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A new air, a fresh day, the first narcissi and a sense of spring.

The Write with Jericho course no longer occupies these emails – hooray – but it’s still there for Premium Members to enjoy at any time.

And (’pon my word – how we do spoil those fellows) we have a whole new course for Premium Members to feast on: the Crime Writing for Beginners course.

If you’re not a Premium Member, that course is available for a mere £99. But why on earth would you pay that? Become a Premium Member and you can get it for free, tra-la.

But enough of Mere Commerce! The Muse summons us.

Thought One: televising a novel

Now, when my first Fiona novel was adapted for TV, the production company hired a fancy screenwriter to produce a script. In an early draft of that script, there was a direction which ran something like this:

“Fiona remembers her harrowing years in hospital as a teenager.”

To be clear, that wasn’t introducing a kind of flashback moment, where we saw images of the hospital, Fiona as teenager, things that were harrowing, etc. It was just an acting direction. Hey, Sophie Rundle, here’s what we want you to show in your face.

The excellent Ms Rundle was not quite sure how to deliver that moment, and the direction was altered.

Thought Two: novelising a screenplay

OK. Hold that thought, and let’s turn our attention to this (lightly abbreviated) chunk from the script of Casablanca:

Ilsa: But what about us?

Rick: We'll always have Paris. We didn't have – we lost it until you came to Casablanca. We got it back last night.

Ilsa: When I said I would never leave you.

Rick: And you never will. But I've got a job to do, too. Where I'm going, you can't follow [...]

[Ilsa lowers her head and begins to cry]

Rick: Now, now...

[Rick gently places his hand under her chin and raises it so their eyes meet]

Rick: Here's looking at you, kid.

Now, if I’m honest, I’m never sure that Casablanca deserves its haloed status as Greatest Screenplay Ever Written. But it’s clearly a more than decent script and this is THE key moment from that script.

And obviously a novel can in principle handle such moments. But not (I hope) like this:

Ilsa said, ‘But what about us?’

‘We'll always have Paris,’ he answered. ‘We didn't have – we lost it until you came to Casablanca. We got it back last night.’

‘When I said I would never leave you.’

‘And you never will. But I've got a job to do, too. Where I'm going, you can't follow [...]’

Ilsa lowered her head and began to cry.

‘Now, now,’ he said, and raised her chin with his hand until their eyes met. ‘Here's looking at you, kid.’

That’s the exact same scene, no? Same dialogue, same actions, same content, same everything.

And – the scene is terrible. It’s not moving. It feels perfunctory and limited and mechanical and pointless.

OK, hold that thought too.

(You now have two thoughts in hand, right? One about Sophie Rundle and a difficult-to-execute stage direction. Two about novelising Casablanca. And, OK, you want to go and check out that crime writing course, so you have three thoughts to hold onto. Plus, you’re a writer, so you quite likely also have a cup of tea. Hold steady.)

Thought three: the magic of the reaction shot

Now someone somewhere once said something like this:

The greatest special effect in cinema is the ability to have the star’s face in close-up on a giant screen.

Few of us get to hang out in real life with (say) an Ingrid Bergman at her peak of beauty and acting prowess. But even if we did, normal etiquette would mean we couldn’t just stare. And even if we did, she’d presumably be life-size, not large enough to fill the screen of whatever cinema we might happen to be in.

But screenwriters do get to use Ms Bergman’s face. And that face means that the little screenplay moment works perfectly. Our poor novelist – who had no beautiful giant face to play with – wrote a drab and forgettable version of the same thing.

So what to do?

Well, it all lies in the reaction shot.

On screen, we just need to see a charismatic face doing some Acting. “I’m not just sad, I’m noble and sad. In fact, I’m noble and sad and regretful and loving (and also beautiful and perfectly lit) and you will never forget this moment.”

In the novel, we can’t do that, but we have something more powerful. The interior reaction shot. Cinema can’t handle that Sophie Rundle stage direction – not without some very clunky backstory footage. But a novelist can do so with ease. You want to convey a complex reaction to something? Convey it, buddy. Want to reflect on the past? Go right ahead. Want to tease out the difference between this kind of noble-but-sad feeling and some other sort? You tease away.

And, OK, all this is a long way to say that in a lot of the work I see, writers are too busy rushing forward to deliver a proper reaction shot.

But cinema doesn’t make that mistake: the whole emotional punch of cinema is delivered in two steps:

1. Concoct a plot and characters that result in a character feeling something powerful
2. Show the character having that feeling – up close, on screen.

Your job as a novelist is the same:

1. Concoct a plot and characters that result in a character feeling something powerful
2. Show the character having that feeling – by jumping into their mind and heart and telling us what’s there.

Don’t go to all the hassle of (1) without collecting the revenues that you get from (2). That’s where the gold lies.

A word from our writing guru

I’ll end this cinema-themed email with a quote from that fountain of wise writing advice, Clint Eastwood. He once said:

My old drama coach used to say, 'Don't just do something, stand there.' Gary Cooper wasn't afraid to do nothing.

That’s my advice to you. Let your novel stand there a moment. Let your camera rest on the character. What are they thinking / feeling?

Tell us and tell us properly.

Only then should you move on.

***

FEEDBACK FRIDAY

Nice obvious task for Feedback Friday this week:

• Find a scene from your novel when you deliver a proper reaction shot. Max of 200-250 words. Include just enough that we know what your character is reacting to – then show us the character’s reaction.

Once you're ready, post yours here.

That’s it. And I bet that some of you realise you often don’t have reaction shots that last more than a sentence or so. If so, try beefing that moment up and seeing if it works better.

***

That’s it from me. Half-term is over: a relief.

