Writing for Wellbeing

Writing is a quiet wonder for mental health. There’s a reason so many teenagers dive into writing journals, diaries, and poems, during those years of so much hormone-and-identity upheaval. As we emerge into adulthood, though, we mostly ditch that. We forget what a wonderful help it can be, and we think everything we do has to be “good”.

Here’s a secret: writing can be good and good for us. Sometimes turn by turn; sometimes at the same time. Sometimes just good for us and we turn it into something good later.

I’ve written here before about how much writing can help our wellbeing. In The Wheelchair and the Cushion of Art, I described how it’s helped me navigate heartache, depression, and living with a chronic illness. In The Joy is in the Doing, I wrote about how process-focus brings back the joy (and the productivity!) and how I wrote myself back to health from a massive stress crisis. You Are Not Ark Fleet B explored how during the pandemic, everyone took refuge and respite in the arts – the films, TV, books, music, that helped us hold on: ”We can call it respite. We can call it mental health. We can look to the physical health benefits of easing stress, and how much that heals, how much it wards off. We can look to the societal benefits of not going berserk with cabin fever…” And why “even if no-one ever reads what you write, society is better for you writing.”

That’s because writing is amazing for wellbeing.

• Writing gives us respite. Whatever we’re dealing with – stress, heartache, grief, anxiety, illness, crisis, or even high-octane brain-fizzing excitement – we need a break, so we can be strong again tomorrow.
• Play, creativity, and flow-states protect us against stress. They literally physically protect our brains, and help us grow new neural connections, so we can respond more flexibly.
• Writing helps us process things. Instead of staying stuck, writing can hep us move through the emotions and thoughts, and emerge from it.
• Making something supports our sense of self. Crying on the sofa because you’re in so much pain that you can’t even put a ready-meal in the oven sucks. Writing a poem about it doesn’t get the ready-meal in the oven, but now you’re someone crying on the sofa and someone who’s written a pretty spiffing poem. And where the emotion is, there’s also a poem or story there now, as a container to help hold the emotion.
• Writing offers us free self-expression. Our full, varied, and wild selves can emerge on the page. That’s especially useful when our inner self feels constrained by work, by public face, by caring for others first, all the things that adulthood requires of us. From the page, it can even creep more into the world: a freer more playful sense of self.

All of this is good for us, and good for those around us. We’re not being selfish or indulgent by taking time to write. How much better, for our partners, families, friends, colleagues, even people who cut us off in traffic, if we’re rested, unstressed, flexible, able to process our feelings, and whole in our selves? (And it’s easier to ask for help with the ready-meal if you’re not a snapping resentful ball of rage. IME.)

Writing’s not a cure-all or a replacement for all mental-health support. After years of writing a poem a day, when “the blue curtain” kept cropping up, I finally booked therapy for my medical PTSD. Six sessions of EMDR therapy sorted that out, but its presence on my notebook pages took it from the shadows to booking an appointment.

Writing is an amazing power tool in our tool box. So here are my best tips for writing for wellbeing, from an amalgam of research, my experience, and my students’ experiences.

• Write by hand if you can. This has so many benefits that I’ll write a separate blog post about it next week.
• Don’t wait to feel okay – do it anyway. The same way we don’t wait for a headache to pass before we take a painkiller, you can sit down to write joyfully, grumpily, relaxed, or stressed. It still works.
• Make it a little treat. You don't want to drag a notebook onto a table cluttered with breakfast dishes or open another document straight after work for yet another chore to tick off: treat yourself a little. Sit somewhere you like, make your favourite drink, maybe put some music on. Take yourself out for coffee in a café or pub garden, if writing outside your home helps. Whatever modest effort makes it nicer, even if that's just putting the dishes behind you where you can't see them!
• Drop your standards. This is always true for writing: we need to let ourselves write badly and go for quantity over quality, not so we churn out rubbish, but so we let ourselves experiment. You can still develop as a writer, try new techniques, and write amazing stuff that way. You’re more likely to, if you’re not rigidly demanding perfection from every word. It’s even more important to drop your standards when you’re writing for wellbeing. In that stress-state, I literally muttered “Doesn’t matter if it’s shit,” on repeat while I wrote. The measure of good writing time, here, is time spent writing. Stun your inner critic with “Doesn’t matter if it’s shit,” and just write. That’s where the flow lives. It might turn out good later, but let it be rubbish now.
• For fiction, don’t write about you. The more clear blue water between you and the main character, the easier it is to step through the magic doorway into writing-land, as I wrote about in The Characters That Let Your Stories Fly. Try out new characters, new genres, new approaches: variety breeds joy and creativity. It will always be self-expression, because it’s still you writing, the self will out, but of a much freer kind.
• For poems, mix between you and not-you poems. Sometimes you need to blurt or to shape acidic little ditties about exactly what you’re experiencing and feeling: that’s healthy and good. Sometimes you need to take a break and write about spores: that’s also healthy and good. As with stories, the you still emerges; the self will out. My spore poem ended up actually being about my tenuous relationship with hope and a disappointment I feared. It was a stronger poem for being ostensibly about spores, and when the disappointment came, I had the exact poem I needed.
• Try poems with formal constraints: syllable counts, rhymes, metre, specific end words, a refrain to work in, and so forth. Something marvellous happens when you’re excavating a grief but also counting syllables: new objectivity, a you inside and outside the feeling.

