Parlour Games

To add to your collection of festive writerly games, decor, and joyous silliness, I have a lovely new brace of parlour games for you, perfect for large groups. One of them is ideally suited to us of a literary disposition (but equally enjoyable for those who aren't!) and the other is really just a matter of joyous chaos. We tried them both at my birthday party last week and they worked even better than I'd hoped. Let the games begin!

Poem Enactments

This is best with a really good-sized group, at least ten people, ideally more. You'll also need enough space for people to sit around the edge and leave the centre of the room clear. 

Anyone can read or recite a poem. Before they do, though, they assign people to act out the parts. (Or ask for volunteers.) It's very important to cast before reading. 

While they read / recite the poem, the actors play their parts, following whatever directions come their way. I did The Walrus and the Carpenter, casting a sun, moon, walrus, carpenter, oldest oyster, and all the other oysters. My brother in law, as the sun, did a truly majestic job of trying to make the billows smooth and bright. My sister, as the moon, was splendidly sulky about it. The sight of most of my friends fervently pretending to be oysters, trotting behind the walrus and the carpenter, will live with me forever. Especially when they started making oyster noises. 

In someone else's poem, I volunteered to be the pond. It turned out the poem was Daddy Fell Into the Pond, so I got heftily landed on! In The Owl and the Pussycat, many of us were bong trees. When someone else did The Jabberwocky, Gwendi (the Jabberwock) collapsed to the floor in death so dramatically that the thunk was audible.

Nursery rhymes, picture books, Lewis Carroll, Roald Dahl's Revolting Rhymes, and Doctor Seuss are all great contenders for poems, as well as dramatic ballads like The Highwayman.

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The (Brief) Singing Of Many Songs

Everyone needs to be briefed to think of their favourite song to sing. A hymn, a carol, a pop song, a protest song, a lullaby, a folk song, whatever they know and is dear to their hearts.

Before The Singing, everyone firmly fixes their song in their mind, and lightly hums the opening note. Then everyone sings, all at once, for two minutes, and may the loudest voice win!

We didn't have a prize, but we totally should have, and the winner was 100% my sister with her passionate rendition of Toto's Africa, drowning out even her husband's and Will's combined Jerusalem. Glorious! Half the cacophonous choir collapsed in giggles after the first minute, but the remaining roar was still award-worthy.

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And if you want more silly or writerly festive things to do, I've got heaps more for you already up on the blog:

• Four Writerly Party Games (these work well with 4+ people)
• Zoom Party Games (the same four games plus two extra, all converted for playing over Zoom)
• The Present Game, for a chaotic and increasingly random present exchange
• How To Make a Christmas Star, which you can do on your own as paperly decor or as a group with everyone contributing spokes to the star
• How to Fold a Little Book, if you want to fill your Christmas tree with tiny books (You could use richly decorated Christmas paper so they look even more splendid.)

Wishing you wonderful, creative, silly fun! 

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Autumn Writing Food: Mushroom Bake

Hearty cheesy mushroom bake with red lentils, succulent inside and crispy on top.
Gluten-free | Veggie

Ars longa, vita brevis, as I said to one of my students at the WolvLitFest last weekend: art is long and life is short. It's always a struggle to find enough time for all the projects. 

At least, that's what I meant to say. I said the first word, paused because my head was full of another Latin phrase (memento vivere: remember to live), so... basically I just said, with full thoughtful confidence, "ARSE" and then looked around for a bit.

I don't think she's going to let me live that one down. 

Anyway, the brevity of time (ARSE!) is why I send you these seasonal writing food recipes. We need to carve out time for our writing, often from already busy lives, and we need to remember to live. Perfect writing food is quick (either to make or to double up another day's cooking) so it doesn't steal your writing time, low-carb so your writing time isn't sabotaged by sleepiness, and as much a treat as writing itself. 

This autumn's is one of my absolute favourites for a chilly writing day, easy to double, triple, or even quadruple, and freezes beautifully (and without wasting freezer space, if you use my nifty tinfoil trick). It's one to make on a non-writing evening, in extra quantity, and then freeze the rest for future writing time.

Mushroom Bake

Serving and times

Prep & active cooking: 25–30 mins
Oven time: 35 mins
Serves: 4 (This scales up very easily; always round up the number of eggs, as they hold it together. There's a scaling-up table at the bottom for easy reference.)

Ingredients

For spicy tomato sauce (optional)

• 1 small onion, thinly sliced
• 2 chillies, sliced
• 1 tsp of hot chilli flakes / powder (optional)
• 1 tin of tomatoes (400g)
• 1/3 teaspoon salt
• ½ teaspoon black pepper

For mushroom & lentil bake

• 175g red split lentils
• 350 ml vegetable stock (I use powdered bouillon and hot water)
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 175g mushrooms, chestnut or portabello chopped / sliced
• 2 Tablespoons butter
• 1 stalk rosemary (5”), finely chopped
• 125g cheese, grated
• 1 egg, beaten

To serve

Baby spinach leaves (approx 50g per person) or side salad

Method 

Spicy tomato sauce

If you’re making the spicy tomato sauce, get this on the go first so it has plenty of time to simmer down (1 hour, ie the same time as the rest of the cooking)

• Thinly slice 1 small onion and 2 chillies.
• In a small pot, fry the ½ teaspoon black pepper, onion and chillies on a medium-high heat, for about 10 mins (you can start the other cooking meanwhile).
• Add the 1 tsp of hot chilli flakes / powderchilli powder if using, 1 tin of tomatoes and 1/3 teaspoon salt.
• Turn the heat down and let it simmer gently, uncovered, to reduce for about an hour.

Mushroom & lentil bake

• Heat the oven to 180 C.
• Chop one onion.
• In a pot, put the 175g lentils in the 350ml hot stock to simmer, covered, until soft (10 mins). When they’re done, just turn them off and leave them on the side for now.
• Meanwhile, slice the onions.
• Melt the 2 Tablespoons butter in a deep wide pan (the wider it is, the faster this goes; deep is helpful for when you’re stirring in the mushrooms)
• Add the onion to the pan and fry on medium for about 10 mins.
• Meanwhile, slice / chop the 175g mushrooms (you can just hack them all up – no need for finesse) and finely chop the stalk of rosemary
• Add the mushrooms and rosemary to the onions, turn up the heat, and fry till they’ve released all their water and the water has evaporated (5–10 mins)
• Meanwhile, beat 1 egg in a bowl large enough to contain all the ingredients and grate 125g cheese into the same bowl. Grease a baking dish (approx 20 x25 cm for this quantity).
• Mix the cooked lentils and fried onion & mushroom into the bowl with the cheese and egg.
• Pour it into the greased baking dish: we like it about ¾–1 inch deep, to get more crispy surface. Deeper is also fine, up to about 1.5 inches deep. Bake for 35–45 minutes.
• Serve on a bed of baby spinach with the spicy tomato sauce dolloped on top.

