One time, I was negotiating with the heads of a commercial trade association. We were introducing a new safety standard for a product type. This group had not bothered to find out about it until late on but now wanted a piece of the action. They had brought with them a couple of powerful players to support their case. However, all the work had been done. What they were proposing was that we hold up the process for several months while in effect they went over old ground, purely so they could get their name attached to the project and thereby enhance their status for new would-be clients.

I pointed out that they were proposing work that wasn’t necessary and their leader said a strange thing: “I do not know that question.” Then he continued to outline their redundant work schedule, smiling all the time as if I hadn’t actually questioned him. I asked what was necessary about their proposal, and again he said, “I do not know that question.” This irritated me and I repeated my challenge. One of the group’s supporters then admonished me for being aggressive. Absurdly, perhaps, they had won their case: they’d been presenting themselves in a reasonable manner while I’d been contradictory and blunt. So the pointless work went ahead.

Now, picture a night out with a small group of friends. Drinks, laughs, reminiscing. Lots of unspoken agreement; little challenge. Warm feeling of same-ness, of shared beliefs. Yet a dispassionate observer might just detect an aura that amounts to, “I do not know that question.” Work being done that’s already been done. Which is not really conducive to insight or awareness or perception.

Friends mostly support each others’ ongoing self-deceptions: that they know everything; that their political views are not opinion but fact; that the war they’ve had going with their neighbours for years is a just one; that their jokes are actually funny.

Does it matter? Probably not for a nice night out. But the question is, what if you treat your characters the same way? You write them as not knowing the question that the story is going to ask of them. They just agree with each other and the closed doorness of their situation.

Can a writer switch from not knowing the question in his life to knowing it in his fiction? If you keep the door closed when you deal with your friends (and enemies), can you actually write a character who likes to keep it open?

Maybe this doesn’t matter if you’re writing plot-driven stories. In fact, it’s probably an advantage that your characters don’t question their situation, or refuse to take part in the plot because it’s predictable and already been done to death. But . . .

There was that last night of a writing course, in the hotel bar, everyone else gone to bed, just you and another writer you hadn’t spoken to before. You got talking, with no agenda. There was a tacit agreement between you that you’d probably never meet again or even stay in touch. At some point, she told you she was getting married soon and mostly felt excited by it, but it also meant entering a specifically ordered world full of nice people with implicit rules, of pleasantly decorated but nonetheless closed doors. She didn’t say but you understood her fear that it would affect her writing. And she’d become a writer in the first place in order to lift rocks to see what was underneath; to rifle through people’s diaries and use the contents mercilessly to explore the human condition.

You didn’t want anything from her, and she didn’t want anything from you, other than a couple of hours of talking openly and honestly. Secrets were shared, not of specific names, dates and places, but of the steadfast intention to simply tell the truth, first to oneself, then to everyone else.

Afterwards, you indeed went your separate ways and never discussed it again. Which is how it should be between a writer and a reader.

You never checked the books she published later. You hoped they’d be true, and that if they were, it hadn’t meant the loss of her family and friends. You didn’t want to find that they weren’t.

I taught a class recently and we looked at some openings to novels. ‘The Catcher in the Rye’, for example, masterfully provides the reader with a ton of information about Holden Caulfield in the very first page or so but without you realising. It informs you on two levels: the details of his life but more importantly how he feels about it. So, in a very short space of time, you’re following the story of a fully realised human being.

By contrast, the opening of the first Harry Potter is peopled by cartoon characters like the Dursleys. Mrs has a long neck which is, apparently, useful for looking into the neighbours’ gardens; Mr is fat and no-necked with a large moustache and therefore a villain in the making, and so on. Harry, when he appears, is not much better.

Which, if true, raises an obvious question: why do millions and millions of people like Harry Potter? Plenty of people like ‘Catcher in the Rye’ too, of course, but not with the same fanatical devotion. And these are fans who don’t just love the book, in some cases they vigorously attack anyone who doesn’t (as can be seen for example on Amazon customer review discussion threads).

One view might be that children prefer characters they can identify with and that’s easier to do when their fictional hero leaves plenty of space on the inside. And it could be true the same principle also applies to a lot of Harry’s adult fans, too. It would certainly explain the attacks on the non-believers, as if it’s the fan him/herself that’s being criticised, not a fictional character.

This response wouldn’t work with Holden Caulfield, because he is too well-formed. Harry, by contrast, is not only vacant for the most part, he doesn’t appear to have much motivation for what he does. Similarly, the world he lives in appears to be driven by random magic and random morality. We’re never told why Harry is the good guy and Voldermort the baddie. Not in terms that would explain their character at any rate, and or would begin to fill in the space. Which means readers are free to take with them their own feelings about magic, and good vs evil, and why friendships happen, and thereby become part of the book.

You don’t really join ‘The Catcher in the Rye’. However, I’d argue that if you open yourself to it, then, rather than you filling the empty spaces in Holden Caulfield, his emotional journey touches similar emotions in you. So, in a sense, the book gets inside you, not the other way around.

