The blog of an aspiring author, wending her way from first draft to edit, and hopefully to becoming not only agented but published. Can I get an agent by the end of the year? I certainly hope so! My name is Amy Goodwill, and the only way to get this done is to sit down, shut up and do it. Brain, fingers and keyboard. Nothing to it... right?

Sunday 20 April 2008

Linear and Non-linear writing

I'm a linear writer. When I say that, I mean that I write from beginning to end of whatever I'm writing, each scene following the previous scene in time as you progress through the novel, and basically never write scenes out of order.

A lot of writers work the other way around - write whatever they're thinking about at the time, regardless of where it fits into the book, then put everything together afterwards, like a film director does.

Each of these methods is equally valid, and work for different people for different reasons. I find it easier to progress through my story and incorporate character and relationship growth if I know exactly where I've already been and what has happened before the part I'm writing. Others find it easier to write whatever is most vivid to them at the time, to get it down on paper as fast as they can.

Today I wrote a scene that belongs two books in advance to where I am right now. It had been haunting me for days, and all the time new phrases and images were coming into my mind for it. Rarely has a scene come on so strong of its own accord, out of sequence. And so I wrote it down while the fire was still in me.

It's something to consider when you're writing, anyway. You don't have to start at the beginning and end at the end. If you're stuck, jump to a part you know you can write. Or just do it anyway, if the inspiration comes.

Nobody but you will ever know which bits you wrote first.

Tuesday 8 April 2008

A little about myself and my work

I realised today that I've never actually written anything of any significance here about the novel I'm working on, what sort of writing I do, that sort of thing. So I guess I better had, huh? I hesitate to write too much about it, but I'll tell you a little.

My current WIP is called The Night Tower, and is a fantasy novel which is hopefully going to be somewhere in the region of 120,000 words, rather than any larger wordcount. I have a quartet planned, of which this is the first novel, and I am about 90% of the way through the first draft. It has strong elements of romance and crime/mystery, and is character-driven rather than fantasy-driven, by which I mean that magic exists, but within strict limits, and is not the true focus of the story, but an engine by which it moves along.

I have finished a full-length novel once before, and many unfinished projects, which I hope eventually to go back to and rewrite better than they were before. I hope to submit to agents by May next year. I was aiming for this year, until I realised that my dissertation will be hitting me hard from September onwards, and the clash might sink both my ships. So, once my degree is finished...

Look out for The Night Tower on the shelves, won't you?

Thursday 3 April 2008

TIHFU: something new I'm trying

So I'm currently reading through The Complete Guide to Writing Fantasy, and in the very first (introductory) chapter, the writer makes a point I thought was really good.

If you want to write about history and politics and mythology and belief, why don't you go and read the books you've never thought of actually reading, the ones that actually talk about all of that in deep and meaningful ways, that have survived for hundreds of years?

I mean, who knows politics better than Machiavelli? And who did mythology better than the Greeks? The more you read, the more you'll know and the better your writing will be.

Makes sense to me. I've always wanted to be well read, so why not make it now?

I haven't started on the books I bought yet, for the simple reason that I'm on a hospital placement right now in Devon practicing my future trade and kicking ass at testing patients. But once I get a chance, I'm diving in. Why not expand my horizons and see if that expands my writing, too?

Books I bought, for now:

The Qu'ran, english translation
Greek Mythology text (well regarded one)
The Prince by Machiavelli
A General History of Pirates
In the Company of Demons (Renaissance demonology, Key of Solomon, that sort of thing)
The Art of War by Sun Tzu

I think the guy at the bookshop must have thought I was nuts for buying that random an assortment, but I'm looking forward to reading these and moving on to even more. I just hope I don't expand my mind so much that it won't fit between my ears any more :)

Monday 31 March 2008

TIHFU: Book Review (look, it rhymes!)

Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, Second Edition: How to Edit Yourself Into Print

Amazon.co.uk

I've read quite a few books about writing, and I have to say that this is potentially one of the most helpful and useful. I will quite cheerfully admit to having no idea as to how to go about editing my manuscript properly and professionally, and after the debacle that was the 'Editing' class I went to at the university (don't ask), this was a breath of fresh air. And, dammit, cheaper than that class was, too!

Browne and King not only have an engaging, easy-to-read style, but make their points clearly and succinctly, showing you the different options rather than just telling you (aha!) While they don't dive into the 'bigger picture' aspect of editing - as this would differ hugely between books - they do make many good points that will help with that, as well as fixing all the smaller problems that really niggle with readers when they're left alone.

Many published authors say that they sit with this book by their elbow whenever they start revisions, no matter how many books they've written and sold. I'm perfectly willing to do the same.

Thursday 27 March 2008

Procrastination

Firstly, I would like to apologise for the long period of time since my last post. My non-electronic life got very busy this month, and so writing another entry for this blog kept getting put off and put off until it's been a shameful 25 days since my last post. I'll try to do better.

