#WritersCoffeeClub May 15: Follow-up: and how little (plots, ideas, settings, etc) is not enough?
In my experience, if you need to convey some information crucial to the plot of a novel, you need to say it twice (or better still thrice) or 25% of your readers will miss it completely.
(Of course, if you repeat yourself *even once* a different 25% of your readers will leave angry reviews denouncing you for repetition.)
#WritersCoffeeClub May 16. What's a writerly risk you've taken recently? Did it pay off?
In the space of three years I've ended TWO long-running (20 year, 9+ book) series that were my bread-and-butter day job, betting the farm on spinning up a new series. It's not yet definitely scheduled for publication (although I'm halfway through writing the second novel, nearly 200,000 words in).
Payoff: ask me again in 2030?
#WritersCoffeeClub May 22
How well would your current WIP work as a play?
It wouldn't! Too many settings and multiple alternating plot strands. Never mind the length (148,000 words)!
#WritersCoffeeClub 20 Jun: What of your immediate surroundings enter your work? The seasons, music, dreams?
I try not to let that happen, and if it happens by mischance, I try to spot it and fix it during development edits. (Qualified exception: sometimes I allow music to creep in—but only when it's thematically significant.)
#WritersCoffeeClub Jun 22 - Walk us through how you build a story.
I don't usually write short stories these days (this century): so before I can start writing I need at least three Big Ideas to bang together and spark unexpected side-effects. Then I need to figure out the general shape of a fictional world, and finally decide what kind of protagonists I'm going to send out to explore it. The story then tells itself. (You can tell I'm a pantser, not a plotter, right?)
#WritersCoffeeClub August 4: Do you consider yourself a writer, an author, an artist, something else? Why?
I write novels for a living. Writing is my job, not my identity, except insofar as any occupation you've been engaged in for over a quarter of a century turns into a large chunk of your identity.
#WritersCoffeeClub 21 Jun: What do you listen to while you write? (Music, silence, a crowded café?)
Auditory wallpaper, which means either ambient electronica *or* familiar old favourites that have worn grooves in my grey matter so that I can tune (heh) them out while they're playing.
(I write in my home office. Can't drop situational awareness in public places. And I need music to occlude the street noise outside my window.)
#WritersCoffeeClub 28 May: Have you ever regretted cutting a scene?
I always regret the wasted effort of having written an unnecessary or bad scene in the first place, only to have to cut it out later. I write for a living and I find wasted writing time positively painful.
"Measure twice, cut once" as the tailor said.
#WritersCoffeeClub 31 May: What went right for you this month?
Eye surgery is receding in the rear-view and I finally have working reading/computer glasses! So sitting at the computer for a couple of hours no longer leaves me cross-eyed and irritable, and work is re-starting.
Good morning, #writersCoffeeClub! Here’s your prompt list for June! (is it just me, or is this year flying by?) This month’s theme is ‘sensorial.’ 💙💚
As always, the text-based list is available on my site ➡️ https://sulfur.ink/wcc-june-2026 ⬅️
This month, we have two call-and-response questions on the 13th and 27th. These are two-part questions: respond to the prompt, then repond to the responses of others!
We very much look forward to your answers! 🎉 Happy writing! 📝
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#WritersCoffeeClub 24 June: Must you know the ending before you write the first line?
What is an "ending"? End of scene, end of chapter, end of novel, end of series-of-novels? The answer is different in each case! In particular, at series scale I *never* know the ending because how long it runs for isn't solely upto me, and I don't plan books out in chapters in advance. I generally know what a book is trying to achieve before I start, but how the ending delivers *closure* is free to change.
#WritersCoffeeClub June 2. What do you hope sticks with a reader long after?
I'd like to hope that the deep thematic points of my novels stick in the readers' heads, but that's hopelessly optimistic: realistically, I just hope they enjoyed it enough to buy the next (and if a pithy aphorism or a pointed insight sticks and changes how they think about life, that's just a bonus).
