Elmore Leonard on thrillers:

1. Never open a book with weather.
2. Avoid prologues.
3. Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue.
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said”…he admonished gravely.
5. Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.
6. Never use the words “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose.”
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
9. Don’t go into great detail describing places and things.
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

Ronald Knox on crime:

1. The criminal must be someone mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to follow.
2. All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.
3. Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable.
4. No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end.
5. No Chinaman must figure in the story.
6. No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right.
7. The detective must not himself commit the crime.
8. The detective must not light on any clues which are not instantly produced for the inspection of the reader.
9. The stupid friend of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal any thoughts which pass through his mind; his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly, below that of the average reader.
10. Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.

Andrew Motion on Poetry:

1. Decide when in the day (or night) it best suits you to write, and organise your life accordingly.
2. Think with your senses as well as your brain.
3. Honour the miraculousness of the ordinary.
4. Lock different characters/elements in a room and tell them to get on.
5. Remember there is no such thing as nonsense.
6. Bear in mind Wilde’s dictum that “only mediocrities develop”— and challenge it.
7. Let your work stand before deciding whether or not to serve.
8. Think big and stay particular.
9. Write for tomorrow, not for today.
10. Work hard.

Kurt Vonnegut on Sci-fi and black satire:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

As well as leaving us with a lot of important political and philosophical issues to think about, Orwell also provided some characteristically intelligent and well-though-out writerly advice.

George Orwell

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus:

1. What am I trying to say?
2. What words will express it?
3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?
4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

And he will probably ask himself two more:

1. Could I put it more shortly?
2. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

One can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

There’s some overlap with the speed information, which I’ll crop out for brevity’s sake. So. Michael Moorcock’’s Rules of Writing:

1. My first rule was given to me by TH White, author of The Sword in the Stone and other Arthurian fantasies: Read. Read everything you can lay hands on. I always advise people who want to write a fantasy or science fiction or romance to stop reading everything in those genres and start reading everything else from, Bunyan to Byatt.
2. Find an author you admire (mine was Conrad) and copy their plots and characters in order to tell your own story, just as people learn to draw and paint by copying the masters.
3. Introduce your main characters and themes in the first third of your novel.
4. If possible have something going on while you have your characters delivering exposition or philosophising. This helps retain dramatic tension.
5. Carrot and stick – have protagonists pursued (by an obsession or a villain) and pursuing (idea, object, person, mystery).
6. Ignore all rules and create your own, suitable for what you want to say!

As a little bonus something, you might be interested in Jack Kerouac’s list of 30 hints and tips for writers. Some of them are a little, um… Kerouac. You’ll see what I mean…

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house
4. Be in love with yr life
5. Something that you feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
19. Accept loss forever
20. Believe in the holy contour of life
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
22. Don’t think of words when you stop but to see picture better
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
29. You’re a Genius all the time
30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

Michael Moorcock is a highly influential English writer. His career has mostly specialised in fantasy and sci-fi, and whilst some of his novels have been highly literary, he was a firm exponent of sword-and-sorcery, particularly in the sixties and seventies.

He has often commented on the craft of writing, but one of his most unique and interesting techniques is his plan for writing a book in three days. He was talking about sword-and-sorcery at the time, the fantasy inheritor of pulp fiction, and the books in question were typically 60,000 words, but even so, there’s a lot to be said for his methods. Despite the general medium, the power of his work has been huge, and his best-known character, Elric, is one of fantasy’s great standouts.

Michael Moorcock

Anyway. Here is Mike’s technique for writing a book in three days:

