Welcome to the home of The Fine Line

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.

The Fabrication of Fiction

My novel, The Master’s Ruse, is set in a future time when the sea is biologically dead. It unfolds in a country ruled by a military junta. Literature and freedom of speech have been banned and the holdings of all libraries burnt. The narrative voice belongs to an aging authoress who lives on a vast [...]

---

Semicolon Usage

What is the correct way in which to use semicolons? Despite being an arguably nonessential form of punctuation, the semicolon is prone to overuse, appearing scattered over paragraphs like confetti.  In correct usage, it can serve two purposes. The first is between sentences as a pause that is longer than a comma and shorter than [...]

---

Seeking Seclusion

I’m finding it difficult to establish any sort of writing routine.  I don’t have a specific room in my house just to sit and write.  I want to be able to just sit somewhere quiet, interrupted only by bird song, for example – not my three teenaged kids and husband who don’t seem to take [...]

---

Writing Through The Block

I’ve always wondered how one overcomes writer’s block. Personally speaking, I have no difficulty starting out ~ the blank page does not intimidate me ~ but somewhere between the one-third and halfway mark writer’s block sets in and I have the darndest time writing through it. I tend to just ramble and ramble for pages [...]

---