It's time for our mid-week, almost mid-month, break from the challenges and drudgery of writing to laugh a little. The following jokes were stolen... er, borrowed from a professor at Villanova University Karyn Hollis, who first posted them on the University website. A writer died and was given the option of going to heaven or hell. She decided to check out each place first. As the writer descended into the fiery pits, she saw row upon row of writers chained to their desks in a steaming sweatshop. As they worked, they were repeatedly whipped with thorny lashes. "Oh my," said the writer. "Let me see heaven now." A few moments later, as she ascended into heaven, she saw rows of writers, chained to their desks in a steaming sweatshop. As they worked, they, too, were whipped with thorny lashes. "Wait a minute," said the writer. "This is just as bad as hell!" "Oh no, it's not," replied an unseen voice. "Here, your ...

What’s the easiest way to find a plot for a story or novel? Let it find you! Just today I read a newspaper article about the chief executive of a media company - already a millionaire - who had voted himself a multi-million dollar bonus for the fifth successive year. Then he had used dubious schemes to avoid paying tax on it. I was outraged. Was he worth such a reward? No. Did he invest his surplus wealth in Good Works? No. He was an icon of unmitigated greed. And a plot started to emerge... I drafted a story in less than an hour in a white heat of anger. I added conflict. I imagined that the tycoon had an underling, poorly paid. She faced a moral dilemma. Should she stay loyal to her boss, who had done her many personal favours, or blow the whistle on his illicit schemes? On reflection, I made the man a decent fellow, brought up in terrible poverty and driven by insecurity to accumulate vast wealth. Did he deserve to be ruined? Hm... At the end, there was no moral conclusi...

Or Why I Stick to Writing Novels The title of this article, I realise, is provocative. It would seem to imply that I consider short stories to be inferior examples of the writer’s art: practice works produced by novices, or the second-rate oeuvres of mere dilettantes incapable of the sustained creative effort required to produce a full-length novel. In fact nothing could be further from the truth. Painful as it is for me to make this confession, the reason that I don’t (or very rarely) write short stories because (in general) I lack the intense, tightly-focused imagination needed to write a good one. The question now arises: what are the attributes of a good short story? Opinions here will differ, depending on who is addressing the question. A writer of Literary Fiction (who has read and admired the works of Raymond Carver) will contend that a good short story is one which evokes the cultural ambiance in which the writer is writing. By this standard of measurement, the ...