In that vein, what better topic for a post than procrastination?

Procrastination - the writer's biggest enemy


I don't know about you, but I'm a terrible procrastinator. Given a choice between two things, one of which requires effort and the other of which doesn't, I will, unfortunately, tend to put off the work and do the fun thing instead. Whether that's catching up on my email, or my internet friends, or surfing around google looking at random things, it's all too easy to forget to do any writing at all.

Hence the problem. How can you ever be published if you never finish writing the goddamn book?

Answer: You can't. Nobody will publish half a book (unless, of course, you are F. Scott Fitzgerald, the book is The Last Tycoon, and you happen to die halfway through writing it.)

How do we fight against procrastination? The answer, unfortunately, seems to be poorly for me, at least at the moment. I'm working up to getting myself back into a routine of writing, but it's hard to get back on when you've fallen off the horse. I used to write 1000 words a day, minimum, and keep going until I had done it, because that was the discipline I set myself. And it worked. Now I've just got to do it again.

Try setting yourself a target for each day, no matter how big or how small, and just sit down and do it. It doesn't have to be wordcount - it could be time spent, for instance. Try setting yourself a target of writing for ten minutes every day. It's a small enough amount of time that you should be able to find it in there somewhere, and small enough not to be discouraging.

Let's try to battle procrastination. Let me know if you have any suggestions, too, as I'd love to hear them!

Now, where did I put that game...

Sunday 2 March 2008

Knowledge is Power

(or, at the very least, a potential plot thread)


Remember what I said the other day about how getting different experiences could be really useful for writing? That the more you experience, the more you can use?

It’s the same for knowledge. Who knows when that tiny tidbit of information might get you out of a tight plothole? Or even allow you to build something on it to make your story really work, really stand out and function healthily.

Most of us pick up these pearls of wisdom all the time, just by being human. Someone will say something on a chat show when you’re watching TV, or you’ll be reading a book and think ‘oh, that’s interesting!’ And your brain will squirrel it away like the efficient biological computer it is, ready to resurface when you least expect it.

I already knew what my character’s power was going to be – but why would it work like that? Turns out, I already knew the answer, from my lectures at university. I could supply the biological basis for it, and away we went. Not that I’ve actually written it into the novel, because their society doesn’t have our level of medical knowledge. They would have no idea what it meant. But I do, and it helps me to decide how it works in such a way that the character is much more believable, because I have set rules.

Similarly, I try to base all of my magic on genetics rather than random chance, because it gives everything a certain order to it that makes it more believable.

This applies to research you do for stories, too – don’t put it all in your story, but keep a lot of it running in the background, as it were, to keep everything ticking over smoothly. And for God’s sake don’t get rid of it – you never know when it might be useful in the future, either in a sequel or in another project.

The more you know, the less you have to work to find things you don’t know, or to fill in gaps with explanations, because they’re already at your fingertips. Awesome, huh?

Thursday 28 February 2008

Oops!

Sorry to everyone who got redirected here from my comment about the cellphone that runs on blood, somehow putting in the link and also putting my website address into the comment bar got mixed up and the one became the other... no idea how.

Didn't do it on purpose :(

Here's the real link: http://www.physorg.com/news122819670.html

Wednesday 27 February 2008

You could call it work experience, I suppose.

One of my aims in life is to experience as many different things as I can. Go to different places, eat different foods, learn new things.

On the one hand, it's interesting. And on the other, it's a great way to help fuel your writing.

Remember 'write what you know'? Well, the more you know - the more experiences you have - the more accurately and fully you can write, taking advantage of your experience to deepen your prose for your readers.

I'm not saying 'go out and kill someone'. I am saying, if somebody says 'would you like to go to the races?' (this happened to me over Christmas) and you've never been, say yes. Go running in the rain with no umbrella! Eat weird food! Try on dresses you could never afford (Yeah, I know, you do this already :D)

Just go for it, and then put it back into your writing.

Sunday 24 February 2008

Writing Interpersonal Conflict

Crushing your characters’ most important self-concepts (Hit them where it hurts!)



Stories revolve around conflict. Without it, there is nothing to struggle for, to strive against; if Frodo had no trouble just wandering off to Mordor to dispose of the ring, how interesting could Tolkien have kept The Lord of the Rings? There has to be something to work with, to make the reader cheer for your protagonists, and urge them on despite all the obstacles in their path.

There are five classical conflicts accepted by literary theorists, though in modern times man vs machine has become the sixth. The other five are:

Man vs. Himself
Man vs. Man
Man vs. Nature
Man vs. the Supernatural
Man vs. Society.

Interpersonal conflict revolves around the first two – man vs. himself and man vs. man.

A friend of mine has the unfortunate talent of being able, in the heat of an argument, to say exactly the worst possible thing she could say to whoever she is arguing with to make it really hurt. Whatever that person holds as their most important self-concept is where she’ll hit. Now, in real life, this is not much fun, to put it mildly. But in writing, you can use something like that to create major conflict between characters.

