The truth is there is no simple answer, no easy template, no cookie cutter plan to follow. I wish there were. Instead, every novel charts its own course, heads in its own ship through mostly unknown waters. Often writers are surprised where they end up. ‘I thought I was writing about love,’ they say, after the romantic lead dies. ‘I wanted it to be a happy story.’ But where do you take happiness? Does happy ever after make a good story?
With this in mind I’ve decided to blog on what...

I love audio books. However, I didn’t start out liking them. In the early days of listening to an 80,000+ plot, my mind would wander to other stories or events before eventually coming back to the novel and I would wonder what had happened while I’d been mentally absent.

However, a few years ago I found my eyes were often tired at the end of the work day, and I started listening to short Podcasts, then moved onto abridged novels on BBC Sounds. Lying on the sofa, eyes closed and listenin...