How the subconscious mind shapes creative writing

Authors who improvise, like John Boyne, and those who meticulously pre-plan like Michelle Paver, all seem to benefit from thoughts they don’t know they’re having

Do you remember those plastic slide puzzles you used to get in party bags? They were made up of a three by three grid with eight tiles and a blank square – the missing tile allowing you to move the others around.

This nine-grid puzzle was the central image behind the story of Mark Haddon’s The Red House – although, bizarrely, he didn’t know it when he wrote the book.

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