In early 2020, I was planning a series of thirty daily Poem Skills to coincide with national poetry writing month (NaPoWriMo) in April. When the pandemic hit in March, I redesigned it to support mental wellbeing, to help people find respite in calm absorbed flow, and ran it on the blog for free. I took all my experience of writing for wellbeing and made sure every topic offered people somewhere interesting, relaxing, or uplifting to put their minds. (The other things we need to express will emerge when they need to – like spores.) I alternated between poems with formal constraints and free verse (with optional forms), for the best of both worlds. I got so many lovely private messages from people who were finding, as I did, how much writing helped. In 2023, I ran it again, inside the Writers’ Greenhouse Community, this time adding flash-fiction (very short story) options in the same spirit of discovery, fun, and mental wellbeing.

And I’m thrilled to offer it to you now: reworked, spruced up, and expanded, as 30 Days of Writing. Whether that’s 30 days in a row, or every few days, or whatever works for you. It’ll teach you loads about poems and stories, because it’s me who made it (I’m a teacher: the self will out), but the sunlight flooding it all is writing for wellbeing. Because writing can be good, and good for us, and a joy.

So if you’re looking for something to write, or an added regular practice, and especially if you want to write for wellbeing, you can start here and try the first three days for free. And as a launch treat, you can get the whole thing for 10% off until the end of May, with the coupon code:

30DAYSLAUNCHTREAT

I hope it brings you joy, peace, and delight.

Writing Skill: Social Peril

Social peril is a fantastic tension point in stories of all genres and styles of writing: Bridgerton-type society romance and drama, the precise contemporary observations of literary fiction, pacy commercial fiction, historical fiction from last year to the Ice Ages, fantasy and science fiction... Basically, wherever you have a society, you have the opportunity for social peril. 

It’s something that we personally feel as an intense threat, it’s about as bad as threats can get for a human, but it’s hard to explain to others why it would be so bad. It’s hard enough to explain in our own lives, even harder when the society you’re writing about is removed in time, place, or imagination, or simply in sub-culture.
   “But Mu-um, everyone will look at me!”
   “So?” says Mum.
I mean, really: what’s the worst that could happen?

Good question! Exactly the question we, as writers, need to be asking – and answering. So here’s a plotting exercise that’s great for turning internal fears and existential crises into tangible events. It’s also very helpful for creating a richer sense of society in story and for practising story shape. So give yourself the gift of 10 or 20 minutes’ writing time, grab your notebook, pen, and a cuppa, and let’s explore that.

1. Pick a society

Pick your society: Regency high society, the Stone Ages, a ship’s crew, a small English village, a secondary school, the magi in your epic fantasy, a fast-paced law firm, whatever. If you have a story in progress, you can use this to explore it. If you don’t, pick whatever tickles your fancy.

You can do the rest as a 10-minuter or a 20-minuter, as you prefer; just follow the shorter or longer time suggestions.

2. Brainstorm: what are the very real and practical ways someone relies on the group? (3 or 6 mins)

Be as specific as you can, at this point. If you’re using your own story, you’ll be drawing on the specific situtation of one of your characters. If not, let the character details emerge through the brainstorming. For example, if I chose the Stone Ages, a Stone-Age hunter needs others to hunt with, and also needs gatherers for other food, etc. 

There are a lot of ways that we formally and informally rely on each other. Brainstorm as many different things as you can.

3. Brainstorm: What are the very tangible, practical consequences of social disgrace? (3 or 6 mins)

If they’re outcast, whatever that means in your society, what happens? For example, my Stone-Age hunter can only hunt small game if they’re working on their own; they might not have access to a fire, so they’ll be eating it raw, which is more of a health risk and less nutritious; they won’t be getting the gatherers’ food, so will probably start getting scurvy, or might poison themselves gathering the wrong thing; the furs from their small game would rot because they don’t know how to handle those properly... and so on. 

Use the ideas from your first brainstorm and anything else that emerges. As you brainstorm, more details about both the character and the society will start to emerge and sharpen.

4. Turning it into story (rest of the time: 4 or 8 mins)

Now you know exactly what’s the worst that can happen, it’s time to whisk all that together into story, with five questions:

1. What could cause social disgrace? (eg in my Stone-Age society, that might be stealing food, killing a pregnant animal, etc.)
2. Who specifically would turn against them? This needs to be the majority, but think of some specific influential people, to show it happening. (If you’re making this all up as you go, you can just jot bare details, eg “tribe leader”.)
3. How might you stage out the disastrous consequences? You don’t want all the bad things to happen at once, so arrange them in order of what happens. (You can just number your brainstorm in order of size of disaster / logical order)
4. Who might stay on their side, even a bit? This is definitely a minority, and they might not be able to speak out, but they do care. Think of one to three specific individuals.
5. What could restore their name? 

Et voilà! Social peril, that so-human but so amorphous fear, is turned into stuff that happens. Which is exactly what we want to do, as storytellers.

Want more Writing Skills? As a member of The Writers' Greenhouse Community, you'll get a new Writing Skill every week: quick fun activities to develop your writing across plot, character, description, style, genres, and poems.

Plus you'll get expert advice on tap, a friendly supportive writing community, and help sending your writing out.