But of course that can be dangerous. Putting yourself in Harry and his world is safe, because it’s never going to challenge what’s driving you. You can take the theme park ride through the exterior scenes, inside its world but not its world inside you.

So, I believe identifying with characters has two main aspects to it: either you occupy the empty centre of the character, like putting on a super hero suit for a party, which means the character doesn’t really exist, he’s just a fantasy vehicle, or you identify with the character’s difficult moral choices, and the dilemmas he has to face.

With the latter, you don’t occupy him so to speak, instead you walk alongside him and encounter the same awful turning points, torturous embarrassments, long dark nights of the soul that he does.

I’d argue that the first, while appearing to be the more immersive option is actually a way of muting the emotional punch of the story. But the second, while apparently less involved, is actually the braver option, emotionally.

It’s similar with fans: they wear the same costumes as their heroes, and they learn every adventure inside out that those heroes have ever had. But what they perhaps don’t do is use the example of the hero as a starting point for their own emotional adventures.

And if the hero ever entered that fan room and found it full of people wearing his clothes and striking his poses, and if he was looking for someone who could actually join him on a new, so far unscripted, adventure, would he choose any of them? Or would he instead, scan the edges of the room and see the quiet one in a dark corner, dressed normally but returning his gaze with the same self-generated intensity, unnoticed by the others?

There are more fans than corner-huggers, of course. And that presents the writer with a dilemma. Does he try to produce characters that can be easily identified with or does he instead work to create people who are full of purpose and who will make it possible for the reader to join them, in spirit if not in the flesh, but not to take them over and be them the way a lot of readers most want them to be?

Just to complicate things, it’s a lot of fun being a fan. You get out and meet other fans, and have a good time at conventions. Being a corner-hugging solo reader who doesn’t get to put on his superhero tights and cape requires more, well, self-sustainability perhaps. As with all things, there are prices to pay on both sides of the line. And if you want to be an effective writer you have to be willing to pay them both, constantly.

I once went on a date with a woman I met through a newspaper singles page. We got together in person in a wine bar in Victoria. I bought drinks and we started talking. She told me something about herself, then I talked but after only a few minutes, she said, “Do you know what your problem is, Terry?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to know but before I could answer she said, “You’re too deep.” She said ‘deep’ as if it was a disease. “You need to lighten up.” I got up without finishing my drink, said “Goodbye,” and walked out.

It wasn’t really the first time. Not on a date, exactly. Frequently I’d had people come up to me and say things like, “Smile – it might never happen!” when I’d just been happily thinking.

It took me many years to work out that the problem wasn’t with me being deep, it was more with them being shallow. At least where causality and motive are concerned.

Writers need to face the ‘deep’ problem, and with their date – the reader. But let’s get something out of the way right from the start: ‘deep’ is not the chronically serious/intellectual disease that the shallow like to declare. It’s simply being thorough. Those who don’t like deep are actually just avoiding responsibility. You don’t need a degree in theoretical physics to work out when someone you’re close to wants support; you just need to care.

So, while readers might care about the facts of the matter of their obsession, they don’t necessarily care about the hidden, important stuff that makes their favourite characters tick. Readers identify with characters but they don’t chaperone; they don’t parent; they don’t coach them. That’s the writer’s job.

Readers may think a lot about characters and plots and details, but they don’t take on the responsibility of creating and maintaining the largely unseen mental and emotional buttressings that ensure there is depth behind the stories.

A writer should never apologise for depth. He should revel in it; gladly accept what it means – which is to be always building it, with thought and belief and invention. He never settles for the comfort of simply amassing knowledge from the already-created.

Depth is commitment, in terms of time and love and belief. And a writer has to be very careful not to dilute it, in order to, say, please the immediate needs of the reader. If he does, the result can be stories that the reader finds easily accessible, immediately satisfying, but in the long term somewhat unsatisfying.

Readers dip in and out of stories but a writer is never off. He won’t always actually be writing. In fact some writers use writing as a way of not being on, odd though that sounds. But the act of putting words on a page can be avoiding the responsibility of depth. Let’s face it, many commercial writers hardly ever stop writing but in the process usually manage to avoid much depth.

Depth in our own person probably derives more from what goes wrong in our lives, not according to plan; from losing when we’d expected to win; from unfair and unexpected slaps in the face. And let’s remember that many readers disappear into a book in order to escape those very slaps in the face.

But that doesn’t mean a writer should produce characters that he believes readers will feel comfortable with. Part of a reader’s need to escape is in fact to spend time with characters who have the very depth he hopes to win for himself, even if he isn’t aware of it.

And again, characters with depth doesn’t necessarily mean they have grim, ‘realistic’, outlooks on a miserable life. Depth can mean the challenge of spontaneous humour, wit, the ability to elevate any situation with insight. And in this, the always-on writer may find himself having to constantly navigate between the demands of the so-called social interpretation skills of literary fiction that is also often spiritually hollow, and the more honest entertaining commercial stories that can ultimate disappoint by never attempting to be more than the sum of their genre-specific parts.

