What Came First, the Chicken or the Egg?
Bear With Me!
Okay, this is probably a weird analogy but this is how my (bird-brained!) mind works. So, in terms of the title question, Iâve thought long and hard about this and, with my limited scientific knowledge, Iâve decided itâs the egg (yes, I know thereâs more to this question than meets the eye, but stay with me!).
Why the egg?
Well, given that evolution can occur through genetic mutation between generations, surely the precursor species laid an egg which gave birth to the chicken species? Now, this may have happened in increments across generations, with âmissing linksâ in between, but eventually an egg was laid which hatched a modern-day chicken. Right? OrâŠnot? All thoughts appreciated on this very important subject!
Anyway, âWhatâs this got to do with writing?â I hear you ask. Well, it reminds me to ask myself the question: âWhat SHOULD come first â the writerâs intention, or the readerâs experience?â
Now, surely the two should be wed. Of course they should! The writerâs intention should impact the readerâs experience. Or, to put it passively, the readerâs experience should be impacted by the writerâs intention. The question reminds me to ask myself what the purpose of my scene is. Ideally, my intention when writing it should be to drive the narrative forward in order to keep my reader engaged. This can be achieved in different ways, e.g. by demonstrating a characterâs want/goal/motivations in that moment (possibly contributing to the overall arc/theme) and, importantly, whatâs getting in their way; a big reveal through dialogue; a win/lose battle (either literally or emotionally) and perhaps a hint of the potential consequences; a realisation expressed through interiority; an increase in tension/suspense/stakes (evidencing what the character has got to lose in this scene) etc etc etc.
But, instead, itâs very tempting to use a scene to indulge our âdarlingsâ. Often, this is related to world building/setting description or character building. Thatâs not to say that we donât need to include these, but should they be the whole purpose of a scene? Should we, as the writer, become so lost in our beautiful prose and descriptive prowess that we forget to think about story? About keeping our reader wanting to turn the page in their excitement to find out what happens next? In other words, is our intention to showcase (or, yes, indulge) our writerly craft or to give the reader the experience they picked the book up for in the first place? *Caveat: sometimes dwelling on our darlings isnât a conscious intention, but more an expression of our own interests/our enjoyment in immersing ourselves in them, but either way, the impact on the readerâs experience is the same.
Another rabbit hole is the info dump. This is where you as the writer want to impart all the knowledge you have about an element of your story (e.g. backstory) in one great chunk, rather than dispersing it more organically through the narrative. Wanting to shoehorn all of your meticulously and time-consumingly sourced research can be included in this point too. Ask yourself â is the reader going to stay with me through all of this information? Or would they rather ride along with the character through their arc, experiencing what they experience, feeling what they feel?
A good trick Iâve heard to avoid your well-intentioned âdarling dumpsâ is to imagine removing the scene and asking yourself, does this make a difference to the development of my A plot? Iâve also read that itâs a good idea to think of each scene as a mini-story within the bigger story. Does it have a beginning, middle and end? Does the scene elicit questions/provoke characters to make decisions/display their consequences? Is the ending actually a new beginning, creating more questions for the character and/or reader (DuhâŠduhâŠduhâŠ!)?
Experience
I think I have a tendency, like a lot of writers, to use my opening to âwrite myself into the storyâ. I need to get better at checking what the purpose of my opening is. Iâve recently started a new novel which begins with a bus journey. Is this scene necessary? Or should I just start when the character reaches their destination, where the story really begins? Why didnât I just do this in the first place? Well, I wanted to explore/describe my character and demonstrate their âstatus quoâ life at the beginning of the novel. But couldnât I have done this through a more âactiveâ scene? Iâll have a play around and see whatâs possible.
Itâs often said that writers should write their story (or part of it depending on how/when you edit), then just delete the first chapter altogether. Is the narrative actually impacted? If not, you were right to âkill that darlingâ, as painful as it might be, because at the end of the day, the reader experience should come first. *I never actually advocate full deletion â try cutting and pasting into a new document instead. You never know when you might be able to use sections from it elsewhere!
Final Thoughts
What  came first, the chicken or the egg?!
What is your intention as a writer? This could be in a specific scene or across a whole novel.
What do you want your reader experience to be in that scene/novel?
Do you have any tips for evoking a rich reader experience?
