The grass is always greener when you’re writing ‘off-topic’.
Poetry is always a stretch for me but, inspired by a great workshop by Ed Wright from The Creative Word Shop, this emerged!
‘When I’m not writing, I’m knitting’
My mind is tangled yarn.
I rip my knitting off its needles.
Wool trails from the bin onto the floor,
where lie the fragments of paper from unfinished drafts,
where the vacuum cleaner can no longer go.
If I leave,
If I close the door,
Will my mind unravel?
(Alison Ferguson, 11 June 2022)
‘And another death at Sea Vista Nursing Home,’ Inspector Bill Taylor said, reaching for the hand sanitiser as he finished up the morning briefing.
Sarah Ryan and her fellow officers began to rise from their scattered seats, giving a perfunctory groan. In these days of COVID-19, one more death in a nursing home — even one that had been so hard hit as Sea Vista — wasn’t news. And besides, thought Sarah, it was just another old person.
‘Sergeant Ryan,’ the Inspector beckoned her over. ‘This one needs a quick look-see.’
Sarah approached only as far as the mandated 1.5 metre mark. She knew how germ-phobic the Inspector was at the best of times. The betting pool was growing that he’d be wearing a full hazmat suit to work by the month’s end.
‘The one at Sea Vista? Why me?’ Sarah tried to make her question sound less of a whine. It wasn’t the risk of catching the virus. It was the smell. ‘I mean, Jack’s free.’ She gestured futilely in the direction of her colleague as he made a speedy exit.
‘As are you,’ said Inspector Bill Taylor, ‘And besides, you need the experience. You haven’t done a possible homicide yet, have you? They’ve got themselves a body in the library. The bloke’s heart probably just gave out. I wouldn’t be bothered usually, let alone now with them all going down like nine-pins,’ the Inspector said, continuing to work the sanitiser into his chafed hands.
At the mention of homicide, Sarah’s rising rebellion stuck somewhere in the region of her throat. She took a deep breath. Her heart was pounding uncomfortably as if her ribs were closing in. Stop being ridiculous, she told herself. It’s just the smell. Come on, it’s not as if you haven’t smelled worse.
It didn’t help.
It wasn’t just the smell. The cold chicken flesh of the hand gripping hers.
‘But the Superintendent’s fielding complaints from some nutter whose mother’s in there,’ he continued. ‘Keeps threatening to go to the press about a serial mercy killer on the loose. But look, don’t go getting ideas, just focus on the body in the library. Take some statements, do the report and keep the media off our backs. You’re good with the oldies. Wasn’t that grandmother of yours in a home?’
The words hung uncomfortably in the air between them.
The fug of soiled sheets. Windows grimed with years of stale air. The rasping laboured rattle of death.
Sarah turned on her heel to go. There was no point in arguing. She’d go in, talk to the manager, have a quick look and be out of there before the day’s end. No need to talk to anyone of the old people. They’d likely all be demented anyway.
‘Oh, one more thing,’ said the Inspector. ‘There’s a no visitor rule. COVID safety and all that. If you need more than a day, then you’ll be there overnight. Pack a bag.’
You know that moment when you think you’ve polished a piece of writing to perfection? Savour it, because the next time you read over it, you’ll wonder how you missed all those clumsy word choices, awkward sentence constructions, and frank errors.
I’ve been immersed in editing two of my ‘works in progress’ over the last few months and have discovered the joys of automated editing tools. These computerised tools use complex algorithms to highlight aspects of your writing which may need attention.
Of course, word processing programs like Word do this to some extent, e.g., underlining questionable grammar and typos in red. But these automated editing tools do much more. For a review of six popular tools (After the Deadline, Autocrit, Grammarly, Hemmingway Editor, ProWritingAid, Word Rake) see: https://thewritelife.com/automatic-editing-tools/. They all offer free trials, and most provide a free version, with the option to upgrade at a cost.
The tool I have been using is Autocrit and it’s teaching me a lot about my writing habits. For example, long paragraphs, repeating words, and too many fillers (most notably, ‘that’). Yes, it does get tedious, but I think the end result is successfully moving from ‘polished’ to ‘burnished’.
As we’ve hunkered down in our separate corona-crypts, social media has been filled with tales of new skills (sour dough, anyone?). My challenge has been to embrace the video-making capabilities of Adobe Premier Rush. Here’s a short (5 minutes) recording of one of my traveler’s tales:
Click here for The Crypt!
