Christmas Cracker Number Ten - Endings

New Year's Eve feels like a good time to be thinking about how to end things.  As the year draws to a close you start to get some kind of perspective on how it has been and I rather like reading and watching the various media roundups of the highs and lows -- it  helps you to take stock.

Being at the cusp of the year like this does illustrate one of the key points of a good ending to a story : it is not just a case of looking back at what has happened, because as one year ends another one, fraught with all kinds of possibilities, beckons. It's the same in fiction. A well tuned narrative should conclude in  a way that at some level anticipates the future. This is not just for the purposes of writing a sequel — I’m not that cynical — but it can give your novel ongoing momentum and in a strange way that enhances the reality of the world you and the reader have together created: it can continue without you; somehow, it has an independent existence.

Happy 2011!

Christmas Cracker Number Nine - Comings and Goings

With the New Year looming I guess it's kind of natural to be thinking of comings and goings, of one sequence ending and another beginning, so perhaps it is timely to channel these musings and put them to some good use. I'm talking scene structure here...

Sometimes it's difficult to judge when to start a scene and also when to finish it.  You might think this is a peculiar proposition -- that a scene begins at the beginning and goes on until it reaches some kind of conclusion, and in many cases it should do just that.  However, if you want to add a little spice and zest to your narrative, it can be a good idea to arrive late and leave early, if you catch my drift.

If you start right at the beginning of a scene the first couple of pages can seem rather prosaic, an accumulation of necessary information leading eventually to a climax.. In the Scottish play (old habits and superstitions die hard) the famous sleepwalking scene starts with Lady M. in mid flow, we don't see her getting out of bed and fishing for her slippers, we can assume this has already happened (maybe not the slippers - ed.). It can be more dramatic to cut to the chase and leave some questions unanswered, one or two practicalities creatively unaddressed.  This way, you can wrongfoot your reader and wake them up a bit - Did I miss something?  What's happening?

In the same vein, if you plough on relentlessly to the end of the scene, you can lose out on the opportunity for notching up the tension. Why not cut away just before the denouement, so that your reader is gasping to know what happens next and reads another ten pages instead of turning the light out and going to sleep?

As with all things, it's best to use this technique sparingly, if you overdo it it will become irritating and predictable, but turning up fashionably late at a (New Year's Eve?) party  can  make heads turn - in fiction, as in life.

Christmas Cracker Number Eight - Spelling

How you present your work is incredibly important and spelling is a vital part of that. I know that I'm a fine one to talk - to my chagrin, I've noticed one or two typos in previous posts and I feel utterly mortified by them. In my defence (there is no defence, there is no excuse) I use voice recognition software, which means that strange things sometimes appear on the page (Korean penis instead of Coriolanus, for example), but vigilance is all.  It is easy, when you are familiar with a passage, to skim read it and miss small mistakes, but you don't get a second chance to make a first impression (see my post on cliches!)

For me, spelling is a work in progress, something I know I could do better at, but because I feel it is a weakness myself  I'm conscious of it in others. And publishers and editors really mind about it...

Christmas Cracker Number Seven - Show, don't Tell

Here's an old chestnut with a kernel of pure truth at the centre.  A good writer doesn’t tell a story, she shows it unfolding and that way the reader is drawn in, rather than remaining on the edge of the action.  “Re-reading the letter from her brother the girl felt sad.  It was not good news” is a colourless description compared to “She read the letter again, mouthing the words, the thin pages trembling in her fingers.  When she had finished it, she folded it in half and then in half again, as if the bad news could be shut away inside it, to be hidden in the back of a drawer and then forgotten.”

I think it's a strange cocktail of detail and action, which helps to dramatise the situation.  When you are writing, be sure to put yourself imaginatively right at the heart of the scene you're working on.  Try not to take short cuts and summarise something unless it is really incidental, in which case it shouldn't be there anyway. Go large!

On that theme, still eating turkey?  Me too...

Christmas Cracker Number Six - Cliches

Puffy white clouds filled the sky - stop, stop right now, just don’t go there.  Clouds are always puffy.  Back to the drawing board right now...

I guess the only time you might get away with using a cliche is if it is for characterisation -- perhaps you have a character in your story who thinks and speaks only in platitudes.  Or you could possibly use them for comic effect, but not otherwise, in any circumstances, ever.

Am I being harsh?  I don't think so.

Christmas Cracker Number Five - Repetition

My Boxing Day style tip is to do with repetition -- in literature, as in life, it is better not to say the same thing twice.  If you use a word twice (yes) your writing can seem slack.  It's better to think of a different way of saying something.

