Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 148

The Many Lives of Sweeney Todd

An odd little play that was reborn in Tooting, South London, has now become a hit in New York, set in a perfect reproduction of Harrington’s Pie and Eel Shop, where the audience gets splashed with shaving foam and Kensington Gore. Tooting Arts Club produced ‘Sweeney Todd’ late last year, staging it in a genuine […]

Where Will An Anti-Trump Film Come From?

Rebuilding Satire Who will be the first to satirise this almost-unsatirisable change in America before Trump – who has already started banning reporters from briefings, so far CNN, the Guardian and the New York Times – starts the kind of censorship that always accompanies rising warmongers? So far Hollywood appears toothless, although they require a […]

Old Wine, Not Very New Bottles

Everything old is new again; I can’t read another novel set in the Blitz unless somebody brings something new to the party, and I’m getting tired of books set in the mid-19th century. And yet there are still many stories to be told. I saw Gurinder Chadha’s ‘Viceroy’s House’ yesterday, about how India’s partition came […]

London Otherworld

Certain cities are dreamworlds. For me, Tokyo, Bangkok and New Delhi fit the bill, although I haven’t been to Shanghai, which I imagine would really do it. London has a special sense of otherness, because it is still a collection of boroughs, villages and wards, despite what developers try to do to it. There’s no […]

How To Write A Short Story Part 3

The shape of your story is built by the aim, the scenario, the characters, the plot, the style – and through them the idea emerges. The danger is that by not constructing a short story this way around, by starting with what you want to get across, you can end up with something plodding and […]

How To Write A Short Story Part 2

I thought I’d put these three posts together to save you hunting about for them on the blog, so here’s part two. Bad stories get published; it’s a shock, but they appear regularly in collections and small press, usually because lazy editors call their mates. The system is not a meritocracy – if an editor […]

How To Write A Short Story Part 1

I’m going to post these lessons once a week, just for fun. They’ll cover a few of the questions I most often answer. Nobody likes a good all-rounder. That was the advice given to me by my favourite teacher, Mr Scholar (really), Sherington Junior Boys School. It’s great advice. To do something well, specialise. A […]

Unfilmable Tales?

  When I started writing short stories I had no parameters I was aware of, and piled up tales on all sorts of subjects into collections willy-nilly. These are out as e-books now, and I’ve just noticed that many of the editions still have the original illustrations in. I used to commission them from artists […]

London’s Less Visited Museums

Why is it that one of the first things one does upon visiting another city is to go to its museums? I hardly ever do that at home. And London is stuffed with them. The Kinetica is a platform for international new media art. At the moment it features immersive works that ‘challenge perceptions to question […]

Forever Young: What’s Missing In The Workplace

I make no apologies for excerpting part of a much longer article by Tom Goodwin because he voices something many feel. It’s a bit patronising but hey, he’s in advertising (‘Head of Innovation’, poor guy) and has a point to make: Living in New York and working in advertising I rarely see people over the age […]