Here’s another fascinating rabbit warren to explore in the writing world. I’ve been to a couple of talks this year that have mentioned ekphrasis and I’m starting to get my head around it. It’s traditionally a poetry term and the Poetry Foundation explains it as:
‘… a vivid description of a scene or, more commonly, a work of art. Through the imaginative act of narrating and reflecting on the “action” of a painting or sculpture, the poet may amplify and expand its meaning. A notable example is “Ode on a Grecian Urn”, in which the poet John Keats speculates on the identity of the lovers who appear to dance and play music, simultaneously frozen in time and in perpetual motion.” (Poetry Foundation)
For the latest Live Reading run by the Hunter Writers Centre, we were invited to respond to the artworks of James Drinkwater, showcased by the Newcastle Art Gallery. His vibrant paintings, sculpture and mixed media works prompted 25 writers to read out their ekphrastic responses to an enthusiastic audience. Most readings were poems but I was amongst several people who responded in prose.
The artwork that I responded to was titled ‘Surrender – a self portrait 2019’ and it was listed as a ‘mixed media assemblage’. For copyright reasons, I can’t show you a photo and its picture isn’t shown in the catalogue, but perhaps you’ll be sufficiently intrigued to get along to the exhibition (ends 11 August 2019). On the other hand, the following picture (by Mysticartdesign) is free to use so, while it looks NOTHING like Drinkwater’s artwork, it’ll give you a flavour of where my imagination flew. (Be warned – I may have been reading dystopic fiction!)
The Messenger
Novocastrians, I come with news from the Tableland. I know from your good Leader that I am the first traveller who has made it past the brigands that beset the road over Barrington to reach your coastal commune.
My Leader has sent me to ask — nay, implore — you for your help. He charges me to tell you of our troubles, and seek your aid. He is sure that, once you learn of the situation, you can but send every able-bodied fighter to join the massed army he is raising to fight the Threat.
But I go too fast, forgive me. My need is pressing and, in my agitation, I have failed to undertake those observances as are right and proper for one who stands before the Sacred Offerings. I do so now, in honour of our forebears who fought, man and woman, boy and girl, to drive back those who would try to wrest the last arable land from us. I give thanks to the landmines that guarded our borders; I give thanks to the missiles that sent the planes falling from the sky above; I give thanks to the shells that rained like fire on their ships so that they could not breach our safe harbour. And more than these, I honour the struggle of those who, faced with the choice of the white flag of surrender or the black flag of death, picked up their bloody shields, spears and axes and fought and died so that we, the children of their children, could build anew. I pledge, with all here present, to continue our quest to leave our dying Earth and to look to the stars.
We have all made these observances again and again since we were children and so perhaps we could be forgiven if the words have grown comfortable in the saying. Our forebears’ struggles seem but tales to tell around the fire, now that we have food to roast on the spit and skins to keep the winter chill from our bones. But the threat from the South is real. The ice has reached the shire of Hornsby and the seas themselves start to heave with sludge.
I see you shake your heads. What? You think I exaggerate? Port Macquarie, the last stronghold of the North fell to the Threat barely a Moon span ago. Only the Tableland stands between us and the destruction of all we have fought for.
You keep your eyes fixed between your feet, sir. Perhaps you think that you would do better to defend your own commune rather than risk leaving it undefended? But think of the Sacred Offerings. Think of the lessons it teaches us. Only by uniting will we have sufficient force to successfully hold our ground and complete our quest.
Yes, I swear to you, the Golden Galaxy Voyager is nearing completion. Only one more section is needed. We are nearly to the top of the stairs to the stars. Would you have your children’s children say, as they shiver in their lonely ice caves, ‘if only’?
No. I see it in your eyes. No. A thousand times no. There will be no ‘if only’. We will not wave the white flag of surrender. We will fight, together, for the stars.
There are many wonderful resources that explore the interrelationship between character development in writing and plot/structure. For example, in his video essays on ‘Anatomy of Chaos’, Adam Skelter suggests that the character’s emotional state (positive or negative) as they enter the scene should have changed through the scene so that their emotional state is substantially different. The way in which that change occurs is driven by the choices they make (e.g. due to external events, internal worldview, their goal), i.e. driven by their character.
