"The key to creating a character is in the detail": writing advice from best-selling author Jennie Godfrey
goodhousekeeping.com – Tuesday July 29, 2025
Jennie Godfrey is author of Sunday Times bestseller The List Of Suspicious Things, which has sold over 100,000 copies in paperback alone. Her debut was inspired by her childhood in West Yorkshire in the 1970s. Jennie is from a mill-working family, but as the first of the generation born after the mills closed, she went to university and built a career in the corporate world. In 2020 she left and began to write.
She is now a writer and part-time Waterstones bookseller and lives in the Somerset countryside. She is a judge for Good Housekeeping's 2025 writing competition, which is running until 31 August.
7 brilliant pieces of writing advice
1 The best opening paragraphs give a flavour of what's coming and why the reader should care, with a big dollop of voice. For me the voice is the most important aspect of the opening. If I am hooked by the voice, I am hooked full stop.
Writing Morally Gray Characters
vocal.media – Monday July 28, 2025
Let’s be honest: morally gray characters are having a moment. They dominate TikTok, swoon across the pages of romantasy, and spark endless discourse in fandom circles. And as someone who writes fantasy (and reads way too much of it), I totally get the appeal. They’re deliciously complicated, impossible to predict, and often the ones who steal the show.
But here’s the catch — just giving a character a tragic backstory and letting them occasionally stab someone isn’t enough. If you want them to actually matter to the reader, they need to be more than just broody and mysterious.
So, let’s talk about how to write morally gray characters that feel real, layered, and anything but hollow.
Motivation Is Everything
A morally gray character isn’t just someone who does bad things. They’re someone whose choices make sense within their worldview — and who likely sees themselves as the hero of their own story.
Think of Kaz Brekker from Six of Crows. He’s ruthless, manipulative, and has a taste for vengeance — but his motivations are crystal clear. Every calculated move is rooted in trauma, loyalty, and survival. We don’t just see what he does — we understand why.
Fan fiction is everywhere, if you know how to look
washingtonpost.com – Monday July 28, 2025
When Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings began pitching literary agents 15 years ago, they kept their interest in fan fiction a secret.
Known by their combined pen name, Christina Lauren, the best-selling romance duo met through their shared love of Twilight fan fiction. At the time, Billings says, coming from fandom “was much more of a black mark on you” if you wanted to break into mainstream publishing. This was just before “Fifty Shades of Grey” — a novel that began as a rewriting of “Twilight” — became a global publishing phenomenon. Now, Hobbs and Billings work in a publishing industry with a vastly different attitude: one far more receptive to authors who got their start writing unauthorized works online for other fans, based on previously existing characters and worlds.
Fan fiction’s ascendance comes as entertainment and media companies are turning to established intellectual property to shore up the eroding economics of their industries. It also helps that many of the decision-makers grew up online, with active accounts on Wattpad, Tumblr and other fan-fiction-friendly platforms. Agents directly solicit writers of popular fan-made works, and new books proudly advertise their “fic” roots. Fan fiction didn’t invent tropes like “only one bed” or “friends to lovers,” but fic websites popularized tagging and searching through them, and these categories have become a mainstay of promoting genre fiction of all kinds.
A crisis of sex and money
thecritic.co.uk – Sunday July 20, 2025
Not long back, the Society of Authors’ journal, The Author, printed what can only be called a jeremiad by a small publisher named Sam Jordison.
Mr Jordison, together with his wife Eloise Millar, run a distinguished independent press whose successes include Eimear McBride’s career-launching A Girl is a Half-formed Thing and Lucy Ellmann’s Booker-shortlisted Ducks, Newburyport, which was ushered onto the Galley Beggar list after its author had been shown the door by messrs Bloomsbury. Galley Beggar are, without doubt, a very good thing.
The gist of Mr Jordison’s lament, supported by a great deal of forensic detail, was that the economics of publishing had become so skewed that it was all but impossible for him to make a profit.
Rising print and paper costs, not to mention Brexit (Galley Beggar export, or rather try to export, books to Europe) had all played their part in this debacle. His conclusion was that whilst in 2015 the margins on a £10 paperback allowed the publisher a small profit, in 2025 he would be lucky to make a few pence.
By chance, Mr Jordison’s j’accuse was followed, a month or so later, by the launch of a new independent, Conduit Books. All the broadsheet newspapers covered the story, which seemed odd until one realised that over the firm’s founding principle rose the scent of novelty. Or rather controversy.
Conduit, helmed by a novelist named Jude Cook and noting the terrific gender imbalance in UK publishing, intends to specialise in novels by men, and “cerebral” ones at that. As Private Eye remarked, “All you middle-brow hussies can keep your distance.”
These news stories seem to be connected. The first shows that the economic model of a certain kind of publishing has all but collapsed. The second suggests its access points are in danger, too.
6 Writing Tips From the Sci-Fi Legend Robert Heinlein
nofilmschool.com – Thursday July 17, 2025
For the sci-fi nerds, Robert A. Heinlein needs no introduction. He was one of the Big Three English sci-fi writers of the 20th century, alongside Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke.
He was maybe not the finest sci-fi writer if you were looking for flowery language, but Heinlein was unparalleled at writing dystopian fiction that emphasized scientific accuracy. He connected with readers through his interpretation of the future, a dystopian yet symbolic vision that was both innovative and definitive.
In his lifetime, Heinlein wrote over 66 books and countless essays for science fiction magazines.
Starship Troopers (1959), Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966), and "The Green Hills of Earth" (1947) are just a few of his most notable works.
