Reading Archives | The Writer's Cookbook

Reading and Writing About Neuroscience

by Guest Blogger | Apr 14, 2020 | Reading | 0 |

This is a guest post by Jonathan Taylor. Astonishing Hypotheses In 1922, Sigmund Freud famously...

Christmas Present Ideas for Writers

by Kristina Adams | Dec 10, 2019 | Creativity, Productivity, Reading, Writing | 0 |

It’s that time of year. The songs are everywhere, the food is yummy, and the stress of buying...

How to Research Your Book Without Breaking the Bank

by Alexa Whitewolf | Nov 27, 2018 | Reading, Writing | 0 |

So you’ve always felt the bug of writing, but now you really, REALLY want to get it done. And you...

How to Get Back into Reading

by Guest Blogger | Oct 16, 2018 | Reading | 0 |

This is a guest post by Dawn Hartley. I’ve always been an average reader. As a child learning to...

Interview with Dr Sophie-Louise Hyde from The Student Wordsmith

by Kristina Adams | Jun 26, 2018 | Reading, Writing | 0 |

A few months ago, I had the pleasure of attending a workshop led by Dr Sophie Louise-Hyde. I was...

Stories to Die For: True Crime vs Crime Fiction

by Kristina Adams | Jun 19, 2018 | Fiction, Reading | 3 |

Who doesn’t love a good murder? Crime fiction is one of the world’s most popular...

How to Find More Time to Read

by Kristina Adams | May 3, 2018 | Reading | 0 |

Pretty much all of the most successful people in the world are voracious readers: Oprah Winfrey,...

Interview with Dan Bronzite, Script Studio Creator

by Kristina Adams | Apr 26, 2018 | Reading, Scriptwriting, Writing | 0 |

When Script Studio’s creator, Dan Bronzite, reached out to me about the possibility of a review, he also mentioned how he’d come up with the software thanks to his own experiences with screenwriting.

I was in intrigued to find out more about the story behind Script Studio (formerly called Movie Outline), so I sent him some questions. Here’s what he had to say.

How to Analyse a Poem

by Kristina Adams | Apr 12, 2018 | Poetry, Reading | 0 |

The beauty of poetry is that it’s open to interpretation. Yes, some images can only mean one thing, but the best poems mean something different to everyone. That’s not because they’re poorly written, but because we project our own experiences onto what we read.

Poets must make deliberate decisions about every aspect of their poem. Things like a poem’s structure, its title, and even its use of punctuation are deliberate decisions made by the poet to reinforce—or sometimes contradict—the overarching theme or message of the poem.

In this post, we’re going to look at some of the areas you can analyse when reading a poem.

How to Give a Great Poetry Reading

by Kristina Adams | Feb 1, 2018 | Poetry, Reading, Social Media and Marketing | 4 |

Poetry readings differ from other kinds of public speaking events for many reasons.

Firstly, they’re more of a musical performance than a fiction or nonfiction reading.

Secondly, you need to embody the character of your poem. In fiction, you can get away (a little) with reading in a fairly normal voice. But if you don’t put passion and pizazz into your poetry, you’ll lose your audience, and fast.

Many poems are written to be read aloud.

So, as a poet, you need to embrace this.

Even if you hate being on stage more than anything else, you can learn to love reading your poetry aloud.

And the more you read your work in front of people, the easier it gets.

Promise.

Interview With Shreya Sen Handley, Author of Memoirs of My Body

by Kristina Adams | Jan 25, 2018 | Reading | 0 |

This time last year, I was in the middle of a course called Writing Your Way Into the Media at Nottingham Writers’ Studio.

It’s thanks to that course, Janet Murray, and the sales guy at my day job that I’ve had work published in The Huffington Post, Thrive Global, and more.

That course was taught by Shreya Sen Handley, a former broadcast journalist and television producer for international channels such as CNBC and MTV.

I interviewed her about her first book, Memoirs of My Body, and her writing process.