Density isn’t something that often gets talked about, but it is one of the first things a reader notices about a book and one of the last things – sometimes years later – they remember about it. Writers dream of readers. They picture someone reading what they have written – if the writer is lucky, […]
We’ve dealt with our spaces and places, as they relate to story-time, now we need to deal with our time. This should be a lot simpler. Imagine a big invisible clock, hovering in the sky of our flat empty space. It’s not an ordinary clock, showing the hours of the day. It’s a countdown, and […]
Let’s spend a moment examining what story-time means for one particular genre: horror. (Some generalisations follow. Not all horror novels may conform, I realise.) The story-time of a horror novel depends upon a specific form of suspense, namely dread. Horror novels are dread-ful. But we can subdivide them in terms of microgenres, in terms of […]
Last night I introduced Clare Farrell, one of the co-founders of Extinction Rebellion, at the second Writers Rebel event. The first event took place last October, on Trafalgar Square, where 40 writers – including Ali Smith, Robert Macfarlane and Susie Orbach – read and gave speeches. At the event, I read Blake’s ‘What is the […]
STORY TIME REDUX We’ve already begun to think about stories and time and how they fit together, how they are sometimes the same thing – story-time. Not all story-times are the same. And this is where I would like to propose a different way for you to think about your own writing, and a different […]
Here is a non-story. A waiter works in the café at the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Every smoking break, he goes and looks at the view. Afterwards, he goes back inside the café and continues serving customers. Here is a story. An old Korean woman who lives in North Korea has a […]
BUT THAT JUST WOULDN’T HAPPEN – IT’S NOT AT ALL REALISTIC Oh dear. It’s like Mr But has taken over the section titles. He’s making a bid for total power. Mr But has more to say. I’m going to let him speak for as long as he wants: You’re taking examples from Hollywood movies – […]
WHAT IS A SCENE? Or, more usefully – WHEN IS A SCENE? Going back to our Winning dialogue, in which two people are both trying to win the argument, and so win the scene – there are only a very few ways this can play out. Underdog defeats Top Dog and becomes Top Dog (Change) […]
I wrote this for a panel event at Birkbeck College. The brief was to write about ‘A Book that Change my Life (Involving Critical Theory)’. It was intended for the MPhil and PhD students attending, but is about how early work relates to completed work, within individual projects but also within lives and oeuvres. If […]
King Death Life-Like Lilian’s Spell Book (My Mother’s Seven Spirits Demand Justice) Notes for a Young Gentleman (O: Short Stories) Patience Mutants Wrestliana Dead Boy Detectives Vol 1: Schoolboy Terrors Dead Boy Detectives Vol 2: Ghost Snow Free Country: A Tale of the Children’s Crusade Vastation (opera) with Samy Moussa Toby (album) […]
