A staggering work of no importance whatsoever

 

So I’m walking into the house with my shopping, and the neighbour says, Hi, and I say Hey, how’s it going, and the neighbour says, Well, Nick is swimming now, he loves it, he was terrified of the water at first but he’s taken to it like a fish... The question is, do I care? No? Why not? And, what would it take to make me care?

A story is like your kid. You brought it into the world, you helped it grow, everything about it is fascinating to you. But why should anyone else care? Obviously they care about their own kids, if they have any. But they also care about some kids they’re not related to, so why not yours?

Read more »

Plotting In Your Pants

When it comes to writing a story there are the two widely known approaches. You can plan thing in advance and then follow the instructions like a map. Or you can wing it and see what happens as the story develops organically.

People have their preferences, but which is better? Which is easier, and which requires more effort? Does one lead to a dry, mechanical tale, and the other to a meandering, unfocused mess? How can you tell which suits you and your story best?

Read more »

Need to Know: the basis of all story

Any story requires the reader to want to know what happens next. This need to know is called suspense. Usually people think of the big, terrifying, heart pumping moments when they think of the term, but wondering if you need to buy milk is also suspense.

If you can build and maintain suspense in a story, at whatever level, it will be more interesting to read for the reader. See the box above? What’s inside? Not knowing makes you curious, huh?

What if I then say, I’ll tell you tomorrow, and take the box away?

Read more »

U is for Unexpected Delivery

Within a story the plot will go in various directions and surprises and revelations will occur. But in between all that people will move around and interact, and that’s where writers can come undone. Informing readers of ordinary activities in ordinary ways is going to slide through their heads without really registering. Even if a story is true, if the events are described accurately and with authentic touches, that won’t necessarily make it interesting.

Giving a character goal, even a simple one like making a coffee, and then showing them achieving that goal, is dull. But some writers think if they show the process in great detail it implants meaning and resonance to the mundane. And sometimes it does (but not automatically — you have to know what you’re doing and what effect it will have on the reader). If I think I know what’s going on, and it turns out it’s exactly what I thought, whether it was a big plot twist or some tiny incidental moment, it will deaden my curiosity. Even if there’s plenty of exciting things to come, I will detach from the story, skim or skip bits or give up altogether, because my desire to know what happens next isn’t being stimulated. And dammit, it’s the writer's job to stimulate me.

Read more »

K is for Kill Your Darlings?

This well-known phrase, attributed to various people, basically means that sometimes we hang onto something in the a purely because we like the sound of it. It may be irrelevant, it may be long winded or unbalancing, it may disrupt flow and pace, but because it’s clever, or funny or lyrical, we see it as having earned its place.  I think we all know when we've written a nicely turned out phrase and who wouldn't want to show that off? The problem is it means the rest of the narrative suffers and, difficult as it may be, the sage thing to do is to remove it.

I don't necessarily agree.

Read more »

I is for Inciting Interest

At some point in the first chapter the main character will have to deal with something. Some issue will arise, a problem will present itself, a revelation will be made, a decision will be considered. This inciting incident will set the story into motion, and tell the reader the sort of thing they can expect. The tone, the theme, the level of realism. Sometimes it occurs on the first page, maybe even in the first line. Or it can take a while for it to emerge, allowing us to get to know the characters and the setting.

The inciting incident doesn't necessarily have to be a problem the main character will be dealing with throughout the whole story. It can be one of a series of events that lead into whatever the story is about. But it has to capture the reader’s interest as it is the first point of entry into the story proper.

Big or small, of domestic or global importance, two things need to be considered. Firstly how are you going to present whatever it is? And secondly what are the consequences?

Read more »

Book Autopsy 2: A Love Story

In my last post I analysed the first chapter of Ira Levin's A Kiss Before Dying, but to be honest this was something of a soft target. As a thriller it naturally follows most of the 'rules' of contemporary literature popular with creative writing teachers and how-to books. Starting off with a hook, keeping pace high, using action to move the plot, these are all fairly standard for the genre.

My dissection of the first chapter still revealed some interesting things, but I think it would be even more intriguing to take the same approach with a book from a completely different genre: Romance.

Read more »

Take my advice

I enjoy reading “how to write” type books. Whether they're on fiction, screenwriting or plays, by established writers explaining their method, or by somebody you’ve never heard of revealing their secret formula for instant success. I find the subject fascinating — but just because their system works for them doesn’t mean it’s going to work for me.

I tend to write all night, with plenty of coffee and hard boiled eggs for sustenance. At dawn I stop everything and go jump in my private lake, cutting through the water like a fart-powered  torpedo.

—Stephen King

The problem with most of these sorts of books is this:

Read more »

Seeing is believing

The problem with most obvious and familiar emotions is that a word like ‘angry’ gives us an instant idea of what angry means, but not a picture. But when you refer to a specific time when a specific character got angry, what does that really mean? What does it look like? All you really convey is a general, clichéd concept of the kind of mood that person was in. You don’t put the reader in the scene, seeing it.

There are two ways to overcome this.

Read more »

Build a story, leave the door open

A story is more than a series of events that happen. Scenes have to be interesting, they have to build and they have to play a role in communicating the overall narrative. But how do you know if the scene you have written is helping to tell the story or distracting from it? One way to decide is to look at the scene and ask yourself what is its significance? Not to the character, or even to the writer, but to the story.

Most things that happen in a story can be said to have some sort of influence on the greater scheme of things if you really push it. A girl walking down the street on the way to school who notices a red sports car, which is then never mentioned again, could be said to have some symbolic or metaphorical resonance with the themes of the story. That's fine, but once you know that, you are then able to decide whether that's the best way to achieve that effect (which it may well be). Problem is most people don't do that and leave it hanging as a thing that happened in the story just because. And that's what it will read like.

If a woman is getting ready to go for a job interview and the phone rings and it’s some guy trying to convince her to switch phone plans, and once she gets rid of him she goes off to her a job interview, what’s the significance to her story? If it makes her late and she misses the bus, then that could have a very strong impact. If the guy tells her that she'd be stupid to pass up this limited special offer and she gets very irate, calling him a cocksucker who should stick his head up his own ass so he has somewhere quiet to eat his bag of dicks, and then puts the phone down and goes back to being very normal and getting ready (pink shirt or white shirt?) that tells us something about her but it has a particular significance since she's going for a job interview where that aspect of her personality may prove to be a liability (although personally I'd hire her on the spot).

Read more »