Depth is found in the cracks between the various worlds of demanded compliance we’re all constantly confronted by. As soon as a story of genuine idiosyncrasy is discovered it’s turned into a cult. An enthusiastic but derivative story about a boy wizard is turned into an infallible religion which the author is only too willing to follow. A thrilling novel about teens having to fight to the death is extended into a repetitional cash cow.

Depth is the cradle of real magic; shallow just chases uninformed applause.

When I was at college in the early 70s, a friend of mine had a chat with me over a pint about his forthcoming marriage. Bryn and I had known each other for nearly three years, in which time we’d got drunk together, visited each other’s homes, gone trekking on the Gower Peninsular, played football together for the college.

“I wanted to explain to you why I’m getting married,” said Bryn.

His bride-to-be was his first real girlfriend. A lovely, pretty girl, from the next valley to his in the Rhondda.

“Why would you want to do that?” I said.

“I want you to know it’s because everyone else wants me to,” he said.

“Then you’re an idiot,” I said.

There was more but this exchange sums it up. And it marked a divergence in our lives. He went on to have kids and stay married to the same person, to be a strong part of their two families’ storylines; I didn’t. I don’t really know how he feels about that now. To say we no longer have anything in common isn’t necessarily true, however. But what we share is rooted in early adulthood, just before other people put serious pressure on us to shape our lives the way they think they should be.

What I think this story has to do with writing is that we writers need to be aware of the crucial turning points in our lives, and what they might cost us in terms of creativity.

Ancient bards, at least in myth, used to travel the country beholden to no one other than their next patron, just for a short time. I like to think their audiences greatly valued their otherness: that, unlike kings and peasants, they were free to tell stories that would excite, challenge, even offend. In reality, I suspect they were canny characters who would censor their material according to the vibe they detected in their hosts. But still, their art was not essentially compromised by domestic confinement.

Modern authors can suffer from the double-whammy of living a compromised life and having to write within an world that’s been internetted to death. How do you get hold of that otherness these days? Everyone’s watching the same films as you; reading the same books; listening to the same music; visiting the same chain shops on the high street, any high street; eating the same food; wearing the same brands; exchanging the same guff on Facebook.

In the past, if you didn’t go the route your family wanted you to go, you almost by default found yourself in strange new worlds. Now, those worlds are harder to find, and even when you do find them, there’s almost always a connection to everywhere/one else to link to.

For the writer, I think the answer may lie not so much in physically breaking away from the norm, but more in mentally sitting down with oneself and challenging one’s thought-routes towards a story. You have to be honest with yourself and admit that the pressure on you is to produce a story that’s easy to follow. Publishers like to say they look for stories that are ‘the same but different’, although what they really mean is ‘THE SAME but also a tiny, little, not too upsetting, bit different’. If you see that to be the direction of the idiot, then you need to tell yourself that you’re just going for different.

Before the world got connected, a lot of writers lived in different; and their challenge was to make it same enough that readers could get it. Now, we all live in same, so the challenge is to get different. The problem is, of course, that readers now not only live in same, they don’t really want to leave it; perhaps don’t even know what different feels like. So, the extra challenge of the writer is to provide different but in such a way that the reader wants to go there, even if they never actually will.

But it gets worse, because the writer is now expected to get on board the inter-same outside of his stories, as himself. He’s also surrounded by big hit movies and TV series that are fully of wonderful special effects in High Definition but populated by characters who wouldn’t be out of place in his local pub.

So, my friend met a crucial turning point in his same/different journey as a young guy of 21, facing a pretty clear choice. In one direction lay buying a small house, then a bigger one; visiting relatives; parents babysitting; putting kids through school . . . solidity, security and settlement. In the other was anything from squats to caravans to tents to igloos, with perhaps a string of strange, unpredictable and heart-breaking relationships; money, no-money; adventures, dangers, the bleakness of existence perhaps followed by a proving of the spirit . . . nothing predictable or dependable.

I believe these two directions have merged now for the most part, with the connected world approximating different but its risk hedged in by ultimate global familiarity. Which means the writer who wants to say something meaningful has to find a way to un-merge himself. I think that’s through challenge: to question every idea, story structure, character act and word he considers using. And if he does that, he may well decide there’s not much point in writing anything at all. But at least that decision lies in the direction of different.

I used to work with a guy who couldn’t stop posturing. If he asked you a question, his left eyebrow would rise like a caterpillar impersonating a tent. If he was thinking about something you’d said, his forehead would turn into a badly ploughed field, and his head would incline to one side earnestly. If he was in a pub chatting up a woman, he really would lean on one elbow against the bar and nod encouragingly like a man who is deeply in touch with his feminine side. He was great fun, too. Sometimes, he and I would spend the whole day conversing in rap, or hillbilly or stupid toff. Which of course is another kind of posturing.

