Writing - Emotional Range

 So we've written about the details in stories, we've included information about any details that might have changed to make it interesting, and now we've got to try to make it more interesting for the reader. There are many ways of doing this, but for today just want to consider emotions that you may well include to engage the reader. 

Certain emotions are easier to write about than others, for example, anger, which people can apply their imagination to, still quite readily. With those two emotions, one could imagine a fast pace, plenty of action, lots of descriptive opportunities, and draw on personal experience. Those emotions that are not quite as easy to deal with, or what may be described as softer emotions, or darker emotions. For example, sadness, the pain of loss, and failure are intensely personal, and as everyone knows, people react differently in these situations; they have a longer time scale and quite often involve a process that the human body needs to go through to assimilate such emotions.

 

I want to simplify things and just consider happiness and fun, annoyance, sadness, and frustration.

 

In the first case of happiness, it being Easter weekend, one can imagine any situation where people are visiting friends and relatives and delivering presents, Easter eggs obviously, undescribed phone games, welcoming attitudes, delightful surprises, imagining lots of smiles and perhaps quite a lot of noise and laughter. Where the story goes from there is obviously up to you, the writer, and you're free to make that decision

 

On the other hand, the sadness of a frustrating story may be something totally different, and if you can imagine how people would react to the Iran war or the mention of Donald Trump, the loss of a loved one, all of those scenarios trigger a different range of emotions. You may well have anger, you may well have sadness, you may have frustration, a deep sense of loss, a very much darker place to be.

 

Whatever the story type you choose, this is when you can draw on your own experience. That is not to say that if you have never experienced personal loss, you should avoid the subject. However, you may well have to do some basically search to fully understand all aspects of that particular scenario. It depends upon the audience you are aiming for as to which of these emotional roller coasters you decide to work with.

Whatever you decide to do, be sure of the ground you are choosing and consider all aspects of human reactions, from physical to psychological, before you embark on this journey. 

God Bless 

Poetry Thursday 138 - Easter Bunny

 A fun time of year that is more of a new beginning than the turn of the year. 

Easter Bunny

 

A happy time from tragedy,

applied to the cute and cuddly,

whether it be rabbits or chicks,

the intention to sell chocolate bricks.

 

Supposedly a sign of rebirth,

mood lightening from dark winter’s dearth,

but really another opportunity for selling,

obscuring the message’s true meaning.

 

Opportunity to embrace newness again,

a natural world’s living campaign,

to protect our planet and save the future,

from the actions of the current caretaker.

 

Appealing to the fondness of the children,

with creatures and confectionery distraction,

hoping they will enjoy the reward,

and become more efficient landlord.

 ©David L Atkinson April 2026 

God Bless 

Writing - Writing CEO

 There’s one certain thing, and that is that you are the CEO of your own work, so you could make whatever artistic decisions you wish. I approached last week the idea of when and when not to include copious details in your work, on the fact that too much at the wrong time could actually slow the pace. It would seem that by suggesting that you are the CEO, it doesn't matter when or where you put the details, but the rules are just the same. Too much detail kind of slows the pace of your story; not enough detail may detract from interest in the story.

 

However, as the CEO of your own work, you have the right to make decisions without reference to anybody else. It is nice when you are given positive feedback and advice, but as in all aspects of life, you can choose to ignore advice, irrespective of how good it is. Being your own CEO allows you total freedom of expression.

 

Freedom of expression is the gift that writing gives you. You can change the details of existing situations, adjust timelines and time scales, and be as futuristic as you wish to be, among other things. This is only limited by your imagination. It should be the source of inspiration for your writing. What I’m saying is you can write whatever you like, and no one else has the right to deny you in your wishes. Of course, if you wish to sell books, it may be necessary to take current trends into consideration. 

God Bless 

 

Poetry Thursday 137 - Evolution Stalled

 So, where is the world now, and where is it going? I wrote a similar poem 4 years ago. Has anything improved? 

Evolution stalled

 

As an outsider, observing the human race is pain,

watching how they don’t advance again and again,

hoping for improvement in everything they do,

admiring new trends that they gradually accrue.

 

The way they race forward ignoring history,

repeating mistakes a confusing mystery,

plunging the race into familiar conflicts,

after years spent developing peaceful constructs.

 

Opening hearts to the plight of less fortunates,

while rewarding the rich with golden coronets,

removing rules for public safety,

while claiming interest in all humanity.

 

Creating collectives like NATO and G7,

to discuss security and fiscal heaven,

when really the welfare of the millions of many,

is of little concern to the rulers’ activity.

Global warming, inflation, war in Iran/Ukraine,

issues to test the sharpest brain,

yet saddled with the wit of a presidential mouse,

who wants a ballroom in the White House.

 

Evolution of species is inextricably linked,

to whether they continue or become extinct,

judging by the quality of international leaders,

we are about to devolve to bottom feeders.

©David L Atkinson March 2026 

God Bless 

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