stories: Title meaning About the title, Bell has said it is a nonsense phrase that came to her in a dream but "Linguistically it translates to a calculated series of steps forward. I like the riddle quality and the weightlessness of the phrase." and "Semantically the intention is to evoke a progression of steps away from creeping paranoia." Concept album analogy Bell has made the following statements about the flash fiction collection's likeness to the concept albums of her teen years in the 1990s: "Read some other single-author collections to see how the stories are arranged. I find a short story collection to be a bit like the old “mixed tape” or the modern iPod playlist, there is an art in the order. If your stories have an evolving theme they can be like a concept album." "I like Strings & Ribbons for its poetry and reprieve. Its placement in the collection is like a lighter musical interlude on a heavy rock album." "I write with so much tension, sometimes it is difficult to sustain over a long time, I often need to construct deliberate ebbs and flows to add some reprieve to all the suspense." Influences Bell learnt about the free indirect speech method of writing from James Wood's How Fiction Works. Australian short-story collections that have inspired her are Margo Lanagan's Black Juice, Cate Kennedy's Dark Roots, of which she has said "For perfecting the craft of the short form Australian author Cate Kennedy does it best in her collection Dark Roots, every story sticks with you and haunts you, she is the master," Tim Winton's The Turning (stories), and Angela Meyer's Captives. She has said that the minimalism and dirty realism of short-stories by Tobias Wolff and Raymond Carver have struck a chord with her. Bell has repeatedly cited Angela Carter as an influence. She has said the appeal of Angela Carter's works is the juxtaposition of oddities, and has singled out The Passion of New Eve as a favourite saying "it’s a real trip and a gender bender. You will question everything you know about relations between men and women, and the imagery will stay with you forever." In interviews Bell has cited the following authors as influences: Ursula K. Le Guin, Aldous Huxley, Virginia Woolf, Oscar Wilde, Jane Austen, DBC Pierre, James Frey, Deborah Levy, Lauren Beukes, Julienne van Loon, Jim Crace; and the following