Find out more and join here.  

Writing Skill: Bringing It All to Life

The four key elements that bring a story to life, as something readers can lose themselves in and feel like they're living inside, are rich characterisation, purposeful description, a compelling plot, and live action on the page, telling the story through scenes, not explanation / exposition / etc. All of those are things we can work on individually, as we develop and draft our stories. In the final draft, they all weave together – and that's what you'll play with in this Writing Skill.

You can keep this to ten minutes, as a quick exercise to stretch those skills, or spend longer on it, as you prefer. And you can use it as a starting point for invention, if you don't have a story on the go, or try it with an existing story. Whatever you choose, grab yourself a cuppa, a notebook and pen if you can write by hand, and settle in for some fun!

Start with character description 

We're using character to start with, here, so first off we want a paragraph of description about a character: their hairstyle, accessories, clothes, habitual expression, etc. Feel free to include their habits as well. As much as possible, we want things they choose about themselves: that tells us something about their character, whereas their height / eye colour / natural hair colour / etc gives us nothing about their personality.

Here's an example from my freewriting:

He keeps a wool hat pushed down on his head in all weathers, he shuffles and slouches along in a big old coat that hangs down to his hips, and he sees the world a different shape to most folk.
    When that oversized coat came down to his ankles, its capacious pockets held the purses he lifted. Now it holds scraps of paper and pencil stubs, and if you emptied them all out and lined up the phrases, why, it would read just like that poetry they make so much of at the uni. 

If you're using this skill as your starting point

First off, write that paragraph of description about a character, making up the details as you go along, focusing on the things they choose about themselves. Allow yourself to invent freely and wildly, with whatever comes to mind. If you want a starting point to invent your character, use this lovely quick cameo character generator. Spend five minutes on this if you want to keep it to a ten-minuter.

If you're using your own story

Flip through your writing for any static descriptions of your characters. If you have any, use one of those. If you have no static descriptions, check if you have any description at all of your characters: do you give the reader any visual hooks for them? If not, write a paragraph of how you imagine one of your characters, focusing on the things they choose about themselves. Spend five minutes on this if you want to keep it to a ten-minuter.

Turning the description into action

That paragraph gives us description and characterisation woven together already. Now we want to plait that into action, as part of a compelling plot. Quickly jot down:

• Where is your character?
• What are they doing and why does it matter? 

If you're using this Writing Skill as a starting point, you can just make those up. If you want some extra inspiration, try this quick plot generator and just click on "Setting" and "Situation". If you're using your existing story, look for the first scene that really features that character.

Then, for the rest of the time you have available, rewrite the paragraph, only mentioning what the character does with all those aspects of their appearance. Something can only be mentioned if they interact with it to some purpose (so not idly lifting and putting stuff back down).

Here's an example of my own reworking:

Description through action

• Where is my character? On a rooftop, at night.
• What are they doing and why does it matter? Spying / eavesdropping on a meeting for the head of the guard.

The next night, he had a new spot: perched on a narrow roof ledge above the curtained window, the bone flag tickling his very toes. He watched the moon scud through the clouds with a faraway gaze as if he were only trying to see the sailor who poles it across the skies. But he pushed his habitual woolly hat up above his ears and strained for three things: how many voices were in the room; whether any could be identified; and whether their words could be discerned.
    In time, he reached into his raggedy oversized coat and pulled out a scrap of paper, an old label from one of Culpeper’s bottles. It bore the solemn injunction to ‘inhale thrice daily but not to drink thereof’. He turned it over, sucked his pencil stub thoughtfully, and wrote by moonlight, ‘A hand of voices turns to fists.‘ He pushed the paper back into his pocket and continued to stare at the moon. The head of the guard would understand its meaning.

All of the detail comes to life, when it's being used as part of the action. And how much more fun, to read one of his mysterious notes, than just to be told that they read like university-admired poetry?! As you can see, I didn't fit in his childhood history: that's fine, we can't ram everything into one scene. We dripfeed info across a story.

So now, decide where your character is, what they're doing, and why it matters. Then write them in that place, doing that thing, weaving in as much of the descriptive detail as you can.

Have fun with it!

Want more Writing Skills? As a member of The Writers' Greenhouse Community, you'll get a new Writing Skill every week: quick fun activities to develop your writing across plot, character, description, style, genres, and poems.

Plus you'll get expert advice on tap, a friendly supportive writing community, and help sending your writing out.

Find out more and join here.  

Tips for a Feedback Writing Group

This post is specifically about writing groups to give each other feedback. I have a general post on writing groups including other kinds here.

A writing feedback group is absolutely transformative, both for you and for your writing. As I said in my Top Ten Tips for My Students, other people can do something we can never do for ourselves: tell us how our vision is coming across on the page. We know the effect we want to create, but we need other people to tell us the effect they’re experiencing: how characters are coming across, if a poem is clear or inscrutable, and so on. Bouncing ideas off other people also works better than working alone. We solve other people’s creative dilemmas more easily than our own, and in return, they can do the same for us.

