Great writers - nature or nurture?

Are writers taught or are they made? Is the ability to produce a great novel somehow derived from the genes, or is it a craft that can be learned through effort and good teaching?

Like all such questions, this is a false dichotomy. For a truly great writer, innate ability is surely needed. But learning the craft also. I have been privileged to witness so many students developing their capacity to write beautiful, powerful prose that I am convinced of the importance of good teaching in this process and that the innate ability is not as rare as some people claim.

There is a problem however. I have seen people postpone writing their first novel because they feel they are not quite ready. Instead, they do another writing course. And another. And another. Courses become a thing to do INSTEAD of writing.

You can't learn to write novels without writing novels.

Last night I gave the first in a series of classes designed to combat that problem. The deal is this: each student works on their novel through the week. This is the process from which they will derive most of their learning. And on Tuesday evening we all come together to talk about their progress, share samples of their work, answer problems that have arisen, give suggestions and encouragement. Each class will be 50% taught and 50% manuscript workshop.

With 14 students, the class is full. We couldn't fit anyone else in the room. I discovered that, curiously, there are 13 female participants and only one male. (Writing courses do typically attract more women than men, but this is more asymmetric than usual).

Everyone seemed focused on the prospect of writing and I sensed a creative excitement in the air. Novel writing gives that - a sense of excitement. It is a journey into the unknown. I'm really looking forward to the rest of this course.

Six things you should never do... if you are in a movie

1. If there has been a murder recently, trust the police to look into it rather than starting an investigation of your own. Follow this instruction even if you knew the victim.

2. Just because a building is creepy it doesn’t mean you have any right to break into it on a whim.

3. Just because the front door opens when you push it, doesn’t mean it is a good idea to step inside and look around. Consider the possibility that the opposite may be true.

4. On finding an old book or box in the house, don’t take a deep breath and blow the dust off the top. A slightly damp cloth will do the job far better without giving you or your fellow searchers an asthma attack.

5. However much time you feel it will save you in your search, never say, “let’s split up.”

6. On tripping over body in the dark, immediately call the police (see point 1). They may remind you of points 2 and 3, but will realise you are more likely to be a stupid person than a killer.

Strangeness in Stories

I'm putting together a workshop on storycraft for inclusion in a filmmaking course later in the year. Preparing the worksheets has set me thinking about the question of 'strangeness' in stories.

When people describe the archetypal patterns found in traditional stories they sometimes talk about the 'ordinary world' and the 'strange world'. The ordinary world is the home life of the protagonist before he/she starts the quest. The strange world is the unfamiliar landscape the protagonist will pass through before reaching the goal, whatever that may be.

This transition from ordinary to strange isn't confined to traditional hero epics. It comes up again and again in modern movies and novels.

The ordinary world may not be ordinary to us, the audience. But it is ordinary to the protagonist. If the protagonist is a racing driver, 'ordinary' means hurtling around the track at 150mph.

In a similar way, the strange world may not be strange to us, the audience, but will definitely be strange to the protagonist. One of the most important qualities of the strange world is that the rules the protagonist used to live by no longer hold good.

Not so silent

It may seem as if I have been silent for a few months, but it is not so. All my blogging recently has been on the Museum Buddies (MuBu) site.

But I will be returning my activities here very soon as the period of my digital writer residency is coming to an end.

In the meantime, this is the kind of thing I have been writing about:


Miles Travelled = 649
Museums Visited = 11
Mood = Hungry

I’ve been travelling around heritage locations in the East Midlands for a few months now and to be honest the only places I’ve been really aware of food were the various museum cafes which have sustained me on the journey – a jacket potato, a cup of tea and perhaps a bar of chocolate.

But that must change today. I’m travelling to Lincoln in the company of...


You can find the full article here at my MuBu blog

#GMP24 twitter feed for crime writers

This is just a quick entry to point any crime writers who follow my blog in the direction of the Twitter feeds GMP24_1 GMP24_2 GMP24_3 and GMP24_4

GMP stands for Greater Manchester Police. The 24 is a reference to the fact that they were putting out a Tweet for every incident they dealt with over a 24 hour period. The 4 different feeds are due to the fact that the Tweeting had to be done in shifts, so thick and fast did the incidents happen.

The resultant feed is fabulous source material for crime writers. Or poets. Or any writer for that matter. Go see.

And here is a really interesting article from the BBC news website on the whole event. I've borrowed their graphic of a tag cloud of the stream because it is so good - and am putting this link in by way of thanks.



Thank you BBC and GMP.

Poetry Exhibition

The word 'Exhibition' usually goes along with the word 'Art'. But next week it will be combined with the word 'Poetry'. Yes, Leicester is having what may be its first ever poetry exhibition.