So, try not to use an eye-catching word or phrase more than once in the same book, never mind in the same chapter or, heaven forbid, on the same* page.  It’s worth going to extra trouble to find a fresh way of conveying your thoughts.  It will stretch you as a writer and keep your prose sharply focused.  Repetition can come across as laziness - if you love words, find new ones every time.

* It's okay to repeat things for emphasis, or to set up a lyrical echo, but not otherwise if you can help it.


Back to the mince pies now...

Christmas Cracker Number Four - The Jane Austen Game

We used to play a brilliant game I was a teenager, which we called The Jane Austen Game, although I'm sure other families have different names for it, but it's a bit of literary fluff that makes people laugh and can sharpen your writing skills as well....

The person who is "on" chooses a quote from the dictionary of quotations and reads out the name of the person who said it and the date, to provide some period context. All the players have a few minutes to write down a sentence or two that they think the chosen writer might have said, while the person who is "on" copies out the original. Everyone hands in their offerings to her and she shuffles them and then reads them out and the players have to vote on which they think is the genuine article.

As far as I remember - it's too long since I've played it - anyone guessing the real quote gets a point, and if someone  votes for yours, you get a point as well.

So if you are splayed out in post-turkey euphoria and you've opened all your presents and are wondering what to do next, have a go at this one

J.E. Crawford Flitch 1913...

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Cracker Number Three - Adjectives

I think it would be quite nice to pull a cracker and instead of finding a limp joke inside, to unfurl a little writerly nugget instead, (though I suspect I might be in a minority here) so here is a quick thought about adjectives....

Although not as tricky as adverbs, adjectives (words which describe a noun, a thing) need to be handled with caution. It is easy to give full rein to your creativity and use adjectives lavishly, but you run the risk that they may obscure as much as they reveal. Go for accuracy instead. Rather than saying that The man  was big and fat, say The man was corpulent, or The enormous man.

You get the picture.

If you can’t forswear adjectives altogether, avoid using them in pairs - you’d be amazed at how many people do. It can set up a predictable rhythm in your writing: the long green grass, the thin old woman, when what you want to do is to keep the reader on their toes. So, sometimes use one, sometimes use three and sometimes leave them out altogether. In this way your prose will keep its spring.

Now it's time for the paper hat and the miniature pack of playing cards....

Christmas Cracker Number Two - The "It" Word

When I'm teaching, this thought sometimes provokes quite a lot of argument, so I'm not offering it up as a hard and fast rule, just as something which feels quite personal to me and how I write, but in my experience sentences, paragraphs or chapters which start with the word it can sometimes set off on the wrong foot - literally, as it’s really a question of emphasis, of metre.  (There are exceptions, as my students are always quick to point out - It was the best of times, it was the worst of times -  but I think they only prove the rule and that you’ve got to be Charles Dickens to get away with it). It was a cold night has less authority than  The night was cold. Put what is important at the opening of your sentence and it begins to seem turbo charged.

Try it for yourself  - it may not work for you, but it's good to test ideas out as deciding what feels right is all part of refining your voice as a writer.

My nephew is seven today -- Happy Birthday Gabriel!

Christmas Cracker Number One - Adverbs

I thought that, with the festivities almost upon us, it might be handy to share a few simple style tips that will make your prose sparkle like tinsel, a brief thought for each of the twelve days of Christmas. (I was going to try and tie them in with the verses of the carol, but got stumped at first base -- a partridge in a pear tree anyone??)

I'm going to start with my own pet hate - adverbs; these are words which describe an action: crossly, silently etc. To me, using adverbs feels like writing of  first resort, they offer the most obvious description, the initial thought which comes to hand, and I think the challenge for writers is to look beyond that. In my writing groups we have the literary equivalent of a swear box for anybody who uses -ly words without due caution.  Using more words than you need dilutes the power of your work. Go for the perfect verb, rather than opt for one that is less than ideal and then have to qualify it .  The boy walked slowly down the road tells the reader much less than the boy dawdled down the road, or the boy trudged down the road.  Become allergic to words like suddenly.  The door opened suddenly is a much slacker phrase than the door burst open - here the impact of the action is captured in the short, quick fire words.

Try abstaining and see what happens. My hunch is that it will concentrate your prose and concentrate your mind....

Picture this....

After all last week's chat, some radio silence, and perhaps a fine old door to admire...

In fact, pictures or images can sometimes be a fertile source of inspiration.  Why not spend a little while looking at the one above and then start asking yourself some questions....?

• Why is the man sitting there?
• Is he resting?
• Has he been there long?
• Is he hoping to meet someone?
• Will they turn up?
• What can have detained them?
• What is his mood - is he tired, reflective, contented, distracted, bored, despairing - and if so, why?
• Where is he?
• Is he employed / a tourist / homeless?
• Is he there on legitimate business, or is something shady going on?
• Do you like him?
• Can he be trusted?
• Is he a passive sort of person, to whom things happen, or is he more of an active protagonist?
• How old is he?
• Is he married or single?

