As a novelist, you shouldn’t be too kind. We all know Kurt Vonnegut’s exhortation to put your characters through hell, but do we always heed it where our own beloved […]
I think in the film and television business we talk more about agency than people do when discussing stories destined for print – although why this should be so I’m […]
If you want to be reminded that characters are the most important part of a narrative, go and read (or reread) George Elliot’s Middlemarch. I have just done exactly this […]
A story doesn’t consist of a series of unrelated events. Everything that happens is linked causally or psychologically to what came before and what follows. People often forget this, particularly [...]
I’ve dipped into advice given by the Man Booker-prize-winner, John Banville, before, and I’m about to do so again – and for good reason. In unrehearsed conversation, he comes up […]
Tears streamed down her cheeks. She wept and wept, sobbing into her sodden tissue until it dissolved and she was left hiccupping… It’s worth making the point again because I […]
I’ve been researching film structure. Perhaps because there’s so much money at stake in every movie – and unthinkable fortunes at risk in many movies – a great deal of […]
I’m sure I share at least one idiosyncrasy with many millions of my fellow human beings: I love to watch people. I could quite happily spend an entire morning on a […]