Fail to explain what’s going on

Dear readers,

I owe you an explanation. At some point over the next few months, there will be a shiny wonderful book (you remember books, right?) based on this blog. It may or may not be called 100 Ways To Write Badly Well. It will include both the best bits of this blog and all-new material. I’m pretty sure you’ll like it.

The lack of updates here is partly down to me working on said book. The lack of updates in the near future will also be partly down to this. I’m going to mothball this site for a few months and relaunch it, new and improved, when the book’s ready. Sorry for not explaining this sooner. Don’t worry, though – it’s all going to turn out okay in the end, just like a predictably-plotted story.

Those of you who have sent me suggestions for new blog posts are wonderful people and I can only apologise that those suggestions are being put on ice for a while (yes, ice and mothballs – what of it?). Thank you all so much.

See you soon.

Joel

Banish “said” from your vocabulary

‘I’m afraid she’s dead,’ unveiled the doctor. A silence settled on the room as the family took this in.

‘You’re sure?’ proclaimed Lois, quietly. The doctor nodded.

‘I’m terribly sorry,’ he conversed. ‘It was a peaceful end.’

‘Did she...’ Lois vocalised. ‘Did she have any last words?’

‘Yes,’ nodded the doctor, nodding. ‘She epitaphed a few words before she left us. “Tell my children I love them,” she stated. Then she recapitulated “all of them,” and shortly after that, she went.’

‘I can’t believe it,’ philosophised Lois. ‘I can’t believe she’s gone.’

‘I’m so terribly sorry,’ the doctor gushed.

‘Can I ask a question?’ questioned Lois.

‘Of course,’ dialogued the doctor.

‘If we had brought her in sooner,’ she began, ‘is there anything we could have done,’ she continued, ‘to give her more time?’ she concluded, questioningly.

‘I... I’m afraid not,’ the doctor ejaculated.

Commit to clichés

‘Run like the wind!’ Olaf shouted. ‘The kind of wind that goes very fast in a certain direction, then changes course abruptly to avoid obstacles, whilst taking care not to let itself be caught by its pursuers!’

Anneke glanced over her shoulder. It literally felt as if her heart was in her throat – a thumping knot of muscle lodged just behind her tonsils, pumping blood around her body from its strange new position through arteries which presumably had been rerouted down her throat in some way. She ran as fast as she could, knowing that what pursued her was her worst nightmare – worse than finding herself back at school with no clothes on; worse than her teeth falling out in the middle of a business meeting; worse than not being able to understand what the man in the golden highchair was saying and then noticing that he has the face of her boss but sometimes it’s the face of her old piano tutor and she somehow knows without knowing how she knows that if she gets too close he will shout at her but the room is getting smaller and smaller and her shoes are too tight. It was worse than any of those things and was made even more terrifying by the knowledge that it wasn’t, in fact, a nightmare, but a real thing in her waking life. It was, however, a figurative nightmare, with all the concomitant emotional impact that description suggests (for which, see above).

Keep plugging

Dear Readers,

Over the next couple of weeks, I’m performing the How To Write Badly Well live show at three different festivals in the UK:

Sat 2nd July, 8pm – The Page is Printed Literature Festival at the Tacchi Morris Arts Centre in Taunton.

Mon 11th July, 7:30pm – Poetry Café at the Frome Festival (also, I’ll be on the panel for Writers’ Question Time on Sun 10th, 2pm at Frome Library).

Sat 16th July, 5pm – The Literary Salon at Latitude Festival (I’ll also be compering over in the Poetry Arena all weekend – come and say hello).

I realise this is only geographically relevant to around 15% of you, but if any of our American or Australian friends would like to hop on a plane and come along, I’ll buy you a drink when I see you.

As always, the show is available in its entirety on YouTube for those of you too lazy and/or foreign to come along and see it.