The school has given the kids a project to build a model Viking longship in 3-D. My older daughter has built a ship in papier-maché that will be a full three meters long, by the time its dragon figurehead is finished. And when I say that she has built it, I mean of course that I built it with the most minimal assistance from her.

Til soon.

Harry

Over the past month, the Jericho Writers team has been tightly focused on helping you to write better scenes.

Through the Write With Jericho video course – free for Premium Members – we’ve explored:

• Making each scene purposeful
• Creating atmosphere in your scene
• Dynamic dialogue and internal monologue
• Show, don’t tell - and when to break the rule.

Many of you have shared examples of your work with us during the course, and our four tutors fed back on the writing they saw via the forums over on Townhouse.

Here, I’ll share some of the most common challenges authors experienced as they worked on perfecting their scenes – as well as our top tips for overcoming them.

Making each scene purposeful

Following lesson one, best-selling author Becca Day had the following advice to share with her fellow writers:

Remember the purpose of your B plot: This seemed to be a sticking point for some authors, but – in a nutshell – the B plot sums up the reason why the A plot is your character’s story to tell. What is it that makes this tale, and this scene within it, so personal to your protagonist?

Make sure the stakes are personal: Even if you think you’ve come up with something suitably emotive, Becca suggests digging a little deeper to see if you can make it more so. Instead of ‘My character will lose her job if XYZ,’ consider: ‘If XYZ, my character will lose her job – and it’s the job her father always wanted for her. She’ll be letting down his memory if she’s sacked.’ This calls into question whether the character actually cares about her job as much as her father did, or if she’s merely doing it because she feels like she owes it to him. See how much more powerful that just became?

Creating atmosphere in your scene

Meanwhile, Jericho Writers founder Harry Bingham shared these thoughts after teaching Write With Jericho lesson two:

Consider what to leave out, as well as what to put in: Repeated words and phrases, or detail where it isn’t necessary, can detract from the atmosphere you’re working so hard to create. It might sound contrary, but keeping your writing spare – choosing your words carefully – is a terrific technique for building atmosphere.

Be mindful of pace: On the flip side, make sure you’re not hurrying past moments where the reader might like to linger. As you’re describing a setting, ask yourself – does this need a reaction shot? Do I need to dwell, just for a moment, on the feeling this elicits in the character(s)?

If you create a moment, let it live: To some extent, this is about pace, too – but also the natural ways people react to things. When you introduce some action into your setting – a loud noise, say – make sure your character(s) respond to this in a way, and in an order, that feels believable. They won’t know what the sound is, so let’s see their experience of it, their shock and confusion, and then perhaps their relief at figuring out the reason for the din. Don’t name the noise or its source until your character(s) could reasonably know what it is and where it’s coming from or the moment will lose its authenticity.

Dynamic dialogue and internal monologue

In the lesson three forum, I shared the following feedback with our authors:

Avoid excessive formality: In my Write With Jericho lesson, I talked about the importance of keeping speech natural and appropriate for your characters and setting. This advice applies to internal monologue, too. If you want readers to feel close to your protagonist or narrator, you must make them feel like a friend. That means using contractions (‘won’t’ instead of ‘will not’ / ‘don’t’ instead of ‘do not’), and avoiding the sort of stiffness that might feel more ‘job interview’ than ‘intimate, honest conversation’.

Keep an eye on your POV: All writers are guilty of letting their point of view wander from time to time – but it’s important not to let it amble too far! If you’re working in first person or third person close, you need to be vigilant and stay mindful of what your main character can reasonably know about others’ thoughts, feelings and motivations. Be careful not to stray too far into omniscience, if this isn’t the mode you’re actually working in.

Watch out for clunky self-referencing: This is a pet peeve of mine, but in first person narratives (where protagonists are forced to think and talk about themselves constantly), I think it’s important to keep self-references natural. Does anyone really think about the colour of their own hair as they shove it out of their face? Or the precise shade of their eyes as they close them in despair? Obviously, your readers want this information – they need to know what your protagonist looks like – but real internal monologues simply don’t work like this. You need a reason for your character to be thinking about whatever they’re contemplating, so find one! Or, save the eye colour info for a moment where it will slot in seamlessly.

Remember, punctuation affects pace: The way you punctuate speech can have a huge impact on how it sounds – and whether it lands with a big bang or a whimper. If in doubt, read it aloud (even if your nearest and dearest will fear you’ve lost the plot). Consider the difference between: ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean that,’ and ‘Sorry. Really. I didn’t mean that.’

Show, don't tell - and when to break the rule

Finally, over on the lesson four feedback forum, Sophie Flynn suggested the following fixes for writers trying to strike the right balance between showing and telling.

Beware of filtering: Words like ‘seemed’, ‘appeared’, ‘noticed’ and ‘felt’ can signal you’re a step too far away from your main character’s point of view – that you’re filtering their experience through a second pair of eyes. Minimise this if you can, and you’ll find your writing feels sharper and more immediate.

Watch out for showing that feels like telling: Running a fingertip over a barely healed wound, for example, is an act that needs to be connected to a thought or conversation that’s happening in the moment. Otherwise, it won’t feel natural.

Don’t show where telling would be clearer: Again, this is a question of getting the balance right – but if trying to show something takes longer, is more effortful and is potentially confusing for the reader, don’t be afraid just to state a few simple facts.  

Ready to dive in...?

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Not yet a Premium Member? Join us today to access Write With Jericho, plus a host of other video courses, live events and writing resources. Fancy watching lesson one of Write With Jericho 2025 for free? Check it out here.

This week is a good and beautiful week, but also a sad week; a week that enters with the last note of a bugle fading on the evening air. 

