S.J.Glatzhofer

It started with hope. Everyone excited to have entered the new roaring 20s, and to be alive in a time where being able to travel anywhere was at our fingertips. Some of us, including myself, started the 20s in their actual 20s, and I couldn’t imagine what the year would hold for me. Finishing University with a Creative Writing degree, having my graduation where I can do the cliche boomerang and swing my cap up into the sky, and turning twenty-one; with the joy that I knew I could finally drink and gamble if I would ever find myself in America.  It was like reading a book that is filled with many foreshadowing elements. Each week, twitter had a new trend about something awful. There was the thought that WW3 was going to start. The fires in Australia. And the sad passing of Kobe. Until finally news came about Covid. Every day, something new about this virus came out. Everything was shut: theatres, clubs, restaurants all closed. Everything that we had grown up with, was taken from us ...

With Christmas just around the corner, the hype of Christmas novels is massive. Although this hype stops after New Year and doesn’t even begin until after Halloween, it is still something that many of us look forward to.  But why is there such a big hype for reading Christmas novels? Christmas is seen as a time to be hopeful and be filled with happiness. And when books that are considered a Christmas novel come out, it is a chance for people to feel that festive spirit and fall back in love with the thought of hope and happiness.  If you are like me, a writer and someone who enjoys Christmas, you might have thought about writing a Christmas novel, and wonder if you could do this: If you love love Christmas then you will fit great into writing one. You will be writing throughout seasons that Christmas no-longer seems important. You’d be editing throughout the heat that goes against the wintery weather. Therefore, you have to love Christmas to be able to deal with it throughout ...

Everyone knows what the five senses are, we’ve been told these from a young age. However, if you are like me and sometimes might spend over a minute trying to remember one of the senses (I always forget about taste), here is a reminder: See Hear Feel Smell Taste Using these senses when writing your creative piece is important. They help you show your characters’ emotions, and show how the scenery looks. Rather than you telling your readers that your character feels sad, or saying they are at the beach, here you can add the sense to describe what can be seen or smelt. As writers’ we want to use these elements because sensory details help the readers feel they are part of the novel. The reason people pick up a book is because they want to be transported somewhere else, and doing this can be done by using these five senses. Doing this creates an emotional connection with the creative piece, and that is what we want the readers to feel; it makes them remember the novel or the movie.  A...

A lot of people might know there is a difference between the two, but don’t actually know what that difference is. When entering University, we were taught about the differences of story and plot, and once knowing this, it’s quite easy to understand what these definitions are and how they intertwine with each other.  Story: Is a sequence of events in your narrative; better known as a timeline. Plot: It helps make the story come to life, it supports the story by linking the events together with a number of elements.  A common example is: Story: The King died and then the Queen died. Plot: The King died and then the Queen died of grief.  As you can see here the first one states what happens. Whereas the plot adds another layer of emotions, and helps the reader understand what kind of relationship the Queen and King had, and that was actually a loveable one.  To go more in dept: Story: → It can be seen everywhere, not only in books but in our lives and on the news....

When it comes to storytelling, there are many elements to help create an amazing tale. Dialogue is important when writing a creative piece, as it helps distinguish the relations between characters. For example, dialogue between characters where one is the boss and the other character is an employee will be more professional than the dialogue between siblings.  Dialogue can also help your story flow better, and move from one scene to another. As well as that it can help to show, rather than tell the reader what is happening. Yet, when writing your dialogue you want it to not only be formatted correctly, but to read smoothly and not be seen as a big mess.  During my first year at University, we had a lecture about dialogue and there we were told about the ten rules of dialogue to help us to perfect it. 1. In Britain and Australia the speech marks are single. Whereas in other places such as America, the speech marks are double. E.g. British: ‘Sally, listen to me will you.’ Americ...