When To Delete {Editing Tips}

 

All I can say is: be ruthless when it comes to anything that’s — clunky (awkward), redundant, superfluous, extraneous, clichéd, telling, overdone…

When it comes to having a nice fluidity to your narrative you have to ensure you remove things that simply don’t need to be there, simple! Take them out and if it still works then you are on the right track. Some writers think they have to say it in unique and interesting ways. While, to some extent, that might be true it can, if you work too hard, really feel forced. Then it simply doesn’t work! I have seen some wonderful metaphors and similes lost in a crowd of metaphors and similes! The trick is to use such devices sparingly and in just the right place. This gives them power. Got it?

 

Here are just a few things to ponder… I will talk about filler and the things you can lose from the actual story tomorrow!

• Description — this is important for allowing the reader to really ‘see inside the moment’, to visualise it as you intended them to, but they don’t need every single detail drawn in for them — just enough and perhaps more importantly to create the right mood, or tone, perhaps, even, to create the right sense of danger if you are leading them to the edge of a cliff face, for example. Sparing, yet vivid wins the day! So it really does come down to how you use your words and which ones. And if in a moment of great tension then whatever you do don’t stop to admire the view, make the description an active part of the movement itself. Look at how other writers do it!

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• Look at things like attributions; the ‘he said/she said’ in dialogue. You will find that a lot of the time you can remove these as long as you can stay with the flow of the conversation. Better to show some body language so we know who said it. And don’t write  ‘they paused’ — create the pause with an action! None of us stop and pause, well not really! Lose adverbs that are redundant if we can see how something is done or said. Lose different words for said when said is just fine (I have talked about this before!) Punchy and sharp!

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• Lose clichés as these are considered to be lazy prose! The tears streamed down the face… ugh! How about she dabbed her cheeks or some other more interesting way to show she was crying!

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• Telling tags: These tell why something is done or said when it’s usually obvious! She stopped the man to ask the time because she was worried she was late. Telling! If we see her rush and ask the time as she rushes we can see it, it’s shown! See what I mean?

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• Lose ‘that’ and ‘very’ and ‘just’: a lot of the time … see some of my deliberate crossings out. Also see the use of italics when I think the word is more functional so I left it in…  The way that he said it made her smile; he was just so angry (more active?); she was very jealous (though better to show this through actions… right?) Also think about some of the adverbs we overuse! Like ‘suddenly‘… So often there is no other way to interpret the action so lose it and just show the action!

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• Pleonasms: nodding the head; shrugging the shoulders; thinking in the mind… Where else? Get the idea?!!!

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The message here is very simple: if you can lose it, lose it. That way the writing becomes sharper! 🙂 Only repeat expressions or use words that are less functional in a sentence when part of character voice and there is a difference as I will show you later in the week!

Happy Tuesdaying!

 

 

The circular nature of life …

 

We all move in circles …

This post  is a little later than normal as I am ‘kind of having a few days off’ which actually really means I am doing ‘slightly less’ and looking at the size of the list I created for myself for Easter weekend, maybe not as much of a rest as planned 🙂 That’s the thing about working from home. Contrary to the popular belief we laze around and watch daytime TV — in reality we do more than ever! So this list I wrote while I sipped the first coffee of the day made me realise maybe I just ‘have’ to do things! It’s just the way I am! Can’t not! That’s me and why one of my nicknames was  The Dooer. There have been worse.

But I am doing it in a more relaxed way — she tells herself.

So as I was walking Rosie I started to ponder. And while the air has a crispness still and the mountains are frosty, the sun was shining. What a difference a day makes. Yesterday I was at a funeral for the neighbour’s dad, she is only fifteen and far too young to lose her dad — and as we walked to the church it was sunny and then it was snowing like a good ‘un. Later it was sunny again. Freaky. But today feels like spring. It looks like spring and I even saw a lamb in the field.

I got to thinking though about endings, being almost the same as beginnings.

Life is a circle and the ending is almost at the same point on the circle as the start. So what yesterday meant was the ending of one young life sadly, but the beginning of another, whether that means for those he leaves behind, or if you believe there’s more, then in where his soul has gone. And the fact that after a very sad service I had to go into town and post off the manuscript I’d been editing for a publisher, also was a lesson that life goes on. It has to.

Stories are the same and this is why ‘circular stories’ often work so well because we bring the reader back to the same place, but everything has changed. Be that in the thinking of the character, so they appear unchanged but the journey has been internal, or be that more of a physical barrier overcome, she can now walk again. Stories often have this feel of balance. I like that. Look at the story arc and you see the resting phase restored in the curve. Characters need to have been changed — or what was the point of telling the story?

One of the things I do like with endings is always leaving the reader with that sense of hope, much like our circle. It’s an ending and a new beginning.

