Category: What Are

i may be a little late to the party on this one, but particularly at the start of 2025 (and even before then), there was a notable uptick in lower-case only writing across the internet and in print media too. this article attempts to answer the question: what was up with that? you don’t need…

Normally, novels will feature around a set of characters plonked into a setting, and the narrative will follow them as they engage with the plot of a story – but not always. ‘Open-ended’ works of fiction are often criticised for being boring and lacking action – but after reading this blog, hopefully you’ll begin to…

Everyone knows sitting down with the goal in mind of a wordy, unwieldy epic is a nigh-impossible task (at least without copious amounts of substances – NOT recommended!), but there are a few ways of building up a writing habit in order to try to entice those words to get on the page, and stay…

A Roman à clef story is a blend between fiction and non-fiction, as they are usually retellings of real occurrences, but some details, names or events will be changed. This gives an author creative license to either add a little bit of additional flair or mask embarrassing details, depending on where they take the story.…

Spooky writing starts with an eerie atmosphere, and then writers are free to sprinkle in as many mentions of ghouls, dilapidated mansions or dingy moors as they’d like to. These form the basis of the popular conventions of ghost stories, but as with all age-old plots, there are also those that buck the trend and…

A lot of created media out there has little easter eggs, influences or adaptions from other materials, meaning that intertextuality is more than just a question of ‘which came first?’ Varying degrees of influence have their way with texts, such as storylines being lifted and reskinned with different characters, popular tropes carrying across genres –…