The Way A Character Speaks {Editing Tips}

 

It’s interesting how we write our stories and often in workshops I ask people to write me a scene, hook me in and let them think it’s because I want to see how they use devices. But what I am really doing is looking at what comes naturally. If I asked you to pick up a pen and write me an opening scene now, about a missing dog, how does it start? What is your natural storytelling voice? Who does the reader hear, you or the character?

While the omniscient narrator is still alive, these days most novels use character voice and that means first or third person… because, as I have said here before, even in third- person you can still create a limited or subjective viewpoint. So imagine not an external narrator sat in the corner of the screen saying he did, he thought, he said but as if you are that character, You have to imagine you are sat right inside their head. So the narration is as close as a first-person, right? He couldn’t believe it, hell where did she get the damn gun? Jesus, how would explain this? He had to get out. Jesus, right now he had to get the hell away from here… 

It’s in third-person… off the cuff writing so don’t judge it but can you see that this is anything but generic. Even in third-person, it’s the character’s voice you should hear and not me as the author.  Look at how other writers create these voices. In this voice we see, think, hear, make assumptions, act as if we are him and so no external view of his face as he doesn’t see it, does he? So no his eyes sparkled at that moment… how does he know?

Voice is the point in the writing that connects YOU to your READER. The reader wants to be this character and so that’s why, for me, voice is everything. I make the distinction again that I mean character voice and not ‘your voice’ as the author. That’s more about style, how you write, how you construct your sentences, the signature bits that make this story your unique way of doing it, right? That’s what you develop the more you write. No, here I mean character voice and it’s what stops the writing being generic and makes it feel real. Honestly, I learned that from reading Stephen King, the master of characterisation. Look at his work if you haven’t.

When you start a novel the voice you ‘start to’ create for a character changes as you progress through the novel. What you have to do when you edit, is look at how much of that is character development that you need for story, and how much is you developing the character the more you get to know them. The latter is the thing you need to address in the big edit. Ensure a consistent voice. As you get to know characters they start to exhibit behaviour patterns so the reader sees these as cues, he coughs when he can’t think what to say, he picks at an old pockmark when he’s anxious… and he will use memes, expressions, unique to him, as we as people do, right? This is when the character begins to truly live on the page. He attains his own identity. The way he speaks, thinks, acts in given situations, even what kind of person he is: messy, neat, a touch of OCD, outspoken etc. all start to form. Now you will feel as if his voice is natural to you. You have breathed life into a character.

Voice is all part of that characterisation and since it’s the character we hear in any given scene, chapter or the whole thing, then it needs to be right. I actually think it’s the difference between something that’s okay and something that’s great. 

When I wrote While No One Was Watching voice was so important to me and Lydia just became real. Her voice was tricky and, while most people loved her, there was the odd review that said they did not get her voice. Trust me I had a softer voice, worried I was overdoing the African-American vernacular but an editor told me to commit, do it or don’t do it at all and I did have to study to get it right, or as right as this British white girl was able! I hope I succeeded! What can I tell you, as soon as I breathed life into her, she took over and showed me this is me, this is how I walk, talk, think and you better do me justice, girl. Yes, Sir!

The aim for me is that you can pick up the book, let it fall open and know from a couple of lines whose voice this is. That for me makes it sing!

So deleting stuff… I talked earlier this week about the need to edit out those phrases, expressions that repeat, are not functional etc. That is so true. However, you also want to think about the voice. There are times when there might be a sense of repetition, a sense of recap because that is one of the aspects of the character’s personality. Look at Lydia as an example, she does tend to repeat for emphasis. The trick is to get the balance right between the wittering repetitive non-functional diatribe that reflects the way people really speak and creating a believable character with a believable voice, and one that does not bog the reader down with unnecessary repetition. It still has to function to move the plot.

Your editor should be able to make this distinction so you keep the voice but lose the filler.

So now go and look at your favourite novels and firstly ask yourself if this is a character narrator… and now look at how the voice works, is it distinctive?

I will leave you with an extract from my novel…Lydia at her finest… I hope…

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The storm is gone.

