C is for Craft

Mozart was a genius. His talent flowed without apparent effort. But Mozart had to learn his craft before he started composing. Same with writing, but the road to creative writing craft is less clear cut than learning scales and arpeggios.

Now, you don't have to have creative writing tuition or read shedloads of How To books to learn craft, and there are plenty of people out there who have successful writing careers without a single bit of formal teaching. What those people do is what writers have done over the past hundreds of years: read.

Most writers (all writers?) are fervent readers. Read, read, read and unconsciously you pick up a lot of craft techniques. There are other ways of learning craft techniques. Most writers (all writers?) are listeners and eavesdroppers. Most writers (all writers?) are curious about people and the world around them. Most writers (all writers?) are communicators - that's why so many have early careers in professions like acting, teaching, journalism.

For some writers, reading, listening, communicating etc is enough. For others, formally learning craft - whether from a book or a teacher - is a short cut. By craft I mean techniques such as:

Chapter ends and pacing, to control the reader experience.

Ways to heighten tension eg sentence/chapter length, action

Using action to enliven essentially passive description

Dialogue as a tool to convey character and characterisation

Language to add interest and colour to prose

Editing skills

Reading aloud to learn about rhythm and cadence

Knowing when to dramatise and when to summarise

Find yourself a teacher who can and will teach craft (not all creative writing teachers can or do). Failing that, read some books. My favourite book on craft technique is Self Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King. Flair, talent, the stuff that Mozart was made of is something else. You get born with that. But we can all learn craft and, while we may not all be Mozarts (I'm certainly not) we can all be damn fine writers.

B is for Baggage

We've all got it, even if we think we don't.  Baggage is the mind set we carry around with us, also known as hang-ups.  Sometimes it's good - an innate confidence for example that makes us persist in the face of rejection.  Sometimes it's not as beneficial - an innate confidence that makes us reject any feedback from others.  

I think writers benefit from acknowledging their baggage and learning when it's useful and when it's detrimental and how to maximise the former and minimise the latter.  

My baggage:  

I tend to stick with what I know and have to push myself out of my comfort zone.  When I'm writing I have to stop myself from trotting out the same situations/locations.  Now I often leave out those details on the first draft so I can spend some time thinking up different set ups from my first reactions.  When I'm teaching I often get the students to come up with words, or situations rather than coming with them pre-supplied.  I'm always surprised at the range of what they suggest.  

I was brought up with the idea that pushing yourself forward was bad.  I don't like self-promotion, either doing it myself or hearing it from others.  I vaguely hope that by being as good as you can be, somehow the magic universe will notice you.  Don't get me wrong, I'm still a believer in self deprecation and not shoving oneself to the front, but I've also learned that the magic universe doesn't automatically notice you.  You HAVE to get your work (and often, yourself) out there.  If this doesn't come naturally to you, you need to find ways to get round it.  I like chatting, so Twitter suits me, especially as overt self-promotion will lose followers.  I don't like parties and schmoozing so I avoid those situations even though networking is good for careers.

Confidence, lack of.  And the flip side of this is being overly impressed (and then depressed) by other people's achievements.  Letting what other people achieve affect you is daft, but it's an easy trap to fall into.  When I was doing my MA there was one person who became obsessed by other students' marks.  It visibly corroded her belief in herself and her writing as she grumbled and complained about X getting a higher mark for their writing than she had done.  I could suffer from this...instead I mentally stick my fingers in my ears and sing La La La when someone has just got some mega deal or sold shedloads in Tesco.  It's irrational - just because X has succeeded doesn't mean I won't, so there's no reason to skulk back to my laptop thinking 'what's the point in carrying on?'  

This post could go on and on and on, but I'd better stop for fear of boring you - which of course is yet another bit of my baggage...

A is for Action

Action is everything for a writer, both in terms of their writing and in what they do.  Action in writing is simply the stuff that happens - it's not necessarily all singing, all exploding, car chases, fights and the like, it can be interior stuff such as realisations or changes in attitude, as well as external actions like going shopping or meeting a friend.  

The sort of action you find in a novel determines the type of novel it is.  Something by Anita Brookner, for example, has very different actions compared to a novel by Dan Brown, but both are full of actions.  