In my writing group, we were given the challenge of writing a scene in which the character undergoes a significant change (change being the plot driver). So, just for fun, here’s my response to the exercise.
The Library
The library was quiet: too quiet, for Elsie’s liking. She enjoyed the noise of the children at the story-telling group and the chatter of the book club ladies as she moved about, shelving books. But now it was seven o’clock and she was the staff member tasked with the responsibility of locking up.
She fingered the keys nervously in her pocket.
‘First time for everything,’ Mrs Grimes had said. ‘Time you took some responsibility.’
It was ridiculous to fear undertaking such a mundane task. But now, as she turned out each bank of overhead lights, moving her way back through the library, she found she was holding her breath. She scurried down the darkening avenues of shelving.
Only one more bank to do — but it was a two-way switch, one at top of the stairs to the stacks, its twin at the bottom in the gloom.
She clutched the keys tightly, screwing up her courage. One step and then the next. Could she just leave that one? No one would notice.
But she knew she must. Mrs Grimes would know. The woman had all-seeing eyes that spotted broken spines and turned-down page corners before the reader had even pushed their book down the return chute.
She snaked her hand around the door groping for the top switch.
But the light was already off.
Relief flooded her. She didn’t have to go down those stairs.
She began to withdraw her hand but found she couldn’t. Cold bony fingers gripped her wrist, drawing her into the musty void.
Her screams had only just begun.
This time last year, the NSW Department of Family and Community Services (in concert with the Fellowship of Australian Writers, NSW) had declared ‘positive ageing‘ to be the theme for their 2018 Seniors Card Short Story Competition. As a FAWNSW member and a card-carrying Senior, I gave it a shot, and the following story made the ‘Top 100’ list and went into their 2018 anthology (available in hard copy from NSW local libraries, or you can download it in pdf from here).
The Upside of Funerals (a short story)
Ignoring Mitch’s quick flinch, Sarah pressed her powdered cheek against his. ‘So sad it’s taken an occasion such as this to see you again.’
It was nice to see that my old friends had stayed true to their roots. Sarah’s makeup had always been immaculate, even in those days of kaftans and sandals. Back then, Mitch’s diatribes on the bullshit pretensions of the socially mobile had been legendary. Today, however, he merely smiled thinly, restraining himself.
They stood in the rose garden of the crematorium grounds, looking at the other mourners as they assembled. Each of the new arrivals tried to disguise their shock as each recognised another here and there, through the veil of years masking their old friends’ faces. There wasn’t to be a funeral ceremony but, after scattering the ashes, there would be a wake in the pub nearby. Later, there’d be plenty of time for them to catch up. Now, greetings were shared guiltily, as if it were disrespectful given the occasion.
Mitch looked like he’d been uncertain what to wear for a non-funeral. Being middle-aged hadn’t stopped him from wearing jeans, but he’d selected his black ones and thrown on a dark brown leather jacket. It looked like the same one I’d clutched as his pillion passenger along icy winter roads when we were young and foolish. I never expected Mitch to make it past twenty, yet there he was, blinking in the sunlight, as if surprised to find himself still here.
Sarah’s ex-husband was wearing a sharp suit, the backs of his trouser legs shiny with wear. Paul had been her high-school sweetheart and their romance survived their university years, only to falter with the arrival of children. By the look of his suit, Paul had come out the worst from their divorce settlement.
It was forty or more years since I’d seen any of them. There was Jack, with his new partner. The thin brittle wife I’d known had been replaced years before. The drunken intimacy of a night best forgotten lay between us. And there was Geoff, his bulk looming even larger, shuffling about, his characteristic gait now age-appropriate. And Lauren, affecting imperturbability as always, intoned the eulogy that I didn’t want to hear. At least Cathy seemed to be enjoying herself. She surveyed the small group, her ice-sharp eyes noting all and her lips curling back with knowing appreciation of the absurdity of it all.
Mitch opened the tightly-sealed urn and tipped it through the thorns onto the petalled rose bed.
The smell was disconcertingly redolent of a barbeque. It made me think of that time we’d piled into the Kombie and headed out to the farmhouse of a friend of someone who none of us knew. We’d sat through the night drinking cheap flagon wine and smoking weed till dawn greyed the magic of the night into ash.
