As an aspiring writer you’re often exposed to regular aphorisms intended to help you improve your craft: write what you know about, show don’t tell, etc One that I have always struggled with is the instruction to “read like a writer” with the warning that once you become “ a writer” the way you read a book will alter so that you will never be able to enjoy a book as you did before.
I understand the idea behind this - the suggestion to take in a writer’s style, use of language, observe their tools even whilst you are consuming their narrative. The problem I have always had is that if a writer is good and their story draws you in, you tend to forget to read like a writer (which isn’t to say there isn’t something to be learned when the writer is not good and the story does not draw you in).
I recently found a solution to the dilemma: Audiobooks. You engage with the story through an audiobook in a different way to the hardcopy in your hand (or on your ereader if you’re that way inclined). I’ve recently listened to Stephen King’s The Stand on audiobook and the experience was beneficial. Maybe because I know the story already so well I was able to listen as a critical reader - to appreciate some of the “tricks of the trade” Sai King uses to tell his tale. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend coming to The Stand through an audiobook as a first read, and I envy anyone who hasn’t read it the opportunity to experience it afresh, but as a learning tool it’s definitely one to consider.
I’ve just received my first critique back from Miranda. It was based on the first 5 chapters of the novel and the issues it has identified have caused my head to whirl. The following morning I was awake at 4.30 with ideas and plots and any other number of points racing through my mind. I’ll probably expand on them in greater detail in later posts but I thought I’d mention two here that particularly struck a chord.
i) My novel is set in a fictitious town in Yorkshire. As you read the story you come to appreciate that the town’s name: Stoneville, is a key point. However this is a 12th Century town in Northern England - not the middle of the United States of America. Add this to the fact that the main street through my town was called (wait for it…) Main Street and Miranda rightly pointed out the inconsistencies and the difficulty in developing a credible location for the piece. It struck me at that point that much of the fiction I read has a US location and how much I had absorbed into my culture without realising it. This isn’t an American-bashing mission, I was in Maine just a few months ago and I loved every minute… it’s my reflection on the need to understand your location and not be sloppy when making decisions such as place names etc.
ii) Miranda also suggested reading around the genre (horror). I read a lot of horror but I thought I would try and read as a writer (more of this in a later post!) so I have selected 10 horror novels and read the first 30 pages to look at how they were constructed. How the authors set the scene, introduced the characters, and created and developed the tension. So here’s my top 10:
Bentley Little: The Walking
T.M. Wright: A Manhattan Ghost Story
Stephen King: Lisey’s Story
Stephen King: IT
Joe Hill: Heart Shaped Box
Ramsey Campbell:Needing Ghosts
Neil Gaiman: American Gods
Clive Barker: Weaveworld
Michael Marshall: Bad Things
Michael Marshall: The Insiders
Tim Lebbon: Face
Mark Morris: The Deluge
John Ajvide Lindqvist: Let the right one in
The first thing you’ll probably notice is that I’m not very good at sticking to my plans! 10 is a bit harsh and even this list is shorter than the original.
In making the list I deliberately chose not to include any “classic” novels (Dracula, Castle of Count Otranto, Frankenstein etc) as I’m interested in how a contemporary author tackles these issues.
I have an interesting dilemma. I submitted a short story to a publication last year and have received a response saying that they’re interested in publishing the story if I remove the profanity as the story would currently be R rated (It’s a US magazine).
Coincidentally (if there is such thing as coincidence) I’ve recently been listening to Stephen King’s book “On Writing” and the same day I received the response from the publication the passage I was listening to in On Writing was discussing the need to be “truthful” in your dialogue.
This censorship may come as a surprise to people who know me, I don’t swear, but I do recognise that the characters in my tales are not all mini-me and so there are times when it’s appropriate for them to release the odd swear word. So my dilemma is whether to accept the editorial advice and cut the profanity, or whether to stand by my original draft and understanding of the characters within the story.
If the advice was given because the language wasn’t true to the character, and that was a criticism I recognised, then it would be a no-brainer. But is that my truth? I reread the story and questioned whether the speech was apprropiate, and in hindsight I still think it is right; I think that it indicates the frustration and anger of the character speaking. So do I think adjusting the language is “selling out” or lessening the impact of the piece? Well yes. Do I feel strongly enough to pull the story from the publication?
There will be other stories, and other publications… and it’s unlikely the publication or otherwise of this piece will affect my writing career, but still…
Procrastination.
The enemy of all writers.
I work during the week, so the weekend is my writing time. If I can get some writing done in the evenings then great, but Saturday and Sunday are my staple writing times.
Every saturday morning I write a list of things to do that weekend. And it always starts with write 1500 words on WIP. This weekend’s looked like this:
1500 words- Not done.
Send extract 4 to Tim Clare- Not done.
Write short story for Short Fuse based around Babel- Done.
Write short story based around Union for Writers and Artist Yearbook Competition- Started.
Write a short story about Loch Ness for Litopia- Done research.
Write short story for Bristol Short Story comp- Not done.
Design business cards and presentation folder for submissions- Started.