Mister Tommy is still curled up in the towel from last night when he came in lookin’ like he’d fallen in the river. Missy Cat is watchin’ me from Papa’s rocker. In the kitchen there’s half a bowl of beef stew on the floor – soul food Momma used to call it. Or maybe that was chicken stew. Either way she always said it was the way to a man’s heart, of course I wouldn’t know about that.

Don’t you leave one morsel, she would say, food is for the soul and if your soul is right everythin’ else gon’ be right. Then she would get that look as if she was seein’ into the distance. Momma always said she didn’t have the gift but when she looked at me like that with her eyes so wide they looked like poppy blooms with big black centres, I thought maybe she did.

Of course Papa, he never approved of nothin’ like that. He said it was against God. I can still hear him: There should not be found amongst you anyone who practises divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer. Now I never knew what one of them was – a necromancer, but he’d look at me real hard and no way was I gonna ask him and he’d carry on: or one who inquires of the dead. Anyone who does this – they an abomination of the Lord. And I would see the way Momma looked at me when he said that. Papa liked to quote the scriptures, yes he did. But me – little ol’ Lydia an abomination? Just as well I never knew what that meant neither.

Right now not even soul food’s gonna lift this feelin’. Like a cloud even though there’s no clouds in the sky this mornin’, just good ol’ Texan sunshine. But it’s there anyhow: a memory I put away a long time since. Matter of fact I didn’t just put it away – I closed the darn lid.

I walk to the kitchen and gaze into the fridge mumblin’ to myself: Eggs. Bread. Oatmeal. Bacon. Then I close the fridge door with a soft suckin’ sound and look at King Marms who watchin’ me like I’m some kind of crazy woman. Now I know somethin’s gonna happen. I know because I lost my appetite and that means there’s more than last night’s storm in the air.

I look at the pile of paper on the table, all kind of nonsense that comes through the door, offerin’ me all kind of things I don’t want. Except for the coupons. Papa would be so proud about that. He’d rock in that chair cuttin’ coupons like it was therapy. I used to wonder where in the scriptures it said somethin’ about cuttin’ coupons. I bet if I’d asked him he would’ve started quotin’ me the Old Testament: Thou shall cut the coupons …

And he would come home from the grocery store tellin’ me how much he saved, a whole five cents on beans he’d say like he just won the lottery. Papa was proud to own this house. He’d be tellin’ folks ’bout it like he weren’t like the other coloured folks back then. Sometimes I thought maybe he forgot his roots. But he weren’t too proud to cut coupons, no Sir.

© Debz Hobbs-Wyatt, Parthian Books, 2013

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Tomorrow I can talk about anything you want editing wise… send me suggestions, questions etc!

Keeping it Real: Characters

Characters have to sing on the page.

In all of that white space where once they did not have life, you, as the writer, give them life.

So I often have to say to my clients, to make their characters more rounded; to think of them as real people, with pasts, and experiences that have shaped them. They are a composite of all their friends, experiences, desires. Desire is important because what a character wants drives the action… and people tend to forget this. Knowing this one single thing, what a character wants, gives you the blueprint for story, a basic shape and the burning question of the story that the  climax must answer/solve/resolve. But here’s the thing,  just because you know all of the back story and foibles of character, have done your homework, know how they became the way they became remember this has to sit between the lines in the white silence of the page. The worst thing you can do is reveal it in big cluttering blocks of oh by the way you need to know exposition. Got it?

Characters have flaws; demons hiding in their cupboards and this is also vital for plot because these will form the basis of the twists and the turns of the story; facing the demons, a nemesis the antagonist might exploit, right?

Characters must have quirks; those things that make them individual; they always sing Abba when they feel apprehensive, they draw figures 8s on blotter pads when they’re thinking. They wear clothes that colour coordinate with mood… what is it that makes the different from everybody else? This adds depth and layering to character, this is what makes them memorable. Characters have to be memorable.

Characters have voice and this is also a vital part of how you allow them to connect to the reader. These days, as we move away from authorial voices we hear what our characters have to say. Not only do we hear them we invade them. Sure this is evident in first person but even in third-person, most these days tend to be limited or subjective viewpoints. The reader knows just from the way you structure the narrative on the page who speaks and thinks like that.  This is voice.

