by admin | Dec 23, 2014 | A Good Liar, character, Cumbria, Fallout, Forgiven, historical fiction, Lake District, readers, self-publishing
I’m sure more famous authors get loads of letters from readers, but for me it’s a new phenomenon: just a few, usually handwritten, in a card or on their own in an envelope. The writers tell me what they’ve enjoyed about my books. If they’re local, they say how they enjoy recognising places in West Cumbria – where the trilogy is set – and what they themselves remember about them. They talk too about the characters who live their lives in this setting. It feels like well-intentioned gossip, sharing details of what you’ve noticed with someone else. When the first book, ‘A Good Liar’ came out, I got an email, or was it a tweet, which said, ‘Oh that Jessie, I could slap her.’ I could too: Jessie has a tendency to come out with things carelessly at times, getting herself into all sorts of trouble. She’s a complicated woman, which is what I always wanted her to be, and not always likeable, although I still feel that she’s fundamentally a good person. Hence the title.
Other letters are less specific, just expressions of enjoyment and looking forward to the next book, which is due out in November 2015 by the way. I was in a local bookshop the other day and on the stand where my books are displayed was a little note, left over from the summer, which read. ‘Yes it’s here! Book 3 Fallout has arrived!’ I’m sure the queue was a little less long that those for the new Harry Potter books, but I was tickled by the idea of people I didn’t know waiting for a book to appear and wanting to get reading.
My readers sometimes tell me which of the three books they’ve enjoyed the most, and there’s no pattern to that choice, except that the quietest of the three ‘Forgiven’ seems to appeal to fewer people even though I think it’s the best of the three. What I’ve been waiting for and not had yet is something from people who personally remember the Windscale Fire of 1957, which features in ‘Fallout’, telling me that I’ve got it wrong. If I have, then no-one is telling me that, but maybe they just wouldn’t say anything at all. West Cumbrian communication can be a bit ’round-about’, and I am an ‘off-comer’ after all. If anyone’s reading this who has anything to say about any of my books, I would really love to hear from you. Feedback – it’s what keeps us going.
Generally, it’s hard for authors to get an idea of who’s reading what you’ve written, and how they feel about it. I read continually myself, and have never yet written to an author about a book, assuming that what I say about it will be immaterial and probably ignored. Now I wonder whether I should be more willing to write a note, or send a card. If you have a publisher, maybe it’s easier for readers to find you. Or maybe you just reach more readers and therefore increase the chance of communication.
Most of the feedback I receive is from the people I meet when I’m doing readings around this region, but unless I sometimes write down what is said it’s hard later to remember the specifics. When I’m struggling, as I am now, with the final versions of plot and sequences of events and a few relevant references to contemporary life, all the fiddly bits before the real enjoyment of writing starts, I have to stop and think that these details will be noticed and enjoyed, and that what I’m doing matters to someone beyond myself. I write to be read, not as a cathartic personal release. How the writing is received is interesting to me. It doesn’t determine how I write, but it’s certainly part of what encourages me to keep doing so.
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 9, 2014 | readers, writing workshops
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the man with the unprounounceable name, introduced us some years ago to the concept of ‘Flow’, defined in Wikipedia thus:
“Flow, also known as Zone, is the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. “
This is what I want to think about today, sitting waiting for a cab to take me to the airport in Winnipeg and thence to Fredericton, NB, to start – hopefully – ‘flowing’ through next week. You would think that as a writer I would be extolling the impact of writing, making me feel fully immersed, etc etc. but during the past weeks in Winnipeg I’ve not been writing my fourth novel, I’ve been earning the money to publish it.
At least, that’s what I thought this work was for, but I’d forgotten what a challenge and a joy it can be to present ideas that are part of your life to other people. There have been times during this work when ‘flow’ exactly captures my state of mind. I’ve never done any extreme sports, but I think this may be the intellectual equivalent, using all your brain, senses and responses to get ideas across. No script, and several variables to juggle – the prior knowledge of the group, the ways they learn, the ideas that interest them, time, lunch, the goals to be reached by the end of the day. You’re prepared, obviously, but what really prompts the words that come out of your mouth is ‘flow’, and when that happens you hear yourself making connections you didn’t even know were in your mind, remembering apposite facts and ideas from long ago and weaving them in, spontaneously.
That’s teaching. In my case it’s teaching adults. Subject knowledge is important only because it releases your mind from remembering things to the qualitatively different activity of making connections and adapting what you know to the particular circumstances of the moment. My subject knowledge is about teaching and student assessment, and it’s been accumulating over forty years. I should be pretty good at it by now.