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Ten minutes before I left the house, my boss called. âThe science class is cancelled today. Take Jisoo and Jennie instead. They need adjective practice.â (By the way, this happens a lot. I once opened the classroom door to find six quiet ESL teenagers instead of the rambunctious kindergartners for which I had the mood…
Full of enthusiasm for my lockdown project of reading The Complete Works of Shakespeare, I wandered blindly on to play number 5. Some time later I stumbled back out, wondering if there’s any wriggle-room on those do not drink bottle warnings, as I felt the need for some kind of absolute cleansing. Should I sit…
The Long and Short of It I enjoy writing short stories, which is a complete one-eighty compared to how I used to feel. I used to wonder how an author could convey so much meaning in so few words. It took practice and the motivation of entering competitions to change my mind. Love, Christmas is…
When I first started down this self-publishing journey, I heard quiet rumours of the dangers of scammers. I knew they were out there. I knew they wanted my money (What little of it I have), and I knew they had no shame. What I didnât know, and was unprepared for, was just how many of…
We all remember those drawn out days of the first Covid lockdown, right? I don’t know how you coped, but while other people were learning new languages and putting out their trash dressed as Ru Paul, I decided to do something quite useless. I would read the Complete Works of Shakespeare. Oh yes. Armed with…
The Good Thereâs so much to love about writing â the excitement of that initial spark of an idea; the stimulation of the challenge to make it work; that feeling you get when you find the perfect word/phrase/sentence/paragraph to express exactly what you mean in the most eloquent way you can; the thrill of positive…
I recently participated in ALLiâs SelfPubCon, which focused on the business side of writing. There were sessions on using social media, monetising YouTube, website design, using AI for marketing ⊠I watched video after video that made my brain turn off. Video after video teaching me how to cash in on the advertising deluge we…
Giving Feedback The title of this post is a sentence thatâs often used at the end of a fellow writerâs feedback in the Lab, and I think itâs perfect. The first time I submitted work for critique and someone responded with this line, I felt a huge wave of relief. It says so much in…
There has long been an association between mental illness and creativity with seemingly endless examples of successful creatives affected by anxiety, depression, bipolar and other mental disorders: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edgar Allen Poe, Virginia Woolf, Leo Tolstoy, Sylvia Plath, Ernest Hemmingway, J.K. Rowling, Stephen King, Stephen Fry, Emily Dickinson, Franz Kafka, Matt Haig, Van Gogh,…
We are back from a river cruise down the Danube from Budapest to Bucharest. Well, what did we see? We were amazed at the people who are beathing; that is, the air of freedom. New entrepreneurial enterprises have opened upâmany businesses started by people under forty. In fact, our program director on our Viking cruise…
It was an irresistible afternoon, the gorgeously seductive late summer / early-autumn sunlight inviting me to come play in the woods⊠how could I refuse? So I grabbed some wild garlic bulbs and a trowel and hied me to the dappled paradise. Work could wait, at least for a couple of hours. Bulb planting is…
Iâve been avoiding the subject of AI for a long time. Iâve tried to ignore it, tried to pretend it wonât be as big a deal as people are making out, and that it will find its place somewhere and make life a little less cumbersome. But the more time that passes and the more…
Iâm Fine Whenever I meet someone new, I try to learn their language. I donât mean French or German; I mean things like what they convey without actually saying the words, or the way they might say something but mean something different. For the latter, take âIâm fineâ as an example. It can mean different…
Come over here for a moment, would you? But be careful of the edge of the table, itâs rather sharp. Good. Now you can see things from my side of the desk. That towering pile you see in front of you? It’s what some unkind publishing folk call “the slush pile”. Yes, most of itâs…
   December 1973… a village called Oberjoch (over the hill) in the Bavarian Alps. Six feet of snow! I was learning to ski with a six-man unit from 49 Field Regiment, Royal Artillery.    It was a two-week course and we manage to ski fairly well down the smaller slopes at the beginning…
I recently had a great movie night with my daughter. We made a fort (three kitchen chairs with a blanket thrown over the top and far too many stuffed toys to get comfortable), we made popcorn and a bowl of Skittles, and settled down in the living room to watch a movie with all the…
Well, it sort of is⊠Iâve been fascinated by dystopian fiction for many years â any story which explores a dramatic change in the way of life for a society, if not humanity (which can of course cross into the post-apocalyptic sub-genre). But itâs not just the âbig pictureâ of these novels which intrigues me,…