Want to freeze it? Fridge it overnight then wrap each portion size (eg for 2) in tinfoil.

Scaling Up

Onions	1	2	2.5	3	4
Mushrooms	175g	350g	450g	530g	700g
Cheese	125g	250g	300g	375g	500g
Lentils	175g	350g	450g	530g	700g
Stock	350ml	700ml	875ml	1 litre	1.4 litres
Butter	50g	100g	125g	150g	200g
Eggs	1	2	3	3	4

And a generous stalk or two of rosemary!

A note on quantities: The red portion fills a 20x25cm dish and serves 3-4, so the orange and green quantities need two of those or something twice the size. (You can also make it a bit thicker.) The teal and purple are going into wild quantities: you'd need the actual oven tray for those, or several dishes. (The oven tray also works well to do loads and cut it into smallish squares as part of a family buffet or picnic.)

Freezing Tip

If you're freezing bakes, you don't want your whole tray to disappear into the freezer and waste space. Put the bake in the fridge overnight so it goes nice and solid, then cut it into meal-portions and wrap each portion in tinfoil, pinching it shut at the top so that the tinfoil doubles up as their "baking tray" for when they're reheated. Masking tape for the labels doubles up to seal those folds. (Air-exposure in the freezer would give it "freezer burn".) Then you write the food name and date on the masking tape in Sharpie.

Happy writing! And remember: whenever you say "ars longa, vita brevis," finish the phrase. 

Writing Skill: Unjudge

Creating and getting to know our characters is one of the most joyous parts of writing. It's also an area where we easily slip into habits or rut, without realising. This Writing Skill, UNJUDGE, is a lovely character-creation tool for developing more unexpected characters in a way that ducks around our habitual thinking. So give yourself the gift of 10–20 minutes writing time, grab your notebook, pen, and a cuppa, and curl up somewhere comfy.

For this skill, you'll use the site This Person Does Not Exist. It's an AI-generator that creates wholly convincing photos of people who – like it says – don't exist. Though they really, really look like they do! Each time you press refresh a completely new image is created. So the first thing you're going to do is choose your character. Remember, refresh means it creates a new image: you can't go back to a previous one! So I suggest you allow yourself a maximum of 3 "refreshes", to choose your character, and make sure you screengrab each one, cos once it's gone, that's it.

Important note for screengrabbing on a computer: If you right-click and say "copy image", it doesn't copy the image you're looking at! It generates a new one and copies that. To save the picture you're looking at, use the Prt Sc (print-screen) button and then paste it into a document. You can also use a screen-snip tool.

Part One

Once you've chosen your character, study their face and spend half your time (five minutes, if you want to keep this a ten-minuter) making up what they're like: their personality, their job, their hobbies, their relationships, whatever comes to mind. Go completely with whatever comes to mind; don't worry if it seems an obvious choice, a bit cliched, even a bit judgy. It'll be fine, trust me.

I suggest you don't scroll down to Part Two until you've done that bit. 

Part Two

Now that you've got your character fully described, generate ONE more "photograph" by refreshing the site. That's the person you've actually been inventing! Everything you've just made up gets reassigned to the new face. Make sure you screengrab your new character, then spend a couple minutes more making up additional details. The only catch is: you can't change any of the details you've already made up.

When we're working on our own from a photo, it's often easy to slip into rather judgy and prejudiced character creation. We can fight like crazy against our own biases, but that often means we're spending most of our creative energy on batting away the biased choices, or making the exact opposite choice instead. By doing a switcheroo with the photo instead, none of those judgements came from the person's face, and the new identity is often an unexpected fit for our inventions. The disjuncture also leads to fresh ideas.

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Want more Writing Skills? As a member of The Writers' Greenhouse Community, you'll get a new Writing Skill every week: quick fun activities to develop your writing across plot, character, description, style, genres, and poems.

Plus you'll get expert advice on tap, a friendly supportive writing community, and help sending your writing out.

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Writing Skill: Magic Power Backfires

Magic is a joyous aspect of fantasy, but without limits, magic will scupper your plot or leave giant plot loopholes. Some ways of restricting magic are that it’s…

• addictive
• drains the person using it
• creates an imbalance
• built-in limits of the aid (eg potions)
• dangerous for the world or the user
• comes at a cost
• the resources to make it are limited

Having the magical power backfire, though, creates a lovely new dimension to it, following law of unintended consequences. This Writing Skill gives you a lighthearted way to play with it, to explore the story possibilities it opens up. I suggest you spend 10–20 minutes on it, whichever suits. Grab your notebook, pen, and a cuppa, and curl up somewhere comfy.

If you’re using this Skill as your starting point

What superpower or magical power have you always really wanted? (For me, that's breathing underwater or flying.) You're going to give someone that magic power – and then explore all the ways it backfires and all the problems it creates.

If you’re using your own story with magic in it

Pick any magic that appears in your story.

Once you've got your magic

That power might seem like such a wonderful thing to have, but it's going to backfire, in all sorts of unexpected ways. For the user, for those around them, in other ways... 

I suggest you do this as a freewriting exercise, to explore all the ways it goes wrong. Freewriting means writing continuously and completely non-judgementally, without caring about good / bad ideas, grammar, non-sequiturs. Write anything that comes into your head; just keep writing. Follow it and see where it goes. You’re creating raw material, like weaving cloth which you can later cut up and sew together.

That freewriting might include talking out loud to yourself on paper, writing snippets of dialogue or description, summarising events, dipping into storytelling whatever comes out of your pen.

Allow yourself to discover, and have fun!

The skills you're developing

Freewriting: Freewriting is a wonderful way to create raw material, to develop and explore ideas you might otherwise cut back earlier, and to discover voices and subject matter you would never have consciously planned. It could turn into any of the different kinds of writing. Equally valid and valuable, it could simply be the beautiful art of forming sentences on paper, or an exercise in writing more freely – a freedom you can carry into your other writing.

Constraining magic: As I said at the start, we always need to constrain magic, in fantasy, so it doesn't ruin the plot. Using the magic's own inherent properties is an especially satisfying and uncontrived way to do that.

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Want more Writing Skills? As a member of The Writers' Greenhouse Community, you'll get a new Writing Skill every week: quick fun activities to develop your writing across plot, character, description, style, genres, and poems.

Plus you'll get expert advice on tap, a friendly supportive writing community, and help sending your writing out.

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Writing Skill: Soundscape Sliders

My two favourite soundscape sites for writing, MyNoise and Ambient Mixer, both create soundscapes of different places and situations by mixing a bundle of different sounds. Each sound has its own slider, and the listener can play with the sliders to adjust it. For instance, MyNoise's "Medieval Village" has ten sliders: Watermill, Pastoral (birdsong and brook), Rejoicing bells, Fire bell, Trotting horse, Carriages, Market, Animals, Blacksmith, and Fanfare. Ambient Mixer's "Victorian London" has eight: Colombia Road Flower Market, Horse Whinny, Church Bells, Pre Thunderstorm, Steam Train, Rain on Umbrella, Rain on Cement, and Carriages at Night.