First, think – what is the most important self-belief your character holds? Is the fact that she knows she’s pretty enough sometimes to comfort her? Does he pride himself on being there for his family when they need him? And so – what is the absolute worst thing that could be said to them, to flay that open and make it sting?

What if someone turned around to him and listed times when he had failed his family, voice dripping with disdain and venom? How will he react?

If you can get your character to fighting with himself, then it’s going to take a lot to pull them out of it. Where does that take your story?

Interesting, isn’t it?

Thursday 21 February 2008

What Publishers Want

...is very important if you want to sell your work.

I was just reading literary agent Kristin's blog post No Vampires Please, in which an editor at Random House expresses a desire for sf/f novels that DON'T have vampires in them, and in which the heroine is not a soulless killing machine.

That's not to say that another editor isn't still in love with the genre. But if you were submitting to this editor, you shouldn't send her your Anita Blake lookalike.

Getting the right story to the right editor is very important. That's what a literary agent is for - knowing what the different editors want and like and are likely to leap on like rabid dogs. Putting the right story in the right place at the right time is the best way to get it published.

Wednesday 20 February 2008

Writing as Therapy II

I'm flattered to say that I received an email today from Ellen Taliaferro of Writing Practice Prescription about yesterday's post on 'Writing as Therapy', asking if she could use my post on her blog, which is all about writing as a healing process.

I'm a big believer in writing as catharsis, as you may have guessed, so this is really gratifying for me - thanks, Ellen!

You can find her homepage at Health After Trauma, a site whose mission is to "address the long-term medical consequences of trauma and abuse."

Have any of you ever used writing to purge your demons? How did you find it? How did you find your writing changed as a result of it?

Tuesday 19 February 2008

Writing as Therapy

Three years ago plus change, my mother died suddenly and unexpectedly. It was nobody’s fault – just one of those things that happens sometimes. The next year and a half, everything else went wrong, one thing after another – my sister, already ill with glandular fever, was diagnosed with ME, a chronic fatigue syndrome; both my sister and my father suffered from depression; our dog died; I failed my A-level exams and failed to get into university that year. It set off a long, hard slog to get back to where I wanted to be, and away from where I had been put by circumstance.

You know what? I’m a much better writer because of it.

Don’t get me wrong – I would hand it all back if it would take back what happened to us. But the sheer magnitude of it changed me, and I found that I had to write, was forced to write. All my emotion came out in my writing – angry, painful, sad stories. I wrote my first full-length novel by six months after she had died – that’s around 100,000 words – and kept going with other things, too, just writing and writing for hours on end. Sometimes I would sit at the computer and produce 7,000 words in a morning.

Writing can be fun. But it can also be therapy. It helped me to vent all the things that I was feeling in a safe way. Of course, the sheer quantity I was producing also gave me a lot of practice, and I put a lot of the improvement down to that, too.

Writing still helps me to understand and deal with emotions I’m not sure what to do with, by taking myself a step away from them and putting them onto someone else, someone whose actions and reactions I can observe and understand and use. It lets me go deeper. And, in a strange way, I’m grateful for that.

My writing slowly changed anger into grief, and grief into slow recovery. You can see it in the things I wrote, in the changes in tone and story between works. It is still changing me in subtle ways I expect even I can’t see.

If something has happened to you, and you’re not sure you can deal with it, write it out. Let somebody else deal with it. You’ll be surprised what you come up with.

Monday 18 February 2008

TIHFU #2 – Books on Writing

Some people will tell you that any writer who takes a class or reads books about writing isn’t a ‘real’ writer, that you can’t learn to be a writer, that you just are or you aren’t.

That’s bullshit. I will concede that you have to have the drive, the imagination, to write in the first place, but everyone has to start from scratch and learn and hone their craft, and why not read the advice of others while doing it? I didn’t emerge from my mother’s womb and immediately know everything there is to know about eyes, I’m studying it by listening to what other people can teach me about them, and reading books about them. I wasn’t born an orthoptist, the same way I wasn’t born a writer.

I love, love, love reading books about writing. Some of that is about absorbing advice, but after you’ve read a few there’s not a lot of difference between them. So why do I keep reading them? Because every time I get a new one and sit down with it, I feel motivated all over again by reading about how to improve my craft and how to use it.

There are some fantastic books out there and there are some crappy ones. And it’s entirely possible that what I dislike works fantastically for others. But I never pick up books with titles like ‘write a bestseller in a year’ or ‘how to make loads of money from your writing’. Because if you ask me, that comes from the quality of the writer, not some formula. Or at least, I want it to badly enough to want to make it through those woods by myself.

I’m going to be attending a course on ‘Rewriting and Editing for Authors’ at the university next month. I’ll let you know how that goes :)

Seriously, go to your bookshop or go to Amazon and pick up a book or two. Even if you feel like you know everything already. Because there’s always something you hadn’t thought of, or maybe it’ll get you all fired up the way it does me. It’s worth it.