Marcel Duchamp said this: it’s art if I say so. He’s the guy who stuck a urinal on the wall and called it ‘Fountain’. And ever since he did that, the art world swivelled on its axis and became a place where apparently anything goes. And usually for a gazillion quid. Which really gets the…
As a writer, I tend to focus on plot. I love a good action scene, and I also enjoy writing dialogue (probably stems from loving to talk, myself. LOL!). Over the years, Iâve developed a method for outlining my novels thatâs sort of a mash-up of different methods Iâve read about. I start with a…
As a kid, I watched Star Trek. Some things have come true. I remember at the market you had to push to open the door. On Star Trek, the doors opened automatically with a SWOOSH when Captain Kirk made his dramatic entrance (wow, heâs still with us as I write this). A few years later…
Out of the Mouths of Babes This post was inspired by a comment made by my eleven-year-old son. It was prompted by his question regarding what Iâd hypothetically create a YouTube channel about (reading and writing novels of course!). He summed up in one sentence what I took years to work out: âThe most important…
There are debates about audio books vs paperback vs digital formats. This post is not about that. Although that would be an interesting post. But I will not try to convince you to listen to a book if thatâs not your jam. Well, I wonât deliberately try. As for SFF⊠you either love it or…
I recently wrote a blog post about bad writing in current media and decided that this month I would write about good writing instead. Bad writing is low-hanging fruit; itâs easy to spot, and easier still to complain about after you realise something has relieved itself on it. The Acolyte, the show I talked about…
Be Brave Iâve been writing seriously for years. The more I wrote (and read the work of other authors), the more I experimented with different genres, voice, style and structures. I realised I had nothing to lose by going down experimental rabbit holes, except time and effort. But hey, writing is a craft, right? And…
My Writing Journey During my formative years, I had spells when I thought Iâd like to be an author when I grew up (if we ever really do). But I didnât know any writers and it seemed like something that other, cleverer, more privileged people did, not someone like me. But when I reached my…
Donald Sutherland is gone. I saw him on stage at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles years ago in a play. What can one say? M*A*S*H etc⊠I knew Eddie Albert and bid him adieu nineteen years ago. Wow, stop the clock! I sat next to him at a few dinner parties at our…
Lately, Iâve been hearing lots of complaints about awful writing. Not mine â people arenât saying it to my face anyway â but some movies and television shows that are getting some scathing reviews. Some cry that this is racism, homophobia, sexism etc. That these criticisms donât hold water because of the place from which…
A long-lost friend dropped by recently. Myka was in Berlin for a conference, and found herself with a free evening. We offered her a barbecue, a bed and a walk in the woods. Myka was thrilled. Like us, she had bought a house on the edge of a wood. She loves forest-bathing, or walking away…
Be Up-Front Agent Pete often says that writers should play to their strength and put it front and centre in the opening of their novel. It sounds so obvious but this hadnât occurred to me before I heard him say it. Are you good at dialogue? Open with a conversation. Do you excel at action?…
A Rose By Any Other Name Would Smell as Sweet, Right? The Silence of the Lambs, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Elinor Oliphant is Completely Fine, 1984, The Hitchhikerâs Guide to the Galaxy, The Colour Purple â titles that we remember, titles that I love. But what makes them so effective? And do titles affect…
Food, travel, books, movies, television shows, and onâŠand on⊠A family member of mine doesnât like avocado. Wonât dip his chip into guacamole. YUM. A friend I dine with loves escargot. YUK! Slimmy crawl ya’all. I recently watchedâwhat I thought would beâa simple detective series, but when in episode 7 it was revealed the detective…
I always find Beta reading such a great opportunity to learn. I discover things that Iâm sure I do myself as a writer that I critique as a reader. In my last few rounds of beta reading, I found myself thinking about the gap between being âthe writerâ and being âthe reader.â I mean, of…
My experience with deal sites. This one is for the writers. Last week, I ran a promotion for my novel The Trouble with Prophecies. I slashed the price down to 0.99 for the week in an attempt to get sales going. For context, the last time I ran a promotion I made the book free…
Donât Start with a Character Waking Up, Looking in the Mirror, or with a Hangover On Pop-Up Submissions, we received a lot of openings like this. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didnât, at least in my humble opinion. It may be a clichĂ©, but Fifty Shades of Grey starts with Anastasia Steele looking in the…
