I love happy endings. I don’t mind hopeful endings, but I really want a happy ending. I want love found, treasure won, bad guys totally defeated, maybe just a hint of a problem to come back in Book Two. But… Continue Reading →
Goals. We are all supposed to have them. We are supposed to be driven by them, inspired by them to peak productivity and massive achievement. But oh boy, working purely to goals can be dull. Goals are like work. Proper… Continue Reading →
Whenever you write, you are generating fresh ideas – or you should be. But how can you come up with new ideas consistently? Everyone agrees, the Muse is dead or never existed, and we all need to earn a living…. Continue Reading →
I always admired Harry Harrison – for his pulp SF, which I loved as a teenager – and his author bio. His bio revealed that before he became a writer, he had a ton of non-writing jobs. ‘Truck driver’ was… Continue Reading →
Ah, description. Beloved of Victorian novelists and fantasy writers everywhere. How I loathe it. What? But why? Because mostly it doesn’t do anything, just sits there looking pretty and forming no useful purpose. It’s wordplay, which for its own sake… Continue Reading →
There are a lot of questionnaires out there for you to fill in whilst building up your characters. ‘100 questions to create an amazing character’ is the usual tagline. Typically a quiz will have several sections for you to complete,… Continue Reading →
I write novels. Or do I? My first novels were 50,000 words long – because that was the word length given as the minimum to win Nanowrimo. But how long should a novel be, really? How about a short story?… Continue Reading →
This post is part of the April blogging AZChallenge. Today it’s A. I struggle with antagonists. Almost all of my early stories have no antagonist at all. Or rather, none that is embodied in a handy walking, talking bad guy on… Continue Reading →
Firstly, sorry if you saw a bizarre empty blog post email earlier. I pressed a key by mistake… doh! The Poem a Day blog post is coming soon. Meanwhile, onto today’s post: I spent a week focusing on paper for… Continue Reading →
I hereby declare PaperWeek. This is a week where I make efforts to do as much of my reading, writing and planning on paper – and generally to engage with paper a lot more than I engage with my phone screen…. Continue Reading →
© 2025 Sef Churchill — Powered by WordPress
Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