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I went to a lovely writers� group at the weekend, which offered writers the chance to get ‘positive feedback only.� You were given the choice to have unfiltered feedback as well.

I understand that many writers offer stuff for comment with their first need and hope being validation.Ìý A writer will often float in a place between ‘this thing I wrote has potentialâ€� and ‘this is nowhere like as good as the last book I enjoyed so I am terrible and should give upâ€�. I see the case to be encouraging, always, and particularly for new or nervous writers.

Some people and groups enjoy being destructive. Or they seize on a single point that isn’t perfect and deluge the author with suggestions without giving a balanced view of the whole piece. It has taken me years to explain to my partner that when I ask for feedback, don’t start with the typos. This is unhelpful.

I once had a criticism so obviously and objectively wrong it blocked me for months. And some people may have been unsupported and over-criticised a great deal up until that point. Be gentle it is my first time is ABSOLUTELY fine.

But how kind is it in the long run to give only positive criticism?

Writersâ€� groups support us through the solitary weirdness of writing, but a primary purpose for most writers showing their work is to help us improve.Ìý To do that we need to develop our own dispassionate inner critic.Ìý Outside opinions positive and negative help us do that, by us working through how they are right, or not. Someone may struggle on their own for ten years honing their masterpiece in solitary isolation, without getting much better. No feedback â€� improve â€� more feedback loop.Ìý

Once you do start sending stuff out to be published, you certainly will get critical feedback, sometimes from people with no skin in being friendly about it.

Opinions can be framed positively. Positives can be stated first. A writer’s group should encourage you to keep writing.

But if say the stakes aren’t obvious to you, or if no woman on earth would talk like that, you need to tell the writer that. For their sake.

Feedback should be offered from an empathetic place and a real spirit of seeking to help.Ìý It may still sting.

I remember the first criticism I got from my current group. I was cross. I went home, slept on it, reread the offending paragraph, and the feedback I had received was right. So right it was almost unarguable.

Reading other people’s stuff helps.Ìý Critiquing other people’s stuff helps. And a first time reading can be really scary, although at the All Good Bookshop Group, we bend over backwards to be un-scary.

So I told this other group, ‘Bring it on�. Because what ever people say, the decision what to do is mine, only mine.

I give positive constructive feedback!

S, a Young Adult/Historical Fantasy (Sept �22)

The feedback you gave was well thought out, perceptive and very useful. It was also at an appropriate level for a draft 2 as it focussed on whether the story and characters were working rather than primarily on the prose level. The pointers you did give on the latter were both enough and useful.Ìý

It reassured me that the setting, characters, and structure of the plot largely worked although you did make some important suggestions to strengthen and make more credible the key developments of the last third of the book.

(Approx 3000 words of feedback including a synopsis as I saw it, the themes, positives and negatives in a report, and copious notes in the margins.)

In previous writing, I used music sometimes to set mood, or to give my writing energy, or to daydream. With Our Child of the Stars, the music marched in, expecting a bigger role. Here’s how the music changed the book.

It came to me� A scene was small town America, the end of the Sixties, and fall sunlight lit up her patchwork quilt of bright leaves. Molly was sewing her son Cory’s Halloween costume against the clock, and she’d had to lock him out of the room to get it done. How Molly and Gene loved him, and how they feared for his safety. Only a handful of people knew that Cory existed.

Music was playing on a record playerâ€� ²Ñ´Ç±ô±ô²â’s favourite singer, a specific image of a folk singer with long dark hair. It took me weeks to figure out it was Joan Baez singing Farewell Angelina â€� an elusive song of love and loss.

“� the LP worn from years of enjoyment. Joan Baez filled the house with music, that extraordinary voice making mournful love to the air so the whole house became sad and beautiful.�

²Ñ´Ç±ô±ô²â’s favourite singer â€� that had to mean something. I knew far more of Baez’s CV than her work. I soaked myself in her music and many others known and new to me. Baez was and is a musician who uses her talent to fight injustice with beautyâ€� a focused anger and compassion from that era of bright promise, and endless war.

