I thought I would take the time to share with you some writer moments that I have experienced. Even though they are frustrating at the time, you can’t help but laugh. I am sure there are plenty more but hopefully some of these will tickle your inner writer.

1. Characteristics

That moment when you realise your protagonist has developed the ability to change eye colour about five to ten times throughout your novel. If it’s not eye colour, it’s hair. The list goes on…

2. Action sequences

Those good old action sequences where there is a lot of travelling for your characters. You get immersed in the moment and come out thinking yes I’ve done it! It’s only when you read it back the next day, you notice that you have used walking or running about 30 times in one paragraph. Writing is rewriting eh?

3. Trying to be original

The frustration that comes with trying to describe something without likening it to another object or feature. I don’t know how many times I’ve tried to describe a new species of plant, animal or even a physical feature without the word like rearing its ugly head at me. Ah good old fantasy.

4. Name changes

So you take some time away from your novel to work on another project but you finally return to it. You manage to write a few chapters and decide to share it with your friends. They look at you, and say, “this is great but who is Justin?”

You explain it’s the main character only to be told that for the first half of the novel, he had actually been called Julian… Embarrassing as this is, I’m appalled to say this is a true story for me. What’s worse is that many of us spend time traipsing through latin origins, name generators and news articles trying to find the right name. My poor protagonist. He never even saw it coming.

5. Epiphany moment

You’re feeling completely uninspired to write. You get home from work and spend the entire evening procrastinating in front of the TV. Then it’s time for a shower.

Suddenly your bathroom converts into this other world, where you manage to plan an entire novel in your head. Some may even go as far as to imagine the soundtrack for the cinema debut. There’s that moment of euphoria where you think, I’m going to get out of this shower and write my ass off. You turn the water off, step out and hurry to get your clothes on. The computer is waiting for you with a blank document open. You sit down and then… every idea you had evaporates.

6. The chapter of doom

I call it the “Chapter 7.” We all hit that chapter in a novel which does not and will not just write itself. You hate every part of it. It’s considered as the sole reason that you are never going to finish that damn book. The irony is that three months, or even three years down the line, a sudden moment of inspiration hits you and somehow you manage to finish the chapter. What’s worse in many cases is that you actually find you grow to love that chapter more than any of the rest…

7. Losing your character

When you reach the middle of a novel, it can sometimes be a daunting time for your character. You can lose a sense of direction when it comes to your plot. This then spreads to your character and before you know it, they are wandering aimlessly for about 6 pages, whilst your brain wanders around, trying to figure out what happens next.

8. Planned deaths

We all enjoy creating those secondary characters that we know our reader is just going to LOVE. We are the only ones with the tragic knowledge that they are soon going to get the chop. We revel in what we expect to be our readers’ misery. The reality is that it’s us who end up sobbing over their death because we can’t quite believe what a perfect creation we have made, and now it’s gone.

9. I can’t write today

Do you ever sit down and think I just can’t write today. You experience that moment where you spend hours trying to string together a paragraph so that it reads well when your character enters a new setting. You are finally satisfied when a fellow writer advises you that actually, you could cut the whole lot and just say “they entered the [insert facepalm here]”.

10. I’m fooling myself

This one is simple. You take a break from writing to read a new novel you purchased from Waterstones. It’s your favourite genre and after reading the first page, you put the book down and say to yourself my writing is shit compared to this.

Last night opened the doors to an inspiring conversation about darkness in Middle Grade fiction on Twitter (#ukmgchat), an area of debate being the inclusion of hope to provide light in times of darkness for child readers.

Although I believe hope is a vital component of MG, should it be the rule? In Adult, and even YA, we go as far as to see darkness triumph so why should it be any different for MG? I can understand the limitations on how dark we go but at the same time, hope suggests the inevitable – good will always triumph over evil.

Don’t get me wrong, this is usually the outcome I look for in a novel, and it is one that works well, but sometimes I occasionally like evil to put a spanner in the works, and win. As an example, can an antagonist truly be dark, if they have an element of hope within them? Hope suggests grey. Can grey be true evil?

If you are looking for your characters to conquer the darkness or for your antagonist to have a grey area, then I think hope is wholly justified. It offers that contrast for the reader so that they can feel elated when the protagonist comes out the other side. On the other hand, I think complete darkness has to explore the idea that there is no hope.

I remember picking up the Goosebumps series where you would turn to various pages and discover your fate. More often than not, there was no happy ending. My character would be captured, trapped or devoured by a creature. Did I need hope to get me through this peril? Certainly not. As a child, that was the fun of it! It offered perspective.

If we look at the classic tales behind Disney, the reality is that none of the protagonists really get their happy ending, and the hope we hold for the characters on their journeys, is what we should actually label as “false hope.”

If we take the original tale of ‘The Little Mermaid’, she is actually given a knife by the Sea Witch to stab her Prince to death so she can relieve her despair, and live as a mermaid once again.  That’s after she marries him to get a human soul in the first place so that she can go to heaven. There are several different endings but they all align with how she chooses to jump in the sea and dissolve into foam. Some sources report a dispute over the endings, where one was later changed so that the mermaid could redeem her immortal soul, if she was to fulfil good deeds. The fact there are multiple endings to this tale, with and without an element of hope, suggests that darkness could possibly exist in MG without its counterpart.

In my opinion, The Little Mermaid made her choice to live a human life for selfish reasons, and upon realising it was the wrong decision, she is offered an escape route. Do you not think she maybe deserves a bit of tough love?

One could argue that if there is no silver lining for a character in MG fiction, why would we want to read it? The answer is that in the same way we look at hope as a lesson for triumphing over darkness, a lack of hope (or “false hope”) is also a lesson to show we don’t always get the outcome we want, despite the odds.

I think we sometimes forget that children are quite perceptive when it comes to reading. They will pick and choose a genre that suits them. This also means, they might also seek that book on the shelf where the white knight doesn’t exist. After all, in reality, good doesn’t always prevail.