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The Fine Line is an Edinburgh-based publisher, editorial consultancy and website content service. We publish books that enthral our staff, provide personalised content for your site, writing advice to get you started, lessons to download, insights into the methods of working writers, weekly writing prompts, a Dear Editor writers' problem page, and an editorial service designed for your individual needs.

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Tearing Up The Synopsis

Section: How I Write

I know two kinds of writer: there are the ones who like to plan everything very carefully, maybe even writing little personality profiles for their characters on postcards and sticking flow-chart plot diagrams on their wall; and then there are those who reckon the whole point of writing is making it up as you go [...]

Writing Or Rather Not

Section: How I Write

The sad truth is I don’t write that much, or, at least nothing like as much as I’d like. What I do is spend an awful lot of time doing things around writing. Mostly this involves publicity, events and editing of stories for One Eye Grey (the 21st century penny dreadful I publish). Then there [...]

Lyric Writing

Section: How I Write

More often than not writing lyrics is a very difficult process for me. The music side of song writing usually comes fairly easily – often too easily. I’m sometimes woken up because I need to hum the soundtrack to my dream into my trusty dictaphone. This is the process I usually go through: • I [...]

Smitten By The Art

Section: How I Write

My experience of writing has been so various that it seems difficult to abstract generalities about the process which may then apply across all genres – from the attempt at snapshot poetic insight, say, to the aim of chronicling centuries. But here follow a few sketchy observations on the making of a text, as viewed [...]