The gate on the edge of town

“You’re in the great game now, and the great game is terrifying”- Tyrion Lannister

In life, we are all members of the great audience. Every single person reading this has at one time or another acted as a witness. We don’t acknowledge it of course, not really, but it’s still happening every second of the day.

A first kiss, a failed exam, an accident on the road: all are part of the ongoing show. And of course, it’s actually quite easy to imagine your role in the audience. What is perhaps slightly less clear is where you fit in the overall spectacle. Who has seen you at your worst? Who has watched you at your best? More importantly, could they tell the difference?

Memories are a funny thing, constantly changing depending on how we feel, and never sitting still for long enough to be truly appreciated. We all remember, let’s say, opening our Leaving Cert results. But do we really? To me, everything that was ever anything is in many ways a serving of blur with a little dash of clarity.

Both of these concepts, witnesses and memories, have been whirling around in my head since I finished college. There was after all a moment where suddenly it all ended, and overwhelmed by emotion I doubt I was thinking “take a breath and appreciate this little snapshot; it’s a picture you’ll only take once.” But that is the truth of it nonetheless. This was the end, and I can’t just go back and ask for a little more time there now.

Putting my pen down, closing the exam booklet and walking out of that last exam are all part of my story, but who knows who was secretly watching? Those who care, those who don’t, or those indifferent. My story, but their spectacle.

Trapped in the little bubble of college, not sharp to the world moving around me, I don’t think I’ve ever really thought much about being in the spectacle. In a crowded library you can be lost in your own notes, but looking up now and again you realise everything is getting on without you. Now, there are no more notes, and it’s time to join the ranks of those making the world go round.

In that respect college is a bit like your bedroom. There are an infinite number of things you can accomplish there, but outside those walls other things are in motion the scale of which you can’t start to imagine cooked up in there. It’s not that you’re out of touch, more so you’re kept within the confines of something measurable. It’s all happening in a lecture theatre, in a library, on campus etc.

And so now that I’m leaving, the outside world feels a little alien again. It’s very much in the title of this blog. There’s a gate at the edge of town, and inside it you know everything and everyone. You’ve been to the gate of course. I mean, you can even tell me what it’s made of and what it feels like to run your hand over. But you’ve never been outside it. Sometimes at dusk, you’ve sat on it for hours and thought about the fields beyond or the next town over. And never once did you really believe that the day was coming when you’d finally pass through it. That was a dream-a notion. Notions weren’t tolerated in this town.

And yet, that day does come. You feel about a stone lighter, and rather than skip up to the gate like you usually do you sort of wander there half in a haze of your own thoughts and emotions. The sun is going down in the west but there’s enough light to see the first few steps on the road. And then quite suddenly there is the moment, and before you’ve even thought to mark it you’re on the other side. And then there’s a panic and the sudden want to turn round. It isn’t a desire to go back, and even if it is you’ve long resigned yourself to the fact that that isn’t happening. You just realise you wanted it to be memorable though, and a part of you isn’t sure that it was.

Should’t there have been someone there to say goodbye, or give a little cheer as you passed over the threshold?

And yet maybe there was, and not turning to see their face you press on with your journey.

After all, they are the witness, and right there and then you were at either your best or worst. Perhaps they know the difference.


Here now, at the fork in the road


Two roads diverged in a yellow wood



















And that in itself is why the journey matters.

As Robert Frost once quoted

I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.







In Defence of Worldbuilding

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*The following post involves a terrifying amount of burger/restaurant metaphor*

The last book you read involved worldbuilding. There, I said it.

What’s world building? Well, it’s quite simple. It is literally the process of creating a world for an art form to take place in. Every novel has to have a world, whether it’s Earth or not. World building doesn’t just include the actual physical setting e.g. Hogwarts or Panem, but actually goes much deeper than that.

If you think of the physical setting as a burger bun, then the rest of world building is all that juicy meat and salad that sits right in the middle. I mean sure, the bun is necessary to hold it all together, but when was the last time your stomach really growled over two pieces of bread with a couple sesame seeds on top? What you want is the filling, right?

