Blog

They’re Plotting Against Me!

06/12/2009
People (tutors, writers, other students) have told me the same thing in different configurations: “Characters drive the narrative!” I nod. I agree. I go back to quietly and tightly plotting...
Blog

Holden Back the Years

25/11/2009
I’m reading The Catcher in the Rye for the fifth time – following on from a week dipping into Borges’ short story collection Labyrinths, The contrast between these two experiences...
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Notes on Narrative

07/10/2009
Some notes on narrative that, in best Blue Peter tradition, I made earlier. 16 years earlier: Narratives are made up of units of information. In Roland Barthes’ ‘Introduction to the...
Blog

Scrivener

06/10/2009
I’ve briefly reviewed the Mac-only writing tool Scrivener a couple of times for Macworld. This post is based on those two pieces: Most of the stuff I review goes straight...
Blog

Notes on Focalisation

16/09/2009
  Here’s a beginner’s guide to focalisation or “point of view”. Focalisation is the perspective from which we experience the narrative being told. I’m going to find a more concise...
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First Thoughts on Mrs Dalloway

15/07/2009
Ploughing through the first pages of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, I’m reminded of several other artists, not all of them writers. The first is Jack Kerouac. The stream of consciousness...