Even the darkest ending can leave the reader with this sense of change and hope for a new direction. Perhaps it’s the unwavering optimist in me or perhaps it’s something more intuitive than that — do we want to finish a book with an ending so sad we feel despair? There has to be a sense of resolution, some sense of ‘everything might be okay.’ Right? I don’t like the ending to be happy for the sake of it, no. Or that it feels as if the writer is forcing resolutions to tie everything up too neatly. They all lived happily ever after is clichéd and unrealistic — even the optimist in me knows that. It has to feel like the right ending. But at the same time, a sense of one story ending and another beginning makes more sense to me.  Reading is like walking along a path with these characters. Characters you have got to know well, care about, empathise with. You feel their pain and their joy and then we reach the end of the lane. Let go of their hand and watch them walk away. Back to their lives? To a new life? But that is where you leave them. I don’t want to watch a character walk away and sob from the emptiness they leave behind, any more than I want to feel that at a funeral. We live. We die. End of. No, that feels too much like what the point of the journey?There, for me, needs to be meaning, relevance. Hope.

I want to watch the character walk away and feel ready to let go of their hand, even if at first reluctantly — walk back to who they are.  This is where I leave you.

What do you think?

I will be Blogging tomorrow as I have a piece for Fiction Clinic and then I will taking Monday off and resuming with In The Spotlight on Tuesday.

Have a good day all — whatever you do!

Another of Lee’s photos …

Editing, where to start?

I have covered many aspects related to writing and editing your work, so which is the most difficult?

I am amazed when I read Tweets and Blogs posts where writers complain about editing. I will tell you why. Editing is what writing is really all about — the nuts and bolts of it. It’s perhaps as much as 90% of writing and is as integral to the process as getting that idea down as a first draft, which is really only the beginning.I think of  the first draft like laying the slab of sculpting clay and forming a tentative shape of what it wants to be — we can see it’s a human or a dog or a tree let’s say and some parts will be more formed and more detailed than others. But do you leave it there? Is that it?

Of course not. Now you must sculpt, deconstruct to reconstruct, mould, craft, tweak and polish. This is the process, this is writing. There does come a point of course where you need to stand back and stop tweaking and perhaps perfection itself is elusive. But indeed it’s the editing that makes bad good and good better, fine finer and great amazing. So never be shy of the process and never think negatively about something that really is the writing process itself.

There are various forms of editing from a full plot or structural edit that usually is where you start after you’ve laid down the first draft; and there’s line editing and copy editing, oh and final proofing. People call the various forms of editing different things, but really I wouldn’t get hung up on a name and they all overlap anyway. I have also talked to people who use the term ‘development’ editing which is more to do with making ideas turn into stories and is very much an initial form of editing akin to structural editing.

When I critique I do a bit of everything. I am copy editing in the sense I am tidying and correcting issues in the narrative itself, explaining rules that are being broken or not understood, so part of it is the nuts and bolts issues, and in some ways I can’t help myself highlighting the clichés and the point of view issues, incorrect formatting in dialogue, incorrect use of semi colons and so on … but what I also point out is the place to start is to look at plot and structural issues first. The corrections and copy editing aspects need to be there to show the writer where they are making fundamental errors, but there is no point correcting all of that first when it’s likely whole sections, even characters will be lost in the big edit. What I think is key to starting the editing process is to look at what’s not working and what is, what needs to be better, as in voice, character, plot and perhaps refer to the story arc as a place to start. Ask yourself what key question the novel explores, what the conflict is that drives the story and is this clear and strong enough? Is the motivation of the key players defined enough to account for their actions and make the plot as credible as it needs to be? These are the big questions and often ones we find hard to see in our own work. So this is where seeking another opinion is useful.

Then look at the scenes in terms of functionality. I use a spreadsheet for this, especially when confronted with a first draft that needs reshaping. People talk about how every word has to count, and perhaps we think this is being too precious and if we teased apart every sentence and every paragraph, the way perhaps a poet might, we would take a lifetime to write a novel. But it does all have to count. It has to be functional; move plot, develop character and explore theme, tie into the leitmotifs you set up from the beginning. So when it comes to your edit, look at function and make sure there isn’t what we call filler … scenes that add little, that are really only padding. This is really where the story’s shape will emerge from your block of clay when you can think it terms of what a scene and then what a chapter does. If you can’t define that then perhaps it doesn’t need to be there. Perhaps there is another simpler way of giving the same information as part of another more functional scene?

Getting started is often the biggest stumbling block, and being able to stand back from your work and see its flaws.

If you can’t afford to pay someone to do this seek a writer’s opinion you can trust or even a reader although they might not have the skills you need, they might be able to tell you something seems wrong, but not how to make it better. But at the very least put that MS away for a while and then go back to it. It’s amazing what distance can do to highlight what you couldn’t see before.

 

And remember editing is process. It can’t be rushed.

If you have any editing questions please ask!

Have a good day writers and readers!

 

Things that go bump …

 

I wonder if any ghost stories are truly really scary?

What books have you read that really made the skin crawl?

And what is it about these books and these stories that really made that happen?

I, as you know, am a real fan of Stephen King, but for me, it’s not so much the horror but the psychological stories that get to me, the ones that made me see something differently.

That said, one of my all time favourites in ‘Salem’s Lot. My favourite scene, near the beginning sees the most awful creature luring a child into a graveyard. Now you might argue a graveyard is a cliché, but believe me, this worked. What added to the tension was the use of scriptures when he beckoned the child in. The whole scene is set up in a way that’s truly disturbing more than it is frightening and then he uses the most simple device. He uses three little words that for me shows his talent. I think if I saw the blood and heard the screams and had the scene painted in all its glory it wouldn’t have been so effective.

