On the Seventh Day of Christmas My True Love Sent to Me...

...Seven Swans A-Swimming, and there is no prettier sight than one of them gliding along the water towards you. Their passage is elegant and effortless - you never see their black feet beneath the surface, hammering against the current.

It's the same with writing: your story should wash over your reader, your prose eddying, your characters making headway against the ebb and flow of your plot. Enough of the extended water metaphor, already! The point is that your reader shouldn't be aware of any of the effort you've put in. If they are conscious of all your hard work, it suggests that you are either showing off or asking for thanks and neither is good.

Some of the invisible graft that you should be doing includes:

• Researching your story – make sure that you visit any real location which features in your work and that you take plenty of pictures. If you are setting your book in the past, read everything you can about the period you have chosen. It won't do any harm to read books by other writers that cover similar ground to you, either.
• Getting to know your characters – they should never be far from your thoughts. Becoming acquainted with your hero or heroine is a bit like falling in love, you should be filled with a craving for more and more information about them. Make notes if it helps you; think about their past lives, their tastes, their ambitions, their aversions, their strengths and weaknesses. Be consumed by them.
• Planning your plot in enough detail to avoid you having to make expedient additions to it at the last moment because you haven't thought things through properly.
• Being clear about the themes of your story – remember that the plot is there to help you explore a wider world view; if it only exists as a thing in itself, your book will your book will be less satisfying.
• Editing your work – when you think you have cut every extraneous phrase that you possibly can, cut another ten percent so that you polish your prose until it sparkles.

These are some of the ways in which you can support your inspiration, the black feet hard at work beneath the surface, so that your story floats free.

I hope that 2013 challenges and rewards your creativity - Happy New Year !

On the Sixth Day of Christmas My True Love Sent to Me...

...Six geese a-laying. If you are very very lucky and have worked very very hard, one of the six just might be the goose that lays the golden egg – a book which gets published and even goes on to be a bestseller. A Christian interpretation of A Partridge in a Pear Tree would have it that the six geese represent the six days of creation and creation is very much my theme for today. I'm interested in the genesis of a story – where people source their ideas and what they do with them; how the same starting point can result in so many varying fictional interpretations; whether ideas arise more or less fully-formed or have to be teased out over a period of time; how the finished product differs from the first thought; the knock-on effect of seemingly insignificant changes. I'm obsessed by the whole process. That's why I keep a writing diary – it's a record of all the ideas I have, when I have them, and what I go on to do with them. As well as an aide memoir it's like a map to me, it tells me where I'm going, I'd be lost without it.

Writing fiction is such an idiosyncratic activity, there's no prescriptive way of doing things: over a period of time you discover what works best for you. Some people plan ahead, others take inspiration as they go along, or depend upon a bit of both. Some writers use pin boards or post-it notes or index cards, but most of them record their ideas in some form or another, so if you don't, it might be worth considering. In the end it doesn't matter how you go about it, as long as the darned egg gets laid.

On the Fifth Day of Christmas My True Love Sent to Me...

...Five gold rings. It's been suggested that these gold rings represent the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament. Alternatively they may refer to the gold ring around a pheasant's neck – some think that the early verses of A Partridge in a Pear Tree are a reference to the custom of stuffing one bird inside another inside another for the Christmas feast. Perhaps the rings also symbolise the gift of gold brought by the three Kings to the baby Jesus. Who knows?

It's all a question of interpretation, which is a source of endless fascination in fiction, where stories function on a number of different levels, each one accessible to different people in different ways. The act of interpretation is what connects the reader to the writer, It is an active process of enquiry. The trick for you as an author is to ensure that your work remains just elusive enough for the reader to have to work on it with their own imagination in order to experience it properly. If you do everything for them they will only engage with it in a passive way. If you make them do some of the work themselves, checking that two plus two really does equal four and not five as the plot seems to suggest, they will become actively immersed in the world you have created. There should be a sense of open-ended enigma in your narrative. This can be expressed through the unfolding of the plot, or by a character not being all that they seem, or in any number of other ways. Think of writing as a form of flirtation with your audience, promise and withhold, spurn and cajole, leave them in a state of creative uncertainty...

On the Fourth Day of Christmas My True Love Sent to Me...

.......Four calling birds. Aha! You might think they were calling birds, that's certainly what I've always sung, but it only takes a little light fact checking to discover that in the earliest version of the song they are actually four colly birds, which through its association with collier and coal means blackbird.

The creative writing moral for today is to do with accuracy. You should always check your facts when you are working on a story. If your narrative is set during a period when people would have spoken of colly birds, that's the term you should use. If it's set when they would have said calling, go for that. Try to avoid anachronisms as they will break the spell that you've been busy weaving. Your readers will forgive a little bit of poetic licence, but inaccuracy is unpardonable: it suggests laziness, and if someone is investing their precious time to read your book, you should pay them the respect of ensuring it is error free.