This Writing Skill uses that idea for a lovely exploration of sounds in your writing. I suggest you spend 10–20 minutes on it, whichever suits. Grab your notebook, pen, and a cuppa, curl up somewhere comfy, and have fun!

If you’re using this Skill as your starting point

Pick a genre you like, any genre: cosy detective fiction, romantasy, Gothic, historical, space opera, near-future science fiction, epic fantasy, mythology, paranormal fantasy, dystopia, alternate history, folklore, steampunk, urban paranormal, or anything else you fancy.

Each of the genres in that list will create its own sense of place and the sounds you might expect. For example, if you choose mythology and go for Viking mythology, then your sense of place might be on a longboat or a coastal village in Scandinavia. If you choose folklore, you're likely looking at an old-fashioned rural village or farm. If you choose cosy detective fiction, that's likely to be an English village (but it could also be a Caribbean island). If you choose steampunk, that's definitely Victorian era, but it doesn't have to be London; it could be anywhere you choose. If you choose urban paranormal, then what urban spot are you picking: Oxford? Cheltenham? Croyden? So pick your genre and let that dictate what kind of place you're imagining.

If you’re using your own story

Use the main setting in that. If your characters move around a lot, pick the area you'll be using the most, or one that you want to imagine in more detail.

Once you have your place

You're going to plan a soundscape for it, featuring ten sliders. What key ten sounds would you pick out to create the complete atmosphere of being there? Brainstorm all the possible sounds you could include. If you want more ideas, spend 5 mins or so browsing MyNoise or Ambient-Mixer. (If you've come on any of the courses recently, I'll have sent you soundscapes each week, to look back at.) Save the rest of your time for inventing your own soundscape, though.

Already, that will have given you a much more heightened awareness of sounds, to include in your writing. If you want to play with it more, I have two suggestions:

• Actually make your soundscape in Ambient Mixer! Here's the details on how. It's limited to eight channels, so you'll need to pick your top eight out of your ten. If you make one, do share it in the comments. Massive bonus here if you have an ongoing project: you can enter the sound of your world, using your own soundscape, any time you're writing. It's a time-consuming adventure, mind, so only choose this option if you're looking to fritter away several hours!
  
• Write a sound description of your place: a good ten minutes' or so writing, so you really stretch your writing legs with it, giving us everything in terms of the sounds it makes and exploring your sound vocabulary.

Have fun!

The skills you're developing

Part of the joy of stories, for both readers and writers, is imagining ourselves into different places and times. That's especially true of the genres I listed: the sense of place is central to the story. That full-body immersion works best when you give readers all the details their bodies need: not just the sights, but the sounds, smells, tastes, and sensations. It's easy to forget the non-visual senses when we're writing, though. With sounds, we're often pleased if we can muster up one or two to mention. Soundscapes are a wonderful way to remind ourselves just how rich and varied the landscape of sound actually is and how many different things we're hearing at any one time.

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Want more Writing Skills? As a member of The Writers' Greenhouse Community, you'll get a new Writing Skill every week: quick fun activities to develop your writing across plot, character, description, style, genres, and poems.

Plus you'll get expert advice on tap, a friendly supportive writing community, and help sending your writing out.

Find out more and join here.  

Writing Skill: The Market

Markets and their ilk are a lovely moment in writing: a rich opportunity for description and world-building, filled with sensory potential. The only hitch is that as you cheerfully launch your character into this wealth of stuff, you suddenly have to invent all the stuff! Your writing flow suddenly grinds to a halt as you start googling "types of fish" or "ornamental stuff" or "tropical fruit"... Enter Reverse Dictionary.

Reverse Dictionary gives you words that use a word or phrase in their definition. For example, if you look up "ornamental", you won't get synonyms (decorative, showy, etc) but a list of ornamental things: lampshades, figurines, beading, doilies, etc. It also works well with phrases, eg "tropical fruit" brings up heaps of names of tropical fruit. If you struggle to get the exact slew of results you're after, think of one example of what you want (eg "figurine") and put that into an actual dictionary, eg dictionary.com. Look at the definition for a key word, then plug that into the Reverse Dictionary.

This Writing Skill gives you a lovely way to play with this, and hugely enrich your writing. I suggest you spend 10–20 minutes on it, whichever suits. Grab your notebook, pen, and a cuppa, curl up somewhere comfy, and have fun!

• If you’re using this Skill as your starting point, pick any time or place setting you like – historical, contemporary, your country, another country, somewhere completely imaginary, whatever appeals.
• If you’re using your own story, use your own time and place setting, or your own imaginary world.

Spend a few minutes brainstorming the categories of things they'll sell there. For my imaginary world, that's fish, fruit and veg, fowl, spices, and assorted snacks. For a realist story in my home town, I'd also have clothes stalls, knickknacks, second-hand books, and so forth.

Next, spend the rest of the time using Reverse Dictionary to look up types of that thing, and jotting down the examples which catch your eye.

That's it! A brief but thorough trial-run of the Reverse Dictionary, and a much expanded sense of a story's world. To take it further, launch into some writing: have a character enter the market and encounter all these stalls and things, including as many senses as you can.

The skills you're developing

Specificity: Moving from generalities and categories (eg ornaments) to specific detail creates a much richer sense of your story: the details are what bring it alive for the reader.

Sensory description: Markets are inherently multisensory: visually busy, noisy, and an opportunity to include tastes and smells, which are often harder to weave in. This makes the story far more immersive to read.

World-building: Markets are a fantastic chance to showcase your story's world in all its richness and idiosyncrasy, especially if it's a world your readers are unfamiliar with: a foreign country; a historical setting; an imaginary fantasy or science-fiction world. Spending time delving into everything it contains will also enrich your world beyond the market square: next time someone's munching on street-food, buying another character a present, or preparing dinner, you have a much wider repertoire to draw on.

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Want more Writing Skills? As a member of The Writers' Greenhouse Community, you'll get a new Writing Skill every week: quick fun activities to develop your writing across plot, character, description, style, genres, and poems.

Plus you'll get expert advice on tap, a friendly supportive writing community, and help sending your writing out.

Find out more and join here.  

Writing Habits Are Like Punting

It’s so normal, when we want to commit to new writing habits, to draw up a Dramatic New Plan and throw all our strength behind it. Especially at those new-start times of year: the September energy of a fresh academic year; the 1 January resolutions. You push hard. And then, come November or February, you find the New Plan’s already in tatters and you start berating yourself: Am I just lazy? Not committed? I need to try harder. Be better!

It’s normal. That’s what happens with those Big Pushes. And it doesn’t have to be like that. So take a lesson from punting.

That’s me punting with two of my cousins. A strapping lad of 17 and my ex-army cousin who climbs mountains for fun on the weekends. Punting’s basically pushing the punt along with a pole and they are way stronger than me. They should be shooting ahead. But I can leave them in my wake, punting.

