Getting to know your characters before you begin to write your story is critical. If you don’t know much about them at the outset, you’ll struggle to bring them to life on the printed page.

So here’s a…

Writers spend a lot of time thinking about the technical aspect of their work  - does the plot hold together, is the pace right, is there too much description, an over-use of back story, poor grammar, literals etc…

Best-selling crime novelist and creative writing tutor John Dean has started to run an online Crime Fiction Course.

John, author of 17 novels and currently published by London-based The Book Folks, and the creator of DCI John Blizzard and DCI Jack Harris, also runs Inscribe Media Ltd, through which the course will be administered.

The…

You can check out the excellent Nicholas Camm reading the audio version of the DCI Blizzard mystery Strange Little Girl at…

What turns a story from good to very good? For me, it is that extra something.

Whether it be the description of a place that makes you shiver because you feel the chill air coming off the hills, or a portrayal of a character so real they could easily walk in through the door and…

I have just finished the first draft of a new Jack Harris novel. As always, I’ll let it rest for a week or two then come back to start the edit with fresh eyes.

For me, that is a crucial part of the writing process and the test for me is that, if I enjoy the novel and forgot I wrote it, I must be doing something right!

The read-through is also crucial to search for problems with flow, plotlines, poor grammar, literals etc. I want the team at The Book Folks to have a manuscript…

Writers! Fancy writing in a house on a hill? Looking to learn more about how writers draw inspiration from their surroundings? Like to find a peaceful corner of a garden to write? And all with…

So how do you solve a crime when your main information is coming from someone with dementia - how do you know you are being told the truth?

Check out how DCI John Blizzard fares at…

As part of…

My novel Dead Hill (The Book Folks), the first in the DCI Jack Harris series, is approaching 60 (mostly positive reviews) on Amazon, which got me thinking about how it came into being.…

There have been largely encouraging reviews for the most recent DCI Jack Harris crime novel, Thou Shalt Kill (The Book Folks), which explores high emotions in the world of religion (with a nod to the tensions that exist on allotments!).

I value reviews; the good ones boost your confidence as a writer and you can often learn from the negative…

One of my students came up with a cracking first line the other day and it got me thinking about one of my favourite topics.

A busy and harassed judge/editor/agent reads so much that anything that makes them notice you has got to be good. Compelling, gripping, intriguing, the…

I am currently developing a talk on the role of Conflict in Crime Fiction, to be delivered as part of Darlington Arts Festival in North East England (May 17-20, 2019, details to be announced).

But why choose conflict as a subject? Because we live in an age when people increasingly challenge each other and when the ‘ordinary’ man or women is more prepared to challenge those in positions of authority as well.

A world where they are more prepared to be outspoken, particularly on…

John Blizzard story The Railway Man, set in the world of retired rail workers, is approaching 50 reviews on Amazon - you can check out what readers think about it at …

All writing is about every word doing its job. It’s true of novels but becomes an even more pronounced skill when you are writing something short, like a poem or a short story.

My company Inscribe Media used to run a short story competition and we used to receive entries which were not the top limit 2,000 words long but 200 words instead (flash fiction length).

The length meant that the writers had to make every word do its job and discard every word, every thought, every…

I was writing the other day and part of the novel deals with a character dying from a serious bronchial illness, fighting for every breath.

My detectives go to see him only to discover that, since they last met him, he has died. I found myself writing (slightly changed as the original contained crucial plot information) “Five minutes later, the officers were seated in the living room, acutely aware that his chair was empty and that the oxygen cannister had gone. They could see the…

Delighted to say that the new Blizzard crime novel is now out in paperback as well as e-book…

I have just written this for aspiring writers who joined the Crime Readers’ Association (if you not done so, I heartily recommend it, more on https://thecra.co.uk/) and thought  it might interest.

As part of my work, I am often hired to assess aspiring authors’ manuscripts, including for the Crime Writers’ Association, and one of the recurring themes that crops up in the feedback that I give is how to build tension.

Tension is…