Stephen Cox's Blog, page 7
August 25, 2022
Authors Over Fifty podcast
Late Start Writers
I had a lovely chat with Texan Julia Brewer Daily whose podcast is called Authors Over Fifty – which is what it is about – and like most publicity I do it is about both books.
This episode launches Thursday 25 August.
Amazon Music, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts – authors over 50.
That same day it will be available on YouTube
We talked Britain and America, what brought us to writing, methods and issues but above all, the late start.
I think there are several strong advantages to a writer starting later in life and a couple of disadvantages.
If you haven’t started early in life, better to start now than moan.
Being more financially established helps. If you have kids, them being old enough to entertain themselves for a bit is enormously useful.
Many people – not all – have wider experience when older and have their stuff more together and more things to write about.
Against that can be set
Energy and focus. If I was 25 again, I would be able to do new writing in the evenings. (I can sometimes edit in the evenings but not always.)
You get better at writing by writing and getting feedback – however busy any stage of life can be, young starters have more time in total.
Most careers build slowly so obviously if you have 40 years of writing ahead that will be better
The podcast goes into this and hope you enjoy it. Julia is keen to get more subscribers.
While I wish I had started earlier, I equally look at my current books, I fairly sure I couldn’t have written them before I had kids.
August 5, 2022
How many freaking plots are there?
Before I reproduce a letter in the Guardian many years ago, what is all this about there only being one story, or seven, or 36?
Humans like to find patterns and make categories. Aristotle said stories should have a beginning, middle, and end, and progress through a logical chain of cause and effect. Unlike many things Aristotle says, this stands up surprisingly well., although now we don’t always tell stories now in the order they happened.
In Shakespeare’s day, plays were comedies (ends with wedding), tragedies (ends with funeral), or histories (‘right’ King wins.)
The Hero’s Journey tries to shoehorn every story into a single model where personal change and succeeding in the objective are the same thing. At a basic level it is definitely right to consider internal and external conflict and change. In my view, the Heroine’s Journey is better in that it considers three aspects – internal change, external conflict, and a change in respect to society (family, team, etc).
Polti found 36 basic plots – truly more like dramatic situations – in fairy tales.
The following piece claims there are eight essential plots (but in effect adds a nineth ‘modern plotlessness.’) Each plotty plot can be ‘inverted’ or comes in at least two versions – so that is already sixteen plots. They can be done seriously or as comedy or farce. Hamlet could be darkly hilarious if no-one ever managed to murder the people they were trying to kill. Then they can be combined. A love triangle can be added to any of the others.
Of course, reading the below, people need not be human, not all boys are looking for girls, and three is not always a crowd.
It’s true that there are deep structural similarities between stories and that understanding how a story works is important. Stories and books can meander and lose interest because the writer is not clear what they are doing.
Writing combines free creativity and strong discipline, matching ideas can produce fruitful new scenarios. But trying to reduce a book to a standard plot can sometimes serve no purpose.
To say every story is either ‘a stranger comes’ or ‘someone goes on a journey’ only works by taking sweeping definitions of the words. That reminds me of the phase ‘everyone is bisexual really’ which can only be true for a very wide definition of bisexual or really or both – a definition too broad to be useful.
Our Child of the Stars is “A stranger comes to town”. Which of the following plots is it?
I like this list because I use it as a prompt for ideas.
Article begins:
“I’M NOT sure about plots for stories, but plots for plays is something my father, the Irish playwright Denis Johnston, had a lot to say about. Originally he thought there were seven, but then he realised there are in fact eight:
1. Cinderella – or unrecognised virtue at last recognised. It’s the same story as the Tortoise and the Hare. Cinderella doesn’t have to be a girl, nor does it even have to be a love story. What is essential is that the Good is despised, but is recognised in the end, something that we all want to believe.
2. Achilles – the Fatal Flaw that is the groundwork for practically all classical tragedy, although it can be made comedy too, as in the old standard Aldwych farce. Lennox Robinson’s The Whiteheaded Boy is the Fatal Flaw in reverse.
3. Faust – the Debt that Must be Paid, the fate that catches up with all of us sooner or later. This is found in all its purity as the chase in O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones. And in a completely different mood, what else is The Cherry Orchard?
4. Tristan – that standard triangular plot of two women and one man, or two men and one woman. The Constant Nymph or almost any French farce.
5. Circe – the Spider and the Fly. Othello. The Barretts of Wimpole Street if you want to change the sex. And if you don’t believe me about Othello (the real plot of which is not the triangle and only incidentally jealousy) try casting it with a good Desdemona but a poor Iago.
6. Romeo and Juliet – Boy meets Girl, Boy loses Girl, Boy either finds or does not find Girl – it doesn’t matter which.
7. Orpheus – The Gift taken Away. This may take two forms: either the tragedy of the loss itself, as in Juno and the Paycock, or it may be about the search that follows the loss, as in Jason and the Golden Fleece.
8. The Hero Who Cannot Be Kept Down. The best example of this is that splendid play Harvey , made into a film with James Stewart.
These plots can be presented in so many different forms – tragedy, comedy, farce, whodunnit – and they can be inverted, but they still form the basis of all good writing. The fault with many contemporary plays is simply that they do not have a plot.
Rory Johnston, London NW3.
July 4, 2022
Revamp of my web site
Excuse my appearance – and let me know immediately if any links don’t work!
The site is being updated and restructured so it it is clearer and keep coming back to see the improvements! This will include a little shop and easier navigation.
It’s also moved to a new hoster – wordpress.com – so that I spent less time on tech and more time on content.
If you find this useful, a coffee would be nice!