They thrust the pole down, push with all their (considerable) might, hurtle the punt forward – diagonally, towards the bank. They hoik the pole back up – into the branches above. They stab it back into the river bed – now the punt’s veering into the brambles, the passengers frantically trying to flatten themselves. So the strong cousins jerk the pole round, biceps bulging to correct – but a punt is a long flat thing, and it carries on turning, so now they’re the ones heading into the brambles. They jam the pole down and push hard: there’s mud at the edges, which has gripped the pole. Punt shoots away, pole stays put, punter falls with an almighty splash in between.

Big Pushes in writing are the same. It’s not that you lack strength, energy, commitment – but if you use it like that, that’s how you end up in the water.

This is how you punt. Hold the pole out the water, vertical, and let it slip through your hands till it reaches the bottom. Gently, steadily, hand over hand, press the pole downwards behind you. You’re building gradual momentum, not trying to go from still to zooming. And if you’ve hit a pebble or rock, so it’s pushing at slightly the wrong angle, you notice, so you can lift and shift the pole before you’ve thrown your full force at it. One pebble doesn’t become a bramble incident. Or if you’ve hit mud, you can feel it, and twist the pole before you’ve jammed it too deep. One patch of clay riverbed doesn’t become a huge splash.

When your hands are down at your sides, don’t yank the pole up for another thrust: keep it in the water behind you, as much of it in the water as possible. Now it’s your rudder. If you pushed off at a slight angle, gently correct: the smallest of changes, because it’ll steadily keep going. Whatever you do keeps happening, so you just do a little, and watch. That ruddering is more important than how you pushed off.

Take a sip of cava as you float under the tree. Put your glass back at your feet. Lift the pole, hand over hand; hold the pole out the water, vertical, and let it slip through your hands… Each time, you refine how straight you push, and each time, you trail your long rudder, minutely correcting. And you glide smoothly, effortlessly, down the river.

And that’s how to turn your writing habits into a smooth effortless glide, too. It might feel like a Big Push will get you places faster, but only into the brambles and the water. Build momentum gradually, not in one Dramatic New Plan. Add to it bit by bit and push gently, observing the effects. Course-correct in small incremental changes, paying as much attention to that as you do to pushing. Pause as the branches float overhead – those tricky times, when any realistic friend would say “Mate, take a break” – knowing it’s safe to stop for a bit and your momentum continues. Refine, little by little, over time. And you’ll glide.

If you want to remake your writing habits like this in the year ahead, the Writers’ Greenhouse Community will help you refine them, course-correct, and steadily build momentum, till it really is that smooth effortless glide. Click here to find out how to join. And if you’re already a member, sign in here to start with your Trellising module and the next Writing Boost.

How Obvious Should I Make It?

In any kind of fiction writing, we need to manage our secrets. We want to hide the ending so it's a surprise, not a slow-moving inevitable train – but not such a surprise that the reader feels cheated. We want to tuck in foreshadowing, but not give the game away completely – or hide the hints so well that no-one even notices them. 

So how do we find the balance between making things glaringly obvious or playing our cards so close to our chests that the story doesn't work? How do you get it right for everyone? It can feel impossible. And it is impossible – if you think of "everyone" as a single monolithic Reader, for whom you want it to work identically.

Instead, write for three different kinds of readers: Smug Readers, Absorbed Readers, and Happy Lil Passengers On A Train.

Smug Readers

Smug Readers are going to guess everything. They're going to spot every hint, remember every clue, smirk knowingly at every red herring, and predict the ending accurately.

And they'll be pleased about being right! It feels like solving a wordle, a crossword, a sudoku. They'll feel proud, satisfied, and yes, very smug. Quite deservedly so.

Let them guess. Give them the means to guess. If you hide things so well that you confound your smug readers, they'll be disappointed, not impressed. And you'll completely lose your…

Absorbed Readers

Absorbed Readers will spot some things, but not everything. They're absorbed, so they're paying close attention, but they're also absorbed in the story, not treating it as a guessing game. They'll read the foreshadowing and remember it, but they won't always put two and two together. They might have vague suspicions, but no more. Then, when they reach the reveal, they'll exclaim "Ohhhhhh! So that's why… Yes, I thought there was something odd about that!" 

They'll be thrilled at having been so cunningly confounded, and satisfied that it all hangs together. And when they reread it, they'll sing your praises at how clever you were, setting it all up.

So put the foreshadowing, the hints, the clues, where they'll see them – actually there, on the page. In words, not in a cryptic form that needs a Brain of Britain contestant to work it out. But put it somewhere that they won't spot it immediately – in the middle of a paragraph, for instance, or in the midst of some exciting action.

It's easy to feel like these are our ideal readers. But you also need to cater for your…

Happy Lil Passengers On A Train

Happy Lil Passengers On A Train are cheerfully immersed in the story. They're not trying to predict the direction – they're on a train! They're staring out the window while the story-scenery flows by, taking every red herring at face value, missing every scrap of foreshadowing, not making a single guess. And when they reach the reveal, they. Are. Astounded. Amazing! Incredible!

Happy Lil Passengers On A Train don’t want to be guessing anything: doing that means stepping outside the story, which means losing the lovely total immersion. They want to be taken on a wonderful journey and reach their astonishing destination. And then they will be very, very happy.

This means that everything, ultimately, has to be spelt out. At the point where your Smug Readers have already guessed a while back, and your Absorbed Readers have just gasped at the reveal – at the point where you think any reasonable reader should know this, how can they not, ffs – at the point where you need them to know this for the next bit of the story to work – you need to make a Train Announcement for the Happy Lil Passengers. Spell it out. In actual words. State it clearly where it's obvious: at the end or beginning of a scene, even at the end or beginning of a chapter, so no-one can miss it. And then, like a Train Announcement, say it again.

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Instead of writing for one kind of reader, you're writing for three kinds, in turn. First come the clues and hints, which the Smug Reader will spot. Make sure they're there, on the page, so the Smug Reader has a chance: they want to guess right! Then a bit later comes the goose-pimpling moment of dawning realisation, when the Absorbed Reader goes "Ohhhh… Oh, I bet…!" And then, when the reveal is DONE and the story is moving on to the next stage, or ending, a Train Announcement for your Happy Lil Passengers, with a bing-bong at the start, which they absolutely can't miss.

Some people are predisposed to be one or another kind of reader, but we can all be all of them, at different points. Even the smuggest reader, curled up with flu and a book, turns into a Happy Lil Passenger On A Train. As long as you're catering for all three in turn, every reader, whoever they are right then, can enjoy it.

If you want to learn more about managing your story's secrets, look to the genres that specialise in secrets: mysteries, crime and detective fiction, and thrillers.  All stories have secrets, but for those genres, it's their stock in trade, so they have a wealth to teach us about it.

And if you want to dive deeper into those genres and what they can teach us about managing secrets, the Unravelling Secrets workshop is on Saturday 16 August 2025 in Oxford: a one-day workshop on how to balance suspense, secrets, and clues, using your own story or a practice story. Click here for the workshop details and to book your place.