You get the general idea...

Just the act of thinking about the questions and finding some answers for them will probably provide you with enough material for the basis of a story.  You are already on the way to establishing a central character; all you need to do now is to start assembling your thoughts into some kind of order and a plot will begin to emerge and before you know it - you're writing!

Writing for Radio - Avoiding the Pitfalls

"Radio has really become the National Playhouse.  It is where people who don't go to the theatre turn to hear the rearrangement of life into drama, that curious process which can make sense of what happens, help with pain, heal through laughter."  Gillian Reynolds, The Daily Telegraph.

Hopefully, you're halfway through the opening sequence of your brand new play for radio by now, but here are a few tips to keep you on the right track...

1. Radio doesn't have scenes in the way that a stage play has.  It consists of a number of sequences, which can be a single line long or last for several pages, although be wary of sequences which go on and on as listeners can easily become bored, or distracted by the ironing, or whatever.
2. Avoid overcrowding -- the only way you can establish a character's presence is by having them speak or being referred to by name. If you have too many people crammed into one small scene the listener will quickly lose track (and go and do the ironing, or whatever...)
3. Stage directions - let your dialogue do the work for you, so that everything necessary for the actor or director is contained in what the character says.
4. Brevity is the soul of wit -- and good radio writing. Be sparing with your sound effects. don't overload the script like this: A CAR DRAWS UP. ENGINE OFF. DOOR OPENS AND SHUTS. FEET WALK TO THE FRONT DOOR. A KEY TURNS IN THE LOCK. FEET WALK DOWN THE HALL TO THE KITCHEN. This  is a literal approach and sounds dull.  I'd be ironing the pillow cases already.
5. Be more lateral and think in sound -  GEOFF'S BREATHING IN THE PHONE BOX BECOMES MORE LABOURED AND PAINFUL. BEHIND HIM AN ORCHESTRA, AT FIRST QUIETLY, PLAYS MAHLER'S FIFTH. BRING UP INTERIOR ALBERT HALL..

 There is a mass of useful information available from the horse's mouth at http://www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/

In the meantime, FX SAILING BY TO FADE....

Thinking in Sound

Donald McWhinnie, in his excellent book The Art of Radio, said that "...the writer's business is to make excessive demands of his interpreters," a challenge that is probably easier to rise to in radio than in any other medium, because the scope of it is so vast.

A radio play can travel between centuries and continents.  It can take place in any number of exotic locations, or within the confines of one person's mind.  The possibilities are pretty much limitless, yet precisely because of this, as a writer you need to be quite disciplined in how you structure a play. You have to attract your audience and hold their attention by the means of sound alone - there's none of the light, colour and movement which help to enhance plays in the theatre, or in films or television. The radio writer has nothing but sound to stimulate the imagination of the listener, so it needs to be rich and varied.

Many  writers who are new to the medium can get easily carried away with the wonderful box of tricks available as sound effects, but these are only meant to support the key ingredient, which is dialogue.  Gripping, nuanced dialogue that interests and excites the listener should be at the centre of your work.  This is how you convey important information, which means that speech on radio needs to be a little more explicit than anything written for a visual medium.  It is a subtle trick to pull off, because too much overt signposting sounds stilted and artificial and your listeners will probably start turning over to Radio 2, (or worse!)

It's not simply a matter of stringing together conversations - if a play was all talk it would quickly become dull.  The writer needs to think of the other aural elements of sounds, music and -- important but sometimes neglected -- silence.  Pauses help the listener to assimilate what they have heard and prepare for what happens next.

You need to keep the mix of sounds you use as luscious as possible.  Try altering the lengths of sequences, or the number of people speaking, or the pace of the dialogue, or the location of the action,  or the background acoustics.  For example, in the world of sound, one room can sound like any other if they are roughly the same size, but the difference between an interior and an exterior acoustic can be huge and therefore dramatic. Try contrasting  a noisy sequence that has a number of voices and effects with a quieter passage of interior monologue, and see where that takes you....

Writing for Radio - turning on, tuning in...

"As with all forms of storytelling that are composed in words, not in visual images, radio always leaves that magical and enigmatic margin, that space of the invisible, which must be filled in by the imagination of the listener."  Angela Carter
Bearing in mind that the BBC receives something in the region of 10,000 unsolicited manuscripts every year, it's important to make sure that your offering stands out from the crowd for all the right reasons.  There are a few basic conventions you need to get your head around, but there is also some incredibly helpful software that will help you to do this. Click here for information about how to download ScriptSmart, which is the BBC's preferred script formatter.

