Free Story - The Hero Atsukawa

It was in the second summer of the Shogunate of Tokugawa, the summer of the rains, when the little girl called Yurimaru was taken. An interval of woe, when the grain harvest was devastated by the great winds and waters, and the people ate grass and dogs and children to survive. The Daimyo of Yurimaru’s prefecture was a man of great justice and kindness called Lord Mitsui. When he heard of the disappearance of Yurimaru, Lord Mitsui sent horsemen and harbingers far and wide to offer a large reward for the head of the man who took her. Lord Mitsui did this even though Yurimaru was a person of low birth and little importance. So great was the justice and kindness of Lord Mitsui.

***

The East West Road cuts a straggling horizontal line through the island of Hokkaido. This stretch is a muddy scar of black clay connecting a string of villages - poor places, where few live and even fewer stop. For all its quietness, there are still a few people trudging along it, hurrying through this featureless backwater, trying to push on to more salubrious surroundings before sunset. The ceaseless rain churns the mud into a quagmire six inches deep, a sucking trench of ooze that clutches at the feet of travellers and slows their progress to a crawl. Heading west against the usual flow of traffic, is a clutch of despondent farm labourers plastered in mud and carrying clean tools over their shoulders. As they plod up the road, which here is little more than a narrow track, they pass a jaunty old man who walks with that strange, bobbing step of one who never locks his knees. He is dressed like a merchant. His peasant jacket is made of bright blue silk embroidered with cart wheels, and his trousers are of finest black cotton now befouled to the thigh with black mud. He carries no wares, and there is no train of pack animals following him. There is only a bare, six foot wooden staff propped at a jaunty angle over his shoulder. He calls out a cheerful greeting as the little knot of labourers streams past and around him. They return it with surly nods. Struggling along in the old man’s wake is a girl no more than twelve. She has a koto in a bag - a travelling musician. The old man calls over his shoulder to her.

“Beautiful girl! Come and be my friend and I will pay you! Then, when you grow up, you can be my wife!”

The girl ignores him.

Some way behind them is another sort of man entirely. He is shabby, his hakama and haori are frayed and worn, his hair bound in a loose top knot. Only his swords, the long katana and short wakizashi, have the look of love and care. They are magnificent pieces, sheathed in gleaming black enamel, corded with yellow silk, hilted with gold jewels and bright silk bindings. The farm labourers walk a long way off to the side of the road and wait with bowed heads until he passes. He ignores them. His eyes are fixed straight ahead, his feet moving with steady, patient regularity - left foot, right foot, and onwards, without a moment’s pause, sure and stable even in the clinging, slippery clay.

The old man follows one of the few bends in the road and comes upon a little roadside shelter selling tea. It is occupied by some drabble-tailed geisha huddled together under the meagre awning and flinching away from the water that sheets down from its edges and splashes at their legs. He turns his beaming face to them and calls out in a strong, fruity voice.

“Ah! Beautiful girls! Why won’t one of you follow me and be my wife!”

They simper and giggle, their hands flying up to their mouths to cover their teeth. The old man beams at them and carries on to look for better comfort and shelter. The little musician treads silently behind him. The geisha, thinking that she means to join them, shriek and fling clods of mud at her, but lose interest as it becomes clear that the girl means to go straight on. Some minutes later the swordsman plashes round the corner in his sure-footed way, seeming to glide along the surface of the road - on it, but not of it. His swords, his blank eyes, make the geisha fall silent and still. They watch him as a cat watches, coiled, tense and ready to flee. He comes inexorably closer, and even though his eyes never once even flicker in their direction, the geisha flee their shelter to hide behind it, cowering in the soaking rain until he is finally past.

There is a small grove of rocks and trees, its limbs and crags embracing the low form of a small tea house. It has a rich blue tiled roof and fine framing, and the painted signs have been brushed by an expert hand. The old man gives the house the shortest of glances before turning in his tracks and making for the front door. He is a few paces away from the shelter of the eaves when the lady of the house jerks open the door and comes hurrying out, a trail of soup dribbling down the white lead paint that covers her face.

“Noble traveller! Won’t you come in out of the rain? We have refreshments!”

“Ah! Beautiful lady! Won’t you be my wife?” says the old man, grinning. The lady of the house titters into her hand, her shoulders hunched, her whole body bowed and shaking with affected mirth. Her hard black eyes, however, follow the movements of the old man, relaxing only when he reaches into the folds of his jacket and produces some coins.

“Come in, come in, noble traveller! We have some guests already and they are excellent company.”

