Excavating a Roman Floor | Time-lapse

This is a great little video. I love it.

Excavating a Roman Floor | Walbrook Discovery Programme

From the web page:

In a series of videos we recorded the whole process of uncovering, recording and lifting a Roman tessalated floor!  The first video follows our archaeologists (and our friendly McGee site laborours [sic]) uncovering the tessalated floor by removing the trampled material that lay on top. 

The only comment I would make is that it would be even better if the text was under the picture instead of on the picture. It's very distracting. But .. great idea. Do more! 

About the Walbrook Discovery Programme: web page
About Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA): website

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Plot, story and episodes

This is a very good blog! Excellent. Read it.

The biggest problem facing the beginning novelist

Blog post: Anne R. Allen

From the blog: 

E.M. Forster illustrated this in one of his famous lectures on novel-writing:  

• "'The king died and then the queen died' is a story.  
• 'The king died, and then queen died of grief' is a plot."

Anne R. Allen gives six suggestions to help you get the plot. 
Read it. 
Read the whole blog post. 
Finally, she says:

Ask yourself these questions: 

• Could you remove a scene or two and still have the same story outcome? 
• Does the plot build from one inciting incident to an inevitable climax? 
• Do you have both a protagonist and an antagonist? 
• Does the protagonist have a goal that isn't achieved until the end?
• Does your book have three well-defined acts? 

She gives a link to a graphic on the 3-act structure - from Syd Field, author of Screenplay and The Screen Writer's Workbook - as shown on the website of College of DuPage, Glen Ellyn IL, west of Chicago. 

Thank you, Anne. Very helpful.

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Build a career as a writer – podcast

This is the link to Nicola Morgan's blogpost which has the link to the full podcast of the Write Lines conversation between Nicola, Sue Cook, Sue Moorcroft and Julie Cohen. 
Nicola says,

Settle down with a cup of coffee while we talk you through aspects of trying to make a career as a writer:

Build a career as a writer – with Sue Cook, Sue Moorcroft and Julie Cohen

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Characters We Love to Write (And Read!)

A blogpost from the Adventures in YA and Children's Writing blog.

We don't fall in love with plots... Our brains are hardwired to relate to people, so for most readers, it's really all about the characters.

Characters We Love to Write (And Read!)

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When do you stop revising?

From Emma Darwin's blog:

With anything the size of a novel you could always change bits, and yet in the end you do have to stop.

This Itch of Writing: When do you stop revising?

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How to write a book in 30 days | Books | The Guardian

How to write a book in 30 days | Books | The Guardian

Six stages for your first draft.

Here is a selection from the Tweet stream from Tim Lott's live webchat on 26/10/2012:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2012/oct/24/live-webchat-time-lott-writing-advice … 

• Book publication has very little to do with networking. At the best, it can get you a reading from someone who matters. 
• I used to use index cards to organise characters/scenes, but now I log them in files on my computer... 
• ... for character, make a computer file and open a section for each of your characters, writing down their habits/verbal tics

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Poem: It is a golden morning

Today deserves a poem.

It's a golden morning
And light through leaves
Patches the road
With sun.

I'm going to the dump
With builders' bags 
Full of dead leaves and sticks
Pruned from the bushes in our garden.

Not by me, I hasten to add.
My wife does the pruning
And the gathering of leaves.
I do the dump.

It is a golden morning
And the rays of sunlight filtering through the leaves
Of the lime trees at Lovesgrove
Patch the road with sun.

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