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I just started reading this short story collection by Roddy Doyle (the first of his that I've read) and the first story has done something interesting which I immediately thought "I should note that down somewhere". Here seems as good a place as any. If this is my writer's diary then recording little tricks I find other writers doing is probably a good thing to put in it.


So, Box Sets. There's something interesting going on with the narrative point of view in this opening story. It's in 3rd person and has a certain distance from the two main characters, Sam and Emer.


What caught my attention were instances of a scene being described and then later edited. One scene ends with "He [Sam] threw the mug." It's only a couple of scenes later that this moment is revisited and padded out with further details. We learn that Emer had said "I'm leaving" before Sam "[throws] the mug at the wall, above the cooker."


It's an interesting technique. The lack of detail around the first time we encounter this moment allows the story to progress. The subsequent actions of Sam that we see in the next scene seem like a massive overreaction. A cyclist rides into him and Sam throws the bike into the sea... but then we shift back and find out Emer has told him she's leaving just before this happens. New context comes in to partly justify his mood at the time of the incident we've just witnessed.


I like this technique. It feels like a kind of acceptable cheating. To partially withhold information, but sort of reveal it through the actions that follow on from it, and then fill in the blanks.


Nice one Roddy Doyle. I shall read on.



Updated: Jan 16, 2023

Had a day where my actual day job sidelined some writing I wanted to get done today. But I guess that's the gambit of trying to write whilst working full-time. I have some time this evening but I always feel more sapped trying to write after day job work.


Side note - I never liked the idea of writing whilst working - it always felt like I was cheating somebody somehow... but I found Jem Calder talking about this on the BrickLane Bookshop Podcast and I found his words very helpful.


This evening I finally managed to do the 200 in 50 exercise. Just in time as I'm due to meet my writer friend tomorrow where we'll compare second attempts.


Here's mine:


The Noah Network

The Noah network worried.

One Noah, named Noah, worried a lot.

Noah had never seen a badger. Or a hedgehog.

It was not his kind of thing. He was not that kind of Noah.

Now the network said to collect two of each. Two of each wild thing.

He was glad to be some where, where the wild things were not too wild.

He had to find them. Two of each badger and two of each hedgehog. Were there different kinds?... Different kinds of badgers and different kinds of hedgehogs?

The Floods.

That was the thing.

Floods. Floods. Floods.

The network worried.

The floods were not kind.

Noah worried he had left things too late. How was he to find two of each badger, two of each hedgehog and two of each other wild thing, when he had never seen a badger or a hedgehog?

Some Noah’s said it was already too late. Some Noah’s had already seen the flood. Their wild things had already been lost.

Their badgers lost.

Their hedgehogs lost.

Noah had never said the things he worried about to others.

The thing he worried and worried and worried…

He worried he’d be better named something different.

Updated: Jan 16, 2023

I've added around 700 words to a short story I'm working on this morning. 700 likely terrible words that will need a lot of editing. But 700 words to work with is better than a blank page. I did that in about 40 minutes at my desk. I've been with this story for a while so I can work reasonably quickly with it. I'm currently re-drafting it from a different point of view. I started in first person, switched to third but have moved back to first again and am sticking with that.


I've taken advice from Neil Gaiman (I think it was him) and adopted the approach of when I'm at my desk I can do 1 of 2 things:

  1. I can do nothing

  2. I can write

Allowing myself to do nothing is a nice way to take the pressure off needing to write. But not allowing anything else also means that writing starts to look like an intriguing idea when I'm bored from doing nothing. I've had success with that idea and now when I do sit down at my desk, I do get work done.


But I think I need to work on staying here longer. I've done 40 minutes of writing. In reality, that's a nice amount but it's not a mega-amount. It's the weekend so I feel like I should be spending hours and hours at my desk. Taking advantage of all this free time. I feel guilty for not doing so. But it's quite exhausting this writing stuff.


I'm going to start setting a stopwatch on my phone (turning the screen off so it doesn't distract me as I work) whenever I sit down at my desk to write. I'll take note of the times and see if I can edge the amount of time I spend writing up little by little. I think I'd feel better if I dedicated hours to writing each day instead of minutes.


40 minutes today. Maybe 41 minutes tomorrow.

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