Category: Writing and Self-Publishing

New Atlantis: A Poem

Liam Smith 2 Comments

I hang my head in shame. It has been more than six months since I’ve put finger to key and clacked a new blog post into being. More than six months since sharing a story, poem, or even a trademark thought or reflection. Well, it ends today. I’ve a new poem to share with you, and a little tale to go with it. Patient readers, I present for your pleasure: New Atlantis.

2022: Good for babies, disastrous for writing

You might recall my last blog post. I described the recent changes I’d made in life: I was immersed in teacher training and expecting a baby in January. Well, I’m now a teacher and, even more importantly, a father. Tristan Smith was born on 12th January 2022, and he’s as perfect a baby as we could hope for. Yes: even when he cries all day. I loved that crying when I was trying to complete my final assessment for my PGCE. Loved it. Hmm.

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How to Write a Screenplay

Liam Smith 2 Comments

This article may or may not contain instructions on how to write a screenplay. But it does contain the twisted tale of how one of my short stories was adapted into a(n equally short) film.

INT. PUB IN WORTHING

It started January 2021. No wait. Technically, it started before our lives were hit by 21st century black death and we all went into lockdown. My bandmate and I were plying our trade at an open mic in Worthing. Another guitarist asked if I could put some percussion behind his set. We got talking and, like any good self-publicising writer, I mentioned my books. I played cajon to We Are the Champions. A good night was had by all.

Back to January 2021. Chaz – for ‘twas Chaz Parvez who had conscripted me into his Queen tribute – shot me a message on Facebook. He was writing, producing and directing a short film. A horror. I wrote horror stories – would I mind giving the screenplay a critical read? I opened the attachment. “2-5-1 (WORKING TITLE)” by Chaz Parvez. You want the first lines?

FADE IN:

“the killing”

INT. CONCERT HALL, BACKSTAGE-EVENING

This was my kind of thing.

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How to review a book

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This year, I’ve been listing every book I read in this What I’ve Read diary. Each page invites you to scribble some notes about the book, as well as give it a star rating. Which begs the question: what makes a book good? Just how do you review a book?

My What I’ve Read diary was a present from Millenial Maize

There are lots of parts to a book, and not just pages either. Things like characters, settings, events. More nuanced things too, the things that exist between the lines and which we’ll be looking at today. Style. Theme. Even truth. They all add up to something more than the sum of their parts. Let’s ready our critical scalpels and look inside the anatomy of a novel. At the things which make a story good or bad. Let’s learn how to review a book.

Why review a book?

Reviewing a book isn’t about criticising it. It’s about thinking analytically about its composition, and the choices that went into it to making it. There are some brilliant novels out there in the world and it’s important to recognise the hard work, choices and sacrifices that went into them. Reviewing a book – even if only in your head for a day after finishing one – is part of experiencing and respecting it. And about understanding what makes it good – or bad – compared to the bazillions of other books out there.

As we learn how to review a book, with some simple questions, we’ll see the amount of crossover between them. If writing a book was as easy as working through this like a checklist, everyone would be doing it!

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Get Rhythm: How to Write in Poetic Meter

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Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary…

Ever wondered why some poetry sounds so good when you speak it out loud? How it contains its own rhythm that you can’t help but fall into? There’s a word for that. Poetic meter*.

This article started life as an essay on meter and how to write in it. But seeing as I got bored writing it, I figure it wouldn’t have enticed my readers to stick around reading it. And I am married to a web analyst who notices things like my website’s performance. So we’re going to try something snappier; more fun and more visual.

iambic pentameter diagram explaining rhythm Read More

Pre-Meditated Poetry vs. Writing Poetry of Passion

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So how’s everyone doing in quarantine? Run out of films to watch or books to read? Eaten a housemate? No, of course things aren’t that bad yet. Netflix is infinite, books are plentiful, and your housemate won’t fit in your oven. But, there is plenty of time for catching up on tasks around the house. Plenty of time for writing. Plenty of time to pay some attention to my neglected blog – and perhaps for writing poetry…

I do poetry quite regularly now. Not instead of prose; that still gets its 5000 words a week (occasionally I even send work off to agents or competitions; I just don’t advertise the fact). Performing poetry means a lot of my media posts now are about poetry, especially since I’ve got some poetry friends to tweet and twitter with. Also, pictures of me on a stage gesticulating by a microphone make for better Tweets than wrote more words today:

Chatting with other poets, I’ve come to realise that my poetry-writing process might be a bit different to the norm – though not, I suspect, different to the process of a prose writer. You see, at the poetry nights I go to, most poets have fresh material every month: new bits of verse about things they’ve done or seen, or feelings they’ve had. I will listen, sifting through my Kindle for anything I might not have read out yet, coming up short. I think my poems might have a longer gestation period than others.

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