Starting A Novel With A Story Idea

Some people are planners and like to plot out their novels from start to finish, before they write a word.  Some are pantsers, writing into the blue without any plan, flying by the seat of their pants, and most of us will be somewhere in between.  It doesn't matter.  What does matter is that you need to start is an idea - but not just any idea.  You need a story idea.

A story idea suggests future developments.  So, you have an idea about a group of friends at a wedding - I choose  this because this is the idea I started off with.  The trouble is, a group of friends at a wedding doesn't suggest anything much in terms of story.  

You need to put in some conflict.  A group of friends at a wedding, one of whom is in love with the bride.  Immediately that suggests story development.  Who is the friend? Who is the bride?  Why does he/she love her?  Why is she marrying someone else?  Does the friend know the groom?  What is their relationship with the groom?  What is he/she going to do at the wedding?

You can recognise a good idea because it suggests lots of questions that you need to answer.  And in answering the questions, you write a novel.

10 Types of Character Names To Avoid

It's important to take care when naming your characters.  You want the reader to be absorbed into your fictional world and anything that pulls them out of that world, even if it's only for a second or two as they ponder your punctuation, is to be avoided if you possibly can.

1. Top of the list of character names to avoid is anything which doesn't have a straightforward relationship between the spelling and the pronunciation. I struggle with many Irish names such as Aibhlinn and Caoimhe even when I know what the pronunciation is supposed to be (ave-leen and kee-va respectively).

2. Tricky to pronounce ones comes next.  The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler is one of my favourite books, but is the main character's name Macon pronounced May-con or Mack-on? I've been told that there's a city in the USA which is pronounced May-con, so assumed it had to be that rather than than the French wine growing region Mack-on, but my American students struggle with it also. And what about La-a? This is apparently pronounced Ladasha. Yeah, right.

3. At least Macon is short. Rumpelstiltskin is fine for a short fairy story, but imagine a whole novel featuring him. Worse, imagine typing out Rumpelstiltskin hundreds of times.

4. But sometimes a character needs a long name, in which case it's a good idea to abbreviate it. I once knew a woman called Anastasia Rodrigues. She called herself Birdie, which was charming. Rumpelstiltskin calling himself Rumpy would be less so.

5. Russian novels defeat many people because the characters have complicated names with patronymics and diminutives used interchangeably.  It's best to have one name consistently used per character.

6. Then there are silly, famous or punning names. In my school year was a boy called John Thomas, and girls called Catherine Parr and Fanny Blood.   I have met a child called Courtney Salmon whose parents knew the pun and still went ahead with it, which is simply mean.  That's all in real life.  None of the names would work for fiction because the reader would either snigger, or wonder if the author had realised the pun whenever they read the name.

7. Inappropriate names. Names are often era specific and class related. There aren't many working class Ruperts, or upper class Chardonnays. My grandmother was called Maud, her sisters were Edith and Ethel, her brothers Harold and Claude, all of which are splendidly Edwardian names and would work well in fiction set in that period, but would sit oddly in a contemporary piece.

8. Which leads on to similar names. I'd advise against having Maud and Claude in the same piece of writing, speaking as one who discovered the hard way that having characters called Jenny, George, John and Justine was a recipe for confusion.

9. For practical, writerly considerations I'd avoid names that don't pluralise easily - Tolkein ran into this problem with the party at the beginning of Lord of the Rings: when more than one member of the Proudfoot family were in the same room, did they become Proudfeet?

10. And finally, to end with endings, especially names ending with s - Davies, Thomas, Jones.  These can be tricky even if you're confident of your ability to use apostrophes and extra s's correctly.

PS Sorry about the recent absence, I've had some internet issues.  

Dialogue Rules for Presentation

The first (and main) rule is Be Consistent.  In other words, while most dialogue is presented on an indented new line within quotation marks, 

   'Like this,' she said.

you might see dialogue presented with dashes and no indent

- Like this, she said.

- And here's some more, he added afterwards.

And there are other variations that I've seen, but the first version is most usual and the easiest to read.  So long as you are consistent - ie chose one method and stick with it - you'll be fine.  

When it's a new person speaking you always start on a new line.  However, if it's the same person speaking you don't always have to start on a new line, but can imbed the dialogue into the same paragraph.  

   'Have you eaten yet?' Meghan said.

   'No - what's for dinner?' Michael asked.

   'Boiled lamb and pickles,' she replied, wiping the carving knife on her apron.  The rain lashed at the windows, blown sideways by the unforgiving wind that whistled and whined down the chimney.  'Pickles are from the farmers' market.  They're good 'uns.'

Because the comment about the pickles comes attached to the previous bit of dialogue from Meghan, we assume that it's still Meghan speaking.  If it had been on a separate line, and indented (as below), we'd have assumed it was Michael talking. 

   'Have you eaten yet?' Meghan said.

   'No - what's for dinner?' Michael asked.

   'Boiled lamb and pickles,' she replied, wiping the carving knife on her apron.  The rain lashed at the windows, blown sideways by the unforgiving wind that whistled and whined down the chimney. 

   'Pickles are from the farmers' market.  They're good 'uns.'

Sometimes a character has a long, long speech and rather than have them ramble for page after page with no paragraph break, you need to give them a rest.  You indicate this by NOT closing the quotation marks on the previous paragraph of speech.

   '.. Boiled lamb and pickles, that's all we had to eat, in those days.  You youngsters don't know you're born, what with burger this and pineapple that. A juicy gherkin was as exciting as  condiments got in those days.

   'Mind you, I still remember that time I ate some piccalilli.  It was on a Tuesday, right after the farmers' market...etc etc.'