• First of all, it’s vital to have everything prepared. Whilst you will be actually writing the thing in three days, you’ll need a day or two of set-up first. If it’s not all set up, you’ll fail.
• Model the basic plot on the Maltese Falcon (or the Holy Grail — the Quest theme, basically). In the Falcon, a lot of people are after the same thing, the Black Bird. In the Mort D’Arthur, again a lot of people are after the same thing, the Holy Grail. It’s the same formula for westerns, too. Everyone’s after the same thing. The gold of El Dorado. Whatever.
• The formula depends on the sense of a human being up against superhuman force — politics, Big Business, supernatural evil, &c. The hero is fallible, and doesn’t want to be mixed up with the forces. He’s always about to walk out when something grabs him and involves him on a personal level.
• You’ll need to make lists of things you’ll use.
• Prepare an event for every four pages.
• Do a list of coherent images. So you think, right, Stormbringer: swords, shields, horns, and so on.
• Prepare a complete structure. Not a plot, exactly, but a structure where the demands were clear. Know what narrative problems you have to solve at every point. Write solutions at white heat, through inspiration: really, it can just be looking around the room, looking at ordinary objects, and turning them into what you need. A mirror can become a mirror that absorbs the souls of the damned.
• Prepare a list of images that are purely fantastic, deliberate paradoxes say, that fit within the sort of thing you’re writing. The City of Screaming Statues, things like that. You just write a list of them so you’ve got them there when you need them. Again, they have to cohere, have the right resonances, one with the other.
• The imagery comes before the action, because the action’s actually unimportant. An object to be obtained — limited time to obtain it. It’s easily developed, once you work the structure out.
• Time is the important element in any action adventure story. In fact, you get the action and adventure out of the element of time. It’s a classic formula: “We’ve only got six days to save the world!” Immediately you’ve set the reader up with a structure: there are only six days, then five, then four and finally, in the classic formula anyway, there’s only 26 seconds to save the world! Will they make it in time?
• The whole reason you plan everything beforehand is so that when you hit a snag, a desperate moment, you’ve actually got something there on your desk that tells you what to do.
• Once you’ve started, you keep it rolling. You can’t afford to have anything stop it. Unplug the phone and the internet, lock everyone out of the house.
• You start off with a mystery. Every time you reveal a bit of it, you have to do something else to increase it. A good detective story will have the same thing. “My God, so that’s why Lady Carruthers’s butler Jenkins was peering at the keyhole that evening. But where was Mrs. Jenkins?”
• In your lists, in the imagery and so on, there will be mysteries that you haven’t explained to yourself. The point is, you put in the mystery, it doesn’t matter what it is. It may not be the great truth that you’re going to reveal at the end of the book. You just think, I’ll put this in here because I might need it later. You can’t put in loads of boring exposition about something you have no idea of yourself.
• Divide your total 60,000 words into four sections, 15,000 words apiece. Divide each into six chapters. You can scale this up or down as you like, of course, but you’ll need more days — and stamina — for longer books, and keep chapters at 2.5k max. In section one the hero will say, “There’s no way I can save the world in six days unless I start by…” Getting the first object of power, or reaching the mystic place, or finding the right sidekick, or whatever. That gives you an immediate goal, and an immediate time element, as well as an overriding time demand. With each section divided into six chapters, each chapter must then contain something which will move the action forward and contribute to that immediate goal.
• Very often a chapter is something like: attack of the bandits — defeat of the bandits. Nothing particularly complex, but it’s another way you can achieve recognition: by making the structure of a chapter a miniature of the overall structure of the book, so everything feels coherent. The more you’re dealing with incoherence, with chaos — ie with speed — the more you need to underpin everything with simple logic and basic forms that will keep everything tight. Otherwise the thing just starts to spread out into muddle and abstraction.
• So you don’t have any encounter without at least information coming out of it. In the simplest form, Elric has a fight and kills somebody, but as they die they tell him who kidnapped his wife. Again, it’s a question of economy. Everything has to have a narrative function.
• Use the Lester Dent Master Plot Formula.  [[I'll put the formula at the end of Moorcock's tips -- Ghostwoods]] You must never have a revelation of something that wasn’t already established; so, you couldn’t unmask a murderer who wasn’t a character established already. All your main characters have to be in the first part. All you main themes and everything else has to be established in the first part, developed in the second and third, and resolved in the last part.
• There’s always a sidekick to make the responses the hero isn’t allowed to make: to get frightened; to add a lighter note; to offset the hero’s morbid speeches, and so on. The hero has to supply the narrative dynamic, and therefore can’t have any common-sense. Any one of us in those circumstances would say, ‘What? Dragons? Demons? You’ve got to be joking!’ The hero has to be driven, and when people are driven, common sense disappears. You don’t want your reader to make common sense objections, you want them to go with the drive; but you’ve got to have somebody around who’ll act as a sort of chorus.
• When in doubt, descend into a minor character. So when you reach an impasse, and you can’t move the action any further with your major character, switch to a minor character ’s viewpoint, which will allow you to keep the narrative moving, and give you time to brew something.

Elric with his evil, sentient, soul-drinking blade Stormbringer.

You’ll also need to know the Lester Dent Master Plot Formula. Lester Dent was a hugely prolific writer of pulp fiction stories, and is particularly remembered for the Doc Savage tales, which he created and wrote the great bulk of. His masterplan is a blueprint for classic pulp fiction stories, and it retains a lot of power, even today.

Lester Dent’s penname is Kenneth Robeson. He is the creator of Doc Savage and author of that successful book-length magazine since its birth. He has been writing five years and often turns out 200,000 words a month. He has not had a rejection in the past three years. This article describes the master plot that Mr. Dent uses.

This is one opinion. It is opinion of one who believes in formula and mechanical construction, for a pulp yarn.

It is opinion of one believing:

1—Majority of pulps are formula.

2—Most editors who say don’t want formula don’t know what they are talking about.

3—Some eds won’t buy anything but formula.

Framed over this typewriter, on a bulkhead of my schooner now anchored off a bay in the Caribbean while we attempt to raise a Spanish treasure, is an object which tends to make the convictions mentioned appear to be facts—or an unexpected hallucination.

