William Dawson

I always fall into this trap. Really, if you want to make your novel convincing, you should go where your research takes you. But instead, I usually find myself trying to make my research follow where I want the novel to go. Partly this is because I can't hold huge amounts of information in my brain for long periods of time. I thus have to do a lot of the research at the point of writing, so I often find myself spending an afternoon scrabbling around on the internet, trying t

I love writing beginnings. Whether it's the start of a whole novel or just the start of a chapter, there's a sense of infinite opportunity. You can let your mind roam far and wide. By the time you set fingertips to keyboard, chances are you've been daydreaming about what to say for days (or weeks); and even if the words don't exactly flow, there's a sense of satisfaction as you try to puzzle out what you're trying to do. It's a good sort of problem solving. However, I have co