LEGALIZING THE PLOT

LEGALIZING THE PLOT

The legal profession has always been a novelists’ treasure house, and lawyers themselves are a gift to writers of fiction.  If your plot has wound itself into a hopeless tangle, you can often solve matters by allowing the family solicitor to discover old documents or...
IN LOVE WITH THE VILLAINS

IN LOVE WITH THE VILLAINS

When portrayed on the grand scale, villains in fiction can be surprisingly fascinating.  Would vampires as a race have gained such worldwide appeal without a sinister undead gentleman in evening dress dominating the screen or the page?  Equally, would psychological...

UNDERSTATING THE CHILLS

It’s a fact of life that there are times when the shadow can be mightier than the substance. Over ninety years ago the German film-maker F.W. Murnau chilled cinema audiences with the 1922 silent movie, Nosferatu.  It’s still chilling people today, and probably the...