The object on the bulkhead is a formula, a master plot, for any 6000-word pulp story. It has worked on adventure, detective, western and war-air. It tells exactly where to put everything. It shows definitely just what must happen in each successive thousand words.

No yarn written to the formula has yet failed to sell.

Lester Dent

A year or so ago, a rough form of this master plot was handed to a man who still had a first sale to make. If recollection is correct, he sold his next six yarns written to the master plot.

The business of building stories seems not much different from the business of building anything else. The idea is apparently to get materials, get a plan, and go to it.

The rough form of this story plan, this master plot, will follow. But first, it might be a good idea to consider some of the materials.

It seems likely that “character” rates as one of the principal story-making materials. Many a yarn comes back with “Inadequate Characterization” pencilled on a rejection slip, and a scribbler works up a headache trying to figure out what the hell that meant. It might help to glance over some barn door variety characterization gags that most professionals use.

A fair idea is to make out a list of characters before starting a yarn. Then it’s conceivably a better idea to try to get along with half the list.

For a detective yarn, several characters may be handy, to wit: One hero. One villain. Various persons to murder. It may not be a sure-fire thing to murder women, some editors being finicky that way. Somebody for the hero to rescue is often handy, too. Female. Not female, though, if the editor has what he is wont to quaintly call a “no woman interest” mag.

Characterizing a story actor consists of giving him some things which make him stick in the reader’s mind. Tag him. A tag may be described as something to recognize somebody by. Haile Selassie’s sheet and drawers might be called an appearance tag. So might Old John Silver’s wooden leg in Treasure Island. And movie comic Joe Brown’s big mouth. The idea is to show the tag to the reader so that he may thereby recognize the actor in the story. Instead of marching the character in only by name, parade the tag.

Mannerism tags may cover absent-minded gestures. Perhaps the villain (villainy at this point unknown) is often noted rubbing his eyes when in private or when thinking himself unobserved. At end of yarn, it turns out the color of his eyes has been disguised by the new style glass opticians’ cap which fits directly on the eyeball, and cap was irritating his eyes.

It’s nice to have tags take a definite bearing on the story. Not all can, however.

Disposition tags should not be overlooked. Is the character a hard guy? Does he love his women and leave ‘em—and later help them over the rough spots? This tagging might go on and on and become more and more subtle.

Characters usually have names. Occasionally an author is a literary Argus who writes a yarn carrying the actors through by their tags alone, then goes back and names them. This procedure is not necessarily to be advised, except a time or two for practice.

It is not a bad idea to use some system in picking names. Two characters in the yarn may not necessarily need names which look alike. Confusing the reader can be left to villains. If the hero’s name is Johnson, “J” and “son” names for the others might be avoided. Too, it may not be the best idea to go in for all very short names exclusively. And a worse idea is to go in for all long ones. Telephone books are full of names, but it’s an idea to twist them around, selecting a first name here, second one there. If nothing better is at hand, a newspaper, possibly the obit page, can help.

Now, about that master plot. It’s a formula, a blueprint for any 6000-word yarn.

A rough outline can be laid out with the typewriter, although some mental wizards may do it all in their heads. About a page of outline to every ten pages of finished yarn might serve.

Doc Savage, Man of Bronze.

Here’s how it starts:

Devise one or more of the following:

1. A DIFFERENT MURDER METHOD FOR VILLAIN TO USE
2. A DIFFERENT THING FOR VILLAIN TO BE SEEKING
3. A DIFFERENT LOCALE
4. A MENACE WHICH IS TO HANG LIKE A CLOUD OVER HERO

One of these DIFFERENT things would be nice, two better, three swell. It may help if they are fully in mind before tackling the rest.

A different murder method could be–different. Thinking of shooting, knifing, hydrocyanic, garroting, poison needles, scorpions, a few others, and writing them on paper gets them where they may suggest something. Scorpions and their poison bite? Maybe mosquitos or flies treated with deadly germs?

If the victims are killed by ordinary methods, but found under strange and identical circumstances each time, it might serve, the reader of course not knowing until the end, that the method of murder is ordinary. Scribes who have their villain’s victims found with butterflies, spiders or bats stamped on them could conceivably be flirting with this gag.

Probably it won’t do a lot of good to be too odd, fanciful or grotesque with murder methods.

The different thing for the villain to be after might be something other than jewels, the stolen bank loot, the pearls, or some other old ones. Here, again one might get too bizarre.

Unique locale? Easy. Selecting one that fits in with the murder method and the treasure–thing that villain wants–makes it simpler, and it’s also nice to use a familiar one, a place where you’ve lived or worked. So many pulpeteers don’t. It sometimes saves embarrassment to know nearly as much about the locale as the editor, or enough to fool him.