The group helps us, as well as our writing. Having readers and feedback is motivating and keeps us going when we hit a hurdle or a dry patch. If we’re having a bad word day, or struggling with a plot problem, we know we’ve got people to ask for help. And we’ve got companions, in the strange wild worlds we invent and the strange wild process of doing that, who also know what it’s like, celebrate our steps forward, hug us when we cry. (And when we finish a first draft, they’ll throw a party instead of asking “When can I buy it in the shops?”! They get it.)

For all of this, we need a consistent, long-term, suitably sized writing group, which can read each other’s work over time and build strong bonds. We need to trust them, because we’re showing them the early drafts, the imperfect work – even if we’ve got it as perfect as we can make it on our own. They can only give us the support of bouncing ideas if we feel safe asking for help. Having them as readers is only motivating if we feel this is a good place to share our writing.

So here are my suggestions for how to assemble and develop a group like that, some extra feedback tips especially for writing groups, and how to find those lovely people in the first place.

Assembling a group

Who’s a good fit

In my experience, having the exact same level of experience and the same genre isn’t that important. Different genres teach each other good things and a mix of poems and fiction can also work well.

What matters most is...

• You read each other’s genres / forms, even if not devotedly.
• You have a similar-ish level of output.
• You have a similar level of commitment.

Practicalities fit

The basic practicalities are just as important: for the group to last, it needs to fit well in our lives.

• Are you looking for an online group or in person?
• Do you want to be geographically close? (Eg ours meets online but we keep it to Oxford so we can also meet up socially in person.)
• How often do you want to meet? Once a week? Once a fortnight?
• What times and evenings work? Agreeing a set day is much easier than trying to juggle multiple calendars, which often leads to a group petering out. Our group sometimes shifts for a term, because of my teaching, but then we stick to the new day for that term.

Group size

4–5 people is a really good cohesive size long-term and means everyone can get feedback each meeting. That said, groups often shrink for all sorts of non-bad reasons (babies, job changes, evenings available shift, all sorts of Life Stuff), so it’s fine to start larger.

Developing a group

Agree the rules

Having clear rules up front helps prevent a lot of social stress and potential frustration. The rules should cover:

• How much you can send in each time. Our group has a 4000-word limit.
• When it’s sent by. We’ve recently moved this to the weekend before, to accommodate work schedules.
• How many is quorum to meet if various people can’t make it. (For us, quorum is two.) This also helps prevent the calendar-juggle, which can lead to petering out.
• How long to spend on each person’s feedback. 20–45 mins is often good, depending on how much people are submitting. Allowing too long can be unhelpful, as people start trying to find extra things to say. I find that 20 mins is great for 2000 words; 40–45 for 4000. We put the person getting feedback in charge of watching their time, so they can move the discussion on if they need to.

You can always adjust the rules as you need to – eg if someone’s finding the word-limit too high, and struggling to read everything, you can discuss it in the group and change the rule. But having clear rules makes everything smoother.

Allow time for chitchat and social meetings

This is essential for bonding, to build that trust and relationship: ruthless efficiency doesn’t build bonds. It’s important to respect everyone’s time, so the group stays viable long-term, but also to allow 5–10 mins to chat at the start, and a bit of space to chat between people.

High trust, high honesty

This is something that builds. Our writing is close to us, dear to us, and something we’ve made. So sharing it is quite vulnerable, especially at first. I’ve got lots in my Top Ten Tips for Giving and Receiving Feedback about how to approach feedback well, and some extra feedback tips below, to help with that.

The other aspect of high trust is to be honest with your group about where you’re at. If you’re feeling fragile that day, they need to know. If you need extra buoying up, tell them. That doesn’t mean they say anything false (that’s unhelpful) but they remember to prioritise the stuff that’s working well. Everyone in my group has, on at least one occasion, burst into tears. And this is an incredibly safe very bonded group! Not because anyone was cruel, but because the person getting feedback was overwhelmed by whatever else was going on. Sometimes we don’t realise that until we’re crying and then it’s, “Wah, sorry, this is kinda about where I am right now, not what you said.” We’re all allowed to be vulnerable, hence being honest, and trusting.

Celebrate!

Part of being a group is celebrating each other: if someone creates a chapbook of poems, or finishes a short story, or the first draft of their novel – rejoice with them and celebrate with them. Sometimes (in fact often), they’re struggling to celebrate at that point, so rejoice for them, throw celebration at them!

I love cooking, so I love making a dinner party based on the food in someone’s story: I had enormous fun devising nettle pies with vegetarian hot-water crust and a fey foraged salad, for one. In January 2026, when I finished a huge rewrite, my group threw me a pirate party, complete with menu and decorations based on my story’s world. (I’m not the only cook in the group!) For someone else’s completed first draft, we had a lunch out at her choice of spot and ordered custom LEGO mini-figures of the characters in her novel. We also have extra celebratory rituals – eg if someone submits the final instalment of their story, we give them the whole session for feedback, just them, with plenty of time to go through “yellow bits” (phrases / words we’ve highlighted as especially good).

Whatever celebrations, rituals, and festivities work for your group, celebrate each other.

Extra feedback tips

Absolutely read my Top Ten Tips for Giving and Receiving Feedback: there’s heaps of essential detail there on these ten tips:

• Ask questions
• Say what's good
• Say what could be improved
• Listen and consider
• Feedback should help people write more
• Think growth not talent
• Set time and length limits
• Be careful who you ask for feedback
• Avoid group-think in writing groups
• Have multiple feedback sources

Different patterns emerge when we work together over a long time, so I have five extra tips specific to longer-term writing groups.