Why? Because it is week four of our Write with Jericho course, and therefore the final week of the course. Premium Members will be sad because WWJ is drawing to a close, but they will also be happy because there are a host of other courses they can relish - and because new courses will be popping up all through this year like mushrooms in a damp October. 

And yes, non-members will have an extra sadness because they've missed so much excitement of late... Except that they know doing this one small thing will give them abiding and highly cost-effective joy. 

(Also: if you're a non-member and want to enjoy week one of Write With Jericho for FREE, then go on. Enjoy it. It's open to all.)

In this week's final lesson, my colleague Sophie Flynn is teaching about showing & telling, which is a topic that kinda drives us mad at JW Towers, because so many people get it wrong.

The rule is “show, don’t tell,” and it’s a good rule. I like it. It’s always helpful to have at the back of your mind.

But it’s also a terrible rule, because it’s so often false.

Sophie gives an example of this.  

Telling: “It was now midday.”

Showing: “The short hand was already more or less pointing at the twelve and Josie saw with panic rising in her throat that the long hand was now all but upright too.”

That second version is terrible in so many ways it’s hard to count. For one thing, it’s mystifying. It’s so obvious what “it was now midday means”, whereas the second sentence needs a kind of anxious decoding… And even once decoded, it leaves the reader with a slight well, that was weird feeling. 

Of course, the second version is also far baggier and less efficient than the first. What's more, it still uses telling, because it tells the reader that poor old Josie – trapped as she is in a terrible novel – has panic rising up her throat. On a strict show-don’t-tell model, you’d have to somehow show that panic rising. How you’d go about doing that, I just don’t know.

So, the Idiot Version of the rule is just plain false.         

In a way, I’d prefer it if we replaced that formulation with a simple command to dramatise. Suppose Jane Austen had written the following:

Telling: “Mr Darcy proposed to Elizabeth Bennet, but she refused him with some asperity.”

That’s a perfectly accurate account of one of the most famous scenes in English literature – but also quite clearly a terrible replacement for the scene that Jane Austen actually wrote.

Dramatic action needs to unfold in what feels like real time to the reader. Everything else can just be neatly stitched in with brief but accurate snippets of telling.

I won’t talk about this more – Sophie does all that in her course video – but I’ll do again what I’ve done throughout these Write With Jericho emails and just take a look at what one of my own scenes does. I’ll use the same scene as I used last week which, if you remember, I just picked at random.

So here we go again. The scene itself is in bold. My comments are in italics. Where possible, I’ve shortened the text for brevity.

Dad is talking about the security issues that his clubs have faced recently. Nothing out of the ordinary. The occasional idiot with a knife. The odd binge-drinker who gets violent.

This is telling: Fiona’s swift summary of something that isn’t that interesting and doesn’t need to detain the reader for long.

I don’t premeditate the thought, just blurt out, ‘I know. I sometimes think I should get myself a gun. You never know what might happen.’

That’s all I say. A stupid thought that wouldn’t have lasted out the minute. But Dad’s on to it straight away.

‘What do you mean, love? You want to become an armed officer, is that it? Are detectives even allowed to carry guns?’

This is showing – dialogue always is. Even here, though, Fiona doesn’t try to show that her statement was a a stupid thought that wouldn’t have lasted out the minute. That’s not something that can be easily shown. It’s not dramatic. So she just tells it in a perfectly straightforward manner.

I backtrack straight away. No, I don’t want to join some armed response unit. No, I can’t see the South Wales force thinking that DC Griffiths would be the right person to wave the heavy weaponry. No, it’s probably a stupid idea.

This is still probably showing. We’ve dropped the direct speech, but Fiona is summarising reasonably accurately what she actually said.

‘You mean have a gun at home? A licensed thing? But you know, these days, you can get a shotgun or whatever for going out hunting. Air rifles, that sort of thing. But they won’t let people carry handguns. Not off a shooting range. And quite right too. The number of crazy people there are. If I could ban the whole damn lot of them, I would.’

‘Yes, me too. I’m not really saying anything. Just, like you say, there are some idiots out there.’

‘You worried about something, Fi girl? If you are, you need to say. Maybe the police isn’t the right job for you. I mean, don’t get me wrong, you’re fabulous. CID bloody lucky to have you, never mind what I might have said. But you mustn’t take risks you shouldn’t, you know.’

Dialogue = showing. This is the dramatic heart of this (tiny) scene. But just feel how flat the scene would be without this dialogue at its heart. The heart of ANY scene should be showing, That’s where the drama is.

He pauses, the shadows of our old arguments crossing our lamplit present.

His suspicion of anything to do with the police. His fear. My determination to pursue the career of my choice. Two obstinate people, digging in.

And to be fair to Dad – and I didn’t perhaps understand this as well as I should have done – he was worried about me too. He’s always been protective of me, doubly or trebly so during my illness and afterwards… even when my life was all put back together again, he felt that a career in the police force was absolutely the wrong one for me. Too much danger. Too much stress. Risks physical and mental…

Anyway. The present pause compresses that whole debate into a few seconds of silence. It’s Dad’s way of saying that I can always quit the police, come home, take a job with him. My silence is my way of saying, ‘Thanks, Pa, but no way.’ Our argument unfolds in a few beats of nothing at all.

All telling.

But there’s absolutely no way to show this past history without diving into entire chapters of pointless backstory. Those chapters would have murdered any forward momentum in the plot, whereas three or four paragraphs of reflection work perfectly fine – especially because the reader will by this point be very curious about that past of Fiona’s. (They’ll still be curious, because Fiona still hasn’t talked about The Big Thing that makes her the way she is.)

Then it finishes. Finishes with a truce.

‘You look after yourself, love. If you need anything, you just say.’

‘I will, Dad. Thanks.’

Back to showing.

It’s bedtime. I feel oceanically tired. Tonight, I know it already, I’m going to sleep well. I’m home.