1. Print your play or story on A4 paper, it using one side only.
2. Characters' names should be clearly separated from the speech and should be given in full throughout -- don't use abbreviations.
3. Sound effects and other technical information should also be clearly differentiated from the speech.
4. Attach a synopsis of the play, even if it is a completed script, together with a cast list and brief notes on the main characters. 
5. Make sure you keep a copy as things can go astray.

Deciding which radio slot you are going to pitch for (see my last post) will  dictate the length of your submission.  As a rule of thumb, half an hour's broadcasting amounts to between six and seven thousand words, although you need to indicate whether your material should be performed in front of a live audience or not as this will also have an effect on how long it needs to be.

A few basic abbreviations to have at your fingertips :

• F/X means sound effects
• GRAMS refers to recorded music
• D means distort
• V/O stands for voiceover

Having looked at some of the nuts and bolts that will help you put a script together competently, tune in next time for the interesting stuff: : thinking in sound.  It's through the blue door....

Radio Mechanics

 "The almost telepathic transference of images from mind to mind is the beauty and the glory of the radio play."  Martin Esslin

Radio offers the freelance writer an absolutely fantastic range of opportunities.  The good old BBC broadcasts original radio plays, radio dramatisations of novels and stage plays, series and serials, poetry, features and short stories, so there should be something for you to get your teeth into no matter where your interests lie.  However, if you're thinking of trying a spot of radio drama, there is an important thing to say first, even if it is stating the obvious : listen to what is being broadcast at the moment.  BBC Radio has a number of different outlets for drama and it is worth familiarising yourself with all of them.  Immerse yourself in some of the following on Radio 4:

The Woman's Hour 15 minute slot is on every weekday at 10.45 and is repeated at 19.45 in the evenings.  These are commissioned in multiples of five and usually consist of a series with individual stories in each episode, or short term stories that develop as the week progresses.

Comedy Sitcoms are broadcast from Monday to Thursday at 6.30 and last for half an hour, focusing on sketch comedy and family entertainment.  Submissions for these should be addressed to Radio Entertainment.

The Afternoon Play is broadcast every weekday afternoon between 2.15 and 3 o'clock and concentrates on imaginative, accessible and entertaining. dramas which offer a complete narrative strand

Comedy Narrative is to be found on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings at 11 o'clock.  Producers are looking for light and entertaining sitcoms or comedy dramas.

That old stalwart The Saturday Play is an hour-long drama every Saturday at 2:30 p.m..  Popular genres include thrillers and love stories, with the emphasis on enjoyment and escapism.

There are also opportunities for a more radical and experimental approach to drama via Radio 3's Drama on 3

When you have familiarised yourself with the kind of material which is currently being commissioned, here are a few basic tips on how to present your work

One of the things which interests produces most is where they might place your story or play, so you need to make clear which slot you are pitching for when you contact them.  Don't submit an idea, send them a complete script together with a cast list containing a few brief notes on the main characters.  If you are submitting a script for Woman's Hour you should send two full fifteen minute episodes and an outline for the further three episodes.

The address to send submissions in the first instance is:
BBC writersroom
1st Floor, Grafton House
379 Euston Road
London
NW1 3AU

That's got some of the basics out of the way. Next time I'll take a look at getting started...

Radiohead?

The inestimable Radio Four is this country's most prolific commissioner of new dramas (and probably short stories too) so looking in more depth at writing for radio is something that interests me - I once did a week-long intensive course run by Jane Dauncey for the BBC at Ty Newydd in North Wales and still have a few of her tips to pass on, but I'll have to do some thinking first, and some rummaging in old files...

What I wanted to unpick a little today is how you can approach descriptive writing -- how to conjure a place in the mind of your reader - and I guess for most of us our default setting is to concentrate on the appearance of a location, describing a remote valley, or a beach, or a suburban street in visual terms.  Smells can also be incredibly evocative, but I think a more unusual and lateral approach can be to talk about the way a place sounds.

To test this out, it might be useful to describe somewhere relying solely on what your central character can hear.  Just as there are different fields of vision, there are different fields of sound and you can bring depth and texture into your writing by moving from close, almost internalised, minute sounds (breathing, the flutter of a pulse) to something more intermediate and then on to something in the background.  It's a great way of making yourself focus upon detail, and what it can reveal, but also of flexing different descriptive muscles.  When you have finished your soundscape, you may find that you can incorporate it into a description that includes visual information too, so that the overall image you are creating has greater completeness and resonance.

It would also be a good way of limbering up for some radio writing, and today we are going through the pink door....

