Writing - Details

 When you are trying to engage your readers, there are many different strategies that you can apply. Personally, I enjoy description, which helps me picture the scene in my head. The danger is that with too much description, you can end up slowing the narrative to a crawl and losing your audience. You have to be able to discern what is the right balance to allow your stories to flow and yet also engage with the reader. 

 

One of my favourite books when I was growing up was HMS Ulysses by Alistair MacLean. In non story, he spends a couple of pages describing the sea conditions in the North Atlantic, which is relevant to the fact that the ship HMS Ulysses is a warship and it’s the Second World War. The information is so vivid you could almost make yourself seasick just reading it. 

On the other hand, there are stories where the description of a physical scene is so turgid that he actually turned me off reading, and one of those for me was Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens. Don’t get me wrong, I love Charles Dickens’s writing, but as with all authors, not everything that he wrote was the most exciting or fascinating in style. 

When writing your magnum opus, there is the feeling that you need to spend time using flowery language and detailed description, which may be necessary to have a chance at the Booker Prize, but to entertain, it is probably necessary to be circumspect in the quantity of detail you include throughout your work. 

God Bless 

Poetry Thursday 136 - Seed is Sown

 Hurrah to the Scottish Assembly defeating the Assisted Dying Bill. I have said before that I don't want anyone to suffer, but if the time and money were put into palliative care, would there be a reduction in likely candidates to opt for Gravitas in Switzerland? My main objection, however, is a simple distrust of politics and politicians. We presently are seeing the result of venal tendencies towards big money to maintain their hold on power in the US. We saw it to a degree under Boris Johnson's premiership during Covid. Alongside the bribes, how long would it be before conditions, not voted for, were applied to these bills? Terrifying! 

The buying and selling of politicians is not new, but gained greater impetus from May 4th, 1979. 

Seed was Sown

 

Ferrous woman misspoke of Assisi, of harmony and truth,
while sharpening a sickle to prune the vigour of ower youth.
On May 4th, the damned threshold crossed, a new era begins,
feeling a caad and bitter shiver, from a heartless kind of wind. 

The tall chimneys of the north began to lose their breath,
fiscal reasons drafted creating slow and steady death.
no longer a united labour force, redundancy became the king,
while bells for pits and ports began their final ring. 

The industrial state gathered up, the silver sold for gold,
stories of trickled down common wealth suddenly we’re told,
greater value in ticker tape and glass-walled city towers,
while soft pink, hands took back the reins of once-collective powers. 

She decried past society, just individuals in a line,
and turned the water, rail, and gas to private bread and wine.
The spine of old Britannia snapped beneath the fiscal strain,
exchanging soot and brotherhood for speculative gain.

 

So started the long descent, the slow and polished slide,
what was once a shared estate became a Great Divide.
From that ominous May morning, new tablets were revealed,
a nation with a price tag, former spirit bought and unsealed. 

©David L Atkinson March 2026 

God Bless 

Writing - Empathy

 One exercise to improve writing is to practice empathy. It can be practised by looking at a story that you are familiar with and rewriting a section of it from the point of view of a character other than the main characters involved. If you are feeling particularly adventurous, you might try from the point of view of a pet! 

'What are you looking at?' 

That doesn’t mean that your story has to be about animals. There is Black Beauty, which is a very human story and is narrated by the horse, and then, of course, you have purely animal stories like Watership Down.

The story of Paddington Bear is told by the bear himself, even though he's the only animal in the story.

The point is that taking yourself out of the writer role, I’m becoming more emotionally involved in the story, which is a valuable exercise in itself, and it helps to develop an understanding of the emotional states of the people you are writing about.

An alternative exercise would be to take a familiar story,  for instance one of Jesus' stories, and write about it but from the point of view of 1 of the disciples, maybe Thomas. Perhaps an episode from Star Trek from Ohura’s perspective. The possibilities are endless, and one possible spin-off is a short story for yourself.

Whatever you decide, the actual exercise will enrich your future writing.

 God Bless 

 

Poetry Thursday 135 - Doomsday Clock

 The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists changed its format from a newsletter to a magazine. Its first cover features a clock, both conceptualized and designed by artist Martyl Langsdorf. The Clock’s hands move based upon whether events push humanity closer to or further from nuclear apocalypse. The Clock later includes dangers posed by climate change and other existential threats. 

Doomsday Clock 

It's Ticking

 

Turned on in 47.

an indicator pointing at heaven,

the method as yet unidentified,

of how the world will be transmogrified.

 

53 - first turn of the spring by hydrogen,

to return Earth to molten origin,

  63 - Cuban crisis intensifies the race,

Test Ban treaty slows the pace.

12 minutes

 

72 – Russia and USA sign SALT,

 if anyone shoots it will be their fault,

80 – SALT fails, more states connect,

resources and crises collect.

7 minutes

 

81 – Russia invades Afghanistan,

Reagan refuses to be anchorman,

84 – communications cease,

US want a space system centrepiece,

3 minutes

 

90 – actions make peace more certain,

down comes the Iron Curtain,

Cold War finally over,

Does it mean we’re all in clover.

