People often ask me, ‘hey Ali! Whaddya do when you’re not writing books, blogging about writing books or blogging about books written by other people?’
Category Archives: writing
Good News, Everyone
Least convincing Conan ever.
My first contribution to The Working Barbarian is now live! You have just under a week to read it and vote on what happens next.
To explain – I recently became involved with an online Choose Your Own Adventure story. Every week someone writes a section, You The Public vote on what happens next, and the baton is passed on to the next writer who writes their bit of the tale based on the results.
How to write a fight scene
One of the most difficult things I’ve had to write recently was a guest post for the Fight! Fight! Fight! blog – a website dedicated to pondering what would happen if fictional characters did battle with one another. Yes, it is a niche market.
Part of my issue was that the page is run by my boyfriend, so I knew that when he gave me a deadline he actually had a few posts in hand and there was no real sense of urgency. If I missed my deadline, something else would take its place.
The other problem I had was that it was not like anything I’ve ever written before. I had a lot of false starts, because it turns out I’ve never written a proper fight scene – my stories and articles are generally pretty light hearted. I had no idea how to make it convincing, so in the end I didn’t bother.
It turns out, therefore, that I don’t actually have any helpful advice to give on the subject of writing a fight scene. Sorry for the misleading title of the post. Still, if you want an example of how not to do it, you should probably check out the site. FYI, you may benefit from familiarity with Pride and Prejudice and a thick skin in terms of creative language, as my fight is between Mr Darcy and Malcolm Tucker.
If you want to write a fight, by the way, he is always looking for contributors – you’ll find contact information on the top right of the Fight! Fight! Fight! page. Hooray for the internet!
Filed under writing
Vote Now, Or Forever Wish You Had
Jala by Eoin Hurl (http://ultimatehurl.tumblr.com/)
You may remember a post I posted at the beginning of April, explaining that one of my internet friends had concocted A Brilliant Scheme to pay homage to Choose Your Own Adventure Books via the power of the internet.
The Life And Times of A Working Barbarian is now live, with a blog and a Facebook page to prove it (social media being the only way to gain any clout these days).
Book Week Scotland
Denise Mina, Mairi Hedderwick and Richard Holloway at the launch of the Treasures campaign last week, by RobMcDougall.com
Last winter the Scottish Book Trust delivered the very first Book Week Scotland, a scheme that got people to focus on books, reading and writing for a week. Naturally I am very much in favour of this sort of behaviour, and it turns out lots of other people were too because everyone had such a jolly time they have decided to do it all over again.