On my bookshelf here with me right now:

Wannabe a Writer? by Jane Wenham-Jones
Creative Writing by Leach & Graham
The Way We Write – edited by Barbara Baker (this is a great book – interviews with bestselling authors of fiction, non-fiction, children’s fiction, poetry… you get the idea… about how they write, why, where, their trials and tribulations. Really fascinating reading.)

I have more at home, and loaned out to my friends, but I can’t recall their titles off the top of my head! I have been told that Stephen King's On Writing is very good, but I haven't read it. I've promised it to myself when I finish the first draft of my novel project. Here's to hoping that's soon!

Friday 15 February 2008

Naming Characters

Names are powerful things. There’s a reason the old legends say that you can control someone if you know their true name – just try to ignore it when somebody unexpectedly yells your name on the street from behind you. You immediately turn around to see if they’re shouting at you. It’s almost a hardwired response.

Names are evocative. They can be icons of perfection – just saying ‘Princess Diana’ has instant effect, and though we know – thank you, newspapers – about a lot of the things she didn’t do right, her name is still a strong positive name, one that – in the first instant you hear it said – has good attachments. Maybe after a moment you’ll remember some of the other things. But beauty and kindness and charisma are what strike you first.

What if I say ‘Adolf Hitler’? If names had no power, then why would you never consider calling your child that? (I would hope not, anyway.)

Names are important. So it’s important that you name your characters well. I remember reading a fantasy novel once where the romantic hero was called Kevin. Instantly my brain went, ‘Okay, no. Just no.’ And it took a lot of persuading on the part of the author – mostly by being a kick-ass writer – to make me accept that as being his name. No offence to anyone called Kevin, but it didn’t fit the character.

Similarly, if you wanted to name your strong, ethical, intelligent female character, would you really call her Britney, or Tiffany? Unless, of course, you’re deliberately using a name with different stereotypes attached to it for effect, you wouldn’t. Just as you would choose particular types of names for older people, or younger people. The name has to fit.

It drives me crazy when I can’t think of a name for a character, because normally I just know. It’s like serendipity. The name just drops into my mind and it’s perfect. But when that doesn’t happen – and it does sometimes – it drives me mad, because I’m always convinced that there’s a better name out there that I just haven’t thought of.

If I have to go looking for a name, I hit the baby name websites. I try and pick a good one from Google, one with the facility to search for both beginning letters and/or meanings, and, if I can find it, one that will filter by name origin, so I can tie it in to my character’s ethnic background. Then I trawl through the results until I’ve got a shortlist of names I like. Then I have to make up my mind. This can take some time.

How do you find names for your characters? Do you just pluck them out of thin air, or do you go looking? I’d love to know.

Wednesday 13 February 2008

TIHFU – Things I Have Found Useful: RSS Feed

Here’s the first of a new series of features – TIHFU, or Things I Have Found Useful. I hope you will find it useful too!

First up: my RSS feed. I swear, if I could, I would have my RSS feed’s babies. It saves me so much time and effort you wouldn’t believe, and it also provides day-long entertainment, all for free!

For those who don’t know, and believe me I was one until not too long ago, an RSS feed is an internet widget you can set up to collect together blog posts from any website enabled for it – such as pretty much every blogging site, among others – and put them in a place where you can retrieve and read the posts, all without having to trawl every blog, every day, searching for updates. It’s free, too, which is always a bonus! I use Google Reader as part of my interactive google homepage, and I have to say I have never had any issues with it at all. It’s wonderful. You can set it up outside of a google homepage, though, if you don’t want one. Just google it, as it were, and sign up.

If you look at the address bar of this site, you will see a little orange box with three curvy white lines in it sitting at the right-hand side. That symbol tells you the page is RSS-enabled, and if you click it, you can add the page to your RSS feed. Anything added to that page will then appear on your feed. Neat, huh?

The main thing I use my RSS feed for, of course, is reading writing blogs.

Editors, authors, literary agents – I’ve got them all added to my RSS feed, and I read every post they make. Why? Because it’s absolutely the best way to get an understanding of the publishing industry and what they want, so that when I submit I’ll get it right. And they give out some excellent writing advice, too, which never hurts. Some agents even run contests on their blogs, offering critiques or manuscript-reads to the winner. Why wouldn’t you give it a go? You have to be noticed somehow.

Here, copy/pasted in all its glory, is the list of all the blogs I’m subscribed to. Go take a look – you might see something you like!

