A Reading of the Opening to Forster's 'A Passage to India'
As a work of Irony, Forster’s A Passage to India opens as you might expect, by mentioning the place of hollow meaninglessness which is...
The Context of 'Doctor Who' 4
Having overtly replaced its lead actor (Hartnell to Troughton) in 1966 using an invented plot mechanism which opened the door to a...
Key Moments in My Comics History 12
Seen as a kind of ‘flagship’ of IPC Magazines’ children’s range for a while, Valiant was a boys’ adventure comic of the British anthology...
Tolkien and Frodo's Motivations
Earlier in this blog, I examined the development of the character at the heart of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, Frodo Baggins. I...
'An Inspector Calls' -An Irony
The play An Inspector Calls, written by J. B. Priestley during the closing moments of the Second World War, premiered on 1 October 1946....
The Power of Tropes
As we have seen in How Stories Really Work, there are four basic genres, each growing out of the kind of effect a writer wants to produce...
Key Moments in My Comics History 10
In the Australian desert, comics to which one had subscribed didn’t appear through a letterbox to land quietly on one’s mat, but were...
Two Poems in Different Keys
William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker who is now considered to be a key figure...
'Hell Bent' on Story-telling
Steven Moffat’s finale to Series 9 of Doctor Who was possibly both a masterpiece and unintentionally revealing. There are a few unwritten...
The Master Authors' Secret Handbook
This was the first book I wrote about the apparently hidden laws and prnciples behind the world of fiction. When I wrote that 'You have...