Having been asked many months ago to contribute a piece, and with the deadline tomorrow, I have finally got my piece finished a few moments ago.

The road has been long and twisting. I set out with one idea - a poem in ceramics. But that somehow didn't get off the ground. Then came the idea of a different poem in metalwork. I researched this, had much helpful input from various people who have far more technical know-how than me, accumulated the required materials, then realised it was too difficult in the time I had remaining.

Then came the third idea - one of my short published poems written in letters variously rotated and flipped. And Now it is done. Though I still have to figure out how to attach the mirrors people may need to help them read the thing.

If you are in Leicester next week, head down to the Independent Arts Centre on Humberstone Gate. The exhibition will be upstairs.

As for the poem in metal - I still intend to create this. A project for the longer term perhaps.

MuBu Digital Writer in Residence

I've just started working as Digital Writer in Residence for an East Midlands Museums project called 'MuBu'. I've been hinting at this for some time, but haven't been able to be more open about it because we were going through the usual administrative hurdles and getting the project web pages established.

But we are now up and running, so...



Here is a link to the MuBu Digital Writer in Residence project page.

I won't be duplicating all my MuBu blog articles here, so if you'd like to follow the journey, you could subscribe or bookmark that site.

And please give feedback here or there if you feel able. It's all very pleasant seeing web traffic statistics and knowing, in an abstract sense, that a couple of hundred people have visited the site today. But feedback is the lifeblood of the blogger.

Generating Story Ideas

Where to find seed ideas for stories? Here are five ideas and observations:

Many stories come from asking questions. What would happen if... Thought is free so be as wild as you like. What would happen if a whale materialised high above the planet? No, wait, someone already wrote that one.

Stories can come from extrapolation. Read the driest news article from the most serious paper, then ask yourself about the people the story implies. The people in the background.

Don't be afraid of using up all your story ideas. The more stories you tell, the faster you'll find new ideas coming to you. The world is full of stories. All we have to do is train ourselves to notice them.

Other people's lives are a great source of story ideas. Happily, people love to talk about themselves. It is their favourite subject. Be a good listener and you'll have more stories than you can write.

I have a faulty digital radio that cuts out at random, usually leaving sentences unfinished. It's exasperating at times, but perfect for a storyteller. When the radio dies, my mind jumps forward, trying to complete the story.

And I am willing to sell this faulty digital radio/story generating machine. All reasonable offers considered. Now, that gives me an idea for a story...

The difference between Story and Reality

What is the difference between story and reality? According to Mark Twain: "Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't."

Tom Clancy made a similar observation: "The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense." However, he also commented on the overlap between the two: "I've made up stuff that's turned out to be real, that's the spooky part."

In his superb filmmaking masterclass last month, Chris Jones said: "The brain cannot tell the difference between a story and reality." That is why we cry watching a sad movie and scream watching horror. He also said: "Stories are about communicating truths not facts."

My take on it is this: Reality is a tangled knot made from an infinite number of threads. The full blinding complexity and intensity of it is available for us to experience in the 'now'. But as soon as events have past and we look back on what has happened, we start to order our memories into a narrative. From the tangle, we extract a single thread. That becomes the reality of our past.

As storytellers we do the same thing - extracting one thread from the mass of possibilities, cutting it to make a beginning and cutting it again to make an end. Then we present that to our audience.

The Poster Test

I'm still digesting all the information from Chris Jones's amazing film making masterclass. When I wrote about it a few days ago, I promised to write more regarding lessons that novelists could take from the class.

One of the things in Chris's course that struck me most forcefully was a test he used in deciding whether/how to proceed with a film making project based on the title, strapline and poster image.

Does the title alone tell the potential audience what sort of story to expect? Or does it mislead? Does it imply a story or not? What about the strapline - does that help? And the same question goes for the poster image. Unless you have a HUGE advertising budget, your potential audience will make their decision to part with money or not based on this information alone: title, strapline and poster image.

How about these for movie titles that imply a story:

Home Alone
Snakes on a Plane
Star Wars

And for a perfect strapline:

Alien - in space no one can hear you scream

And a poster that tells the audience all they need to know about the kind of film to expect:

Chris described how he had designed three posters for one film project but couldn't get any of them quite right. Thus the film remains unmade. The poster test was revealing a flaw that would have come back to bite him at the point of trying to sell the movie - an ambiguity in genre and audience.

Perhaps novelists think they are above such base commercialism. But it seems to me that we have a lot to learn from filmakers. Even if money doesn't matter to you as a writer, surely having readers matters hugely. And in this game, one equates to the other.