Creating believable and above all relatable characters is not rocket science, but it does make all the difference to the reader. If they care, they’re reading to the end. If characters are flat and wooden, stereotypes, predictable they’re closing the book, not finishing the story. If you give them life in all of that white space then truly GIVE THEM LIFE. Make them sing.

Character is the essence of story; it beats at its heart. Are you with me on this one?

So who is your favourite fictional character? Who does this for you?

Me… Atticus Finch perhaps?

 

Knowing your Characters

My mission this week has been to really get to know the new characters who have been writing themselves into my life.  I  gave them life early this year but have since allowed them, like spoiled children, to run over the pages in a glorious fest of their own invention. This has turned them from the crude caricatures that I started out with into flawed real, but not yet fully rounded people. And so I am so pleased I did, but they remained with their mysteries. So, armed with new notebook (A4 hardback no less) I have been asking them to tell me their stories properly this week away from the actual pages of the novel. Sit down interviews. Yeah really, which might seem an odd concept but that’s how it is.

I think reining in this control and devoting pages to each one has made a massive difference already. I am not one who advocates, as a rule, the detailed character sheets I see some writers use as I feel these too clinical for the way I write. However, this has allowed their stories to take on some new and interesting forms so I can better shape them on the page when I resume the story proper next week.

Since the threads of the plot, as I described are more akin to dots, dots that need joining, this exercise serves to show me how they connect, which, rascals that they are, with their impish grins and their mischievous ways, they were not allowing me to see clearly before.

Is there a rule to the way we write our stories and how we bring the elements of our novels together… ? No. Not a hard and fast one anyway. But I share these devices as they might be useful to my fellow travellers on this odd and wonderful journey to be better writers.

That is all. Have a wonderful day 🙂

Or maybe it should be how the characters reveal themselves…

are your characters behaving today?

When Non-Fiction Writers Write Fiction

I come across this quite a lot in my work, when people perhaps more used to writing technical documents (that was me)  historical pamphlets, text books or newspaper reports, turn their hand to fiction. This is both liberating and confining at the same time and the difference between those who seem to adjust to it easily and those who struggle, seems to be how much the writer actually reads fiction. How much they already know or can learn to grasp the concepts of narrative device for fictional story telling. Because they are different.

When someone tells me they usually write non-fiction books I can usually guess the kind of mistakes they’ll make and for the most part my instincts are right. Writing a historical text or let’s say science text requires an empirical kind of language, a generic reporting of information in the most succinct way. That in itself requires a skill you have to refine and develop. There has to be a logical reasoned flow of arguments, so the structure is key, one salient point leading to the next. Arguments need to be supported and referenced so nothing can be said without substantiation and when a personal viewpoint is presented it needs to be made clear it is the writer’s postulation but it can’t be ’emotive’. It can’t be I have a feeling or a hunch and written from the heart. Or certainly in science papers it can’t. There is a formula that comes the more you write that way. It has to be objective 🙂

So how is this so different to fiction? Well in the writing of science papers some might say there is plenty of fiction in it! But the whole style is so different. For a start fiction is all made up and therefore you want to emote! Emote! Emote! It’s now all about subjectivity and getting right into the head of characters. So those used to non-fiction often TELL. They report on the happenings in a scene like a character standing back from it. So sometimes we still hear that objective voice and it can sound flat. The writer needs to learn how to climb inside the scene and invade the character.

There is also the danger of exposition dumps; so if you write science fiction and are a scientist you are likely to overload with science, because you know it, you therefore want to show it off, right? WRONG. This is something I had to think about when I wrote the short story Mirror Image which touches on the medical horror. I’d love to develop it into a novel at some point. Because it relies on a scientific principle, I had to use some of that for the readers to understand but it had to be in everyday easy to understand language and not as an information dump. So it needs to seep into the work, it needs to exist between the lines so it’s woven subtly into the fabric of the story. And you can use characters to reveal the pertinent information, on a need-to-know basis. Knowing it as well as you do, the same can be said for example of history or finance if you’re writing a historical novel or a conspiracy thriller, does come through but there is an art to how much and how the information is imparted: not like those non-fiction texts!

