On the Tenth Day of Christmas My True Love Sent to Me…

On the Tenth Day of Christmas My True Love Sent to Me…

…Ten Lords a-Leaping. Lucky old me! Over Christmas I went to see the Bristol Old Vic’s anarchic and inventive production of Peter Pan. Rather than have conventional flying, Peter, Wendy and the Lost Boys used bungee ropes to convey the magic of their...
An Alphabet of Better Writing # O

An Alphabet of Better Writing # O

O is for…Originality Some people claim that there are only seven basic plots, or four, or that all the great stories have been written and that the novel is dead in any case.  If you listen to all of that, you may as well put your pencil back in its case/shut...

Summer Shorts – Originality

The great David Lodge’s fantastically helpful book The Art of Fiction contains some interesting and original thoughts on, well, originality.  He says, “The essential purpose of art is to overcome the deadening effects of habit by presenting familiar...

This One’s Mine

Your originality is what marks you out as a writer from everybody else.  When you read articles saying that there are only four basic narratives, or seven, (or even twenty-five), it can be tempting to think that the chances of coming up with something fresh are...