Architecture for Writers

Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, according to Ernest Hemingway, an interesting insight with which to start the week. If you think of your novel as a work of architecture, you may find yourself looking at the way the story arcs and intersects with more pragmatic eyes. Try picturing your book as a building, think what you will need to support the spans of the narrative - strong characterisation and a slippery plot; give it solid foundations, provide somewhere for imagination to take refuge, house your reader, make them at home.

By concentrating on the structure of your story, you will be less diverted by the niceties of polishing your prose (that can wait for later), which means there's every chance your writing will be less self-conscious and the work as a whole more solid and robust.