Decide what sort of writing you like best, and what it is you like best about this sort of writing: is it the structure, the style, or the subject?

Philip Marsden, travel writer and novelist

..It’s not even an urge to tell people. It’s like a saucepan overflowing, it bubbles over and you’ve got to do something with it, because it seems too big to contain in oneself, the vessel isn’t big enough...

Philip Marsden, travel writer and novelist

People who are very successful have a good idea of what they want.

Lynne Truss, bestselling author

... writing prose is not a process of magical inspiration so much as fanatical polishing. Hemingway wrote 63 versions of the final chapter of Farewell to Arms and it’s one of the most perfect endings of any book I know…

William Dalrymple, historian and travel writer

...in a nutshell, a story is what a character does to achieve something, and drama comes out of conflict. Jeremy Mortimer,

BBC Radio Drama Executive Producer