What three little words? you ask — and no it’s not a declaration of love although that might have had other disturbing connotations in another context. No, he says quite simply: It became unspeakable.

What more is there to say? And it’s not a cheat because the build up was crafted so well the imagination was already creating the images.

I remember a book I read as a child that truly disturbed me: The House on The Borderland by William Hope Hodgson. It was one I sneaked off Dad’s shelf and it was fiendish.  I just found it for free on Kindle. What I remember was the language. What today I might deem overwritten, but the images it conjured were gruesome. It will be interesting reading this again, as I now intend having downloaded it, to see if it still has the same effect.

Have a look:  House

I also found another by him that might work for Halloween. I have never read it, but it’s also free here: Ghost Finder

There are so many horror stories. This isn’t my genre per se but it does border on the psychological stuff I like.

My dad was a fan of James Herbert but something about the rat on the front of one of the books put me off. I have to confess to only reading one of his a long time ago.

I did enjoy some Dean Koontz horror at one point too.

And of course Edgar Allan Poe and The Fall of The House of Usher set the old skin prickling many years ago. I found it on Kindle for 79p here: Usher

I loved the way the now late Ray Bradbury had the most wonderful short story in The Illustrated Man that used this story … great.

What about the more contemporary ghost story? Any offers?

The problem with ghost stories is looking for something different; something original. When Bridge House sought ghost stories for Spooked, the danger of branding a book ghost stories, was some that might use some element of surprise (although I think the he was already dead cliché might be a stretch too far these days up there with it was all a dream) … we had to know it was a ghost story. But the collection worked well I think.

We also released Devils, Demons and Werewolves for young adults and I penned something for that, a little tongue in cheek Things That Go Blog in the Night. The emphasis being not so much on the dead as in ghosts, but the undead. Of course this genre, some might argue has been done to death.

I did read Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight to see what all the fuss was about. While I kind of enjoyed it, I have to confess, I didn’t see what all the fuss was about.

And as a final point, in terms of what did work for me and was a take on the classic cliché I mentioned of ‘he was already a ghost’ was a film: The Sixth Sense.  I knew nothing about the film when I saw it so I had no idea what was coming, and I usually am good at guessing. So this worked so well for me I had goose-flesh and I had to go and see it again. It is still up there for that. In a similar, but less dramatic way The Others works for a similar reason. And indeed testament that some old clichés still work.

Oddly the first story I had any real success with in 2008 was one called In Shadow that was shortlisted and published in an eBook LINK

But seeing as it’s Halloween and since I never do this for fear of it being like an ego thing, I will paste the story below. I am a better writer now, but no excuses … here it is: (oh and what I was saying about being set in a graveyard … forget it!)

 

 

 

In Shadow

 Debz Hobbs-Wyatt

My face lost to dust. Faceless.

My voice lost to whisper. Voiceless.

But my shadow. Eternal.

 

Kira had drawn a single teardrop on her cheek and painted her lips rock-chick black. She stared at the line of tea lights, watched the way the wind bent the flames over, then she joined the semi-circle. They had all painted their faces. Jodi’s cheeks streaked white, stretched out like the Scream painting. Becky’s green eyes outlined in black kohl, cat-like.

Behind them, the stones stood, thick and black and faceless. Jodi handed Kira the candle, pressed it between her fingers and stepped back. “Go on,” she said, “Say something.”

She bent, traced the outline of the name, wet against her fingertips, paused midway, watched the way the shadows flickered across the smooth white stone. “Do you really think she can hear us?”

“I thought you said it was something she saw in a film?” Becky said.

“Moonlight and Valentino,” said Kira pressing her hand to the painted teardrop. “It was one of her favourites.”

“It was?”

“She said the women in the film did it to let go.”

“Well, I think we’re freakin’ crazy,” said Jodi.

“It seemed like a good idea.”

“A lot of things seemed like a good idea in the summer,” said Jodi pulling her coat tighter. “Dope does that.”

For a moment, Kira wished it was still the summer, sat on Jodi’s porch talking endlessly about guys, about colleges, about guys some more. And of course about Samantha Black. It seemed they always talked about Samantha Black. Before it happened, they hardly ever talked about her.

“She was murdered,” people said. “Followed home by Freddy Kruger and never seen again.”  Sure.

“Vampires,” someone else said. “She was one of the undead now.” Yeah, right, this is Clovestown not freakin’ ‘Salem’s Lot.

Then there was the rumour the family were on witness protection. Sam had seen something, the babysitter killer or some crap, had to leave in the middle of the night. Come on? Little Sam Black?  Most of them didn’t even know who she was.

“We were mean,” said Jodi and they both turned to look at her. “Well we were. Always making excuses. Always too busy. God she begged sometimes, don’t you remember. And when we did let her come we’d forget she was there.”

“Don’t say that,” said Becky.

“Why not? It’s true.”

“You remember that day in school when they told us,” said Becky. “When they asked us if we knew she was being bullied. Jeez, they even sent counsellors to the school in case we needed to talk about it.”

“Except no one would,” said Kira and they turned to looked at her.  “A vow of silence.”