The old man grins and nods as she speaks, shaking water from his sodden jacket. He follows her into the house, stepping out of his muddy boots in the genkan and luxuriating in the warm spring of dry tatami under his cold, wet feet. The lady leads him to a noisy, brightly lit room. Through the paper walls the silhouettes of two men can be seen prancing antically with a pair of geisha. The lady slides open the shoji and bows the old man in. As he steps inside, the two geisha disengage from their men and hurry over to the little table laden with sake jars and cups. The men turn, hilarious smiles still lingering on their faces. They too are merchants, dressed in bright kimonos that swell with the fatness of their bellies.

“Hello my friends!” says the old man. “My name is Hira, but everyone calls me Sake Warm because that’s what I always ask for, see? All up and down the East West Road, call in at any house and say ‘Sake! Warm!’ and they will think it is me! Will I drink with you today, good friends?”

Their drunken leers return to their full brilliance. They introduce themselves as the brothers Kojima, fuss over Sake Warm and usher him to their table, calling for drinks, for another girl, in their rough peasant burr.

The lady of the house fusses around taking fresh food orders, gathering up empty sake jars. She is distracted by a movement behind her. The little girl with the koto has followed them inside. She opens her mouth to say something, but the lady chivvys her into the room, urging her to begin. The little girl moves to the far corner and sits down. She slides her instrument out of its cloth bag and sits patiently, waiting for a break in the noise and conversation. When the three men have settled to boisterously toasting each other, the lady totters back toward the front entrance. The little musician’s appearance has reminded her to close the door. There, under the eaves, is the swordsman. He stands perfectly still in the little pool of water that is streaming from his clothing. His left hand rests lightly on his katana as he gazes into the house. The lady stops short, hesitates for a moment, comes to a decision. She bows almost to the floor.

“Samurai sama, welcome to my poor and humble house. Will you step inside and take some refreshment?”

He says nothing at first, merely stares past her for a long moment, listening to the sounds of the voices within.

“I am Atsukawa,” he says, finally. The sounds of the party of Sake Warm and the Kojima brothers seem to be happening on the other side of the world.

“Welcome, Atsukawa sama. How can I serve you today?” says the lady. Her bent back begins to tremble as she struggles to hold her bowed position.

“Sake,” he says, stepping inside, making it finally possible for her to straighten out her tortured spine.

“Atsukawa sama, my most abject apologies - we have only one room and it is occupied. Would you care to use my private chambers?”

“I will go there,” says Atsukawa, nodding at the room in which the outlines of Sake Warm and his new friends can be seen. The lady bows deeply, then hesitates again.

“The rate is three mon…” she stops when she realises she is talking to the empty air. Atsukawa has walked past her as if she no longer existed. He slides open the shoji and stands framed in the doorway.

The three men have frozen ludicrously in place, hands outstretched to fondle girls who are no longer there - who have fled to the corner of the room. They too suffer a moment’s hesitation, unsure of their visitor’s rank, the shabbiness of his clothes vying with the magnificence of his swords. Sake Warm is the first to recover. His face crinkles into the broadest of grins as he bows deeply and greets the newcomer.

“Noble, noble samurai! You are welcome, samurai sama! My name is Hira, but everyone calls me Sake Warm because that’s what I…”

“I am Atsukawa,” he says, cutting the old man off. Atsukawa walks to the low table at the centre of the room, kneels in the central place and pulls his swords from his obi, laying them down by his left hand side. The three men stand respectfully in a line against the far wall, their eyes on the newcomer. A geisha scurries over with a cup and jar, pours him a measure of sake and makes to scurry away.

“Leave it here,” says Atsukawa. She puts the jar down on the table and retreats to the corner where the other girls are. Atsukawa drinks, pours himself another cup. His eyes lock onto the girl with the koto.

“Play,” he says.

She plays.

“You,” he says to Sake Warm. “Sit with me.”

Sake Warm grins, bobs his head, and sits cross-legged opposite Atsukawa, clumsily fumbling with his staff for a moment before finally deciding to lay it across his knees. Atsukawa drinks off his second cup and Sake Warm tentatively reaches out for the bottle. Seeing that there is no reaction to this, he pours a cup for Atsukawa and then one for himself.

“Kanpai,” he says with forced cheerfulness, holding up his cup with both hands. Atsukawa looks at him, gives the slightest of nods, and drinks his own cup empty. Sake Warm pours again and, after giving Atsukawa a long, searching look, begins to speak.

“I see, samurai sama, that you wear no markings or livery. May I humbly ask where you are from, and which lord you serve?”

“I have no lord.”

There is another long silence after this as Sake Warm waits for Atsukawa to say more. The mournful picking of the koto seems to absorb the swordsman’s whole attention. After a little while, Sake Warm toasts again, drinks again, pours again.