Narrative device and how you structure fiction is all about the craft of the story telling itself and so it has to be done in a compelling and engaging way. It has to be filmic and visual for the reader like shooting a movie. So in fact it has to be very different to non-fictional texts. So often I see books written in the same generic flat voice and so often there is no understanding of how the fiction writers do it. I have to say, think about what you learned in writing non-fiction and then leave most of that behind.  So even structure can be played with, and often in fiction does not need quite the same linearity you see in an essay for example — that said it does need to flow, one point motivating another so there are similarities as well. And what you can take from non-fiction is brevity. Now that might seem odd but here’s what you do. You now have license to be wordy, so now you can use description and thoughts and it will capture the voice of a character and not this stilted generic voice. Once the writer has grasped what fiction allows him or her to do it’s liberating. Slough off the constraints of non-fiction writing. But once you have set yourself free to do that, then rein it in so the more the writer develops the skill, the more those skills in brevity allow the writing to be pared down. It can’t lose voice or device, it still needs to be compelling, but now some of those frills can be lost. So the same skills in editing your work will apply: so for example while you can use more description in fiction, it still has to be just the right word in the right place.

What fiction does is open new worlds to us, but in a way that allows us to be there and to truly becomes a part of it. Fiction brings new ideas and ways to see to its readers. So the power lies in reaching people outside the readership of the non-fiction books where often we preach to the converted anyway. How likely might you be to pick up a book on the Holocaust for example, unless already interested but you may well read fictional books that tackle that like The Book Thief; or assisted suicide, like Jojo Moyes’s Me Before You. It’s a great way to raise awareness but here lies a fundamental difference: not in a preachy way. Never in a really I write non-fiction but I am using this novel to impart information way. Got it?

Done well and the fiction has great power. I think it can hold more power and get to more people which is why it’s so important to have something to say in your fiction. Change the world, a word at a time.

And remember the readership of the science fiction writer, is not the same readership as the science writer who picks up text books, so if there is a take-home message to this, it’s always bear in mind who you are writing for. Stephen King calls it your ‘imaginary reader’ (in his case his wife) and says you have to bear that in mind whenever you write.

That is all!

It’s an art

If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things

What a great name for a very clever novel. While the jury is still out about the merits of the book group I have joined, we will see what happens in December’s meeting, it did mean Mum and I read Jon McGregor’s novel and how refreshing it was.

It has the feel of a collection of short stories in some ways, although all part of the one story and not disjointed. The key narrator is omniscient (one of my usual dislikes for various reasons) but not when done well and this is done well. And redeemed because some of the chapters have a first-person narrator who holds all of the elements tightly together and means you can connect to someone; which for me is essential in any story.

In a nutshell the story is set in a particular street in a city, in Northern England, and everything relates to a single event that happened on the last day of summer. The story is based on very carefully crafted observations of the people in the street, named as the man at number 21, the girl at number 19 or whatever. But even without names we get a really vivid picture of the characters and their lives. We see the man dying on cancer who won’t tell his wife. We see the twins playing in the street, the students… and you really become immersed in a single day and its strange events that lead to this something bad that happened only you don’t know what it is yet. It’s a symphony of beautiful prose and clever devices. I love the man painting his house all day, on the day that something happened and he doesn’t quite finish the last part. What a wonderful way of measuring time as the novel keeps returning to the events of that day and we know from the outset that this thing stopped him finishing that last bit, so its progression is the ticking clock, brilliant. The only character whose life we see after the event is the first-person narrator who has a secret and teases the reader along with what did happen that day.

 

This is what it says on Amazon:

‘This novel owes as much to poetry as it does to prose. Its opening, an invocation of the life of the city, is strongly reminiscent of Auden’s Night Mail in its hypnotic portrait of industrialised society…An assured debut’ Erica Wagner, The Times.