“They shouldn’t have got away with it,” said Becky, eyes fixed, distant.  “Okay, I’ll start,” she said, raising her voice above the wind. “I’m sorry for all the times we say we’re too busy to listen.” She looked at the others as she spoke. “For pretending not to see.”

Jodi took a step forwards, let her fingers hover without touching the stone. “I’m sorry too,” she said and they felt the wind drop, an eerie silence envelop them. “I’m sorry for keeping quiet.”

“I heard somewhere,” said Kira, “that it doesn’t matter what you do, how good a person you are, you’ll always be remembered for the one bad thing. It was like that for her. The girl who disappeared on Halloween. The girl who killed herself. The girl who felt invisible.”

They stood in silence, watched the trees move along the edges, heard an owl call somewhere. Then Becky spoke. “She was your friend Kira. You have to say something.”

“I was a lousy friend. I didn’t even know her middle name.”

“Just say something, then we can get the hell out of here.”

But Kira didn’t move. The candle almost died then resurrected between her fingers.

“Go on,” said Jodi. “You’re the one who said we needed to do this. That you had something to say.”

Kira felt the sting of a real tear. She drew in a deep breath, held on to it, let it out slowly. “Shetried to tell me,” she said, her words breaking into fragments.  “She said she was never going to see her sixteenth birthday.”

“You couldn’t have known what she was going to do,” said Becky.

“We all saw the bruises,” said Kira. “She was trying to tell me something that day. I was too busy thinking about what to wear for the freakin’ Halloween party. I told her to talk to me another time.”

Kira felt the others at her side, felt Jodi’s hand brush against hers. “Tell her how you feel.”

“As if sorry’s enough,” Kira said as she reread the name engraved in stone. Then she looked at the others. “But I don’t know what else to say.” She felt Becky push a tissue between her fingers, let it sit there for a moment. “She knows,” said Becky.

“But I wish I could do something,” said Kira.

“Come on,” said Jodi. “Let’s go. It’s freezing.”

“No!” said Kira. “We have to do something.” She looked at the name. “Let’s do something right for once. Let’s break the silence before it happens again. Put something in the school paper; expose them, one year on.”

Kira set the candle down on the grave. “Use her initials — Sisterhood Against Bullies,” she said reaching for their hands. “Let her be remembered for something good.”

Cold hands thrust into hers, Jodi with her hollow screaming cheeks and Becky with her cats eyes melting. “Okay,” they said.

“We’re sorry, Sam,” said Kira as they stood in semi-circle, forming the first part of a chain. “We’re sorry we chose not to see.”

Movement in the trees drew their attention for a moment. Perhaps someone was there. Perhaps it was the wind.

 

My face lost to dust. Faceless.

My voice lost to whisper. Voiceless.

But my shadow. Eternal.

Need more ghosts? Look at this (cover by my highly talented brother Justin Wyatt by the way — he works for Disney)

Available for Amazon here: LINK

Badly Written Ghost Stories Wanted

They say you have to know the rules to be able to break them  … so here’s your chance to show us how bad you are … 

I hadn’t realised it is actually the last Friday in the month and we should be holding another Fiction Clinic but this should be better and far more fun …

It’s a ghoulish plan that even my non-writer followers might like to have a go at, see who’s been listening to what you should be doing to write well … let’s celebrate Halloween with some badly written ghost stories.

What do I mean exactly?

Well 100 – 1000 words so it can be the opening, a piece of flash, or a whole story, we might recount while sat by a fire … make it as cliché-ridden, exposition-loaded and telling as you like, some unnatural  dialogue might be thrown in too … think about those cheesy movies, think Scream! We can post a few next week welcoming comments on how bad it is … it’s your licence to show yourself at your worst.

I will send copies of Spooked the Bridge House Ghost Stories book to the worst ones! Your comments will help me decide which deserve books! Just 100-1000 words or thereabouts … send them over to writer@debzhobbs-wyatt.co.uk for me to post with apt pictures just as they are — next week. Then you comment. Those with the best comments will WIN … for being BAD. We want every spine chilling, blood curdling, heart racing cliché you can find… send as soon as you can…

This time being bad WINS.  (Read with a deep X-Factor commentator voice followed by Wa Ha HAHAHAHA… evil laugh.)  

Yes this girl has finally lost it. They’re  coming for me soon, so don’t delay.

Make it so bad it’s GOOD.

The challenge is set …

Characters that feel real …

I am returning to a subject I have every confidence you all know something about, but since I have recently advised a client how characters really need to have a life of their own, I decided I would talk about it again — it never hurts to run a little check-list in your mind.

We all have our own styles and likewise we all have characters we like to read and to write about, one generally follows the other, although not always.

