At the end of last year, an award-winning Australian film director told me that people often asked him how to best learn to become a filmmaker. His response – study Breaking Bad created by Vince Gilligan.
Like many of the ground-breaking cable television series, Breaking Bad unfolds like a good novel. David Simon, who created The Wire, another great series, pitched the crime writer, George Pelecanos, to join the writing team with the concept that The Wire was like a novel for television.
In fiction, particularly commercial fiction, the most important thing is to keep your reader turning the pages. This is what the art and craft of writing fiction is all about.
As the English novelist, E.M. Forster said in his book Aspects of the Novel, a story “… has only one merit: that of making an audience want to know what happens next. And conversely it can only have one fault: that of making the audience not want to know what happens next.”
One of the outcomes of our 4-Week Unlocking Creativity course is to help participants understand and recognise whether writing fiction is something they want to pursue and make part of their life.
Writing fiction is an art and a craft that takes time to master. If you do want to publish a novel or write a professional screenplay, you need to dedicate time to learning the craft. The same applies to any creative endeavour.
A burning question many aspiring writers often torture themselves with is ‘Do I have the necessary talent required to be a writer?’
People often ask me how many talented writers come to our courses. I respond by saying I believe everyone who has a genuine desire to write has the raw ingredients to be a writer.
More Than Meets the Eye
My partner, Roland Fishman, and I run The Writers’ Studio, which Roland founded in 1992.
We were both shocked and saddened to hear of the recent death of one of our writers under suspicious circumstances. And even though it was 10 years ago now, I can clearly remember the night we met her.
Once you’ve written the best novel you can and feel ready to get your novel published and release it to the world, the first decision you must make is whether to self-publish or pursue a traditional publishing deal. This article explores the pros and cons of both paths.
The British author services firm, Reedsy, describes self-publishing vs traditional publishing as one of the great debates of the literary world.
Self-publishing authors sing the praises of having creative control, not having to deal with the publishing gatekeepers and receiving higher royalties.
This fourth article in our publishing series aims to explain why the synopsis, along with the Query letter, is such an important tool when seeking representation from a literary agent or publisher.
A synopsis is an overview of your manuscript. Writing it forces you to define your story and capture its essence, conveying that you are in command of your material, in an engaging manner. It is an artform in itself. The quality of your synopsis will determine whether an agent or publisher will read your full manuscript. Most agents and publishers simply do not have time to read every manuscript they receive.
Having read practically all of Michael Connelly’s books and being very much inspired by his character, Detective Harry Bosch, when writing my novel No Man’s Land, it was great to return to my roots as a journalist, sit down with him at the Wharf during the 2015 Sydney Writers’ Festival and interview him.
He’s a real master of the craft and I felt very fortunate to be able to ask him all those questions that have been bubbling away in my unconscious for years. And I’m pleased to say he seemed like a very decent bloke.