On the Third Day of Christmas My True Love Sent to Me...

......Three French hens. Now it turns out that the French hens in question are actually Faverolles, a heavy breed of utility fowl which originated in north central France in the 1860s and are characterised by their beards and muffs. They are excellent layers and good meat chickens, but because of their docile natures are prone to being bullied. Thank you Wikipedia. 

Here's a picture of one that I took -  in north-central France!

I'm telling you all of this to explain a little bit about the role that research plays in writing fiction. What I've done in the paragraph above is to overwhelm you with facts, but facts are heavy and dense and can weigh a narrative down when you actually want it to take flight. Facts can be interesting in themselves, but rarely contribute to the alchemy of good fiction. They need to be buried in the foundations of your story, underpinning of the architecture, but they shouldn't intrude too much. In creative writing terms, if I were writing about three French hens, the most interesting detail from the trove of information I've uncovered is about their docility, which is something I would be able to show in my story, rather than telling as I would a straight fact.

The hard-core information should stay privy to you, it provides the tinder to set your imagination alight. The occasional evocative detail is something you can share with your reader, but don't tell them everything, never do that, always keep them guessing, wanting to know more.

On the Second Day of Christmas My True Love Sent to Me...

......Two turtle doves who, because they mate for life, symbolise undying love – one of the great themes of fiction. Almost every major novel has a love story at the heart of it (though if you can think of ones which don't, email me because I'd like to know!)
It is a truth universally acknowledged that the course of true love does not, and in the case of fiction, should not, run smoothly. In the world of the novel love should be unrequited, thwarted, unacknowledged or forsworn. Happily ever after isn't the subject of a good book, although it may be its conclusion. The basic plot of a love story has been summed up as boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy wins girl back and although it is up to you as a writer to make this simple trajectory your own, you need to centre your story on the process through which your protagonist realises they are in love and that securing the affections of the loved one is worth any sacrifice. The element of questing which is crucial to a romance dates back to the mediaeval age of chivalry and in that sense it's a tried and tested formula.
So, if you have time on your hands during the holiday period (hah!) try sketching out a story that follows the basic principle boy meets girl etc while appearing not to. Make the story individual and distinctively your own, break any rules you like, but stick to the basic path of loving, losing, redeeming.
Think turtle doves...

On the First Day of Christmas My True Love Sent to Me...

... a partridge in a pear tree, which in creative writing terms is an excellent example of alliteration, so this is what I'm going to look at in the first verse of my Creative Writing Christmas Carol.
Alliteration is when you cluster the same consonants together for acoustic effect. The Partridge in a Pear Tree, which dates from 1780, is stuffed full of them and the fact that you have to get your tongue round the lords a leaping and the maids a milking gives the lyrics a bright staccato quality that compliments the music.The reason for using alliteration is to make your prose (or poetry) more resonant, so that the words you choose capture the sound of what you are describing. For example, seven swans a swimming perfectly sums up the slow glide of the swans swimming upstream (you see, I'm doing it too.). Alliteration isn't just used for decorative purposes, it can give emphasis to phrases (think tabloid headlines) and helps to create atmosphere as well. Used judiciously, it can add a certain je ne sais quoi to your work as it suggests stylistic confidence. It's a handy tool in the creative writing kit.

Creative Writing – Getting down with the Detail

I love this picture, taken in France last summer.

I like it because of the moody sky, the black trees, the dark earth. I like the layered light of the setting sun. It's a brooding scene, full of atmosphere.

There is - you've guessed it - a creative writing lesson to be learned from it. The presence of the three solitary birds sitting on the telegraph wire adds enormously to the emotional weight of the image. They seem so separate from each other, waiting for we don't know what. To me they add poignancy, suggesting something transitory, something small and vulnerable. In terms of the composition of the photograph, they are a tiny part of the whole, the smallest detail.

The moral for today? That it is here, in the detail, that great things occur. When you are working on a story or an individual scene, concentrate on the big picture by all means, but remember that a tiny but telling detail could do all the hard work for you.

Have a great weekend.

(Christmas) Presence for Writers

In my chequered past I was an actress. An early and indelible lesson I learned was about stage presence: if you sidle on to the stage looking as if you have no right to be there, uncertain of what to do with your hands, you're doomed from the start. You would do better to follow Laurence Olivier's advice – zigzag on, find your light, sweep your eyes once round the dress circle and begin. In this way you will take possession of the space and ensure that everybody's focus is fixed on you.