I read recently how one pet peeve of agents is the story of the classic ’empty’ housewife after staying in a marriage for 30-40 years now makes a decision and her life is plunged into some kind of peril where she must stand up for herself. The agent makes the point this has been ‘done to death’ and is a cause to cringe, no matter how beautifully it’s written. I don’t know if I entirely agree, but what I would say is I do often abandon novels because they seem ‘too samey.’ I guess this is the same thing in a way. We are all different but one thing I love is not only for characters to feel real, flaws and all, but for them to feel quirky. Even lesser characters with cameo roles might have a twitch or some odd purple flower pinned to their jacket. Maybe the bank manager wears an “I love Dolly Parton’ pin? I once had a commuter on the London underground who sat there in a suit reading Hello magazine. He only had a minor role so I wasn’t going to fall into the other error of painting in far too much irrelevant detail about him, but what I wanted, since he did have a role to play, was something that made the reader say “Oh! I thought he’d be reading The Times.” Now he becomes memorable because there was something momentarily unexpected about him.

For your main characters I really think they need to live as individuals and I love quirks and flaws. Case in point is Amy who I’m writing now. She could almost be ‘unlikeable’ if you didn’t see why she was flawed (this returns to a point I made earlier this week) or if there wasn’t something about her that showed this crass exterior was a front and inside she probably wants what we all do … LOVE. Right?

I invented another character called Bob, the Sports Editor with a bad case of OCD and while I never intended him to be there, he has an important role to play for helping Amy see a contrasting side to the story of the wolf girl … to see her as animal, as a social experiment. He feels pity for her. I might well have stretched the quirk a tad too far, they said at crit group this week, although it seems they all loved the character. Well it’s a draft that will be worked on so I might tone him down when I get to that. At the moment I think you wonder how he manages to hold down his job. Then I got to thinking that a sports editor who remembers every half-time score and every goal in the US play-offs might just benefit from his OCD. Of course I don’t make fun of the condition, not at all, in fact, if anything I hope of all the characters in the offices of the New York Sun, Bob is the nicest 🙂

Now I never planned him, and I love it when that happens. But it is a lesson in making sure your characters not only feel real, but become your Bob Spergers, Sports Editor, and no one elses.

It’s about stereotypes that I have also talked of. We need to recognise character traits, understand their motivation and the role they play … but they also need to have individual qualities about them that are as unique as the human that created them. There is no sports editor quite like animal-loving Whitey Ford fan, Bob. He is all mine.

So take a look at one of you stories and ask yourself:

• Are the characters  individual and quirky enough?
• What is their biggest fear?
• Is their motivation for action strong enough to carry the story?
• What don’t you tell the reader but it comes through in their actions?
• What are their flaws? Quirks? Mannerisms?
• Is their change in the story significant enough?

I am not one for writing huge lists of what he has in his fridge (although I probably know), what CDs he has on his shelves (although I probably know), favourite film, political party, favourite colour … etc … but  I probably know it. I personally don’t like to plan my characters in every detail before I start because my very best characters have walked in and said Hi my name is Bob and I need to touch a photograph of Yankees pitcher Whitey Ford three times to feel safe.  If you get my drift. Other facets of personality (like that Bob has 3 cats and one of them is called Spaghetti) came from the initial voice he talked to me in. By the end I will know all these other things about him (like becoming friends with someone, or maybe realising you don’t want to be friends with this person) and many things will seep into the character without saying it out loud, and, oddly, I believe if you create the character believably enough my readers would probably know the answers to many of these questions too. And for me one of the daft things about these sheets, is some of the answers are irrelevant. Favourite colour might be a metaphor for mood, but most of the time is a detail we don’t need. So don’t get bogged down with this. However, if this does work as a way for you to create wholesome credible characters than go ahead.

We all find our own ways.

And so we should.

Have a great day!

Get it right, and the voice will emerge and suddenly this little story has a whole life of its own.

Flawed and memorable characterisation, right?  Dr House

Why Feedback Matters

I will try to keep it short n sweet this morning as lots to do (I’ll probably fail though!) but I thought I  would talk about the importance of editing and critiquing, as the title says — why feedback matters. Oh not again you say! I have come across a number of writers who don’t buy into paying for editing or critiquing. Well, you don’t have to pay for it, there are many ways to get feedback. All I will say is that working as a lone ranger and not showing your work to someone for an objective opinion, can mean you don’t see even the small things. By small things I mean what I talked about yesterday. It’s easy to make beginner errors or have beginner weaknesses and without someone to point them out, you may get so used to writing that way, it becomes a hard habit to break (a song title me thinks?). Of course it is your choice but are you always the best judge of your work?

Get feedback whenever you can … but trust the opinion.

One of the things that scares people is exposure, laying it bare, their words, the ones they’ve slaved over (to coin another cliché) being mauled over like a carcass. Although as a veggie I really don’t do that — honest! But I think the problem is also one of objective versus subjective that can scare us. This is why friends and family are not always the best for this. Even avid readers do not always make the best critiquers. First of all what do they read?  Do they know or like your genre? And second how much do they know about writing? How helpful can they be? It’s one thing to say ‘this doesn’t work’ but a good critter (cute and furry like me! Less of the furry!) will offer advice about how to improve. As I say, it’s not so much about right and wrong, but good and better or bad and better whatever the case  may be. They count, every opinion counts, but get the right ones. Can a new writer tell the good from the bad advice? I’m not sure I could.