Music became more important as I wrote the book. Gene always had a guitar I think but the music grew and he became more of a musician. Molly remembers their marriage day.

“Gene stood grinning in his best suit, with the flower in his lapel crooked. He was the one for her. The people they loved had come to support them and neither of them tripped over the words. Then off to dance, to his choices and hers: ‘Stop! in the Name of Love�, the Temptations and the Supremes. Peter, Paul and Mary, the Byrds, the Beatles and the Stones.�

The one song cited is ironic, foreshadowing. The beautiful marriage enters stormy waters â€� tragedy, depression, alcoholism. Gene strays but how far? I played those songs and others about broken hearts, as I decided, how far could he go and the marriage still be healable. ÌýAgain, the choice of song was unconscious but sharp in its meaning. Gene Stops! He changes his mind at the motel doorâ€�

In American Pie McLean shows as so many did the growing disenchantment at the end of the Sixties, entering the Seventies. You cannot understand the time without seeing how many people did not have flowers in their hair. The majority of young people voted for Nixon in 1972. Unpicking this, and hearing other voices from that era, helped me understand. It flowed naturally to me that Molly and Gene had friends they disagreed with � they would find decency in unexpected places.

The Meteor brought fire and destruction, and a wounded boy â€� the only survivor of a tragedy in space â€� a boy they call Cory. He learns English and Earth music with enormous enthusiasm. Cory fizzes â€� he is childhood turned up to 11 â€� eager to learn, make friends, and explore â€� he brings delight back into Gene and ²Ñ´Ç±ô±ô²â’s life. Yet he finds Earth’s cruelties are challenging â€� his world has no war, no starvation.

It was important to me that he did not look human and that we should overcome our prejudices. He is traumatised by the loss of his mother and his friends. In the early weeks, he adopts Where Have All The Flowers Gone as a ritual song of letting go his dead mother and the many others of his kind who died. For him it becomes a night-time song to remember and heal.

We shall overcome keeps turning up� a song of many roots � fashioned by a Black preacher, then a song of the labour movement, then civil rights and the opposition to war� Gene plays it to Cory when they first meet because it’s a party piece and Gene has run through the obvious children’s songs. It’s a song Baez also sings for a very serious purpose at a crucial point in the book. I found writing about the Sixties was also writing about the challenges of our time.

Gene and Molly wrangle about Gene’s passion for science fiction and support for space travel â€� Molly thinks caring for people on earth should take priority. Of course, the irony is, Gene’s ‘stupid space storiesâ€� turn out to have a purpose.Ìý I loved the humour and anger in Gill Scott-Heron’s performance piece, Whitey’s On the Moon â€� it didn’t end up in the final edit but there’s a taste of in ²Ñ´Ç±ô±ô²â’s argument under a full moon.

Many of the songs across the two books are ones I invented, as artists respond to the events that do not happen in our version of history.Ìý In Our Child of Two Worlds, the family face bigger dangers, and everything they take for granted is under threat. For if Cory’s people come and take him away, they will break ²Ñ´Ç±ô±ô²â’s heart.

The world is both beautiful and sometimes unforgiving â€� humanity rises to love and loyalty and courage and compassion, yet we add to the inevitable darkness too.Ìý Yet we have hope and humour and music. Our Child of the Stars (and Our Child of Two Worlds) make a single story about family, friendship and what we owe each other â€� how love grabs us and makes us vulnerable â€� about how love in all its forms has a price. This ordinary and extraordinary family make a song of hope about how things could be.

Joan Baez � “Farewell Angelina�

Joan Baez “We Shall Overcome� (at the March on Washington with MLK)

The Supremes “Stop in the Name of Love� �

Gill Scott-Heron � “Whitey’s On The Moon�

Don McLean � “American Pie�

Pete Seeger “Where Have All the Flowers Gone�

PalmersÌýGreen Author Stephen Cox has his second book out in paperback on 13 October. It’s also the tenth anniversary of committing to being a writer.

Our Child of the Stars and now Our Child of Two Worlds combine family drama in 1960s USA with new takes on a few classic SF ideas.Ìý A childless couple adopt an orphaned alien and try to keep him safe â€� against peril on Earth and in space.