Another brick in the wall

Structure is something I really struggle with, to me it is the hardest thing of all.  It's a bit like trying to put a tent up in a high wind, you just get one bit staked down and then the wind gusts and another bit goes billowing off beyond your reach. I find it relatively easy to come up with an interesting situation and from that it can be quite fun to tease out a plot.  But how do you tell it?  In what order?  That's the killer question.  Do you begin at the beginning and follow a clear, neat line to the end? Do you start halfway through and look back and then forward? Do you have one omniscient  narrator who can see into the heart of every character, or do you opt for a single point of view?

As you can see, I have lots of questions (this is just a very small sample) but questions are good, questions mean that you are thinking. Answers can be a little harder to come by, but I suspect that to a degree it is a case of trial and error.  When you set out, stories have their own impetus, they will be told and they tend to come spilling out every which way, so it can be a fine line between re-structuring something and going for some rather tight editing. That's why beginnings are always such a headache, because you have to re-jig things until you hit your stride. Making radical changes to the structure further on in your narrative can be difficult, because the longer your story gets, the more there is to haul around and the more unwieldy the material becomes.  Post It notes and index cards can be worth their weight in gold in these situations. If you're really struggling with something, it can be an idea to throw the whole thing up into the air and (metaphorically) see how the pages fall.

Sometimes it can help to think laterally.  If you want an exercise that may help you shed some light, write three scenes which are linked thematically, not necessarily by plot, and see where that leads you...

....to another door!

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

Ooh, I'm having another Tale of Two Cities moment.  I do read authors apart from Charles Dickens (at the moment I'm immersed in Tipping the Velvet.  It's the first time I've read anything by Sarah Waters and I'm absolutely wallowing in her lush and lecherous prose). The reason I'm quoting the great Mr D is that I have been thinking a little bit about how to set your work in time, how to conjure up a period without stating baldly September 1942, or whatever.

Dickens' beautifully cadenced phrases set up a rhythm that has proved to be unforgettable: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair...." Although he quickly goes on to tell us that his story is set in pre-revolutionary France, this first introduction offers us a wider view (in fact, it offers a perfect lens through which to view the story, but perhaps that is for another day.)

If you want to avoid being too literal, there are various devices you can use to evoke a particular period. Mentioning clothing is an easy kind of shorthand -- if your heroine is wearing a crinoline, the reader can hazard a guess that the book is set in the Victorian age, if your hero has safety pins, piercings and a mohican it is likely to be the late 1970s.  People's behaviour and their manners can be indicative: think housewifely domesticity for the 1950s, ribaldry for the late 17th century, and so on.  Attitudes can play their part -- are we more snobbish now than we were fifty years ago, or are we snobbish in a different way? You can use slightly archaic speech patterns, if you use them sparingly, although they can easily become an irritant.  Sometimes a reference to a current event is enough to do the trick.  You get the picture...

If you want to try your hand at an exercise in order to get some practice, try writing a short scene which is vividly contemporary, then write the same situation in a different period, so that the reader will know when it set without you mentioning the date.

In the meantime, here's another door...

When is a door not a door?

I love doors.  They fascinate me.  They reveal and conceal.  They are a bridge from one state to another.    They can be a barrier that forbids,a dead-end which is frustrating and inhospitable.  They can be used almost as a weapon, as a form of assault -- to have a door closed in your face is a terrible humiliation.

Oh, but a door ajar....

This is one of my favourites, a proper Frances Hodgson Burnett door, redolent of secret gardens. It offers and withholds; it entices; it makes you want to press your hand against the splintery wood, glancing over your shoulder to see if anybody is looking, and slip inside.  It is full of possibilities....

God knows what Freud would say, but I like to think that my fascination is to do with the central question that fiction asks: what next?  Where will this take me? Each door is like the start of a fresh scene or situation, a new chapter. I also think that in many ways they tell you something about their owners - in that sense I like my doors smart, or faded and peeling; piss-elegant or vandalised.

This one is in Moret sur Loing in France and belonged to the painter Sisely....

And this one didn't....

Ostensibility

I was listening to writer David Constantine talking about his short story Tea at the Midland, which has just won the National Short Story Competition. It's about a couple having tea in a hotel overlooking the beach at Morecambe, and they start to argue about a freize painted by Eric Gill, which is decorating the room.  They begin by bickering, "She had been so intact and absent," Constantine says, while, "He desired very violently to force her to attend and continue further and further in the thing that was harming them." Though still apparently disagreeing about the painting, the argument becomes more personal, more edgy. "You turn everything wrongly," he said.  "No," she answered, "I'm trying to think the way you seem to want me to think."