Back to telling.

REFLECTIONS

In a way, there's not much to reflect on this week. For me, two things stand out:

1. The movement between showing and telling is constant and seamless. A reader wouldn’t remotely notice the movement from one to the other.
2. The dramatic heart of the scene is shown – in this case through dialogue, but you could imagine something purely physical instead, a fist-fight, for example.

Really, the choice between showing and telling is a choice between Efficiency (telling) and Drama (showing.) 

Altering the reader to the fact that it’s midday? Probably better told. Darcy proposes to Elizabeth Bennet? I’d show that if I were you.

***

FEEDBACK FRIDAY

Once again, Feedback Friday comes straight from the Write With Jericho course this week. Sophie has asked you to:

• Rewrite a scene from your novel or non-fiction project, focusing on when to show and when to tell.
• Choose 250 words of this scene and share the before and after over on Townhouse. 

Once you're ready, post yours here.

***

That’s it from me for this week. 

Til soon,

Harry

If you’re anything like me, writing the opening pages of a novel is one of the best, most magical parts of the entire drafting process. Everything is new and interesting! The idea is still shiny, still full of potential! The words practically pour onto the page.  

Then — quite rudely, and without any warning — the words only drip. A few sentences here, a single paragraph there, until your brain feels clogged, the ideas stopped up.  

While it’s common to hit a creative block or two (…hundred) as you’re drafting your novel, there are three techniques I always recommend to writers for pushing through those barriers and consistently getting words on the page. 

1. Set a goal for yourself every time you sit down to write — and keep it reasonable.     

Your goal will be dictated by what makes the most sense to your process. Perhaps that’s a word-count goal, or a page-count goal, or a certain number of scenes you want to write that day. Whatever it is, be sure to keep it reasonable, i.e. keep it small.  

You might think setting a small goal for yourself is a counterproductive way of making good progress on your draft, but I’ve found that small goals actually take the pressure off. There’s a huge difference for me, mentally, at the beginning of a writing session when I have a goal of five hundred words versus one or two thousand. When it’s only five hundred, I feel like I have a chance! After all, five hundred is only one hundred words five times, and I can definitely write a hundred words.  

The best part is: once you hit your reasonable goal (which you will; I believe in you), you get to feel like an absolute rockstar for accomplishing exactly what you set out to do, and I find that when I have that feeling, the words keep coming! And if they don’t, that’s okay, because you still accomplished your goal and still made progress.  

2. Give yourself “short assignments” 

This technique comes from Anne Lamott in her excellent craft text, Bird by Bird. She  notes how easy it is to become overwhelmed by the huge scope of writing a novel, so she recommends breaking it down into much smaller chunks, i.e. short assignments.  

Examples of short assignments might be writing the first paragraph of a chapter, writing just the dialogue in a scene, or finding the right transition between one section and the next.  

Once you finish one assignment, you can take a break (or, my favourite, reward yourself with chocolate) and then dive into another.  

This week is a good and beautiful week, one of the best weeks ever.

And why? Because it is Week #3 of our Write with Jericho course. (Which is free and exclusive to Premium members.)

And just because we love ALL of you not just our lovely Premium Members, you can catch the replay of lesson one of the course for free. Enjoy the mighty Becca Day on adding BOOM to your scenes.

This week is all about dialogue and subtext and internal reflection, which are all things that are vast fun to play with and also vastly effective on the page.

Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve beaten one of my scenes to death, so no more of that. Instead, I’ve picked up another scene from the same book. As before, I’ve chosen this at random – literally just moving my cursor at random through the text until it plopped onto some meaningful dialogue.

So: let’s review this little scene thinking about subtext. And internal monologue. And what the spoken words tells us about the two characters involved.

The scene is set in Fiona’s father’s study-cum-lair. Her dad is a former criminal, but charismatic and warm towards his family. Fiona’s in a bad head-place. She’s just been physically assaulted in her own home and has returned to her parents’ place for a sense of security. This is now late in the evening.

Bold text is from the scene. My comments in italics. I’ve shortened the text here and there, just for brevity.

Dad is talking about the security issues that his clubs have faced recently. Nothing out of the ordinary. The occasional idiot with a knife. The odd binge-drinker who gets violent.

That is: the scene opens neutrally. Whatever her dad is talking about has no relevance to the story.

I don’t premeditate the thought, just blurt out, ‘I know. I sometimes think I should get myself a gun. You never know what might happen.’

That’s all I say. A stupid thought that wouldn’t have lasted out the minute. But Dad’s on to it straight away.

‘What do you mean, love? You want to become an armed officer, is that it? Are detectives even allowed to carry guns?’

Now, there’s quite a lot of code going on here. The surface text is clear. Fiona says, “Should I get a gun?” Her dad takes that thought and remodels it as, “Oh, you want to become an armed officer?” (In Britain, police officers don’t routinely carry firearms.)

But there’s also subtext.

Fiona knows damn well that her father was (or is?) a criminal who may well have used illegal firearms in the past. So is her ‘blurted’ thought really just the expression of a woman in shock? Or is it a trial balloon sent up to see what her father might offer her?

And then the dad: he’s no shrinking violet when he comes to violence, but he (deliberately?) turns aside from Fiona’s obvious meaning to explore a legal / official way in which she might get access to a weapon.

I backtrack straight away. No, I don’t want to join some armed response unit. No, I can’t see the South Wales force thinking that DC Griffiths would be the right person to wave the heavy weaponry. No, it’s probably a stupid idea.

Notice here that there’s some implied dialogue which is just summarised, rather than written out in full. Rotating between direct speech and indirect speech is a way to keep the rhythm of your scene nicely varied. It’s also just quicker: Fiona’s backtracking would probably have taken up more page space than this quick summary.