But action in itself doesn't make for interesting reading.  It has to be action with meaning, action that carries change with it.  When you're starting out writing it's often easy to forget this aspect of action.  Characters may be doing lots of things, but they can be staying in the same place, whether it's on a action filled journey that is just one event after another, never moving the story forwards, or a character hanging about thinking things over but never moving on.  

I think it's also one of the reasons people get stuck at about 30,000 words.  The initial burst of energy gets them quite a long way along, but then the action begins to dry up.  Characters and the writing get stuck.  The solution is to move the action along through change.  Raymond Chandler is supposed to have suggested having a dame enter holding a smoking gun, Terry Pratchett suggests a naked woman bursting in brandishing a flaming sword.  Not necessarily advice to be taken literally (especially if you're writing a contemporary rom com) but the point is to change the situation dramatically.

Action is also important in a writer's life.  If you don't DO stuff, then nothing will happen.  Doing means writing, then putting the writing out there (if being read by others is what you want).  Even if you're famous you've got to make some effort  (a celebrity once came to one of my novel writing classes, complete with an agent and a publisher, but was stuck at doing the writing - several years later, there's still no sign of a novel).  

Do it, without fretting too much about the end result.  Do it, get it done, and then fret - but do it first.  As Goethe said, 'Action has magic and power in it.'

Really, Really Wanting It

I find it worrying how many times you hear on reality talent programmes how the contestants really want it, it being whatever the prize is. They really, really want it. Really, really, really want it. You see this on X Factor and America's Next Top Model and - oh, anything that involves a judge deciding who to pick and who to drop. Sometimes the judge even says approvingly, 'A really wants it'.

I must admit my reaction is 'So what?' Sure, if A really wants to win, they'll perhaps work harder, spend more time on whatever it is they're trying to achieve, and that's good, but just wanting it? Is that supposed to out-weigh talent, and ability and skill?

I worry that 'wanting it' leads to a feeling of entitlement. 'This is what I want (and I really, really want it), therefore I should have it.' If you want to be a singer or a model then you're not going to get far without the support of people already working in the industry. Really wanting it, in real life, doesn't get you far unless you also have talent, ability, skill, persistence etc.

Until recently, that's been true for writing. You write a novel and yes, you've always been able to self-publish, but before e-publishing finances dictated small print runs and limited access to distribution networks. Now, e-publishing has taken those barriers away, and for good measure, Amazon and the rest will deal with all your invoicing and payments. All you have to do is the formatting, marketing and spending the money received.

I think e-publishing is great. I think it's creating opportunities for writers (although there are also some worrying signs that it could be financially disastrous long term).

But I do worry that feelings of entitlement might lead writers rushing in to self-publish before their books are ready on the grounds that they want publication now. Just because you feel ready, just because you want it really really badly, doesn't mean you are in fact ready for publication.

When I started writing fiction I had no idea of the amount of work that went into bringing a short story, let alone a novel, up to scratch. And I'd spent the previous ten years writing and editing non-fiction for my living. I was genuinely surprised that my short stories didn't automatically get short listed for every competition they went up for. Gradually I learned...

But I was still convinced that the first version of Adultery for Beginners was amazing, and was equally amazed that no one wanted it. No one even asked to read more. After a long period of sulking, I re-wrote and ended up cutting 90%. Yup, that's how good that first version was.

I've heard that feeling repeated by other authors. They look at their first writing (often because they're thinking of e-publishing earlier works which are now out of print) which at the time they thought was brilliant and shudder.

Self-publishing blogs you can read comments like: I'm going to e-publish when I'm finished because I don't want to go through the hassle of submitting, or I don't like people commenting on my work, or I can't be bothered with rewriting it. And the response is sometimes things like: good for you, and go for it, and conventional publishing is dead. Luckily there are also people who comment saying, are you sure it's ready? Because a writer may really, really want it, and think their book is ready, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it is.

One of the great things about e-publishing is how easy it is to tell friends about a great book you read. It's also very easy to tell someone about a bad one. You and your book may be ready, but is the readership ready for your book? The question isn't about how much you really really want it. It's about how much the readership really, really want it.

Pacing In A Novel

Learning how to pace your writing is an important skill, but the basics are simple: Sometimes go faster, and sometimes go slowly.

If you go fast, fast, fast, fast you begin to lose impact. It's like someone shouting all the time; after a while you switch off. If you go slow, slow, slow, slow, your readers will begin to drift off.