Working at it professionally (being a critter that is) I always try to be as objective as I can. It matters not what the genre or style, you have to stay true to that, but good writing is good writing and bad writing is bad writing. This applies across the board (keep them clichés coming Debz!). I have talked before about how something like critiquing is difficult to audit. In essence anyone can set up like I did. I like to think the fact I have an MA in Creative Writing, a publishing history and work as a small press means I have credentials potential clients will look at when deciding whether to work with me. But, anyone can set up to do this.  And so how is it audited? For me the huge number of returning clients and those that went on to win competitions or get published is as good a measure as anything. But I know myself, in the past, I had an agent suggest more dialogue was needed, while another looking at the same whole MS wanted less dialogue. Then it has to be your call. It’s impossible to be completely objective, but certainly the more I work with writers, the more I see the same weaknesses time and time again and I believe another critiquer would pick up on the same things.

Loosely this was tested for me in the past when clients admitted to sending the same stories to other people and how similar the reports were. One said it was so similar it was eerie but I was less blunt and more encouraging in the way I said the same thing, so they stuck with me. That’s not to say I wasn’t honest and I am sparing with my sugar coating, but I certainly hope to encourage and not destroy! I dare say it can go the other way too and some would prefer someone else. That’s the way it should be. I encourage people to seek other opinions. But I am sure the advice I give is going to be of the same nature as others in my position.

This was tested recently, when on recommendation, I submitted samples and had to do a test for the UK’s leading Literacy Consultancy.  I generated one of my in-depth reports, very similar to the ones I do with clients, on a piece they had already critiqued. This was an interesting experience and the only way to go if you want uniformity and sound advice from all your readers in an agency. I passed and was delighted to find we had indeed picked up on all the same weaknesses. There are bound to be slight differences but overall the conclusions should be consistent. This result was not only a great validation, but also means I will be doing some work for them as well 🙂

It does matter who looks at your work and I highly recommend agencies that work like this one — for professionalism, for consistency and they also have access to publisher and agents.  There are many smaller agencies and people like me, prices vary. There are online crit sites and writing groups. I guess it depends on how intimately you want someone to analyse your words and also what you can afford. There are also a lot of writing books out there. But one thing I will say, I know a number of authors who have told me they’ve read many of these books but when I’ve come to look at their work, it doesn’t show. So perhaps it’s harder to see it in our own work.

Just make sure your trust the person who works with you.

Now I must work. A special treat for you tomorrow from a successful published author telling us about self-publishing, the lovely Alison Wells.

Be inspired today

The finish Line …

Well, and I’m sure it comes as no surprise I’ll end my mini-dissection of your Blog 200 entries on the ending, more aptly I felt described here as ‘the finish line’. When you reach the end of your masterpiece, be it a short story that’s been worked and reworked until you can virtually quote the lines you’ve read them so many times, or the real feat of endurance the novel or memoir or whatever your work is … you deserve a huge glass of champers … and now I nod wisely and tell you what you don’t want to hear … “This is where the work really begins.” Sigh.  If you get it accepted you will meet several editors, is it ever finished you ask? But of course it’s the process of editing that turns great to FANTASTIC. That is how you should approach this.

I was once contacted by a writer seeking my critiquing service because they said they hated to edit, so they never did. Red light alert. Editing is writing, it’s 90% of what a writer does. I politely told that writer that if they were as serious about  having a career as a novelist, as they said they were, they better start enjoying the editing process. I was far more polite than to use these actual words, but the essence was the same. Needless to say they never emailed me back! Of course editing comes in many stages and I won’t delve into all of that again, but I will talk about endings.

One of the most common errors I see is a mad dash to the finish line. We. All. Do. It.

We often don’t realise we do it. But since the ending is the one place we usually do know where we’re heading, and if we love our ending, and even if we think we’re taking it at a nice steady pace, the danger is our passion drives us there too fast. We are so excited to show the reader how great this ending is, we don’t take the time to give it the justice it deserves.

While this might sound contradictory, it’s really not — at moments when the tension is at its highest, and your action is at its fastest (usually the climax) you need to slow it down. Now I tell my clients all the time to use short sharp pacey sentences to augment the drama, to add pace. And that’s right, but slowing it down does not mean, as I talked about yesterday, pausing to take in the scenery (at these moments no one stops to admire the sweep of the mountain ridge or the cascade of the waterfall that’s about to drown them — unless that fits some unique aspect of a poetic character who seeks death) … I mean slow it by delaying the climax and this will build the tension.

Here’s an example (plucked from the North Wales air right this second, oh God!) …

He was there. The man they said was her real father.  He was holding a shot-gun.

Ellie stepped back. She watched his face, the way he chewed his bottom lip, as she did.

He lifted the gun. A single flash. Nothingness. Death came as he fired the next shot into his own brain.

While you might think this works and it might at the end of more drama we need to build this scene.

He was there. The man they said was her real father.  He was holding a shot-gun.

Ellie stepped back. She watched his face, the way he chewed his bottom lip, as she did. The shape of his nose, flat, like hers. He was holding a shot-gun.

She felt the fence behind her, one more step. His hair was pressed flat, greasy, as if he’d been wearing a baseball cap. Her hair did the same. His fingers thick, sausage-like, balanced there, on a trigger. He was holding a shot-gun.

Voices some place; far. A dog barking some place; distant. Sirens, some place; too late.