101 Reasons to Stop Writing
A Newbie's Guide to Publishing
At Last! Writer Beware Blogs! AC Crispin and Victoria Strauss Reveal All!
Beaver and Steve
BookEnds, LLC — A Literary Agency
Buzz, Balls & Hype
Cute Overload
Girls read comics
I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?
Nathan Bransford - Literary Agent
Neil Gaiman's Journal
PostSecret
Pub Rants
Rachelle Gardner, Literary Agent
Reading Under the Covers
Smart Bitches, Trashy Books
So You Want to Be Published
Story Sensei
The Rejecter
Writing Fiction Right from novelist Gail Gaymer Martin


By the way, a handy thing I found out today – did you know that if you press the CTRL key at the same time as scrolling your mouse scroller, you can change the font size on any webpage you’re looking at? It’s awesome for when people have just sized things wrong, or you’re having trouble reading. Just remember that it applies to any other page you then navigate to, as well, so remember to change it back.

Monday 11 February 2008

Designing Your Characters

(Or, how not to end up with Princess Froufrou-Trixiebell the Fourteenth and her shining purple eyes)


Small aside: I've noticed that on the livejournal feed for this blog the link near the bottom of this article is messing up the HTML. There's nothing wrong with the HTML on this end, so I can't fix it. Sorry.

Fiction involves a certain amount of suspension of disbelief as a part of its very nature. We cut out all the ums and ahs of real conversation, unless they illustrate a character’s indecision and uncertainty, along with all the repetition you get from real people – further to that, when was the last time you read a book where it showed you that the character went to the bathroom anywhere near as often as is humanly necessary, or even (most often, and with good reason) at all? I think we can all agree that we don’t really want to read about every potty break, every time somebody felt it necessary to repeat themselves ad infinitum for no reason, each individual falling asleep and waking up the next day.

But that can be taken too far, and nowhere so much as in character design. How many people do you know who are truly, from every hair on their heads to everything they do, absolutely perfect? Not a single flaw? Nobody, of course, and that’s probably a good thing, because admit it, they would be absolutely nauseating. So why do so many writers feel it necessary to make their characters so perfect that it’s impossible to suspend our disbelief, when we’re so prepared to do it?

There’s a term for it in fandom – Mary Sue, or Gary Stu, fiction. The author has written the character she would want to be in the story, and so of course she is wonderful in every way. Everybody loves Mary Sue, passionately and without reservation, and not only is she the most powerful in all the land she is also the most beautiful. Is there no limit to her perfection? She never puts a foot wrong, never says the wrong thing, never gets a spot on her alabaster skin. It’s sickening. On top of that, she usually has a ridiculously overblown name, like Rainbow Blossom, or Aramantha Felicity Softfeather. All in all, it’s the ultimate turn-off, and back-buttons are hit on browsers all over the internet. The only difference with books is that you can, in fact, burn them and get the visceral pleasure of seeing the horror inflicted on you turned back on the book, as well as taking out the wasted £5.99 from its paperback hide.

Believable characters have flaws, both physical and personal. Maybe his nose is a little crooked, or her belly a little soft. Even making somebody short can be enough, sometimes. I’m not saying make your characters hideous, but make them feasible. My main character in my WIP, Halley, is has a lot of self-confidence and trust issues, to the point of a fault. She’s pretty but not gorgeous – her figure is average, her hair is brown instead of platinum blonde.

That’s an important point, by the way. I’ve deliberately chosen for her to be a brunette, not because brunette is unattractive – far from it, and I’m brunette myself – but because it’s the second most common hair colour in humans after black. Some writers will have a million and one redheads, and it’s just not that common a hair colour outside of the Weasley family tree. (In fact, it’s the least common colour of all.) After a while it stops being a way to differentiate a character and starts being OTT. The same can be applied to eyes, though less so. Unless, of course, you give your character purple eyes for no good reason. If you’ve got a reason – it marks them as a Mage, maybe, or it’s a distinguishing feature of the royal family – fine, that’s great, go ahead. But don’t do it ‘just because’.

One of my favourite book series, “Resenting the Hero” and “The Hero Strikes Back” by Moira J. Moore, has a main character who has red hair, but is neither curvy nor petite, so in fact has a very average and not-terribly-remarkable figure, and describes herself as needing a lot of work to make herself worth looking at. Admittedly this is from first-person, so we can assume she might not be totally correct, but the point is that she has chosen a description that works to make us believe her as a real person. It doesn’t extend to her super-hot hero, of course, but there’s a reason he’s that hot, so it works.

Personality-wise, everyone has something wrong with them, as it were. Maybe the character is obsessive-compulsive, or always says the wrong thing, or is prejudiced against one thing or another. Just give them something to make them real, to make them sympathetic, because somebody who’s perfect most definitely isn’t.

Gail Gaymer Martin has done some very good posts over on her blog lately about character design. It’s worth checking out here, anyway – she gives some very good advice.