#WritersCoffeeClub Jun 26 - Have you ever included subtle (or unsubtle!) homage? Tell us about it.
The first four Laundry Files novels are explicit homages to specific British spy thriller writers of the 1960s-1980s (Len Deighton, Ian Fleming's film franchise, Anthony Price, Peter O'Donnell). The next three tackled different fantasy sub-genres (vampires, superheroes, elves) while "Equoid" did unicorns no favours. "Saturn's Children" was an explicit homage (and send-up) of Heinlein's "Friday".
#WritersCoffeeClub June 3rd: Conversely, which sense is the most difficult for you to write?
I don't generally describe sensory impressions in my fic. (Although there's a problem-child novel—stalled, unpublished—where the protags are a hominid-like species with a very strong scent-sense who communicate moods/emotions via pheromones, and it forced me to confront smell.)
#WritersCoffeeClub Jul 5
How do you make use of the critiques you receive?
If they're unsolicited, I don't!
From test readers/editors/my agent, if two or more of them stub their toes on the same obstacle, something probably needs addressing. If only one critter has an opinion on one specific aspect … apply bullshit detector while asking self if something *should* be changed. (Agent and editors get a presumptive pass on competence to make change requests: other readers, not so much.)
#WritersCoffeeClub 4 June: In what ways do your real-world surroundings appear in your work?
Current WIP is space opera in a future where Earth is forgotten, so it's completely divorced from our surroundings.
Previous works set on Earth, well, they leaned heavily into places I've visited and lived, but I only wrote my home town(s) into three novels: "The Nightmare Stacks" (Leeds), "Halting State" (Edinburgh) and "Rule 34" (Edinburgh). Unless you count London in the Laundry Files (I don't).
#WritersCoffeeClub #WritingCommunity
5th Jun 2026. What climes and climates feature in your work? Why those?
I'm a city boy and most of my stories are set in cities or otherwise indoors. And the extraterrestrial ones (like the space opera I'm working on now) has zero relationship with our terrestrial climates.
#WritersCoffeeClub June 16. Bloomsday! Have you ever based a character more or less on yourself?
Ew! Nope.
#WritersCoffeeClub 20th July ~ Talk about a friend who really drives you as a writer.
Is this some weird American vernacular idiom? Because I can't work out what this prompt is asking. (Drives me … mad? Drives me … like a car? Drives me … like a herd of sheep?)
#WritersCoffeeClub 7 Jun: Do you avoid idioms, colloquialisms, or embrace them?
I write SF/F; unfamiliar coinages and obscure words are vital tools for alienating the reader from their assumptions. (Clichés do the opposite, so unless I'm using one in dialog to illustrate the speaker's outlook—or the narrator's, in 1st person PoV) I generally avoid them.)
Compare the accepted meaning of the word "virtual" today with the 19th and 15th century meanings …
#WritersCoffeeClub 8 Jun: How vast are your settings?
Current project: it's 700,000 years in our future, the entire Virgo supercluster of galaxies (of which the Local Group is a small backwater) has been settled by human-descendant species, there are at least 30 million star systems on the wormhole grid and 10x to 100x that number connected intermittently by slower-than-light starships, and no star system has just one settlement (terraformed planet or space habitat).
Does that qualify as vast?
#WritersCoffeeClub June 29: Is writing a lonely endeavor for you?
Yes (unless I'm collaborating, which hasn't happened in the past decade).
#WritersCoffeeClub July 21: Do your works contain erotic elements? How far do you go?
Yes, but only when it's plot-appropriate, and I'm not usually insert-tab-A-in-slot-B explicit (unless there's a story-related reason) …
#WritersCoffeeClub June 9. Have you ever written something which later turned out to be a little too on the nose?
Oh hell yes. Story of my life, basically.
#WritersCoffeeClub July 1: Recently, how excited have you been to sit down to write?
Writing is my job, and has been for more than a quarter of a century.
I'm on vacation this month, getting over mild burnout before I sit down to a major rewrite project, which I'm excited about the potential of (if it sells it might be the start of a whole new series).