Here, surrounded by manicured lawns, there was something in the way they stood together, thinking about our fragile short lives that made sense of the daily struggle. The sound of soft guitar filtered amongst us. Mitch had tied his hair back, and begun to pick out sad notes on his acoustic guitar. It was good to hear his music again.
When he stopped, there were the sounds of throats being cleared and noses blown.
‘Coming to the pub?’ Paul asked Sarah.
She looked grateful to be asked.
‘You look like you could do with a drop of something,’ Geoff said, giving Lauren a bear hug.
He was probably avoiding commenting on her eulogy but she looked like the embrace was enough.
I watched them begin to leave, some headed to the pub, others back to their busy lives.
My ashes settled into the earth.
They, each a fragment of a once-shared friendship, were now scattering again into the air, swirling together for a moment in configurations of goodbyes, as if reluctant yet pleased in the end to leave.
I could not follow, but it had been good to see them all for one last time.
They each hoped to see one another again, yet not on an occasion such as this.
THE END
_____________
Hope you liked it! And if you’re feeling inspired to write then, the Department of Family and Community Services has recently announced the 2019 theme: ‘Love your Life’. They’re a relentlessly cheerful bunch, aren’t they?)
See https://fawnsw.org.au/seniors-card-short-story-competition-2019/ for further information: Closing date 22 May, 2019.
I blame book clubs. If you belong to a library-run book club, you may have noticed a predilection for your reading list to comprise novels with older protagonists. The age range for ‘older’ can be anything from 50 to 80 or more, which is frightening from wherever you are standing on the timeline. These characters are considered remarkable by the miracle of being both older and yet interested and active participants in the world around them. The protagonists are (pick as many as apply):
And, almost universally,
This is not to say that such books don’t make an entertaining read. They are a pleasant way to spend an effortless afternoon. Amongst my fellow book club members, the consensus ratings of these books were 3/5. Such books are usually well-written and well-edited to achieve that magic page turning quality. However, it’s the underlying characterisation of age that strikes me as open to question.
Here’s a summary of 2018’s teeth-gritting reading, including their publishers’ blurbs (in no particular order):
Hester and Harriet by Hilary Spiers (2015, Allen & Unwin) – genre mystery/’domestic fiction’
‘Hold on to your tea cups – you’re about to fall head over heels for Hester and Harriet, whose quiet and ordered Christmas celebrations are turned upside down with the arrival of their runaway teenage nephew and a young refugee woman and her baby.’
It wasn’t until I was about half-way into this book that I realised the ‘elderly’ sisters were in their early 60s.
The Fence by Meredith Jaffe (2016, Macmillan)
‘Gwen Hill has lived on Green Valley Avenue all her adult life. Here she brought her babies home, nurtured her garden and shared life’s ups and downs with her best friend and neighbour, Babs. So when Babs dies and the house next door is sold, Gwen wonders how the new family will settle into the quiet life of this cosy community. …Soon the neighbours are in an escalating battle that becomes about more than just council approvals, and boundaries aren’t the only things at stake.’
Jaffe teeters between a savage and insightful recognition of the realities of ageing (for example, the care of a dementing husband) and satirical farce as events compound as the older characters behave in increasingly irrational ways.
Lost & Found by Brooke Davis (2015, Hachette)
‘At seven years old, Millie Bird realises that everything is dying around her. She wasn’t to know that after she had recorded twenty-seven assorted creatures in her Book of Dead Things her dad would be a Dead Thing, too. Agatha Pantha is eighty-two and has not left her house since her husband died. She sits behind her front window, hidden by the curtains and ivy, and shouts at passers-by, roaring her anger at complete strangers. Until the day Agatha spies a young girl across the street. Karl the Touch Typist is eighty-seven when his son kisses him on the cheek before leaving him at the nursing home. As he watches his son leave, Karl has a moment of clarity. He escapes the home and takes off in search of something different. Three lost people needing to be found. But they don’t know it yet. Millie, Agatha and Karl are about to break the rules and discover what living is all about.’
This book distinguishes itself from the others by attempting to embrace the sexuality of the older person. However, when Agatha and Karl fall to their knees and make passionate love in the sandy desert, our book club members were unanimous in shrieking: not on the ground!!