Revamp of site
The site is being updated and restructured so keep coming back to see the improvements! This will include a little shop and easier navigation
July 3, 2022
Four books I read in June
I’ve read two books where a teenager has to navigate a post-apocalyptic England – and two queer romances. You can miss good books if you scorn teenage protagonists.
We live in a world contemplating disaster. Writing about after allows stories of humans under pressure, and it can ask questions about how we organise ourselves, what we would lose, and perhaps here and there, what we might gain. They don’t have to be right wing power fantasies. Read more here.
A boy and his dog by C A Fletcher shows the British Isles largely depopulated. Gris’s family only knows one or two other families, scattered across the whole Western Isles. A stranger steals his dog, among other things, and impetuous Gris sails after him. Step by step Fletcher puts Gris in increasing danger, in a haunting vision of a world largely without humans. The author has a brilliant way of foreshadowing disaster, in a way that makes what actually goes wrong a complete surprise, with at least one unforgivable twist, and he brings it to a staggering ending.
The Book of Koli by M R Carey starts in a post-apocalyptic Yorkshire, where an isolated village is slowly shrinking – births being fewer than deaths. Surrounded by carnivorous trees and other mutants, the community is ruled by those who can make old technology work. Koli challenges this and ends up expelled. Carey delivers originality and imagination, his humane take on the world is accessible. This is the first of a trilogy, in which Koli must see if humanity is doomed to die out.
Red White and Royal Blue is fun – Alex is the adult son of the female President of the US and dislikes tall handsome Prince Henry of the British Royal Family. (It’s set in a world where Trump lost). Obviously, they’re going to end up in love but it’s good clean entertainment getting there. Spin, the obsessions of the modern media, and the stultifying nature of monarchy add to the mix. Many people firmly believe it is bad to read books that make you happy, and they also believe it must be easy to write them. I’m not going to read this sort of thing every day but it’s very successful, and even drips in a positive political worldview. Passionate love scenes are tasteful.
Felix Ever After follows black trans artist Felix at art school in Brooklyn, it is about his struggles with bullying, including aggressive deadnaming, and not knowing what he wants to do with his talent. The title warns you that he gets his stuff together, though it’s sharper and less obvious than Red White and Blue. We need an assertion of the basic humanity of trans people.
June 13, 2022
Our Child of Two Worlds: a few reviews of interest
(There are more – this is a quick selection)
“A compelling story of love, family, and hope, Stephen Cox skilfully continues the story of Cory, the alien child who became the beloved son of Molly and Gene in Our Child of the Stars. Cory is torn between where he came from and his life on Earth. Heart-warmingly beautiful, Our Child of Two Worlds is not to be missed.”
Barbara Conrey, USA Today Bestselling author of Nowhere Near Goodbye
Annarella – Scrapping and Playing blog
“Riveting, compelling, and emotionally charged: a page turner I loved”
“This is a book about hope, hope that things can get better, that we can work it out”
“Like the best SF, Our Child of Two Worlds is about us, at our best and worst, and how we respond to the best and the worst in others. Cory’s people are from a very different, almost Utopian seeming culture and – as in one of Swift’s novels – we’re judged by that comparison, Cory himself noting it even as his love for his adopted parents and his friends burns bright. Are we worth saving, if we seem willing to destroy ourselves anyway?
“Once again, Stephen Cox has created a novel that strikes at the heart of family. The novel, I think, can be seen as an examination of how complicated family interactions can be. How infuriating blood relatives are. How difficult marriage can be even when both people are on the same page, wanting the same things. How hard it is when what is best for your child most definitely isn’t best for you. Throw in some aliens and the threat of the extinction of the Earth and those themes are stretched to their limits.”
“The sequel to Our Child of the Stars will definitely delight those of us who loved the first instalment.”
“Stephen Cox writes beautifully and fills his characters with warmth and self-questioning. I love the incidental characters who debate whether Cory is a hoax. There’s the drama surrounding Molly’s family. There are tensions that play out on an intimate scale against the massive context of aliens, space travel, the potential end of the world. It works brilliantly.”
June 7, 2022
Firestarter Revisited
The film was objectively terrible. The acting wasn’t terrible but people were not given much to work with.
It is a shame as I still think the original novel has more to commend it than is the conventional wisdom. Although for sure, flawed.
May 11, 2022
Firestarter lit a fuse for Our Child of the Stars
A new Firestarter movie is the third screen adapation of Stephen King’s novel. I’m going to see it, because I have a weird affection for the book, and it was a curious influence on Our Child of the Stars.
I found out yesterday that SF critic Brian Aldiss agreed with me that Firestarter was a better book than Carrie, which is some support.
Some influences are chosen – for example I knew the arrival of the Meteor would resonate with Smallville, the Superman origin story yet of my creation. There’s also some unconscious Firestarter influence in that both it and my work use the ‘sweet child, terrible power’ trope and both have a family with a special child fleeing unaccountable government forces across the north-eastern US. The clever ending of King’s novel was also an influence on how my first book resolves.
Zack Efron will play Charlie’s Dad, Andy in the new film and if he wants to play Gene in the film of Our Child of the Stars, our people should talk.
I wrote about some of this on Medium.
May 1, 2022
SPOILERS ALLOWED Zoom discussion
I am running a Zoom Meeting on Tuesday 3rd May, 730-9pm BST. This is for people who have read both books or who don’t mind if the brilliant ending is spoiled (!? if such people exist.) All welcome for a civilised chat about the books and allied topics.
There will be other opportunities to talk.
I need your email to send you the Zoom links. Best is to subscribe to my newsletter whose subscribers knew about this weeks ago.
