Useful stuff | Alison Morton's Thrillers

Unlock your secret writing weapon: your memory

Writing a romance, thriller, historical, whodunit, sci-fi adventure? Whichever it is, it’s a depressing thought, but all the stories have been done before. There are only supposed to be seven plots:

man vs. nature man and woman/man man vs. society man vs. machines/technology man vs. the supernatural man vs. self man vs. God (‘man’ obviously […]

How Filofax kept me organised at the RNA Conference

Remember Filofax? Like many people in the 1980s, I toted a black, approx A5 sized leather folder which not only contained my diary, notes and address book, but also expenses sheets, stamp and card holders, to do lists, maps, vocabulary lists – in short, my life.

Came the electronic revolution, I waved it bye-bye. The […]

Helping to track the timeline of a story

Writing the first book of my Roma Nova stories, I found I needed to develop a tracking system not only of the action but also of its timing. It’s so easy when engrossed in producing any story, let alone a thriller, to inadvertently get events in the wrong sequence or introduce a character to another […]