The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree by Susan Wittig Albert (2010, Berkley)
‘The good old ladies of Darling, Alabama, are determined to keep their town beautiful. The Darling Dahlias garden club is off to a good start until rumors of trouble at a bank, an escaped convict, and a ghost digging around their tree surface. If anyone can get to the root of these mysteries, it’s the Darling Dahlias.’
Be warned – it’s a series.
This tendency to view older people as ‘cute’ or ‘dear things’ is the reverse side to the more serious ageist coin where older people are absent, invisible, or fragile/disabled/unwell/burdensome. There has been academic scholarship and debate exploring the perpetuation of ageist stereotypes in literature that is highly relevant to the dark side of this issue. I’d suggest that the lighter side is potentially just as damaging.
Looking at the novels I have endured this year in my book club, I have developed a maxim:
“The younger the author, the quainter the older protagonist.”
The portrayal of older protagonists by older authors is strikingly different. For example, this year we also read 86-year-old John Le Carré’s brilliant return to the world of Smiley and Guillam, ‘A Legacy of Spies (2018, Penguin).
Peter Guillam may be getting hard-of-hearing and he’s not above exploiting perceptions of failing aged memory, but he remains as sharp as his mentor.
If I’m fortunate enough to live as long as Le Carré, I’d love to read the novels that quaint-ifiers write in twenty or more years’ time and see if their characterisation of their protagonists has changed.
Like many aspiring writers, I’ve been busily entering my writing into competitions over the last couple of years. There are pros and cons, of course, with some arguing that it’s a good way to build your reputation as a writer (if you win) and to develop your skills (even if you don’t). While I agree with both these arguments, for me there are even more practical reasons to enter.
The focus of a particular competition allows me to minimise the distractions of another idea or another story. Such distractions look much easier to write at the very same moment that the work in-hand starts getting harder. With the competition in sight, I can tell myself ‘later’.
There’s nothing like a deadline to make you finish something. Inevitably, I can see ways to improve what I’ve written in the minutes, hours, days after submitting it.However, then I console myself with the thought that just means it’ll be available for revision on another occasion.
And, drum roll . . .
In 2017, I submitted work to two local competitions without success. But in 2018, I ramped up my productivity and submitted to five national competitions and one international competition.
One of these, the Seniors Card Short Story Competition, doesn’t declare a winner, but they do publish the top 100 in book—and in 2018,my story ‘The Upside of Funerals’ made it into the book. As a government-sponsored competition, they make a lovely fuss so, with the other senior writers, I got to have lunch at NSW Parliament House in Sydney, listen to speeches and have my hand shaken with our local MP. The book, Seniors’ Stories Volume 4, will be available in hard copy in libraries through NSW and online.
I also made it onto the Shortlist for the Scarlet Stiletto Awards for 2018. This is an exceptionally entertaining competition run by Sisters In Crime, to encourage and promote women crime writers. They also hosted a stellar Awards night in Melbourne at the Thornbury Theatre at which I received a ‘Special Commendation’ certificate for my story ‘Fragments of Meaning’. The nine top Award winners’ stories are available in ebook, ‘Scarlet Stiletto: The Tenth Cut’, from Clandestine Press.
It was a great way to finish the year and an inspiration to start thinking about what ‘crimes’ I can commit to paper next year!
The issues around structure are anathema for some writers and an obsession for others. I’ve written in this blog before (March, 2017) about how people who write ‘by the seat of their pants’ (pantsers) often see structure as a straitjacket, constraining the flow of ideas and creative development. People who prepare detailed plot outlines and character arcs (planners) see structure as a way to corral and harness their stampeding ideas. However, planners can find that the exhaustive world-building and development of character background stories can take years (I’m looking at you, George R.R. Martin) and run the risk of the creative spark fizzling out before they pen their first paragraph. On the other hand, for pantsers, the upside of understanding structure is that it can provide an invaluable diagnostic tool when revising that first unwieldy draft.
By nature, I’m a planner but I treasure those moments of flow when the story and the characters take over and write themselves. However, most of all, I love revising (yes, strange, I know). That hankering to revise is often what motivates me to push past my writer’s blocks since, without text, there’s no diagnostic problem-solving. When getting that first draft out, one of my frustrations is that my default structure is ‘And then … and then … and then’, which makes for dull reading. To try move past this, I’ve been reading a range of books about writing structure that are often recommended by other writers.