Review Point Blank for my blog- Done.
Review Heartland for my blog- Done.
Do 3 critiques for Litopia- Done.
Write blog for my work blog- Done.
Submit book reviews for forthcoming Litopia Muse Ezine- Done.
Writing East Midlands blog- Doing it now.
On the surface of things looks pretty good, it’s been a fairly productive weekend. A short story in the bag, a couple of blog posts, some research, caught up with my critiques.
Apart from the fact that the only thing I really need to do is the first 2 items.
Why the delay then?
Because I’m procrastinating.
Because those 1500 words aren’t new and fresh and exciting words. They’re editing.
And editing is the mother of all procrastination.
I’ve written 131 words out of the 1500. I’ve listened to a podcast. I’ve done all the washing that was in the washing basket. I’ve watched the Arsenal Chelsea match. I’ve been to the Gym.
And the reason I’ve done this?
Because it’s hard. Because editing is hard.
This section is slap bang in the middle of the book; everything I do now unravels something else or is affected by something that happens before and after. I write something and I have to go and check whether the reader already knows this. And so I procrastinate.
What I need is someone to lock me in a room with no outside stimulus and force me to finish this section. I don’t even think it would take that long if I put my mind to it.Even when I’m sat at my computer it doesn’t guarantee that I am writing, there’s always the internet, Twitter, Facebook and Litopia. I’m building my author platform I tell myself. I’m not. I’m avoiding doing something that is hard.
The good thing about getting all this out is that I now feel guilty enough to stop faffing and get on with it. It’s about 6.30. If I knuckle down I can get 1000 words in before bedtime.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
After an exchange of emails with Miranda where we talked about what I was looking to achieve from the mentoring scheme, what elements of my writing I was particularly keen to focus on, and similar areas for consideration, the time has now come to step up to the oche.
I’ve been submitting fiction for a number of years now and I don’t ever remember being nervous like this when submitting a piece. Not that I think the response from my mentor is going to be a tirade of abuse of the “you can’t write, what are you doing on this scheme?” sort. I suppose I’m conscious of the desire to “make a good impression” (as we all are, surely?) and also that this is a leap of faith for me because typically my “public” writing falls into two categories: reading out raw work in workshops and writing groups while the ink is still drying, or submitting stories for publication once they have been worked and worked and worked and I’m satisfied that they’re as good as I can make them. The work submitted to Miranda is somewhere in the no-man’s-land between those two: I’ve written it, I’ve started to edit it, but it isn’t finished.
But it’s out there now… and whilst I’m waiting for the reply I’ll get on with some of the issues I have with the structure and storyline of the novel as it stands.
Empathy.
This is a tough one. I have been told by many people wiser than me and read in many blogs that you need to create characters that your reader can feel empathy with.
But, what does this mean in the context of fiction?
It isn’t sympathy, although sympathy can create empathy. It isn’t a matter of liking the character either. But it is certainly one of the main components of creating believable characters.
Wikipedia, the font of all knowledge, cites empathy as-
“Empathy, which literally translates as in feeling, is the capability to share another being’s emotions and feelings.”
This seems simple and is a really neat definition, but how do you go about writing characters that the reader can empathise with? This is really a question, because I don’t think I’m near enough to an answer to write about it with the sort of definitiveness that I would like.
The way I see it is, we don’t need to agree with a character, we don’t even need to like a character, we just need to have a clear understanding of their motivations. And these motivations need to ring true with the relationship which the reader has with the character and with the course of action that the character is taking.
Does that make sense? I’m not even sure if it does to me, but this is part of the process I am undergoing through these rewrites.
In my WIP I think the problem of distance from the MC and therefore lack of empathy with her is linked to her passivity and this is something that I am addressing in this round of rewrites.
I sent my work off to TLC and awaited a response. Within a few days I had a response from TLC with the name of the person who was to be my mentor.
I read about the writer to be my mentor and after much heartsearching and deliberation I decided to contact TLC about the choice. In my head I’ve got a clear idea of what I want to get out of the mentoring scheme - someone to help develop me as a writer not only in the specific aspects of the novel I’m working on, but wider - lessons that would stay with me for the next book and the next and the next. For this I felt I needed a slightly different mentor to the one TLC had initially suggested.
This afternoon I heard back from TLC and they have suggested a different mentor; Miranda Miller, author of Loving Mephistopheles. I’m delighted to be working with Miranda and I can’t wait to get started.
It’s most likely that the first steps will be to come to an understanding on what the mentoring process is… I know the “standards” in terms of 6 pieces of work submitted over 12 months, totalling no more than 60,000 words, one of the areas I’m interested in is how to ensure the mentoring programme is not just a longitudinal critque scheme. Hopefully the next stage will begin to answer those questions.
I sent my second extract to Tim still bubbling with ideas from the first response. His first crit had been about general thoughts, so I was interested to see whether the second extract would cement his opinion on the piece.
I included in the package a chapter breakdown so that Tim could see where I was going with it.
This in itself proved to be a worthwhile exercise.
