Middle Grade Settings: An Introduction Having photos in front of you can help you write about your settings I’m going to make a confession. Settings are not something I often spend time planning. Perhaps my stories are the poorer for it, but the settings come as I’m writing or editing. The Glass Room, in Taking Wing, is not something I planned before I started writing. Personally, I’m a very visual writer, seeing my characters as though they are a video in my head, and I write what I see. As such, the setting just happens! There are benefits and drawbacks to this. The main benefit is that the writing process is more interesting. Not everything is set, and my story can still give me surprises. The drawback is that, similar to AI, I cannot know that I’m not stealing settings from films and books I’ve seen/read previously. I certainly don’t mean to plagiarise but the concern is a real one! With that in mind, I have started to at least have a vague idea of my settings before I start t...
This week, I've been delving back into Ancient Rome, so this song was October's logical choice for a Horrible Histories blog. I'm so excited about the release of Alternate Endings , a collection of eight short stories from different historical writers. Each one (as the title suggests!) picked an event to change in history. Mine was the sparing of Vercingetorix's life. So Julius Caesar has been at the forefront of my mind! But Crassus was already dead by the time my story was set. In fact, his death triggered the collapse of that First Triumvirate. Unlike the later triumvirates, theirs was established solely to further their own ends individually. As the centuries turned, a certain hierarchy was established within each set of three, the geography reflecting this, but Caesar, Crassus, and Pompey were all as close to equal as they could be. Despite the appearance in the video, however, they all equally disliked one another. There was a circle of mistrust amongst them and...