In this article I am going to give a brief outline of some the conclusions of Peter Stockwell’s work in his book Texture: A Cognitive Aesthetics of Reading, Edinburgh University Press (Edinburgh:2009) pp134-144. Please do not be afraid. We will be comfortably in layman’s terms.

Specifically, we will talk about how we use “mind-modelling” to create an idea of how other people exist as independent to ourselves – a process as true in real life as in literature. Then we will explore two approaches, a “universal” approach that focuses on archetypes and a “cognitive” approach that focus on objectives and strategies.

I will argue that taking a cognitive approach to creating characters will result in greater empathy and a more enjoyable reading experience. Essentially, if you focus on the what, why and how of a character rather than an arbitrary “who”, you will write better books. This article, with a lot of help from Peter Stockwell’s research, explains why.

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Directing Little Wonder Radio Plays means I have read several hundreds of play submissions. Many of them are bursting with passion for their themes: anti-patriarchy, anti-feminist conspiracy, dealing with Alzheimer’s, coping with loss, divorce, corrupt politicians, global pandemics. This is great! Passion is great!

At the same time, everyone in the human race suffers from a little beastie known as confirmation bias: we are more likely to believe things we believe already, and we like to hear stuff that tells us we were right all along.

So, everything is great, right? Passionate people write plays (books, poems, films) for people who share their passions to agree with. Unfortunately, everything is not great. Nine times out of ten an excess of passion results in crap writing.

In this article I am going to explore why your passion is sabotaging you, and what you can do to make it work for and not against you.