Everything Everywhere All In One Place

I’ve been writing these craft articles for quite a while now. Is it four years? Is it five? I’ve lost count. Certainly, they stretch back far enough that the earliest ones seem quite hazy in my mind. Okay, whatever I wrote last month seems quite hazy in my mind, but there are things I’ve written for Prattlefog & Gravelrap that I no longer have any recollection of writing whatsoever. Possibly, I’ve reached a point of critical mass. “Prattlefog & Gravelrap” means “waffle and waffle” (these are words I’ve made up, but you’re very welcome to use them for your own purposes!), and in each article, there’s quite a lot of waffle, while the articles themselves have proliferated like an argumentation of clowns. That all adds up to a whole heap of waffle. Waffle-R-squared if you will. So, I thought it would be useful to put a little order to things before it gets out of hand.

This post is therefore a sort of index. Everything everywhere all in one place. All my articles. Most of my free resources. A vague attempt to categorise these into topics with emoji bullet points and a brief explanation of what my ridiculous titles are trying to imply.

---

Hopefully, there’s a lot of useful stuff below. These are things I’ve put together as free-to-access resources because I want them to benefit the greatest number of people. However, it often takes three or four hours to write one of my monthly craft articles and some of the resources on my website represent dozens of hours of work. Other creatives on Substack have understandably turned to a pay-to-subscribe model, but I would like, if at all possible, to keep Prattlefog & Gravelrap as free and accessible to all. Therefore, if you have a couple of pounds to spare, I’d be really grateful if you’d consider making a small donation via my Ko-fi account.

Structural components of a story

🌹 That Which We Call a Rose (titles - what they can achieve and how we go about achieving that)

🥚 Breaking the Shell of a Soft-boiled Egg (openings - where and how to start in order to invite your reader into the story in the strongest fashion)

🚂 Setting a Platform for Change (openings - creating the strongest start point to allow for build and narrative / character change)

⚠️ Eek! It’s All Become a Little Tense (tension - creating upwards build)

🍃 Exit, Pursued by a Bear (endings - finding the right moment, focus and rhythm for your end point)

🔡 It’s as Easy as ABDCE (the “arrival, backstory, development, climax, ending” story structure - COMING SOON)

🧮 Story Planner (a list of questions to help with planning, structuring and deepening stories)

Other story ingredients

🌊 Creating Depth (depth and layers in terms of plot, scenario, character, relationships, and themes)

🔭 Finding Focus (narrative, character and thematic focus and cohesion)

⏲️ It’s All in the Timing (time in the real world vs time in fiction)

🥦 Original-Flavoured Stories (originality - finding a unique angle through narrative, character, scenario and form)

📐 The Trigonometry of Stories (the triangle of plot, character and language)

🔍 What Am I Actually Saying (finding deeper meaning in our stories)

Characters, perspective and voice

🦾 Body Language Bible (thesaurus for body language)

👩‍🌾 Character Creator (questionnaires and other prompts for character for creation)

💀 Choosing an Outfit for a Skeleton (five strategies for making characters come to life)

🤡 Emotions Guide (guide for pinpointing precise emotions)

📢 Levels of Voice (author voice, narrative voice, character voice)

🪞 Looking Inwards (interiority)

🎯 Motivation and Barriers (character motivations, active characters, external barriers, internal barriers - COMING SOON)

🔁 Unusual Habits (directory of unusual habits we can use to create unique characters)

🤿 Unusual Pastimes (directory of unusual pastimes we can use to create unique characters)

👮‍♀️Unusual Professions (directory of unusual professions we can use to create unique characters)

🥸 What Makes Us Unique? (uniqueness of appearance, personality, history, relationships, behaviour, possessions, desires and voice)

Language and words

🏛️ Collective Nouns (a list of collective nouns)

🎨 Colour Guide (a list of colour words)

🧙‍♀️ Conjuring New Words (word invention in an our stories)

🗣️ Dialogue Formatting (a guide to formatting fictional dialogue)

🤣 Funny Moments (eleven techniques for adding splashes of humour to your work)

💋 K.I.S.S: Keep It Simple, Stupid! (the power of sticking to simplicity when it comes to words and phrases)

⚖️ Literary Terms (a glossary of literary terms)

✋ Oddballs, observations, inventions, and other wordy highlights (ideas for infusing your prose with original details - COMING SOON)

🖼️ Reframing the World (ideas for taking a pre-existing story in a completely different direction when it comes to editing)

👅 Sensory Inspiration (a glossary of sensory details)

🛠️ Sentence Structures (an introduction to the four basic sentence structures)

Editing and feedback

👧 The Goldilocks Method (a three-step strategy for editing towards the point of “just right”)

♻️ The Importance of Feedback (thoughts on the feedback loop)

📞 The Language of Feedback (thoughts on how we frame the feedback we give)

🪢 Unknotting the Knots (strategies for identifying and improving knotty sentences)

Genres and forms

🦋 A Butterfly in a Jam Jar (flash fiction)

🧜‍♀️ Holding a Mirror up to the World (speculative fiction - COMING SOON)

⌛️ Tiny Time Machines (historical fiction)

⚡️ The Nifty Approach to Writing (novellas-in-flash)

📸 Writing Effective Flash Fiction (flash fiction)

The writing life

💚 Being Kind to Ourselves (thoughts on comparison, perspective and writerly self-care)

⛰️ Climbing Mountains (thoughts on how the writing journey is often like climbing a mountain)

🧠 A Writer’s Consciousness of Craft (the role of literary craft and how it pertains to the actual activity of writing)

🧙‍♂️ The Improvement Illusion (thoughts on why it sometimes seems like we aren’t getting better at our craft)

🏆 In It To Win It (thoughts on writing competitions and how to improve your chances on doing well)

📚 The Many Rs of Reading, Reading, Reading (thoughts on different ways of reading to best enhance our craft)

⛔️ The R Word (thoughts on rejection)

🚰 Replenishing the Creativity Well (ways to top up our creativity levels)

✂️ Ripping Up the Rulebook (thoughts on writing rules)

💫 What I Wish I'd Known When I Started Writing (collected wisdom from published writers)

✍️ Why Do We Write? (writing for joy, catharsis, exploration, improvement, and publication)

🏜️ The Writing Desert (the benefits and risks of experimentation)

Prompts and other resources

🗝️ The Benefits of Restriction (seven exercises in learning through restriction)

💡 Prompts From Published Authors (thirty inspiring creative writing prompts)

🔌 Prompt Generator (random prompt generator for words, scenarios, characters, places and forms)

🍬 Free resources (all my free resources and free resources from others)

---

If you enjoy reading this newsletter, could you do me a favour and share it with all your writing friends using the “share” button below? Word of mouth is so important to a freelancer like myself.

And if you’re able to spare a couple of pennies, I’m very grateful to those of you who choose to buy me a virtual coffee each month. It allows me to keep this newsletter free and accessible to all.