So when you first sit down with a writer then, what is the first thing that you look for when you are helping them to shape that story, to either get them started or to get them moving again?

Oh, I've got loads of questions, but my first question is always, what's your story about? And invariably people will start to tell me what happens in it.

It's to get the difference between what a story is about and what happens in it, because they're not the same thing.

And if they can, if they can define what the story is about, because what the story is about is the universal.

What happens in it is the specific.

And sometimes someone will say, oh, I don't know if I could write a story because I haven't had a lot of experience.

I've always lived in the same place where I've always done the same thing.

is there a set of problems i'm going to call them problems even though i'm not sure that's the right word that first-time novelists tend to have that you see over and over again what would those