Authors Electric

The Magic Pudding  by Norman Lindsay What does the word ‘magic’ in a book title conjure up for you?  Not a silly question. There’s method in my magicness. Because before I read one of my favourite books as a child, I’d have assumed a story with that word in the title would be about fairies, or wizards, or mysterious lands where animals can talk and rivers run silver… a benign, happy kind of magic in other words. Enid Blyton’s Magic Faraway Tree , for instance, or Aladdin's magic lamp in A Thousand and One Nights , or Alison Uttley’s Magic in my Pocket .  Then my uncle returned from Australia with a copy for me of  The Magic Pudding by Norman Lindsay.  Nice title, thought I, if a bit predictable. Obviously, a version of the Brothers' Grimm Magic Porridge Pot that miraculously feeds the impoverished family who owns it, without ever running out. (As long as they obey the rules that is. There has to be a catch somewhere.) All about generosity, in other words, from...

My heart leaps up when I behold       A rainbow in the sky:  So was it when my life began;  So is it now I am a man;  So be it when I shall grow old,       Or let me die!  The Child is father of the Man;  And I could wish my days to be  Bound each to each by natural piety .  William Wordsworth, British School, By anonymous - Art UK, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/ index.php?curid=97545046 I know, I know, I don't usually begin my post with a Wordsworth poem but today I couldn't help it. That wonderful line, one of the poet's most famous, keeps going round and round in my head (for reasons which will become clear if you stay with me).  But first, how does this Child is father of the Man idea even work? No child can beget (if anyone uses that word anymore) his or her parents, that's just nonsense. Yet in the context of this delightful poem it’s clear Wordsworth’s meaning is both simpler and deep...

ChatGPT in action. Photo by Matheus Bertelli: https://www.pexels.com/ photo/laptop-office-working-internet-16094045/ Katherine Roberts’s  experiment with ChatGPT  got me thinking. As yet this AI writing tool can in seconds produce reams of prose, matching the prompts given, in a way that no one, adult or child, will ever want to read. So far, so good. (Or satisfyingly bad.) But any complacency on the part of genuine flesh and blood authors is misplaced. As Katherine and others have pointed out, this bot learns quickly. We can’t rule out that, sooner or later, given enough original material from an inventive editor, say, it will be able to create a gripping, heart-warming tale with all the right kind of characters, and dialogue that doesn’t make your ears bleed. Something actually readable. Publishing houses will save heaps of dosh by eliminating authors altogether from the equation and we writers will, er, be written out of history.  An alarming prospect, and not just fo...

First, get rid of the parents. Rule 1 of writing a children’s adventure story. You have to neutralise the parents in some way because they’ll prevent your child characters running any sort of risk further than climbing the odd tree, or getting home after dark.  Tree-climbing with parents - not much risk here. Photo by Darina Belonogova: https://www.pexels.com/photo/ people-climbing-the-tree-8764872/ That’s why so many heroes of children’s books are either orphans, or have parents unable to function as a result of illness or other misfortune.  For obvious reasons, stories for adults don’t have to follow this rule; hence I was convinced - at the beginning - that a book I read recently was for children, not grown-ups. The heroine was 13, after all, and most of the other characters were younger than that. Their father was away collecting plants in Tibet (the classic Absent Explorer Father trope), while their mother was taken seriously ill right at the start of the story. The ch...

Sometimes when submitting my work, I get a question that stumps me: what’s the theme of your story? It’s a story, I want to reply, it doesn’t have a theme. Which isn’t strictly true, but to expect a writer to sum up the   complex interweaving of character, purpose and plot that makes up a novel in one word feels to me like looking through the wrong end of a telescope. I don’t know about you, but I don’t sit down and decide to write a book about human relationships, or loneliness, or the abuse of power, bullying, courage in the face of danger, overcoming difficulties or redemption. A story forms itself in my mind which will have all these elements and more, but it won’t be about any single one of these. It will be about an unconfident, friendless 12 year-old girl who finds herself on a journey to the bottom of Hell ( Ante’s Inferno ), or a keen, geeky 13year-old boy, driven by desperation to make a pact with a demon ( The Tragickall History of Henry Fowst...