Don’t worry about spoilers

Your writing group is so you can help each other: share each other’s worlds, spot the things you can’t, be a source of motivation and encouragement, and so on. So you need to share what you have with them, for them to do that.

It’s fine to try avoid spoilers, when you’re trying to work out how something plays out, but in the end there are inevitably “spoilers” – when they’re seeing a rewrite of a chunk, or you’re working on a full redraft. That’s where beta-readers come in: they can see the much more polished draft (thanks to your group) and answer those questions. Your writing group helps you create and improve it, so they need to see what you’ve got.

Offer problems not solutions

That seems wild but it’s the right way round. We’ve spotted something that’s not working for us in the poem or story. It’s in our remit to say what’s not working, and why (ie exactly where in the text we’re getting that from). But it’s not in our remit to give the “fix”.

The writer knows their own work much better and once they understand the issue, and if they agree, they’ll have a wider repertoire to draw on for changes. (In a 2014 FantasyCon Editor’s Panel, the professional editors said the same.) In fact, jumping in too quickly with our own ideas can stymie their process: before they’ve had a chance to think, we’ve already sent their thinking a particular direction.

Similarly, never lead with just suggestions. It might feel like flagging up the problem is “negative”, so we start with the suggested fix. To them, without the problem being identified, it feels like we took a perfectly fine story or poem and started trying to write our own on top. If they want suggestions, they can ask or we can offer.

A few years ago, when everyone was getting too excited about suggestions and new ideas, and overwhelming each other, our group instituted a “no suggestions unless asked for” rule. We absolutely still ask for and offer suggestions. Bouncing ideas around and getting advice from each other is a beautiful part of the process. It’s wonderful when a group stepping-stones their way to a perfect fix: one identifies the issue; another suggests a fix and flags up an issue with the fix; a third uses that to suggest an alternative that works; and so on. But we need to keep really clear boundaries on that and make sure, at every stage, the writer still wants ideas and isn’t having them rained down.

Before giving suggestions, ask:

• “Would you like a suggestion?”
• “I have an idea for how to resolve that, if you’d like.”
• “Do you want more ideas at this point?”

And if you don’t want other people’s ideas at this point, you can say:

• “I’d like to think about it more myself first, thanks.”
• “Actually I’m fine for the moment.”
• “I need to process it on my own a bit first.”
• “Thanks, but I think I’ve got plenty to explore.”

It’s fine not to give all your feedback

It’s the writer’s job to say what they want feedback on. We need to answer what they’ve asked, ask if they want anything else, and stop there. It doesn’t matter how brilliant our edits were if they didn’t ask for edits.

The temptation to give exhaustive feedback is always there, and only grows stronger when we get more invested in each other’s work. We’ve got great ideas! We’ve got very useful edits! We love the piece and want to make it better! We need to resist that temptation. Exhaustive feedback breaks people. Remember the original Tip 5: Feedback should help people write more.

Beware the “Actually, now I think about it...”

It wasn’t an issue. Some of us flagged it as something we liked. But now we think about it, as the conversation goes on, it’s really a problem actually? And maybe they could do this, or that, or the next thing… And increasingly, the suggestion would throw their story or poem out of kilter, tone, voice.

This can be a result of allowing too much time for feedback, so we scrape for more to say. In a long-term group, though, it also crops up as a result of good bonds. Agreeing with each other feels good, in a group! And we need to beware of that, in our writing groups. (That’s the original Tip 9: Avoid group-think in writing groups.)

It’s fine for someone else to pick up on something we didn’t and for us to agree. We can just say, “I didn’t notice that, but I agree.” If we start extemporising on it, having only just thought about it, we risk creating a pile-on.

We’re the readers

As we get more engrossed in each other’s stories, and feel deeply invested in them, it’s easy to start speculating “what a reader might think”. But they’re testing it on readers, right now, right here: we are the readers of their poem or story. In a past writing group, we had this exchange:
“A reader might be confused by X.”
“Were you confused?”
“No, not at all.”

We don’t need to hypothesise readers: we are the readers. Likewise, if we’re seeing a rewrite, we can’t be a first-time reader and guess what they might think – that, again, is where beta-readers come in.

The only reason we forget we’re the readers is that we’re so engaged with each other’s work, and that’s beautiful. In fact, all these extra tips come in to play precisely because it’s a fantastic, long-term, supportive group. And that’s what exactly what we need, to know our writing’s effects, to bounce ideas, to motivate each other, to ask for help, and to enjoy the company of other writers!

Finding your people

So where do you find people to create a group like this? The best way is to meet other writers, in person or online – a chance to chat to them, live. That’s one of the reasons I create as many opportunities for that as I can, in everything I run.

If you’re in the Writers’ Greenhouse Community, you have the chance to chat to each other in the monthly Writing Boosts and to follow up those connections in the online group chat. When I run online workshops, including the freebies, I always include time to work together, to meet each other. If you’re in Oxford, everyone’s welcome to the Summer Drinks, plus the Summer of Writing workshops are fantastic for meeting other writers and chatting about writing.