In the interview I heard,  Constantine explained that the story was about what he called ostensibility, when characters (and people in real life, painfully and with difficulty) use one subject as a means of talking about something else that they find hard to address.  In terms of fiction writing, I think it helps to make a scene more interesting: the reader absorbs one level of the conversation, perhaps before even realising that a second more tricky one exists; they have to work a little bit harder - always a bonus!

Another beautiful line from the story sprang out at me. Here, the writer is describing the view from the hotel window, with "...a troubled golden light flung down at all angles."  I think this is what using ostensiblity in your work can help to achieve...

 Where to now...?

Have your very own Lynn Barber moment....

Long before she came to prominence as the writer and central character of her memoir (and subsequent film) An Education, Ms Barber has been producing pithy and unflinching interviews with the great and the good, most recently for The Observer.

She is renowned for not pulling her punches and her pieces consist of reported conversations with her interviewee, but running alongside that is a gritty commentary about the celebrity in question as well.  It occurred to me that this might be a useful starting point for developing a character....

Why don't you subject your hero/heroine to a Lynn Barber-style grilling?  Write an interview with them, (in which you ask them their past, the situation they find themselves in within the plot etc) which combines their own account, in their own words, with your commentary as interviewer (is your hero being evasive, disingenuous, secretive or over-confiding, for example?) In this way you will  put a little bit of spin on  things, revealing your character through what they say of themselves as well as through the observations of others. Little exercises like this can easily be adapted to fit into a scene in your story and may be a good way of getting some momentum going.

SMALL PRESSES

Blue Nose Poets are a London-based group of writers dedicated to bringing poetry to a wider audience by means of events and international writing competitions.

Independent Black Publishers does exactly what it says on the tin - it's an umbrella organisation of publishers specialising in African and Caribbean literature.

Brandon Books has been a leading imprint in Ireland since 1982, producing about fifteen fiction and non-fiction titles every year.

Ambivalence, maybe....

Things are rarely black and white -- it is in that ambiguous, messy, grey area that most of us live and where interesting fiction is often kindled.  If you are aiming for clarity in your writing: the well-realised character, the taut plot, not to mention crisp, new-minted prose, try not to exclude a little bit of healthy ambivalence from your work.

We are complex beings and our behaviour frequently lands us in complicated situations.  Your heroine may love somebody but not be in love with them; she may be passionately committed to her work, but hate her boss. It is within these areas of ambivalence that tension grows and tension is an extremely handy tool to have in your writing armoury.

There is a wonderful phrase - I think it was said by the inestimable Adam Phillips (see my earlier post) but I've got a head like a sieve so I may be wrong - which encapsulates this and may prove a fertile starting point for a story: "This heap of half broken things they call togetherness."  Go for grey and see where it takes you -- my hunch is that you will arrive in an interesting space full of creative uncertainty.

SMALL PRESSES

Black Gate is a magazine offering adventures in fantasy literature.  They have an informative website with an interesting writing blog that you may find helpful.

Founded in 1971, Blackstaff Press is Northern Ireland's leading publisher of quality Irish books (more than seven hundred and fifty to date), supported by Arts Council og Northern Ireland.

Bloodaxe Books has become rather mainstream  since Peter Finch last compiled his list of small presses and little magazines.  They are now a major publisher of poetry, with more than four hundred books by two hundred and fifty poets to their credit.

Studio of ....(A Homage to Tim Pears)

Visiting art galleries or exhibition, I'm always intrigued when the notes about a particular picture say, Studio of Raphael, or Mantegna, or whoever. This is partly because I'm intrigued by the anonymity of the artist or artists involved and also because I'm interested in the relationship between them and their more famous master: the jealousies, the rivalries, the resentments, the adulation.

I'm also enthusiastic about the idea of studying a craft from someone more experienced than yourself.  With writing, the obvious way to do this is to read voraciously and widely: read around your subject for research purposes, read writers you admire, read writers you dislike but who are extremely successful and then try to work out why - just read.

You can also learn at a micro level.  If you want to find out about the nuts and bolts of good prose, it might be an idea to pick a paragraph written by an author you rate and then deconstruct it. I adored In the Place of Fallen Leaves by Tim Pears when I first read it and I have pasted in an extract below. Go through it with a fine tooth comb.  There are seventeen words in the first sentence, the majority of them only one syllable long. Choose a subject that you want to write about, but use an identical framework to Tim Pears, ie your first sentence should have seventeen words in it, one syllable for the first, three for the second, one for the next three and so on. It's an incredibly rigorous exercise, which can be inhibiting and confining, but by the end of it you will be infinitely more attuned to the structure and rhythm of good writing.  You will also be a more analytic reader.  It's a win / win result.