(Disclaimer: although not politically perfect, Iâm going to use the familiarity of the term âdisabilityâ rather than, say, âdifferently abledâ in this post.) Iâm gonna say, straight up, that I canât tell you how to write about disability, primarily because everyoneâs experience is different. But I might be able to give you some food for…
I decided to self-publish my contemporary romances after unsuccessful attempts at the traditional route. There are pros and cons to making this decision and lots of issues to consider. Will you pay someone to edit and format your novel? What about the cover design? What platform/s should you upload to? How will you market the…
The pebble skimmed the surface ten times before running out of momentum, then seeming to flounder for a split second, sank into the dark still lake sending ripples radiating outwards. “Ten, dad. Beat that,” said Michael. “Hah, easy,” I said. I scanned the shoreline and spotted a perfect skimmer. A small piece of ancient flint;…
Remember lockdown? Remember how we all got a bit excited in the first one and felt we had to make it count? And some of us, you know, wrote a book? Yeah. Turns out quite a lot of us were wrong there. 80,000 words of relatively competent sentences don’t always add up to a book.…
Rules and Commonalities Iâm not a musician but even I know that songs have a structure, verses and a chorus, that they often have a beginning, middle and end, that they can build to a crescendo, explore a narrative, evoke deep emotion and stay in our hearts forever. But just what is the magic ingredient…
Iâve been doing the daily Wordle puzzle since it started. In case you missed it, Wordle is an online game that gives you six chances to guess a five-letter word. It was invented by Josh Wardle, a software developer, for his girlfriend who loved word games. Just for fun, so the story goes. Until he…
Last time, I spoke about stories that stay with you â or more accurately, the ones that donât. This month, I want to take some time to unpick what makes a good story. One that lives in your psyche days, even years, after the final page has been turned. I think itâs fair to say…
You Are Not Alone Most people experience rejection when querying. Beatrix Potter, author of The Tale of Peter Rabbit, got so many rejections she ended up self-publishing. Now, over 45 million copies have been sold world-wide. Rudyard Kipling was told that he didnât know how to use the English language. F. Scott Fitzgerald was told…
Time and Head Space When I was teaching full-time, I found it difficult to fit in any writing. Itâs definitely not a nine-to-three job! My evenings and weekends were taken up by planning, preparing and assessing, as well as various administrative tasks. Not to mention the demands of family and general life. However, switching to…
In that heady, comforting, all-encompassing safety-net that is the deep love forged by a long life together, my soul-mate and I tried to find ‘our song’. Amongst all the haunting melodies and time-tested lyrics, surely we could find a single song that expressed the depths of our feelings for each other? He suggested some, I…
Who the hell do you think you are? I once heard that authors alternate between two perceptions of their work-in-progress. One is: âThis is amazing! Iâm a bloody genius!â The other is: âThis is the worst thing ever written! Ever! In the whole history of story!â The truth, of course, is that itâs usually somewhere…
âChristmas wonât be Christmas without any presents,â grumbled Jo, lying on the rug. That opening line is indelibly inked in my memory. Other fictional characters captured my childhood imagination before the March sisters: Anne of Green Gables, Black Beauty, Big Red. All great stories for children. But âLittle Womenâ, Louisa May Alcottâs coming-of-age story set…
The Brother has a view on modern verbiage ++ Now, câmere âtil I tell you this. Iâm all ears. What is it? The brother has barred himself from watching television above in the digs. Excuse me? Barred himself for the foreseeable future on account of him having been roaring at the TV in the residentsâ…
We All Have Our Own Opinions Of course we do! Life would be very boring if we didnât. But there are elements to story that seem to be essential and universal. Iâve listed some below but itâs not exhaustive and Iâm interested to hear other ideas. Character I often hear authors talk about the…
Say What? Writing a novel with more than one point-of-view can be tricky. How can you juggle different personalities and motivations â and somehow use them to tell a balanced, coherent and compelling story? How can you ensure that each character has their own âvoiceâ (something that I find extremely difficult to achieve!)? But does…
There’s something about cats. Yes, in January  I burst my eardrum trying to cure the ear mite infection I caught from our two. They wont be  sleeping on the bed pillows after that. But I mean more. The truth encapsulated in this post from Jennifer Adcock, writer. “You know who doesn’t get impostor…
Sorry! Iâve been a tad disingenuous with this title because Iâm not referring to the act of writing on behalf of others, but rather the literal act of writing about ghosts! Trick, or treat? Of course, there are many ghost stories, especially in the horror genre, but Iâve selected a few from other genres to…