And in the multi-week courses, whether online or in person, you really get to know each other well – pretty much every course I run goes on to create a writing group for those who want one and don’t have one yet. Some of them now running for years! You can see all the live courses here.

May your writing group be a joy and a boon, may you help each other, trust each other, and celebrate each other. And happy writing!

Writing Skill: Ideas Into Scenes

Often in the early stages and first-draft, we have reams of exciting ideas in our writing, but not so much stuff actually happening on the page. We have swathes of exposition, backstory, info-dumps, and zoomed-out storytelling. That's fine: that's how we capture ideas, in first draft.  

But things actually happening, in close-up, in "real time", is what makes stories come alive. So when we rework our first draft, we want to turn all those ideas into Stuff That Happens, in scenes. In this Writing Skill, you're going to play with exactly that: turning ideas into the stuff of story. With options to use this as a starting point, OR with your existing story if you have one. You can do this as a ten-minuter, to try out the principles, or spend longer on it, as you prefer.

First up: an all-important definition.

SCENE: A scene is a section of story where things happen in close-up, in continuous time. It’s often in a single setting (but if the characters move somewhere else in continuous time, it’s still one scene). It usually includes action, dialogue, description, and sometimes character's thoughts.

To practise this, we're using the Random Plot Generator. (NB: That's a generator drawing from a database, not AI.) Click the "Situation" button to get a random situation. (You can add the other things as well, if you want more ideas.) The situation I got is "Someone is leaving prison after 20 years." So, that's my idea. Now I want SCENES.

1. Anything we need to know or understand the situation: make that a scene.
2. The thing is happening: make that a scene.
3. What happens after / as a result: make that a scene.

For example:

1. We need to know my character's been in prison for 20 years. So I'll have a scene of them giving a new inmate a tour around the prison.
2. The thing is happening: I'll have a scene of them actually being released.
3. What happens after: I'll have a scene of them sitting with family, maybe struggling to reintegrate.

For each of your three scenes, brainstorm

• Action: What are they physically doing? If this were filmed, what would you see them doing?
• Dialogue: Who's talking? What are they talking about?
• Description: What's around them? What are they noticing / interacting with? What does stuff look, smell, feel, sound like? How does that add to the scene?

For example, in my first scene, my character is moving from room to room through the prison (I'm assuming they can roam a bit during the day in rec rooms, work rooms, etc) pointing things out. So that's their action. The dialogue is them explaning stuff to the newbie, all of which indicates how long they've been there. "Yeah, that telly broke back in 2011," etc. Description: What they'd notice about the prison, having been there so long, is the changes to stuff, and maybe see some things through fresh eyes, because they're touring people round. The description could also contribute a sense of confinement, as well as familiarity, and set the atmosphere.

Importantly, at no point am I having my character say "I've been here twenty years." That's a) as part of the discipline for this exercise: characters telling each other information is still exposition, and b) to make it more memorable. Readers aren't memorising, so one line might fly over their heads, even if I did include it. If it's important for the reader to know it's been twenty years, I want to create a sense of all that time.

If you’re using this Skill as your starting point

Pick your situation, any other details you want from the generator, and spend ten minutes brainstorming your scene(s)' detail. If you want to spend longer on it, go ahead and write the scenes.

If you’re using your own story

I suggest you do this with the generator first, as a ten-minute exercise, just the brainstorming and mapping-out parts, not the actual writing. You can then apply the same principles to your own story, for any ideas that aren't being acted out in scenes yet.

Scene 1, giving us the info we need to understand, can often be layer into an existing prior scene, rather than have a whole scene just for one snippet of info. That said, if your draft currently has more ideas than events, go ahead and make it a whole scene. 

Either way

Have fun brainstorming / scene-mapping, and happy writing! 

Want more Writing Skills? As a member of The Writers' Greenhouse Community, you'll get a new Writing Skill every week: quick fun activities to develop your writing across plot, character, description, style, genres, and poems.

Plus you'll get expert advice on tap, a friendly supportive writing community, and help sending your writing out.

Find out more and join here.  

Writing Skill: What Happened?

Want to keep the reader on the edge of their seats in a scene, quivering with suspense as they turn each page? I’ve got a thrilling Writing Skill for you: What Happened? This is a splendid skill for creating slow-burn thriller-style tension, and for weaving in purposeful atmospheric description that becomes part of the action, makes the events memorable, fills the scene with atmosphere, and makes the reader feel like they're living inside the story.

So if you want to stretch your suspense skills, have a play with this. Steal ten minutes for your writing, grab a pen, a cuppa, and your notebook, and curl up to write.

To start with, you need two things: an empty public building + something very very wrong.

The empty public building

It might be empty because it's after dark. It might be deserted. It might be in ruins, ancient or modern. As for what kind of public building, it could be a library, CERN, a medical facility, a shopping mall, a college, a pavilion, a church, a school... Wikipedia has a helpful list of public and institutional buildings if you want more ideas. (An aquarium, perhaps?)

Something very wrong

As for what's wrong, well... We're playing with thriller mode, here, which opens up an inspiring range of sub-genres: action, crime, political, spy, legal, science fiction, medical, archaeological, mystical... Do you want them finding evidence of a new disease? A priceless artefact missing? Gothic powers at work? Glowing fish that almost certainly shouldn't be glowing?

