by admin | Apr 24, 2015 | pace, plotting, structure, writing
A few days after getting back from our long trip, my sense of urgency about the first draft of book 4 was overwhelming. I had an outline, or thought I did, which had taken weeks to develop and looked as if it would carry me through the first draft. So I began at the beginning, avoiding the trap I’d fallen into earlier of starting with scenes I was most excited about, regardless of chronology, and hoping I would piece it all together later. That way madness lies, for me at least. So Chapter 1 it was, and then on to chapter two, then three. So far, so good. But by now the inadequacies in the outline were beginning to show. Threads had been left hanging, by default not be design, some actions seemed implausible, minor characters said unexpected things and threw the storyline around.
I stalled, went back, fixed some of the difficulties, re-wrote the outline for the next few chapters and continued. By now all sorts of unexpected things were happening, and the urge to go back and tweak previous chapters to fit in with the current direction was slowing me down. Of course there would be some inconsistencies and things to be fixed, but remembering them was the first challenge and finding them in the text was even harder. Why did someone decide they had to Gateshead? Where did Gateshead come from? In desperation I tried ‘Find; Gateshead’ but that didn’t work. I’d have to go back and re-read all the previous chapters to track it down.
After a number of such frustrations I decided that tweaking things as I went along would ruin the sense of forward momentum that had been turning up such unexpectedly good scenes. This was a first draft, that would be read with care by my trusty editor and annotated in detail to guide the essential re-write that would have to happen anyway, however much fiddling around I’d already done. I’m finally doing what my editor advised me to do in the first place: just crash on through the first draft, amending the outline as necessary as I go, keeping track of plot and all the other threads as well as I can and put it right, all at once, in the second draft rather than ‘toing and froing’ and driving myself nuts.
With that in mind, at least the chapters are rolling along nicely and the fleshing out of the story keeps turning up things I’m happy with and had not anticipated. Which is good, isn’t it? I just wish is wasn’t keeping me awake at night.
by admin | Apr 7, 2015 | character, old posts, opening paragraph, overview, plotting, readers, structure
I’ve reached the conclusion that time away from ‘the current work’ enables me to step back and view what I’m doing more objectively, and more clearly, but it has to be a certain sort of break to be most effective. Here’s how it seems to work for me. I’ve been writing outlines and planning the current book (number 4) for some months now. I knew I would be taking two months away from it early this year and expected that this would provide the space I needed to reflect on the project – characters, pace, themes, plot and so on – so that everything would be clearer when I returned. But that didn’t work. The time away was like being on a different planet, so exciting, varied, all-consuming, and exhausting at times that there was no space in my head to reflect at all about the book. After I’d got home and recovered for a while I just started the first draft as I’d planned to do, using the outline much as it previously stood.
Ten days later, into the first draft and rolling along quite nicely, I’ve just had another shorter break over the Easter weekend. Immediately beforehand I was up to my ears in writing and editing, working and reworking the original outline as the detail on the ground was revealed – as I mentioned in my previous blog post. Maybe that was why, during four non-writing days, my head has been wrapped around the story to the point where I could hardly sleep. Two darlings have been ruthlessly put to the sword as a result. The first of them, the opening paragraph, was nudged towards its demise by my perceptive editor Charlotte who skims the drafts every now and then and always asks incisive questions. The old first paragraph which I’d polished carefully for months, is now dead, and the one will be sharper, clearer and more likely to capture a reader’s attention.
The second doomed ‘darling’ is a character from my third book, who was about to reappear in this one. I was looking forward to meeting him again, but yesterday, when I was half watching Wolverhampton Wanderers vs Leeds United on the TV, I suddenly thought ‘Why do I need him here? What’s he adding to this story? If he has a function, is that not already being played by another character? Why complicate matters unnecessarily?’ Scales fell from eyes and when the next stage of the outline is re-written, he will be gone.