 

Extract from In the Place of Fallen Leaves by Tim  Pears

One Saturday back in May Ian had asked me to check the cows in the far pasture. Half the herd were heavy with calf, ponderous in movement, passing through time itself at a different pace, appropriate to their weight and condition. I stood on the lower rung of the gate. The sun was slanting across the field and the cows had scattered themselves across it, grazing. I was about to leave when I realised that, without fuss or warning, no more than thirty feet from me a cow was giving birth: she stopped grazing and started to drop her calf, just like that, still chewing the cud. But it didn't come out all at once: the top of its head appeared, and then a little more, and then all of its head up to the shoulders. There it stayed, its eyes closed, half in the world and half still in its mother's womb, as if reluctant to wake up from the long sleep of gestation into the bright light of life. Its mother, too, looked unsure, not quite able to make up her mind whether or not to let go of the companion who'd shared her body.

It was in case of just such an eventuality that Ian had sent me there, and I knew I should jump off the gate and run home to tell him it had started, so they could bring them into the barn, and Tom could help them with his inborn skills of the midwife. I knew I should; but I was transfixed.
It seemed like ages I stood there, gripping tighter the bars of the gate, silently urging the cow to push, mother, push it out of you, but nothing was happening, the calf was stuck and I was getting worried when quite suddenly it came sliding out all at once, afterbirth breaking up around it, tumbling into existence trailing its umbilical cord like a kite string.

 SMALL PRESSES

Atlas Press specialises in extremist and avant-garde prose writing ("anti-classics")  from the 1890s to the present day and  are the largest publisher in English of books on Surrealism.

Bandersnatch Books is a cooperative of writers, artists, editors and designers specialising in alternative fiction.

Bedlam Press, now associated with Necro Publications specialise in hardcore horror and have recently launched a range of e books.

Write Rite Right

I love the ritual of writing.  I love making a cup of tea, coming upstairs, turning on my lap top, gazing out of the window (icicles hanging from the sash this morning) while it boots up. I love the clutter on my desk: the photos, the postcards, the skateboarding pen holder my son made me when he was at primary school.  It's my home; it's where I live and come to life.  I love the sound my laptop makes -- I suppose it is some kind of cooling fan, whirring, but to me it sounds like a continuous exhalation, which is more or less what writing is.  I love the miracle of opening the document and finding (hopefully) that my novel is still there.  I love the gradual immersion into what I have written, the way the tendrils of an unfinished paragraph or scene wrap themselves around me.  I love the intensity of the first new words each day, that continual freshness.

All these rituals mean so much because they are part of what creates my comfort zone, but almost more important to me is the way that writing ritualises life itself.  There are countless theories about the number of basic plots which exist - is its seven, is it thirty - a debate which perhaps obscures the significance of the fundamental impulse to tell a story.  With our narratives, written down or told to friends, or texted, or tweeted, we try to make sense of what has happened to us, to celebrate, to analyse, to forewarn.  A story is the best vehicle we have for exchanging experiences.  It teaches us empathy, helps us to identify with other people and provides insight and understanding.  It humanises us and reminds us that others around us are human too.

Writing isn't just to do with inspiration, it's about aspiration as well: the continual quest for the perfect phrase and the endless revisions needed to achieve it.  In all my years of teaching, I've never seen anyone right at less than their best.  I've seen them improve on their best, but I've never seen them settle for less.  Writers want to get it right, no matter what the cost.  The creative act is a way of connecting with what is good in yourself -- keep writing.

SMALL PRESS ALERT

Founded in 1968 by Peter Jay and now based in Greenwich, south-east London, Anvil Press is England’s longest-standing independent poetry publisher.
Contact -  http://www.anvilpresspoetry.com/contact.asp 

Arc Publications 

Poetry publishers for more than forty years...

The Association for Scottish Literary Studies 

An educational charity that aims to promote the study, teaching and writing of Scottish literature. Publications inlude New Writing Scotland, an annual anthology of drama, poetry, short fiction and creative prose.

The Law of Unintended Consequences

In a recent post, Warp and Weft, I was flirting with the idea of adding tension and depth to your narrative by contrasting the style of your writing with the subject matter, suggesting for example that you might try dealing with dark material in a light-hearted manner. With a kind of weird synchronicity, I have just finished reading Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada, which was first published in 1947 and offers a gripping account of German resistance to the Nazis in Berlin during the Second World War.

Fallada explores what it is like for a country to be occupied by its own bureaucrats and politicians, but he describes the brutalising effect of the Third Reich in an almost picaresque fashion: the boot boys of the Gestapo come across as rogues, an assortment of low lifes on the make, and many of them are fallible, even comic figures.

I found this having a strange effect on me as I was reading: the characters were believable, but the light, almost jaunty way in which Fallada portrayed them became it increasingly alienating.  Their offhand violence and treachery somehow failed to register on an emotional level and I found myself thinking that certainly the first half of the book was almost Brechtian in the style -- I half expected Mother Courage to bob in and burst into song.