So how about it? Before getting stuck into a long writing project, choose a title, a strapline and a cover image. Who is going to buy that book? Where will it be sold? And if you are really happy with your answers to those questions - why not write the back-blurb? Fifty words of hard sell. Do a mock-up of the book cover. Ask twenty friends what they think of it. Better still, ask twenty strangers.

Even if we don't like to think of our work in these terms, be sure that editors and agents have to.

Guerilla Filmmakers Masterclass

The Guerilla Filmmakers Masterclass by Chris Jones is a huge journey crammed into 2 intense days. It is film making from story conception through screenwriting, production, post-production and premier all the way to film sales and beyond to the development of your career in film.

Thanks to the work of Hive Films, Creative Leicestershire, Phoenix Square and of course Chris Jones himself, this workshop was brought to Leicester. And thus for the last two days I have been sitting, absorbing what felt like gigabytes of information. Some of it I knew before. Much of it was new to me. It was by stages uplifting, fascinating and frankly terrifying. In short, it was reality.

All the information I might have been able to dig up from books and the Internet. But nowhere could I have had the whole package served in one go. The effect of this was quite startling. Going through the journey of the filmmaker in two days from start to finish gives a sense of perspective. It lets you see the whole thing - every stage in its place.

And having seen the big picture, I can now go and learn more about the individual parts of the process and understand where they fit into the whole. Short of having done it - having made a feature film and taken it to market - short of that I can't imagine a better way to get perspective on the process.

If you are thinking of making your first feature film I strongly advise you to attend this excellent course. It'll be the best money you spend on your project.

I'll write more about one or two specifics in a later post - particularly some lessons that I will be taking from this into my novel writing.

Miss Garnet's Angel

To have closure or not to have closure is a question all storytellers must face. Does the protagonist definitely achieve or definitely not achieve the victory? Are all the secondary plots neatly tied up? Is every single thread accounted for?

Perhaps it is not a question of closure or lack of it, but the degree of neatness.
These were questions that tumbled around in my head last Thursday evening on driving home after an excellent talk by the bestselling novelist Salley Vickers.

Salley does not plot out her novels, she told us. She writes without knowing where she is going, prompted presumably by the unconscious mind. Although her books are not autobiographical, she weaves in threads from her own experience. This became clear as she wove the narrative of her talk, dipping into life experiences and into her novels with such lightness of touch that it was easy to become confused as to which was which.

These things struck me about the writing process as she described it: she reads her work out aloud to herself as she edits it, she walks when she needs to resolve issues and she never reads her own books once they are published. She is also fascinated by the workings of memory and the process of natural selection on ancient stories that survive today. These things struck me because in those respects I am exactly the same. She also visits art galleries when looking for answers, something I have not done but am now resolved to try.

But back to those tumbling thoughts. Have you ever wondered why some stories cling on to the mind after you have finished with them? Some talks too. I was so intrigued by her talk that I bought a copy of her novel Miss Garnet’s Angel.



My one regret about dyslexia is that it is a barrier to my reading more. Reading takes the work of my whole mind. In order to read a whole novel I need to set aside a chunk of time. You can judge then, how much Salley’s talk had clung to my mind, when I say that on getting home I started reading her novel. And that I pressed on to the end three and a half days later.

The story is tumbling right now in my head. I have the feeling that it will still be there tomorrow. Such is the quality of narratives which do not travel directly from A to B, but meander and bifurcate and recombine, beguiling the logical mind. Perhaps it is a quality of stories that are written with the unconscious mind in the driving seat. And perhaps it is a quality also of stories where all the threads are not quite so neatly tied back together at the end.

They say Miss Garnet’s Angel was a word of mouth bestseller. Having read it, I am not surprised. It is as delightful as was her talk.

Writing lines for actors

The process of writing for '43 pounds' is significantly different from the work I usually do. There are two reasons for this:

1) We are going to be relying heavily on the excellent improvisational skills of our cast. This should give us more of a documentary feel - less like scripted lines. So the lines I am actually writing will probably never be spoken. They are there to guide the actors rather than constrain them.

2) I already know some of the cast and have started workshopping with them. This has given me the seeds of several ideas. And when I type the words in, I can already hear the voices of the actors saying them.


Hearing voices may sound more like a mental illness than a writing technique. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that when I read the lines that I have written, I hear them in my head with the tone, accent and delivery of those individuals.

Getting the voices is one of the important milestones for me in writing any work of fiction. With this it has been given to me from the start.