“Where have you come from?” Atsukawa says suddenly.

“I am a simple merchant, as you can see,” says Sake Warm. “I have come from Yubari, where I live with my family, and I travel between there and Sapporo. I trade in tea and tea sets, if it pleases you, Atsukawa sama.”

Atsukawa thinks this over for a moment.

“You lie,” he says. “You are the criminal Hira, and you are from this prefecture. You took the girl Yurimaru into the forest, raped her, ate her, and now you have doubled back so that you can pretend to be a traveller and a stranger.”

The koto stops playing. The only sound for a moment is indrawn breath.

“With the deepest respects - you are mistaken, Atsukawa sama. My name is Hira, but I am no criminal. Go anywhere along the East West road and say ‘Sake Warm’ and they will know me. I swear to you - I am no criminal, I am a tea merchant…”

But Atsukawa has stopped listening. A lightning quick flick of his left wrist has brought his katana to hand. The sword hisses out of its beautiful sheath and through a vicious arc, clashing as it stops against the foot long blade that has just sprung from Sake Warm’s staff.

The two men spring apart, Sake Warm’s once cheerful face now contorted in a ferocious snarl. Atsukawa’s face is blank. He seems to be looking through the old man as he drops the sheath and takes a two handed grip of his sword.

“You are well armed for a merchant,” says Atsukawa, softly.

“Ronin scum! How dare you attack me? You will die!” screams Sake Warm.

Atsukawa nods to himself. He steps left and the old man follows the movement, swinging the bladed staff so that it sings through the air. But Atsukawa has sprung off the ball of his left foot, darting suddenly right and away from the arc of the strike. He brings his sword down on Sake Warm’s unprotected shoulder, cutting the torso diagonally in half. Blood splatters on the paper walls. A thin line of splashed blood arcs across the ceiling as he brings his sword up again. A gobbet of human flesh flicks onto the face of the nearest geisha. She screams and makes a run for the door. Atsukawa reacts to the movement, cutting her down. There are more screams at this, so he steps forward, slashing right and left, and the other girl falls heavily onto the bloody floor. The Kojima brothers are backing away from Atsukawa, shoulders hunched submissively, hands raised in token of surrender. Atsukawa looks at them. The sword blurs again. The first brother is slashed across the belly and he follows the cascade of his intestines to the floor. The second brother has stood in the way of the backswing. He sways for a moment before his head falls to the floor, teeth chattering as it bounces on the tatami matting. A great jet of blood spurts to the ceiling. The body drops and the fountain of blood turns into a gushing river. The shoji slams open behind Atsukawa as the lady of the house comes pelting in.

“What have you done!” she shrieks.  Atsukawa turns and slams his sword point into her open mouth so hard that several inches of blade punch out the back of her head. She sags, and Atsukawa lets the weight of her bring his sword point down. He plants his foot on her gaping face to help him free the point from her skull. Atsukawa turns to the little girl with the koto. She sits perfectly still in the corner, her doll like face and hands splattered with crimson flecks.

Atsukawa points his dripping sword at the mess of innards and flesh and bright yellow fat that was Sake Warm.

“Is this the man who took your sister?” he asks.

The girl looks, pale faced with terror, then shakes her head.

“But his name is Hira,” he says.

“Forgive me. It is not him,” says the girl.

Atsukawa nods to himself, flicks the thick blood off his sword and wipes the remaining smears on the already heavily crusted hem of his haori.

“We go to the next place,” he says.

The girl nods, gathers up her instrument and follows Atsukawa through the now silent house and out into the rain.

***

At length there came the noble ronin Atsukawa. He had heard of the reward and wished to punish this crime that cried out to heaven of its evil. The noble ronin Atsukawa travelled far and wide, seeking the monster who had taken the girl Yurimaru. He had many adventures, and performed many great deeds until he reached Sapporo, where he finally found and killed the criminal Hira who had taken the girl Yurimaru. As well as the reward, Lord Mitsui accepted Atsukawa into his personal retinue. In time, Atsukawa became the leader of Lord Mitsui’s retainers and performed many great deeds. It is for this reason that the town of Kawajima has its name, in memory of the great and noble deeds of Atsukawa.

The Tyranny of 'Narrative Drive'

He who would pun would pick a pocket.

Most writing advice columns will start by telling you that it doesn't matter what you write, what your 'style' is, and that there are no rules. This is bullshit.

Okay, so it's not a complete lie, but it is an over-simplification. It's the sort of polite thing people say when they don't want to discourage you. Like, "You write quite well for someone your age," or, "Yes, it really suits you, but I like the other one better."

