am still not happy with the name Mij! Even the iguana looked warm. He blinked at her and waited. Maybe hoping for something to ch

      Running with an idea and allowing your writing to flow gives you freedom. It stops the editor in your head censoring your writing straight away. We all have a censor in our heads wanting to correct our behaviour and work. Setting a timer and just running with an i

  This has been the summer of Preston Child. A friend recommended the novels because of their co-authorship and because he knew I would love Preston Child’s hero.  The FBI protagonist Pendegrast, is part Holmes, part Dracula and more than a little Oscar Wilde. I love Preston Chil

Mansfield’s mind is beautifully captured here! I love the way she could so naturally catch an idea and chase it , allowing expansion and playfulness, but never losing the reader’s interest.  “The mind I love must have wild places, a tangled orchard where dark damsons drop

For a long long time Frankie felt shy. Shyness ruled her world like a shadowy grim faced dictator. She felt trapped behind some grey prison wall; occasionally glimpsing through the odd tiny chink, a world of easy conversation and confidence.    Oftentimes,   she believed she would alw

”Moving a guy as big as Keever wasn’t easy. It was like trying  to wrestle a king-size mattress off a waterbed. So they buried him close to the house. Which made sense anyway. The harvest was still a month away, and a disturbance in a field would show up from the air. And

( I started this last summer drinking coffee and watching an ambitious spider. I know in the back of my head lurks Mansfield’s brilliant, yet miserable late story‘ The Fly’. This is a light tale, though I can feel the tale moving towards some Highsmith complicity or

 Free writing loosens the pen and disinhibits our censoring mind. 500 words at a gallop give our imagination the opportunity to wander ‘away’-  rather like Kezia in Mansfield’s brilliant New Zealand short stories: Prelude, At The Bay and  ‘The Doll’s Hous

Are these two of the best opening lines ever written? I find them both irresistible! For how  can a reader resist reading on after such greetings?  Both narrators  sound just ‘right’: both  very  individual voices whom we trust to lead us on into the narrative. The voices

As a child, I loved reading Jules Verne and Robert Louis Stevenson;  later, I adored the Indiana Jones’ films. This is a small extract from a longer story. I hope it may prove just a little adventurous!  English students, seem to share an interest in creating adventure narrative

Anything can inspire a story. Indeed our days are crowded with inspiration for anecdotes and if desired, written stories or poems.  In the summer I stayed in a farm house in Devon, which was beautiful and old enough, to enjoy its idiosyncracies.  Inspired by a leaky ‘needle show

          ”I never hated a man enough to give him diamonds back.” (Zsa Zsa Gabor)    Our Dreaming mind allows our daily mind to escape its limitations and censorship. One of the most liberating and creative aspects of a dream maybe the way in which

A long time ago, I wandered into my weekly lecture at Liverpool University expecting my own English tutor, Steve Newman to talk about Keats’ poetry. I didn’t get Steve, instead his wife delivered a talk about the Lamia which kept me spellbound, not least because Jenny Newm

Sometimes we only need a ‘trigger’ point memory to retrieve something we may have ‘lost’ in our past. At the Phoenix Writers’ Group in Horwich Bolton,  we often explore different ‘triggers’ through workshops.  Here’s a simple trigger usi

Partly  inspired by Blake’s wonderful poem The Schoolboy containing the ageless wisdom: How can the bird that is born for joy Sit in a cage and sing? Partly by Stephen King's Misery and not a little by my aversion to fastidiousness! As I have mentioned before on this blog, 50 wo

I first read Oliver Sacks in 1986 when The Man who mistook his wife for a Hat was published by Picador. I was utterly absorbed by his stories of human beings compromised, often in extraordinary ways,  by neurological problems,  yet who managed to re-imagine themselves with resourceful

John Mouldy I spied John Mouldy in his celler, Deep down twenty steps of stone; In the dusk he sat a-smiling Smiling there all alone. He read no book, he snuffed no candle; The rats ran in, the rats ran out, And far and near, the drip of water Went whisp’ring about. The dusk was

Reading helps us find out who we might be under cover so to speak!  We don’t need to wear borrowed clothes when we read, we can truly imagine those what if personalities and places that often times get submerged because of convention: for as we are governed, so we tend to govern