The filling of a world, however, is seen in the little things: why does nobody walk down 2nd street at night? Why is the grass blue by the lake? How do you get elected to government in the country?

Of course, government is a “big thing”,but in the grand scheme of a novel it could only be a minor feature.

Another question readers commonly have is not what’s in the proverbial burger, but why are we cooking it at all in the first place?

World building is something stereotypically associated with fantasy or sci-fi novels, where in many cases authors have a blank canvas in front of them and just have to dive in and start somewhere. It’s thought that fantasy authors waste hours and hours drooling over languages and maps and leave little time for an actual story to develop. This is an understandable assumption, but one that leaves a lot of novels outside these genres suffering from terrible foundations. It’s all-too-easy for an author in general fiction or romance to play into this and forgo basic research or background detail in favour of characterisation or plot.

But while many readers might argue they never pay much attention to the details built into a world, it is usually the case that the best writers blend these features so seamlessly into a story that the reader often doesn’t even notice they’re there. Instead they get a kind of subconscious knowledge of the world. It’s a bit like Inception. A good book kind of makes you feel like you are in the world and that it was your desire to be there, not the writer’s skill, that got you there. It’s like the waiter telling you he brought you the vegetarian option by mistake right after you’ve tossed aside your napkin thinking you just wolfed down a quarter pounder and cheese. Sure, you feel aggrieved you weren’t right, but didn’t you enjoy it all anyway?  Didn’t all those details taste so good, regardless of whether you profess to like them or not?

That’s what good world building does. But why talk about all the good burgers (reference noted) when it’s the blackened ruins you remember more? So instead of trying to defend world building by showing you the best thing on the menu, I’m gonna go right ahead and point out a few ways you might ruin a summer BBQ and piss off a lot of readers as a result.


1) “I have bacon and cheese and tomato and lettuce and hot sauce and jalapenos and…and….and”

Nothing says bad world building like not knowing where to draw the line. One minute you’re wondering how big your city is, and the next you’re trying to figure out which tattoos the Grim Gang get when one of their members gets killed. Who are the Grim Gang? I don’t know-literally just made them up. My point is it’s very easy for good and bad writers to just forget they were in the middle of a story and fall into the pit of “well I can make FOUR gangs where you only had three. I must be better”. Details aren’t merited by their quantity. Any good reader wants something a) innovative and b) well presented, which leads me onto my next point

2)”Can I get you something to drink? By the way the special is a chicken fillet burger”

Your details are only as good as your delivery, and all that excellent creative ability goes to waste if you just walk around the restaurant that is your novel shouting “THE SPECIAL IS CHICKEN FILLET”. Maybe the reader might catch on you’re forcing the point.

What you want is for them to spy it on the corner of the menu, or catch a glimpse of it on a sign on the way in. Make the reader feel it is almost hidden; almost left in by accident rather than you just screaming it in their face. They’re a lot of ways a writer can dangle out this “oops did I mention that my apologies” hook, like blurring details into dialogue rather than narration, or creating plot strings that might nudge in a couple aspects of your world into the reader’s field of vision. Whatever option you choose, it’s important to remember to mix it up. Even when you use a trick, if it’s consistent throughout a novel it eventually becomes predictable and a little annoying.

3)”Let me take your coat. By the way the dessert is pavlova”

Dear God, your reader has only sat down for their dinner and already you’re telling them about dessert menus and the service charge. Slow it down there. I mean, those details weren’t even in the original burger metaphor so this is clearly world building out of control. This is referred to in world building circles *adjusts glasses* as infodumping. Infodumping is where you have a large amount of detail the reader needs to grasp the story but rather than dole it out piece by piece you just want to bring them the entire four course dinner (burger et al) to their table at once and hope they don’t kick up a fuss about it. Long story short, they usually do. Good writers use the length of their novel to their advantage. I’ve read a lot of novels lately that have been exploiting infodumping to appeal to a select portion of readers who collect facts about a world like gold dust. Most people won’t enjoy the overload though, so best to leave the bill at least until after they’ve finished their soup.