There are rules. They're broad and flexible and can be applied in a huge variety of ways, but rules they are and exist they do. One of these rules has to do with the requirement for 'narrative drive'. This is a vague one to define, but it basically boils down to the feeling that stuff is actually happening and that the story is actually going somewhere.

I hate to say it, but anyone who tells you this isn't important is flat out lying to your face, albeit with (usually) benign motives.

Probably the most important aspect of narrative drive is a sense of momentum. I believe it's actually true that things like pace and frequency of incident don't really matter - a lot of readers prefer slow, contemplative works. What kills momentum, however, is the lack of a unifying idea or set of ideas, lack of consistency in pacing, and the lack of coherence in incident.

Here's three broad principles which, when kept in mind, should help to preserve narrative drive.


WEAPONISE YOUR NARRATIVE

Treat the narrative as your primary delivery system.

This is about having something to say. Before the first word of a story is written, careful consideration needs to be given to the ideas or feelings which the author is trying to get across. Basically, if your plot is not designed as a delivery system for a devastating assault of ideas and emotions, then it's just possible that your story might not be worth reading.

Okay, so maybe I'm exaggerating, but it is important to be clear about what you're writing about if you want to avoid producing a story that feels vague, aimless or pointless. It doesn't have to earth-shattering. There's no rule to say that every author must always and only write about the horrors of war, or the insane hubris inherent in human existence. Sometimes, a story which perfectly captures something small - like the desolation of a grey and rainy day, or the heartbreak of life's minor defeats - can be more poignant than any towering epic of literary greatness. But deliver something you must, as people who read writing purely for the sake of beautiful words are called 'poetry readers'.

It could be argued that what I'm saying here is genre specific, but I don't think it is. Remember, I said delivering an idea or a feeling. It really doesn't matter what you're writing, from advertising copy to screenplay to literary doorstopper, it is guaranteed that you will be trying to deliver one or the other. Thrillers deliver excitement, horror promotes dread, sci-fi often shoots for wonder - the list goes on.

By focussing on the idea or feeling you wish to convey, it is far more likely that you will hit upon the best possible vehicle for delivering it, as well as avoiding a story which leaps peripatetically between a dizzying over-abundance of concepts.

The process is a simple one. Some people start with ideas, others with stories, others still with disconnected scenes. Whichever starting point works for you, it's important to pause and determine what you want to make the reader think and/or feel, and then design the rest of your story accordingly. Not to do so is to radically increase your likelihood of producing either an incomplete or a failed manuscript.



DON'T FAFF ABOUT

If your book is this thick, restart and try again.

When you have an idea of where you want your story to go, it's important that you get there as efficiently as possible. Now, don't get the idea that I'm saying every story needs to tear along at the pace of a Lee Child thriller, but it's still not okay to waste scenes and actions. Just as we apply Chekhov's Gun to story elements, so too should it apply to everything else.

On a very basic level, let's say you start a chapter of a novel knowing that you must achieve the following before you can move on:

1. A meeting between two characters
2. A key piece of foreshadowing dialogue
3. An overall impression of a locale
4. The introduction of an important object

The immediate tendency is to think of each of these plot and story elements and create a scene perfectly designed to show each of them. When you're one or two chapters in, this approach may very well work best, but if you continue in this way throughout your book, what you're going to end up with is a smoking hot mess. Characters will have to be used, re-used and invented, and your people and events will start moving in repetitive loops. Also, there's a good chance you'll end up with about 700 chapters.

It's a good idea to apply, at the very beginning, the principle of economy. If all the things on the list above need accomplishing, what is the minimum number of scenes and character actions required to do that? Can the characters meet in a venue which is emblematic of the chosen locale, have a conversation in which they foreshadow the plot and then proceed to notice or mention an important object? If you consistently craft in this fashion, even stories not exactly crowded with incident will gain a sense of momentum and purpose. 

It's easy to forget, but what I try to do is imagine that I have to painstakingly hand draw each scene I'm going to create, and then let my constitutional laziness take over. This is generally effective because, as a writer, painstakingly hand drawing every scene is exactly what you have to do.

PANTSER OR POSEUR?

This is a hipster reading paper anime because it's cool. Don't be that guy.

You may have noticed that much of the foregoing assumes a degree of planning. This leads me to believe that many authors are going to skim through this thinking, "Well, I'm a pantser. None of this applies to me."

A word about pantsers. Nobody who writes anything worth reading does so with zero preparation or planning. 

Nobody. 