The last few weeks, I have been replaying a video game from my distant past. An old favourite by the name of Final Fantasy VII. I used to play this game almost once a year; I kept going back to it again and again throughout my childhood and often used to inform my imaginative play…
Over achievers rarely herald from untroubled upbringings. Being born to a mother with low confidence in her own abilities wouldnât have been so bad, had she managed an ounce of confidence in her own children. Such is life. The poor woman was bullied by her father. He, in turn, had been emotionally wrecked by the…
Ciao. Getting ready for our two-week trip to Northern Italy. Northern Italy you say. What about the rest of Italy? Well, in due course. A friend of mine recently went to Italy and did the typical, American 9 day, 10 night tour of Italy on a bus. âBring down your luggage and be on the…
âArenât you supposed to be writing?â I shove the nagging question away. The computer will still be there when I return to it, cursor blinking patiently at the top of a blank page. It is Thursday, one of my two weekdays designated for writing. I am cradling a cup of coffee and standing in the…
An Issue of Trust Iâll admit, novels with an unreliable narrator are not everyoneâs cup of tea, but I love them. You start off thinking the character is taking us on a believable journey and that we can trust their telling of the events, then unease creeps in. We start asking questions. We wonder where…
Mention the word Trope to us writers and we’ll recoil. Add the word Cliche and you’ll see us running for the hills. These two five-letter words are not what any of us want in our wonderful, new, original, works, right? But consider this: things only become tropes when they are overused, and they only become…
My three psychological novels have unlikeable point-of-view characters. Without balance, they can appear two-dimensional â and Iâve discovered that achieving that balance is rather tricky! What do I mean by balance? I suppose Iâm talking in terms of the readerâs perception. Is the characterâs dark side countered by a bit of light, or a reason…
A writer friend of mine and I have exchanged writerly encouragement to each other for many years. The most frequent reminder we bounce back and forth is that writing is really hard. We take baffling things in our life, in society, in the world, often stuff that strike us as chaotic, and we try to…
Dear Grandpoppypops Wish you were here? Look at the size of the stamps now! So much larger than the penny black you showed me from your visit. Not much has changed so far as I can see in human structure, society is still set on exploiting other sections of itself. Your industrial revolution really set…
Flann O’Brien’s much-loved character – The Brother – transported to the 21st century. What would he make of contemporary trends and fads? This episode imagines his reaction to Molecular Gastronomy, Nouvelle Cuisine, and the tampering of a subject very close to his heart. ****************** Now the brother has a thing or two to say on…
This is my first post on this forum, so I wanted to do something short and light. What types of distractions interrupt you when youâre hammering away at your keyboard? The phone rings? Your significant other shouts at you from the other side of the house? Your cat comes in and plops down onto your…
My first day as a professional writer, I lifted a police report from the pile at the Coffeyville station and read âMurder.â Now, this was a small town, and I was pretty sure this sort of thing was a rarity. I wasnât sure there had been much in the way of this most heinous of…
First Things First Iâve never understood people who have a favourite song, book or film. Surely your choice depends on your mood. Itâs the same with genre. Maybe today I fancy reading something light-hearted and fun. Tomorrow I might want to feel a shiver run down my spine. The next day I might be enticed…
Lucky seven they say, but the morning I had to load that many strong-minded mustangs onto a lorry at the top of the Swiss Alps with a 4am deadline, it seemed a doomed number. Especially when lorry drivers with ferry schedules and EU regulations have famously short fuses. They have been known to back out…
Hands up anyone whoâs had a bit of writerâs block? Looking around I can see thatâs pretty much all of us, right? Even you at the back, hiding behind your laptop screen, pretending youâre doing research into character types, whilst actually playing Royal Match and posting videos of your cat. Why do we have such…
I’m delighted to give you an early peek into this yearâs Litopia Book Club selections, together with relevant purchase links. Itâs a particularly strong and carefully-selected list, and as youâll know if youâve attended one of Jasonâs riotous Zoom sessions, a good time can be guaranteed for all! For further information and exact dates, please…
Selling highly-priced, poor-value seminars and writing courses to aspiring authors isnât just unethical â itâs also damaging to the publishing industry, says Litopiaâs Peter Cox in this article for “The Bookseller” That old scoundrel Sam Brannan would have felt completely at home in today’s publishing business. Â Sam, you may recall, was the original promoter of…
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