Archive for March, 2009

Writing micro-budget feature films

Published by
Fiona Veitch Smith
at 25 March 2009 in Filmmaker interviews, Guest Blogs and screenwriting. 16 Comments

The Crafty Writer’s guest blogger, Keith Jewitt, talks to film producer Jack Tarling about writing screenplays for micro-budget films.   

TCW: First of all what do we mean by a micro-budget film?

JT: There are no hard and fast rules but I am going to be talking about films costing well under £1million and in most cases less than £250,000. Continue reading ‘Writing micro-budget feature films’

Writing historical crime novels – interview with R.S. Downie

Published by
Fiona Veitch Smith
at 20 March 2009 in Author interviews, Business of Writing, genre, history writing and Publishing. 14 Comments

Ruth Downie, author of historical fictionSome visitors to The Crafty Writer who have been following the non-fiction history writing series have been asking for something similar on writing historical fiction. So we asked Ruth Downie, author of Ruso and the Disappearing Dancing Girls (‘Medicus’ in the USA) to chat to us about writing historical crime novels. Ruth is married with two grown-up sons. She was born in North Devon and now lives in Milton Keynes. Her first book featuring Roman medic Gaius Petreius Ruso was published in 2006, and became a New York Times bestseller (albeit briefly, she reminds us!).  Her second book Ruso and the Demented Doctor (‘Terra Incognita’ in the USA)  is now on the shelves.
Continue reading ‘Writing historical crime novels – interview with R.S. Downie’

Writing history for the commercial market – 2: narrative history writing techniques

Published by
Fiona Veitch Smith
at 5 March 2009 in history writing, niche markets and Non-fiction writing. 0 Comments

In this second session on writing history for the commercial market, we will look at how to write narrative history by using creative writing techniques to write the ‘story’ of your history.

Whose story is it?

The most marketable and interesting form of written history, is history about people. Your research will have unearthed many potential ‘characters’. Which ones are you going to feature in your story? Articles are best written when focusing on a single ‘protagonist’ or a small group. In a book you can deal with more characters, but they need to be linked. There are a number of questions that you can ask that are used by fiction writers to develop a character. By adopting this approach you will help to bring your personalities to life and to present them in a lively, readable historical narrative.
Continue reading ‘Writing history for the commercial market – 2: narrative history writing techniques’