Fear and Darkness in The Karate Kid. (Or, how I learned to look properly at Johnny Lawrence.)

If someone had told my thirteen year old self I’d be writing a blog post (not that there were such things as blogs when I was thirteen!) on the subject of The Karate Kid’s chief antagonist, Johnny Lawrence, I’d have giggled pathetically and pledged eternal allegiance to Daniel LaRusso.

Musings on Point of View in fiction.

It occurred to me the other day, when trying to teach point of view in narrative to an exam class, that the notion of POV can be a bit confusing. Certainly, when I started writing, years ago, I didn’t really consider the importance of maintaining a consistent point of view in a scene, and was […]

Bookends and Cold Turkey

So this week is half term week, and I’m supposed to be stepping away from the computer, remembering I have a family and spending some time with The Husband and The Sprogs. As you can see, that’s going well! I’m generally not very good at Cold Turkey, whether that’s biscuits, booze or books… In all […]

An intimate issue, or, rather, the issue of intimates…

**CAUTION! The following post contains lots of pictures of beautiful people in their pants. And some rather breathless discussion of the notion of sexy underwear. Proceed carefully…** I’m feeling a bit naughty tonight. It’s been raining on and off, and after writing about being in creative stasis, my mind started to wander to other, more, […]

The rise of the ‘Alpha Wave’; is Mr Darcy coming back?

I had an interesting conversation with a friend this week about men. More specifically, fictional men, and what we really want in a made up male character. Now, those of you who are regular readers of this blog will know that I have a bit of a fascination for romantic heroes, but this conversation got […]