He was also naturally creative. Once, he turned up at work on April 1st saying, “I heard you on Radio 4 last night. I didn’t realise you were a professor of Arthurian studies.” Noting the date, I suspected a wind up but decided to play along. “Yes,” I said, “it’s not something I’ve told many people.” So, if he was making it up, I’d neutralised the trick because he wouldn’t know for sure if it was actually true. However, he nodded thoughtfully then said, “I recorded it. Would you like to hear it?”

Now, this was interesting. It looked as if there might actually be a Professor Terry Edge. Even so, I expected him to declare that the tape was stuck or something, so was surprised when typical BBC music swelled out of the machine, followed by a well-intoned voice introducing first the programme, then Professor Terry Edge. This was great! – a total coincidence of names but I could just carry on pretending I was the professor and he’d believe it. It was credible, too, since he knew I was into the Arthur myths.

When the professor spoke, he actually did sound a bit like me, so I nodded along and said, “Thanks. I hadn’t actually heard this yet.” For the next five minutes or so the interviewer and the professor continued their somewhat erudite conversation until abruptly my colleague switched it off, grinning. “Thought I’d appeal to your ego and love of Arthur.”

I laughed. “You did that? It sounded totally genuine.” And it did. He could actually have been a BBC interviewer if he really wanted to be.

But here’s the thing: he wanted to be a writer. And he wrote lots of stuff. Well, lots of bits of stuff: hilarious one-liners, promising scenes, starts of stories . . . What he didn’t do was ever finish anything. He loved the moment, and the performance; loved being reactive. But all of that required a straight man: me, the world, the workshop.

A writer has be his own straight man. At various points in the creative process, he has to stop posturing and deliver the sceptical, cold, dull, boring inner Ernie Wise to his inner Eric Morecambe. For every, “This dialogue is great!” idea he has, he needs to challenge it with, “But it doesn’t work for that character in this story.” For every, “I’m brilliant!” he has to counter with, “Only if you make it believable, and that means cutting out that joke, that comment, that wonderful description that makes you cry every time you read it.”

The contradiction of being both one’s inner frying pan swinger and the face that gets panned can be too much for many naturally creative people like my work mate.

And actually, it’s worse than even being able to occupy both Party and Pooper roles within oneself: because Party has to win. Ultimately, Wise has to be fatally frying panned by Morecambe. The reader needs your creative side to prevail. Which is harder than it sounds because frankly the straight man gets all the best arguments. Not the best lines, but he’s the one who’s got the easier role, whatever Ernie supporters might tell you to the contrary. The creative has to counter-argue logic, rationality and scepticism, and come out the other side with the truth and beauty which will always be beyond the reach of the straight man, who will hate you forever when you do.

One time back in the 1980s, Johnny Shedbuilder and I were on our way to Nairobi, to spend a couple of days hiring a jeep and heading out for the game reserves. On the plane we read the Lonely Planet Guide to Kenya. It warned us about a scam that young Kenyans played on naive westerners when they got off the bus from the airport.

We’d also read about Cairo, too, where we’d stopped off for a few days en route. It had rightly prepared us for the wonderful and infuriating chaos of the crowded city, and the charm of the old parts where we went wandering and incongruously came across a full size table tennis table in a tumbledown alley. We played games with the kids there, then had tea in a small cafe before heading off for the pyramids where we were unsuccessful in unravelling the real reason they’d been built.

The guide had warned us not to drink anything with ice in it because the water it was made from could contain traces of sewage. But the small market stalls sold juices made from whole fruit crushed into ice, irresistible in the heat and dust. So we ignored or forgot about the warning.

We got off the bus in Cairo and a very nice young chap approached us. He was dressed in black jacket, white shirt, red tie, and looked studious. He was very apologetic, explaining that he’d like to talk to us because we were from England where he had an invitation to attend Reading University and would like some help in preparing for it. He was very convincing and we offered to buy him a cup of coffee and hear more about his situation. He led us to a cafe and while I noted the flicker of recognition in the owner’s eye, I didn’t pay it much attention.

Our new friend told us a most unhappy tale about how he’d studied hard to win a university place in England, and how much he would love to go there. But . . .

Well, let’s just say Shedders and I were on the verge of writing the fellow a cheque before we finally remembered the Lonely Planet’s warning. Almost everything they’d detailed had been reflected in the young guy’s tale. And yet we’d still almost been taken in.

A couple of days later, we drove our hired jeep to the outskirts of Nairobi where my ex-girlfriend was head teacher of a school. On the second night there, my stomach suddenly decided to impersonate Mount Vesuvius, erupting without warning in two opposite directions. All night, I evacuated painfully. My friend called out the school nurse who gave me medicine which did the job. God knows what would have happened if we’d been out in the middle of some huge game park.

Another warning ignored.

I also managed to suffer heatstroke on the same trip. And on my last night, after Shedders had already gone home, I was staying in a coastal hotel owned by my teacher friend’s friend but decided to visit another hotel a mile or so up the road, going by taxi. The guide book warned that westerners should stay in their hotels because they could be subject to various crimes in-between them, especially given the comparative poverty of the local people. But my hotel was dominated by British people I could always get plenty of back home, so I went to a hotel that was dominated by Germans and perhaps in a moment of universal insight, soon realised that they were just as boring as my lot.