On a street in a town in the North of England, ordinary people are going through the motions of their everyday existence – street cricket, barbecues, painting windows…A young man is in love with a neighbour who does not even know his name. An old couple make their way up to the nearby bus stop. But then a terrible event shatters the quiet of the early summer evening. That this remarkable and horrific event is only poignant to those who saw it, not even meriting a mention on the local news, means that those who witness it will be altered for ever. Jon McGregor’s first novel brilliantly evokes the histories and lives of the people in the street to build up an unforgettable human panorama. Breathtakingly original, humane and moving, IF NOBODY SPEAKS OF REMARKABLE THINGS is an astonishing debut. ‘The work of a burning new talent …Jon MacGregor writes like a lyrical angel’ Daily Mail

I loved the way this is structured, for something experimental, and actually even in terms of the narrative it dares to break the rules, in its formatting, its lack of speech marks… and yet it works. I work with writers sometimes trying to be experimental and break the rules and I always say only break them if you one — really understand them, and two — it enhances the way the story is told, forcing the reader to change the way they read the words on the page. This is a good example that does just that.

Of course this is a literary novel and so it more about the characters than the plot that drives it and is a good example to illustrate the difference between the commercial and the literary. The title represents that small things in life and the novel looks at the every day and the mundane and yet significant to those people in the story.

It’s in the small observations we find ourselves.

Did someone say that, am I quoting someone or did I come up with that? I like it. It is the small things and if you get them right you paint a picture of life. I love the small details in my writing. And in fact, while my novels are more plot-driven, I do find myself looking for those tiny details to bring a character to life.

I see this more  in my short stories. It brings to mind the voyeur in The Theory of Circles story published in Unthank Books Unthology 3, one I was very proud of and it was nominated for the Pushcart. These are also observations of the comings and goings on the Crescent and is very much about the characters. See how you do this in your own writing.

Mum would not normally read this kind of book and she loved it. Unlike some novels that make it onto the Man Booker list, it is not word-heavy and the simplicity and yet beauty of the language made it feel as if every word counts. Mum’s only criticism which I kind of agree with in part, is by the end the device of using the observations on that single day was a little like watching something in slow motion. You were drawn into it and you wanted to know what happened, but Mum said she was thinking just tell us now. So perhaps it could have got to that sooner. I see what she means and it’s a valid point, but I felt that less so. I was drawn into the wanting to know and it carried me to the end, although the ending is oddly understated and yet brilliant and Mum did love that.

I urge any writer to look at this book for its differences and to see how to craft nameless characters in a wonderfully vivid way. Any book that makes me stop and say I wish I wrote that line is my kind of book. And there are many bent over pages in this book where I thought, oh what a line! Write it, save it, store it, aspire to write like that.

I will leave you to find out those for yourself.

I will be reading this book again.

I give this 5 stars.

 

BUY ME

Book clubs make you read other things and so I will be reviewing some of the books here or if I don’t persist with this particular book club (since we didn’t even discuss the book!) I will be doing my own book club with the writing group, suggesting titles and will put them here as well for anyone who wants to read along at the same time.

Have a wonderful Tuesday everyone! The chill means I am beginning to think of Christmas. I love it, but never until December, then I allow myself to succumb to it. Next week…

When truth is elusive

Lots of thoughts buzzing this weekend as I made preparations for my talk at the Rochester Literary Festival in ten days’ time. When I wrote While No One Was Watching I realised more than any other work, that truth is not something absolute and is defined by context. Yet we would tend to believe truth is a defined thing: a fact or belief  about something known to have happened. And the lie is considered a deliberate distortion of truth. But when truth is open to interpretation and is in fact really only in the mind of the believer, and a lie is only really a lie if a deliberate act, then is there such a thing as absolute truth?

When it comes to the Kennedy assassination, the quintessential conspiracy theory, truth is perhaps even more elusive. How do you know what  to believe when you have credible books by experts, equally convincing, but saying the exact opposite thing. Is what we believe weighted by how many books we read that say lone assassin versus how many say conspiracy — is that a known entity defined by how many books are actually out there and is that a figure biased by what people actually believe — or is what we think just how many books we happened to read? #random? I mean you can’t read them all? My science brain is kicking in, having worked in research so I know how many credible sources you need to say something might be probable and the errors through biased reading before you even examine the credibility of the source and author bias — I mean, even ‘factual’ books are little more than opinion a lot of the time, not absolute truth.