When the hero Otto Quangel is arrested, the narrative becomes altogether darker and his tribulations are described with such grimness that it was impossible not to be drawn into his plight.  He himself regrets the repressed way in which he has lived his life, and just as he failed to reach out to the people he cared about most, many of Fallada's characters failed to reach out to me.

Which makes me think that if you are experimenting with your writing, using different stylistic techniques, it is important to keep interrogating what you were doing.  Write with your heart, but make sure that your editorial brain stays alert, so that you don't achieve a dazzling effect in one part of your story, only to pay a high price for it somewhere else.

Revealing My Sources....

If you want to keep up-to-date with industry news from within the world of publishing, including snippets of information about which authors and genres are selling well, which editors are on the move and where they are going, or how independent bookshops are faring, then The Bookseller's comprehensive web site provides an excellent one-stop shop.  To make life even easier for you, they send out a free daily news e-mail - click here if you are interested in subscribing to it.

For example, you may be interested to know that The Fiction Desk, a well-established site for all things literary, is venturing into publishing with the launch of a new imprint featuring quarterly anthologies of short fiction, with the first edition, called Various Authors, scheduled for April 2011.  Editor Rob Redman is accepting submissions from unpublished as well as published authors via the web site. Worth a punt?

Relationships (thank you Adam Phillips...)

If you've got a situation in your head, a plot that is growing satisfactorily out of it and one or two strong characters who are gradually taking shape, but you are still in the process of teasing out the central relationships, you could do much worse than get hold of a copy of Monogamy by the psychotherapist Adam Phillips. This is a fascinating, elliptical exploration of why relationships go wrong and why monogamy has infidelity built into it (and many other fascinating themes and ideas).

I devoured it soon after it was published (roundabout 1995, I think, and it is still available on Amazon) and scribbled down hundreds of notes and quotations which I still consult when I'm feeling stumped or looking for inspiration.

You might like to try this one for size: "The things about people that we fall in love with are often the things that end up driving us mad." There's a whole short story just in this single sentence, right there for the taking...

Getting Started

In a recent post I was chuntering on about how to build the back story of one of your characters -- what has happened to them prior to your narrative beginning - and using that as a means to help kickstart your novel or short story.  Brian Keenan (if you haven't yet read An Evil Cradling, his extraordinary account of being a hostage in Beirut, drop everything and start it now) once came up with an interesting suggestion.  He said that a good beginning for a narrative is a room containing some orange peel and a pair of unlaced shoes.

I've tried this with various creative writing classes and been astonished by  the range of fascinating situations and plots that it has given rise to.  Why not try it yourself, and if the orange peel etc doesn't get your juices flowing, come up with your own random ingredients and see what you can cook up with them...

SMALL PRESS

Alun Books

www.alunbooks.co.uk

enquiries@alunbooks.co.uk

Alun Books is a small press, founded in 1977 in order to publish books about Wales and/or by Welsh authors, mainly in the English language. The Barn Owl Press imprint was added in 1982, for a series of award-winning children's books, and in 1991 Alun Books merged with Goldleaf Publishing, adopting Goldleaf as the imprint for its local history publications.

Warp and Weft

Among the many things which come together to create a good piece of writing (confidence, originality, authenticity, grammar) is something which is often neglected, and that is texture.  It's one of the additional extras which mark out flair from mere competence and there are a number of ways of achieving it.

Think in terms of weaving: you have the warp going in one direction and the weft going at ninety degrees to it and the interlocking of the two is what creates the material you are making.  It's the same with writing -- if everything is flowing in the same direction, you end up with not much texture to your work and consequently very little structural tension (which is a little bit different from the tension arising from plot - what happens next?)

It's easier to achieve than you may think and can be quite fun to do. Try  contrasting the style of your writing with the subject you are describing.  For example, if you are working on a dark piece about suspicion or mistrust, experiment with writing about it in a light-hearted, comic style.  That way the threads of your narrative are working against each other, creating tension.  If you want an idea of what I mean, read WH Auden's poem about Miss Gee. it's a heartbreaking ballad about a lonely and sick woman, but it is written in a bright and brittle tone with bouncy rhymes and rhythms, so that the form of the writing counterpoints and enhances the sadness of what Auden is writing about.

SMALL PRESS ALERT

Aloes Books

http://www.aloesbooks.co.uk

info@aloesbooks.co.uk

Aloes Books have been publishing since 1970 and accumulating second-hand books of quality and taste since before then and claimed to be an efficient book-find place, literary note-book, bibliophile watering hole and a print and publishing advice service