You’re sitting in bed on a Saturday morning with your nose in a novel, or maybe in row F of the cinema with a movie on the screen, or you’re just having a quiet night in with Netflix, and your nose is bubbly with snot, tears streaming down your face, laughter bursting from your lips.Continue reading “Emotion Tone. The thermonuclear weaponry in the writer’s arsenal.”
Category Archives: Writing & Publishing
Let’s be honest, the novel is dead.
Writers can be a hugely insightful bunch. A good novelist can tell you what’s going on inside the head of another human being at fifty yards. But when it comes to seeing the blindspots in our own self-awareness, novelists suck. Today, The Bookseller published a little summary of a radio interview with Robert Harris, whoContinue reading “Let’s be honest, the novel is dead.”
In defence of Baron Vladimir Harkonnen
Over on G+, in response to my thoughts on liberal dystopias, Jason Baryla mounts a sterling defence of the widely maligned Baron Vladimir Harkonnen. # “Maybe it’s because of how much Donald Trump resembles Baron Vladimir Harkkonen” Sorry if this is off-topic, but I cannot agree with this statement. The Baron was a hedonist withContinue reading “In defence of Baron Vladimir Harkonnen”
Liberals have to do better than Brave New World
The future that liberals want only looks great for the Alphas who can buy a place in the techno-corporate hierarchy. Maybe it’s because of how much Donald Trump resembles Baron Vladimir Harkkonen. It’s hard to have a conversation about the weird landscape of politics today, without referencing at least one scifi dystopia. “a much moreContinue reading “Liberals have to do better than Brave New World”
A Neuromancer movie in 2017 will look a lot like a documentary
It’s well documented that William Gibson started out writing science fiction, and book by book progressed towards the future he had once predicted. By Pattern Recognition in 2003 Gibson was writing about a London that seemed to come into existence even as the book was published. I know, I was living and working in theContinue reading “A Neuromancer movie in 2017 will look a lot like a documentary”
Your Voice Is In The Sentences You Write
20 years into making my living as a writer, I’m neccessarily a sentence obsessive. I chose to spend my weekend revising sentence structure, a task I undertook with the help of Brooks Landons’ Building Great Sentences, my favorite text on the subject. Sentence revision filled my Saturday and Sunday for two reasons; I’m planning aContinue reading “Your Voice Is In The Sentences You Write”
Why teach writing? To learn of course.
There’s a story of a lazy Buddhist adept, whose name escapes me, who was made to teach a lesson by his master. The student never paid attention in class, or did his chores around the monastery. But when made to teach, he gave a long lecture on compassion, that remains a high Buddhist teaching toContinue reading “Why teach writing? To learn of course.”
Game of Thrones is epic fantasy for social justice warriors
Game of Thrones and Hilary Mantell’s Wolf Hall offer two different takes on how social justice overpowers aristocratic elites. In the age of Trump, we need these social justice metaphors more than ever. The cosmetic similarities between Game of Thrones and Wolf Hall are not hard to list. Both occupy a similar period in history,Continue reading “Game of Thrones is epic fantasy for social justice warriors”
How do stories work?
The Rhetoric of Story isn’t a writing a course. It’s the answer to a question that has fascinated me for over a decade. How do stories work? How do a few words on a page, some flickering images on a screen, convince us for a time that we are a different person, living a differentContinue reading “How do stories work?”
Game of Thrones: 6 predictions for season 7
Just watched episode one of season 7 and RAWWWWR that’s some powerful storytelling. George has been skillfully setting up these epic conflicts, getting us emotionally invested in every one, and now they’re all about to pay off. Ice and Fire are ready to clash at last. The only question now is, what twists will GRRMContinue reading “Game of Thrones: 6 predictions for season 7”
The poetics of SF
Science fiction is scared of language. It’s practitioners come, in bulk, from the numbered disciplines. Physicists. Engineers. Coders. The number is absolute. Seven is seven is seven is seven. It’s not six and it’s not eight. This is the whole point of whole numbers.
Is another world possible?
I grew up with these words, “another world is possible”. On the two council estates I lived on until I was 18. At the radical bookshops I found in my late teens. In the ant-capitalist protests I joined in my 20s. Working for New Internationalist, then Amnesty. And now, I see the idea has madeContinue reading “Is another world possible?”
Damien Walter 