All the best,

Joel

Explain how clever you are

I was perambulating unassumingly along the boulevard (this being the correct term for the particular, almost arbour-like (although not, it must be pointed out, arbouresque), thoroughfare upon which I was located) on a solstitial morning in June (I mention the precise month only because I fear my peracute polyonymy might bamboozle you by dint of sheer perspicuity) when I happened upon (or, indeed, happened to happen upon, depending on the degree of predestination or otherwise your own philosophy, dear reader, allows you to countenance) a particularly dentigerous (which is to say, imbued with a denticulated maw of considerable significance) specimen of Canis Lupus Familiaris (of the order Carnivora, the class Mammalia, the phylum Chordata and, as I am sure you have ascertained by this point, the kingdom Animalia). This, as you will shortly realise, was a chance happening (again, the question of fate in this scenario is, as you might put it, “up for grabs”) imbued with a not inconsiderable semiological heft. For now, though, do not overtax yourself with interpretive endeavours, dear reader; all (inasmuch as such a term can be applied to the, I’m sure you can find no way to adequately deny, infinitely fractured world in which we reside) shall be revealed.

Craft ambiguous similes

Susan stepped out into the busy road like a country lane, causing traffic to screech to a halt like nails on a blackboard. She stood for a moment, letting the wind whistle past her like a wind chime and the silence fill her ears like shells.

‘Get out of the road!’ yelled an obese taxi driver like a sack of blubber. Susan paid him no attention. She was calm, not letting her thoughts turn to panic, like a still pond.

‘It’s okay,’ she said, feeling as unflappable, placid and content as a dead bird’s wing. The taxi driver’s eyes widened like a child at Christmas.

‘Out of the road!’ he repeated, his voice a furious scream, like a stuck record.

COMEBACK WEEK #5: Kill off key characters

On his forehead, Dash felt a trickle of sweat trickle down his forehead.

‘You see,’ said Colonel Daringman, handling his LaserBlasterGun carefully in his hand with care, ‘I knew that the only way to destroy you was through your sense of duty. Your sense of adventure. Your lack of a sense of where the sensible limits of risk are.’

‘So you sent me on a suicide mission?’ Dash growled with a growl.

‘Not quite,’ the Colonel frowned. ‘I knew you would never commit suicide on a suicide mission, so I sent you on a killing-you-with-a-dangerous-mission mission.’

‘You fiend!’ shrieked Samantha, fainting. ‘How could you?’

‘Let me show you,’ Daringman hissed with a hiss, stepping over the unconscious beauty. Dash felt the air around grow thick with the slowing of time as time seemed to slow. In that one fatal instant, he could see the energy beam emerging from the muzzle of the LaserBlasterGun as if it was space-ketchup coming out of a space-bottle. In actual fact, he knew it was moving at the speed of light or faster as it crawled through the air towards him like a baby made of deadly laser energy being fired from a gun. He was powerless to move, powerless to cry out or even to think. Time slowed again. The closer his death came – the laser baby dawdling now – the slower time seemed to get. In the last instant, the one that seemed to go on forever, he felt a sensation like a weight being lifted from him. For an infinite moment, he knew everything. Then, Dash Gallant, Captain of the Star Corps, hero of the battle of Tor’Sang, the only man ever to escape a Mhal-Evol’Unt interrogation unit, closed his eyes for the last time and joined the ranks of the dead.

COMEBACK WEEK #4: Alienate your existing readership

‘It’s good to see you, Samantha,’ purred Dash, his velvety voice as smooth as silk. ‘I can’t think of anyone I’d rather come back to.’

‘I feel the same way,’ purred Samantha, her velvety voice as smooth as silk. ‘And to think that some of these pilots come back from a dangerous mission and the only person there to greet them is their maintenance robot.’

‘Yes, can you imagine?’ purred Dash, his velvety voice as smooth as silk. ‘What kind of person would form a deep personal bond with something as stupid as an adorable robot sidekick? That’s the kind of childish conceit than only an idiot would enjoy.’

After laughing for a minute or two, Dash paused, alert. Amid the hilarity, he could hear the unmistakable sound of a LaserBlasterGun powering up. He turned around. Colonel Daringman was coolly pointing his weapon directly at Dash’s chest.

‘You weren’t supposed to come back,’ purred the Colonel, his velvety voice as smooth as silk. ‘But you just don’t learn, do you?’