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©The publishing world is so full of grumpy literary agents it is hard to find one that will stop drinking coffee because they get involved in the plot you have created – that’s if they get past the first page. Writing is such a complex art because we are creating our story and characters in the first instance to please ourselves. However, when the story is finished it has to appeal to other readers as well. And while we are dealing with that we are also remembering all the rules of writing – and bending a few of them as we develop our personal skills. So how do we catch the agent’s eye?

Words have enormous power and, by extension, writers also have great power. Every word we place on paper or in the ether using technology has the capacity to change hearts and to increasing understanding at a cerebral level.

An artist’s words have the power to move hearts, to console the broken and inspire them to mend and to broaden a reader’s experience of the world.

I can often tell a new writer by the silence in their writing. I find it is something early stage writers forget about. I did.

Now a days, I pause as I’m writing and ask myself when did I last mention sound because it is a sense I am least conscious of.

However, I had a sharp reminder when one of my tutors, many years ago, wrote on a piece of my writing, “This reads like a silent movie.”

He was right but even in a silent movie the sound of the machine is clattering in the background or there is music, rarely absolute silence, as if the viewer was in a vacuum.

Dialogue is the glue that holds a book together. When I sit and write, I become each of my characters in turn. I’m an actor in my head and my tone of voice and feelings change as each character takes the stage to perform. How do we make the dialogue come alive? It isn’t hard but it takes practice and patience and, before you know it, you are riding a bike and changing dialogue gears without giving your mind and itching fingers a second thought. So how do we write unforgettable dialogue that holds the reader’s attention?