The best thing you can do when creating characters is to think about them. What makes them tick, what makes them real people. How would they react to various situations? If you’re the sort of person who finds that writing exercises help you to understand people and situations in your work better, try thinking of some really stressful scenarios and writing them out with your characters. How do they behave? Where do they go wrong, and where do they triumph over their own faults? And how damn good do they look in the mirror, without having been sculpted by a plastic surgeon (I would assume? Okay, though, here’s a random factoid for you from one of my lecturers – plastic surgery always leaves scars. Always. It’s just that the really good surgeons know how to hide them – under your eyebrow, in your armpit, etc. So don’t go relying on plastic surgery for a plotline unless you’ve got some futuristic face-changing tech. For facelifts? They cut your skin at the hairline, peel your face half off and do the surgery, then reattach it, so that the scar is hidden in your hair. I’m not even kidding. Creepy much? I think you get my point.)

The more believable the character, the more believable the story is, as a general rule. Why make things difficult for yourself from the get-go when you don’t have to?

Wednesday 6 February 2008

Writing the Dream

Or, How to make the most of your sleeping imagination



I don’t know about you, but I always seem to be doing something when I could most use the time to do nothing. Doesn’t matter what it is. And if I have to think about it, even worse – because it’s all time I could be using to think over my plot and the scenes I want to write, and every time I think about it I add something more to the mix and make it better.

So instead, I think about it in that time when I’m lying in bed with the light out but I’m not yet asleep. Head on pillow, warm, comfortable. Right. Where did I get up to? Oh, yes. Now, how shall I write that scene?

I don’t know what it is, but I get my best thinking done at that time of night, when I’m relaxed and the day has already been and gone. Maybe it’s that my brain is already starting to shut down, and I’m accessing the part of my mind that creates dreams. Maybe it’s just a ‘me’ thing. But I get more plotting done when I’m lying down to sleep than I do at any other time of day, and I freely admit to spending a lot of my time thinking about my writing. It keeps me invested, too, if I can sit down and imagine my favourite up-and-coming scenes, or even ones I won’t get to for months yet. (I’m a linear writer, meaning that I start at the beginning and write my way through ‘til the end. A non-linear writer writes different scenes whenever they think about it, then slots them all together later. I just can’t do it like that.)

Sometimes I’ll even have a dream that I can use for ideas – I’ve dreamed whole novel ideas before, the sort of thing that makes the basis for an entire plot. Maybe I’m just lucky – or maybe I primed myself to it by thinking about plots before I went to sleep. Who knows? If it happens to you, as soon as you wake up for God’s sake write down as much as you can remember before it fades! The same goes for any fantastic idea. Too many people have forgotten what could have been their magnum opus for the want of a piece of paper, and it’ll never make it to print that way.

Give it a go, anyway, and see if it works for you. I’d be interested to know if it does.

Picking your hero

If you’ve got a romantic plot in your book – doesn’t matter if that’s the main plot or a subplot – you’ve got to pick your love interest carefully. Nothing’s worse than an unbelievable romance. For the purposes of not driving myself crazy, I’m going to address this as though you’re writing a straight female main character, whose love interest is a straight male character. But most of this will apply to any combination of people, gay or straight, male or female, so bear with me.

Unless you’re writing a romance novel, and often even in a romance novel, your hero has to have a purpose in the plot other than being the love interest. Otherwise he’s left standing around like a loser waiting for the heroine to come back and get all wibbly about him, then gets put back on the shelf again when anything important is happening. So, for example, maybe your hero is working for the enemy! Oh no! Not only do you have the romantic tension of two opposing sides with attraction to one another, but you can use him as an ‘in’ to the enemy, showing you more about them and telling you more about them without you needing to do so much extra work (read: reaching) to get your heroine the information she needs. This gives him a role in the plot other than ‘stick romantic interest scene here’, which is much better for your novel.

On top of this, you need to pick him himself carefully. It’s no good having two people who are totally unsuited for each other, but forcing them together anyway – there have to be points of connection, of intersection, between them that you can exploit to build emotion into. What does your heroine want in a man? The heroine of my current work-in-progress, Halley, is shy and insecure – so the man she is attracted to is strong and sure, but not loud and overbearing – he makes her feel safe. Could you imagine Jane Austen’s Elizabeth Bennet settling for a man like Mr Collins? Of course not. Because he’s entirely the wrong sort of person for her (besides, of course, being an absurd caricature of a ridiculous and pompous man. But that’s beside the point.)

To take the example of Pride and Prejudice further, but turn it around, Mr Darcy would never have fallen for Jane, no matter how lovely she is. It’s all about matching personalities and lives – just like you would in real-life relationships. You wouldn’t pair up your loudmouthed, extreme-sport-loving younger sister with your quiet, bookish friend unless there was some other connection between them to make it work. And if you can find that connection, fantastic, use it – you’ll probably build a stronger story. Without it, you’re sunk.

In my opinion the most important thing you need to know when making two characters fall in love with one another is why. Why does she love him? What is it about him that she likes, that makes her heart beat faster, that makes her want to spend the rest of her life with him? What is it about her that makes him smile, want to ask her to be with him, to be his wife? How are they going to get there? Will they ever get there? There has to be more ‘why’ than ‘why not’.