Note that the dialogue has reversed already. First, she says, “I want a gun” and then she says, “No I don’t.” Fiona may be in shock, but she is very smart, very strategic. What is going on here?

‘You mean have a gun at home? A licensed thing? But you know, these days, you can get a shotgun or whatever for going out hunting. Air rifles, that sort of thing. But they won’t let people carry handguns. Not off a shooting range. And quite right too. The number of crazy people there are. If I could ban the whole damn lot of them, I would.’

But her dad isn’t dropping the idea, even though she just told him to. But he’s shifted it from, ‘Oh, you want a gun at work?’ to ‘Oh, you want one at home?’

The gun idea has become a little more personal, a little less official.

And this former gangster is saying he’d ban all handguns – really? Or is this cautious man, who has a police officer daughter, just playing things extremely safe in the event that someone was recording his words?

‘Yes, me too. I’m not really saying anything. Just, like you say, there are some idiots out there.’

Fiona is now steady with the ‘Oh, no, I don’t really want a gun’ message. But she did put the idea out there. And she did blurt the thought to perhaps the only person she knows who might be able to lay his hands on an illegal handgun. So how real is her denial?

‘You worried about something, Fi girl? If you are, you need to say. Maybe the police isn’t the right job for you. I mean, don’t get me wrong, you’re fabulous. CID bloody lucky to have you, never mind what I might have said. But you mustn’t take risks you shouldn’t, you know.’

Her dad has now crept from ‘armed officer’ to ‘licensed shooting range’ to ‘are you in trouble?’ He often uses a kind of burble of white noise – happy, positive chat – to disguise his strategies, and he does so here. But he’s saying: (A) don’t take risks, and (B) are you worried about something? That’s like any dad to any daughter … except that she’s a police officer and he’s a (former?) gangster.

He pauses, the shadows of our old arguments crossing our lamplit present.

His suspicion of anything to do with the police. His fear. My determination to pursue the career of my choice. Two obstinate people, digging in.

And to be fair to Dad – and I didn’t perhaps understand this as well as I should have done – he was worried about me too. He’s always been protective of me, doubly or trebly so during my illness and afterwards.  … even when my life was all put back together again, he felt that a career in the police force was absolutely the wrong one for me. Too much danger. Too much stress. Risks physical and mental. …

Anyway. The present pause compresses that whole debate into a few seconds of silence. It’s Dad’s way of saying that I can always quit the police, come home, take a job with him. My silence is my way of saying, ‘Thanks, Pa, but no way.’ Our argument unfolds in a few beats of nothing at all.

This is quite a lot of internal reflection that makes sense of the current pause. And this is a lot of revelation: more information than we’ve ever had on the father / daughter relationship during her troubled teenage years. Because the reader STILL doesn’t know what Fiona’s illness is, this scrap of text will be carefully scrutinised for any clues. And it emphasises her dad’s protective nature. And she just asked and then un-asked for a gun. What does a protective and criminally inclined dad do with that request/not-a-request?

Then it finishes. Finishes with a truce.

‘You look after yourself, love. If you need anything, you just say.’

‘I will, Dad. Thanks.’

This is a bland ending. Except that the subtext is still here. After all, the gun question hasn’t really been resolved. And Fiona could have chosen to respond to the ‘Are you worried?’ question, but she didn’t. If she had said – credibly – ‘no, I’m not worried’, then maybe the whole gun question could have been genuinely laid to rest. If she had said, ‘yes, I am worried’, then it would have looked like she was asking her criminal father for the use of a weapon.

But – both parties just evade the question. Lay it to rest with platitudes.

It’s bedtime. I feel oceanically tired. Tonight, I know it already, I’m going to sleep well. I’m home.

And – we’re done. ‘I’m going to sleep well. I’m home.’: that suggests some emotional issue has been settled … but we’ve just had a bit of dialogue that raised an issue – then denied it – then evaded it. What’s been settled?

Well, at this stage, the reader doesn’t know. But before too long, Fiona’s dad sends a workman round to her house to fix some cupboards that barely needed fixing. The workman chatted as he worked. In the course of that chatter, he mentions an unlicensed shooting range and gives Fiona directions on how to find it.

Fiona does indeed drive to the firing range at night and finds a gun laid out on a bale of straw. With bullets. She fires off a hundred or so rounds, trying to get the feel of the weapon. Then an unnamed man arrives, gives her some basic instruction in how to shoot. She leaves the range with the gun and ammo.

And by the end of this firing range scene, we finally know how to interpret that father-daughter gun conversation.

Fiona came to her gangster-dad and said ‘I want a gun.’

But gangster-dad can’t say to his police-officer daughter that, sure, he can find handguns no problem, so he evades the question.

Fiona, being a police officer, has to deny her own request, so she does – repeatedly.

The gangster-dad tests out various neutral options, none of which get an, ‘Oh yes, that’s what I meant’ from his daughter, so he asks her if she has fears for her safety.

She can’t say yes, because that would be like affirming that she wants a gun, so she evades. But she hasn’t said, ‘no, I’m not worried’, so gangster-dad comes away with three messages: (A) his daughter is afraid, (B) she wants a gun, (C) she wants an illegal, deniable weapon, because if she didn’t, they wouldn’t have had to go through that whole rigmarole.

And because gangster-dad loves his daughter and is very good at what he does, before too long a handgun is put into Fiona’s possession … but via a route that can’t possibly connect back to her the man who put it there.

REFLECTIONS

If you scan the italics and the bold above, you’ll see there’s way more of the former. And the beautiful lesson there is that subtext is much richer and more encoded than the text itself. To unravel the subtext, we need to spend more time and words than was present in the text itself.

