Category Archives: Writing

Background to writing

Greg Garrett’s Five Essential Films on Race in America

Mixed race relationships:

The second theme discussed in ‘MISSING, Past and Present’

The question of mixed race and issues relating to marriage of people from different religious backgrounds runs seamlessly throughout my recently released novel.  Having worked all of my teaching life in a multicultural society the came naturally to me and so it has been fascinating to see what other bloggers have to say.

Gregg Garratt writes in his vivid account of the portrayal of race in American much loved films:

“Race is hard to talk about and often conversations can become divisive, but film is one of our most important meaning-makers, and American movies have been grappling with race for over a hundred years. Here are five essential films that can help us talk about race by seeing how far we have come as a nation and, perhaps, how far we still have to go.”

via Greg Garrett’s Five Essential Films on Race in America

 

 

 

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June 5, 2020 · 7:16 pm

Themes in novel writing

theme1

Genre

Writing under a particular genre ~ romance, crime, mystery, fantasy or historical fiction, for example, is one way of classifying a novel, but what about the underlying themes.

Themes

Common themes are love, death, evil, survival, war, peace, tragedy.

Writersedit.com lists and describes 10 popular themes:

love, death, coming of age, good v evil, courage and heroism, survival, power and corruption, prejudice, individual v society, war

It is an interesting blog because it describes novels within each theme, great when beginning to plan a novel or even to advertise your novel alongside similar themes.

Why is knowing the theme important?

  • When writing the blurb it is useful to incorporate the themes
  • They are key search words for visibility on the internet (Amazon especially)
  • Themes are succinct words for any marketing materials when describing your book
  • They are great to have ready when giving a succinct verbal description if asked, ‘What’s your book about then?’ ~ difficult if you are not prepared and you don’t want to waffle on.

What themes did I chose?

When planning my recent novel, MISSING Past and Present I slipped into these major themes:

  1. Poverty and homelessness
  2. Mixed relationships and multi faith marriage
  3. Prejudice
  4. Gender inequality
  5. Resilience and fortitude

In my last few blog posts I have addressed the first theme, Poverty and Homelessness, describing how working in a soup kitchen ‘cum’ network of support for homeless people inspired my novel in the first place, and so in the next few blog posts I will turn to the second and third themes, which I feel go hand in hand.

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Filed under MISSING Past and Present, Writing, Writing a novel

MISSING, Past and Present ~Cover Reveal

Drummmm rollllll!

I’m proud to present the cover for my new mystery inspired by history

MISSING, Past and Present

Available at the end of February 2020 in time for leap year!

On-line launch on 28th.

What do you think of the cover?

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Filed under Author Diana Jackson, Bedfordshire, Events, Mystery inspired by history series, Writing