What To Leave Out?

I think I've mentioned elsewhere in my blog (several times -- avoid repetition, Ed) that I'm interested in the gaps and spaces in a creative work; in what is alluded to, rather than what is spelt out.  This is particularly true when it comes to characterisation.

To write effectively about a character, you need to know as much as possible about them: their past, their inner life, their appearance, their proclivities, what irritates them, what unsettles them -- the list is endless, but it is ground you have to cover in order to be able to bring them to life on the page.

The million-dollar question is how to convey all the knowledge you have garnered.  Although there are many facts you need to know about your hero or heroine, you don't necessarily have to write them all down for your reader, as it would slow the action immeasurably and have them wandering off to put the kettle on (and find a better book to read).

Rather than swamp them with fast flowing torrents of information, occasionally it can be productive to leave them guessing about some things, to suggest significance without spelling it out too much.  To put this to the test, write yourself a list of a dozen or so important facts about your main character and then choose one that offers most scope for ambiguity, one that raises more questions than it answers.  Start writing about this and see where it leads you.  It's the ambivalent parts of human nature that are usually the most interesting.

Think how a door which is open a crack, rather than flung wide, inflames your curiosity:

Well at least it does mine....

Writing and Therapy - A Quick PS

Here's an afterthought from my previous post. I've just been reading interviews with Edward St Aubyn as I am so enjoying his novel, Mother's Milk.  No writer could have drawn more comprehensively on their own experience than he has, so I was interested in his remark about writing and therapy.

'If it does have any therapeutic value, the only way to get access to it is to write without any therapeutic intent. You transform experience into, for want of a better word, art."

 Enough, already. See you soon.

Writing as therapy? Only lie on the couch if you want to read a good book, not write one

There's a blurry old line between writing and therapy.  I've taught classes where people were unable to finish reading their work because they were crying and in many ways both reading and writing highly-charged literature can be cathartic.

If it's catharsis you are after -- that purging release of emotion, then using your work as a kind of therapy may be a good idea.  If your aim is to write to the very best of your ability, it might be better to do your therapy elsewhere.

I suspect I'm on potentially controversial ground here.  Many feel that their inner demons drive their creativity and provide the passion to write in the first place. I know from my own work that my experience informs the subjects I choose and how I tackle them.  However, my hunch is that unless you confront major personal issues and come to terms with what they have to tell you in some forum other than your story or novel, you will be the servant of them in your writing, rather than the master.  You also risk writing and rewriting the same stuff, because unless you lay your ghosts they keep coming back to haunt you.

Perhaps an added bonus of doing therapy before you write, rather than as part of the process, is that you will have already visited dark places, fascinating, uncomfortable places, but will be (hopefully) be healed enough to write about them, a kind of reporting from the interior, without coming to further harm.

What Would Shakespeare Give Away for World Book Night?

It's Shakespeare's birthday, which gives me license to remember the dysfunctional number of times I stood at the back of the stalls of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, when standing cost 70p a ticket, dizzy with excitement at seeing Eileen Atkins play Rosalind, or Ian Richardson/Richard Pasco play Richard the Second, almost fainting with the intensity of seeing my first Romeo and Juliet with Estelle Kohler and Timothy Dalton (even though the staging was such that we could only see their feet in the balcony scene), and just don't get me started on Alan Howard's Henry the Fifth...

Those were the days when I first glimpsed the alchemy of language, how words can transfigure thought and emotion into something mystical and oceanic. I felt more alive in the blackened back of the stalls than I ever did in my own life. The private magic of a great read still has that effect on me today.  So does attacking the base metal of my own writing, searching for gold, searching for gold.

It's not just Shakespeare's birthday, it's World Book Night as well, so to mark the double celebration, take some time to think what books have meant in your own life. I handed out free copies of Carol Ann Duffy's The World's Wife last year.  This year, I'm going to follow Nicola Morgan's excellent suggestion and buy a book to give away - benefiting both the author and the recipient.

I wonder what Shakespeare would give away for World Book Night?

Why Losing Your Balance Can Be Good for You

Ooh, Google have changed all the templates for my blog, so that I feel as if I'm all thumbs today.  I'm in a state of cyber bewilderment and don't quite know if I'm on my head or my heels.

As a writer, I know that I should hold onto this state, (although in my heart I long to be up, running and totally proficient). But while my technological balance (and every other kind of balance) is uncertain, I'm sure that the potential for interesting things to happen is far greater than normal.  When your feet are solidly on the ground, you may find you are less creative.  If you are mid-somersault you may see things from a more interesting perspective

With that thought in my mind, I'm going to stop writing and fumble around behind the scenes for a bit, to find out how everything fits together.

It's no good.  I'm lying to you.  Actually, I'm going to sneak off and read Mother's Milk by Edward St Aubin - prose whetted like a blade and a talent to make you weep. 

Enjoy the weekend...