   'What fascinating stories you tell, Meghan,' Michael said, suppressing a yawn.

So if the first rule is Be Consistent, the second rule is Make It Clear.  If any reader ever has to work out who is speaking, you've failed in the dialogue presentation.  

Dialogue Is Talk With Purpose

My sister is over from abroad, and I've been spending a lot of time with her and my mother - and jolly nice it's been too, as we chat about family things past and present.  I think anyone else listening to our conversations would be bored to tears, but for us they are serving a purpose - that of cementing family bonds in a pleasant way.  They are not intended to entertain anyone else, just us.

It's a distinction writers need to bear in mind.  Dialogue, as written in fiction, has a primary function of entertaining the reader (or viewer or listener).  Let's suppose you have a scene of a mother and her two adult daughters talking about family.  It's serving a purpose, that of showing how the family bonds are being cemented.  But once that's been established - and it should happen pretty quickly, within half a page I'd have thought - the scene will need a new purpose.

The new purpose could be anything - a hidden agenda for one of the participants, preferably a hidden agenda for ALL of the participants, which they're trying to promote.  Secrets, long established grievances, revelations for the future - all suitable purposes to move the story on and make it interesting.

In real life, we're quite happy to ramble on all weekend about family stuff, but no reader/viewer/listener is going to put up with that.  Dialogue in fiction constantly needs new purposes or it won't work.  

When You Need To Tell Not Show

It must be the one writing command that everybody knows - Show, don't tell.  And it's true that showing, not telling, is usually the right response.  However, not always.  Sometimes you're better off telling rather than showing.  An example is when time passes in the story with nothing much happening.

The next two weeks passed without Amelia hearing from Godfrey.  She was at the point of forgetting him when the phone rang. 
"Hi, it's Godfrey," etc.  


The reader needs to know that two weeks have passed without Amelia hearing from Godfrey.  If we showed this, it would take quite a few pages to cover Amelia's two weeks.  Telling is more economical.

After the first kiss, all thoughts of going back were abandoned. They decided to eat at the pub, and spent the evening talking about everything and anything: pets they'd had when children, their favourite things to eat, their families - his mad mother, her dodgy brother - favourite films, bands, books. Everything Godfrey said Amelia thought was incredibly interesting, and by the time they were walking home hand in hand she was half way to being in love.

In this example, exactly what they talked about is irrelevant. What the reader needs to know is that they had an enjoyable evening talking about inconsequential stuff, that Amelia finds Godfrey fascinating and that she's half way to being in love with him. 

Similarly, it's OK to describe the room, for example, we don't have to 'show' that there's a table in there.  If the character makes a ham sandwich, then tell the reader they make a ham sandwich - you don't have to show them getting out the bread, butter and ham, then buttering the bread etc.  

Concentrate on showing the stuff that's important to the story - usually action - and tell the less important stuff.   

Why I Wish I Could Be LIke Ernest Hemingway

Every day I do a lot of writing.  I write emails and blog posts.  I go on Twitter.  I comment on other blog posts.  I write lists.  I write down bright ideas and plans for an imaginary future.  It's all interesting, and it has to be done, but it doesn't count as word count.  The only thing that counts as word count is words written on my novel.

Why is it so easy to write the other stuff, and so hard to write our creative work?  I was reading about Hemingway and how he put his writing first, above anything, even when it wasn't getting anywhere and everyone was saying he should give up.  I find it very hard to prioritise my writing in the same way - there's always something that needs to be done first.

I've never had any inclination to shoot elephants or catch a marlin, but oh, how I wish I could be like Ernest Hemingway.  But, let's face it, that's like wishing I was a stone lighter, or could play the piano really well or speak fluent Italian.  I could do all these things - if I made them a priority.  Or as a friend once wryly commented, 'that's easy - no kids.'

And so I plod on.  And somewhere, around the cracks and crevices of real life, the book will get written, as it always has done so.  Inch by inch, not yard by yard, let alone mile by mile.  But I will get there. I wish I could be like Ernest Hemingway, so I could get there quickly, but so long as I get there, does it really matter how I do it?

The Tale of a Reluctant Reader

Today is my son's birthday - hip hip hooray!  He arrived three weeks late one hot July evening and his first six months were shaky, but once he'd settled down he became an easy child to deal with, except he wouldn't read.  He could read, that was obvious, as he would read his reading books but reading for pleasure was unknown.

What he liked were fishing catalogues.  Long car journeys were enlivened by him asking for quizzes.  I'd give him a page number, and he'd tell me what was on it.  'Pole rod, telescopic, £48' and so on.  That went on for quite a few years.  Still no books.

He liked being read to - I have read the whole of Lord of the Rings aloud to him - but he wouldn't read himself. Then one of the booksellers in Waterstones in Salisbury suggested trying this first novel which had just come out in in paperback by someone called JK Rowling. I read chapters 1, 2 and 3, but chapter 4 he did himself, and then we alternated chapters.  I was so delighted I bought the second Harry Potter book in hardback, and he read most of that himself.

But he was still a reluctant reader.  This continued throughout his school years, and into university.  I dedicated my second novel Nice Girls Do to him:  "For Nicholas, who lights up my life even if he won't read my writing".

Then, there became a change.  He read all of Evelyn Waugh, then Hemingway, then Roth.  Dickens - the works.  The reluctant reader had become the omniverous reader.

This May, he became an editor at a leading international publishing company.  It's ironic that that reluctant reader and writer now makes his living from reading and writing.  Blood will out?  I don't know, but I learnt 2 things: firstly, JK Rowling deserves every penny she has, and secondly, there's nothing like being handsold a book by a good bookseller.  

Happy Birthday, Nick.