Have I ever mentioned the Faber Academy course I went on years ago called ‘Stuck in the Middle’? Just a weekend, but I still remember the shot in the arm it gave me. Gill Slovo and Sarah Dunant led it as a double act, a pincer movement of perception and experience that caught many of us round the table in the middle, making us look at our half-finished work from the outside rather than the inside. It was harrowing but salutary. I’ve thought about signing up again, but I don’t think I need to. I think I can be ruthless – no pun intended – all by myself. Maybe watching football helps.
by admin | Apr 1, 2015 | overview, plotting, structure, word count, writing
I hope someone’s noticed that I’ve been away, out of the blogsphere all together, for weeks on a long and amazing trip to Argentina and Antarctica. Actually, it’s over two months since I’ve posted anything, and now there’s so much on my mind I’m not sure where to start.
The question on my mind right this minute is this: how helpful is a detailed outline before you start the first draft? Five years ago I might have said, ‘Who needs an outline. I have a few characters and a few ideas and doesn’t it all just roll out?’ Two months ago I would have said, ‘An outline is absolutely essential and the more detailed the better.’ Right now, today, I’m thinking. ‘The most helpful thing about an outline is that when you get lost, you have some idea where you are. It gives you a bigger map, but with a smaller scale so you can take in the whole picture more easily.’ But, just like with OS maps of the Lake District, sometimes the paths marked on the map don’t correspond exactly with the paths on the ground.
The first draft is where your writing feet meet the ground. Only then can you see more detail in the territory. Contours and dotted lines turn into real hills and walls. PH marked on the map becomes a real pub, which could be closed and boarded up, or open and welcoming. I spent much of my ‘thinking abut the new book’ time in the past few months on the outline, changing it again and again until I was sure it made sense and flowed and had a good balance of character and events, internal and external dilemmas and conflict, the highs and lows of a classic 3 act structure, and all that. When I actually started to write last week, the first two or three chapters fell on to the page pretty quickly, following the outline page by page. But then things began to spread out. I thought I’d dealt with all the ‘what-ifs’ but then more popped up, demanding to be pursued. Characters said some things I hadn’t expected, and unforeseen anomalies became glaringly obvious.
I’ve noticed before that as I go from outline to draft the story gets darker. Why is that? I think of myself as a reasonably happy and optimistic person, but the words seem to be pushing me into ‘noir’. ‘Cumbrian noir’ – a new genre perhaps? The current book is definitely feeling more ‘noir’ than the previous ones. It should, given that it’s a crime novel rather than the ‘family saga’ tag that loosely describes the trilogy published in the past three years. In crime novels, necessarily, some people do bad things and some people suffer: that’s the nature and impact of crime. But the things I want them to do and suffer seem more ‘noir’ in the draft than they were in the outline.
Seven chapters in now: the overall plot is holding together OK but the chronology has changed a little. I’m having to look ahead three chapters in the outline rather than one to get the best sense of where to go next, and wondering of course why I didn’t anticipate the extra twists and turns that seem so obvious now. I don’t regret this: actually it’s rather fun and keeps me engaged for hours, while the washing up languishes in the sink and I stay cloistered in my upstairs cubbyhole, facing away from the stunning view beyond the window. At the end of several hours writing I feel I’ve achieved something more substantial than the mere fleshing out of a given story. I also need some exercises to relieve my aching neck and shoulders.
I try not to word count: it’s the quality of the words not the quantity that matters. But I couldn’t resist counting at the end of Week 1 and it came to an impressive 20,000 or so. Sounds far too much, but there they are, and most of them read and checked and amended. So far, so good.
Tomorrow there are distractions, in the form of a trip to Cockermouth for a book-related evening at the New Bookshop where I’ll talk about my work as a ‘local author’. That should be fun too, although not as deeply satisfying as keeping on writing, to which I’ll return on Friday.
by admin | Dec 5, 2014 | character, crime fiction, critique, genre, plotting, point of view, readers, villain
Weeks ago I thought the outline for Book 4 was almost finished: just the odd twist here. or an extra chapter there and it was done, waiting to be fleshed out in all its detail in the first draft. Then I had to step away for a while to focus on another project and when I returned to it, I lost confidence. Everything looked trite, predictable, and some of the characters felt wooden and two-dimensional.