She kept her eyes on his, same shade of green, leaking onto the same sallow cheeks. Wing beats, maybe a crow in the apple tree. The only living things in his yard cluttered with machines, a car graveyard.

The crunch of shoes on gravel.  His shoes. There was no where left for her to run.

She closed her eyes. The last thing she heard wasn’t the shot-gun boom although it came, it wasn’t the scream that slipped from her cracked lips. It was the crow, a cry that seeped into everything and drowned out the second gunshot. 

Okay, so raw, off the cuff and could be better (I know) but see how drawing out the drama that would be fast, gives the reader the sense of time slowing, of tension, of fear and this is what you need to do in these moments. You don’t need to say time slowed ( cliché!), you are showing it.

So do look at your work and make sure you haven’t fallen into the trap of dashing to the finish line because you can see it. Take your time.

Often it’s the climax before the home-coming scene or chapter where we sew up loose threads and clarify for the reader the final messages, where we do slow it down. And rightly so. But it’s the scenes before it, the climax we often gallop to. So then the home-coming feels as if we missed something to get there. The runner was on the blocks and the next minute he’s crossing the finish line in first place and you have him back at home holding the gold medal he never thought he’d win. And while that might have been the point of the story, the victory after all he’s overcome, it will feel bland if the climax was weak — even if it’s a great ending!

Think of the ending (oh here comes Debz favourite food analogy) as the last bite of the sandwich. You should leave them satisfied, full but not overwhelmed but wanting to eat that sandwich again and again. They will dwell on that last bite. This is what will resonate. So now you have those last lines you thought about so often. Get them right and you give them that lip-smacking wow feeling when they snap the covers of the book shut. (Okay so maybe they click the off button on their Kindle but the first one feels so much better!)

While writers do spend a long time on beginnings and endings, also remember if you can write that well in those parts, go back and now make sure it all reads that well! You can do it!

I will look at the actual endings of the Blog pieces tomorrow as time is dashing by, see now I am rushing to the finish post … do you feel cheated?

Well owing to its episodic nature, you’ll just have to tune into tomorrow. I hope!

Here’s an ending I can quote line by line and have since childhood. Know what it is yet? (Did you read that with an Australian accent?) And ‘Googling’ it is cheating, come on anyone can do that! By the way is the verb ‘to Google’ in the dictionary yet? How times change.

‘and here my story ends. My troubles are all over, and I am at home; and often before I am quite awake, I fancy I am still in the orchard at Birtwick, standing with my old friends under the apple-trees.’

“So you start running first … and I’ll follow …”

The It Factor …

Thanks for the 5 entries received so far for the  ‘It’ Factor Blog 200 Challenge! Keep ’em rolling and I will also comment (if only on brief) on all of them next Friday or ongoing in the week after if we have a lot of them!

I called it the It factor because it seems to be that all elusive something agents and publishers are looking for, but hard to define.

I was looking back at some old stuff of mine recently and it’s a great way to see how far we’ve come on our journey and how much we’ve learned. If, like me, you’re trying to get a novel published, the ‘near-misses’; the ‘almosts’ tell us how far we’ve come since the straight-off rejections. And I was reading only today, how many novelists who do make it, often have two, three maybe five old novels stashed away that never made it. At first you might think that was a lot of time, and what’s to show for it? But then you only have to delve a little deeper to realise how those represent the journey and you could not be where you are, and have the success that comes without those learning stages.  No one said it was going to be easy!

The reason for this challenge is to see how effective 2oo words can be at showing off your writing skills, and how far along this journey you are. When an agent or publisher picks up your MS, first of all they need to see from the outset you’ve followed the guidelines and it’s not on pink paper in comic sans, with photos of the children you need to feed stapled to the begging query letter … not that I think any of my lovely followers would do that … but an agent once told me they had received something like that … no kidding! Well here, posting on a Blog the formatting is done, more or less. But then they read and this is your chance to capture them. While I have said 200 words, and you submit more than this to an agent, I can tell you that those 200 words they first read, sometimes less, can be enough to tell them how experienced the writer is and if they know how to write.

At Bridge House when I select stories, I know by the end of the first page if this is worth reading more. Trust me I do always read on and I hope to read it all, but often, if I read poorly written, clichéd, error-ridden work, I will reject it right away. Now that may sound harsh, but it’s honest. I have had clients say that they submitted the first three chapters but they’re not the best and the agent would’ve loved it if they’d got to chapter 7 … all they needed was to request a full MS.  Wake up. If you’re a good writer, all of it has to be good. And if the opening (the part usually worked on and polished the most isn’t enough to have ‘It Factor’ stamped on it) … it’s unlikely the rest will.

So I can’t wait to read all the entries and see who has it? I think you all will have ‘it’ somewhere in the writing, but does the whole piece as an overall text have it? We’ll see …

Keep them coming!

Submit your entries here: (yesterday’s post): Add to comments

Have a great weekend everyone, happy writing 🙂

It’s all in the arc …

Arc not Ark

Following on from the fab guest post yesterday — if you didn’t see it, please have a read, I thought I would ponder for a few moments on the story arc. And I will talk about how this applies to non-fiction as well, in reference to memoir.