Here’s a nifty much used in faking local color. For a story laid in Egypt, say, author finds a book titled “Conversational Egyptian Easily Learned,” or something like that. He wants a character to ask in Egyptian, “What’s the matter?” He looks in the book and finds, “El khabar, eyh?” To keep the reader from getting dizzy, it’s perhaps wise to make it clear in some fashion, just what that means. Occasionally the text will tell this, or someone can repeat it in English. But it’s a doubtful move to stop and tell the reader in so many words the English translation.

The writer learns they have palm trees in Egypt. He looks in the book, finds the Egyptian for palm trees, and uses that. This kids editors and readers into thinking he knows something about Egypt.

So. The Master Plot itself.

Divide the 6000 word yarn into four 1500 word parts. In each 1500 word part, put the following:

• FIRST 1500 WORDS

1. First line, or as near thereto as possible, introduce the hero and swat him with a fistful of trouble. Hint at a mystery, a menace or a problem to be solved–something the hero has to cope with.
2. The hero pitches in to cope with his fistful of trouble. (He tries to fathom the mystery, defeat the menace, or solve the problem.)
3. Introduce ALL the other characters as soon as possible. Bring them on in action.
4. Hero’s endevours land him in an actual physical conflict near the end of the first 1500 words.
5. Near the end of first 1500 words, there is a complete surprise twist in
   the plot development.

SO FAR: Does it have SUSPENSE?
Is there a MENACE to the hero?
Does everything happen logically?

At this point, it might help to recall that action should do something besides advance the hero over the scenery. Suppose the hero has learned the dastards of villains have seized somebody named Eloise, who can explain the secret of what is behind all these sinister events. The hero corners villains, they fight, and villains get away. Not so hot. Hero should accomplish something with his tearing around, if only to rescue Eloise, and surprise! Eloise is a ring-tailed monkey. The hero counts the rings on Eloise’s tail, if nothing better comes to mind. They’re not real. The rings are painted there. Why?

• SECOND 1500 WORDS

1. Shovel more grief onto the hero.
2. Hero, being heroic, struggles, and his struggles lead up to:
3. Another physical conflict.
4. A surprising plot twist to end the 1500 words.

NOW: Does second part have SUSPENSE?
Does the MENACE grow like a black cloud?
Is the hero getting it in the neck?
Is the second part logical?

DON’T TELL ABOUT IT. Show how the thing looked. This is one of the secrets of writing; never tell the reader–show him. (He trembles, roving eyes, slackened jaw, and such.) MAKE THE READER SEE HIM.

Characterizing a story actor consists of giving him some things which make him stick in the reader’s mind. TAG HIM.

BUILD YOUR PLOTS SO THAT ACTION CAN BE CONTINUOUS.

• THIRD 1500 WORDS

1. Shovel the grief onto the hero.
2. Hero makes some headway, and corners the villain or somebody in:
3. A physical conflict.
4. A surprising plot twist, in which the hero preferably gets it in the neck bad, to end the 1500 words.

DOES: It still have SUSPENSE?
Is the MENACE getting blacker?
The hero finds himself in a hell of a fix?
It all happens logically?

If so, fine. These outlines or master formulas are only something to make you certain of inserting some physical conflict, and some genuine plot twists, with a little suspense and menace thrown in. Without them, there is no pulp story. These physical conflicts in each part might be DIFFERENT, too. If one fight is with fists, that can take care of the pugilism until next the next yarn. Same for poison gas and swords. There may, naturally, be exceptions. A hero with a peculiar punch, or a quick draw, might use it more than once.

When writing, it helps to get at least one minor surprise to the printed page. It is reasonable to to expect these minor surprises to sort of inveigle the reader into keeping on. They need not be such profound efforts. One method of accomplishing one now and then is to be gently misleading. Hero is examining the murder room. The door behind him begins slowly to open. He does not see it. He conducts his examination blissfully. Door eases open, wider and wider, until–surprise! The glass pane falls out of the big window across the room. It must have fallen slowly, and air blowing into the room caused the door to open. Then what the heck made the pane fall so slowly? More mystery.

The idea is to avoid monotony.

Suspense must be the sugar which draws the flies. And possibly it’s coupled up with the MENACE, a slightly intangible thing at first glance. Menace shouldn’t be hard to recognize in a story. It’s that feel of terrible things to happen to the hero and every other decent person. It might be built up by repeated references, a word dropped now and then, and by making the villain particularly bad.

Villians don’t necessarily have to be inhuman, though.

ACTION: Vivid, swift, no words wasted. Create suspense, make the reader see and feel the action.

ATMOSPHERE: Hear, smell, see, feel and taste.

DESCRIPTION: Trees, wind, scenery and water.

THE SECRET OF ALL WRITING IS TO MAKE EVERY WORD COUNT.

• FOURTH 1500 WORDS

1. Shovel the difficulties more thickly upon the hero.
2. Get the hero almost buried in his troubles. (Figuratively, the villain has him prisoner and has him framed for a murder rap; the girl is presumably dead, everything is lost, and the DIFFERENT murder method is about to dispose of the suffering protagonist.)
3. The hero extricates himself using HIS OWN SKILL, training or brawn.
4. The mysteries remaining–one big one held over to this point will help grip interest–are cleared up in course of final conflict as hero takes the situation in hand.
5. Final twist, a big surprise, (This can be the villain turning out to be the unexpected person, having the “Treasure” be a dud, etc.)
6. The snapper, the punch line to end it.