The following books are interesting and inspiring, so I’ve given a brief snapshot review of each of them.
Brooks, L. (2011). Story engineering. Writers’ Digest Books.
The central messages in this book relate to what Brooks describes as the ‘Six Core Competencies of Successful Storytelling’.
Interestingly, Brooks suggests that there is no particular order in which you might work on each aspect of the story. However, when it comes to structure, knowing something about each of the other aspects helps ‘engineer’ your way through each pivotal plot point and the key stages of set-up, response, attack and resolution.
Larry Brooks is a successful author who is very experienced in running masterclasses on writing. He also hosts a useful website http://storyfix.com/ which is full of information and resources. ‘Story Engineering’ is very accessible. The experience of reading each chapter is like doing a mini-workshop. As I read, my mind was flooded with ideas about work-in-progress. For a taster, you might enjoy a video interview with him that is available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGq84WOQfqM
McKee, R. (2010). Story: Style, structure, substance, and the principles of screenwriting. Harper Collins.
McKee’s book first came out in 1997 and is quoted by just about all the other authors who followed him into this topic. The information and ideas have a wide application beyond screenplay writing. There is an extended interview with McKee on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_s8wIOMAU0 .
Pierre, D.B.C. (2016). Release the bats: Writing your way out of it. Faber & Faber.
Punchy and inspiring, Pierre urges us to ‘write in a fever, rewrite in a cardigan‘. Pierre is a highly successful satirical novelist (Man Booker prize winner). His book is more memoir than a writing manual, but his incisive wit skewers many of the myths about writing. In essence, this book is a call to action—just write! There is a serious (though lengthy) interview with him on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYt-KCLtnU4 , and some lighter moments at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtqNwhMlcG4 .
Truby, J. (2008). The anatomy of story: 22 steps to becoming a master storyteller. Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
Truby’s book is, paradoxically, formulaic as well as subversive. Truby is, like Brooks (above), an experienced workshop provider and so the book leads you through 22 specific steps to developing your story. However, at the same time, Truby explodes the idea of the traditional three-act structure and explores multiple examples from film and literature to show how master storytellers exploit or defy traditional story structures to surprise and intrigue. Truby emphasises how structure is intrinsically driven by the themes and characters.
The book is very easy to read and highly entertaining because of the frequent use of familiar examples. I found myself mapping out ways that I could radically alter the way I had conceptualised my work-in-progress as I read it. For a short taster, see the YouTube clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5-9cOZps44 .
Yorke, J. (2014). Into the woods: How stories work and why we tell them. Penguin.
John Yorke has a wealth of experience in British television (BBC) and writes insightfully about how structure works and why it warrants study beyond the ‘how to’ approach. Like Truby (above), he integrates examples from many familiar stories from literature, television and film into his discussion of what works and why. Yorke provides a fascinating analysis of the Russian-doll nature of story structure. Within the overarching story structure, there is a nested structure of each act, and within each act there is a structure within each scene, and within each scene there is a micro-structure. In particular, there is a mirroring of scenes between the first and last acts that brings the story to a satisfying resolution. One of the examples he provides of this will be familiar to those who enjoyed the film, Strictly Ballroom.
(from Yorke, 2014, ch.10)
First Act
Scott dances his own steps selfishly.
He refuses to dance with Fran.
He chooses to dance with Fran.
(other intervening Acts)
Last Act
He chooses to dance with Fran.
He dances with Fran.
He dances with Fran to the rhythm of his own heart.
To get an idea of the depth and gentle humour of his approach, you might be interested to listen to the 45-minute seminar available at https://vimeo.com/70034237 . For a short taster, see YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsUNJ9OAbdk
Whether writing structure is a helpful tool to identify where our stories flag or whether it informs our first jottings in a story outline, it is of some comfort that others have struggled before us. At the same time, perhaps it is salutary to consider Yorke’s warning (Introduction):
‘Is this therefore the magic key to storytelling? Such hubris requires caution — the compulsion to order, to explain, to catalogue, is also the tendency of the train-spotter. In denying the rich variety and extraordinary multifaceted nature of narrative, one risks becoming no better than Casaubon, the desiccated husk from Middlemarch, who turned his back on life while seeking to explain it. It’s all too tempting to reduce wonder to a scientific formula and unweave the rainbow.’ Yorke, 2014
