Columns

When Reality Gets Tough, the Tough Get Reading

August 9th, 2017

In a college literature class, a professor spoke negatively about using books as a form of escapism from reality. I took that hard, assuming he meant we should never take a break. We had to be fully engaged in reality, 100 percent of the time, or we were living life wrong.

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The World in the Skull: A Story’s Environment

August 9th, 2017

One of my best friends is a film maker. We’ve skirted around the idea of me writing a script for him for a number of years now, but it never seems to happen. I remember one reason why he thought I wasn’t exactly suitable for a particular project: “You’ll start world-building.”

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Through the Labyrinth: Plotting the Story

August 8th, 2017

Plotting. Plotting, plotting, plotting. Plotting. Plotting. Plotting, plotting! It’s the one aspect of novel writing that scares me the most. The thing that makes me wake in the middle of the night, saying to myself, “Of course! This is what happens next!” The miracle idea that by morning’s sad light seems inane, or cheesy, or worst of all, utterly nonsensical. Plotting. Now what happens? How does this present event connect back to that other event, four chapters in the past? Why on earth is this person taking this particular action now, for what reason?

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Moods in White, Black and Grey: Finding a Style

August 7th, 2017

Just as every book has its own ideal structure, the same is true for style. Some authors have a style uniquely their own; you can recognise their work from just a few sentences, as with J.G. Ballard or William Burroughs. Other authors operate more closely to the universal style or ideal of well-made prose. But within these two parameters, a book, a short story, needs to be expressed in the language most suited to its expression.

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A Bestiary of Authors' Brains

August 7th, 2017

The mind of an author is a dangerous place. Bad things happen in there. Awful things. However, it is the place where most authors spend the majority of their time. It’s also a place that, for a variety of reasons, regular people often have to enter. For those of you who have to do so, and for authors who want to know exactly what kind of beast is messing with them and how to fight it, I have created a bestiary of the writer's brain. This is not, by any means, a complete bestiary; it is merely a starting point that seeks to cover the basic information and provide help.

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Populating the Nightmare: Creating Characters

August 4th, 2017

There are many ways of creating characters. For a science fiction novel I tend to create the world first, along with the technology or magic that infects the location and makes it interesting and unique. Then I let the effects of this technology build, and change, mutate and turn bad, and I think to myself: who is the worst possible person to tackle such a force? Who would be most easily overwhelmed by it, damaged by it? So the hero is born. This for me is the first step in bringing a protagonist to life, in opposition to a far stronger power.

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The Surprising Feminism of Stephen King's "The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla"

August 4th, 2017

Stephen King hasn’t written too many prominent female characters since he burst onto the scene with his debut novel Carrie in 1974. Since then he’s had maybe a handful of novels with female protagonists as the lead. Those would include Cujo, Gerald’s Game, Dolores Claiborne, Lisey’s Story and a few others.

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Adventures in the Noir Trade: Mixing Genres

August 3rd, 2017

I am very much a genre man. Rather than the niceties of the well brought-up “literary” novel, I prefer sensational tales told in broad strokes with lots of twists and turns, startling imagery, sharply defined characters, and some event or revelation that makes me sit up and say out loud, “What the hell? That’s amazing!” Quite simply, I want to be struck with awe. And from an early age, science fiction novels fed that essential desire.

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How to Start A Writer Feud

August 3rd, 2017

A couple months ago I got into a writer feud. It wasn’t as bad as when Richard Ford spit in Colson Whitehead’s face, but it was much worse than when Salman Rushdie and Francine Prose were beefing on Facebook about Charlie Hebdo. It wasn’t as memorable because I’m a D-List writer and the other writer is F-List. It was two nobody writers in a micro-scene fighting, which was probably more sad than funny.

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A Madman Scattering Dust: Time as a Theme

August 2nd, 2017

Dayzone is a city that never sleeps, where the lights never go out, where the sky – the natural sky – cannot be seen because of the millions upon millions of lamps, flames, bulbs, neon signs, lanterns and other light and heat emitting devices suspended above the streets. In such an enclosed, sealed environment, one completely cut off from the normal cycle of day and night, and the changing of the seasons, how would people tell the time?

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