HAS: The SUSPENSE held out to the last line?
The MENACE held out to the last?
Everything been explained?
It all happen logically?
Is the Punch Line enough to leave the reader with that WARM FEELING?
Did God kill the villain? Make SURE it was the hero.

There it is. Take it, do what you can with it, while I go on deck, put on the diving hood, and have another try at that galleon, with the wife up the mast to keep an eye on the reefs for sharks and barracuda.

Note:

Most published articles have interesting histories behind them. This one might interest some of you. Lester Dent sent us a modest little six-page article just about the time this magazine was going to press. The last line of the article mentioned his master plot formula; the famed master plot that has fed every Lester Dent story for the past several years.

We wondered if Mr. Dent would share that formula with the fraternity. We phoned his hotel in New York. “Sorry, Mr. Dent has gone to La Plata, Mo.” We phoned the village postmaster at La Plata. “Sorry, Mr. Dent is on his yacht, the Albatross.” “Where?” “Off Miami someplace; my goodness, why?” The long distance operator in Miami, a student of human nature if there ever was one, asked us a question: “How long has Mr. Dent been on his yacht?”

“Why?” we were glad to ask this for a change.

“Well, you see if he’s just bought a yacht he’s on deck running up flags, and then running them down again.”

“Oh.”

“But if he’s had it for a while, he’s below listening to his radio. If you want, I’ll have the police put out a call for him on short wave.”

We demurred.

The operator coughed, letting us know she knew we were a plain sissy.

To invade the privacy of an author anchored God only knows where by belching into his radio: “L-e-s-t-e-r D-e-n-t, Lester Dent call Miami police station. Yachts at sea off Miami, flag the Albatross. Owner wanted by police.”

What a rummy we’ve turned out to be, we thought, as we gave the operator, who was by now politely sneering at us with her conversational coughs, the go ahead.

About two hours later a startled voice called us from Florida and asked what the hell we were up to. It seemed that every yacht off Miami caught the call and began signaling the Albatross while the rest of that busy little city came down to the wharf to see L-e-s-t-e-r D-e-n-t, a man obviously wanted by the police.

We explained demurely. And of such stuff are authors made that Mr. Dent agreed to send along his famed formula, although he added, with a touch of homespun: “I hadn’t ought to.”

It’s a pretty fine thing for an author to share such a hard-won secret with his competing professionals, so if you like this piece, we have a mild suggestion to make. Buy a copy of Doc Savage on the newsstands and if you like the lead story, tell the publishers so in a letter.

All’s Well That Ends Well is the story of a maid – Helena – who heals the King of France and, for her reward, asks for the hand of Lord Bertram in marriage. Bertram consents, then runs off to fight a war in Italy with his habitually deceitful follower Parolles, hoping that death will get him out of it. Hurt, Helena sets out on a pilgrimage and ends in Italy, where she meets Lord Bertram’s new lover, Diana. Diana and Helena swap places unknown to Bertram, who sleeps with his betrothed. He later agrees to love Helena and their unborn child. Almost half of the invective below is directed at Parolles.

All's Well That Ends Well by Photobunny

• Little Helen, farewell; if I can remember thee, I will think of thee at court.
• The complaints I have heard of you I do not all believe; ’tis my slowness that I do not, for I know you lack not folly to commit them and have ability enough to make such knaveries yours.
• You would answer very well to a whipping.
• Scurvy, old, filthy, scurvy lord!
• Methink’st thou art a general offence, and every man should beat thee. I think thou wast created for men to breathe themselves upon thee.
• You are not worth another word, else I’d call you knave.
• France is a dog-hole, and it no more merits the tread of a man’s foot.
• She is too mean to have her name repeated.
• He’s a most notable coward, an infinite and endless liar, an hourly promise-breaker, the owner of no one good quality.
• I spoke with her but once, and found her wondrous cold.
• For I knew the young Count to be a dangerous and  lascivious boy, who is a whale to virginity, and devours up all  the fry it finds.
• Drunkenness is his best virtue, for he will be swine-drunk; and in his sleep he does little harm, save to his bedclothes about him.
• He hath out-villain’d villainy so far that the rarity redeems him.
• He excels his brother for a coward; yet his brother is reputed one of the best that is. In a retreat he outruns any lackey: marry, in coming on he has the cramp.
• Use the carp as you may; for he looks like a poor, decayed, ingenious, foolish, rascally knave.
• I saw the man today, if man he be.
• This woman’s an easy glove, my lord; she goes off and on at pleasure.

