What was extraordinary, but hardly surprising, was the resulting word count. By my remaining outside my characters’ heads and hearts, the novel was reduced to one third of the length of my shortest novel to date, and one fifth of my longest novel. The process was akin to being engaged in the most extreme editing while at the same time writing the first draft.

The process had parallels with rewriting a screenplay, after receiving notes from the director and producers. It is a brutal process and technique must be precise. That 110-page (or fewer) count must be preserved, while maintaining each turn and beat in all the right places, from scene to scene and act to act, while making seismic upheavals in structure. If you want to learn about storytelling, get a screenplay into development. It’s a remarkable fast-track experience and nothing else will bring you closer to a stroke, or a scream of animal rage. One’s emotions and even instincts must be overruled.

And yet I’ve been totally engaged writing screenplays. Have really taken to the craft, and I believe it has made me a better storyteller.

I was discussing the writing and publishing of modern genre novels with a friend and correspondent recently. And I was struck again by the notion that using fewer words, primarily less description and less character interior, tends to move readers through stories faster. And is a style favoured by modern commercial publishers. To my eye, this is how ‘plot-driven’ fiction is written. There are exceptions, particularly in novels that require extensive world-building, but generally, in the age of the thriller, I feel the writing is simpler and more direct. Some might say less sophisticated. But it suits modern tastes, attention spans, leisure time, travel, technology, not least audiobooks, even standards of literacy. It also reveals the emphasis, nigh on tyranny, of plot and story and the demotion of all else. It is the way things are. Literary, lyrical, philosophical, poetic styles and approaches are in decline; story-driven fiction is dominant. And, in my defence when making these sweeping generalisations, as an editor I sat in publishing meetings for eleven years (in the age of the sales director).

To make either approach work well, however, involves considerable feats of skill from a writer; each approach to fiction is faced with remarkable challenges. But the former has a better chance of publication and finding a readership. It also produces more terrible books than should have ever existed. Though, when done well, story-driven books are sublime. When I came across a great commercial book as an editor, and it didn’t often happen, I almost wept with joy. The approach is also more cinematic in structure and execution. I see a connection there, at a time when the lithographic plays second fiddle to the pictorial – or what we see on our screens.