The guide book warned that local women frequented the western hotels, looking for men who’d pay for sex. I indeed met one such woman in the bar and we spent the next few hours talking. I told her right at the outset that I didn’t want to have sex with her; that I was in love with my new girlfriend back in London. She seemed to understand and turned out to be a very interesting and intelligent woman. She told me that her day job was weaving but that the twenty pounds she could get for sex was more than a month’s pay.

At the end of the night, she called a taxi that I said I’d pay for, to take me back to my hotel and then to take her to her village. But the taxi stopped between the two hotels and my female friend demanded that I pay her twenty pounds, the taxi driver turning in his seat to fix me with a steely gaze. I said I didn’t want to have sex and wasn’t going to pay. Which in retrospect was probably not very clever. There was a long silence during which I guess she weighed up various balances; perhaps she even realised she’d made a mistake in not taking me at my word. Whatever, she nodded at the taxi driver who re-started the car and took me back to my hotel.

These stories aren’t in my book, ‘Subbuteo in My Soul’, which contains various other adventures Shedders and I got up to. I didn’t select them because they didn’t fit the purpose of that particular book. I guess the point I’m trying to make is that you need to have a wide range of material you can select from, not just take the first idea you come up with. This applies to fiction as much as to biography. Too much fiction reads like the author is using up every last scrap of his imagination. Huge multi-part series are probably to blame, at least in the Fantasy genre. And publishers don’t help, demanding that authors write in the same genre and use the same characters as far as possible.

It’s very easy as an author to end up like the host of an organised tour, where all the sights are worked out beforehand and the reader is going to feel totally catered for. However, it’s getting dysentery you remember; and nearly being robbed or offed on the east coast of Africa. Until in the end the reason every Fantasy story you write takes place in a medieval European type village where all the white locals drink ale from tankards and smoke long pipes and dandle wenches on their knees while the evil wizard in the woods cackles like Vincent Price and would come out as gay except you didn’t realise that was a good idea to boost your demographic until after the books have been published is because you no longer drink water unless it’s been sterilized or passed through a mountain at great expense.

Connect, connect, connect. Our brain sits in blood-filled darkness; craves light and sound and meaning. It needs you to feed it, stimulate it. And what it loves most are stories.

This is how it used to be many years ago: most of the food a brain got was unstoried, other than a day can be said to begin and end at some point. It was shown trees and grass and dogs and cats and buildings and other people. These things responded to their own rhythms. The brain observed but didn’t really feel inspired by them very often. But that quiet co-existence with the everyday provided a natural balance to the time when a story might appear. For centuries, they would come largely from family and friends, and the occasional professional story-teller. And when they did, the brain became if anything over-stimulated, running with the magical coincidences of a meaningful, if not strictly true, adventure.

Books came, then the radio, film and TV. Stories were easier to find and a hungry brain could snack and feast on them around the clock. But for most people, there was still the contrasting quiet, even dull, trees and trains and other people between the stories. They say it’s the space between notes that makes music work. Perhaps it’s the same for stories: that they work best between the less shaped spaces of our lives.

But it seems now that those spaces are in danger of disappearing for good. The brain wakes up today and immediately connects, not to the solid continuance of walls and windows and the garden outside, nor even to a distant voice on the radio, but to aspects of itself via social media. Messages from friends answering messages from oneself . . . the ongoing story of each other and us. It continues through breakfast, walking down the street; travelling to work; at work in many stolen moments; on the way home; while sharing a meal in a restaurant.

All of this connection is done under the mantle of story. We believe we’re living the story of our lives. But the truth is, it’s not a story. It’s a never-ending stream of unremarkable and unmotivated fragmentary scenes. You go on Twitter and tell your followers, “I had a great tofu burger for lunch today.”

So? screams the brain.

“Sneaked off work early today.”

So?

“Amazing! Bumped into an old school friend I haven’t seen for ten years!”

So: this happened next is the meat of story. It is the reason-coupling that links separate scenes. Scene B happens because of what happened in scene A. So is everything.

But there is no so in a standard Facebook life.

Yet we keep telling our brains that there is. Which means they live most of the day in the midst of a massive lie, a world-wide conspiracy, where millions keep insisting, this is story, this is story, this is story.

But there is no so.

There also is no quiet contrast to real story. For some years now we have been telling our brains that everything is story. So, what happens now when the brain is introduced to a real story? Increasingly, it feels agitated, rather like the religious zealot being confronted with hard evidence that his god does not exist. It does what zealots do, which is to ignore the evidence and look instead for ‘evidence’ of its own.

I believe we’re seeing the beginnings of brains destroying real stories in order to preserve their false belief that ordinary life is story.

Mainstream television, movies and books increasingly produce nonsensical, sequentially unmotivated and ultimately purposeless ‘stories’. Plots are thin and often full of holes; characters behave purely in reaction to their circumstances. It’s not so much that most brains don’t notice this; it’s more that they want the shapeless plots and illogical sequences of events and the too many coincidences, so that their viewing/reading is a continuance of their false storied lives. Not a stimulating distraction from.

