The art of fiction | 25 November 2011

What to do if you want to write a novel, but can’t find a plot (in the broadest sense of the term) around which to frame your ideas? Give up, is Margaret Atwood’s stark advice. There is no formula, she says, no easy answer to writing fiction. Most people have a creative spark, but not everyone has the intellect to discipline it. You either have it or you don’t. So much for the truism that everyone has at least one novel in them.