So here’s the thing: I haven’t posted much in a long while, but I have a good excuse: I’ve been working on the first draft of a new book. Well, not so much a first draft as a zeroth draft: 90,000 words of unconnected vignettes that don’t hang together. No change there, you might thinkContinue reading “A Return to the Blog (and a return to the novel)”
Tag Archives: Narrative Theory
More About My Struggle With Poetry
So, on Thursday night, I was listening to someone read a poem about a rocket disaster (don’t ask me the reason, it’s too complex). The poem began with some beautiful imagery about the preparations for launch, then switched, two-thirds of the way through, to some very factual sentences reporting the disintegrating situation that led to allContinue reading “More About My Struggle With Poetry”
What Decides Literary Genre?
This week, I heard someone reading a poem that sounded to me exactly like prose. Now, I’ve always been bad at understanding or passing any meaningful comment on poetry (it’s my blind spot) but the more I listened the more I realised I was responding to the poem exactly as if it were a shortContinue reading “What Decides Literary Genre?”
Working on a new book with a new theory
Today, I have a new theory about plot. Succinctly stated, it goes like this: There are only three questions that can hook the reader: what’s happened, what’s happening and what’s going to happen next? It goes along with a new theory of what questions engage readers with character: who are they, why are they likeContinue reading “Working on a new book with a new theory”