You don't actually have to decide what's wrong in advance, mind. You can consider possibilities, then shrug, dive into the writing, and discover alongside your character.

Start writing

You're not mapping out the whole story, in this Skill: you're diving into writing the first scene. Your character (who they are can gradually come clear through writing them) is exploring the empty building. They know something's wrong, but they don't know what yet.

Include plenty of multi-sensory description as they move through:

• What are they seeing? They're hunting for what's wrong: we're looking through their eyes.
• What are they hearing? Sounds are particularly evocative for creating a tense atmosphere, because they also emphasise the underlying silence, and what we can't see.
• What does it smell like? Smell is brilliant for making us feel like we're really there, inside a scene, because it's not easily reproducible, unlike visuals and sounds.
• What sensations are they having? Is the air warm, cold, humid, dry? Do they touch anything? What are the textures? This brings us right into the embodied experience of the character, so we feel like it's happening to us.

All of this will create maximum creepy atmosphere. It'll also be inherently purposeful: they're hunting for clues to find out what's wrong, so every snippet of description is more information about that, for them, and for us as the readers.

Then end the scene at the most dramatic moment. That may or may not include the reveal on the page – up to you. At the moment you gasp, end the scene. (If you can't bear to stop writing, grab another page and continue the scene on that, as a new section. Leaving the reader on that cliff-hanger!)

Want more Writing Skills? As a member of The Writers' Greenhouse Community, you'll get a new Writing Skill every week: quick fun activities to develop your writing across plot, character, description, style, genres, and poems.

Plus you'll get expert advice on tap, a friendly supportive writing community, and help sending your writing out.

Find out more and join here.  

Writing Skill: Fairytale Detective

If you want to explore red herrings, to keep the reader distracted from the true reveal you’re actually working towards, I’ve got a lovely playful Writing Skill for you: Fairytale Detective! Red herrings are always a skill worth exercising, whether or not you’re writing detective / mystery fiction, as you never want the reader to see the real ending coming.

So give yourself the gift of ten minutes writing time, curl up with your notebook, pen, and a cuppa, and have fun!

To start, pick a fairytale. If your memory of fairytales needs refreshing, here’s a lovely site which gives you heaps at a glance. And then, as this is detective fiction, you need to pick someone who’s been killed – a main character, ideally, if not the main character.

Next, choose your detective. This can be someone from within the same fairytale or you can borrow someone from another fairytale: the gingerbread man perhaps, or Rumplestiltskin, or the Beast, whoever you fancy.

Now that you’re prepped, you’re onto the main bit: assemble the cast of everyone else in the fairytale, and work out everyone’s motivations to murder the dead character! Only one of them will have actually done it (or more, if they’ve been acting in cahoots) but all of them need an apparent motivation.

You can do this planning-style, if you’re planning-inclined, or just start freewriting to discover. As for tone – you can keep it super-playful / po-faced tongue in cheek, but there is also room to go seriously dark here, in a Gothy/noir way. Think of Angela Carter’s Bloody Chamber stories and how richly literarily dark some of those are.

The main thing here is to practise exploring everyone’s motivations, so once you’ve done that, you’re done! You’ve stretched that skill. But you can absolutely take this further, if you’d like to. Here’s some suggestions of what you could write:

• The dialogue from the interviews your detective holds with each suspect
• Character cameos of each suspect plus description of how they present themselves
• Action snippets of the suspects doing suspicious things
• Action of how the detective investigates each suspect
• All four together, writing the full story!

Have fun!

Want more Writing Skills? As a member of The Writers' Greenhouse Community, you'll get a new Writing Skill every week: quick fun activities to develop your writing across plot, character, description, style, genres, and poems.

Plus you'll get expert advice on tap, a friendly supportive writing community, and help sending your writing out.

Find out more and join here.  

What Is Narrative Tension?

We’re all told that a story needs “narrative tension”, a “central conflict”, and that’s true. The problem, though, is that in this context, “tension” and “conflict” don’t mean what they usually do – so when people apply that advice, it can end up ruining the story.

The most striking example I’ve ever found of this was a “castle” – I shan’t name it, to protect the innocently hapless. We’d chosen it for a mini-adventure visit mostly because it promised Talking Portraits. After the wonderful storytelling on HMS Victory, in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, we were all up for audio story tours!

The “portraits” were large vertical flat screens, with characters posed as paintings which then come alive and chat to you – basically videos that start moving when you enter the room. The characters were the castle’s owner, his wife, and their daughter, discussing the history of the castle. It started off fine, if a little dull… And then the characters started to argue. Mostly the couple berating their poor daughter, but sometimes they quarrelled with each other, too.

It fast became clear that someone had told the script writer that the story needed some tension, some conflict – and they’d gone for the garden-variety, not the narrative sort. Straight-up interpersonal tension and conflict.

The result? Cringing visitors were chased from room to room by this bickering family, flattening themselves on the furthermost walls to avoid setting the portraits off, warning each other on the sill of each room. Nobody wanted to witness the endless family quarrel, however many titbits of Useful History it included! Rather than giving the story energy, the tension and conflict ruined it, and we all scuttled away, dismayed.

I often see the same thing in early drafts, when people want to create narrative tension but end up with characters bickering. That makes us want to read it less, not more. It also often makes the main character less sympathetic – after all, they’re constantly sniping at people. That in turn makes us care less about their aims, which in turn makes us less interested in whether they do the thing or not. In short, it undermines the exact narrative tension which it’s trying to create.

