Few things in life have given me as much joy as the ten years or so that I spent inline skating...
Like a Bat out of Hell
Tag: novels
L’esprit de l’escalier
So you’ve been at this party and some wiseacre has made a smart remark at your expense, but it’s not until you’re out the door and halfway down the stairs that you think of the snappy comeback that would’ve floored the bastard… if only you’d thought of it in time.
The plot folds: Wilkie Collins’ No Name
Wilkie Collins’ No Name kicks off with a plot fold so elegant, so beautifully crafted, that it induces an almost electric jolt of pleasure
By any means necessary
I've tried all sorts of approaches to composing a novel; but it invariably ends up in a chaotic mess...
He’s not a naughty boy, he’s the Messiah!
So here's the trope I'd like to eliminate from Young Adullt fiction: messianic main characters. Fuck 'em.
Avast there, ye swabs!
The whole point about the bad guy is that he thinks he's the good guy. For a great villain, go back to Treasure Island and Long John Silver...
Unpersuaded: a disappointing classic
Last year, on a whim, I decided to revisit Persuasion… and was genuinely taken by surprise: it seemed to me not merely disappointing but actively bad...
Donald Hounam 