4)”The bun is bread. Bread is flour. Flour is wheat. Wheat is cereal…”

This kind of ties in with number one, but here the problem isn’t the amount of stuff you’re packing into the burger as much as how much you’re talking about that damn burger. Think of it like a menu listing. A good menu quips a short two-liner on each item, and that seems to be enough to grab the attention of 99% of restaurant goers. What you want to avoid as a writer is writing a page on every single ingredient like people will flip out if they don’t know. You have to give the customer some credit (warning don’t give them real credit you need money). All readers/ customers are coming into your novel with a basic working knowledge, and if you keep spoonfeeding them they’re gonna want to punch you at some point (love how spoonfeeding works for restaurants here too, as an aside).

5)”Ya so that’s the burger. Meat and bun.”

As a converse to number four, don’t skim all the way back either. You still want your burger to be juicy and palatable. So invest your time in innovating. Bacon in a burger? Game changer. Somebody must have come up with it. The same goes for world building. Fan-favourites such as dragons and alternative universes all had to have started somewhere. So as a writer, try be the somewhere. If you want your world to be more than just a burger, then go ahead and start creating. At the end of the day, you’ll always find people who’ll eat it. Don’t try cook your burger like the place down the street just because they seem to have a staple crowd. For whatever reason, in a lot of cases people just won’t buy yours.


6) “This is red onion not white onion?”

One of the biggest parts of world building is keeping a tab on it. Just go ask G.R.R Martin how his burger is coming along. You best believe he has to use one of those fancy sticks to keep that mess together. Anyway, if you want to keep a reader in that state of “oh I’m in a restaurant this is great I’m not paying through the roof for this” (commonly referred to as a state of disbelief), then you have to be bringing your A-game. No chef likes to see a burger come back in the door of the kitchen in the hands of a startled waiter. If you’re gonna do it, do it right the first time. Keep accurate accounts of place names, maps, customs etc etc. Don’t try keep all the ingredients in your head. Write down anything you need for your novel and if it relates to anything else, then make a note of that too. It’s usually something really stupid you mess up e.g. red onion-white onion (seen in a novel for example as somebody travelling 100 miles far too fast). It’s very rare you actually are so clued out that you forget the actual burger.

So, as you can see, creating a world isn’t as easy as bun, meat, salad, bun. It takes a good bit of prep work and if not done right can literally blow up right in your face. The best way to move forward is have a system and stick to it (but hey, still leave room for a little flair here and there). World building is a wonderful tool to have as a writer, and one that a lot of readers (either consciously or subconsciously) will welcome time and time again. No matter what genre you’re in, consider it a valid part of your work and invest time into making the all important transition from built-world to world-in-story. Remember, those burgers won’t cook themselves.

Order up!


10 things not to do in the library

There’s enough of these during study months etc, but I said I’d get in early since the examples are rampant. With a swarm of new faces in college, the incidence has spiked and so here I am to countdown ten of the things people in the library will remember your face for.

1. Hiding your facebook

Look, we know you’re on it. Don’t try hide it in a separate tab, or minimizing your screen, or stretching to block the screen. Anybody with a laptop that has 1/100th of a bar of connectivity and is between the ages of zero and twenty five (because after that, it’s all downhill) will instinctively throw up their social networks on their internet. Nobody is gonna judge you, embrace it.

2. Leaving the sound on anything

Phone? Laptop? Breathing? If I’m next to someone and they have their sound on it gets to me. Not because it interferes (in fact all teenagers are don’t even notice it in this day and age), but because it puts out the idea that “yes, I do know it’s on. What ya gonna do?” Well I’m gonna walk right over and smash your stupid overpriced flip phone give you a look, I guess.

3. Bringing your friend over

OK, this one tops all as the worst thing in the library. During study month you’ll inevitably get that one guy who ambles from desk to desk advertising to his determined and anxious class mates how he, a jolly lad, is in the library. So novel is the idea of studying in a new building, or just studying at all, that this man must parade his four pages of food stained notes from bench to bench loudly whispering how he knows what is coming up. For those in august, I’m sorry, he’ll be back.