What Crap TV Can Teach Creative Writers

Following on from my last post about the seamless and subtle Twenty Twelve currently showing on BBC 2, it occurred to me that you don't have to watch excellent television if you're curious to learn how good writing is created.  You can learn just as much from watching crap TV.

To this end, you might like to cast your eyes over The Syndicate, Kay Mellor's "gritty" drama about the lives of a group of lottery winners.  See if you can last for a whole episode, and when you next find yourself in front of your computer with a blank page ready and waiting, think of everything this drama has attempted, and do the opposite.

The programme aspires to tragedy, setting brother against brother in true biblical style, but in spite of sterling work by the likes of Timothy Spall and Lorraine Ashbourne, it never manages to get beyond hollow melodrama.

There are a few reasons for this: some of the plotting is clunky -- it is unlikely and far-fetched and because it strains of the willing suspension of disbelief whereby we collude in the story we are being told, it becomes difficult to believe.  This has a knock-on effect. If the action is implausible, then the emotional responses of the characters starts to seem empty.  In an attempt to breathe life into a dodgy script, many of the actors put their heart and soul into their performances, but they only come across as histrionic and insincere.  There is a lesson here -- don't over-compensate, if there is a flaw in your work, go back to the drawing board and rewrite until it rings true.

For a story, or a script, or a novel to succeed, it must have integrity.  Never write for effect -- to create beautiful prose, or to evoke emotion as Mellor has done -- because you will be putting the cart before the horse. Instead write in the pursuit of truth, both in terms of how you plot your narrative, so the action stays plausible within the conventions you have established, and in terms of the characters who are caught in its grip.  And before you set to work, remind yourself again and again: less is more, less is more. Wise writers will always leave some work for their readers to do.

A Master Class from Twenty Twelve

For a consummate example of how to hit a number of creative writing buttons all in a one-er, I suggest you - read Dorothea Brand's excellent book Becoming a Writer?  No, (but you should). Join an evening class? No, (but it may not be a bad idea). Work your way through all the great writers from Austen to Zola to try and fathom their literary mysteries? No, (although it's a great plan for the summer).

I recommend that you sit down and watch an episode of Twenty Twelve,  BBC2's pitch perfect comedy drama about the coming Olympics. Setting aside bravura performances from Hugh Bonneville and Olivia Colman, there is much you can learn from the flawless writing:

• It is understated.
• It is deftly, panifully observed.
• The characterisation is extraordinarily subtle - each person is recognisable, empathetic, irritating, amusing -- in other words, utterly human.
• The relationships it explores are fractious, misconstrued, unrequited and irresistibly fascinating.
• It deals with a familiar subject, something we all think we know a little bit about, so we are able to bring our own impressions to bear upon it, we can make a connection easily and that way half the author's work is done.
• Although it is written to be funny, the pathos and poignancy of every situation and in every personality is fully explored, giving each episode depth as well as humour.
• It has a David and Goliath feel to it -- the flawed, ordinary guy taking on big issues and overcoming them.

 So curl up on the sofa next Friday at 10 p.m. and turn on, tune in, and see what there is to learn...

Keeping It in the Family?

I heard an excellent edition of Start the Week on Radio Four a while ago, in which Andrew Marr interviewed a number of writers - AS Byatt, Colm Toibin and Will Eaves - about authors and their families.  I guess as a writer your family of origin is the most potent seedbed for ideas, although all the guests on the programme were in broad agreement that writing about them, if not an outright exercise of aggressive power, ran the risk of introducing 'disequilibrium.'

One of them referred to the relationship between WB Yeats and his father, "There may have been love involved, but love wasn't mentioned very much." This struck me as a fascinating starting point for a story.  It hints at the complexities of family ties, which both support and fetter. It also conjures up the emotional inarticulacy which makes writing such an interesting exercise - how people are unable to say what they feel, how oblique 'close' relationships can be, and how terrifying we find intimacy.

All of this is the stuff of great fiction, the indissoluble marriage of the domestic and the profound.  If you don't start writing it, I just might...

Reading - When Once Just Isn't Enough

There was an interesting article in The Observer last weekend, where a number of writers talked about books they had taken the trouble to read not once, but twice.  The piece was worth reading if only for a perfect image from one of my favourite authors, Geoff Dyer,

I'm not a great rereader – or at least, I'm a failed one: I decide to reread something I read 20 years ago and then give up because the original experience, presumed forgotten, turns out to have been mysteriously preserved, like a leaf between the pages.

 Mostly, I'm an accidental re-reader.  I was completely immersed The End of the Affair by Graham Greene and it wasn't until the very last page that I realised I'd read it before -- I even found the other copy on my bookshelves, testament, perhaps, to having my heart broken too many times. I don't even like Graham Green, that much.