I like to use public speaking as an analogy. There are speakers who are brilliant at extempore speaking, and those who require careful planning, notes, and so on. Extempore speakers tend to have a few things in common. Firstly and most fundamentally, they have expertise in both speaking and at least one subject. People who can speak extempore can usually do so because they have practiced speaking to the point where they are glibly articulate, and because they know what they're talking about inside out and upside down. On top of this, when observing an extempore speaker, one notices that they do not, in fact, speak entirely off the cuff. When called upon to speak, they will pause, see the broad outline of their argument in their minds, and then set off. 

From this we can see that they don't eschew planning - their whole lives have been a process of planning and preparation for the moment of speaking. This means that all that's left to do on the day can usually be shortened to a second or two of thought. This is emphatically not the same as failing to prepare or plan at all.

Now, you may think that the divine and plentiful flow of your unique genius is sufficient to keep a reader locked in the compelling spell of your literary greatness, and if you do, I won't argue with you. There wouldn't be much point anyway. But if you're a pantser because you've assessed your spontaneous writing to be better than your contrived, then I'd just point out one thing. However good it is, you still need a rudimentary scaffold or path to your destination. And you still need a destination, because the greatest single killer of narrative drive is aimlessness, and the quickest way to kill a reader's interest is to lack narrative drive.

Writing Retreats - Are They Worth It?

Zoya, Kris and Sue, showing the flag for the SWW.

I'm prone to occasional bouts of 'Middle Class Panic'. I've worked extremely hard to break out of my middle class bubble and sometimes, when I feel I'm backsliding, I will find myself in the grip of a strong compulsion to do or say something more or less inappropriate, profane, insane or disgusting. This usually occurs when I find myself talking about property values, matching food to wine or being judgemental about people in track pants.

There were occasional breaks in the drinking for work.

Which should make it easy to understand the degree of trepidation with which I approached the idea of attending a weekend writers' retreat. It's difficult to think of anything more middle class - the only thing I can come up with is those yoga camps people go on, but I'm not really sure I can factor in the absolutely unthinkable when making comparisons.

Me possibly saying something important, but probably not.

Why did I even contemplate going, you may be asking, if I viewed the event with such profound dread? Well, the single most compelling factor was that this retreat would be in the company of the Northern Beaches Writers' Group. This sterling group of people has railroaded me into various projects and undertakings, all of which have been successful, surprising and full of positive learning experiences. Rather like a Disney film, only not so derivative, crap or twee. 

So, braced to endure conversations about child-rearing, mortgage brokers, arthouse cinema and a host of other topics in which I have absolutely no interest, I girded my loins, trained my liver and set out grimly determined to get as much drinking and writing done as possible. As it turned out, I was far from being the only person to have had this idea.

Kris and Kylie, living proof that I do not work as hard as I should.

We arrived at our resort some time in the middle of Friday afternoon. 

Sorry - that last sentence gave me Middle Class Panic and I had to throw a chair across the room. Anyway, we arrived, nosed around our living spaces and checked all the cupboards and drawers to make sure no previous guest had left a stash of booze by mistake. Well, I assume I wasn't the only one. It was after this that events took a surprising turn.

Me, feeling the effects of unremitting booze, Guy not doing so, and Kylie being unimpressed.

We had arranged to meet at one of the cabins for reasons I did not fully understand. I soon discovered, however, that we were working on a revision and clean-up of our Write a Book in a Day entry, The Time of the Jade Spider. We went straight to work. Our fearless leader, Zena the Zealous, moderated a highly productive discussion, which was nowhere near as bad as it sounds because it was also a very well catered (read 'lubricated') discussion as well.

Some idiot with a guitar.

We then proceeded to get rowdily, manically and loquaciously drunk. Well, I say 'we'. A guitar was produced and strangled, songs were sung, pacts of eternal friendship made and, in my case, balconies leapt from. The following morning, after having discovered the resort's critical error of providing me with bacon in all you can eat form, we got down to work. And work we did. Sure, there was all the usual stuff - raging out over internet problems, staring at a blank page becoming convinced that I've completely wasted my life, breaking my resolution not to be, yet again, everybody's IT support person, but these minor problems were as nothing compared to what was actually achieved.

Zena Shapter, group leader, ego wrangler and selfie taker extraordinaire.

Writing was done, knowledge was shared, enormous quantities of alcohol were consumed, sure - but all this stuff is just stuff. The main thing - the thing which made the whole thing worthwhile - was the fact that the weekend re-affirmed my belief in the idea of writing as being the sole most important thing in my life. Spending time with like-minded (and not so like-minded) writers is nice, but the main effect was far more important. More than anything else, the benefit was in regaining a sense of the possible. Seeing how other writers work and hearing about their forays into the harsh and indifferent world of publishing made the whole undertaking of writing seem significantly less nebulous and futile.

A rare picture of me actually listening to someone else.