What’s a writer to do? Well, if he’s been well and truly socially networked, nothing. His writing will automatically adjust to producing non-story stories. He’ll nod admiringly as Dr Who runs around aimlessly, waving his sonic screwdriver to make everything all right. He’ll just shout with the fans if anyone tries to point out the lack of decent story: “Hey, it’s okay; it’s Dr Who!” He’ll watch all the videos from Comicon where the cast pay homage to the brand, where no one talks plot or arc or meaning.

He won’t notice the frantic editing to up the pace, to sleight of hand viewers over the plot holes and inconsistencies. He’ll smile admiringly as actors publicly pay their dues by fawning on about how getting the call to be on the show was a dream come true, not just another job. The pre-series build-up across all media heightens the gloss and builds belief: surely all this money spent on telling us how good the show will be means it really must be good?

For a decent plot to work, the pace has to slow down for a while. First, the writers have to take time out to really think through what their character needs to do in order to convincingly pull through. Then the writing itself has to pause between effects; it has to introduce cause. Finally, the actor/character has to do the same; to deepen, in effect.

But there are no pauses on social media; no causes. Just effects. Oh dear. Then, as with politicians, newspapers, football clubs and friends, the writer has to follow too.

Good plots and causes are now a luxury, by and large. It used to be the writer’s personal message that needed to be slipped in under the story’s radar, so as not to distract the reader. Now it’s the story itself that has to be stuffed inside a sugar action pill and swallowed unconsciously.

Good stories are now like high fibre foods: necessary for digestion but not much fun. And of course, on Facebook Fun is God.

Sometimes when I’m teaching, new ways of expressing things just turn up. So it is that I’m standing next to a flip chart on which I’ve just written PROSE IS A VEHICLE. I look around at the eight students sitting behind desks arranged in a loose arc. We’re in one of the large sunny rooms of a pleasant college in Oxfordshire. The course is for near-beginners and we’re on our second day. I think it’s going pretty well, but you can’t always tell.

“Prose is difficult to discuss,” I say, “even though you could argue it’s the most important element of writing.”

“What kind of vehicle?” says Steven, brow furrowed. Steven is a retired civil engineer.

“Well,” I say, “that depends on what kind of writer you are.”

“I don’t follow,” he says. “Surely, the best vehicle is the one that gets you from A to B at minimal cost and maximum mechanical efficiency.” I think he has a twinkle in the eye which I take to be a welcome sign of the healthy beginnings of self-parody.

I love these moments, when I have to let the idea inform me, rather than the other way round.

“That may be true if you’re an out and out commercial writer,” I say. “Then, prose for you is mostly just functional.”

“So,” says Steven, “you’re saying that for a commercial writer, prose is like a Ford Transit van, whereas for an arty writer it’s a – ”

“Pimped up Morris Minor!” says Jools, one of the younger students.

“As usual,” I say, “analogies only take you so far. What I think I’m trying to say is that functional, well-constructed prose will do the job but it mostly suits the passenger who just wants to know, ‘Are we there yet?'”

“So, are you saying that with good writers, it’s all about the journey?” says Dawn, with just a touch of world-weary sarcasm.

What do I mean? Why are analogies so limiting? The idea seemed simple enough: prose is the vehicle which takes you on your trip through the story. But I can see now that if we stay with this analogy we’re in danger of saying that prose is a fixed commodity: once built, it’s always going to be the same, whatever the journey.

“You have to keep re-building it as you go,” I say, “depending on the territory.”

“Like a Transformer?” says Jools.

This reminds me that I really must put on a specialised Fantasy and Science Fiction writing course soon. Most of my references are F&SF, and a lot of my students’ are too. I blame Stephen Spielberg, George Lucas, Gene Roddenberry and whoever it is that writes Dr Who these days.

“Kind of,” I say, “but I think it also has to change between proactive and reactive continually, whereas Transformers basically just kick the crap out of each other.”

Most of them look confused. I’m probably confused, too, but I press on.

“If you look at extremes,” I say, frantically searching for examples, “you’ve got, say, Jeffrey Archer and James Joyce. Archer’s prose is always running ahead of itself, always verging on premature plot ejaculation. He can barely hold in the climax – sorry – just wants to get you to the pay-off as fast as possible, before you have time to notice the utter lack of believable characters and the creaky storyline that was nicked from Scooby-Doo. With something like ‘Finnegans Wake’, however, almost all the meaning is in the prose itself.”

“Have you actually read Finnegans Wake?” says Mark.

“Of course not,” I say. “But we studied a passage of it at college. It read like gibberish until our tutor showed us how it was actually packed with historical puns and references.”

“At least Jeffrey Archer tells a good story,” says Jess. “With a proper beginning, middle and end.”

“Anyway,” I say, “I think we’re saying that good prose does more than just get you there but not so much that you lose sight of the story.”

Jools asks the question I always dread around about this time. “Examples?” she says. “Which writers use good prose?”

