Evie Wyld is Booktrust's third online writer in residence.

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  • New writer's tips again!

    Posted Monday July 27th 2009
    by Patrick Ness

    They’re coming fast and furious now.  Well, fast, perhaps.

    There’s a new set of writers’ tips up today, this one talking about voice and how your book has one whether you like it or not, so it’s time to start listening to it.

    Bravos and brickbats to the usual comment spot.

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  • The small matter of making it great.

    Posted Friday July 17th 2009
    by Patrick Ness

    I’ve written before on here about writing both first drafts (where you try anything and everything because no one will ever see it) and second drafts (where you cut away all the unnecessary fat and get a first glimpse at what your actual story is). 

    Each one is a scary thing. Facing the blank page every day for the first draft, desperately hoping there are enough diamonds in the rough of the second.

    And so I’m sorry to say the third draft isn’t any easier. It’s where, by some indescribable alchemy, you must take your story and make it great.

    Hopefully*, of course, you’ll have a head start on this. You wouldn’t have begun the first draft without a good idea, and the energy and power of that will still be there. You wouldn’t have cut away things in the second draft unless they needed to go for the good of the story, so what remains will be pretty much everything you need to get a real book out of it.

    So what’s the third draft for then? For me personally, it’s all about the telling of that story. I’ve set out my material as…

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  • New writer's tips up!

    Posted Monday July 13th 2009
    by Patrick Ness

    I’ve spent most of the last month working on the new short story (which I hope you’re all enjoying; it’s free, after all!), so there’s been a lull in the writers’ tips portion of the page.

    No longer! Up today is a new set of very counter-intuitive tips on how setting limitations on your writing might actually free it. If you’ve been struggling with your story, this might help, though a little bravery is also required.

    Questions and comments welcome.

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  • A peek behind the curtain

    Posted Monday June 29th 2009
    by Patrick Ness

    Well, I’m finally putting my money where my mouth is. After all these tips and blogs, here at last is a piece of original writing by yours truly for you to judge as you will. If you haven’t read it yet, do so, and then read the rest of this blog, as there are a few spoilers (and a bit of engineering revealed).

    It was always part of the duty of the Writer In Residence to write a short story for the site, and I had lots of swirling ideas about what I might do. Most of them, unfortunately, were entirely inappropriate for a family website. 

    Luckily, though, my favourite idea, which kept nudging itself forward, was one that would hopefully work for everyone. In The Knife of Never Letting Go, Todd meets Viola in the swamp, of course, and we slowly come to learn that she’s crash-landed at the head of a convoy of settlers.

    But what chain of events led her there? Readers kept asking, and hey, since I knew, I thought, why not make that the story? A treat for fans as they wait the long ten months (and counting) for book three, but then of…

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  • Breaking Your back

    Posted Wednesday June 17th 2009
    by Patrick Ness

    As part of my duties as Writer In Residence, I’ve been working on an exclusive short story for the site. An opportunity to put my money where my mouth is, I guess, whatever the hell that means. Being willing to actually bet rather than just talking smack? Yeah, okay, makes sense after all.

    Moving on. I’ve been working on this story and have, without consciously thinking about it, followed the tips I’ve been putting up (and there’ll be more to come after I finish the story; I’m only one man!). I’ve spilled everything out in a super-messy first draft – and boy, am I not kidding about that one – written to a few key scenes, all towards an ending feeling I wanted to leave the reader with.

    Which changed about five times as the story unfolded, so there you go, the tips are tips, not hard and fast rules. Bend them where necessary.

    But today I’ve got it on my to-do list to really 'break the back' of the story. That’s my job for the hours of this afternoon. This morning was accounting and correspondence. In the age of email, that takes forever. This afternoon, back-breaking.

    (But while…

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