4. Putting on a movie

My god anywhere but the library. Nobody ever watches “Schindler’s List” in the library. Nobody sits back and throws on “Titanic”. No. It is always dodgeball or step brothers or the last king of scotland. OK, so that last one is irrelevant, but I saw it recently and it was very good. Just watch it in the corner if you must. Does it always have to be in a middle desk with the volume high up and the jokes pouring out from the leaky gaps of your ear debilitating headphones?

5. Leaving for like 3 hours

Everyone knows those seats that everyone wants. They have a good view, not too much light, A PLUG. Please don’t be that never-present ghost who has been reserving the seat since before the cold war. I’ve seen desks empty all day. Soon, I can imagine the library staff will take to declaring some people legally dead due to their absence. RIP lads…

6. Taking a phone call at your desk

RING!!!! RING!!!! “hello, ya I’m just in the library. what? SPEAK UP.” <—–This guy. Does the hallway not exist as a point to some people? Do they just assume the initial door opened up to their desk and they did not move through any area where noise was tolerated to a phonecall level? No? Shocking….

7. Printing….oh…just an entire book

Page, page, page, page, page,page…..And it just keeps going! You stand there in sheer disbelief as to when this will end, afraid you have been caught in some kind of time loop where the print job just won’t finish. I think a 50 page rule is about fair. Even at that, I’d be hoping that was 25 front and back. God like just buy the book you’re probably paying the equivalent anyway. Can only imagine what would happen if UCC Boole had colour printing.

8. Incessant walking syndrome

That one person who you’re wishing the white-coated library staff would come over to and lash to the bench. You’ve seen this person do 6 laps of the floor already, and if anything they are picking up speed. They also make sure to take the most awkward and longest possible way around each area, making sure to kick enough bags that they have to make scratchy “sorrys” all day long.

9. The Beast

That one guy (hardly ever girls) who brings a four course meal to the library. Chicken roll, drink, crisps..wait,what is that, is that a dip? And the best part is he is on some level conscious so he makes sure to drag on the eating process for some forty minutes. Each snap of a crisp is another flick to your patience, and slowly but surely you find yourself packing up and moving off.

10. Keyboard slapping

SPACEBAR. The single most slapped key in all of library time-space, possibly closely followed by enter. And of course this guy left 3,000 words to the last four hours, so he is allllll slap slap slap. And just once..the girl or guy will get to a stage where they need to skip a couple lines….

Tips on how to reduce your procrastination for study

Fairly self explanatory, we all do it. In fact I’m in the library right now doing it in all fairness. Study can be interesting, but even interesting might not be enough to convince you to take on such a task. Exercise is fun too, but its the thought of effort that puts us off more than the actual act. Over the years I’ve put up with enough of my own procrastination to know where everybody stands, and so I’m gonna share a couple things that have worked for me when it really mattered.

1. Stop telling yourself something is unimportant

Maybe it’s a small essay or a presentation, but it still matters. Telling yourself you won’t need to put in effort is a certain predecessor to you actually not putting in any at all. Even for small percentage tests, tell yourself that everything about it is crucial. don’t listen to what anybody else is doing. Find out just how much you need to do and then go do it. 

2. Reward yourself

A common device for avoiding backing out of your studies is treating yourself after. Mostly students use a food item or a night on the town. While that may be good in the short term, try to plan your long term reward system on something healthy and beneficial. If you have a study system, take a day off. If you want to go somewhere or buy something relatively inexpensive, do it. Giving yourself an item to reach is a useful and versatile tool into convincing you to study. What can work better again is having the security that you won’t get what you want unless you put in the work (i.e. have parents/friends assure you they will refuse you that certain present you’ve been planning as your reward).

3. Stop thinking about your procrastination

Procrastination is a ten dollar word every nine year old in the developed world knows. The concept has become so common place that it now is a essential thread of student life and rarely will remain hidden from the guidance books of your place of study. What will guarantee procrastination is thinking about it. Most sufferers tell themselves before the assignment is even started they have no hope. Most will tell all their friends about their procrastination, and try fob off that they are not at all worried. Using the term and the idea of you being stuck in its grasp will only make it worse. Instead, forget about it. Realise that you are fully capable f doing the work and go tackle it.

