Authors Electric

 Ever been writing something, and suddenly realised you have no idea how to get from A to B? In fact, you have very little idea of what A and B actually look like apart from a few important details such as the pub, the flooded quarry and the cave in which the escaped tiger is hiding. Which direction you would choose? What you would have to pass through/over/under? How long would it take? What method of transport would you use? Or do you suddenly realise that C couldn’t possibly be related to D without some very unlikely incest, or that E and F would never speak the same language or be old enough to have met Stalin? We tend to think we understand the worlds we create so well that we don’t need any help to remember the details, but you can get it so wrong. Even a well-respected author such as C.S.Lewis can create anachronisms, especially when you have two worlds where time moves differently. What really upset me as a child was the time discrepancy between The Voyage of the Dawn Tread...

 Like so many people, I’ve been watching a lot of TV recently. There are a number of very good series available at the moment, The Great being my current favourite. The script is first rate, and very funny, despite having its darker moments. Two of the other series I have been watching are The Drowning , and Finding Alice . But there are enormous plot-holes in both of these, and I can only imagine that they have been left in the expectation of another series, although nothing has been said about this. Don’t read the rest of this if you still intend to watch them, as there will be spoilers. I have no issue with the acting or direction in either of these; excellent all round. It’s just the storyline! Where’s that script editor when you need her/him?   The Drowning: The premise is that a five-year-old boy, Tom, disappears on a family picnic by a lake and is presumed drowned although his body is never found. His mother is understandably devastated, and her marriage falls apar...

As well as being a large New World monkey, a werewolf in full cry, or an unpleasant letter in a red envelope sent to someone at Hogwarts, the other definition of howler is a stupid mistake or ludicrous blunder.  Some of them find their way into general parlance, particularly when used by a person of note, and Covfefe appears to have achieved this rather dubious status with the greatest of ease. Like most writers, I have other forms of income and, like most writers, a lot of it consists of teaching. In the old days, before everyone thought they could write because their computers made everything look professional, howlers were limited to hard copy, whether it was a manuscript or a sign in a shop window. I fondly remember such delights as the notice in my local butcher’s, during a salmonella outbreak one Christmas: AVOID SALMONELLA BY OUR TURKEYS. It took me a moment to realise that it was the letter U that was missing. Both spelling mistakes and punctuation can radically ...