Tag Archives: Technique

Writing

Watching the novel

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When I read a novel, it is like watching a movie. Sometimes it’s a really long movie that runs sporadically over a few weeks, and occasionally some of the characters look a bit different when they come back on screen, but I ‘see’ it all happening in my mind’s eye. Which is why it really bugs me when an author purposely blinds me.

I was reading a novel by an author I really like, but they refused to show me the main protagonist. There was clearly something up with his appearance, and I watched him walk around dark streets and avoid people, but I didn’t get to ‘see’ him. This went on for three chapters. How am I expected to craft the movie of this novel if I can’t even see the main character?

I think I’ve bemoaned the unreliable narrator before, but this is different. This is wilful omission that both author and reader are aware of. It’s like someone pixilated the lead in the film and expected everyone to just go with it.

I have to confess I put the book down. Who knows, maybe in the next chapter the author did the big reveal, or maybe I was going to be forced to go through the whole novel so I could have an a-ha moment at the end when suddenly it all made sense. Regardless I’ll never know. For me, the appeal of the novel is being able to get into the skin of the main protagonist and learn with them along the way. If they have some kind of physical issue that impacts every facet of how they live their life, then I think I should know about it on page one.

Clearly that is just my opinion, and there will be loads of people out there who love that kind of book (oh wow, all this time he was actually the pet dog!) – which makes me wonder, do some people actually read books and not make their own movie?

Writing

Top 10 Writer Things to Do – Make time for writing

Yes, it’s the last Top 10 for the year, and yes, it’s a pretty obvious one. Clearly to be a writer you need to write. To be able to write, you need time. Most of us don’t have much time, so we have to make it. That means cutting time from something else.

What you give up is not always going to be as easy as a few episodes of Master Chef, or the weekly vacuum. Sometimes it’s going to be fun stuff, stuff that you want to do, stuff that is a whole lot more attractive than sitting at your computer trying to drag words out of your brain.

Trust me, when you make this sacrifice you’ll feel like a writer.

I only tend to apply this when I’m in the middle of a project. I have large-ish breaks between projects where the fun stuff is likely to win out. So for me this isn’t an all-the-time thing, but I would suggest, if you want to finish a project, you need to do this.

We all make our writing time in different ways, but my way of doing it is to plan my week in advance. So I can book in that work Christmas party, but I’ll be sure to also block out writing time in the same way I’d book in a coffee with a friend. Once that time is allocated, it is booked.

Here I’ll give you a warning; as someone who is making almost no money out my writing, I find friends and family don’t really understand why I’m saying ‘no’ to them so I can write. So be prepared to be evasive ‘oh, I’ve got something on that day’ (which also helps to make you seem more mysterious) or if pressed, outright lie; ‘that’s the only day I can see <insert name of friend they don’t know here>’. Or if you have more guts than me, just tell them that’s how it is so too bad, so sad.

The key is you need to commit to a time, and then commit to that time. That’s how books are written, and that’s how you become a writer. Good luck!

Writing

Project promiscuity

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Okay, I know I’m inviting a bunch of really bad spam from that title, but it was the most accurate way I could think of to describe my old approach to writing. I’ve been writing all of my adult life, and until the last few years I was a big believer in writing what I felt like writing. Our moods change a lot, and when you are happy you don’t really want to get bogged down in a depressing or dark piece of fiction. So I always used to have a number of projects on the go at once.

I ended up with a lot of novels that only got to chapter 5. I also had a lot of partially written short stories. What I had very few of was finished pieces. I also did almost no editing because the lure of new words always won.

About three years ago I decided I needed to finish stuff, so I tried to focus on just one project at a time. It didn’t work, as soon as I got to a difficult bit in my story I’d set it aside and start thinking about another story. Thinking turned into writing, and next thing I knew I had another novel that only made it to chapter 5.

Not many people know this, but a few years ago I spent a week believing I had a brain tumor. My doctor prepped me for it with too much conviction, and due to a whole manner of mishaps it took a week between the doctor’s diagnosis, my CT scan and getting the results that the doctor was wrong. I had a bunch of really bad symptoms that gave incredible verisimilitude to my incorrect diagnosis, so needless to say I did a LOT of thinking about the future, and more specifically, how short that future might be.

Above everything else I wanted to finish my novel. Despite my symptoms and stress, every night after work I came home and wrote like a machine. I’d hit a tough bit and I would slog through it to get to the next part where I felt more comfortable about what was happening. I didn’t let any other projects distract me.

By the time I discovered my brain was clear (and disappointingly showed no signs of secret microchips implanted by alien abductors), I had realised that I could force myself to focus. That novel was EveryWere, my pantser novel, and I finished writing it in just over 3 months.