Some of the best exercises in building this sort of relationship, I’ve found, come from fanfiction. (I know, I know, in some writing circles it’s a dirty word. But that’s where my roots are, and remain. There are more talented fan authors writing for free on the internet than are published in any five years put together.) In so many TV shows you can feel a connection between two characters that is never explored by the writers – so ask yourself what it is, why you feel that connection, and how could things develop to make that into something else, something more? You don’t have to write it, just think about it – but if you write it, and share it, so much to the better, because you often get not only feedback from online fandom, but constructive feedback too.

Or, if you prefer not to go the route of fanfiction, try this. When you’re out and about walking somewhere by yourself, look at the people on the street around you. (This is probably one more for the girls, if I’m honest, because it takes a certain amount of romantic daydreaming.) Look for people who you find attractive, or who are just generally attractive. Then make up a background for them – university professor, fireman, kick-ass demon hunter – and (this is the girly bit) make up a story as to how you would get together. Where do you meet? How do you start moving towards one another, set yourself in that place where you start to gravitate towards one another? Who kisses who first? Once you can imagine it with yourself, you can put it out a degree of separation and posit characters to put in your place, and work out how they get together with the love interest. It’s all practice.

For instance: today I had to walk down to town to buy some sour cream for a cake I was making. On the way down I spent a lot of time behind this tall man wearing leather trousers – laced up at the sides; a black coat; a black cowboy-style hat; and his black hair tied up behind his head in a small ponytail. Surprisingly, when he turned a little to look before crossing the street, he had a kind face, and a not unattractive one at that. So maybe he’s got a macho sort of job – let’s take that kick-ass demon hunter from the last paragraph – but he’s still got a core of humanity in him, he regrets what he has to do, maybe he’s lonely. Who would I pair him up with? Well, it’s going to have to be a woman who can look after herself, or he would never trust himself to fall for her when his job might get her killed. She’s going to have to be strong enough to force her way into his life, too. How do they meet? Hmm… maybe she’s involved in one of his cases, maybe she’s half-demon but all human and he spares her… do you see what I mean?

Picking the right partner for a character can be hard, but ultimately it’s rewarding. Your plot will be better, your book will be better, and your romantic scenes will zing that much more. Pick the right hero, and you’re made.

Tuesday 5 February 2008

How to write what you don’t know

(by building from what you do)


Hell knows Tolkien was never a four-foot hobbit climbing a burning volcano with an evil ring trying to take over his mind and a powerful, darkly godlike being trying to stop him from getting there. But if you should only ever ‘write what you know’, how do you get from here to Mordor?

I’ve never been under siege from a crimelord trying to recruit or kill me for the things I know. But I have been scared –and I have been scared enough to want to try and hide, to feel that urge to curl in on myself and make myself small and unnoticeable. Doesn’t matter that it was only because one of my flatmates was on the rampage, or because I was small and the storm outside scared me into my parents’ room in the middle of the night. I know what it is to be afraid, so I can magnify that, build it to become what I want – true terror, a need to disappear.

As you can see, ‘write what you know’ doesn’t have to be taken literally. That’s not to say that you should try to bluff your way through things you have no idea about – don’t try and write a police procedural when you’ve only ever watched CSI on TV – but we’ve all been to school, so why not a magical school, ala Harry Potter? You can fill in the extra details you need around the skeleton of your own experience.

By writing what you know, and extrapolating and magnifying that into what you don’t, you can get a long way. But you do also need to do research. Remember, Google is your friend, if you’re careful about which sources you trust. And you can’t beat your local (large) library for books that could be helpful. If you live near a city, try the city library, or one belonging to a local university might be prepared to let you use their facilities if you ask nicely.

So you’ve never been blind. Spend a couple of hours blindfolded in your room, and use it. That’s all it really takes.

Monday 4 February 2008

A lovely quote

The other day I found a quote about writing that I thought I'd share, since it expresses the sort of joyful sentiment I want to find in writing myself:

"I hope you will go out and let stories happen to you, and that you will work them, water them with your blood and tears and your laughter until they bloom, until you yourself burst into bloom."


I have no idea who said it, or where it comes from, but I really like it, don't you?

The Ideas Process

Anyone who’s ever read an interview with a published author will know that ‘where do you get your ideas from?’ is not only a pointless question – ideas come from everywhere and nowhere – but one that is almost universally hated and met with exasperation. God knows how many times someone like Neil Gaiman, or Terry Pratchett, or J.K. Rowling, to name but three off the top of my head, must have heard that question. Can you blame them for getting a bit pissy about it?

Nevertheless, there is a sort of reason and rhyme to the way ideas come, or at least I find it to be that way with me. There is, you might say, a method to my madness.