I had outlined the novel and it lived for a long time as a post-it montage on my office wall before I turned on the computer. I’ve also written a one page synopsis of the novel.
But it was interesting to break it up into chapter chunks in such an emotionless way. It felt very much like writing scene directions for a play and enabled me to look at the structure in a very dispassionate way.
For example-
Chapter 2. “Understanding”
(Grace POV, past tense)
Grace goes to work- she is a drug counsellor. She debates with Paul, a patient about the nature of responsibility. In her office after the session she reflects on how the problems began in her relationship with Stephen and his jealousy, and thinks back to the events that brought him into her life. While at university she moved in with Lucy and David and fell into a lifestyle of drug abuse. Lucy calling her mobile snaps her back into reality. Lucy explains that she has spoken off the record to her contact at the police and that Amanda Levy died by having her throat bitten out, not cut.
This contains none of the nuances of the scenes, says nothing about Grace’s relationship with Paul, but it does allow me to see how the story plays out.
Sorry, I digress. Extract 2.
I sent Tim the next chronological 10,000 words.
In many ways what he returned with expanded on his thoughts from his first extract. It is clear that there are a number of things that I need to look at.
Empathy is one. This is something that Henderson (Of Writing East Midlands fame) has said to me before as well. I have created a distance between Grace as a character and the reader, she comes across as cold and it may be hard to feel any empathy with her as a result.
Distance is something that I always admired in writers, I think Martin Amis and Ian McEwan are very skilled at creating distant characters. But, you can always relate to them in someway and I think this is the point.
Passivity is another. My storyline is complicated. It took a lot of planning and rejigging and checking to make it work. The side effect of this is that it has made Grace passive in the narrative. Things happen to her, not because of her.
In this instance I relate Empathy and Passivity strongly. If the character has no say in what happens to her, simply allows events to occur around her then how can we as readers relate to her?
Two points to come back to.
I’ve touched on overwriting. Well, he mentioned it in this extract as well, along with show v tell, so there are two big things for me to think about.
I carried out an exercise that Tim suggested- print the whole novel out and then taking 2 different coloured pens highlight every section that I tell rather than show.
It was quite enlightening. I cut nearly 10,000 words out of the book just doing this. Of course, I’m going to have to put them back in, but after that laborious exercise I’m going to make sure when they go back in they’re going to be 100% show.
At the end of December I was delighted to be awarded a place on the mentoring scheme through Writing East Midlands. Just before Christmas I was advised that the first stage of the process is to submit a short (2,000 words) piece of work and a synopsis that would allow TLC to match me up woth potential suitors.
I wrote the novel I’m working on, “Bloody Bones”, about 2 years ago and started editing it in September. Almost immediately the novel has undergone major deconstruction with numerous chapters removed and new chapters added as I started to look at how the narrative flows (or doesn’t!).
Preparing for my submission to TLC I finally made the decision I had been putting off and cut most of the first 5 chapters (it gave away much of the story in chapter 1 which didn’t seem to be a great advert for building tension) and have just submitted the new chapter 1, the synopsis and also the chapter by chapter outline I use.
In preparing the submission I was very mindful that these pieces of work will determine who I will be matched with for the next year and so I wanted to ensure they gave a fair representation of where I was as a writer and what I was aiming to achieve. Hopefully I’ve succeeded.
Overwriting.
Over egging the pudding.
Purple Prose.
No, not the saucy type of Purple Prose, not the raunchy stuff. What I mean is literary masturbation. The love of the sound of your own fingers on the keyboard. An orgy of metaphor and simile.
See, I’m doing it again.
It turns out that I can’t help myself. It’s such a hard thing to nail down though. Where does it stop being ‘literary’ and start being overwritten.
I had a crit from an agent a while ago and he nicknamed me Mr Metaphor.
Tim put it nicely (as he seems to do)- “Stuffing your sentence with adjectives and adjectival subclauses bogs down the pace and can end up being obfuscatory rather than making things clearer.”
Adjectives. A whole other topic. Stephen King said the road to hell was paved with adjectives and if you listen to editors nowadays you would be inclined to agree with him.
Back to overwriting. It’s something that is so hard to see in your own writing. We all love our own words. Otherwise why would we be writers? It’s hard to let go of them sometimes. Lyn Price from Behler publications (Who writes an amazing blog from the editors side of the desk) talks about the ability to kill your babies.
How do you spot which ones to kill though? Space from the project and critiquing I guess. I thought the opening of my novel was fairly taught, I’d certainly edited it a couple of times, but Tim pointed out that I’d used twelve words to describe a hand-rolled fag. Twelve words.
George Orwell wrote an essay called ‘Politics and the English Language’ in which he talks about what makes bad writing. This quote caught my eye:
“…quite apart from avoidable ugliness, two qualities are common to all of them. The first is staleness of imagery; the other is lack of precision.”
Lack of precision. That’s what overwriting is I think. A lack of precision. And that is one of the things I am going to concentrate on during my next round of rewrites.
I am going to aim to be precise in my use of words.