That was a game changer for me. Since then I have picked just the one project at a time and regardless of mood, inspiration, or haunting writing daemons, I work on only that project. I have finished another novel, two novellas and five short stories since then. Probably more completed words than in my entire writing career before that time.

A lot of people enjoy project promiscuity, and they can make it work for them. But if you are like I was, and you aren’t finishing anything, then don’t wait for a terminal diagnosis to get yourself focussed. Try being faithful to just one project. You might go through some tough times together, but you may also find yourself in a deeper, more meaningful relationship with your writing than you have ever had before.

Happy writing.

Writing

Lists

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I love task lists. Their big brothers are Excel spreadsheets, which I also adore, but task lists hold a special kind of magic for me. They are a promise of achievements yet to come. Just writing the list gives you a taste of what it is like to complete them.

I have an ongoing list of stories I want to complete. Each title has a box next to it for me to tick (in red so it stands out) when it is completed, and a space for the date. This list is constantly growing, but also looks very nicely actioned. That’s probably my favourite list.

I also have a weekly list of 20 tasks; 10 personal items, 10 writing items. Anything not completed by the end of the week gets rolled over to the following week. I try to always achieve a pass mark, but sometimes I only scrape a ‘C-‘. I’ve been doing these task lists for over 10 years.

This week I ramped it up a notch. After writing my 20 tasks I divvied them up into daily tasks and allocated them to each day of the week. This was in an effort to stop me from getting to Sunday and finding I have 15 things to complete (as is often the case).

I still have one day of the week to go, but it has worked brilliantly! Even on days when I thought I had my evenings free, but then they turned out not to be so, I still completed my tasks. I skipped out on most of my usual TV viewing for the week, and got to bed a little later than usual on two nights, but the tasks got done.

I won’t lie, it was a lot of work and a bit of stress, but as I ticked off those tasks at the end of each day, I had an overwhelming feeling of satisfaction. Not only that, but for the first time in months I’m going to be getting at least an A level pass even if I do nothing for the rest of Sunday –and that feels fantastic!!!

For those not used to task lists, a good way to set them up is to think about your major goals (finish writing your novel, go back to Uni, whatever) and then break those down into smaller and smaller steps toward the big goal (write novel plan, find academic transcript etc.). Those are the steps you put on your weekly task list. If you find you are not getting around to ticking them off, break them into even smaller steps. It is amazing how much you can achieve. Try it!

Writing

A title is the ultimate flash fiction

I sometimes have a problem coming up with titles. I pretty much know that if the title hasn’t come with the idea (which sometime does happen), then I’m going to struggle with it. Titles are important for conveying a little bit of what the story is about, so you need to get them right.

I have heard a few writers say that if they can’t come up with a title, then it means the story is not working. I think that is just one of those quirky superstitions that writers like to embrace. I’m not bagging them, I’ve got a million crazy superstitions around my own writing, but ‘trouble with titles as an indicator of value of story’ is not one of them.

Thanks to Adelaide writers’ week, I now know that other authors also struggle with the title. One mentioned that she came up with about 50 titles and all were rejected by the publisher. I’m impressed she managed that many, I normally give up at about 10, 15 tops, and then I pick the best of the bad bunch.

My approach to the title is similar to how I attack flash fiction or Tweeting. First I write down everything I want to say, and then I work on making it shorter… And shorter… And shorter. If I can get it down to one word, fantastic, but I think I’m doing well once it under three words. It may have lost some of the meaning by then, but I hope it at least gives a hint of what the story is about.

I think a really good title can pick up a few readers you might not otherwise have nabbed, but I think the title would have to be pretty woeful to divert someone who might otherwise have checked it out. But given my last three publications were entitled ‘Glide’, ‘Glow’ and ‘Life’ you might do better to get advice elsewhere when it comes to titles.

Writing

What to leave out?

I’m writing a fantasy story set in a desert. This has presented a number of problems; what do you build your houses out of when you have very little wood, where do you get water, what do you eat? I have spent a very long time working out the answers to these and many other questions. So how much of that does the reader need to know?

Obviously the first thing to consider is the length of the work. If it is a short story you probably don’t need to go into detail about the politics of the day and how the city is physically able to run if those things are not pertinent to the story. On the other hand, if you are writing a novel then you may want to sprinkle at least passing references to those things.

The story I’m writing is a novella, so I don’t want to over-burden the reader with proof that I’ve thought about how the world could work, but I also don’t want to bug the reader with them thinking what I’ve got happening isn’t possible in a desert. It is a fine balance to strike, and I’m pretty sure that what is enough for one reader will not be enough for another.

Perhaps in future, along with the map and the cast of characters that some fantasy novels are adding these days, you can have an appendix of how the world works? You could attach all your notes about the reed species used in the water filtration, the method of creating durable building materials and the political set up. Then again, maybe that stuff is best left in the bottom drawer?

