Writing skills | Alison Morton Author

Destroying pleasure – using Generative AI to write

AI can be wonderful; it can be morally corrupt. It can ease our lives; it can destroy our creativity.

Now, I use AI for research. I regard Gemini, ChatGPT, Vibe as LLMs (large language models) which cut hours, possibly days, off my research. It’s a quick fix. It points me towards genuine sources which I […]

Criminally conferencing in Oxford

No, not Inspector Morse, but the St Hilda’s Crime Fiction Writing Weekend with the theme of Bad Apples – Crime fiction’s enemies and anti-heroes.

In all my sixteen plus years of writing thrillers, this was my first time at this high quality and fun weekend. It’s been going for 33 years!

The original Victorian […]

What's my writing process?

(Photo: Uschi Hering)

*Falls over laughing*

It’s chaotic. No, I do not sit down at 9 am and work through to 5.30pm. But somehow it does get done.

Right I’m going to try to take this seriously (Puts on stern face)

My first main characters had been running around in my head for […]

Chapters – Entitled or just a number?

Is it better to put a title at the beginning of each chapter in your book or should you merely put a simple number? I’ve never used chapter titles when writing my own books although I’ve absorbed them when reading other books.

What do chapter titles do?

They can act as promises of what’s […]

Home or away? Choose your setting

Writing class

“Write what you know!“

There’s a statement that was hammered home at us when we were newbie writers.

Well, I half obeyed when I wrote my first book INCEPTIO. Actually, it was less than that. I knew the military bit, I’d clambered over a lot of Roman Europe and I knew […]