So I controlled my impatience to get started, ready or not, and went back to basics, taking each of the characters and writing character studies: what does this person look and sound like, how do they dress, walk, eat? Where were they born and raised, what motivates them, what do they aspire to or fear? What will they do in certain situations, and ow will they relate to the other characters they encounter?
That’s a really useful exercise, but these deeper rounder characters are now so engaging that they demand many more pages to do them justice, and each wants their own voice, or ‘Point of View’.
I love the idea of multiple points of view, with even minor characters able to provide their individual perspective and version of events, but I’m wary of going down this road given the strict advice that accompanied the one – and only – professional critique of my writing, way back when the first novel was in its first iteration and I was floundering. ‘Keep it simple’ was the advice. Only two or three of your characters can be given a ‘Point of View’, so decide who they are and stick to it. To do otherwise runs the risk of confusing your readers and slowing down the plot.
Book 4 is my first attempt at a crime novel. I’ve taken the conventional stance – so far at least – of having two main characters on the side of ‘order and honesty’ but as time goes by I’m getting more interested in the ‘baddies’, without whom there is no tension, wrong-doing and resolution. If the ‘baddies ‘ are two-dimensional, the plot fails. Patricia Highsmith understood this: now I wonder whether I could take the risk of appearing amoral, as she can be described, by making the character of a central ‘baddy’ the driving force of the plot and its most engaging voice. I’d love to do that, but it could be a step too far for a first foray into a new genre. My readership so far trusts me not to shock or outrage them: they’re curious about my characters and want to like them. Would they feel betrayed by a detailed depiction of the despicable?
I think I’ll probably opt for safety this time, with two honest characters at the heart of the story, but I’ll also give depth and voice to at least one of the dishonest characters too, letting us see the complexities and ambivalence, and the flaws in our national life at the time when the story is set, which of course are still with us today. I want this book to be the start of a series, and that adds some pressures that I’ll explore in a future post. I’m still thinking about it.
by admin | Nov 27, 2014 | critique, dialogue, historical fiction, opening paragraph, pace, plotting, self-publishing, structure, writing, writing workshops
I suppose I’ve learned quite a lot about writing a novel over the past few years. A long time before that I learned how to write sentences and string them together into paragraphs that followed each other and made sense. I can recall some quite good writing in my school years, and at university, but that was mainly explaining ideas, or recounting other people’s ideas. Writing a novel is different, as different as painting a full canvas is from doing a doodle in the corner of a page. I didn’t realise that at the beginning. I thought that writing full length fiction was not palpably different, just more of the same, and I was wrong.
Now I’m wondering if I can help others through some of the stages I have been through myself. Ideally, as many of the best writing courses do, you would take people through stage by stage, with time intervals in between for practice and reflection, watching the improvement as time goes by. But those courses are expensive, and require high levels of expertise and confidence from the ‘providers’ to reassure the clients they are not wasting their time or their money.
What would I have to offer, having written only three works of fiction so far, which I have published myself. The feedback has been good, and the sales tick along nicely, but do I really have something worth sharing? And given I’m a relative novice in this business, would anyone want to put themselves in my hands even for a little while, and pay for my help? The experience of writing may be slender, but there’s one thing in all this where my experience is deep and trustworthy: I know how to help adults learn. I’ve been in the adult learning business as a freelance education consultant for over twenty years, all round the world. Most of my clients have been educators, but very varied in style, age, nationality, motivation and potential. I’m pretty good at meeting these various needs, as I should be after all this time.
So, could the experience in adult learning make up for relative inexperience as a writer? I think it might just do so, and in a couple of months I’ll get the chance to find out. I’m planning a writing workshop, for a Saturday in January, at one of our local public libraries. ( For those of you who know Cumbria, it’s in Kendal.) I want to find twenty or so people and work with them for six hours, embarking on the very early stages of ‘Writing and Publishing a Novel.’ I’m not going to start with ‘how to write a good sentence’, heading instead straight for how to find a setting and some characters, give them life and write a story that readers will enjoy. Already ideas for useful activities that will meet this purpose are beginning to bubble up, drawing on many of the best activities I’ve experienced in my own learning so far. The starting points will be setting and characters: once we have those, things begin to take off. Tackling the thorny question of getting published may be a lot to take on in a shortish day, but I know it is of interest to most aspiring writers, and here again some practical advice may be helpful.