4. Lose all distractions

A procrastinating student will find distractions with incredible ease. Whether it’s a match, a day out with friends or just a dish that really needs a good scrub, all victims will search out every point of their life to find something to distract from the task. To avoid this, pick a day on which you will work and a time. do not let that time center around anything else but the job at hand. Make sure you can’t be called away or interrupted, as your will will succumb if you even have half a chance at escape. Tell your family or room mates to not disturb you or offer you anything in the form of entertainment. And when you reach your time goal/work load goal, stop. A good first step is to complete just one day’s work level and leave it. You don’t want mad bursts and then the after thought that as a result you won’t need to do anything else.

5. Never take the advice of somebody else doing the work too

We’re all human. As a result although we strive to be honest, helpful and supportive, we mostly end up serving our own desires. How often does a victim of procrastination end up suffering in terms of grades because others dragged them further down. If you have procrastination, do not ask how others are getting on. If you really need help, ask someone who you know will be fully forthcoming about what they have achieved or put in. At all costs avoid people who will only (as is in their human nature) feed you false senses of security about how fine it will all be. You don’t want to be calm as a procrastinating student. You should be worried. These students will most likely fulfill their own work first then find ways to meddle in your own.

6. Find the right balance

A good balance involves knowing at the end of the day that the whole world wasn’t just study. It also involves the knowledge that the work is done. You should be comfortable with your own level of performance. Many procrastinating students will put down their efforts as the process was still daunting. This will not help going forward. Take each small success with renewed expectations, and push to better yourself every time. Procrastination is a long term effect of a short term uncertainty.


Reasons your study isn’t increasing your exam marks

I’m going to go and guess that if you’re reading this you already do some level of study for your classes. If you can’t study, or just downright refuse to do so, then this might not be much help. I might write a blog soon for people who struggle with study. This blog is assuming you want to improve though, and in fact have put in some effort to do so in the past. I realise college has just started, and nobody is studying, but the advice works on any scale. Whether it’s a two page assignment, or a 6,000 word project, study skills are equal in nature. If you find yourself struggling to study for smaller tests, it would serve you a lot better to get into good habits for them, so that the larger, more important exams end up being much easier. I’ll write a few of these study guides when I feel like it throughout the year. A lot of the time the disappointing marks you receive don’t boil down to lack of study. In a surprising number of cases, poor percentages stem from inefficient study.

