Tolkien and 'The Kalevala'
’Do not laugh!’ Tolkien famously wrote in a letter to Milton Waldman ‘But once upon a time (my crest has long since fallen) I had a mind...
Quality of Style
Style is the way in which a writer uses words and other devices right there on the page in front of the reader. Whereas Ideas,...
A Brief Look at Desdemona in 'Othello'
If we accept momentarily that there is a female companion archetype in fiction, as outlined in How Stories Really Work , then it’s worth...
Emotional Commitment
Let’s say that you have a work jam-packed full of powerful ideas, bristling with exciting and recognisable characters, and filled with...
Attractive Power
Whether or not you have good ideas and working characters, the trick underlying everything is to be able to attract readers . This is a...
The Universe That 'Turns'
Of all of C. S. Lewis’s vast contribution to literature and to thought in the Twentieth Century, it is his last book, The Discarded Image...
'Characters' and Your Fiction
There can hardly be a work of fiction without this thing called a ‘character’. But there is a great deal of false and misleading...
The Character of Shakespeare's Richard III
Shakespeare’s Richard the Third is an example of the first kind. Richard is an interesting example of a constructed figure: there is...
