I have an ambition, not worth a place on the bucket list, but one worthy of consideration for a few spare days. I would like to write a short play about a tv production team in the 1970s which is contemplating a reality tv series and see if its collective
Many, many years ago a journalist colleague was reading a novel in her lunch break. She took it from a shop bag and almost half an hour later had finished it. I could barely keep up with her finger as it snaked down each page and dodged out of the
There are many books out there about plot. I won’t tell you which ones to read because it all depends on what you want to write. They will talk about protagonist and antagonist. They will talk about character development and emotions and…. The truth, sorry, my truth is that in
For me the big question concerning AI and writing is ‘why’? I can understand, sort of, the use of AI for research. The results are potentially accurate assuming the algorithm has accessed enough web sites for its data. I’m prepared to accept them, though I am forced to admit there
There’s an easy answer – anywhere you like. Sadly inspiration doesn’t come to us neatly packaged. We can’t open a box and find a set of instructions that will turn out to be a perfect, flat-pack novel. We must be prepared for a word or phrase, for a character in
‘I do I dooooo Iiiiiiii doo Mmmmmm I Arthur James Smethwick do take, hrmmmmm. I whatever do take Molly Rose Bimble. God I mustn’t laugh. Molly Rose Bimble as my lawful wedded wife.’ ‘Art, are you ready, what are you doing up there?’ ‘Nearly. Moll are you sure you want
‘Fuck off, you bastard.’ She screamed the words at him. She spat them. If they’d been bullets he would be dead. The Saturday traffic sped past. An island in the middle of a High Street thronged with shoppers wasn’t where she would have chosen to hurl her anger at him.
‘What are you doing?’ said Pooh. ‘I’m drawing a circle,’ said Eeyore. ‘I need to work out the diameter. What’s twice plus?’ ‘Plusplus,’ said Tigger and in a single boing found himself in a rose bush. ‘Ooh and OOWWWW.’ ‘It depends how big your plus is,’ said Pooh, ignoring the
While we are encouraged to ‘show, don’t tell’ and build pace and mood into our dialogue, sometimes there is just insufficient action and dialogue to satisfy the requirements. The narrator is then called upon to fulfil the obligation of creating an environment for the characters and building those characters by
Listen to the people around you and watch television. When we argue aggressively we tend to use short sentences. The words are thrown together in outbursts without a huge amount of consideration. When we are having a discussion, we build in more pauses so that we can assemble our thoughts
Of course, you can’t. Description gives a situation context. It locates your characters and story in a time and place. If you want it can describe the mood, what those characters are wearing, how they feel. It’s the typical scenario for the omniscient, third-person narrator. ‘He fumed. His eyes glared