Luke Edley

For thousands of years, humanity has pondered what it is that actually makes people laugh. Although there are many styles of humour, no consensus has ever fully been reached regarding the discovery of some magic […]

In my experience, there’s a dark secret most writers share—either they have a history of being depressed at some point in their lives, or they are currently in the midst of battling it. Maybe a dark mood comes and […]

For a workplace fiction novel about cubicle dwellers at an advertising and marketing agency, Then We Came to the End is a surprisingly gratifying and self-aware read, with much to say about the world of middle […]

It’s no secret that most writers are in no position to give up their day jobs. For many of us, our dreams start with a hobby we love and enjoy, leading us to quietly pen our stories in the hope that one day w […]

Flowers for Algernon is a deeply emotional science fiction novel by Daniel Keyes which places society’s treatment of the disabled under the microscope, all thanks to its clever, high-concept premise. The story i […]

We’ve all been taught in school how Shakespeare’s plays tend to fall into one of two categories—comedy or tragedy—but sadly it’s never fully appreciated how the bard’s innovations have helped shape the comedy genr […]

Nicola Barker’s seventh novel, Darkmans, is a long, quirky, difficult and meandering read, yet it remains exquisitely written amongst its ambling plot. That’s if you can even accuse it of having a plot, of cou […]

If you’ve ever had a street portrait done by a cartoonist, you’ll no doubt be familiar with what a caricature is considered to be. Used mainly to describe an amusing drawing where one’s features are exagg […]

A surprisingly light-hearted romp in 1950s pre-communist Cuba, Our Man in Havana is Graham Greene’s humorous spy novel. It’s about a vacuum cleaner salesman called James Wormold who is secretly recruited by MI6 […]

The wires sprouted from Jed’s heart rate monitor, snagging in his chest hairs like a clew of worms. This bugged him, in more ways than one.

Sat on the edge of his bed in a research laboratory in Clodworth G […]

Having made his name writing a series of extremely funny travel memoirs, Bill Bryson’s surprising decision to release A Short History of Nearly Everything in 2004 seemed to come out of nowhere. Ostensibly a n […]

Dennis Wheatley was born in the South of London to a family of upper-class wine merchants on 8th January 1897. Enjoying a very privileged upbringing, Wheatley was packed off at the age of 8 to a boarding school […]

Invective is an age-old literary technique used by poets, playwrights and authors to lambast or criticise others, using the power of words to offer a window into one’s true feelings about another, often with c […]

Ever so slightly departing from the ‘boy-meets-girl’ formula of his earlier romantic comedy novels, Home by Matt Dunn (a funny yet bittersweet tale of a Londoner moving back into his childhood home with his age […]

If you’re a writer who wishes to tell funny stories about your characters, writing humorous dialogue is an unavoidable challenge. Whether or not your work is deemed funny or not will, of course, be a matter of o […]

Published in the autumn of 1974, Beryl Bainbridge’s award-winning black comedy, The Bottle Factory Outing, hones in on the grim realities of working-class life in mid-1970s Britain, offering an eye-opening i […]

The importance of surprising your readers should never be forgotten by any aspiring writer. In fact, it should always be considered a vital part of a storyteller’s toolkit. By seeking to confound your audience w […]

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard of The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. Having sold over 150 million copies worldwide since its release in 1988, it’s been an immovable object on the New Y […]

Long used as an idiom to describe iconoclasm, the idea of ‘killing a sacred cow’ refers to modes of storytelling (or works of art) which defy received wisdom, or overturn respected traditions or customs. The ter […]