We often fear the blank page or the empty screen. But what if I told you that this void is actually the birthplace of creativity? In our free subscriber-only Monday […]
I’ve been puzzling over a small challenge I’ve given myself: to turn a recent experience I’ve had into a short story. The nature of the experience is not in itself […]
Creative writing is not, as some suppose, an arcane art over which only the select few are ever granted mastery, or to which there is access via a magic key, a secret skill available only to the [...]
Writers are God, we rather fatuously proclaim. We can do anything – bring characters to life, destroy them at will, have Fate take a hand in the affairs of men. […]
It strikes me that discussions of political correctness are somewhat risky affairs, since it’s so easy in tippy-toeing around the sensitivities of others, to avoid debating a real and substantial [...]
You’re sitting opposite someone on a train. She is deeply engaged in a book and you take the liberty of examining her closely. She’s attractive and you enjoy your silent […]
Our local is just a short walk away from our boat in Priory Marina in Bedford. Local cinema, that is. (Our local pub is even closer.) Yesterday evening we took […]
Characters, like quarks*, come in many different flavours. There are large, silent characters, whose presence is felt but not greatly demonstrated. There are small, voluble characters that, like [...]
One of our participants once asked whether readers cared about characters. “But don’t they just care about a jolly-good story? An exciting plot which carries them along?” Well (we told […]
Are you old enough to remember that old Robert Altman move, Nashville? There’s a poignant scene in which Keith Carradine takes the stage to sing the haunting, I’m Easy, for […]
I’m reading an exceptionally deft and intriguing Nordic thriller written by a distinctly unNordic former inhabitant of the East Midlands, Will Dean. It’s true, though, that he’s since married a [...]
With a colleague, I’ve been devising a fairly complex story, running over ten or so years, featuring the adventures of a young man as he transitions from childhood, through adolescence […]