So I realise that there is truth in history, the known facts — Kennedy was assassinated at 12.30pm CST, on 22nd November 1963 in Dallas Texas as we rode in his motorcade, by gunshot wounds but even when I go to write from an assassin’s bullet I realise we are not moving away from absolute truth — how many assassins? The placement of the apostrophe suddenly becomes significant. So now we enter the realms of speculation and conjecture. Probability in fact!

I amassed huge amounts of information when I did my reading for While No One Was Watching. Huge. Far more than I needed, given the assassination is a catalyst for action and yes it is integral to plot but it is not an assassination novel per se. But the scientist in me has to have all the details. But truth remained elusive. The ‘factual’ books nothing more than conjecture. And while historical novelists receive critique from historians for their ‘bad version of history’; it’s a novel, by definition it’s ‘fantasy’ ; the author executing ‘creative license’ and since it means no one really knows which part is real and which is fantasy, I propose the novelist creates their own version of truth.

Stephen King claims that ‘Fiction is the truth inside the lie.’ I like that. I like that a lot. The novel is, in its purest form ‘made-up’. But, as in my novel and just about most novels you’ll read, it still needs some facets of reality to work. In my case, fact and fiction are woven together so tightly in places you can’t see the join! So the fiction writer is not so much the fantasist but the creator of a different type of truth. The truth of the story and the role of the fiction writer is to make the reader believe.

A recent psychological study said that the way we read fiction and non-fiction is different. We tend to be far more critical about non-fiction. And if we are emotionally engaged and immersed in a story — we are far more likely to believe it. And indeed the writer of the novel has failed if their reader does not believe it, right? The rules are the rules the reader has created; an un-truth in reality, look at the alternative history novels like Mark Lawson’s Idelwild, Kennedy didn’t die that day but the reader will believe that as the ‘truth’ inside the lie — right? Of course they know here he did die. But what if the fictional elements are more subtle than that, a possibility the reader hadn’t considered before that changes his view about the historical truth?

Lydia Collins in my novel is psychic and even friends who confess to initially having reservations about a ‘psychic’ narrator, said by a page or so in they found her beguiling as a narrator and believed every word. So I did what I was supposed to, right? Phew. But what about my suggestions about what really happened that day at the grassy knoll?

So there lies the crux of the question I pose at my talk, this being the case, where the factual elements and the fictional ones are so close together, will my readers also believe, if even for a fleeting moment, that there really was a little girl called Eleanor Boone who disappeared from the grassy knoll and it had to be a plot to kill Kennedy or why else is she still missing?

The question therefore is: Do fiction writers affect what we believe about history?

What do you think? What films/books/plays etc. used real  events and changed what you believed about the real event? (Even if it wasn’t actually true.) I would love to know … for my talk! Please email me or reply to this post! writer@debzhobbs-wyatt.co.uk

Have a great day everyone.

Don’t forget to book your tickets! October 1st in Kent! BOOK 

When Ideas Fall From The Sky

With my creative writing workshop looming, and having run a session recently, it reminds me that I am not that hot on writing on demand. You know that eerie silence when the leader of the workshop says you have fifteen minutes to write — ready, have an idea and… GO! Sounds of scratching pens burrowing into your soul?

Although, ideas do generally come, even if not good ones and what you write is so first draft you hope you’re not asked to read it out and show yourself for not being able to write at all, you still write something. Right? Of course you can write, it just doesn’t suit everyone writing on demand. I have sat on Arvon courses where people read these pieces that sound so polished I have to wonder if they’re just writing something they already had, bending it to fit the remit? Or they really are literary geniuses — closes notebook and pretends not to have written anything.

Some people do run with the ideas planted at workshops, so I do see their importance. I tend to use them in a workshop to get a feel for what people write (bearing in mind some, like me, don’t produce their best work that way) and it also helps me see what comfort zone they fall into. Yes, I did say comfort zone.