A Weekend In Oxford

If you're coming to a Summer of Writing workshop from outside Oxford, and want to make a weekend of it, here are my favourite suggestions for the perfect Oxford weekend. Obviously Oxford has heaps of things to do and a dozen dozen guidebooks, so this isn't remotely comprehensive: it's my idiosyncratic selection of the favourite places I'd take people, having lived here since 2002. Curated, of course, around your writing workshop on Saturday!

Accommodation

Absolutely book yourself a room in one of Oxford's gorgeous colleges, through University Bookings. The students are away so the rooms are available to book, and you get to roam through the college's gorgeous grounds as well, for the complete Oxfordian experience. Most of them do breakfast included, served in the college dining hall or buttery. The prices vary wildly, according to college and whim; this year they seem to start at £70 a night. Also ask if you're allowed to leave your luggage in the porter's lodge after you've checked out, so you can explore luggage-free on Sunday.

Once that's booked for Friday and Saturday night, your itinerary begins!

Friday evening 

Your college (for the weekend) 

Check into your college room and have a wander around the quads and grounds of your chosen college, have a look in its chapel and dining hall, make sure to look up regularly for gargoyle-spotting, fill yer boots with Dark Academia inspiration, etc. Don't walk on the grass, though. Even students aren't allowed to, except during games of croquet.

Friday dinner 

For dinner, take a walk into Jericho, past Oxford University Press on Walton Street, largest university press in the world. (Cambridge will say theirs is older. Ours is bigger. And the second-oldest in the world.) And head to either of these restaurants:

• The Standard on Walton Street: best Indian food in Oxford. It's been running since 1972, and for many years had heavily tapestried high seating and an absolute veil of thick lace covering the huge front window. In 2009, the two sons took over from the father, transformed the interior into its lovely open new look, and also updated the cooking style to a fresher, more modern vibe. Kawsar is the brother who works the front of house and he's absolutely lovely.
• The Gardener's Arms on Plantation Road (not the one on North Parade!): beautiful bookish pub with a cheerful garden at the back, serving amazing vegetarian pub food. Their veggie burgers are absolutely stand-out. It's run by Silk, who's also absolutely lovely. (When you're standing at the bar, turn and look in the corner to your right behind you: that's a painting of Silk looking all steampunk in flying gear. Now you can recognise him.)

After dinner 

After dinner, if you want to explore a bit more before bed and get a final nightcap, stroll back into town along the Woodstock Road / St Giles, past the Eagle and Child pub where Tolkien and CS Lewis held their writing group (currently closed until they can fix up the building), past Martyr's Memorial, and turn left onto Broad Street. 

Wander between the colleges, over the brick cross where the martyrs actually died (try not to venerate the nearby manhole instead by mistake, as many groups of tourists do), past assorted bookshops and museums (don't worry, they're on Sunday's list), past the Bodleian Library. Turn right onto Catte Street and almost immediately left onto Queen's Lane, and walk under the Bridge of Sighs. (Cambridge and Venice have one of those each too. Ours is better. Obvs.) Various stories compete to explain its name, mostly apocryphal, so feel free to make up your own.

Immediately after you pass under the Bridge of Sighs, turn left down the little alleway. Trust me. Keep following it, as it twists and leads you past bins, and you'll get to the Turf Tavern: a huge and sprawling tavern dating back to 1381, which proudly boasts its history on assorted chalkboards, patio / outside space on both sides of it, and it nestles up against a portion of the old city wall.

Head back to your college to fall asleep to the sound of Oxford's many, many bells. If you hear bells ringing five minutes after all the others, that's Christ Church's Great Tom: they don't hold with this newfangled modern time, brought in with those newfangled "railways" and their need for consistent "timetables", and proudly stick to Oxford time.

Saturday

Breakfast & packed lunch 

It's workshop day! Breakfast in your college if they do breakfast. You'll want a packed lunch for your workshop and I always suggest something non-carby for writing days, so head to Taylors Oxford on 1 Woodstock Road to pick up one of their delicious customisable salads. (You can pop it in the fridge at mine when you arrive.) If your college doesn't do breakfast, you can also breakfast at Taylors, with a pastry and coffee. NB: There are two Taylors right next to each other across the road from each other. If you're facing them, you want the one on the right.

Off to your workshop! 

Then walk up Woodstock Road to outside the Radcliffe Observatory, where you can catch the #6 bus to get to mine. (Bus stop map-pin.) You're getting off at the top of Woodstock Road, at the First Turn Lane stop (map-pin), and you have a map in the email I'll have sent you.

The 9:36 am bus will get you to First Turn Lane at 9:44, 3-4 mins walk from mine. If you get anxious about bus times and prefer to arrive early, you can get the 9:16 am bus, which reaches your stop at 9:24, and pass any extra time peacefully overlooking the canal (map-pin) three minutes' walk from the workshop. You're welcome to arrive at mine from 9:45 am.

Your workshop starts! (At 10 am sharp. Unlike Christ Church, I don't keep Oxford time.) I'll also give you a little map of the rivers, canals, and woods around mine, so you can have a refreshing wander at lunchtime if you want.

After the workshop finishes at 4pm, we usually go to The Plough pub on the green, three minutes' walk from the house, to toast your success and socialise a bit more.

A good long walk & dinner

I'm now making the bold assumption that you want a good long walk, while all the excitement and new info from the workshop percolates, and now that the heat of the day has eased a little. This is an hour's walk, if you're going at a steady pace, with another half-hour at the other end.

Walk through Wolvercote village, over the railway bridge with its sweeping view of Port Meadow, all the way through the village and past the Trout pub (that's where young Lyra worked for a bit in Philip Pullman's Book of Dust series), over the bridge, and turn left through the gate onto the meadow by the ruins of Godstow Abbey. (That was built in 1133 and housed Benedectine nuns. It also features in The Book of Dust.) The map I gave you at lunch covers all the way up to Godstow Abbey.

You're now on Port Meadow: a stretch of ancient meadow that has never been built on or even ploughed for at least 4000 years. It's still used as grazing, for cows and horses, and you'll probably pass some of them as you walk. As well as heaps of swans, geese, etc. Stroll south alongside the river, soaking in the beauty and the sight of Oxford's spires in the distance, for about half an hour, till you find a gate in front of you with another gate to the right, here (map-pin): that's the gate leading to The Perch Pub. And the bit of riverbank you're standing on is pretty much where Alice Liddell and Lewis Carroll had the picnic that led to him writing Alice in Wonderland.

Go through the gate and follow the winding path up to the Perch, with its huge beautiful garden and protected willow trees. Their food's fantastic (the head chef's called Craig, btw) but they're definitely on the pricier side, so if you want a slap-up dinner, have your dinner there (their pies are especially good), otherwise just stop for a coffee or a drink in the gorgeous garden, while you jot down all the interesting thoughts you had while walking. Do admire the truly ancient apple tree, carefully fenced round and propped up to support it!