  • You don’t go to class. Class is where you first hear the material. It is free study. It is the information put across to you by an expert in the field. Unless your lecturer is horrible, attend and maximise the hour or so you have there. Take notes and underline to keep up concentration. Listen and watch the display to deduce the important points. Class might also help for detecting exam questions.
  • You don’t think when you study. If you’re just reading the material, you’re gonna be lost. Think about each point and ask yourself do you really get it. Understand first, memorise second. To be honest the more of a subject you understand, the less you actually end up needing to just push into your head the week before the test. Strive to be able to break the material into a form where you could explain it to anybody. This mistake kills about 99.9% of all students. Most never even engage the material when they read over it. For the few who do, a lot still only ask ‘what will come up in the exam?’ Forget the exam (WARNING: do not actually forget exam). Focus on whether or not you actually know what’s in front of you. Look away from the notes and try tell yourself the story of the information there.
  • You aren’t taking breaks. A good time to take breaks is every forty minutes or every hour. Take a fifteen minute break. DO NOT USE IT TO GO ON FACEBOOK. I’m guilty of doing this too, but please try refrain. Get up and walk around. Go get something to eat. Fruits and juices are great sources of sugars that don’t give you the same crash you’ll get from chocolate or sweets.
  • You are picking the wrong time. Study at mid-morning or in the evening. Take a break after classes to allow yourself rest. Tackle study when you are fresh and awake. Late at night is about as useful as when you are sleeping. Yes, that means it is no use at all. A lot of people will vouch for all nighters. I can tel you both as a science enthusiast and someone with ample common sense that you are not functioning anywhere near capacity that late. A good sleep and early study is far far better. Save a late nighter for an emergency if you are unprepared for an exam. Even then, shut everything off and get to bed by midnight.
  • You never heard of extra reading or reading around your topic. Lecture notes are fine. But they’re born and live as concise samples of the material. Only the best get a full understanding out of shortened notes. Most need a slower delivery. That’s where books come in. A book gives it bit by bit. If you do understand the notes, read them anyway. Getting a second view is paramount for top marks and usually gives you a broader source of information to draw from.
  • You are giving in to easy. Will power is paramount with study. I’m not talking about the will to study; I’m referring to the will to give up on your memory. Try to relay lists back to yourself of things you need to know. If you get stuck, don’t look at the screen immediately for the answer. WRONG. Give yourself time, try to remember other things about the precise subject area and you’ll quickly re-jog your memory. If you give in without trying to remember, you’ll put yourself into that mentality for the exam. Remembering rote-learned material is not fun at all. If you’re gonna do it at least challenge yourself.
  • You spend WAY TOO MUCH TIME ORGANISING. This one even kills the smart people. It will slow you down really fast if you let organisation get to you. Should your notes be accessible and in an easy to learn format? YES. Should all the notes have accompanying flash cards, colour co-ordinates, book references and re-written notes? NO!!!!! I can’t emphasise this enough. Do you need flashcards to remember the three roles of x? Maybe. Do you need them to recall the three functions of y? Perhaps. People tend to jump on the bandwagon of flashcards, spider diagrams, pictures and anagrams to avoid what really matters. If you’re just gonna write out the notes again and not even bother thinking about them…GET OUT. I know some very organised people who get high marks because I know that behind it all they do the study. I also know far more people who are very organised who achieve marks that discredit them. Why? Because instead of engaging the material and actively learning, they spend time drawing diagrams for things they don’t understand. Waste of time if you never learn them. SERIOUSLY.
  • You organise too late. There’s no such thing as studying too early. By studying, I mean making all the diagrams and flash cards you want. This is fine. What will ruin your exam is spending the night before an exam re writing your notes. TOO LATE. Unless you have a very high rote-learning potential, you’ve just wasted precious study hours. Your preparation for an exam needs to happen months before you even hear it is scheduled. Whenever you have a chance, take a look at your notes, your book or your handouts and try put them in a form you can understand. Maybe that involves highlighting. Maybe it involves different coloured pens. Whatever it is, do it sooner rather than later and make sure that when you do it; you try your hand at understanding the notes at the same time.
  • You’re cutting things out. A technique that kills any grade is leaving things out of study. If you have a day, cut ,cut,cut!! But we’re talking good study. That involves addressing everything. If I told you to learn about football, you wouldn’t go and leave the goalkeeper out. True I may never ask about the goalkeeeper. But what about the relationship with the defenders? What about the interaction with opposing strikers? The second you start cutting things out; your overall understanding wanes and your grade starts to slide. Try to understand the hard parts. It makes learning the easy parts surprisingly simplistic.
  • You only study when you study. If there’s one thing that makes you get VERY high grades, it’s knowing that the study never really ends. I’m talking a twin method of action. Any time you have something laborious and boring to do; start studying. Have to clean your room? Ask yourself a couple question while you do. Standing around at work bored? Try to remember what you have to do for your organisation. This method is endless. It can extend from thinking about your study when you pass a book in a shop to putting things on your wall and having a quick look before you head out with your friends. It sounds crazy, and in truth it probably is, but I can guarantee the results. It’s basic logic. The longer you commit to a subject; the more you understand it, and the easier it is to study. The easier it is to study; the more you get in before exams and the better your grade is.

That’s enough to get somebody started. I’m gonna post more of these; to be honest all those ones just jumped to mind first. there are far more reasons your study doesn’t work and I’ll try write on it soon.

10 ways you can improve a short story for your english class






2. Character description. Please don’t overload it.


3. Keep the pace consistent






6. Dialogue, dialogue, dialogue.








7. Stay in character.




9. You don’t need a twist


10. Fill your plot holes

