Filmlab: Best Movies about Writing – Capote

May 25

“There is a splinter of ice in the heart of a writer”, wrote Graham Greene. Watch Capote, and it’s hard to disagree. Bennett Miller’s forensic biopic serves up such a chilling portrait of Truman Capote, as he researches and writes In Cold Blood, that it’s never clear whether the title of the groundbreaking ‘non-fiction novel’ […]

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Filmlab: Best Movies about Writing – Sideways

April 13

Everyone has a novel in them, but not everyone has a novel in them that people want to publish. That’s the hard truth Paul Giamatti’s failing writer Miles is facing in Sideways, Alexander Payne’s delightfully discomfiting 2004 road movie about two middle-aged friends on a week-long tasting trip through California’s wine country. The excursion is […]

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How to Write in a Positive Tone

March 11

In the tone-of-voice guidelines given to company writers, ‘be positive’ is often one of the cornerstones. So if the instruction is to interact with optimism, how is it actually done? We all want to be positive. Positive is good, positive is upbeat. Persuasive evidence shows that we tend to respond well to positive people and […]

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8 Bits of Financial Jargon That Must Go — But Won’t

February 26

Few things divide like jargon. While inspiring terror or teeth-gnashing rage in communications pros, people using such language might meet it with a shrug of indifference or, worse, a glint of pride. So what, you might reasonably ask, is so bad about jargon? Though often superficially appealing – and, we’ll grudgingly admit, useful to financial […]

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Filmlab: Best Movies about Writing – Before Sunset

February 11

Films about writers frequently focus on the thin line dividing reality and fiction. Richard Linklater’s 2004 masterpiece Before Sunset, however, puts a more profound spin on that old chestnut. The middle instalment (for now) of the real-time saga he began with 1995’s Before Sunrise and continued with 2013’s Before Midnight, the film takes the writing-is-autobiography discussion […]

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The Top 5 Most Giftable Writing Guides

December 16

As it’s the season of gifting – and we happen to know a few people who make a living off the written word – we’ve put together a list of the top five loveliest writing manuals to give this December. The below editions of some of the best-loved guides are as aesthetically pleasing as they […]

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Filmlab: Best Movies about Writing – Sunset Boulevard

December 10

The old sexist joke about the stupidity of the actress who sleeps with the writer to get ahead was never funny, but it did contain some tragic truths about the contempt Hollywood has traditionally had for women and screenwriters. Never have these truths been better expressed – or the joke more artfully inverted – than […]

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Making it count: how to shorten your copy in 10 easy steps

December 08

This is the first in a series of “how to” blogs in which we’ll explore some of the tricks of our trade. Most writers often have to work to specific word counts. These limits may seem arbitrary but are usually due to the space available in templates or typeset documents. Your first draft of an […]

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Filmlab: Best Movies about Writing – Manhattan

November 13

In Woody Allen’s prolific career it’d probably be easier to list the films he’s made that haven’t featured writers. From Play it Again, Sam, Annie Hall and Hannah and Her Sisters to Husbands and Wives and Bullets Over Broadway, right up through Deconstructing Harry and Celebrity and on to more recent work, such as Midnight in Paris and Irrational Man, novelists, […]

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Filmlab: Best Movies about Writing – Listen Up Philip

November 06

The craft of writing is a tricky one to convey on screen. Hammering away at a typewriter or laptop hardly makes for sexy cinema, while the occupational hazards of the job – isolating oneself for months on end, sweating over the creation of perfect prose that is unlikely to be read by most people – […]

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