One of the things that's often recommended to neophyte writers of novels is to have one scene per chapter. And someone then asks "What's a scene?" and someone else "How long should a chapter be?" And they're right that the two things are interrelated, but I don't think one-scene-per-chapter is necessarily the best solution. And the length any chapter "ought" to be is actually determined by what you think a chapter is. So, what's going on?

We all know what a scene is in a play, of course... or do we? English drama packs multiple comings and goings into a single scene, and traditionally a new scene expresses a break in time or space. French drama starts a new scene each time a character enters, which seems odd to us, though I enjoy the way it also smells of M Molière's rehearsal call sheet. But the French tradition says something important too: when a new character comes in, the dynamics of character-in-action are, by definition, changed; a new unit of action, if you like, has started.

Of course, fiction integrates dramatic prose with narrative prose and (thanks to free indirect discourse) blurs the distinction between them. So, unlike visual drama (film, plays), in fiction the distinction between action shown "on stage" in real time, and other ways of telling a story, is elided or even eliminated (and it is to some extent in radio drama, too).

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Just when you think you'll never see a Greek Tragedy again, two come along together.

Last week, I was thrilled at the chance to revisit The Space, the arts centre on the Isle of Dogs, where the aptly-titled Lazarus Theatre Company (they specialise in revivals) is currently staging two adaptations of Greek plays: Electra and Orestes, billed as The Summer of The Greeks

As a rule I like small-scale domestic works , but there's something compelling about Greek drama, with its focus on stupendous events and legendary characters in extreme situations. The chorus and lead players give off waves of intense emotion so strong you feel quite battered by the experience.



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Nah, I'm not going to do one of these 'My Writing Journey' type posts - I'd fall off my stilettos if anyone other than myself or Mr HW gave a stuff about my daily slog of getting the novel out of my head and onto the page.

But I will just have a ponder about what makes people want to put paw to keyboard day after day, usually squeezed in after their nine-to-five occupation. And keep doing it, often for years, with very little external encouragement to sustain them.

I started young, as a lot of people do, I think. 'Ferdinand the Fox' saw the light when I was six or seven (but has thankfully never been spotted since), and in my last year of primary school, I wrote and produced a play set in ancient Egypt, called 'Nefera of the Nile' . I don't remember all the details, but I know it involved dastardly goings-on amongst the pyramids and a priest coming to a sticky end - yup, even then I had a bloodthirsty turn of mind!

I scribbled for a while throughout my teens but then life, boyfriends and all that stuff intervened, and writing got shoved to one side (buried under piles of nappies, sometimes literally). When I started again, a couple of years ago, it felt odd...but also a little like coming back to something I shouldn't have left. I had a cast of characters taking up space in my head, and they wouldn't go away. They kept shoving a cup of popcorn into my hand, forcing me to sit down and watch as the credits rolled and their film premiered in front of me.

That's how it works for me, anyway. The characters have their story, and they want it told. Their way. How am I doing? Watch this space...

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Noel Streatfeild had a "bus test" for whether she'd developed her characters well and deeply enough: if you saw the family on a bus, would you recognise them? (If you're a Streatfeild fan that's a great site, by the way). It's obvious what the central characters - the ones Forster called round characters - in your novel need, even if it's not so obvious how to set about it. But what about flat characters? What if the world you're working with has a huge number of peripheral characters? How do you bring a bit of life to them, make us believe in them, without without sinking the novel?

It's most obvious at the beginning, when a reader is working out how this novel works. There are lots of ways a novel can work, but it won't work at all if the reader isn't shown how to read it. And we hold on to what we know about this character so far if we think it'll matter later. And, roughly, we need our expectations to be fulfilled: the proportion of how much we know should roughly be rewarded by how important they are in the story. Well, never say always: Zadie Smith started White Teeth with a suicide by someone who was fundamentally not important in the novel: what was important was the world that body plummeted through, and what happened next.I do know people for whom that was supremely irritating, and others for whom it was just right for Smith's project in the novel, which is full of the apparent superfluities and redundancies of the modern urban world. You pays your literary money and you takes your choice.

But it's also important to realise that while the amount of detail you spend on a character is one clue for the reader, the amount of depth you give is a different kind of clue, and you need to know what you're doing with each.

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The box office and bar staff were very welcoming, as you'd expect on a press night. Press nights are good for spotting celebrity thesps who attend to support their fellow actors. The downside is they laugh like hyenas and try to instigate standing ovations even when they aren't quite justified.

As it happened,The Gift of Lightning was thought-provoking as well as enjoyable and I gave it four stars in my review



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Ten weeks ago, I moved to a new city. Somewhere I'd never lived before. Somewhere where I only knew one person.

Since then, there have been plenty of ups and downs, including 15 workman visits to the flat I'm renting, most spectacularly from the utilities company who took 7 visits to move my gas meter (which was located, bizzarely, in the maisonette below). I have been deafened by Water Hammer (don't ask), traffic, the road being dug up outside my window and the complementary strains of sander, saw and drill from the renovations in the flat above. I have taken to wearing earplugs a lot.



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I've always been able to console myself that despite lacking an agent or a (conventional) publisher I am still, at any rate, the most successful writer in my lone occupant household.

Sadly, even this turns out not to be true.

I got a letter last week addressed to "Paulo Coelho", who has given the Metropolitan Police my address in connection with an incident they would like to talk to him about. I'm not sure where in the flat he's been living but I guess it's a sign that I need to be a bit tidier around the place; clearly I'm providing too much habitat for writers. I cleaned out all the kitchen cupboards before the riots, but maybe he's been putting his head down in my wardrobe. Note to self: really must be more careful.

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One of the editorial comments (for which, read reasons for a rejection) which I often hear about is "There's too much introspection", or "The main character is too passive and doesn't do anything, just thinks." And although I see what they mean, I also see the writer's problem. I'd say that it's most common in character-driven novels, and perhaps it is a particular risk there, but the most recent version of this question was in fact from someone writing fantasy. The character had killed a person in self-defence, at the beginning of the novel. She must show remorse, but how to do that without make the character come across as a whingey drip?

Of course this is a version of a general problem, which is how to convey the full complexity and psychological depth of someone grappling with their situation, and then again when their situation changes (what do you mean, it doesn't change? You haven't got a story to write, if it doesn't) without running the story aground?

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A skint, frustrated mum of two with a deranged Dad and mentally unstable cat – making sense of the world.

So why Polythene Pram? Well, I guess it kind of sums me up. It draws up images of a cheap, functional, model for mobilising children from one place to another and for most of the day I feel the same. I’m certainly not one of these polished, smiley “yummy mummies”. I fulfil my purpose as best I can…

Also, I love the Beatles…

I have a crazy life and crazy things seem to happen to me.

This is my blog about demented familes and frustrated musings.



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