Writing and Improvisation

Aren't all writers improvisers, really? I mean, we sit at our writing desk or our computer or whatever, and we don't have the whole thing mapped out already finished in our heads. There may be an overall plan, but the detail has to be foggy.

Then we write. And the words spill out on the page.

Yesterday I was standing in a large, disused commercial kitchen, pretending to be a boom operator. Rhys Davies, the real life director, was playing the part of the camera man. In front of us were three actors - two playing the parts of actors who had turned up for an audition at this unlikely location and the third playing the part of a director with no budget who was interviewing them.

(Sorry about the confusion - actors playing actors etc. Unfortunately there is going to be much of this as the story of the new movie project is revealed. More of that later.)

The experience was fascinating. Some of the material the actors came out with, I could have written down there and then as polished dialogue. Other parts needed editing, so to speak. To be honest, some moments were so funny that I had to bite down on my lip to stop myself laughing out loud and spoiling the moment. And yes, funny was waht we were aiming for.

Today I am sitting at the laptop, experimenting with scenes for the same movie project. I'm typing dialogue that those same actors might potentially end up saying. The process seems very similar to what we went through yesterday. The lines come to my head and I type them without thinking. OK - I can go back and edit later, but the process feels as if it has that same spontaneity. I'm being the characters, just as the actors were.

The process of writing has a tension between these two tendencies - spontaneity and self-awareness. The creative genius and the critical editor. Both have to co-exist in the mind of the writer. Getting the balance right - that is the trick. As for the actor - is there room for the critic in her/his mind? At least I have the luxury of separating the process of creation from the process of editing.

I suspect that if I understood more of the actor's craft, I would find more parallels.

Whirlwind of writing and organising

Some people had suggested that I might have been biting off more than I could chew to be writing TWO screenplays at the same time. However I felt happy enough with that situation, as they were completely different from each other. Thus there was no muddling up of the two plots in my mind.

What they are going to say when I let slip that I am now working on THREE films, I am unsure.

Last week I sat down with Rhys Davies to work on the Memorabilia screenplay and before we started, I shared a couple of movie ideas - things I had been kicking about in my head for a years or so. When I mentioned one of them, his eyes lit up.

We talked more. He threw in some concepts. I came up with new concepts in return. And I know this is going to sound flaky - but we dropped everything and are now rushing towards a fixed date in mid-January for the beginning of the shoot.

For various reasons, I can't tell you the date. Not yet. The date would give the game away.

The start date is implicit in the film idea - as is a funding model and the beginning of a publicity campaign. When an idea like this comes along, you have to make a choice. Let it pass and trust that another will come along at some stage, or go for it. And that, it seems, is what we are doing.

The state of the publishing industry

Last Thursday Leicester Writers' Club was host to a talk by Elizabeth Cochrane, a rights manager from literary agency Greene and Heaton. The talk was kindly sponsored by Creative Leicestershire.

That's the background.

The substance is that Elizabeth's excellent talk sketched a depressing picture of the publishing industry. Not a new story. If you have followed this blog you will be aware of similar pictures being painted by various speakers on the subject over the last few years. The best sellers are selling better. The rest are selling worse. Publishers and agents are on the hunt for those few who will make it to the stratosphere. The death of the mid-list.

Sales managers were in the past getting to be as powerful as the commissioning editors. Now it seems that they are more powerful. Most books did not make much money before. It seems that they are now making a loss.

That is a somewhat bleak summary of the talk. There was much useful detail, hints and insights.

Here are my thoughts on the matter.

This bleak picture of publishing correctly describes the state of the mainstream industry. The major publishers. The authors represented by agents. As this section of the industry narrows down, new channels are opening for good writers working outside the mainstream. New small publishers have sprung up in the regions over the last few years and well-conceived self-publishing ventures are getting the respect they deserve.

We live in a time of rapid change. The number of different book retailers is shrinking. Leicester's independent book shops have withered to nothing and now even the Borders bookshop is closing. At the same time, the technology of printing is making it progressively easier for individual writers to bypass the system altogether by publishing their own work. If I was starting out now and could identify who my readers were and where they gathered, I would seriously consider doing it myself - writing, editing, printing and selling.

It might not be comfortable to have to think about how one would persuade a person to hand over money for a copy of your book. It might seem to be a prostitution of a noble art form. But for me it gets to the reality of the process we are engaged in.

Memorabilia screenwriting

I’m stealing a few minutes in the middle of a Memorabilia scriptwriting session. Rhys Davies and I are sitting in an upstairs office in The Art Organization on Humberstone Gate, Leicester. Outside the window, rain is spattering against the glass. We’re both sitting as close as we can to the heater without our coats catching fire, because it is cold in here!