You see, the get set go thing has you writing what you know, there isn’t time for different. So it does show what we define as our comfort zones and prompts questions like — do you always use first person? Do you always use narrators like yourself? Do you always favour past tense? It’s actually quite a good way of seeing the ways we get set in, and suggesting come out of that and writing first person, present tense, child narrator instead of past tense, third person, elderly gentleman, might add new life to your writing. And it also shows us our weaknesses, the key being how to spot them. Writing books are great, but sometimes you don’t see the no nos, the head-hops and the telling in our own work, right?

I have some exercises in mind for my editing workshop that also show how we write, and how we define our viewpoint. And who knows where some of these prompts will lead, but what they really do is help us to look inside our own writing and ask of ourselves why we write like that. Because there lies the key to how to develop and not stay in the same place.

 

SO:

Is a great story one defined by a great idea, or can great writing carry a weak idea?

Now there’s a question and I hope you’ll answer — you need a great idea and great writing, right?  But great ideas do not come along that often, so we often have to settle for good ideas and amazing writing. Actually, as I have said here before, often the simplest story arcs and the neatest plot lines (before we get carried away with the embellishments) are often the best and the execution, in terms of how well the writer tells the story (shows the story should I say) is what will bring it to life. We can’t all have WOW ideas, but we can make a story feel wow by how well we tell it.

I am not so sure even the best writing can carry a weak idea too far though.

Take the literary story, where the character drives it, often these will make bad movies because the action might be in one room inside the head of one character, and it might be a simple conflict, making a decision to, say leave a husband? So it terms of plot and story this isn’t going to be up there with some of the plots that wow us, but give it voice, quirk (you know I love quirk) and execute it with skill and finesse and you have something special. These stories win prizes all the time.

Perhaps it’s just as well not all stories need the wow plot or we’d struggle. And anyway, I find just by being in the moment, just by showing up at my desk every day and writing, ideas do sometimes fall from the sky. My lovely little dog learned a long time ago that if she walks in the kitchen while her mum chops vegetables or slices bread, just sometimes, even when we’re not expecting it, good things sometimes fall from the sky.

Have a wonderful day everyone, always a moment away from a miracle…

Ps — still 4 places left on my workshop… so book now! http://www.debzhobbs-wyatt.co.uk/Pages/Events.aspx

Character Blog Hop

I was tagged to do this by the very talented Kirsty Ferry who I met through Bridge House and we have been involved in a number of projects together. She has gone onto great things. She was In The Spotlight on this blog and has now been signed by ChocLit.

Please have a look at Kirsty’s fabulous blog here: http://rosethornramblings.wordpress.com/2014/06/14/character-forming/

I am a little late in this and my apologies as I have been crazy busy as you know. But many thanks to Kirsty for asking me to take part. I did tag people but it seems those I asked are too busy so not sure if this will keep the chain going #fail. However I did ask Gill James so I will include the link to her blog too!

I will tell you about I Am Wolf …

What is the name of the main character? Is (s)he real or fictitious?

Amy Green and she is most definitely fictitious.

When and where is the story set?

The story has two threads of narrative. Part is set now in Alaska and is narrated by Mark Zander. The other thread is set six months ago and is narrated by Amy, set in New York initially but mostly Moscow.

What should we know about him/her?

Amy is a reporter for the New York Sun. She doesn’t need anyone. Her father is dead and her mother is an alcoholic who she hasn’t seen her in six years. She doesn’t feel connected to anything or anyone. She uses the number of likes on Facebook and the number of retweets on Twitter as a measure of who she is.

What is the main conflict? What messes up his/her life?

Amy has f##ked up again. When her boss, Jonathan, ends their  less than secret office affair, she bribes him to let her go to Moscow to cover the story of Volchitsa (Russian for She-wolf) a child allegedly raised by wolves and with no language skills. Amy does not expect to find herself on the trip with photographer Mark Zander — her ex (and perhaps the only man after her father who really loves her), or to find herself drawn to the little girl she sees on a screen at the press conference. Initially she is convinced it is all part of some elaborate hoax — until she sees her. Now the rest of the world claim it’s a hoax but not Amy.

