How Different Media Can Inspire
How I write
What I’m watching
Wuthering Heights (2026) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ out of 5 stars.
Touching, passionate, a visual treat. I enjoyed it immensely.
What I’m reading
The Haunting Season — Ghostly Tales for Long Winter Nights, Bridget Collins et al, (2021) ⭐️⭐️⭐️ out of 5 stars
A patchy short story collection with a couple of stand-out pieces. My favourites were “Confinement” by Kiran Millwood Hargrave, and “Thwaite’s Tenant” by Imogen Hermes Gowar. I felt many of the stories were too polite, restrained by the mores of their settings.
What I’m writing
”The Replacement”. Folk horror. Now at 1544 words.
The first five pages are completed and it’s getting a final review and polish before being submitted to a competition at the end of the month. I’m interested to find out whether this is a short story or if it has the legs to be a novella, or more.
Yesterday I went to see “The Book of Mormon” with my wife, two of my adult children, and one of their partners. I’ll say upfront that I have a love/hate relationship with musicals—mostly hate. Being a music snob has its drawbacks. Many of the tunes in musicals seem trivial and twee to me. As they were in this one.
But while I’m sneaking peeks at my watch I can at least enjoy the storytelling craft. Although musicals have their own expectations and conventions, there are familiar character arcs and plot devices on display. Strip away the songs, the emoting, and the dancing (please!), and most of the time you’ve got a standard Hero’s Journey with some comedic relief, and a sprinkling of promises and payoffs.
While I’m writing, I’m aware of the structures that readers expect. I know that if I stay on the well-worn path, I’ll get to the end. When I started writing regularly, getting to the end was the goal. Now I’ve reached it more that once, I’m starting to take little excursions off the beaten track every now and again. Sometimes I get lost, but I always learn something in doing it.
Last night, when I came home from the theatre, I decided to try something different. I wondered if my first novel, Painting with Sound, would work as a musical. Not that I expect it to become a production at any time, but I was intrigued to see if the story would stand up in that format. I did some research on conventions for the genre and wrote a short treatment, including some song titles, for a soundtrack that definitely wouldn’t be twee or naff, natch.
What I learned was this: when you’ve got to fit into an exacting format with a time limit, you work out the important beats of the story pretty quickly. Lots got cut from the novel. And that got me thinking: maybe those things could be cut from the novel itself, and it would still work. Or even be better!
I know I have to rewrite PWS, hopefully later this year. As my first novel, it was a learning exercise. I love the story—how could I not? It’s mostly autobiographical!—but I understand now that the focus is wrong, the characterisations are thin, and I can do better.
I’ll plug my synths in next weekend and start working on my show tunes, but in the meantime, I’m glad I went to the theatre to see a musical. I’m still learning, and I’m open to new experiences.