That’s because narrative tension and conflict are not tension and conflict by our usual definition of the words: they’re much wider. In fact, I’ve stopped using the words “tension” and “conflict” in much of my teaching, and instead talk about narrative drive and interest. In the Story Elements course, we open it up to discussion of all the things it can mean, such as…

Casting a wide net of all the different kinds of narrative interest gives us a much richer repertoire to draw on, so we’re far less likely to fall into the bickering-characters trap.

It’s much more than those individual various drives, though: it’s the thread that draws the reader eagerly through the whole story. So the most helpful way to distil it, I find, is this: What does the reader hope / fear / think will happen next or want to find out?

That question is so useful that I’ve now added it to my template for my writing-group-instalments, so I always remember to ask them. And asking it sharpens my storytelling immeasurably. We always want the reader to be able to answer that question, 100% clearly: there is a definite reason they’re reading on. And if the reader can’t answer that question, we need to make the reason clearer – or, sometimes, invent it!

In each scene, in each chapter, in each act of the story, ask yourself, “What should the reader hope / fear / think will happen next or want to find out?” That’s your narrative tension, your narrative drive.

 

If you’d like to work on your narrative drive and plot interest in your stories, I have a brace of resources for you, now available as any-time Evergreen Resources: Narrative Drive and Plot Tension Map. 

With Narrative Drive, you’ll distil that all important question for a story, including the crucial component of backing the character through the story. With Plot Tension Map, you’ll pace and layer that across the whole story, so every part is equally gripping: no slow starts or soggy middles.

Both are self-paced videos that you can use any time, taking you through the process in an hour. You can use them to plan a story, troubleshoot it, or redraft it, whichever stage you’re at. Click here to get started with your Narrative Drive.

PSA: Don’t Use AI In Your Writing

More specifically, don’t use AI in your stories or poems if you want to get them published. (And even more specifically: by “AI”, I mean “generative AI”, aka Large Language Models – ChatGPT, Microsoft Clippy Co-Pilot, Claude, Gemini, etc. Obviously you’re not going to use a specialist AI that spots particular cancer cells to write, but it’s worth remembering that all those other kinds of AI exist.)

There are heaps of arguments about generative AI at the moment, but I don’t want to get into the weeds of all that. I just want to give you a heads up about this:

3 Lobed Magazine

Air and Nothingness Press

Arachne Press

Asimov Magazine

Beneath Ceaseless Skies

Black Beacon Books

Clarkesworld

Cosmic Horror

Death by TBR Books

Horned Lark Press

Interzone

LBA Books Agency

Litro Magazine

Livina Press

Moss Puppy Magazine

Podcastle

Rogers Coleridge and White Agency

The Dark Magazine

The Fiction Desk

That’s not a cherry-picked selection. I check submission guidelines a lot – not just for my own work, but also for the Sending Writing Out list I keep updated for the Writers’ Greenhouse Community. Over the last few months, I’ve been seeing those notices everywhere. These are just the ones I happened to screengrab over a few days, as I updated my spreadsheets.

As you can see, no-one wants AI-generated writing. Not literary journals, not genre magazines, not agents, not publishers. Many don’t want you to use it for research and idea-generation either. Some even say not to use it for grammar checks. A couple years ago, I suggested using it for punctuation, which after all is a formal system, but we found that even with the strictest instructions not to change the words, it still did. And several places dish out lifetime bans for submitting writing that’s used AI.

To avoid using AI for research and ideas, I have a few tips.

Add “-ai” to your Google searches

That removes the AI summary at the top and gives you search results instead. I’ve found I get much better results when I remember “-ai”, and often they contradict the AI summary. Even when the AI summary gets it right, the pages written by actual human experts contain a ton more info that you might not have thought to research. Always, when we’re learning something, we don’t know everything we need to ask! The AI summary will only tell you what you know to ask.

Use the Writers’ Links trove of sites

I have a lovely curated list of very useful sites for writers, organised into Words words words • Characters • Places • Plot • World building • Historical research. It also contains lots of rangens, to help you come up with ideas. These are random generators using databases, not AI. Bookmark the Writers’ Links page!

In the Writers’ Greenhouse Community, every fourth weekly Writing Skill features a useful online resource, to help you explore these. I’m steadily adding all the sites I feature there to the Writers’ Links page as well. 

Remember Wikipedia

Free, vast, accurate, up-to-date, human-written, with heaps of info on every subject, and all its sources meticulously cited if you want to delve deeper. Ah, how times change, from "You can't trust Wiki!" You really can, now. Human passions for their specialist subjects have created the wisdom of crowds. Bookmark Wikipedia – ideally on your browser toolbar. 

Block ChatGPT & co on your server

Did you know you can block websites on your own server? If it’s your internet account, you can! If you struggle not to reach for it, that’s a lovely hard-core solution. And if you’ve been paying for ChatGPT, and you’re going to stop using it, what about slinging that money Wikipedia’s way, instead?

* 

I have many, many more opinions about this – of course I do, everyone does right now – but this isn’t about My Many Opinions, it’s just a PSA: don’t use AI in your stories or poems if you want to get them published.