Are writing retreats worth it? Well, this one was, and I'd highly recommend the experience to any writer, at any stage of their journey. Assuming, of course, that they're able to collect a group of people as excellent as the one I've stumbled into.

Meaning - the Payload of Narrative

 One question which is left unanswered by far too many authors is, "Why am I writing this story?"

While a certain amount of arrogance is required to undertake creative writing at all, it needs to be remembered that the fact of a story is not the reason for its being. If we start with the staggeringly egoistic belief that anything we might have to say will be interesting to other people, we're at ops state normal for a writer. This, however, is as far as it should be allowed to go.

Many authors seem to hold the strange belief that people read stories because they like stories. But narrative is not, and never has been, sufficient in and of itself. Story-telling is fundamental to the human experience as a form of communication. This necessarily means that something should be communicated. It is this burden - this payload of thought, concept or emotion - which is the sole justification for a story's existence.

It's a bit like the way children will recount the events of the day. On a superficial level, everything that's required to make a story is there: a sequence of events, characters, setting, etc., but these tales are never what you might call compelling. In fact, if we remove the eye (and ear) of love, it can be seen that these recounts are mind-bendingly tedious. This isn't because of a child's linguistic and technical limitations, it's because the tale being told doesn't actually mean anything. The child is merely practising the skill of recalling and recounting, and has no message to deliver.

Another example is when one of your friends falls victim to the delusion that their dreams are interesting to other people. Listening to a recount of a dream is excruciatingly boring, and this is largely because the thing which makes a dream compelling - the unique internality of the dream experience - is rarely, if ever, conveyed. There's a strong possibility, in fact, that it can't be. So we have a sequence of events which should be interesting but, shorn of meaning, becomes nothing more than a tedious catalogue of irritatingly irrelevant events.

As writers, it's vital that we ask ourselves what we want to say. If your story doesn't have a theme or a message then I'm sorry, but it's not a story. If you're not attempting to capture and convey an idea, a feeling, a way of thinking or being - in short, if you're not using your story to communicate something, then you probably shouldn't bother writing it. Because if you don't have a reason to write your story, no-one else will have a reason to read it.

The Greatest Semantic Dispute On Earth

I am becoming increasingly annoyed at this kind of silliness.

Apparently, the solution to all our problems is to simply call things by different names.

Want to fight Islamic State? Call it 'Daesh'. Concerned about continuing discrimination against disabled people? Then make sure you call them 'differently able' and all will be well. It seems I can't go a day without at least five mass circulation publications insisting that I change what I call something, and vaguely implying that this will help in some way. You know the kind of thing I mean: "Why we shouldn't call it [insert controversial topic here] any more."

It's not like this is new. I remember a brief period in the '90s when I was solemnly informed by everybody that we were obliterating words like 'waitress', 'actress' and 'murderess', and that by doing so we would forever destroy the last dying basis for the patriarchal society. I call this kind of thinking 'bullshit'.

Don't get me wrong - words do matter. The thing is, though, they don't matter because they're words, they matter because of what they mean. Let's take the word 'spastic' as an example. I once had the privilege of working in a centre designed to help people with cerebral palsy get out and about and connect with the world. Part of my job was helping those of our clients who wished to create a Facebook account. My first client was a fifty something sex maniac, closet-genius and dalek lookalike. Let's call him Joe. Joe couldn't really use his hands or voice, so he took to Facebook like a duck to water. Almost literally, because in order to type he had to kind of peck at the keyboard with the pointer attached to his head. This pointer is kind of why he reminded me of a Dalek. I've never seen anyone more pleased than he was when I told him about this.

Anyway, Joe decided to fill in his profile information by writing a brief bio of himself. I clearly remember the first sentence. It was: "My name is Joe and I am a spastic". My first response was confusion, followed very quickly by gales of laughter as I noticed him giving me a rather beady-eyed look to see what kind of reaction he'd provoked. We then had one of our many very slow chats (Joe spoke by indicating letters on a pad with his pointer - it's a bit like interpreting a Ouija board message from a highly intelligent and amusing ghost). What was revealed was that as far as Joe was concerned, 'spastic' was a medical term, and one with which he had grown up. Then, of course, the frequent use of the word 'spastic' as a playground insult caused some troupe of policy wonks to declare that we should no longer use it. At all. Not in it's medical, perjorative, or any other sense.

While I understand the thinking behind this, it does strike me as vaguely reminiscent of 'Newspeak'. Orwell posits that the control of language is the control of thought (I'm sure someone else does too, but Wikipedia's taking ages to load), and as far as I can see, we're living in an era where language is more tightly controlled than at any other time. A very telling example of this is the fact that I have a fourteen year old student who manifests signs of deep discomfort every time he has to use the word 'Jew' when describing the character Shylock, who is, in fact, a Jew. So deeply has it been drummed into him that this generally innocuous word is somehow taboo that he can't comfortably use it in any sense.