Take Heal, a series of short, linked stories I started because I wanted to write a character who was blind. The challenge of describing his whole world – in first-person, I might add – without using any visual information appealed to me. On top of that, I wanted to write a story in which there was a protective older character, the stoic, strong, reliable sort, who jealously guarded their charge from any and all people they considered might be a threat, but who secretly liked the main character a lot and was their best friend. This desire was sparked off in me by the dynamic seen between the two lead characters in fanfiction of the 90’s TV show The Sentinel, a sort of power-dynamic I adore to this day. I developed the idea from there – a blind healer, with healing hands, guarded from the world by his companion. Put him in a new city and his blindness is not only a disability but a way to completely disorient him from everything he knows, make him learn it fresh along with the reader. Everything about the story was built from those two desires, and grew around them organically to form the story.

Similarly with other ideas. I wanted to write a story about grief, because my own mother had died suddenly and unexpectedly the year before, and while at the time I had written very angry fiction, now I wanted something slower, deeper. So I gave my situation to my character, Toby, but changed it so that it was his sister and her husband who had died, and gave him another character to play off of – his brother-in-law’s brother, John, who had lost a sibling the same way he had. From that I grew other ideas of grief and loss into my story – John had been in Iraq with the Royal Marines, and lost many of his men along with his whole, healthy body; Toby’s failed relationship comes back again and again to haunt him, because she is always there to remind him of what he lost. I added more to the original seed, but it was the speck of dirt that I built around, the starting point of the snowball.

If I’m honest, usually my brain just suddenly goes ‘that would be so cool,’ and that’s all it takes for me to have a new idea.

Every idea, every story, starts with a seed. Whether that is a character, or a dynamic, or a theme, you have to start somewhere. The ideas may come from everywhere and nowhere. But the stories come from the ideas. And the story is the harder part. In my opinion, building the story is what takes the talent, not having the idea.

Are you WUI – Writing Under the Influence?

Or, How To Find Your Own Inspiration When It Came From Someone Else's Writing



We've all done it – finished reading a book by an author we admire and said, 'I want to write a book like that.' Whether it's because you admire the way they pulled you into the story, the style in which they wrote it, or perhaps one of the themes – such as vampires, for instance, a thriller, or romance – you want to be like them.

And there's nothing wrong with that. Inspiration comes from everywhere, and who knows – one day they may be the name below the quote on the cover of your new bestseller. But it's all too easy to find yourself WUI – Writing Under the Influence, or, to explain myself, writing a book that is almost the same as the book you want to emulate.

Let me give you an example. A friend of mine is a very dedicated writer, and has bundles of talent – but whenever you look at what she's written you can nearly always guess exactly what's on her bedside table right that minute. The style and theme gives her away at once. 'Ornate, archaic language? You've been at the Tolkien again, haven't you?' You don't want to be an author whom readers can identify as definitely having read this book or that book – that isn't originality. And publishers will know that. As a second example, I have a great and abiding love for a novel I read online by an unpublished writer. When I first read it, it totally wowed me. It was only later, when I started reading Laurell K. Hamilton's 'Anita Blake' series, that I realised the online novel was very definitely overinfluenced. It was all too obvious that that the writer had read that series first and been affected by it in her own writing. While it still had a great plot and great characters, a lot of the themes and ideas in it were ones that had been published years before. Which lost it some of its appeal.

So how do you know? Have another look at your project (yes, I know it's your precious baby, but it's necessary.) Then compare it to the books you have been reading recently, those by your favourite authors, etc. How many things are the same, and how many different? Could you read their book, then your book, and feel like you'd been reading the same book, just in two different covers under two different names?

If you do find yourself WUI, it's time to sit back and look at your project again. To what extent has your story been affected by this influence? And what can you do about it? If the plot is almost identical (no two plots will ever be perfectly identical, but look at the parallels), then you need to seriously think about how to overhaul it. If it's only that the main character in both the published novel and yours is a blacksmith, for instance, or both of you like to use short, sharp sentences, you don't need to worry overly much. It's all a matter of degrees.

(Do remember that it is possible for two writers to come up with the same idea totally separately. One of the more bizarre examples is that in both England and America, two cartoonists simultaneously created a comic about a mischievous young boy known as Dennis the Menace. Neither even knew the other man existed. It's hard when this occurs, because you don't want to be accused of copying the other person, but it happens. Go on with your story, since it's genuinely your own.)

There is a good way to go about emulating your favourite authors. Sit down and look at the novel you enjoyed, and work out the aspect of it that really caught your imagination. Perhaps it's a theme, or the feel of the relationship between two main characters. Maybe you like the perspective given (reading the online novelist started me on first-person writing, which worked better for me than I'd ever expected, and I never would have given it a go myself if not for that book.) Once you've found what it is that grabbed you, think about why it did. Did it appeal to your sense of fun, keep you hanging on the edge of the seat in suspense, make you longingly wait until the times when it reared its head again in the novel? When you understand why you liked it so much, you can then start to think about how to use it in your own work. And you can be safe in the knowledge that you are writing your own thing, as original as you are.

Hello, and welcome to my blog.

I hope you find it useful, and interesting, and all those other good words.