But this wasn’t the plan. Six years ago I made up my mind to learn how to write fiction, and I’m doing that. I wanted to write a novel, and I did – eventually – and then I wrote two more and I’m slowly getting better. There are times in the writing process when I achieve that flow, when hours pass unnoticed, and I feel that same exhilaration as I’ve felt at times in the past weeks here in Winnipeg. But the difference lies in the very private nature of writing as opposed to the public nature of teaching. Imagine writing with the reader at your shoulder, thinking, asking questions, laughing, being moved, right there, on the spot. That’s what teaching feels like sometimes. And when I’m writing I miss that. It’s a lonely business, and I’m a social animal. That doesn’t mean I need people all around me all the time, not at all. I live alone, travel and work alone, and crave my own company from time to time. But somehow I need to bring the buzz of interaction into my writing life. Maybe that’s where I could run workshops about writing, but I don’t have the forty years accumulated understanding that my education life has provided, and which is so central to the ‘flow’ of teaching. Maybe I should just keep going with the education side of my life, not just to earn money to support my writing, but to reward myself with additional opportunities for the ‘rush’ of ‘flow’. I’ll have to think about that.
by admin | Oct 19, 2014 | A Good Liar, character, opening paragraph, readers
I probably know the answer to this question as well as you do: any mention of SEX usually creates a spike in the visitors to any web site, but you can’t talk about SEX all the time. So in between we bloggers have to talk about less stimulating – sorry – things such as genre or structure or titles. Last week’s post about the structure of a trilogy appeared to go down like a lead budgie, even though it was on my mind and I wanted to write about it, so I did. What’s currently on my mind may be unattractive to the average blog reader, but it’s interesting to me, so here goes.
In the past few days I’ve been thinking about the link between visual images and what I write, and I’m asking myself “Is my best writing ‘filmic?'”. When I look at other authors’ writing I most enjoy, they seem to create strong visual images. I can see, not just feel or understand, what the writer is presenting to me. The first paragraph of Dickens’ Bleak House and its depiction of London fog for example, or the opening of The Road to Coorain by Jill Ker Conway, about the grasslands of Australia. Just a few nights ago, I dreamed very vividly about the opening scene of book that’s currently taking shape in my head. It was intensely visual, like the opening scene of a film. I could see how the camera would pan, the close-ups and the wider shots. It woke me up, a sign that this scene was in a sense ‘cooked’ and ready.
The problem with the description I’m looking for is that it can cut across the dictum about ‘show don’t tell’. You can’t represent the visual image I have in mind through the speech of one of the characters, without defying every rule of authentic dialogue. A passing by-stander wouldn’t say to herself, or her dog, ‘Look at the green of the samfire and how it’s growing in the mud round our feet,’ or ‘I’m struck by the pale gleam of the rising sun on tide-washed sand’. If the reader is to see the scene as I see it I need to describe it, in my authorial voice, the voice I’m trying to use as little as possible.
Maybe my aversion to this authorial intervention is misplaced and needs to be re-considered. Sadly, I’ve received very little detailed feedback about my writing so far, but I was once told by an author I respect that what she loved was this – the opening paragraph of Chapter 5 in ‘A Good Liar’.
“August. A hazy Sunday. Breeze from the south, hardly stirring the heavy trees. The land breathed slowly, imperceptibly, as if asleep under the sun. Tides crept up and down shingle and sand, silent save for a creamy whisper at the edge. On the beach the air shimmered over warm stones. Fields and valleys smelled of grass. Sheep crowded into shade, panting.”
There’s no action in this piece, except the movement of the tide. There’s no dialogue. I needed this scene-setting passage to explain a significant encounter for one of my characters. And the opening scene of the new book will need the same sense of place, as the setting is almost a character in itself, influencing both the people and the events of the story. What I really want is to find the words that will share the image in my head with the reader in an unforgettable way, that the reader will want to read again and again and share with others, like a poem.
So maybe I’ll think again about ‘show don’t tell’ and allow myself the indulgence of carefully worded description every now and then, something I’ll enjoy reading out loud, to myself and to others.