From the Perch, walk back onto the meadow the way you came, and continue on through the rest of the meadow, crossing the Medley Bridge and the Bailey Bridge, then the last stretch of meadow to Walton Well Road. (Those three links are map-pins, to help you find your way.) 

You're now back in Jericho, so if you didn't eat at the Perch, you can head to the Gardener's Arms or The Standard, whichever you didn't try last night. And if you didn't go to the Turf Tavern last night, you could pop in there - or even if you did. There's nothing like going somewhere twice, while you're away, to make you feel like it's already your usual spot! Or if you want a drink somewhere new (and also very old), head to The Bear Inn in the happy chaos of alleys behind the High Street, with its collection of thousands of tie ends started in 1957. (Time was, you could cut the end of your tie off in exchange for a pint.)  It's popular with academics, so if any are still in town in August, you can eavesdrop some fascinatingly odd bits of conversation!

Or simply go back to your college (it's yours, this weekend) and sit on a bench in one of the quads, with your notebook, writing quietly and peacefully, while the bats dart in and out of the ivy and wisteria. 

Sunday

Lots of possibilities here, so pick and choose from the below, for as much as you want to fit in and how much time you need to travel home. 

Brunch / Lunch

The Vaults & Garden Cafe is so beautifully positioned you might worry it's a tourist trap: it's not. The food's fab and good value. I take visitors there and often have May Day breakfast there. If you're breakfasting in your college, save the Vaults for a light lunch; if not, enjoy a good brunch. It's in the vaults of St Mary's University Church, where the uni started as just a shelf of books. Sit outside at the garden tables, with the Radcliffe Camera in the centre of the square made up of St Mary's, the Bodleian Library opposite, All Soul's College to your right, and Brasenose College (my one) to your left. Be quietly staggered by architecture. (And, if you're wearing heels, by cobbles.) Then pick your museumy option!

Museumy Option 1: Science and books

The History of Science Museum on Broad Street is my favourite museum in Oxford, mostly because it has the world's largest collection of astrolabes. It's small but beautiful, in a building that absolutely breathes peace. Don't miss the Lyra exhibition, complete with alethiometer, in the one small basement, and the larger basement with the history of medicine exhibits.

Directly opposite the museum is Blackwells Bookshop, home to The Norringtom Room, featuring three miles of bookshelves. (Not all in one long row, obviously.) The first time I saw it, at 19 years old, I started hyperventilating at the sight of so many books and had to go back outside to calm down. Also another four storeys of books, in this huge and sprawling bookshop, with secondhand books at the very top, and a cafe inside the bookshop.

Museumy Option 2: Natural history, cultures, and greenery 

Stroll up South Parks Road to the Natural History Museum. That's pretty cool, but even better, walk right through the Natural History Museum to the Pitt Rivers Museum at the back. (Yes, the one that Lyra visited. We are very much in favour of Lyra's Oxford!) It's an anthropologial museum, absolutely crammed with stuff - so much so that vast swathes of it are in drawers, with signs inviting you to open them! And very beautifully, everything's organised by purpose, rather than culture or time period, so you'll have a cabinet of all the different ways to make fire, for instance. Brilliant inspiration if you write fantasy! The famous / infamous shrunken heads have finally, respectfully, been removed. Do put a coin into the slot with the weird little clay creatures!

When your head is bursting with thoughts, continue strolling up South Parks Road to University Parks. The northernmost side has a lovely tree-lined avenue, if you're after shade, and then you can wander down that to the pond and the river, and fill your eyes with greenery.

Lunch time?

If you've not had your lunch, this is the moment to head over to the Vaults! 

An afternoon in a punt

(Sensitive crimes and a book of poetry stained with the butter drips from crumpets optional)

From the center of town, wander under the Bridge of Sighs and down Queen's Lane (map-pin link), through its twists and turns round the backs of the colleges. The fourth time you turn, when you're here (map-pin link), you'll see the pavement widen in a little curve to your left. Go stand in that curve, then turn around to see the fairytale spires of All Souls' College rising. If I were with you, I'd tell you that All Souls' has never had a single student.

(Then I'd pause, before admitting it's a Fellows College, which is why.)

Keep on down Queen's Lane, and as always in Oxford, look up lots: gargoyles are eveywhere! You'll emerge on The High, next to Queen's Lane Coffee Shop (oldest coffee shop in the UK, ignore the lies that Grand Cafe opposite tells) and carry on down the High to Magdalen Bridge. Just before you cross the Bridge, veer to the left to go down to Magdalen Bridge Boathouse, to rent a punt. (If you know you're definitely going to punt, and are prepared to commit to a time, book a punt beforehand, so you don't have to stand in the queue - it can get very long.) 

Then spend a glorious hour or two punting along the river past the Oxford Botanical Gardens (oldest botanical gardens in the UK) and Christ Church Meadow, through river scents and tree shade, all Oxford's spires and spikes showing to their best advantage, with occasional bells. So that when you do, finally, leave Oxford to head home, your eyes, mind, and soul are absolutely swimming with peace and joy.

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If you haven't booked a Summer of Writing workshop yet, there are still a few places on Planning a Novel and Unravelling Secrets, and you can put your name down for a waiting-list place on The Art of Short Stories, Living Characters, and Non-Human Characters. See all the details and book here.

Summer Writing Food: Lasting Salads

Fresh crunchy green salad that stays fresh and crunchy, topped with all your favourites.
Gluten-free | Vegan, Veggie, or Omnivore

As always, perfect writing food is quick (either to make or to double up another day's cooking) so it doesn't steal your writing time, low-carb so your writing time isn't sabotaged by sleepiness, and as much a treat as writing itself.

I'm serious about the low-carb thing, for writing time. On the Summer of Writing workshops, the people yawning in the afternoons are always the ones who brought a sandwich for lunch. Top tip: don't bring a sandwich!

Salad is my most frequent writing-day lunch, especially when I'm writing outdoors. It's super easy to make a large salad earlier in the week,  to serve as a side for a couple meals as well, and set some aside for my writing day. The fresh crunchiness is a joy, the toppings are a treat, and no sandwich-sleepiness to pole-axe the afternoon with drooping eyelids. That's me on my writing day in University Parks, exactly ten years ago, with my habitual Greek salad and its little jar of dressing.

To be yummy, though, the salad has to stay crunchy and fresh – so here are the secrets of making lasting salad. By nature, this post is more principles than recipe, but I'll add a recipe at the end for my favourite salad proportions and favourite dressing.

How to keep it fresh

The cardinal rule with keeping green salad fresh is don't put anything wet in it. As soon as the leaves and bits touch wetness, they'll start to slump and it'll lose its crunch within an hour, never mind several days. So that means...

