And then what happens?

Several writers I’ve consulted told me their idea for a story then sat back to watch my reaction.

My question was: what happens next?

There was a premise. They had a first act. It was the start of a story but it wasn’t a story itself.

J KennyOctober 1, 2025writing advice, writing coach, writing process

Starting Near The End

The old writing adage says to “start as close to the end as possible.”

It’s also essential not to write a story thinking the end is the beginning.

At its heart, Story is about change. But it is not about triumph. It is about the journey there, the conditions that led to the change.

J KennySeptember 26, 2025writing advice, writing process, writing a book, book structure, writing coach

CCR's Symphony

The start of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Proud Mary is one of those rather iconic bursts, instantly recognisable when you hear it.

It’s there because when writing that CCR album, John Fogerty was listening to a lot of Beethoven. Fogerty was impressed with the opening of the Fifth Symphony.

J KennySeptember 2, 2025writing process, writing coach, writing advice, creative process, creative strategies

Playing With Structure

Structure is essential to guiding your reader through your story. It’s giving information when it is needed. It’s shaping perspective on the events in the book. Structure is the scaffolding that holds up other elements of writing. It also gives you plenty of room to play. When you’re struggling with how things happen in the story, in the order they happen, take a look at what theme and value you are bringing to these events.

Deus ex Machina

Deus ex machina. It’s a device we’ve all heard about from Ancient Greek theatre where a god was delivered by a machine, sometimes quite literally, to solve the problems of the players on stage. The famous example is when Medea needed to escape, the sun god Helios sends a chariot to save her. It wasn’t part of a subplot. It wasn’t something that grew out of lack of ideas. It was a device to bring a conclusion t a difficult position of the characters… and the playwright.

Even thousands of years ago, it wasn’t without its detractors.

J KennyAugust 15, 2025writing process, writing coach, writing advice, writing a book, finishing your book

Riddle Me This

Riddles require you to make up the context of the scene and find what fits. Stories build that piece by piece. There’s no cathartic emotional revelation in having the context given like this. There’s no story. There’s no value placed on this information. There’s no tension other than trying to solve the riddle. Stories require that the information we need – hopefully – comes right when we need it in order to make sense of what has happened.

It's About Context

Scenes and events don’t have a meaning on their own. It’s the context of a story that gives these events any significance.

The difficult part in writing is in building the foundations earlier so the emotional resonance speaks through these scenes.

J KennyJuly 15, 2025writing coach, writing advice, writing process, writing a book

Half Time Report with E.M. Forster

When it’s looked at from a distance we can try to make a narrative out of it but they’re numbers, just statistics. Every half-time break in sports we witness talking heads trying to make sense out of statistics in order to give us a story of the game – some better than others.

These numbers don’t have meaning. But stories do.

J KennyJune 25, 2025sports writing, story structure, what is plot, what is story, writing advice, writing coach

Writing Manually

There was a point while he was writing Fight Club where Chuck Palahniuk came to realise that the two characters – the narrator and Tyler – were the same. It wasn’t a twist he’d thought of before writing. It wasn’t a gimmick to string the reader along. He was writing a damning commentary on masculinity as he saw it in the mid-1990s.

J KennyJune 19, 2025writing process, writing advice, writing coach, writers block, writing a book

Three Points on the Inciting Incident

The power of your story depends on clearly locating your inciting incident.

The fundamentals of this are often misunderstood.

Story is about transformation. A story is in how a character changes. This change does not come easily but there is something that pushes the character out of their comfort to begin the journey.

J KennyJune 19, 2025writing advice, writing process, writing a book, story structure

Stories Are About Risk

Stories are about risk.

The world shifts. Something is changed – for good or bad. The character reacts to this to either try to make things go back to how they were, or to make things better.

Steve Albini and Aristotle

Steve Albini – ““When I talk about recording an acoustic instrument, what I really mean is recreating the sense memory of having heard an acoustic instrument. I say that because acoustic instruments have an extremely long tradition. Every part of the world uses some form of acoustic stringed instruments, and we all have engrained in us personal and cultural memory of these instruments. So when I say I’m trying to make an accurate recording of an acoustic instrument, what I mean is I’m trying to evoke the sensation of having heard that instrument in life.””

Aristotle opens Poetics by describing poetry as a species of imitation. There are different ways to do that, different mediums and different ways. Painting, too, is imitation, Aristotle points out.

In our stories, that’s what we do. We imitate to recreate sense memory.

J KennyMay 12, 2025writing advice, writing process, steve albini, aristotle, writing coach

The Book Writing Blues

Blues music has been a part of popular song on radio and streaming for all our life. We’ve heard countless songs based on the structure. We instinctively know where it rises and falls, where it changes, and where the turn around is. Story structure is similar.

J KennyApril 29, 2025writing a book, writing coach, writing advice, story structure, blues music

Marking Character

As in marking a character in stone. So, a face that shows character shows that which has been marked. Or deeply impressed.

The term didn’t come to mean a person in a story until the late 1660s – a good fifty years after Shakespeare had, as he put it, shuffled off this mortal coil.

J KennyApril 29, 2025writing coach, writing a book, writing advice, writing process, how to write a book

Whatever Worked Last Time...

Brian Eno has a card in his Oblique Strategies set suggesting: Whatever worked last time, never do it again.

That might be more extreme than we always need but the sentiment is a good one. Just because it worked last time doesn’t mean it would work again. And just because a client has one idea in mind with their story, it doesn’t mean that’s the best way to narrate their own journey.

J KennyApril 8, 2025writing advice, writing process, ghostwriter, brian eno

Structural Strength of Your Manuscript

The architecture and design of the building was held together in a particular way. The pressure and tension was held in places that you might not first assume. The architects knew this. A fractured window in one place meant the tension was wrong somewhere else. This is like a manuscript.

J KennyApril 2, 2025writing advice, writing process

The Murakami Approach to Feedback

Haruki Murakami describes how he takes feedback from his first reader – his wife – and his editors over the years.

J KennyApril 2, 2025murakami, writing process, writing advice, writing coach

Hire an Elf

John Swartzwelder is a reclusive writer best known for writing a huge amount of the strongest early Simpsons episodes. He also wrote for Saturday Night Live. Now he writes novels. His writing process involves getting the idea out quick. Finish the first draft as fast as possible. Then work deeper in the rewrite.

J KennyAugust 6, 2024creative process, writing a book, writing process, writing advice

Writing to Communicate

People read to connect with a story. Or they read to learn. They talk about the story with friends because it connects with them. They see themselves in the text. Or they’ve learnt something important from reading it.

Rarely has someone sat down with a friend over coffee and gushed over complicated sentences they couldn’t understand.

J KennyJuly 16, 2024writing process, writing a book, writing advice, ghostwriter

Wonder Boys & Writer's Block

The creative process is so fascinating. Over the last twenty years or so, I’ve collected a lot of different strategies and techniques to tap into the creative process. These come from reading books and interviews, talking with other writers and artists, watching documentaries, and searching out strategies that worked for my favourite writers and artist.

J KennyJuly 5, 2024writing advice, ghostwriter, writing coach