One notable difference between romantic fantasy and most of the other sub-genres is that magic is seen as a consequence of the natural order of the world. It’s not some demonic force from outside, as is often the case in Sword & Sorcery, or a highly arcane science that isolates its practitioners, as frequently depicted in high fantasy. In romantic fantasy, magic is a simple talent, an inborn channel of mystical self-expression. The key difference is that magic here is a wholesome force, in tune with the world. For the heroes, anyway.

The heroes of romantic fantasy are typically either young, recently bereaved, or otherwise just now finding themselves pushed into the wider world. In fairly short order, they discover dread plots against the world they live in, their own burgeoning talents, a group of talented companions who become close friends, and a life-partner-in-waiting. Companions are frequently titled nobles or other persons of responsibility and influence; the hero may be too. By the end of the story, the hero will have gained victory, magical power, true love and a place to call home. This is a shamelessly feel-good sub-genre, not a challenging one. The most influential romantic fantasy series remains David Eddings’ charming “Belgariad”.

Pawn of Prophecy by David Eddings

I’m sorry! I suck!

Unfortunately, I’ve been overloaded with work on a critical, Top Secret project for most of February. I know that’s dull of me, so as a little bit of a consolation, I thought I’d tell you the things that I’m (more or less) allowed to reveal about it. Hopefully, my publishers won’t put a price on my head.

Put simply, it’s a treasure hunt.

The book (which will be available globally) takes the form of a series of images, accompanied by passages of text. Each image/text combination contains a series of clues, which taken together will point to a specific solution. As a theoretical f’rinstance, a large bear on its hind legs in a picture could suggest a Russian link.

Each of the solutions, taken together, will then point to the final answer.

The first person to solve the answer, and submit it after a specific date, will win money. A _lot_ of money.

The answer exists in only two places: my head, and a highly-encrypted DVD locked in a secure bank vault. Obviously if anything dodgy happens to me — I vanish, get kidnapped, die suspiciously, etc etc — then the whole deal is off. Finding the answer won’t require any specific skill or cultural background; literally anyone could do it, if they try. Fortunately there’ll be no question of going out into the countryside with a shovel and metal detector :)

Pot of Gold by Tao Zhyn

So it’s a really exciting project. I’m not allowed to reveal the title yet, but I can tell you that I’ve been thinking of it as The Labyrinth.

The one piece of advice I’d give to anyone hoping to win is to get to know the way I think. It’s good advice for any puzzle; the better you understand the mind that created it, the easier it is to solve it. There may — just may — be clues hidden here in the blog, and other places where I can be found online. Later on, I’ll probably have a specific Twitter feed and blog too, but I’ll still drop little nuggets here for just you :)

Oh, and no, I’m afraid I’m not open to bribes!

There are as many subdivisions as there are mythologies of course, but not all of them generate the same amount of mythic fantasy. Although the Norse and Greek myths have probably been the most influential in contributing to the flavour of modern fantasy, they are not particularly common settings for modern works. Perhaps they’re the victims of their own success, too familiar in terms of general fantasy to be appealing as a mythic story venue.

Other mythic cycles seem to be more attractive to fantasy writers. The Arthurian legend cycle of western Europe remains one of the most popular mythic fantasy settings. The historical origins of the ‘real’ King Arthur remain obscure. There are some mentions of a 5th-century British war-leader in some of the ancient chronicles, but they are tantalisingly slight, and generate a lot of debate. Anyhow, whatever the truth is, it certainly bears precious little relation to the mythic figure.

King Arthur's Domain, Tintagel by IDS

King Arthur’s creation in the sense we know him now dates from 1136, in the “Historia Regum Britanniae” (The History of the Kings of Britain) by Geoffrey of Monmouth. Although it claimed to be a historical account, Geoffrey’s manuscript was highly coloured, and devoted a large part of its text to the story of Arthur, Guinevere, Merlin the magician and the traitor Mordred – quite probably drawing its inspiration from older cycles of Welsh mythology. Despite its factual implausibility, the Historia was a big success amongst the nobility of England and France, and Arthur quickly became a favourite subject of medieval romances all over Western Europe.

Robert Wace added the Round Table in 1155, with the Holy Grail and Sir Lancelot arriving some twenty-five years later through Chretien de Troyes. Many others contributed, until the whole cycle was broadly cemented in its current form by Thomas Malory in Le Morte D’Arthur, around 1470. The definitive modern Arthurian fantasy – so far, anyhow – remains TH White’s “The Once and Future King” (1958). Although the text makes use of anachronistic comparisons and similes, and the story itself is considerably more overtly magical than most, this is still the most influential piece of Arthuriana.

Ancient China is another common setting for mythic fantasies. China has a unique depth of continuous cultural history to draw on, and its own self-image of its mythological past is enthusiastically magical. There are many domestic Chinese fantasies of course – in the West, the best known are “Outlaws of the Marsh”, by Shi Nai’an and Luo Guanzhong (c. 1380), and “Journey to the West” by Wu Ch’eng-en (1592), better known as “Monkey”. Both of these epics are boisterous, highly magical and, like Homer’s “Odyssey” and “Iliad”, highly repetitive, at least in their original forms.

