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Into 2024 with Development Hell

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How to Write an Action Sequence.

A road-map of sorts

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Building the Lovecraft Investigations

How a notion becomes a universe.

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On Irregularity

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Temple of Art

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On stationery

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Too Much Exposition...

...and why there's no such thing.

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How I write...

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Breaking the Screenplay

The rules are there ain't no rules.

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On Fluidity...

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The Spark File

An essential tool

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Going back to the well...

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The Slump

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On writing software...

Boring, but necessary

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In conversation with Michael Marshall Smith.

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A few words on motivation, fulfilment, and process...

Of all the dumb things I have attempted to do in my life, I think writing a Substack piece with the word “motivation” in the title on the hottest day of the year so far, with my allergies flaring up, is probably one of the dumbest. And yet… The process

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In search of collaboration...

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On the importance of writers

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Character Journeys

The order I’m writing these things in might seem a little random, but I’m trying to work in the order in which I think about story. Once I’ve got my research and my notes in order, and I’ve done a little brainstorming, I will turn to

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Organising Ideas

One of the great pleasures of being a writer in any medium is the not-writing part; the bit where you get to play with your ideas, brainstorm them, organise them and categorise them, without actually committing anything to the draft. And so that's where we are now. Licensed

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Story Ideas - The First Spark

It all starts with the spark of an idea. And everyone’s got one of those. During the week, I asked in the Substack chat for example notions that I could use for this piece, just one-line ideas that would illustrate the point. Iain Rowan at Maps of the Lost

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Why Are You Here? - a few words of discouragement.

“Through me you go into the city of weeping; Through me you go into eternal pain; Through me you go among the lost people.” Inferno III: 1-3. Dante Alighieri I thought I'd start cheerful. I also thought I'd start with a question: Why are you here?

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Introducing the Development Hell Writing Course

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Pleasant Green website now live.

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Rip it up and start again

Lessons learned from taking wrong turns.