I have  talked about the story arc a few times, but one of the key weaknesses I see in novels and shorts I critique professionally, is lack of a real narrative drive or focus, something both propelling and compelling the reader on. And it all comes down to two key things: motivation of the characters, i.e. what’s at stake? And lack of direction or goal: what question forms the key focus of your story and therefore will be answered at the climax?

Think of the plot as a set of barriers standing in the way of achieving the protagonist’s goal – physical, mental, organic (as in your antagonists) and the story as how your protagonist overcomes: this is the real essence of story-telling. And it matters not what genre you write in, and even in non-fiction it also needs to be there to create a story and not just a series of unrelated anecdotes.

When you know this, you already have a basic shape. In a novel, even your lesser characters will have their own arcs (character arcs are a slightly different thing and I will talk about these another time as well) but you need to have a key theme or question and those of your supporting characters will also explore — they will augment the main theme.

A basic story arc should not, in my opinion, be formulaic, but more prescriptive. If your story isn’t quite working, if you find it’s not driving the reader on as it should, refer back to an arc and ask yourself if you are building the tension, through a series of inciting incidents towards a defined climactic scene. Are you introducing enough barriers to the fulfilment of this goal,  and after the climax make sure you have the cooling off scene, the homecoming that ties up most (not necessarily all) of the loose ends in a satisfying but not clichéd ending.

Non-fiction generally uses a more empirical language. For many years I wrote in science speak …

The results clearly indicate a shift in control bias. This is further supported by the evidence of Waal & Wall (2001: pp 101-103) who show the effects on temperature in ice boxes and a 10% degradation of cps values across all sample groups … 

This is made up but see the type of language used. It’s far more ‘reportative’ as in telling in succinct and precise language. In fiction you can be far more loose and wordy and creative, although succinctness and brevity is also important. Over-wordy, over-clunky fiction, for the sake of it, for me takes you away from story, and should be handled with care. Writers often like to show off; but here’s my feeling on this (a slight digression I know) … if you overuse ‘cleverness’ – i.e. don’t say it in 5 words, say it in 50, you will lose some of the gems — they will be buried and the reader needs to mine them! Use them sparingly and in just the right place, you’re using a winning passing shot that can not go unnoticed!  See what I did there, a little metaphorical language here and there can work. I hope!

In fiction I like to be right in the  character’s head and I like immediacy, past perfect tenses, the he had thought, he had wondered … these tend to slow it, like he began to walk … while genre and style might lend itself to this in some cases, I usually find shifting to  he thought, he wondered and he walked, are much more direct. And I really dislike hindsight in fiction unless used as a one-off narrative device to teaser the reader on. The little did he know moments. It weakens narrative.

BUT … now some of these things you will use in memoir. You often write memoirs in reflection and with hindsight, but the best memoir will do exactly what a novel will do and use the same combination of narrative drivers, devices … get into the head of the character. But you have more leeway for reflection and hindsight and you are reporting fact. But still use showing if you really want to engage your reader. Writing memories as scenes, as you might in a novel or flashback, as I showed Amanda Green when we worked on her memoir, made it far more visual and engaged the reader more.

But because of the use of so many texts, emails, journal entries and scenes, in her case it felt fragmented initially. For us the trick was to retain enough of this at moments of high stress, when her mental health was an issue, as a way of showing the mood swings and the ’emotional chaos’ for want of a better expression, so the writing became the metaphor, but it also needed compelling narrative to comment on and bring these fragments into a story, with a shape, or it was very hard to read.

But I did say no little did I know moments. But you can in memoir say things like of course at the time I thought all that was normal. I thought I was behaving like any teenager. But I wasn’t. Was I?  I think this is more compelling because the reader knew when they bought the book and read the prologue this is a journey of someone who was diagnosed with a mental illness. And in fact Amanda pivots part 1 around the meetings with the psychiatrist, using flashbacks, to show the diagnosis from the outset, more or less. So I think here reflection is key to exploring theme.

In fiction I always think it’s better to show the action as it happens. That’s not to say you don’t have novels that start at the end, you know your protagonist is in jail for murdering his wife … and now the story goes back to show how it came about … but you would still then just show it. No need for the commentary or reflection.

I also showed Amanda how to take the truth, as it happened, but tell it in a way that really built the tension, as you would in a novel. This is in essence what creative non-fiction does. It loses the empirical speak, although it will use some of that in these narrative sections that comment on and bring the pieces into some kind of logical order, but it uses far more emotion and is structured so there is no reporting, showing the scenes and ending on moments of drama to tease the reader on. It is not distorting fact, merely using a narrative that engages the reader the most. And this we did work on in Amanda’s memoir, so it’s not just telling the story … it’s really bringing it to life. And as I said yesterday, parts that did not add to the story, or explore the theme (in this case her journey into mental health issues and her journey back to finding herself) we cut. Hard when it’s someone’s life … but necessary for story, in exactly the same way in fiction we cut superfluous scenes that do not develop character, move plot or explore theme.

 

Right now I need to write … but I will leave you with a story arc … use it against your own work and see if you have the right arc. Every story ever told, those that play around with chronology, go backwards, use parallel universes, every film, play, opera … all use this basic form … but of course with variations and most stories use some form of three act structure.

Hope it’s been helpful.