LAUNCH

Saturday 15 October,Ìý7pm All Good Bookshop.ÌýÌý35 Turnpike Lane, Wood Green, London, N8 0EP.ÌýThere’s some wine and snacks but do BYOB.Ìý Stephen will reading, doing Q+A and talking on Tigger or Eeyore? â€� ten years getting publishing. RSVP appreciated.Ìý BTW you canÌýand Stephen will sign and dedicate where asked

ONLINE LAUNCH

There is anÌýonline launch Monday 17th OctÌýat 7pm on Zoom â€� similar to above. All welcome but email [email protected]Ìýfor Zoom link. Stephen does talks to groups.

ENFIELD TOWN SIGNING

If you just want to grab Stephen to sign a copy,ÌýEnfield Waterstones Church StreetÌýare planning a just-turn-up signing 12-2pm Sat 15th.Ìý

Our Child of the Stars was praised by the Guardian, Grazia, FT, the Mail and LA Times. (“…a wonderfully emotional, heart-warming journey of what it really means to be a parentâ€� â€� LA Times).ÌýÌý

The sequel, Our Child of Two Worlds has won similar praise.Ìý“Riveting, compelling, and emotionally charged: a page turner I lovedâ€� “watch and be dazzledâ€�

More on

“Mystery/detective/police or legal procedurals are antithetical to horror/fantasy; if you like one, you will not usually like the other. because traditional mysteries MUST be realistic, otherwise detection makes no sense.�

Joyce Carol Oates�

This is objectively wrong.Ìý

Firstly, because many people read widely in genre. I read thrillers, contemporary fiction, historical fiction, science fiction, fantasy, and some YA (and YA can be any of those genres as well â€� it is more a mode than a genre).Ìý To give a specific example, I have read traditional murder mysteries set in ALL these genres â€� traditional in the sense of solved by logic, insight into character, lab work, etc.

I have written ‘traditionalâ€� mysteries which are also science fiction or fantasy. ÌýWhat are the actual issues?

Does the logical process of unpicking a ‘traditional mystery� require absolute realism? Clearly, if you have read good SFF, you know it doesn’t.

Oates assumes that once you leave the shores of absolute realism, anything can happen. Therefore a mystery cannot be constructed because things happen without a reason. This is a rookie error, each story in science fiction and fantasy follows their own logic, which is sufficiently revealed to the reader that the story makes some sense.

Mysteries fall into two types � fair, where the reader can puzzle out what is going on from what is in the text � and unfair � where the ‘investigator� has information the reader does not, or they can make the uniquely correct deduction from the facts whereas a normal person couldn’t find the signal in the noise, or there are multiple solutions. (Famously Arthur Conan Doyle accepted some of his Holmes stories had other solutions.)

A great many mysteries are written to be ‘unfair� and are perfectly enjoyable. You are along for the ride. The SFF mysteries I have written are fair � the detective knows nothing relevant to the case which has not been shared with the reader. Try “Murder in the hospital� in my Free Fiction pages

It is rare to set out to write a mystery which is immediately solved � although it would be a splendid story if the solution could be known immediately but be exceptionally difficult to prove.

Those solving the crime can share what they learn with the reader. ‘Using this spell, I can say who has been in this room since the last full moon.� This is then no different from any other source of information for the detective. Spells or hitech are just lab work.

Or whatever is special in the world may mislead the detective or be inconclusive.Ìý We used to think DNA was infallible. Then we discovered human error creeps in.

If your story rests on orcs having night-vision but being colour-blind, a fair author will slip that fact in, directly or otherwise. It’s no different from writing a deeply conventional murder.

Mysteries are usually out to entertain with a thrilling or intriguing plot, to shed some light on character and the human condition, and in the classic murder mystery, to assert moral order over immoral chaos.Ìý The murderer is caught or otherwise punished.

SFF stories can be heist movies, buddy cop stories, classic noir thrillers, creepy psychological chillers, or political dramas. They can be set in any era and any genre. Ultimately they are more often about people than ideas.