Yangtzi Gorge by Britrob

A much more contemporary example of the same sort of mythic tale is “Blades from the Willows” by Li Shanji (1946), which was serialised in Chinese newspapers in the same way as the Sword & Sorcery stories originally were. Although it only made it into print in English n 1991, “Blades from the Willows” was hugely influential in establishing the Wu Xia story style – the oriental analogue of Sword & Sorcery that most of the Hong Kong magical martial arts movies fit into. These movies – and the comics and books that they have inspired – remain the true inheritors of Chinese mythic fantasy, and they have become hugely popular all around the world.

It should be no surprise to hear that plenty of western authors have turned to Chinese myth for inspiration. Many have met with reasonable commercial success, in the west anyway. The most important was Ernest Bramah, who created a series of wryly humorous books about the mannered wandering story-teller Kai Lung and the tall tales he span. The first of these, “The Wallet of Kai Lung”, was published in 1900. A more recent master of the same charmingly humorous ‘Chinoiserie’ is Barry Hughart, who produced a delightful trilogy of novels about the mystery-solving sage Li Kao and his assistant Number Ten Ox, starting with “Bridge of Birds” in 1984.

A third important source of mythic fantasy is the “Alf Layla-wa-Layla” (literally ‘A Thousand Nights and a Night’), commonly known in English as the Arabian Nights. It is one of the world’s greatest compendiums of stories. It contains an immense cycle of tales that Scheherazade supposedly told to her cruel husband, the King, on a nightly basis, in order to keep him from having her killed. The contents are very varied in origin. Tales seem to have come from Arabia, Persia, India and even Egypt, and there is much dispute as to exactly when they took their ‘final’ form. The rough consensus seems to be that they took shape between about 900 AD and the year 1400. Many probably started as professionally written stories, rather than as folk tales; Arabic Middle Age culture was highly civilized and literate.

Not all of the stories of the Arabian Nights are fantasies, but the role-call of tales found within its pages is impressive: “Aladdin and His Magic Lamp”, “The Ebony Horse”, “The Seven Voyages of Sinbad”, “The City of Brass”, “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves”, “Julnar the Sea-Born” and many others. The first printed edition of the book was produced in France at the start of the 18th century, translated and edited by Antoine Galland. None of the earlier, hand-written manuscripts survive, and there is considerable controversy as to how much of the content Galland actually created himself.

In the end it doesn’t really matter, though. The origins of myth are lost in history, like the seeds of truth that may have given rise to them. That doesn’t change the vital role that that the world’s mythologies have played in shaping modern fantasy.

High fantasy is also referred to as epic fantasy or heroic fantasy, and these names give a clue as to its real nature. Tales of high fantasy are epic in scope, heroic in the breadth of their vision. There may be a main hero, but he or she will encounter a whole cast of other characters, and their actions and interactions form a web spanning both story and land. The world itself has a specific culture, history, geography and bestiary, and the story would fall apart without it.

High fantasy usually comes in big packages. Novels of 500 pages and more are common, and frequently form part of a trilogy  – or more; some core sequences have run to a dozen books. At some point though, the nature of the epic story requires a resolution. Even the longest high fantasy series must eventually come to a recognisable end. For a while, anyway. It’s not uncommon for an author to follow a core trilogy with a sequel trilogy, a prequel trilogy, or even a parallel ‘sidebar’ trilogy.

The Well at the World’s End

Although JRR Tolkien is the author who made modern fantasy what it is, the father of high fantasy is generally agreed to be William Morris. “The Well at the World’s End”, written in 1896 and running over 500 pages in the 1975 reprint, is a fantastical quest-romance written in archaic style. It was not particularly popular when released, but it inspired great devotion in a number of younger writers. These authors – people like Lord Dunsany, ER Eddison, and CS Lewis – went on to give fantasy its form.

These early works provided vital service preparing the ground for the 20th century’s greatest fantasy novel, JRR Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings”. It was first released in three volumes from 1954-55, but it is not a trilogy so much as one long novel with six sub-sections. Tolkien himself fought hard to have the book published as one piece. At first, the Lord of the Rings seemed destined for the same sort of obscurity as Morris’s and Eddison’s romances, and it took over 10 years to gain wide acceptance.

It was with the controversial publication of the American paperback editions, in 1965, that The Lord of the Rings finally took off. The row over the pirate edition probably helped draw the attention the book deserved, and it became one of the soaring bestsellers of 20th-century fiction. Its immense success stemmed from the incredible richness of Tolkien’s grand narrative, and the sheer power of the land of Middle Earth.

