Prosaic: Dairy Dependent Detective

I'm having a bad week, so no follow up to last week's article yet. Instead - here's an old Prosaic story, and it's one of my favourites. Thanks to my godfather this is possibly the weirdest set of story ingredients yet. Late at night when I couldn't sleep, somehow the story became even stranger than the sum of its parts...

How not to use your super-powers

Honestly I’m a bit of a snob about books. If it wins some important “grown-up” award then I judge it. I assume it must be pretentious. Like modern art, I often feel that those which get the most attention in newspapers and awards, are lazy and often following a pattern. I’m rarely surprised or engaged by these types of books. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, for example, was tedious and felt like it was trying too hard. Admittedly my fondness for action and activity throwing a story forward may have something to do with it, but then again I am a man who enjoyed reading Pride and Prejudice!

Failures aren't fun!

I don't like this story. I wanted to tell a sort of fairy tale, but it comes off as twee and a little crass. The advantage of these writing experiments is that they can give me an opportunity to explore new styles or silly ideas. That's potentially great fun, but sometimes I'll come out with something like this.

Failure is instructive. I can look at this story and see how the characterisation doesn't build and how little fantastical elements pop in out of nowhere. That's a problem, and it comes from trying to write a short story based on the Grimm model and fairy tale style.

That doesn't change how annoyed it makes me! Of course, maybe you feel differently. I still feel like there was the start of a good idea in here somewhere...

The best reason to write

This was the story that reminded me how much fun writing can be. After years at school studying English for comprehension and being forced to read awfully self-indulgent Carol Ann Duffy poetry, I'd lost the joy of storytelling. 

After the first rush of enthusiasm I also had to realise that some things work better as a short story. I built a world and planned out a novel's storyline that began with this as a first chapter. In the end though, it said nothing more than I'd already said, less really was more. Of course, that didn't change how much I enjoyed writing this short story.

Ultimately, this idea was just too much fun to pass up!

Prosaic: Nick Clegg - Hall - Box

It's my first real post, and the first story in my Prosaic project. It is my most rapidly ageing piece of work, as when I wrote it Nick Clegg had only just entered into the Coalition after impressing at the debates. He looked a little like a great man, or at least one who thought he was...