Focus

I am starting work on a new article for Focus, the British Science Fiction Association’s magazine for writers. I enjoyed the two I wrote last year. The first, High Stilts: the use of Language in Fiction, in the Winter 2015/16 issue, was about the different techniques writers can use to add flavour to their writing, now that high-flown language is not much appreciated these days. The second article, Systems of Magic, was in the issue for Summer/Autumn 2016, and was about the advice writers are given on the way they develop secondary or invented worlds. Both gave me a chance to think more deeply about my approach to writing,to include examples from some of my favourite authors and discover a few new ones.

The new article will be about the challenges of writing a novel but I haven’t planned it out in detail yet.