Readers who made it past the first chapters – which are really just cozy – soon found themselves succumbing to the spell of the grander narrative. It is as a timeless quest that the book really succeeds. The mysterious portents, the hard travelling, the stunning landscapes, the encircling foes, the urgency of the task in hand, the magical revelations – all are handled with a superb sense of story-telling rhythm. It is a slow rhythm, for it is a very long novel, but in its leisurely way it builds an almost tidal power.

The Kinslaying at Aqualonde by and (c) Ted Nasmith

Tolkien continued to work on detailing Middle-Earth throughout his long life, and the results have been published in “The Silmarillion” (1977) and many other posthumous volumes edited by the author’s son. Whatever their scholarly brilliance though, these later works are missing the central quality which vitalizes The Lord of the Rings – that sense of raw story, in all its glorious force.

Tolkien became a huge seller in the 1960s. His work cleared a space for all forms of fantasy to take root in the marketplace. It took twelve more years before Tolkien’s direct legacy became apparent, though. The year 1977 marked the turning point – not “The Silmarillion”, but the first appearance of two big new instant bestsellers by previously unknown American writers. Both would have been inexplicable, and probably unpublishable, if Tolkien hadn’t gone before.

Terry Brooks’s “The Sword of Shannara” was condemned by some reviewers as a ‘rip-off’ of Tolkien, but it still sold spectacularly well and set a pattern for many more novels to come. Stephen R. Donaldson’s “Chronicles of Thomas Covenant” was a more original and interesting work. There is no doubt that it was inspired by Tolkien’s example. Donaldson offered a detailed secondary world – the Land, where the hero, magically displaced from our Earth, embarked on a mighty quest to defeat the corrupting powers of evil. Although the Land bore a hint of resemblance to Middle-Earth, Thomas Covenant himself was a very different character to any hero of Tolkien’s. A depressive, frequently hostile loner who suffers horribly with leprosy, Covenant cannot bring himself to believe in the Land. The alienation and resentment of this denial makes him do some terrible things, and tragedy piles on tragedy as he leads the Land to the very edge of ruin before finding the strength to let himself truly engage.

With the arrival of Brooks and Donaldson, high fantasy entered an era of commercial acceptability, becoming a type of novel which has made its authors and publishers rich. This was a vast change from the earlier part of the century, where works such as “The Worm Ouroboros” did well to sell a few hundred copies on first publication. It leads the field, now: it is simply what fantasy means to most people. If current trends are anything to go by, it will continue to give a great deal of pleasure to millions of readers for years to come.

Someone or other from the main webpage at Hello! magazine. (Please don't waste your time telling me who.) If you came here seeking Britney's genitals, then -- Great God! -- I recommend heaven666.org

Fragmented, meaningless information breeds a lobotomised readership who crave only further fragments. It’s self-reinforcing, and best of all, it’s cheap.

So when talking heads babble meaninglessly about bloggery out-competing journalism, they’re really talking about the new journalism — 100 words on today’s stock-market dip, or 250 words on how to have a shinier orgasm, maybe as much as 600 words on a day in the life of a fictitious Rwandan orphan made up by some jaded hack who’s never even been to Paris, let alone Africa.

Sure. I can churn that sort of mindless crap out all day long, and so can anyone else. We’re all journalists now.

New-wave media-friendly journalists care of the Washingtonian. Note: No criticism or praise implied.

But it’s important to remember what real journalism feels like. Done well, journalism is as creative and powerful as any writing of ‘literary merit’. In fact, some might argue that it even takes greater skill, because it has to remain entirely within the scope of what is real. That kind of constraint adds complexity.

I’ve never really tried to produce any real journalism. I simply don’t have the resources — the funding, the contacts, the time to travel and research. I’ve done some magazine and newspaper articles, sure, but they’ve been the kind of froth I mentioned above. I write books, and I blog. That no more makes me a journalist than it makes me a surgeon.

This means I can’t turn to my own files for an example of what I’m taking about. Instead, here are a few links to some pieces of genuine journalism. They’re all fascinating, and I suspect that the first one may well be extremely important to all of us in the years to come. You can’t get through any one of them in five minutes. They’re not safe, bland mulch. These pieces will demand your attention, shake your certainties a little, and possibly challenge some of your assumptions. In places, they even attain a sort of beauty.

Please, read them, and remember what it is we’re losing.

Ennui Becomes Us: Randall Schweller’s masterful analysis of the inevitable growth of disorder in global and cultural affairs.

How I Convinced a Death-Row Murderer Not to Die: Michael Finkel writing on his complicated relationship with the death-row killer who stole his name when going on the run.

They Killed My Lawyer: Financier William Browder’s simple tale of the death of Sergei Magnitsky, an honest man who was brave and foolish enough to stand up to corruption in Russia.

A Rough Trade: Martin Amis’ classic ‘01 report from the trenches of the American porn industry.

NOTE: All these links came from Give Me Something To Read, Marco Arment’s selection of top articles bookmarked for later perusal via Instapaper. Both are well worth checking out.