And how enriching this all is!

A beautiful and unexpected plot strand is surfaced by this little bit of dialogue. (And of course, this illegal weapon ends up being used in the book’s climactic shootout.)

And our understanding of both characters are transformed by this little scene. Not necessarily during the scene itself – but once the handgun is produced, and we reconsider the dialogue that prompted its production, we realise that both these two characters are very strategic, very risk-averse – and vastly effective. Fiona asked for a handgun and her dad supplied one. And the two of them secured this outcome without ever saying anything that the Chief Constable him- or herself could take issue with. This is the first time in the series we see quite how subtle and potent Fiona’s dad is. It’s also the first time that we see quite how risk-averse he still is, even with his criminal past (probably) behind him. The whole incident adds a darkness, intrigue and depth to both characters … still without either of them having said anything so remarkable.

That’s the beauty of subtext and the beauty of dialogue. I love everything about writing, but if I could only go on a date with one aspect of it, I’d take Dialogue out to dinner, in her shimmering green gown and unreliable smile.

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FEEDBACK FRIDAY

Once again, Feedback Friday comes straight from the Write With Jericho Course this week. Laura has asked you to:

Share 300 words from your scene, making sure to incorporate subtext and internal dialogue. You’ll get extra points the richer and yummier your subtext is. Once you're ready, post yours here.

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That’s it from me. I shall wear a smoking jacket in royal blue and bring with me a deck of marked cards and a two-headed coin.

Til soon.

Harry

Dialogue is one of the cornerstones of great fiction writing. Whatever genre you’re working in, and whether your novel is literary or commercial, your characters need to speak to one another.

Why? First, because talking is just what people do. A book where the characters didn’t have conversations would feel totally unrealistic, not to mention decidedly odd.

Just as importantly, dialogue provides blessed relief from long stretches of narrative description. While these are crucial for establishing context, worldbuilding and setting readers’ expectations, they simply aren’t sustainable over 300 pages. Dialogue is immediate and immersive: it lifts the tone of a scene and quickens its pace, providing vital balance. I think of it as a load-bearing wall: something that keeps the shape of your story sound, and its structure strong. Without it, your novel could sink beneath the weight of too much ‘telling’.

This leads me on to another reason why dialogue is so very useful for us authors. It allows us to show, clearly and effectively, all sort of things that might be tiresome to describe. Want to make clear that one character has history with another? Give them an opportunity to bicker about something that happened years ago. Need to signal that someone in your novel is more educated than they claim? Give them a short speech where jargon they’ve no business knowing creeps in.

In my Write With Jericho lesson, I go deep into the theory and practice of writing great dialogue – and I also explain how internal monologue can intersect with what your characters say out loud. Here, I’m going to share a few dos and don’ts that should help you while you craft or edit your characters’ dialogue. I hope you find them useful.

Do give your characters distinct voices.

Think about accents, dialect and vocabulary. A wealthy, Oxbridge-educated lawyer will likely sound different from someone who’s grown up in poverty, left school at sixteen and has spent time in prison – and please note, that remains true even if the characters are of equal intelligence!

What can the way your character speaks tell us about their background, upbringing, education and social status? Does their voice truly reflect who they are inside? If not, why not? (I’m looking at you, Charlotte from The Traitors…)

Do make characters' speech appropriate for the situation.

We all modify the way we speak, depending on who we’re speaking to; we chat with friends and family in a very different way than we’d talk to a job interview panel! While your character’s dialogue needs to stay consistent with who they are, you also need to allow for subtle shifts in how they speak.

Do remember that most speech is informal.

Unless you’re writing dialogue for a novel set in another world or time period, I’d always recommend using contractions and keeping your characters’ speech casual. In real life, we usually say ‘I can’t’, or ‘I don’t’, not ‘I cannot’ or ‘I do not’. Informality is key for making your characters’ speech believable. It ensures their conversations feel overheard, rather than artificial.

Don't allow your characters to speak in soliloquy or conduct Q&As.

Unless you’ve created a Winston Churchill-style character, it will feel unnatural for them to make long, uninterrupted speeches. Likewise, most conversations involve meandering and obfuscation – especially if one person is trying to extract information that another isn’t keen to share. Very rarely do any of us give a straight answer when we’re asked a point-blank question, so bear this in mind as you write.

Do make your dialogue work hard.

We’ve all heard the advice to strip adverbs out of our work and use simple dialogue tags – and I’m not the woman to gainsay it. Broadly speaking, if you’re choosing the words your characters speak carefully enough, they can do an awful lot of heavy lifting for you. Want to imply your character is shouting? Show their growing exasperation through the words inside the speech marks. Want to make it clear they’re grief-stricken? Use words that show this, so you don’t need to tell readers how they feel.

Don't overuse exclamation marks and italics.

This is an especially useful tip for when you’re editing dialogue: if it’s riddled with exclamations and italics, you probably need to tighten it up. Too much shouty, slanty content is a sign your dialogue isn’t strong enough, or that you didn’t have full confidence in it as you were drafting. Review it and see what could change.

Finally, don't worry that everything your characters say needs to match up perfectly with what's going on inside.

In fact, it’s thrilling for a reader when a character’s internal monologue contradicts what they’re doing and saying. This dichotomy is often key for developing a strong connection between your reader and your story’s protagonist – so exploit it if you can. Show them that your character’s outward loathing of their workplace rival hides a powerful, secret crush; signal that the perfect wife’s devotion to her husband is the smokescreen for her dastardly murder plot.

For more on dialogue and internal monologue, don’t miss lesson three of Write With Jericho – now available for Premium Members.

As always, happy writing!

This week saw the launch of Week #2 of our Write with Jericho course. (It’s free to Premium members, naturally. If you’re not a member and are curious, just take a look at what membership offers here.)

