The Tool-Kit
Welcome to the Itch of Writing Tool-kit! This Tool-kit homepage holds the full set of sections, so scroll down to browse.
If in exploring the Itch you meet a link which leads to Typepad’s ‘closed’ sign, don’t despair: virtually all important posts have in fact been migrated over here to Substack. We are still working our way through the massive job of updating the thousands of links in the hundreds of posts, but meanwhile just use the ‘search’ facility to find the Substack version of the post you’re looking for - and feel free to message us if you get stuck!
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TWELVE TOOLS (NOT RULES) OF WRITING : just what it says on the tin
MY BEST TIP OF ALL : whatever you write
THE ONLY WRITING RESOLUTION YOU’LL EVER NEED : (the post also known as ‘Don’t Fiddle’) and why you’d be wise to make it
TWENTY-FIVE THINGS WHICH NO ONE SAYS OFTEN ENOUGH : about writing
THE ITCHY BITESIZED SERIES : short posts about key skills and issues
JERUSHA COWLESS, AGONY AUNT : All the problems which the Itch of Writing Agony Aunt managed to answer before she vanished up a melting glacier.
THE FUNDAMENTAL TOOLS & SKILLS
Showing and Telling; Psychic Distance; Past vs Present Tense; the Write Your First Novel series; Pinpoint Your Problem
CHARACTERS
Characterisation-in-action; Giving Characters Depth; Dressing your Characters
STORYTELLING, PLOT & STRUCTURE
Plot vs Story; Narrators and Narrative Drive; the Novel Planning Grid; Scenes; Flashbacks and Backstory; Documents; Prologues; Writing Ethically; Handling Your Material; Creating the Reader you Need
POINT OF VIEW & NARRATORS
Narrators; Point-of-View series; Moving Point-of-View
NARRATIVE VOICE & DIALOGUE
Voice, Style and Tone; Dialogue and Speech Tags; Rhythm and Rhyme; Writing Emotion; Description; Kill That ‘Office-Speak’
SENTENCES & GRAMMAR
Sentence Structure; Long Sentences; Structure and Punctuation; Free Indirect Style; Modifiers; Passive Voice; Verbs; Adjectives and Adverbs; Verbal Nouns and Phrasal Verbs; Common Confusions; Spellcheckers and Thesauruses
REVISING, EDITING, RE-VISITING, RE-ENVISIONING
Diagnosing; Revising Process; Overwriting; Adjectives and Adverbs; Synopses; Cutting and Filleting; Editing; Filtering; When Do You Stop Revising?
PROCESS, PLANNING & HOW TO GET OUT OF THE DOLDRUMS
Research; Drafting; Notebooks; Procrastination; Inner Critics; Yoga for Writers; Writer’s Block; The Anti-Writing and the Must-Write Demons
FORMS & GENRES
Long and Short Fiction; Form; Literary Fiction; Historical Fiction; Creative Non-Fiction
READING FOR WRITERS
How to Read Like A Writer; Riffing and Copying; Books for Writers
GROUPS, COURSES & ACADEMIC CREATIVE WRITING
Writing Courses and MAs; Feedback; Mentoring; Editorial Services, Commentaries; PhDs; Academic Writing
GOING OUTSIDE & GOING PUBLIC
Titles; Presenting Manuscripts; Synopses; Rejection; Pen-names; the Being Published Series; Competitions; Giving a Reading; Publicity; Social Media
THE WRITING LIFE
Surviving Submissions; Rejections; Adulting; Making a Living