Now I need the publicity that will bring in enough people to make it work. We’re working on the website link, but it’s likely that most people will hear about the workshop through the local libraries and media. I do hope some people come: I really want to see whether the ideas in my head will stimulate potential writers to take the plunge as I did six years ago, and am so glad I did.
by admin | Oct 4, 2014 | Authenticity, character, plotting, readers, self-publishing
In the world of self-publishing there’s always talk about the importance of a good editor, and what editors can do to improve the quality of your work. Over the past few years I’ve been fortunate to work with an editor who is also a long-standing friend. You might say that having a friend as an editor is as potentially damaging to the relationship as having a friend teach you to drive. Writing a novel is a stressful business, which can cause friction between you as the writer and the editor who might want you to ‘murder your darlings’ – the bits of deathless prose that you want to keep at all costs, even if they don’t work. Or if you are of a more anal disposition you could argue for weeks over the placing of a semi-colon or where to make two paragraphs out of one.
In my case, disagreements between my editor and myself have been mercifully rare. We’ve talked books for a couple of decades so we know each other’s likes and dislikes, and I trust her judgement about what makes a story effective. She knows I’m fairly robust and can take criticism where necessary without flouncing out or getting depressed.
Her role is two-fold. She will be the first person beyond my partner Mick with whom I’ll share the outline of a new book. She’ll see past the messiness and think about the structure and the characters and whether it makes sense and rings true. She’ll point out discontinuities, misplaced scenes, unconvincing plot twists, and she’s usually right. As the writer I can see the action in my head but sometimes I don’t capture it well enough on the page and she speaks on behalf of my future readers, asking for more detail, or less. I need that: otherwise I can make too many assumptions about the readers’ response.
That’s the stage we’re at now with the new book that’s emerging. Starting with a basic idea I’ve been fleshing it out for several weeks now, adding key scenes, fragments of dialogue, expanding from a few hundred words to a few thousand. Currently the draft outline stands at 12,000 words and still I haven’t written any of the substantive manuscript. I’ve learned to be patient, avoiding the first full draft until I’ve a pretty good idea that the basic structure is ready. Of course things will change: it’s only when you delve deeper into the characters and the story that you realise exactly how things might develop. But at this stage talking with my editor about character, structure, and plot development will be invaluable. I sent the draft outline a week or so ago and have come to London for our first meeting about it. Apprehensive? Yes, a little, but that feeling is diminishing as the number of books increases. Now I’m feeling excited, to learn what she thinks and what suggestions she will make.
After these conversations I’ll head home keen to complete the outline, break it down into chunks, re-consider the order and the chapter breaks, do any remaining necessary research and finally get started on Chapter 1. From then on, if my planning and research have been good enough, the chapters should roll on, tweaking the outline as needed as we go. This is the joy of the process, when the blurry image begins to sharpen and fizz with colour and life. This is when I’ll laugh out loud sometimes, or have to stop because the tears are getting in the way. At this stage I try to read everything out loud, listening for the rhythm of the words and the authenticity of the dialogue.
When the first draft is done, back it goes to the editor for further scrutiny, ‘tooing and froing’ between us as the glitches are ironed out. Thank heaven for word-processing and email to speed up the process. Finally after more iterations than I care to envisage right now, the penultimate ms. will be ready for the editor’s line by line scrutiny, to find and correct the miniscule errors that hide in the text. This is when I need to print out to spot the errors more easily than reading on the screen.
That’s how my editor and I work together. Others may do things differently. Professional editing, I believe, is essential. The author is simply too close to see what needs to be seen. My luck is to have found someone with all the necessary skills and who can deal with someone who doesn’t like being told what to do!
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