This week is officially The Best Week of the Course, because it’s the one where I get to tell you about adding atmosphere to your scenes. I don’t want to go over everything I talk about in the course video, but I do want to pick out one small – but tremendously powerful – technique that you can use pretty much anywhere and for pretty much anything.

The idea is to find descriptions – of people, of places, of moods, of anything – that are both literal, physical descriptions AND suggestive of something emotional or personal or even some kind of foreshadowing. Descriptions like this are acceptable to the reader because they’re just literal, right? They’re conveying useful information. But because they also smuggle a whole lot more into the scene, they enrich it vastly.

Last week, I just took one of my scenes and checked it against Becca’s “a scene must develop questions” template. This week I’ll do much the same. I’ll take the exact same scene as we looked at last week and pick out any descriptive language that straddles something physical / literal, and something more suggestive too.

Bold text comes from the actual scene. Italics are my comments. If you remember, the scene last week involved Fiona meeting a dodgy ex-cop, getting a key to a suspect’s home, and entering that property (illegally). Fiona finds a stack of presumably illicit cash, then gets quickly out of the house.

OK. Here goes:

Speed bumps in the road and cars neat in their driveways.

Does this count? I think it probably does. On the one hand, this is a very literal description of a street. But also – the speed bumps are emphasising a modern safety-consciousness, and the cars stand ‘neat’ in their driveways. Both observations suggest that in this environment, people are cautious and law-abiding. They don’t drive too fast and they park their cars with a rectilinear exactness.

Now that clearly doesn’t describe Fiona at all – the reader already knows her. So really, this description is, yes, picking out some simple physical details, but it’s also telling us, “Fiona does not fit here.” Again, we already know that Fiona isn’t the backing-down type, so if she enters a cautious and law-abiding environment, whatever happens next is likely to be the exact opposite.

In effect that tiny bit of description is foreshadowing the darker material to come – like writing, ‘it was quiet, almost too quiet’, only not a terrible cliché.

There’s an unloved dark blue Toyota Yaris parked up

‘Unloved’, as applied to a car, presumably just implies rust-spots and the like. But the car’s owner – dodgy ex-cop Brian Penry – hates himself enough that he stole enough cash to get himself caught and (soon) jailed. We learn shortly that Penry even used the stolen money to buy himself a piano that he never played. So it’s not just Penry’s car that’s unloved, right? It’s him.

He gets a key out of his pocket. A brass Yale key, which he holds up twinkling in the half-sunlight.

Why ‘half-sunlight’? I mean, yes, that’s a description of a part-sunny, part-cloudy day. But this whole part of the scene is on the edge of something. Just as the key is in half-sunlight, so too Penry is preparing to unlock part, but not all, of what Fiona needs to know.

And Fiona is only half-sunlit herself. The sunny part is that of a clever detective doing her job. The very-much-in-shadows part is that she’s about to enter a house illegally and without her boss knowing.

A little later, Penry ‘half-smiles’ at Fiona, then ‘half-salutes’ her. This whole scene is teasing, not committed. The whole scene is teetering on the verge of something – until Fiona enters the house, and then the tone darkens decisively.

The street is empty and silent. The sunlight occupies the empty space like an invading army.

This is a bit more fanciful than anything we’ve had so far – the first time anything feels writerly in the scene. And again, it offers a description that does dual work. The sunlight fully occupies the space (so we’ve moved away from half-light to full-light. Even my pedant-brain doesn’t mind that though: light conditions can change.) In literal terms. I guess we’re being asked to imagine a scene sun-drenched and simple. But the ‘invading army’ is a totally extreme image suggesting foreboding and the threat of violence. So we have quite a peaceful scene (a neat suburban road in sunshine) and something almost recklessly violent alongside.

There’s been an ‘is it or isn’t it?’ type equivocation in the scene so far, and this description merrily sits tosses fuel onto both sides of the fire. ‘Oh, yes, it’s peaceful, all right. Look at the speed bumps and the sunlight. But, yeah, this whole thing is going to blow up in a second, THERE’S AN ENTIRE ****ING ARMY RIGHT HERE.’

If you said that thing directly, it would just seem nuts. But metaphors play by different rules; that’s why they’re fun.

I approach the door, insert the key, turn the lock.

I feel a kind of amazement when the lock turns. It’s like turning the page in a fairy story and finding that the story continues exactly as before.

At one level, this is saying something simple about opening a door and feeling surprised. But – this is Fiona – the imagery sometimes goes way over the top. Why is this like a fairy story? I don’t completely know, in all honesty, but I think it’s that there’s been a sense of unreality in this scene so far. The neat suburban close should not contain darkness and terror, but there is a sense of something very dark lurking close. So there’s a contest between apparent reality and lurking (but imagined?) darkness. The fairy story image makes that explicit.

In the living room, three fat black flies are buzzing against the windowpane. A dozen of their comrades lie dead beneath them.

On the one hand, this is just a description of flies. On the other hand, this refers back to the invading army and the possibility of violence. Because we’re only dealing with flies, we can suggest a lot of violence without breaking the rules of the actual place we’re in.

[After Fiona finds the illicit cash and exits the house] I’m sweating and cold at the same time. I try to go back to that feeling I had on the print-room stairs [when she was talking happily with her new boyfriend]. That feeling of being somewhere close to love and happiness. Living next door to the sunshine twins. I can’t find them anywhere now. When I stamp my legs, I can hardly feel my feet when they hit the floor.