You need to go forwards in a mixture of fast and slow scenes, though not in such an obvious pattern as fast, slow, fast, slow, fast, slow which will become predictable. And as you get towards the end, the chances are that you'll have more fast scenes than slow ones.

So, what makes a scene fast? Usually lots of action and dialogue, and exciting things happening. A slow scene will more likely include a lot of internal thought and reflection on what's just happened.

If you're unsure, try listing your scenes on index cards. Then lay them out on the floor or a big table along an imaginary central line. Scenes above the line are fast (and the further above the line, the faster they are), scenes below the line are slow (and the further below the line, the slower they are). Ideally, your index cards should zig zag across the floor or table in a varied and unpredictable way.

This is an easy way to check your pace and see if there are any places where nothing much happens for a while (ie several cards together below the line) or if there are clumps of action and excitement (ie several cards together above the line). You can do it for each scene too, and it should show a similarly varied pattern.

And finally, you can check that all your best bits - the ones that you rate highest up the excitement scale - are spread out throughout the novel.

Everything needs to have light and shade and a change of pace to them. Think of a film like Die Hard. Yes, there are bangs and explosions and exciting stuff happening. But there are also sections where Bruce chats to the policeman in a reflective way, the calm before the next storm. Slow, slow, quick, quick, slow or quick, quick, slow, quick, slow, quick - it doesn't matter what the order is so long as it is there.

Using An Egg Timer For Writing

When my children were small, every writing minute counted and I was quite ruthless about getting on with it when I had the opportunity. Now my time is less regimented by the school run, and I have a tendency to let the minutes and hours drift away.

It's been a couple of weeks now since I brushed the dust off my Swiss Army Egg Timer (not nearly as iconic as their penknife) and began to use it regularly. First and foremost, I use it to limit my on-line time. I can't say I've been particularly disciplined - I have a habit of setting it for 15 minutes, then when the time runs out, setting it for another 15 minutes - but the theory is sound, and I'm more aware about how much time I can spend on-line.

As well as using it to limit on-line time, and time spent on domestic chores, I've been using the egg timer for writing. I've been having concentrated bursts of just writing anything down connected with the book, such as ten minutes on what the main character is wearing right now or what her bedroom looks like. I may never use the information, but writing it down is triggering other ideas and thoughts, and I'm sure it will add to the depth of my descriptions. And hey, it's only ten minutes.

I've also been using the timer for my main writing. I find I have random pockets of time, perhaps half an hour before I have to go out. Before my egg timer I would faff around, perhaps doing something domestic or grabbing a cup of tea, or randomly looking at stuff on line. With my egg timer I now sit down and write, knowing that I'm against the clock. It's surprising how much you can get done in half an hour, and how those half hours add up.

It's the great cliche - I'd write a novel if I only had the time. Well, most of us do have the time if we limit all the other stuff. And I'm find my trusty Swiss Army Egg Timer a useful tool to help me do just that.

Workshoppers and Readers - Why You Need Both

I am a BIG fan of workshopping - giving and getting feedback is the quickest way to develop as a writer, in my opinion. But it shouldn't be used as the only method of working on a novel.

The problem is that workshops, by their nature, can only look at small pieces at a time - a chapter or maybe two would be the maximum. You can (and should) edit each section thoroughly but be careful of losing sight of the bigger picture. The question 'Does the story work?' can only be answered by looking at the novel as a whole, not in little sections.

So, you need to find some people who will be readers. It's a good idea if they can be different to your workshoppers so they can come to the story fresh. It's good if they're writers too, but they don't have to be, so long as they read your genre. That's essential. Ask them about the story, ask them about how the characters are coming across, ask them about pace. Don't ask them to do a line edit - leave that for your workshop group.

I know several people who have spent years workshopping their novels, when IMO they'd be better off sending it out to readers. I understand why people do this - no one wants to ask a friend (let alone a book doctor) to commit several hours of their time to reading your novel until it's as perfect as you can possibly make it - but at some point it has to be done.

The perfect pattern would be: workshop until the first draft is done. Then send it out to readers, to check the story as whole works. Then back to workshopping to refine the text. Repeat as required.

Think of your editing as beautiful embroidery on a dress. There's little point in doing the finest work if the fabric of the dress is poor, or the style is wrong. Getting that right is what a reader will help you to do, and the workshop will help with the embroidery.