The same is true with writing. If your work is hesitant or imprecise (using too many adjectives and adverbs), if it isn't sufficiently edited, or if the construction is weak, you won't command attention. Command is the operative word here, because to write well you need to write with authority, which derives from confidence, which in turn comes from investing a good deal of time and thought into your craft until you are certain of what you are doing. Practice makes perfect, it really does.

To have a presence as a writer, to dominate the page, you need a strong and distinctive voice. You can only develop this by writing copiously and editing endlessly. Oh yes, and by reading. You should read with passionate eclecticism, leaving no page unturned.

Better get started then.

The Narrative Hinge

I took this photo of a hinge in France during the summer.

I think it's very beautiful: it is functional but the decoration of leaves and fruit (acorns? vines?) prevents it from being merely utilitarian. I like the contrast between the dark metal, the gilding and the pale wood.

I took this one in Chipping Sodbury. It is on the door to the old police station and is altogether more florid and – well – blue. Both hinges assist in the transition from one location or state to another, opening the door admitting you to the interior or ejecting you to the exterior depending on your direction of travel.

In literature, plots need hinges too. In order to propel your hero on his journey through your narrative, to make him leave his ordinary life and enter the world of your story, you might need some kind of hinge – a device such as a message, a setback or a challenge – to open the door and send him on his way. As he progresses, different portals might need to open for him, some of them leading up blind alleys, others closer to the heart of the adventure. These moments of transition, like my decorative hinges, need to be more than purely functional. If you bolt them on because you discover that you need them, the mechanism will grate and grind. If they exist as events in their own right and are neatly integrated into your story, they will operate smoothly. It's the difference between being expedient and going for an off-the-shelf option, or crafting something specific and individual.

If you are planning a story or a novel, spend some time thinking about the transitional moments in it and how you can best engineer them. Change  - in location, in outlook, in expectation, in fortune - is an essential ingredient in any narrative. If the hero doesn't change, his experience will have been in vain. A narrative hinge is the device which makes this possible.

The Literary Chicken and Egg Question?

First, find out what your hero wants, then just follow him, according to legendary sci-fi writer Ray Bradbury who, to be honest, makes it sound all too easy, but perhaps he does help to resolve the literary chicken and egg question of what comes first – plot or character.

If you come up with an ingenious plot and plonk in any old protagonist to service it, my hunch is that the end result will be two-dimensional and emotionally unsatisfying. If you start by creating a character, building her wants and needs, her hopes and fears layer by layer then you will be able to devise a plot that tests her strengths and exposes her weakness. If you know in advance what your heroine's heart's desire is, then you will be able to thwart her and subsequently to discover how far she is prepared to go to achieve it. This is the difference between a linear plot: a) happened, then b), which led to c) and one which is more organic: a) happened, which had this effect on your heroine making her feel something that caused her behaviour to change thereby influencing  your hero, which provoked him to do such and such. Putting character first enables you to explore the relationship between psychology and action and ultimately to look in a fuller sense at cause and effect.

So if somebody asks you the literary chicken and egg question, the answer is definitely chicken – it's character that should come first.

Exploring the Past by Degrees

Without getting too metaphysical and going way beyond my pay grade, we experience time in a number of different ways. How we relate to the present differs from how we relate to the recent or even the distant past, and all the way stations in between have their own subtle distinctions. As writers we can express these through the tenses we select.
Here are some of the ones we commonly use:

• Present: I write
• Present Continuous: I am writing
• Simple Past: I wrote
• Past Imperfect: I was writing
• Past Perfect: I have written
• Pluperfect: I had written
• Conditional: I would write 
• Conditional Perfect: I would have written
• Future Perfect: I will have written

In these examples the present is condensed and authoritative: I write – it's a statement of fact, whereas the present continuous I am writing sounds a little more hesitant and open-ended. The real nuances start to make themselves felt when you venture back in time. I wrote is direct and straightforward, but I was writing is somehow more suggestive: I was writing... (and then something happened to stop me?) I have written sounds emphatic, taking three words to hammer the message home. I had written takes you farther back still. It's a dead tense, an inaccessible one and I don't like it at all. I would write  sounds like someone hedging their bets - I would write but... but... but - it's an uncomfortable tense, a mitigating tense, but it's not quite so hand-wringing as the conditional perfect – I would have written (but it's too late now.) The future perfect sounds wonderfully organised and efficient, redolent of forward planning: I will have written. It's self assured in a way that the imperfect never can be.
Try substituting different verbs: I would have loved, I was hurting, I rejoice, and you start to see what a crucial contribution the choice of tense makes to what you are trying to convey. Choose wisely and you will have done yourself (!) a great favour.