• Dress it when you serve it: I make dressing in jars (which is handy for shaking them up to mix everything) and only dress the salad portions dished up onto our plates. For writing outside the house, I take a tiny jar of dressing with my salad.
• Deseed cucumbers: The seeds are the wettest bit, so without those, the rest of the cucumber doesn't wet the salad leaves so much. To deseed them easily, cut the cucumber in half lengthways, then scrape a spoon down the centre to pull the seeds out. It takes about twenty seconds.
• Don't add chopped tomatoes: They're wet wet wet. Either add chopped tomatoes when you serve it or use whole cherry / baby tomatoes.
• No mushrooms or apple or other wet food: Mushrooms shrivel and go miserable and make everything else sad; apples go brown. Fruit like orange segments are wet, so they're out too. Avocado goes brown almost instantly and is wet.
  
• Keep it tightly sealed in the fridge: Find a tupperware the exact right size, so there's as little extra air as possible in the container. Don't push the salad down to fit it all in though - crushing the leaves will again hasten their softening. If you're making grab-and-go portions like my pic, you can portion it up when you make it.
• Take what you're having out the fridge: Fridge-cold salad is a bit meh, it's nicer if it's allowed to lose that edge of chill. If I'm writing at home, about half an hour before I eat, I take a portion out the fridge - either in its nifty serving container, or I dish some into a bowl and cover it.

With these strategies, a green salad can last very happily in the fridge for four days, without losing its lovely crunch.

You can also vary it by making a large salad base and then changing up the toppings. I often make a large salad base for the week on a Sunday or Monday night, with a base of romaine lettuce, deseeded cucumber, halved black olives, and red onion. That night we'll add feta and chopped tomatoes to make it a Greek salad, to go with moussaka; the rest often turns into a bacon & blue-cheese salad, for the week. (That's what I was portioning up in the pic at the top.)

What to put in the salad base

What you add is completely up to you, but here are some of the ingredients that are happy living in the fridge chopped up, as part of the salad base:

• salad leaves – I like the crunchier ones, romaine and little gems
• cucumber, deseeded
• spring onion
  
• normal onion, red or white, finely sliced
• red green and yellow peppers, finely sliced
• baby spinach
• sliced raw courgette
• celery
• mange tout
• watercress, rocket, etc 
• small whole tomatoes

Adding toppings

Your salad base is a perfectly respectable green salad all on its own, but for a treat writing lunch, you want some joyous extra bits on top. These are some of my favourites:

• bacon and blue cheese
• bacon and avocado
  
• prosciutto and blue cheese: prosciutto slices are very happy in the freezer and then you can just pull out a few slices when you take the salad out to de-chill. Because they're so thin, they defrost at lightning speed.
  
• Greek salad: feta and olives
• apple and walnuts
• other nuts / seeds sprinkled over
• croutons, because sometimes you want salad to hurt
  

And of course, a beautiful dressing makes a salad sing, so I've got my favourite recipe for that at the bottom.

My habitual "recipe" is below, but really, the principles here are the main thing, and the rest is following your heart and making an effort to treat your writer-self!

Recipe

Serving and times

Prep: 20 mins
Serves: 6-8 lunches depending on toppings

Ingredients

• 1 heart of romaine lettuce, chopped into inch-sized pieces
• 1 cucumber, deseeded (cut it in half lengthways and scrape a spoon down the middle)
• 1 small red onion, chopped into eighths and then sliced. (Shake it in a tupperware to separate the slices.)
• 1 jar black olives, drained and halved
• 300g baby tomatoes, kept whole

PLUS 

• 1 block feta (200g), drained and chopped into cubes 
  OR
• 220g Stilton, chopped into cubes, and 500g bacon, fried to crispy and drained on paper towel

Perfect classic French dressing

• 4 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
• 2 Tbsp lighter oil 
• 2 Tbsp red-wine vinegar
• 2 tsp Dijon mustard
• 2 tsp caster sugar
• 1 garlic clove, very finely grated or crushed to a paste
• Salt and black pepper, to taste

I mash the garlic, sugar, salt, and pepper in the mortar and pestle to really crush the garlic, then add the mustard and mix that well, then scrape it into a jar, add the oils and vinegar, tighten the lid on the jar, and shake it well.

Happy writing and happy salad eating!

Writing Skill: Mystery Place

Writing mysteries is partly about an intense atmospheric sense of place, and partly a complex little puzzle of laying out your clues, reveals, and red herrings so the reader's neither bewildered nor bored, but enthralled, guessing along eagerly. This Writing Skill is a nifty way of playing with both halves, your rich place and mapping out the story's shape.

 The Writing Skills come alive when you play with them, rather than just reading them, so steal yourself 10–20 minutes, grab your pen and notebook / some paper, pour yourself a cuppa, and start creating.

Step 1: The Place 

First off, pick a place you find suitably intriguing or interesting. That can be somewhere you know, or a location from photos, or a random interesting place in the world. If you want ideas, try the first four Place links on the Writers' Links page. The first two let you choose a location by type, then you have lots of pictures of it; the third lists types of places for inspiration; the fourth gives you unusual locations around the world.

Step 2: The "facts" 

Next, write down 20 "facts" about the place, from the banal to the mysterious: some real ones, if you know anything about the place; some made-up ones; anything you randomly come up with. Allow yourself to invent and to add "silly" / "boring" ones. They don't all need to be great facts: that's why you're writing 20. And taking the pressure off lets you be more creative.

Step 3: The story 

Once you've got your list, you're going to select five of them:

• Pick one "fact" as the final piece of information that explains everything.
• Pick one "fact" as the first puzzling thing that your character encounters or discovers.
• Pick three "facts" to go in between, which do ultimately help explain what's going on with this place, but which also seem to point to another answer. Put them in order of increasingly surprising / dramatic / intriguing.

You now have the shape of your mystery story: the first puzzling thing to create the initial mystery; the three layers / plot twists / red herrings to give shape to the middle of the story; and the final reveal. You also have plenty of background on your place, and a good sense of it (possibly some photos too) to write compelling description-as-action-and-atmosphere, as your character explores and starts to uncover the mystery.

You can stop there if you want: you've already practised the techniques of a) brainstorming freely; b) mapping out a story shape according to five pivotal "reveals"; and c) using place to generate the story. If you'd like to carry on, start writing the story from the character first arriving at the place, some atmospheric description, and uncovering the first puzzling thing…

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Want more Writing Skills? As a member of The Writers' Greenhouse Community, you'll get a new Writing Skill every week: quick fun activities to develop your writing across plot, character, description, style, genres, and poems.

Plus you'll get expert advice on tap, a friendly supportive writing community, and help sending your writing out.

Find out more and join here.  

Am I Planning Or Just Procrastinating?

“How do I know if my planning is actually just procrastinating now?”
“Should I stop planning and start writing?”
“Is my planning just a writing-avoidance behaviour?”

I get variations on these questions a lot. So, first off: for those of you who prefer not to plan and just dive in and start writing – go! Be free! You're allowed to do that! You can do the plotty-planning stuff in your redraft stage. Work the way that suits you.

