How to Write Killer Prose

Making your words sing, by the author of Killing Eve

Friends, in advance of my next Killing Eve: Resurrection post, I wanted to let you know about the new writing programme I'm going to be running here on Substack. I've been writing professionally for more than thirty years now, and I'd like to help you take your writing to the next level. Some writers know from the start how to make words do what they want, but that's not most of us. It wasn't me. I learnt the hard way.

I've had a helter-skelter career as an author and journalist. Up one month, down the next. In the early days, I was given sage advice by agents, editors and fellow writers. I often didn't heed this at the time, and sometimes their words took years to fall into place. In the end I realised that they were all saying the same thing. Find your subject, find your voice, and your readers will find you.

When you're living a full-time writer's life - pitching to jaded editors, grinding out the copy, chasing late payments - everything gets hooked to the next story. What do they really want out there? There's no time to ask the most important question of all. What do I really want to write about?

When I finally stepped back for long enough to answer that question I realised I'd been pinballing for years, forever flying off at tangents. I'm a good listener, but I realised that the one person I hadn't listened to was myself. And I discovered something else. That when you're writing what you really want to write, the writing itself becomes easier. The what, in other words, dictates the how.

These are some of the subjects we're going to be looking at in How to Write Killer Prose. It doesn't matter if you want to write fiction, a memoir, an essay... It's all words and sentences and paragraphs and pages. It's all prose. And I can help you make it sing.

I'll be making the first post in a week or so. It'll be free, so you can get an idea of what I'm offering you. Subsequent posts will be for paid subscribers. This will help support me, and it'll help keep Killing Eve: Resurrection free.