17 minutes

95 – only five years and a close call,

Russia no lambs replacing USSR’s fall,

Failure to control nuclear a shame,

India and Pakistan joins the game.

9 minutes

 

02 – terrorists stir the worries pot,

new weapons give even more a shot,

07 – N Korea on the rise,

conducts nuclear tests – no surprise.

5 minutes

 

10 – climate change joins the equation,

main actors want further action,

pointing towards no nuclear bombs,

the climate leading modern psalms.

6 minutes

 

15 – no new forwards steps,

some denying of climate concepts,

leading to more significant threats,

pointing disaster at all our doorsteps.

3 minutes

 

18 – social media is in the frame,

communication available to every name,

introduces an instrument to everyone,

leadership pressure can be built upon.

2 minutes

 

20 – humanity faces nuclear war and climate change,

information wars affect the range,

national relations is becoming more aggressive,

self-aggrandisement of leaders increasingly obsessive.

85 seconds – 2026

©David L Atkinson March 2026 

God Bless 

Writing - International Women's Day

 March 8th is International Women's Day. The international situation, regarding Iran and the behaviour of American President Donald J. Trump, is probably of more importance than usual today. It seems to me MAGA's attitude towards women is a step backwards into the Victorian era. In fact, it is quite sad that in the 21^st century, we have taken a huge step backwards. 

There are many seriously clever women in the world today, and have been throughout time. The insecurity of men keeping women in the background goes back centuries. However, it will no longer work; information is now much more readily available at a moment’s notice. With the advent of the internet and mobile phones, and even in the most repressed societies, mobile phones are available, whether the powers in charge like that situation or not. This is true for all nations, all cultures and all races around the world. Sadly, the current situation in the world is being created by old white men. Women make better leaders. 

Toni Morrison published her first novel in 1970 at the age of 39. The book, “The Bluest Eye,” unflinchingly explored themes of gender and internalised racism, setting Morrison on a prolific literary course that would ultimately earn the American author a Nobel Prize in literature in 1993. 

Born the youngest of three children in Decatur, Alabama, Mae Jemison was a student of science before going on to serve as a medical officer in the Peace Corps and establish her own practice as a doctor. Inspired by the Apollo moon trips but discouraged by the lack of female astronauts, Jemison pivoted careers and, in 1987, applied to NASA.

Out of more than 2,000 applicants, Jemison was selected to train at Kennedy Space Centre. On Sept. 12, 1992, Jemison boarded the space shuttle "Endeavour", and along with six other astronauts, she orbited the Earth. Her trip to space landed Jemison in the history books as the first Black woman in space.

Just two of a plethora of women who have had significant influence in the world. 

God Bless 

Poetry Thursday 134 - Precious Words

 The Trump administration, MAGA, is convinced they are doing God's work. They are entitled to their opinion. After this week's attack on Iran I felt this poem/prayer was relevant. 

God is in the Rain

 

When we pray to God looking to the skies

we see the clouds before our eyes,

and as we pray to God we ask questions

for ourselves and others, for His suggestions,

on how to live each and every day

and keep illness, fear and trouble at bay.

 

When we pray to God looking to the skies

we see endless expanse before our eyes,

and as we pray to God we confess our sins

looking for the peace His forgiveness brings

to our aching souls and tortured lives,

bringing gentleness that we may survive.

 

When we pray to God looking to the skies

we see the sun before our eyes,

and as we pray to God we give our vow

to live as He would expect from now

so that the world will be a better place

for us and the rest of the human race.

 

When we pray to God looking to the skies

we see drops of rain before our eyes,

but as we pray to God we fail to see

the extent and infinite care that He

lavishes on us time and again,

as frequently as every drop of rain.

© David L Atkinson November 2014 

God Bless 

Writing - Dare to be different

When I started writing in 2011, it never occurred to me that eventually I would start being concerned about writing to a formula.  In fact, being concerned about writing to a formula is one of the reasons why I stopped writing novels.

 Now I’m not saying that becoming formulaic in your writing is a bad thing, particularly if you've attracted an audience, because the audience may well be attracted to the style and the repeated actions that you include in stories. 

Just take, for instance, the way Poirot stories end with the collection together of the witnesses/suspects in this tale so that the detective Hercule Poirot can name the perpetrators. The writer of the TV series set in the Caribbean, Death in Paradise, has actually employed a similar conclusion for each episode.

If you are fortunate enough to have gathered the following it may be because of the security that your writing formula has generated in their minds, so not altogether a bad thing. However, I found that writing to a formula can also make you lazy, and even as the writer, it can become boring, and so I gave up writing novels A while ago now.

That doesn’t mean to say I would never go back to it, but I would actually quite like to do something a little different. So enjoy your writing and even enjoy your success with whatever formula, if you have a formula you use, but keep your mind open to alternatives. I did break away from the Steele formula after 5 stories and wrote Cessation. 

Get Cessation from Amazon. 

 

 God Bless