Those of you who like to plan, at least some, before you write: you're allowed to plan. Usually, when someone asks, “Am I planning or just procrastinating?” they do actually know which, in their heart of hearts, but a few fears or anxieties are clouding their clarity:

• “Writing has to mean words on the page.”
• “I have to perfect the plan / world before I can start writing.”
• “I can’t start writing in case I get the words wrong.”

“Writing has to mean words on the page.”

It doesn't. Planning is part of the writing. It doesn’t mean you’re procrastinating: it’s part of the process. Not all parts of writing produce word count. (Read – or reread – Word Count Is Like Paint to set yourself free from the word-count trap.) And actually, everyone plans. Some plan first, then write. Some write, then redraft / plan afterwards.

So ask yourself, honestly, “Am I still busy with the planning or am I just nervous to write prose?” Often, when I discuss this with students, it turns out that they are still busy with the planning; they're just feeling like they “ought to have started already”. So here's a reassuring bit of info: when I start a new novel, whether this was back when I was ghost-writing or now, the first quarter of the time I spend on it is planning. These days, that's often three months of two writing days a week.

It’s fine to plan for as long as you need to. But be wary of thinking that…

“I have to perfect the plan / world before I can start writing.”

You don’t need a perfect plan. In fact, you can’t have a perfect plan: you’ll always learn more about the story, the world, and the characters through writing. Once, I did create a “perfect” plan: with my second ghost-writing novel, I was determined to be more efficient and planned every detail, down to each scene. Writing it was hell: there was nothing left to discover, no creative leaps, just an endless colour-by-number with words. It was also the worst novel I’ve written.

You want to leave yourself room to discover, invent, and have exciting creative leaps and “Aha!” moments in the writing. Those are often richer than what you could’ve consciously planned, because you learn your character / world / story so much more deeply through writing it. And remember, the person writing the story always knows it better than the person who planned it – so the writer gets to change the plan.

Likewise, some conundrums and mysteries are best solved through the writing. Sometimes you need to trust the process and leave things open: “Yes, I'm including the giant octopus. I don't know why, but I'm convinced it’s important.” Sometimes you can't know until the end whether it’s is an important detail or not. You might end up taking the giant octopus out. It might be the whole solution to the end.

Your plan doesn’t need to and can’t be perfect. It just needs to be enough that you can start writing. How detailed that is varies from person to person, so you need to trust yourself to know. In order to trust yourself, you also need to be sure you’re not thinking that…

“I can’t start writing in case I get the words wrong.”

Both things can be true: you can be still busy with the planning and nervous to write prose. Putting words on the page  can be scary, especially if the page is very very clean and you feel like the words you write now are The Words That Will Stay.

If you’re still planning and you’re nervous of the prose, write snippets. When you're planning, sometimes snatches of dialogue or brief bits of scene just come to you, unbidden: grab some fresh paper, and scribble them down while they're coming. Tuck them in a “snippets” folder. It's glorious, reaching that scene and finding your hasty drafts already written. That way you capture it when it's fresh, you know you're not afraid of writing prose because you're doing it, and you're not hurrying yourself past an important stage in your process.

If you honestly think you have finished planning, at least as much as you can for now, and you're just tinkering in case the words come out imperfect: write imperfect words. Write it badly, and fix it later. Honestly, we do that anyway, whether or not we intend to, so we may as well give ourselves the freedom of intending to. Scribble all over that clean clean page, and set about writing, badly, knowing you'll fix it later.

We’re not musicians on stage, trying to get everything right in one performance: we get to work in drafts. Rough out the action and add description later. Or write two pages of description because you need to know what everything looks like, then trim and interweave it later. Chuck down the dialogue and add the action later. Use boring familiar phrases which you’ll switch up for fresh ones later. Write in drafts, in layers. Include octopuses you might take out later.

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Once you feel confident that you’re allowed to keep planning, that you don’t need a perfect plan before you start writing, that you can start writing alongside the planning, and that it’s fine to write imperfect first draft, then you can ask yourself “Am I planning or procrastinating?” And trust your own judgement.

If you want some help managing the strange mysterious process of planning, which can feel like mapping out mist, the Summer of Writing: Planning a Novel workshop will give you hands-on practical strategies, whether you’re starting from scratch or reworking raw draft. It’s in person in Oxford, full day, on Sat 9 August. Details and bookings are here; just 3 places left, so do be quick if you want to join it.

What's the Point of Description?

I’ve had some good teachers – in drawing, singing, running a business. Every time I find a good teacher, it reminds me of the difference between a taught course / curated resources versus just looking things up myself: they teach me the stuff I don’t know I need to know. Stuff I might otherwise ignore, dismiss, eyeroll at, or even actively refute.

Description is that, for most writers. Plot? Character? Dialogue? Everyone’s signing up to learn those. Description? I weave that in alongside the others, because I know you need it. Contemporary novels of all genres average 48% description, but so many people, avid readers of those novels, still believe description bogs things down and isn’t used so much these days.

So here are ten things all that description is doing.

It makes the story immersive. We live in our bodies; we experience the world through sensory information. That’s the info we need to feel like we’re living in the story.

It makes scenes memorable. Place is memory, as I’ve written about before. Do you want the reader to hold onto a particular scene or key information? Describe the place vividly.

It does your world building. Historical fiction, fantasy, science fiction, and travel fiction all hinge on a world that’s not the same as our own familiar environment. Everything you can describe – rooms, floors, food, clothes, scents, colours, plants – is giving information about your story’s world.

It creates mood and atmosphere. You want it darker? You want it creepy? Poignant? Vibrant? Intimate? Your description will create the mood in which you nest your action and dialogue.

It deepens your characterisation. Your character’s home. Their room. The pub they chose to meet in. The clothes they chose to wear, or are all they have. Every titbit of description here is a wealth of character info. Add point-of-view description from another character, and you’ve got a two-fer-one on characterisation.

It creates scene anchors. Are you interweaving story threads? Plaiting in sub-plots? Flashing back to the past then returning to the present? The rich description you seed in is the reader’s anchor for returning to that thread so they remember, quite literally, where they were in that story-thread before.

It creates action. Where your characters are limits or creates what they can do. Whether you’re writing epic fantasy, spicy romance, quiet literary fiction, or an action thriller, the place shapes what they can (or can’t!) do – so we need to know.

It paces your story. Need a beat for the reader to absorb what just happened, and really feel the ramifications? Want to draw out the building tension before The Thing happens – or doesn’t? Description is your pacing.

It’s the silence in dialogue. ‘They were silent for a long time’ doesn’t create a pause for the reader: it’s seven words; we skip right over it. A passage of description allows us to feel the silence, and whatever resonance that has in the scene.

It does your exposition. All that stuff you want to explain to the reader, for them to understand your characters, story, plot, world? A huge swathe of it can be woven in through descriptive detail.

With all that at work, it’s a wonder we can even cap description at 48%! We don’t give it all in one wodge, of course: we weave it in. Bringing the story to rich immersive life.