Category: Writing

  • Visions of South Africa: a creative couple from South Africa

    Visions of South Africa: a creative couple from South Africa

    Garth Alperstein was born in South Africa. As well as having spent a career as a paediatrican, he has worked with indigenous Australians in the outback. And in recent times, Garth has published a memoir, The Fourpenny Axe and a Snooker Cue: eBofolo remembered with Ginninderra Press, based on his memories of his childhood spent…

  • Irony and Fun in “Double Madness”

    Irony and Fun in “Double Madness”

    Double Madness by Caroline de Costa Published by Margaret River Press, 2015  If you like detective stories and a rollicking good read, with a nice dose of voyeurism thrown in, this first novel by Caroline de Costa, is definitely for you. “Double Madness” is a crime novel set in far North Queensland. Not surprisingly, place…

  • Some special things about Nouméa

    Some special things about Nouméa

    Noumea, the capital of New Caledonia (la Nouvelle Calédonie) is situated at the southern-most tip of the main island, directly east of Australia.  It has a similar history to Sydney, as It was set up as a penal colony for (French) prisoners. The indigenous inhabitants are Melanesian.

  • Characterisation in writing fiction

    Characterisation in writing fiction

     I attended my first ever Webinar one  day, about a year ago. It was a web-based seminar on Characterisation, organised by the TBA Lounge, an American site, and was set to happen at 9.30pm Thursday Eastern American Time. This corresponded to 11.30 am Friday in Sydney. As well as filling in holes in my knowledge…

  • The Hero’s Journey

    The Hero’s Journey

    Many writers on literary structure and theory present a linear figure to portray the format of a short story, the narrative arc, of a memoir or a novel. Kal Bashir, however, represents structure in screen plays and in the above mentioned genres as circular. This fits in with the idea of the monostory by Joseph…

  • On the Train to Sydney

    On the Train to Sydney

    This is a short excerpt, still under review, from Chapter Twenty-Seven of Karrana. Bridie thought Stella, curled up in the corner of the mail train compartment, her red curls squashed against the leather, looked like a ginger kitten she remembered from childhood. Two women on the opposite bench were drifting off too, lulled into a…

  • The Ghostly Light

    The Ghostly Light

    This is an early excerpt from a chapter of my novel “Karrana”, second draft well under way at this stage. When he got to Halfway Creek, he had to stop to catch his breath. It was pitch black now with the stars blotted out by the height of the trees and the lay of the…

  • Show Don’t Tell

    Show Don’t Tell

    One of my favourite examples of “showing” is from Australian writer Tim Winton. In the following example from Cloudstreet, Lester Lamb and his sons, Quick and Fish, are netting for prawns, walking out into the water from the beach carrying the heavy nets. (This is Telling). In the following example, showing depends on the choice…

  • A Grain of Folly

    A Grain of Folly

    How is Fiction Writing a Form of Folly? In order to understand the features of fiction, it is helpful to examine the features of an opposite type of writing: the academic essay. I taught Academic English to overseas students at the University of New South Wales in Sydney for many years. Since retiring, I’ve become…

  • The Night of the Barricades

    The Night of the Barricades

    Emerging from the metro station, Hannah opened her eyes on a strange world into which she’d stumbled by chance. All was new and filled with a radiance she’d never known before in the antipodean world she’d left behind. Hippies were twanging their guitars along the River Seine, and flower sellers, good and bad artists, and…