The process we’re going through is different to the collaborative writing I have done before. This time we are taking a well-worked treatment and transferring it to screenplay format. That might sound like a mechanical process. Merely reformatting. The reality is quite different. We are finding that the process of unpacking the treatment to form the screenplay leads us to make many discoveries.

Some scenes do not work in the form that we initially conceived. Characters do not want to do what we imagined they would. Transitions between scenes turn out to be visually jarring. Or maybe the flow of emotions doesn’t work.

All these discoveries are the direct implication of what was in the treatment. But it is only at the point were it is written out in full that cause and effect is revealed and the discoveries are made.

In answer to these newly revealed problems come new ideas. If one character is changed from benign to scheming – what will it do to the dynamic of the story? And from these fresh ideas come the real joy of the process.

The treatment we had was good. The screenplay is in my estimation much stronger.
Today we will reach the point where we have the first act scripted in rough. On Friday I hope to spend some time on my own editing dialogue and making the prose of the scene descriptions smoother.

The Phoenix, Leicester's new Digital Media Centre

Rising (metaphorically) from the ashes of the Phoenix, Leicester’s old art-house cinema, comes a brand spanking new digital media centre. What shall we call it? Ah yes, I know. The Phoenix.

I started watching the building of the new Phoenix from the time they put metal hoardings around the site and started digging a big hole for its foundations. Over the months it grew from the mud, took on an angular, modern form and was finally painted an interesting mustard colour.

Last Thursday the process came to its fruition with the grand opening. I turned up at the stroke of 2pm when the doors opened and found myself in a throng of exited Leicester folk, all eager to explore. I don’t think many of them could have been disappointed.

The building contains three theatres, the largest seating 250, the smallest a cosy 30. There is also a television/film studio, sound recording and editing suites, educational facilities, display areas and the obligatory cafe.

Curiously, the building also contains living accommodation and office space for rent. I have yet to figure out whether this was for economic reasons, or perhaps in response to some planning requirement. Time will tell how this aspect of the place works out.

Leicester's cultural quarter is now host to the architecturally impressive Curve theatre, the LCB Depot - home to exhibition space and many creative businesses, and the new Phoenix. Has anything been missed?

A home for Leicester's writers perhaps?

Writing in a digital future

As a dyslexic author, I have a somewhat conflicted relationship with the written word. Most authors and publishers are quick to say that people will never give up books and reading. And whilst I do believe that is true, I am convinced that other modes of creative expression and information transfer will grow in significance.

In our pre-literate past dyslexics were not disabled. And in a future where recorded image and sound are given more weight, our present sense of disability will recede. Indeed, I believe this is already happening.

Imagine that I wanted to find out what it would take to install solar panels on the roof of my house. Twenty years ago, I’d probably have headed off to the library to find a book on the subject. Ten years ago, I might well have searched the Internet for an article to read. Today, I’d go to straight to YouTube or Vimeo and find a video tutorial.

We live, as they say, in interesting times. None of us know how writing and digital media will develop in the coming decades. But change is happening. Change is accelerating.

Hang on to your hats.

(Irony warning – yes, I have noticed that this article comes to you via the very medium that I appear to be dissing. No need to point it out.)

The End of a Story

A good story is a powerful thing. It lulls you in. It insinuates its way into the back of the mind and abides there, even when you are not thinking about it.

When you get to the end, there is a sense of completion. A journey has been finished. Parts that were separate have been brought together. The back brain can put it to one side and rest.

All the above is true of reading a book or watching a movie or listening to a story over a camp fire. It also describes my experience of creating a story. The narrative exists in a nebulous, illusive form only crystallizing into something solid when it is written down.

At the beginning of the writing process, I stride forwards into the fog, not knowing what is going to emerge after the next few paces. In the middle, I start to get a sense of the potential destination. And at the end - in the dash to the finish line - I have it all in my head simultaneously and am frantically trying to get it fixed on the page.

This last stage is the reason for my silence over the last couple of weeks. I have been pressing on towards the end of the screenplay 'Interviews With A Serial Killer' (formerly known as White Angel 2).

It is an all-consuming process. Frantic with writing. Even when not writing, I am thinking about it. The characters, the twists, the imagery and dialogue allow the writer little rest. It is a self-centred phase. I don't think it makes me a particularly nice person. There is just me and the story and I resent anyone who wants to take me away from it.

Last night at 9pm I finished writing and e-mailed the screenplay to Chris Jones - presently attending a film festival in Spain. I'm sure there will be further drafts, but for now I feel the weight lifted. My back brain is no longer having to juggle all the variables of a story.


Exciting things are happening in the next few days, so more blog entries will follow.