There appears to be contradictory advice about structuring narrative, so it’s no wonder it’s confusing and can take a long time to figure out a style that suits an individual piece of writing. A cursory internet search comes up with many different approaches. There’s Chekhov’s gun, where Chekhov famously wrote that a rifle on the…

My children excitedly clutch two end-of-term vouchers to a burger franchise. On each blue rectangle of cardboard are their names written by their occasionally exasperated, but most often excellent, kids’ gymnastic coach. They’ve been looking forward to this day. They’ve waited—not patiently—through the post-Christmas consumption of obligatory left-overs and for relatives to return to the…

I’ve heard it said that it’s wrong to anthropomorphise animals. The same logic has been applied to the environment; we tend to reduce the elements and landscapes to something more understandable, more manageable, like a human mood. Personification, anthropologists say, has been done by every culture through time. It is said to foster human understanding.…