The sunshine twins: it was sunny in the close before Fiona entered the house, but there’s no reference to sunshine now that she’s come out. So the ‘sunshine twins’ is a reference to love and happiness – a phrase she used when we had the scene on the stairs with her boyfriend – but it’s also a reference back to how the world was before she found the dodgy cash. In effect, when Fiona says ‘I can’t find [the sunshine twins] anywhere now’, she’s saying that she can’t go back to the past boyfriend-happiness state OR the sunny street of ten minutes ago, before she had irrevocably entered a house illegally and found the cash.

This passage strongly hints that the consequences of leaving that sunny state may well involve something quite dark and dangerous. And of course, the novel does start to tip into an ever darker mode from here on.

REFLECTIONS

Last week, I said:

‘A lot of writing advice is generated because people have to generate something. They have a blogpost to write, or an email to send, or a course module to fill,

But the only advice worth anything is advice that helps you solve problems in your writing. So when I read or listen to advice, I always ask: does this actually describe what I personally do when I’m writing well? Does this advice actually generate insights that will help me when I get stuck?’

And honestly, I think if you took the literal-but-not-really-literal element out of my writing, you’d lose a really big chunk of what makes it worthwhile.

The technique is so rewardingly simple: ‘Cars neat in their driveways’? Any idiot can come up with that, right?

You just need two things to make this approach work for you.

One, you need a ‘handbrake off’ approach to your writing. A willingness to put near-nonsense images into your work. (Sunlight like an invading army? That’s ridiculous. Welsh sunlight is never like that, but try it. Write it down. See if it fits.)

Two, you need the judgement to figure out what works and what doesn’t. That’s a matter of gut feel rather than the kind of analysis we’ve just done here. I honestly never thought about this scene in this hyper-analytical way until just now. I did bring a kind of gut feel test to every sentence, though. That’s usually enough.

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FEEDBACK FRIDAY

Feedback Friday comes straight from the Write With Jericho course this week. I asked WWJ students to do this:

Share 250 words from your scene. I’m looking for:

• Atmosphere / physical description
• Some observation (or action) which bridges the physical & the emotional
• Everything 100% consistent with the character.

Because this email has been all about the middle one of those bullet points, I want you to make sure that anything you share has at least one example of that technique. If you want more background, then my course video will explain all. Once you're ready, post yours here.

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That’s it from me. I am as hungry as a boar and as lean as a pencil. I don’t know why.

Til soon.

Harry

Embarking on the journey to write a novel is both thrilling and intimidating. For me, the decision to pursue writing courses through Jericho Writers was about more than just learning to write — it was about growth, connection, and finding my voice in the literary world.

Here’s how these courses shaped my writing journey and why they might be the stepping stone you need, too.

Why I chose writing courses with Jericho Writers

Writing a novel has always been my dream, but like many aspiring authors, I felt unsure of where to start. I sought professional guidance to refine my writing and push my creative boundaries. I wanted to gain technical skills, build confidence, and surround myself with a community of like-minded storytellers.

I approached these courses as tools to help me develop as a writer, step by step. Each course I chose met specific needs, from drafting a manuscript to navigating the publishing world.

The courses that transformed my writing

1. The Ultimate Novel Writing Course

This was my first foray into structured learning. The Ultimate Novel Writing Course took me from a spark of an idea to a complete manuscript, offering the structure and accountability I needed. With expert guidance and peer feedback, I found myself pushing through moments of doubt and creative block. The course taught me narrative structure, character development, and, most importantly, how to finish what I started.

2. The Self-Edit Your Novel course

Once I had a manuscript, I knew the next step was refinement. The Self-Edit Your Novel course taught me how to view my work through an editor’s lens. I learned to identify areas for improvement, enhance clarity, and polish my story until it shone. This phase was truly eye-opening — it amazed me how much a focused revision process could elevate my writing.

One memorable piece of advice came from Debi Alper, who suggested I start my novel at chapter four and switch tenses. That single change transformed the pacing and impact of my thriller. She also encouraged me to imagine my protagonist as a famous actor, which resolved my struggle with their voice.

3. The Path to Publication course

With a polished manuscript in hand, Path To Publication helped me navigate the world of publishing — a realm I found both exciting and overwhelming. It provided invaluable insights into compiling a compelling query letter, synopsis, and submission package. The highlight of this course was the agent showcase, where we read our first 500 words to two agents. Their feedback was not only constructive but incredibly motivating. Receiving a full manuscript request from one of the agents less than a week later was a dream come true, and I wasn’t the only one on the course to experience this success.

Lessons learned along the way...

Each of the courses I undertook with Jericho Writers surprised me in unexpected ways. I discovered strengths in my writing I hadn’t noticed, as well as habits I needed to break. Feedback from tutors and peers was invaluable, teaching me the importance of listening and staying open to suggestions.

Some of the biggest lessons I’ve taken away include:

Resilience and Vulnerability: Sharing your work can be daunting, but it’s a necessary step in the creative process.

The Value of Revision: Editing is where the magic happens. It’s the bridge between a good draft and a great story.

Embracing Experimentation: Trying alternative approaches often leads to breakthroughs.

Connections Matter: The relationships I’ve built continue to inspire and support me.

Course highlights

The Ultimate Novel Writing Course helped me write my first novel and gave me a deep understanding of narrative structure.

The Self Edit Your Novel course boosted my confidence and taught me how to experiment with my writing.

Thanks to the Path To Publication course, the submission process is no longer a mystery, and I feel confident approaching agents and publishers.

Looking back and moving forward

These courses were more than just learning experiences for me — they were transformative. They equipped me with the tools to navigate the ups and downs of writing and publishing while fostering a sense of community that I deeply value.

If you’re considering taking the plunge, I can’t recommend Jericho Writers’ courses enough. Whether you’re starting with an idea, refining a draft, or preparing to submit, there’s a course to guide you every step of the way.

Here’s to your writing journey and all the stories waiting to be told.