But Joyce Carol Oates does us one favour � it reminds us to read in a genre before pontificating about it.

Picture thanks to cottonbro pexels.com

Les Murray wrote a great poem about shorts, as in trousers, but I am talking about short stories.

Short stories provide a superb form for fiction, and I’ve written a good many. ÌýAn intriguing story can be done in a few words â€� flash fiction is often more like poetry â€� or they can sprawl to 10000.

I believe an idea, or a set-up, has a natural best length. Your story seed might grow to be a rabbit hutch, a shed, a house, or a cathedral.

ÌýIt is one reason why all the speculative genres are keen on the short form. You might feel 2-5000 words is enough to float the imaginative challenge.

One of my stories (Winged) postulated a society where a small number of people â€� apparently at random â€� grow wings in adolescence. The winged can fly, are stronger in various physical ways, and much more charismatic. This fast-tracks them into the elite of politics, the civil service, and media. The story combined the prompt ‘what if coming out immediately moved you into the eliteâ€� with the human idea of ‘what happens to a school friendship when one friend receives a massive leg-up in life through chanceâ€�.Ìý

Some great ideas don’t need much development. Winged will never be a novel. I am perfectly capable of developing a credible working society around this, and of writing a novel about male friendship. I just didn’t feel I had to do this particular work, this particular way.

Conversely, when I wrote the short story that launched Cory into the world, it was obvious I was tilling fertile ground. Family. An outside eye on humanity. Loving difference. A kid in terrible danger. ÌýÌýThe issue was not â€� can this grow into a novel? It was, is it two novels or three?

With short stories you can try out ideas, and forms, and settings � try them as a writer and try them as a reader. You can finish the piece with the end of the world, the transcendence of humanity, or the Second Coming. You get in when you need to and leave before you outstay your welcome.

Short stories allow you to taste someone’s work. ÌýI’m unlikely to finish a novel with a truly terrible chapter but if a short story doesn’t work for you, you haven’t wasted a day.

I am intrigued by novellas. 20-40k allows substantial room for character, world, and plot development.Ìý

Anyway, a plug.

I have on my website. get exclusive content every so often.Ìý

Coming soon a new story in the Coryverse (the world of Our Child of the Stars and Our Child of Two Worlds) and in due course a new taster story to the world of my Work in Progress.

I may share with you the real solution to the Princes in the Tower; a charming enigmatic elegy; a sweet superhero love story; a provocative post-apocalyptic tale; and the only story I have ever written inspired by a scientific research paper.

Late Start Writers

I had a lovely chat with Texan Julia Brewer Daily whose podcast is called Authors Over Fifty � which is what it is about � and like most publicity I do it is about both books.

This episode launches Thursday 25 August.

Ìý,Ìý,Ìý,Ìý.

That same day it will be

We talked Britain and America, what brought us to writing, methods and issues but above all, the late start.

I think there are several strong advantages to a writer starting later in life and a couple of disadvantages.

If you haven’t started early in life, better to start now than moan.

Being more financially established helps. ÌýIf you have kids, them being old enough to entertain themselves for a bit is enormously useful.

Many people � not all � have wider experience when older and have their stuff more together and more things to write about.

Against that can be set

Energy and focus.Ìý If I was 25 again, I would be able to do new writing in the evenings. (I can sometimes edit in the evenings but not always.)

You get better at writing by writing and getting feedback � however busy any stage of life can be, young starters have more time in total.

Most careers build slowly so obviously if you have 40 years of writing ahead that will be better

The podcast goes into this and hope you enjoy it.Ìý Julia is keen to get more subscribers.

While I wish I had started earlier, I equally look at my current books, I fairly sure I couldn’t have written them before I had kids.

Before I reproduce a letter in the Guardian many years ago, what is all this about there only being one story, or seven, or 36?

Humans like to find patterns and make categories. Aristotle said stories should have a beginning, middle, and end, and progress through a logical chain of cause and effect.Ìý Unlike many things Aristotle says, this stands up surprisingly well., although now we don’t always tell stories now in the order they happened.

