Why Repetition Can Be Powerful … and How to Get it Right
This post was first published in June 2017 and updated in June 2022.| Aliventures
This post was first published in June 2017 and updated in June 2022.| Aliventures
This post was first published in April 2018 and last updated in June 2025.| Aliventures
Zero to Story is a detailed 21-day course that takes you through the fundamentals of writing, before guiding you through writing a flash fiction piece and a short story.| Aliventures
Finish Your Novel| Aliventures
We’ve got just under three months left of 2025 … how’s your writing going?| Aliventures
Quick announcement, in case you don’t read to the end: | Aliventures
Wherever you are in the world, life is likely looking very different from how it did a few weeks ago. Here in the UK, everything except for essential businesses like grocery stores has closed until further notice. Schools closed two weeks early for the Easter break, and it’s looking like they won’t be opening again any time soon.| Aliventures
Is there one time of day that’s “better” for writing than another?| Aliventures
Want more from your writing time? Whether you want to carve out more time, stay focused, or improve specific areas of writing, there's everything you need here.| Aliventures | Making the most of your writing time
When you're writing in the third person, it's easy to end up head-hopping. This is when you move from one person’s perspective to another, without quite meaning to. It’s not a deliberate perspective shift, at the end of a scene or at some natural break. Instead, it’s like the point of... The post Do You Head-Hop? Getting Third Person Point of View Right first appeared on Aliventures.| Aliventures
I launched Writers’ Cafe in May 2024 … and it’s been fantastic to see lots of different writers come through the doors!| Aliventures | Making the most of your writing time
Choosing names for your characters can feel almost as tricky as naming a baby … you want to get it right!| Aliventures
Writing the first scene of a novel is tricky.| Aliventures
Writing Resources| Aliventures
This post was originally published in May 2011 and updated in November 2021.| Aliventures
External conflict is vital for your story. These external conflict examples show different types of conflict to deepen your plot and character development.| Aliventures | Making the most of your writing time
This post was inspired by an email conversation with Emma from the brilliant blog Science at Your Doorstep and by a question from an Aliventures reader. It was first published in April 2018 and updated in October 2021.| Aliventures
While the writing process naturally falls into different broad stages, each of us will have a slightly different personal process for moving through and between those stages.| Aliventures
Editing Essentials comes with a couple of extras:| Aliventures
We’re halfway through 2025 – how’s your writing been going so far this year?| Aliventures
How long is a novel? What about a novella, or even a novelette? Find out the different definitions here and figure out the best length for your own book.| Aliventures | Making the most of your writing time
We’re into April already! It’s been a pretty good first quarter (Q1) for me, though one with a few challenges.| Aliventures
This post was first published in May 2023 and extensively updated in February 2025.| Aliventures
This post was first published in May 2017 and last updated in January 2025.| Aliventures
Note: This post was first published in 2013, and was last updated in October 2022.| Aliventures
How do you describe characters without boring your reader? Here's how to write character descriptions: what to do, what NOT to do, and plenty of examples.| Aliventures | Making the most of your writing time
Your protagonist has a character arc where they change (for better or worse) throughout the story. But what IS a character arc? That's what we unpack here.| Aliventures | Making the most of your writing time
“Characterisation” is how we show, on the page, who our characters are.| Aliventures
Your friend recommends a thriller to you and tells you it’s “a fantastic page-turner”. Another friend tells you about a sweet romance novel that’s a “gentle, slow burn”. Both your friends are describing something to do with the pace of the stories they’ve enjoyed.| Aliventures
Do you belong to a writers’ group?| Aliventures
If you’ve already purchased one or more packs and need help accessing your download, please email me at ali@aliventures.com.| Aliventures
Looking to pile on the suffering for your characters (or need ways to traumatize your OC)? Here's a list of all kinds of suffering, with tips and examples.| Aliventures | Making the most of your writing time
This post was first published in August 2015, and updated in April 2019. | Aliventures
I’ve written a fair amount about dialogue over the past few years … partly because I love writing dialogue! And I figured it was about time I collated those posts in one place.| Aliventures
This post was originally published in June 2016 and updated in June 2020.| Aliventures
I’m doing NaNoWriMo this month – maybe you are too?| Aliventures
Note: This post was first published with four stages of writing in 2011, and updated in May 2021 to include the publishing stage. Images are used under the Creative Commons 2.0 license.| Aliventures
Sometimes, life is so busy that it’s a real challenge to find any writing time at all.| Aliventures
What is a scene, exactly? (Tip: It's not the same as a chapter.) Here are 7 key ingredients of scenes plus 10 useful tips for writing (or rewriting) them.| Aliventures | Making the most of your writing time
Note: This post was originally published in 2014, and was last updated in May 2021.| Aliventures
This post was first published in April 2019 and updated in April 2022.| Aliventures
Join the Newsletter| Aliventures
Stories run on conflict: internal (in the character's mind) and external. Here's how to get internal vs external conflict right, with lots of examples.| Aliventures | Making the most of your writing time
This post was originally published in April 2016 and updated in July 2021.| Aliventures
Do you make these common mistakes in your writing? Here's what to look out for on a sentence level as you line edit (close edit) your short stories or novels.| Aliventures | Making the most of your writing time
What exactly is bad writing? I take you through detailed examples of bad writing in fiction, explaining what's wrong with them ... and how to fix it.| Aliventures | Making the most of your writing time
Are you thinking of writing a novel? You might be stuck at the planning stage: how much is enough? What do you REALLY need in place before you begin to write?| Aliventures | Making the most of your writing time
The stories that stick with me are ones where the characters feel like real people, with lives before the story begins … and lives that continue after the final page.| Aliventures
What grips readers and keeps them reading?| Aliventures