I can think of two good reasons to re-read something: sometimes, it can be like a reunion with an old friend.  I can't bear contemplate ending my days without having read Wuthering Heights again and I've sobbed my way through it two or three times already.  Other than indulgence, it can be useful, as a writer, to re-read something you have really enjoyed the moment you finish it.  Devour it once for pleasure, then go through it forensically for a second time, trying to work out how the magic tricks are done.

With so many fantastic books waiting to be read for the first time, it can seem almost sacrilegious to return to an old favourite.  What books would you go back to, and why?

Anything but Silence - How to Use Sound in Your Writing

It's raining and I can hear the uncertain syncopation of the raindrops hitting the roof of my house-shaped shed.  It's evocative to listen to: small, staccato needle points of sound.  If I close my eyes, it takes me back to camping trips as a child: the caravan windows steaming up, condensation dripping from all the fittings, the dampness of my sleeping bag.

Even if you're not writing for radio (but especially if you are) sound can be a valuable tool for the writer.  It can help you out with a number of things.

• It can create mood and atmosphere.
• It can kindle memories, providing something familiar to which your reader can relate.
• It can shift the focus of a scene -- a sudden noise will make your reader do the literary equivalent of turning their head to see what has happened. 
• It can shock -- think of the sound of skin being peeled back from human flesh.
• It can create suspense -- imagine the noise of a dress being slowly unzipped, or of a knife being eased from its sheath.

Close your eyes for a moment, and listen to all the sounds around you, and think how you might use them, creatively...

Necessarye Coniunction

We're putting the finishing touches to our house, now that the builders have fled.  Downstairs, we have an interior window looking in to a little snug which doesn't get much natural light.  To remedy this we commissioned glass artist Simon Howard to make a panel for us - cue drumroll, cymbals, fanfare...

The inspiration for it came from East Coker, part of the Four Quartets by TS Eliot.

The association of man and woman 
In daunsinge, signifying matrimonie—
A dignified and commodiois sacrament.
Two and two, necessarye coniunction,

Simon took the text from the last line and abstracted it - the coloured glass represents the negative space between the letters.  The panel has been acid-etched and sandblasted and my picture doesn't do justice to the shimmering texture of it.

As a writer and avid reader, I'm interested in the gaps between words.  Perhaps it goes back to a childhood fascination with the cracks in the pavement and the terrible fate which might befall you if you stepped on one. These gaps, these creative spaces, are freighted with the possibility that something unexpected might materialise, or that everything could fall apart. I love their ambivalence, their mystery.  I've already spent ages staring at Simon's opalescent panel. What he's created for us out of glass is as delicate and fleeting as breath on cold air.

Characterisation -- Reproducing or Creating?

When I first started writing, *drilling in the background, more shelves going up* many of the characters I wrote about were based on people that I knew.  Even if I didn't know them personally, I knew about them, in particular how they looked. To begin with, especially with minor characters,  I found this incredibly helpful. It was a way in, a prop; perhaps it had something to do with the comfort of the familiar. It took me a while to discover that this Central Casting approach to characterisation had its limitations.

Two problems spring to mind.

If you are writing about somebody you know, slicking a fictional gloss over them to protect both them and you, it becomes very hard to get away from the fact that ultimately you are working in facsimile. You may come to feel that you are involved in reproduction, rather than creation and it's difficult not to let this devalue what you are working on

If you are basing a character on somebody you vaguely know, it is unexpectedly challenging to get beyond vaguely knowing them.  What you do know about them can get in the way about what you'd like to invent. They don't shed the actual qualities they have, simply for your convenience, and gradually you find that your hands are tied. The semi intimacy with which you began is likely to be precisely where you end up, and for the writer and the reader, this is a highly unsatisfactory experience.

In the end, it is elating to cut yourself free from what is familiar. That fearfully clean slate is actully full of possibilities. For your reader to form a relationship with your protagonist, you need to do so as well, even if that implies ups and downs and moments of heartbreak. The characters who plague and confound you, who won't leave you alone but niggle away at your subconscious, are the ones you start by not knowing very well, but come to love the best.

P.S. Ed Reardon's Week is back on Radio 4 tonight -- I never know whether to laugh or cry.

A Curtsey to Coetzee

OMG I've finally, at last, got round to reading Disgrace, JM Coetzee's epic account of the dirty, jagged inevitable march of justice. Respect. The gaunt narrative follows the downfall of college lecturer David Lurie, from the seduction of one of his students which he perpetrates, to the horrific, metaphorically retributive rape of his own daughter, which he is unable to forestall. I won't anatomise the plot in too much detail - read the book yourself, if only for the pure notes Coetzee's prose strikes.


What did it teach me most as a writer? How important it is to empathise with your main character, for your readers to identify with her even if they don't like her very much - it's an extraordinarily subtle trick to pull off. You might want to have a go at it yourself: try writing a piece in which your heroine is initially alienating, but whom you end up liking inspite of yourself. How to do it? Start with her journey towards self knowledge, and see where it leads....