Inside the story-making brain

Stories, strange ideas, science, nature, writing and the occasional piece of complete nonsense.

I'm interested in the things most people walk past without noticing. A strange behaviour. A scientific fact. Something growing where it shouldn't. A conversation that doesn't quite make sense. A question that won't go away.

Sometimes I write about them.

Sometimes I investigate them.

And sometimes they turn into novels.

Have a wander. You never quite know where a thought might lead.

What if a story knew it was a story?

And what would happen if the characters found out? I've lately been pondering that a story is a strange kind of agreement between a writer and a reader. The writer creates a world that doesn't really exist and the reader agrees to believe in it for a while. Somewhere between those two things, something quite remarkable happens. People who never existed can make you laugh, frighten you, make you angry or leave you feeling strangely sad when you close the book. We all know t

Neil Bailey

3 days ago5 min read

What happens when you stop trusting what you see?

How much of the world are you actually experiencing, and how much are you simply assuming? I once read that we don't really see the world around us. We see the version of it that our brains have constructed. That sounds like the sort of sentence that belongs on a motivational poster in a therapist's waiting room, but the more you think about it, the more unsettling it becomes. Look around you now. Pick something ordinary. A mug. A window. A tree outside. Your computer screen.

Neil Bailey

Sep 306 min read

Neil

Bailey

Thrillers where nature, science and human behaviour collide

Inside the story-making brain

What if a story knew it was a story?

What happens when you stop trusting what you see?