I find this deeply worrying. We've always needed to be jealously protective of our few and precious freedoms, and it seems that freedom of thought and speech might be quietly slipping away under the radar. Don't get me wrong - I'm not pulling a Clint Eastwood here. I think much of what he's said recently is the result of long pent-up bad temper, and possibly age-induced psychosis. I'm not sure how much serious consideration his comments really merit. But I do think that when it comes to our approach to hate speech and bigotry, we've got it wrong. It's not words we should be addressing, but meaning.

We've created an environment where many people feel compelled to censor themselves, but we have utterly failed to address the roots of the underlying prejudices which make this necessary. This means that there are some people out there (you know who you are, Ms Hanson) from whom 'Person of Asian Descent' sounds worse than 'Gook' or 'Zipperhead'. And the annoying thing is that I can't call them out on it, because they've conformed to the new convention of the acceptable which stifles racist language, but ignores racist intent. And then there's the further consideration that if you silence someone for long enough, they'll eventually explode. Sometimes literally.

I think the solution, like so many other solutions, lies in us just growing the hell up. As fun as it is, we need to stop this childish game of he said/she said, stop being hysterical about names and get back to the core business of liberalism, which is defending and promoting the real-world equality of rights of every human regardless of shape, colour, creed or gender. If we take care of that, the semantic equality should just naturally follow.

Chekhov's Gun and Delusional Writing

Chekhov's gun is one of my favourite literary principles. For those who don't know, it's basically the rule that any significant element of a story should be directly relevant to that story. So, if there's an interesting salad fork on the table, that fork had better end up protruding from someone's eye, or being valued at a million dollars on Antiques Roadshow, thus saving the protagonist from want. What it shouldn't do is sit there as a kind of cul de sac of description and attention, and then never appear again. Or even worse, appear repeatedly for no reason at all.

On first reading, this idea might seem a bit extreme. What about all my beautiful sunsets, my complex political realities, or my character creations 'too good' to leave out? Well, to put it simply: nobody cares. If your sole object in describing a sunset is to perfectly capture its crimson glory as it bleeds across the flat plain of the horizon, what you should do is go away and write a poem about it. If your grand vision of a dystopian society is so compelling you can't help but describe it in mind-numbing detail for no reason at all, this is why essays were invented. You get the idea.

This is not to say that there is no place in any story for world-building or beautifully descriptive writing - far from it - but discipline must be maintained in all things. If the primary goal is to tell a story, then that story must be told. If the beauty of the sunset affects the mind-state of your characters, inspiring them to change the way they act or view the world, then by all means pick up a thesaurus and go nuts. If the way your world works directly impacts on the actions or options of your characters, then yes, explain away.

A picture speaks a thousand words, but the reverse is not necessarily true.

If you've written something which does not serve the story, then it's got to be cut. It does not matter in the slightest just how hauntingly beautiful, or incisively intelligent the passage is - it must be excised. By all means put it in your 'spare parts' box for later use, but that's about all it's going to be good for.

It might seem that I'm being a little insistent on this point, but there's a good reason for this. By far the easiest thing to lose sight of, when writing a story, is that the theme or message we're trying to convey, while important, is not the story itself. And while technical skill may be important, it is emphatically not in and of itself the reason why people read us. Look at Dan Brown, for instance. The man can barely put a sentence together, and that just doesn't matter next to the fact that he can cobble together a compelling tale. We're story tellers, with an absolute requirement to effectively and entertainingly tell stories.

There's a practical aspect as well. As an editor, when I see this kind of foolishness in a manuscript I know, deep in my bones, exactly what kind of author I have to deal with. A rank amateur, precious, resistant to advice, and an overall nightmare. If that's the way an editor reacts, you can be certain that publishers and agents will see it the same way. It's not too hard, I think, to extrapolate the likely effect on their decision making when it comes to considering your work for publication.

Any time we find ourselves looking at a piece of writing and wondering whether or not to cut it, we should ask the following. Are we thinking of keeping it because of its quality rather than its relevance? Are we thinking of keeping it because it iterates the stunning depth of our personal vision of the world? Or are we perhaps thinking of keeping it because it's good writing and we think readers will appreciate that for its own sake? None of these are good reasons to keep a piece of writing in a story. They are all aspects of the delusion that the primary goal of storytelling is expression and realisation of the self. It's not - that's what group therapy, poetry and Facebook are for. Pick up Chekhov's gun and obliterate, with extreme prejudice, any such notions and the story elements that go with them. I guarantee you that the end product will be well worth the sacrifice.

