This blog contains spoilers! Downton Abbey spawned such a high degree of loving obsession from people around the world that it would seem wrong if it never featured in this blog series. We were late arrivals to it: by the time we were catching up, there had already been three series and their associated Christmas Specials. Everybody knew that Matthew died in a car accident at the most inopportune moment possible, and that the lovely Lady Sybil died in childbirth. I do wonder how differently I would have felt about the series if I had experienced the same shock as those who watched it the first time round. Now, I'll caveat the following statement with the fact that I love Downton Abbey - it's one of my comfort series that I'll go back to time and time again to watch on my phone. But, in writing terms, I think it's something of a cautionary tale. The tale being: know when to stop. The first three series of Downton Abbey are pure drama, taking us powerfully - and often pa...
Every Christmas holiday, Ginny, Jude and I have a story day. This, quite simply, is a day when we all sit down together and have a mega long writeathon. We are fully immersed in our own fantasy world and our poor parents have to put up with our obsession. We each have our "story story" which is our main story. Tomorrow I am revisiting my old story story that I finished when I was still a kid. There was a reasonably good plot but the writing was iffy, and there were way too many characters. Today, I sat down and wrote a list of characters that I couldn't bear to miss out... Here's my vague list of essential characters to include. To give you an idea of how many have been left out, here's some others I can remember: Jacob, Felice, Calantha, Edward, Nicholas, David, Eloise and Michael. I'm sure there are more which I've forgotten! Yes...that was as well as the list in the picture!! As you can see, some of the characters stick with you...