Writing

Material

I don’t normally go searching for material, it usually appears in my head as part of the story, but this week things have been different. I wanted to come up with a new story idea, so my eyes were open. It was amazing how many things were presented to me.

I watched a documentary on life in a desert, which created the perfect story location complete with geographical, geological and ecological set-up. I then did a tour of the state library and got a whole bunch of colourful stories about daily jobs that don’t exist anymore. Jobs I didn’t realise ever existed. Jobs I would never have been able to make up myself.

It makes me wonder how often I’m totally blind to these little pieces of seasoning that add that extra dimension to your work? I feel like I’m seeing a lot more things these days. I think spending so much time living in my head is good for me, or at least it is good for my writing.

 

Writing

Croquet writing

I’m in the middle of my next novel, and after the success of my last attempt at pantsing, I was tempted to try that again. This time, however, I’m on a very strict timeline, so I can’t run the risk of running totally off track. If I do that I might not be able to finish it before I’m forced to go back to work.

So in an effort to capture the speed and agility of pantsing, but have the dependability of planning, I’ve come up with a marriage between the two which I’m calling croquet writing. I’ve set some target events that have to happen, but how I get between those is anyone’s guess. So like the hoops on a croquet lawn, I know what I’m aiming for at any point in the story.

Yeah, yeah, I know, I haven’t invented anything, it is just planning but with a bit less plan, but it might be exactly what I need. So far it is working, I have the same feeling of having no idea what I’m going to write when I sit down at the keyboard that I had when I was pantsing, but unlike pantsing, I can clomp through a rough patch to get onto the next plot point and then run from there.

I suspect there will be a lot of editing required for the rough patches, but maybe not as much as for the pantser where I had to cut out whole chunks of stuff that went off on a tangent that was never realised, or where I had to go back and insert foreshadowing for stuff I didn’t know was going to happen.

I’m at the half-way point now, which is past my usual fall-over spot in a novel, so with any luck I’ll be writing those magic words soon; The End.

Writing

First lines

A piece of advice that all writers are given is that you should always grab a reader from the first line. While a good first line is a great thing to aim for, I don’t think it will keep a reader going if the second, third and fourth line are not much chop. I also find it hard to believe a reader would be inclined to put a book down after just the first line, even if it was staggeringly bad. In fact even then I’d want to keep reading to see if it got worse.

Here are the first lines of three of my favourite books…

“First the colours.” – The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. I do think the fifth line in this book is great; “Here is a small fact, you are going to die.”

“My name is Moon.” – Half Moon Investigations by Eoin Colfer

“An old blue Ford pulled into the guarded parking lot that morning, looking like a small, tired dog after a hard run.” – The Long Walk by Richard Bachman/Stephen King.

None of those first lines particularly hook me, though I do like the imagery of Stephen King’s sentence, but the point is that I loved ALL of those books.

I think a well written blurb will always do ten times more to sell your book to a reader than a first line ever will. That’s no reason not to put a bit more effort into your first line, but I do wonder if it might just be publishers cold-reading manuscripts who care deeply about first lines.

My friend Liz explores more first lines here.

Writing

Continuity

I once got a gig on an independent short film as a continuity person. I went to great lengths to make sure the cigarette being smoked was always burnt to the right point in the conversation and that the girl’s scarf was worn consistently in each shot.

I got the job because that’s the sort of thing I pick up when I watch a movie. It’s a ‘skill’ I’ve rarely had to call on when reading a book, until now. This week I picked up a book that is full of continuity errors.

The character walks to another character’s house, and at the end of the chat he takes her downstairs to her car so she can drive home. She gets up early, describing the sunrise in detail, then goes to see a friend who comments that it is nearly 5:30pm so they’ll need to wait until the next day to go to a florist. It is as if no-one bothered to read the book after the first draft was completed.

I don’t claim to never make these mistakes, I can totally relate to changing your mind on something, going back to edit it, not remembering that you referenced the thing you changed later in the story. But that’s why you always do a read through when you think you have finished the book. That’s why you give it to your beta-readers, to pick up on all the little details you got wrong. That’s why you employ an editor if you run a publishing house before you commit the book to print.

This is not a self-published book, it is also not the first edition. I can’t see how it is possible that so many continuity errors have made it into the copy of the book I have. The story is well put together, so I want to keep reading it, but the errors really are starting to hamper my enjoyment because there are just so many of them.

It really has underscored, for me, the importance of beta-readers. I know there are a lot of writers out there who shy away from showing their work to people they know, but will gladly send it off to a publisher. I guess the writer I’m reading was like that, and she managed to get away with it. But I think in 99.99% of cases where this has happened the authors have not been so lucky. In a world where publishers are looking for a reason to say no, it is best not to hand them this mistake. I’m sure that’s why I normally see so few continuity errors in books.