In Shakespeare’s day, plays were comedies (ends with wedding), tragedies (ends with funeral), or histories (‘right� King wins.)

The Hero’s Journey tries to shoehorn every story into a single model where personal change and succeeding in the objective are the same thing. At a basic level it is definitely right to consider internal and external conflict and change. In my view, the Heroine’s Journey is better in that it considers three aspects � internal change, external conflict, and a change in respect to society (family, team, etc).

Polti found 36 basic plots � truly more like dramatic situations � in fairy tales.

The following piece claims there are eight essential plots (but in effect adds a nineth ‘modern plotlessness.â€�) Each plotty plot can be ‘invertedâ€� or comes in at least two versions â€� so that is already sixteen plots.Ìý They can be done seriously or as comedy or farce.Ìý Hamlet could be darkly hilarious if no-one ever managed to murder the people they were trying to kill.Ìý Then they can be combined. A love triangle can be added to any of the others.

Of course, reading the below, people need not be human, not all boys are looking for girls, and three is not always a crowd.

It’s true that there are deep structural similarities between stories and that understanding how a story works is important. Stories and books can meander and lose interest because the writer is not clear what they are doing.

Writing combines free creativity and strong discipline, matching ideas can produce fruitful new scenarios. But trying to reduce a book to a standard plot can sometimes serve no purpose.

To say every story is either ‘a stranger comes� or ‘someone goes on a journey� only works by taking sweeping definitions of the words. That reminds me of the phase ‘everyone is bisexual really� which can only be true for a very wide definition of bisexual or really or both � a definition too broad to be useful.

Our Child of the Stars is “A stranger comes to town�. Which of the following plots is it?

I like this list because I use it as a prompt for ideas.

Article begins:

“I’M NOT sure about plots for stories, but plots for plays is something my father, the Irish playwright Denis Johnston, had a lot to say about. Originally he thought there were seven, but then he realised there are in fact eight:

1. Cinderella � or unrecognised virtue at last recognised. It’s the same story as the Tortoise and the Hare. Cinderella doesn’t have to be a girl, nor does it even have to be a love story. What is essential is that the Good is despised, but is recognised in the end, something that we all want to believe.
2. Achilles â€� the Fatal Flaw that is the groundwork for practically all classical tragedy, although it can be made comedy too, as in the old standard Aldwych farce. Lennox Robinson’sÌýThe Whiteheaded BoyÌýis the Fatal Flaw in reverse.
3. Faust â€� the Debt that Must be Paid, the fate that catches up with all of us sooner or later. This is found in all its purity as the chase in O’Neill’sÌýThe Emperor Jones.ÌýAnd in a completely different mood, what else isÌýThe Cherry Orchard?
4. Tristan â€� that standard triangular plot of two women and one man, or two men and one woman.ÌýThe Constant NymphÌýor almost any French farce.
5. Circe â€� the Spider and the Fly.ÌýOthello. The Barretts of Wimpole StreetÌýif you want to change the sex. And if you don’t believe me aboutÌýOthelloÌý(the real plot of which is not the triangle and only incidentally jealousy) try casting it with a good Desdemona but a poor Iago.
6. Romeo and Juliet � Boy meets Girl, Boy loses Girl, Boy either finds or does not find Girl � it doesn’t matter which.
7. Orpheus â€� The Gift taken Away. This may take two forms: either the tragedy of the loss itself, as inÌýJuno and the Paycock,Ìýor it may be about the search that follows the loss, as in Jason and the Golden Fleece.
8. The Hero Who Cannot Be Kept Down. The best example of this is that splendid playÌýHarveyÌý, made into a film with James Stewart.

These plots can be presented in so many different forms � tragedy, comedy, farce, whodunnit � and they can be inverted, but they still form the basis of all good writing. The fault with many contemporary plays is simply that they do not have a plot.

Rory Johnston, London NW3.

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The site is being updated and restructured so it it is clearer and keep coming back to see the improvements! This will include a little shop and easier navigation.

It’s also moved to a new hoster � wordpress.com � so that I spent less time on tech and more time on content.

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