Red Tube, Blue Tube, and the Mnemo-Narrative of Trump

I'm still idealistic about the internet. I still think, even with all that we've seen and done so far, that it can be a tremendous force for good, giving voice to the voiceless, enriching minds and providing a pathway to mutual understanding, the first and most fundamental pre-requisite of peaceful co-existence.

Of course, not being completely insane, I'm well aware of the fact that it does not currently do any of these things very well. The temptation here is go on a tremendous rant, excoriating the epic, biblical scale of stupidity which is displayed, minute by minute, in any corner of the net you might wish to name. The rational thing to do, however, is to ask why this is so.

Why is the internet so often such a disappointing place? Why has public conversation been so infantilised that most political discussion is indistinguishable from a screaming match between nine year olds? What's happened to feminism? And, most incomprehensibly, why is Donald Trump?

One idea which has been in the public domain for quite some time now is the 'echo chamber' effect. We filter our online experience through algorithms which determine our preferences and prejudices such that it forms a kind of feedback loop - we believe the world is a certain way, and social media sites reinforce this belief by showing us the world according to our conception of it. This means that without breaking the red tube/blue tube effect, we are continually being provided with 'evidence' that the world is, in fact, the way we think it is.

When it comes to the curation of personal interactions, I have absolutely no problem with this. We have so little control over other aspects of our lives, there is an imperative need to control the tenor of what little time we have that actually belongs to us. If your idea of Nirvana involves cat pictures and pseudo-spiritual platitudes delivered by meme, all I have to say to that is: "fill your boots." The problem arises when we then decide to filter news, politics and broader world philosophies through this same set of algorithms.

What this creates is an instant mythologisation of the real world. Without serious effort, it is actually impossible to qualify and compare sources or to access points of view which diverge from our own. This means that every time something happens, each segment of the political spectrum creates, in real time, its own instant mnemo-narrative of the event.

In the past, it used to take years for an historical incident to be warped, mythologised and then co-opted to support a world-view or a broader idea. These days, however, it happens instantaneously. A plane crashes in the Middle East and it's immediately hard evidence of Islamists destroying the world or the CIA protecting its alien overlords or, more generally, of the non-Western world being just a little more crap than our own.

And by the time the investigators and other more responsible brokers of information have caught up, it's too late. The mnemo-narrative has been created, and yet another bulwark constructed between individual ideologies and the pluralism of actual reality.

It is fascinating to watch this happening with the distasteful phenomenon that is Donald Trump. I watch the red tube and the blue tube, the right and the left, and what I see is mutual incomprehension.

On the one hand, we have a mnemo-narrative of Trump as hero of the downtrodden and the excluded. A man for the people, who is radically against the world as it is currently configured - a configuration, I might add, which has routinely excluded, exploited and disadvantaged the unskilled, the under-educated and the poor. The red tube is full of praise for Trump's attacks on 'political correctness' and, more broadly, on what it sees as the 'intellectual elite' and its contempt for the 'ordinary man in the street'.

Over on the blue tube, we see the representatives of this 'elite' being simply unable to understand what is being said and how any message so fundamentally stupid can be accepted by anyone. The mnemo-narrative being created here is of Trump as an atavistic fascist, using populist trickery to drag the world kicking and screaming into the 1930's. His followers must therefore consist only of fascists, racists and the cognitively impaired. Careful interrogation and refutation of his spoken arguments is seen as being the kryptonite best suited for the fight against the Trump phenomenon.

In a way, this is stupider than anything Trump has ever said. One of the major discontents being channeled by Trump is the feeling that the 'elites' think 'ordinary people' are stupid. To attempt to discredit this by calling Trump supporters out for stupidity is a wonderful example of the kind of idiocy possible in a world viewed entirely through partisan filters.

The simple fact of the matter is that what he says doesn't matter. Populism is about being popular, and one look at the world as it is now and has always been should be enough to tell us that popularity has absolutely nothing to do with competence, sanity, rationality or any other objective measure. Populism is all about speaking the language of emotion, and this is a language that does not so much form sentences as it uses tropes. Apparently nonsensical slogans become pregnant with multiple shades of meaning, and the aggregate of these slogans comes to represent the totality of one's discontent with the world. This happens all across the political spectrum, which makes it even more incredible that politicos are confused by Trump.

We need to get un-confused, and very quickly. If we keep concentrating on irrelevancies like words, policies and arguments, and fail to address the very real, very intense emotions behind the rise of Trump, we risk alienating enough of the population to result in his election.