RIFF.REBELSOUL DEV

Category: Literature

  • John Fowles: Mischanneling

    John Fowles on the strengths of the novel vs. the screenplay: Why have I got it in for the novel? […] All the purely visual and aural sequences in the modern novel are a bore, both to read and to write. People’s physical appearance, their movements, their sounds, places, moods of places – the camera […]

  • John Fowles: Choosing to Be a Writer

    It would, I believe, be disingenuous to hold a class without offering the unsuited persons in the assembly a chance to leave the room. To be a writer – that is, someone for whom writing is closer to being a aspect of being rather than a particular activity, demands certain distinctions. There are many personal […]

  • John Fowles: Writers are not Doers?

    At the heart of my studies (and my teaching) is the question what is a writer? Certainly, it is not someone who simply writes things down; and nor is it necessarily someone who writes a text. An artist is not someone who daubs canvas with paint any further than frequent flyer is an aerospace engineer. […]

  • Writing Dialogue

    I try to avoid the Writing for Noobs arena and focus on Becoming a Decent Writer – often writing about writing is ironically dreadful, but I do admit to sharing Craig Clevenger’s pet peeves: TALKING HEADS, HEARING VOICES AND THE DISAPPEARING NARRATOR I have two major pet peeves when it comes to dialogue. First, it […]

  • Visualising the Creative Process

    I was talking to someone about the creative process once and came up with some imagery for it. I described the initial phase as a kind of nebulous cloud; a haze that lurks around your head. It’s made up from the stuff of your life; here and there are vague forms, a ghost of a […]

  • Creators

    Oh what a tangled web we weave when we seek to conceive Rincewind stared at him, “Who ARE you?” The man took the pencil from behind his ear and looked reflectively at the space around Rincewind. “I makes things,” he said. “What sort of things?” “What sort of things would you like?” “You’re the Creator?” […]

  • Review: Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger

    As a huge admirer of Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveller’s Wife it brings me no pleasure to say that her second major work Her Fearful Symmetry comes as a significant disappointment. Where Traveller’s was deep and visceral, impeccably composed, thrilling and emotive with rich and delicious characters, Symmetry (aptly for its title) is quite the […]

  • Makers

    In this situation I’m a representative. A martyr. Imprisoned, unable to grow. At the mercy of this resentment, this hateful millstone of envy of the Calibans of this world. Because they all hate us, they hate us for being different, for not being them, for their own not being like us. They persecute us, they […]

  • Review: After Dark by Haruki Murakami

    A single night is a night too many in the company of Haruki Murakami’s petite and pretentious After Dark, which compelled reading if only to fully appreciate the limits of its grotesquely crude idioms. One half-imaged the book, which reads as an unintended pastiche of post-modern literature, to be a tragic misadventure in Japanese/English translation; […]

  • The Magus in Haiku

    Haiku are easy But sometimes they don’t make sense Refrigerator My latest obsession in linguistic dexterity is the Haiku. In its basic form of observing 5-7-5, if not subject. (Alliteration is so last week.) I’ve started translating favourite novels to the measure; and I wonder if this isn’t the most marvellous, healthy exercise: A great […]

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