It’s only when Amy sees the scars on the child’s wrists, like her own, she realises they are connected by the same disconnection.

What is the character’s goal?

Amy wants to help Volchitsa. But Amy is as lost as her — so maybe she needs to find herself first.

Mark wants to find Amy who is missing in Alaska — but why? What happened after she returned from Moscow? She is gone with no shoes, no cell phone, none of the trappings of her old life. Mark hopes the truth can be found in the ramblings of her time in  Moscow scribbled in a journal.

 

I want to thank Kirsty for the tag and invite Gill James, my business partner at Bridge House, Lecturer in Creative Writing at Salford University to tell us something about her character in her latest work. Gill has been a mentor to me and given me many opportunities with my writing when I was starting out. She has a string of novels, mostly young adult and you have to check out her blog here: http://gilljames.blogspot.co.uk/

 

 

What does your character want?

It seems a simple enough question but you’d be surprised how many manuscripts I read where I don’t know the answer. Since most writers are focussed determined beings who know what they want, I wonder why they sometimes forget what motivates their key characters.

I have talked about this before, but for good reason — it’s important. Characters need more than it might seem ‘real’ people need to drive their actions. In real life where we see it only from the outside, we often get only glimpses of behaviour and ponder the reason that motivates it. In fiction we can get right inside a character, we are privy to the most private thoughts and fears — and as such we should be able to work out what drives the need. Why a character never sleeps, has scars on their wrist, can’t go near even the cutest dog, avoids a certain aisle in Tescos — all these idiosyncrasies that define us as human. Not only do we need this to understand aspects of personality, but also for the overall story. If we’re unsure what a character wants, we don’t see what drives the action — and so when we reach the story’s climax, are we invested enough? Do we care about the outcome?

The main thing I see as really connecting a reader to story is investment — total complete whole immersion in the world of the protagonist. That’s why I am so in love with voice and not a lover of head-hopping. I want to live inside a character or characters as I read, and the crux of that investment is knowing what they want, and knowing quite near the beginning that’s what this book is about — answering that question, solving that puzzle, facing that dilemma.

So when you come to edit you next piece, writers, or read your next book, readers, think about that fundamental question — what does your character want?

Have a great day all!

Oh and don’t forget I will in be Chester at the end of the month signing!

What you tell yourself …

We all tell ourselves many things. We all have an inner voice saying do it, don’t do it, just eat the cake, no think of your hips, kill the darling, no let it live. It’s the interior monologues we have with ourselves that can, if too loud become a form of madness. But we need to listen, even in the stillness of a quiet moment. See if you can capture this in your own writing.

When you write from the heart, when you step inside a character this is the voice you need to connect to. Creating an interior monologue, however softly you use it in your writing, creates that added dimension to the realism of a character.

When I look at someone’s work and it has far too much telling, far too much reporting how a character feels, I ask them to listen. I ask them to find the inner voice of that narrator. In our move away from the omniscient all-seeing narrator, in a world where contemporary literature demands a connection to a character, which for me is achieved with voice, we must not forget the inner voice. There is nothing more personal than connecting to the innermost fears and emotions of a character. And while I am not a fan of the long rambling stream of consciousness writing that can get in the way of story, just a poignant moment of expression, a single line where a character hears that inner voice, can really help the reader shed the last of their own skin and realise they have stepped into the world of the character. And for me that’s exciting.

So where does this rambling come from this morning? I suggested for writing group tonight, people write a letter to themselves as a child, you know the exercise, or create a fictional such account which to me creates the more interesting exercise. Imagine what Hitler would say to himself (would he change anything?), what about Kennedy, would he tell himself not to go to Dallas that day? Would you have gone to work at the Twin Towers on the day of 9/11? If you connect to an inner voice maybe you would. Maybe it is supposed to be the day you die and no one changes that. So there forms the thread of some ideas for short stories. Not that I’ve written this yet but I am temped to take a character from While No One Was Watching, perhaps even Eleanor Boone herself, and ask her what she’s write to herself. How could you do that with other fictional characters? Lots of food for thought?

Have a good day everyone.

Why not have a go at something like this and post it here?