I think about my own writing. Definitely, there have been moments when I’ve felt the story, the vehicle for telling it and me, the writer, all merge into one headstrong force, riding the plot, even teasing it, while at the same time encouraging the characters to not just join the flow but if they feel like it, to build an otter dam and turn it into their own special world for a time . . . then the prose has its own life: not plot, not character, not voice, not tone, not even words exactly, but some kind of spirit machine that you barely even believed in until that moment when it just turned up.

“I’m not sure it’s ever all of any one writer’s work,” I say. “You get it in Dylan Thomas at times; and Ray Bradbury and Doris Lessing. You have to find your own examples. And if you produce it yourself it probably won’t secure you a sale. But you’ll know it when you write it. And so will anyone else who reads it, who isn’t a slave just to what happens next.”

“I’m probably stuck with the Ford Transit,” says Steven. “I’m very literal.”

Jack Lasermouth is a writer. Mostly science fiction but quite a bit of fantasy too, not to mention a shot or two of crime, an air kiss of romance and the odd self-conscious brain-stretch of literary. He’s not had much published so far, however, just a couple of stories in magazines that pay a few dollars a pop. He doesn’t really know why. Editors usually send back his stories without comment, other than the occasional generic ‘not what we’re looking for at the moment’. Once, he wrote back saying, ‘So, what are you looking for?’ but didn’t  get a reply.

When he writes, he tries to find something different to build a story around. It might be a joke his mother made recently, about how young people today look like zombies, shuffling around with their blank stares fixed on their little glowing screens. That one, he turned into a story called, ‘Zombies are Coming, Just as Soon as They Finish Texting’ but it didn’t sell.

When he tried literary, he thought he ought to delve deep into his psyche and find something beautiful, artistic, insightful and interestingly confusing to write about. He remembered feeling self-conscious at school, about liking science fiction when all his teachers told him it was crap. That story was called ‘Requiem for a Child’s Fascination with Quantum Theory as Expressed Through his Father’s Existential Sigh’. But that didn’t hit an editor’s button either.

Then he applied to a writing workshop at a science fiction convention, got a place and forgot about it until he received an email reminding him that he needed to submit a story by the end of the weekend. He had plenty of old stuff that he could put in but then he noticed that one of the expert critiquers in his group was a literary agent. Big chance! He needed a novel, or at least the first few chapters, and fast.

In the pub that night, the empty Word page on his laptop glowed at him accusingly and he realised he was done. He’d used up every original thought he’d ever had. His story juices had run dry. His tale-telling pecker was at half-mast. His plot balloon had been fatally pricked. But he couldn’t give up this chance to impress an agent. There must be something . . .

What if instead of looking for something original he borrowed a few old ideas and stitched them together with a slightly new twist? Hmmmm . . . His mind ranged around the hundreds of books he’d read, focussing particularly on recent novels. Noir . . . always a safe bet. Hard-bitten detective . . . lives in a hovel . . . drinks heavily . . . hasn’t had a case in weeks . . . ooh, better still, let’s put him in the future so he can use some cool tech to help solve the case . . . make the setting a little bit Blade Runner, a touch of the Matrix . . . Colombo-ish character; cleverer than he looks . . . now we need a twist . . . Ah, yes! He’s a transvestite! Likes to dress up as a female policewoman; attends crime scenes to get inside info – sorted!

At the convention, he joins his critiquing group. When it’s his turn, the first to speak is a writer; someone who’s actually been published quite a bit. Lasermouth looked him up online a few weeks ago and read some of his stories. He had to admit they were original all right but a bit intense for him. He had to think hard to keep up with them. Anyway, this guy lets Lasermouth have it straight: advises him to lay off the clichés and reach for something he actually cares about: a theme, an emotion, a passion . . . Jack nods and takes notes but he isn’t really paying attention. He just wants to get published.

Now it’s the agent’s turn and Jack tries hard to read her face. He’s fearing the worst, after a real author has just expertly fingered Lasermouth’s little exercise in casual copy-catting.

Her face breaks into a wide smile. “I loved it!” she says. “It’s a great homage to California noir. Your main character is a wonderful collection of tropes that crime readers love. And it’s a brilliant twist to make him a transvestite . . . ”

The published author is rolling his eyes but Jack doesn’t care. After all these years of rejection, he’s basking in the cool breeze of promise flowing over him through the agent’s suddenly opened door.

All he has to do is tell her the book’s finished then leg it home to bash out a quick 90,000 more words borrowed from various other sources, disguised just enough to pass muster.

Later, in the bar, the published author buys Jack a drink. He’s still feeling giddy from what happened after the critiquing group was over, which was the agent asking him to send her the rest of the book as soon as; adding that she was pretty sure she knew a publisher who’d take it on.

“Congratulations,” says the author but his eyes seem to be saying something less straightforward.

“Thanks,” says Lasermouth. “I can’t believe she loved it.”

“What do you think she loved about it?”

Now Lasermouth recognises what’s in the author’s eyes.