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!
by admin | Sep 7, 2014 | character, historical fiction, plotting, readers, research, structure, writing
For two days I’ve been in the company of writers, at the first Borderlines Book Festival in Carlisle, and my mind is almost too busy to cope. I arrived here by car, plane and train from the Outer Hebrides on Friday night, made my own small contribution to the event running a workshop on ‘Writing Local Fiction’ on Saturday morning, and then, relieved of any responsibility, settled down to enjoy learning from others. What I have learned since then is enough to keep this blog going for weeks, but for now I’ll choose just one element that especially interested me yesterday.
It was a panel discussion presented as a ‘Clash of the Genres’ with two historical novelists, William Ryan and Ben Kane, versus two crime/thriller writers Matt Hilton and Sheila Quigley. The ‘debate’ that developed was less a clash of genres than a clash of approaches to the task of writing. Each of the four very successful writers organised their writing in completely different ways. Matt Hilton turned a childhood addiction to American thrillers into a career emulating that genre from a distance, producing American style thrillers of his own for several years before he ever visited the USA. When he visits there now I wonder how some of his readers receive his broad Cumbrian accent. Hilton has absorbed the details of his specific genre so well that his reproduction of it is perfect. He was never ‘taught’ to write, he just learned it through reading. He draws his inspiration and ideas from visual images, a juxtaposition of landscape and objects and people that sparks the kernel of the story. ‘Who is that man?’ he asks himself. ‘Where has he come from? Why is wearing that, and what’s happening over that hill?’
Sheila Quigley also learned to write through reading, but finds her material not in photographic images from another country but all around her home in the north-east of England, in the street, the pub, the post office; intensely local personal landscapes that she peoples with characters that come into her head fully formed and write their stories through her. One of her readers described her talent as ‘channeling’, as a medium between the spirits of her characters and the words that pour into her laptop. She has never planned any of her work more than four pages ahead, writing down what she sees and hears in her head. She began writing little pieces about the area and ‘sending them off’ – to whom and where I wondered – until one day an agent rang from London and asked if she could write crime fiction set in the north-east. ‘Of course,’ she replied, not knowing the first thing about crime fiction, and many books later she is still going strong. Could that still happen now, or has publishing become too risk-averse?
Historical novelist Ben Kane was a vet in a former life who grew tired of the long hours and broken weekends on call and looked for another way to earn a living. Boyhood in Ireland – with no television – had brought a passion for books and history that led him inexorably towards as he put it, ‘men with swords’ and that’s what he writes about, mostly the Roman Army and Empire. Not content with sedentary research, and as a way of keeping fit, he decided to do his research experientially, dressing as a Roman legionary to walk Hadrian’s Wall for example, to get the full sensation of such a life. Whatever he does, it works, and he obviously loves every minute of it.
Finally, chairing the panel with charm and grace, was William Ryan, also Irish, also a unstoppable reader as a child who ended up barrister before he too tired of the long hours and heavy demands and turned his hand to something else. This time the passion was Soviet Russia in the 1930s, with an underlying theme befitting a barrister, the search for truth and justice. His hero, Captain Korolev, shares that passion, in the unpromising and dangerous context of Stalin’s dictatorship. Research for Ryan is both digital and personal, and the planning meticulous, such a contrast to the unplanned narratives from Quigley. Of the four, only Ryan had subjected himself to a ‘Creative Writing’ course, and though he ‘learned a great deal from it’ – he is a very polite man – he was offered during a two year course no guidance whatsoever about the structure of full-length fiction.
There’ll be more in future posts about the usefulness or otherwise of ‘Creative Writing’ as an academic discipline with qualifications. For now, I need to reflect on the diversity of how writers approach their work, and how I do so myself. In my morning workshop yesterday I tried to share the approach I can see developing for me with the three books now done and a fourth beginning to take shape. Research? Yes, early on to get a feel for the period and then again later to answer specific questions that the emerging narrative throws up. Planning ahead? Essential for me, but still allowing that in the end the characters themselves may react in unpredicted ways, bending the story to fit their demands. And what of the characters themselves? The most important lesson I have learned and acted upon has been to start to write not about the plot but about the life stories of my characters, their childhoods, their parents, schooling, likes and dislikes, how they speak, dress, walk. Only a fraction of all this might find its way into the story, but the story is enriched by it. It is that deeper understanding of who your people are, filtered through the imagination and onto the page, that allows those same people to take your little plot and make it something worthwhile and interesting. I don’t think Dan Brown ever understood that, or maybe he didn’t need to as his books sold in the millions with some of the weakest characters and the most clunky dialogue that ever appeared between book covers. I’m trying not to think about the implications of that.
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