In this article, we have compiled some of the best writing tips by the “Dean of Science Fiction,” Robert A. Heinlein.
Stella women's literary prize picks battle with non-existent enemy as it fights 'male gender bias' in the book industry
skynews.com.au – Sunday July 13, 2025
Australia's 2026 Stella Prize - for women authors - includes a male judge.
If inclusivity is embraced to the extent that gender is no impediment to judging a gender-specific prize, then inclusivity has been rendered relativist to the extent of being just ideology with good branding.
Paradoxically, it would be considered insensitive, in the current climate, to allege that a male judge was hindering representation and the distinctive voice of dozens of prospective female judges, whose lived experience and perspectives as women might make them inherently more suitable as a judge of a literary prize from which men are exempt as entrants.
The Stella Prize claims to fight for gender equality.
The Stella website says it “takes an intersectional feminist approach to privilege and discrimination. We are committed to actively dismantling all structural barriers to inclusion for women and non-binary writers”.
This is a sociocultural delusion, ignoring that the publishing industry is disproportionately, almost overwhelmingly dominated by women - roughly 60 to 70 per cent of Australian novels published in recent years have been written by women.
The most up-to-date Lee & Low publishing survey found that 71 per cent of people in the US industry are women, including 74 per cent in editorial roles, 70 per cent of book reviewers, and 78 per cent of literary agents, with that number replicated in a scroll through the Australian Literary Agents Association website.
Writing Advice and Literary Wisdom from the Great E.B. White
lithub.com – Saturday July 12, 2025
E.B. White, beloved children’s author (Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little, The Trumpet of the Swan), innovative and revered essayist, and co-editor of the indispensable The Elements of Style, celebrates a birthday today. He was born in Mount Vernon, New York, on July 11, 1899. A deeply private man, White, whose full name was Elwyn Brooks White (his Cornell University nickname was “Andy”), had an abiding love for nature and ecology, most evident in his children’s books and essays.
His first publication appeared in The New Yorker in 1925. He went on to become a contributing editor for the magazine in 1927; in this capacity he wrote over 1800 articles. He was credited by famed New Yorker editor William Shawn for inventing a new literary form—the magazine’s “Comment” essay: often personal, incorporating the writer’s first person experience, while also being critical and incisive, as well as accessible to a wide readership. E.B. White loved writing, and given his prolificacy across multiple genres, this versatile wordsmith had some sage advice when it came to craft. Here are some of his most interesting thoughts on writing, creativity, and the majesty of the written word.
The Secrets to Writing Unforgettable Villains
nofilmschool.com – Tuesday July 8, 2025
When you're working on a screenplay, you spend so much time making sure the hero pops out and the plot makes sense that oftentimes, the villains can be left behind.
But if you want a movie or a TV show to really stand out in the audience's mind, or attract some great actors, you need the villain to be unforgettable.
Today, I want to look into the YouTube video I watched about how screenwriter James A. Hurst works to create memorable villains.
Let's dive in.
Create an Unforgettable Villain
Look, screenwriting is hard. It can take me forever to finish a script and to really craft it in a way that connects with an audience.
So if people have "tricks" or "shortcuts" to do this stuff, I'm all ears. That's why I was pumped to watch this video.
"Your main character doesn’t need to be perfect but they must be relatable": Brilliant writing advice from a top literary agent
goodhousekeeping.com – Saturday June 28, 2025
As the literary agent to some of the best writers around - Sara Collins (winner of the Costa Debut fiction award), Jing-Jing Lee, Jennie Godfrey, Bryony Gordon and Candice Carty-Williams are among her clients - Nelle Andrew knows pretty much everything there is to know about what makes a good book. Here she shares some of the best writing advice from her 20 year career.
1 Creating believable characters
The characters should drive the story, not the other way around. Make your main character compelling, with flaws, desires and agency. Readers should care what happens next because they care about who it’s happening to. I fall in love with the voice first. If the voice doesn’t hook me, I won’t keep reading, so ensure your narrative voice is distinctive, confident and consistent. Your protagonist doesn’t need to be perfect, but they must be relatable and motivated. Avoid stereotypes: nuance and specificity will set your characters apart.
2 Show, don’t tell
Avoid overly expositional writing. Every sentence should serve a purpose – either to develop a character, advance the plot or build atmosphere. Use action, dialogue and internal thoughts to reveal emotions and themes. Avoid telling the reader what to feel – let the story, and the characters within it, evoke feelings. And don’t overwrite; clarity, rhythm and authenticity matter more than big words.
The Odd Over the Obvious
slate.com – Saturday June 28, 2025
This spring’s hot topic of conversation for my colleagues in higher ed was that “Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College” article in New York magazine. Most of the fellow professors I spoke with about this were horrified by how often students now can and do let A.I. write their papers. Others are joining their students in asking, Why not?
A surprising coalition—William Shakespeare and 17th-century scribes, as well as 21st-century elementary school teachers, anti-fascist scholars, and epidemiologists—would tell you why not.
A key principle for 17th-century scholars transcribing or translating classical or biblical texts was lectio difficilior potior: The reading that is stranger is stronger. If a word differs between two versions of the text you’re working on, you should actually choose the one that seems to make less sense. That surprising word choice is likelier to have been the original author’s meaning, because it’s likelier that a previous copyist, translator, or (eventually) typesetter replaced a surprising word with one that was more predictable than vice versa. The wisdom was: Don’t let an easy, commonsensical option erase a unique and potentially more interesting and challenging statement.
Get the free newsletter | Submit a news item or article | Get Writers' News for your website