He takes a long swallow of beer and straightens his shoulders, accepting the road he’s just decided to take for the rest of his writing life.

“The fact she can sell it,” he says.

There’s this girl. You’re good friends but lately you’ve been sensing that it could be more. You want to ask her out for a drink, something the two of you have done a lot but this time, you want to hint that it’s so the two of you can see if you really click; that you might want to get serious together.

Supposing, instead of the half-glimpsed, half-guessed way we normally conduct such potentially life-changing events, you actually had to sell the evening to her. I suggest there would be broadly two approaches you could take:

1.         “Hey, Jemima. Fancy going to The Dog and Duck for a few laughs and a chat about anything that interests you; and I mean you. I’d really like to get to know you better; talk about your favourite pop stars and all your cats, the ones you’ve shown me all those adorable pictures of. We could talk about favourite holiday destinations, and the best meal we’ve ever had; and what makes a perfect Christmas. I just know somehow that we’re going to find we have even more in common than we already do.”

Or:

2.         “Jemima, when I’m with you I often sense that we’re close to the edge of an adventure into the unknown. I don’t know what lies that way but I feel inspired to explore it with you. I don’t want to spend my life swapping superficial tastes in music, books and food. I want to see where the path will take us, together. No set route and no destination in mind; the only safety we’ll have is that we’re in it together, the two of us against the corporate, comfortable and ultimately dead-end world. It might even lead to love; the real kind.”

Well, let’s just say one of these approaches is more of a risk than the other. The first, if only by the law of probabilities is more likely to get Jemima down the pub. And isn’t that the main aim? Surely, she’ll have at least detected a hint of what you really want and at least she’s there in person to convince later. Whereas the other route is more likely to have her running for the exit even before she’s inside the pub to exit from.

On the other hand . . .

There is nothing more magical than holding her gaze while you make it clear that this is no social equivocation: you want her, the real her, to be with the real you – and then she says, “Yes.”

Not unexpectedly, I think there is a similar dilemma for the writer when submitting to editors.

Despite what a lot editors say about wanting quality writing that’s different and true, expressed in prose that does more than just tell the story, that’s a character in its own right, they don’t often publish that sort of thing. It’s quite likely that they don’t receive much of that sort of thing of course, and hence a kind of viscous circle.

A conspiracy of the adequate quickly takes shape. It fills the Science Fiction and Fantasy anthologies and magazines, it even wins the prizes. Readers, with little else to choose from decide this must be all there is, so they read it, get used to it, become comfortable with it. The writers who write it can produce gallons of the stuff to order, to fill any hole an editor has in his publication. So the second-rate, the barely okay, becomes not only common but even celebrated too.

Why would an author try to do anything else? He’d be nuts to. It would be the same as if every time he had the chance to go to the pub for an evening with someone, he promised the best of himself would try to make it a unique event, and fail in the attempt rather than trot out a load of conversational crap that can’t really be challenged but certainly will be forgotten once the affects of the alcohol have warn off. Any takers?

There are authors who are very successful because they pander to this quick-fix need, in a field swamped by submissions. They take care never to write anything that requires the reader to think a little, to shift perception. Instead, they produce generic character cut-outs that say and do nothing the reader isn’t always ahead of. Their prose has the depth of the warning on packets of Sainsbury’s cashews that reads, ‘This product may contain nuts’ only not as funny.

A pox on them. They know who they are, and they know the compromised, condescending, utterly hollow work they produce.

Real writers don’t bring out stored reactions to the girl, eager to say and do anything that will please her. They don’t even think of the girl as a first thing. Instead they lead with their inherent, questing curiosity. Curiosity that’s interested in her, not the indistinct compromise between responsibilities the world has made her; but the her that knows there’s something more. Curiosity that takes constant risks, drawing out poetry from the angles of light across her eyes that may or may not be on the verge of soft yet total change. Not just moment to moment, but moment discovering the next moment and changing the one after it.

This is still an investigation into the integrity of the author, I think. Not integrity as in being of strong moral fibre but more to do with someone who won’t compromise on effect. Who always strives to tell a story memorably; to not stint on character, not settle for cliché, not cheat the reader by plugging the story into some plot-o-matic device that’s about as subtle as a cold caller asking you how you are today.

I deeply believe that there are a whole bunch of readers out there who want to read quality work. And there are plenty of authors who want to provide it. But it’s difficult to get them together. The noisy shallow surface skimmers have most of the space, created by brands and genres and markets and false needs; all the crap that’s easier to talk about in the pub than reality.

The key to all this probably occurs quite early in an author’s life. Either he writes because he wants to explore and share the endless mystery of life or he wants everyone to call him an author and buy his stuff, even if it’s full of nothing but borrowed ideas powered by an insecure ego.

In the business world, there’s the expression ‘balls on the table’ (or ‘plums on the cabinet’ as someone in my office once told everyone by email, presumably offering us some kind of fruity treat), which means putting yourself on the line. For an author, I think that means writing with heart and belief, disguised legitimately with characters and style and humour and great prose. It’s not a hollow soul disguised as art.