Tag: creative writing
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Things You Can Do Right Now to Improve Your Blog Hits
How do you go about improving your web hits? Frustration with low outreach is one of the main reasons people stop blogging. But you can streamline your blog and improve what you already have without just adding more content.
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How I Fell Out of Love With Laptops and Returned to Desktops
In my last blog post, I wrote about the changes I expect to make through the course of 2022. I’ve been laying out some of these changes since 2020 when the pandemic first allowed and then forced me to review my freelance services.
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Your Business Blog Needs Valuable Content, Not Just Good SEO
Do you focus on SEO? Have you heard that it’s the be all and end all? Stop what you’re doing and read this because you’ve been given some dodgy advice. That might have been true as recently as five years ago but so much has changed.
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Some 21st Century Character Archetypes
This first appeared in 2012. New version edited and updated. I read a lot of books and I watch a lot of films and TV series, typically in the evening to wind down from spending all day on the laptop working. I’ve identified several tropes of the modern age. I don’t know if any appear…
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Feed a Writer AND an Artist: Buy Books New!
“Do you know how much it costs to pay an artist to design a custom cover for your book?” Was a question I recently asked of somebody in a book group. This was in response to how “cheap” self-published and indy book covers look, and that they “put readers off”. While readers are drawn to…
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Using Metafiction in your Writing
Metafiction is a form of metatheatre – it’s probably not a term you’ve come across all that often. However, it’s one of the oldest plot devices (usually used for comic effect) with roots in ancient Greek theatre. We still used it today and there was a great example of metafiction in last week’s episode of…
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The Power of Words: Best and Worst Political Slogans
Words are powerful. I’ve written on the subject of political oratory repeatedly. Two years ago, I discussed my discomfort with the media’s character assassination of Jeremy Corbyn being “unelectable”, for example, and in the run-up to the General Election in 2015, I listed some common politician stock phrases. Here, I want to discuss election campaign…
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Lorna Doone and the Sense of Place: Exmoor Coast
I’ve written about the importance of sense of place in fiction several times already. How you define your urban spaces, rural places and inspirational landscapes can create a vivid image in the mind of the reader. It can really help to absorb the reader into the book. I am presently reading Lorna Doone – a…
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Why Regional Food Culture Matters in Your Fiction
Food, glorious, food. Who doesn’t like it? We need to eat to survive but there is so much more to food than mere sustenance. I started writing about food on this blog when researching for my Romans vs Aliens novel (preliminary title: Children of Phobetor). The article on Roman street food remains rather popular. I…
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Words & Terms I Wish Advertisers Would Throw on a Fire
This is going to be one of my “Grinds My Gears” type posts. Some types of business speak really grind my gears, as I have already discussed. Advertising though is a whole other kettle of fish. There are some words and terms that I really would not be upset if I never encountered them again.
MG Mason Creative 