Common Pitfalls # 3

When I started writing, I had no idea what hard work it was.  I thought it was just a matter of telling a story. Hah!  And now, when I am reading the work of other beginners, although I often feel a little shiver of excitement when someone obviously has potential, I often think that they sell themselves short because they have lost patience (or interest) in what they are doing, or have become discouraged for some other reason, or simply have not yet become aware of how many revisions are needed to give their work its best chance.

Often, it is  not the technical challenges which are the hardest to deal with as these can be overcome with patience and practice; your writing may well illuminate for you personal isssues that are unresolved.  (My first agent read a draft of a novel that I had written and suggested that I went into therapy!  The best advice she gave me...)  The stuff that you shy away from in your writing is often what you need to concentrate on the most. It's like turning into the skid, when what your instinct is telling you to do is to wrench the steering wheel in precisely the opposite direction. If you can't spot your weaknesses yourself, a reading  friend (or creative writing teacher) will quickly pick them up and then it is up to you to focus all your energies on them, because your strengths will also come from the same source.

Common Pitfalls # 2

Another aspect of writing which can trip up the beginner and often betrays their lack of experience is characterisation.  I suspect that people are too fixated on appearance (in life as well!) and feel that once they have covered hair/eyes/complexion/colouring/natural beauty everything is done and dusted.  Although this can be a part of portraying somebody, it is only a very small part, a first impression which quickly seems incidental and almost beside the point.

You need to add plenty of detail.  By this I don't mean cramming in some kind of curriculum vitae (although all this information needs to be inside your head as you write). Every action you hero or heroine undertakes should reveal something about them.  When they make a cup of tea do they do it distractedly, messily, fussily, in a terrible rush -- or do they bung the teabag in a cup and then forget about it for twenty minutes? The same applies to the way they cross the road, or make love - you need to provide masses of context to begin with.

In your first draft I would include all of this kind of detail - it's a way for you to find out about your hero and what makes them tick.  In addition to showing us how they behave, you can add in information about how they speak, what they think, and how other people see them. By the time you have included all of this your narrative will be groaning under the weight of it all, but then it is time to start the process of distillation (see my previous post.....)

Common Pitfalls # 1

After many years of teaching creative writing, I've learned to spot work from people who are inexperienced reasonably swiftly.  A number of things give them away and I thought it might be helpful to talk about these, so that you can try and avoid what are fairly common pitfalls when it comes to your own efforts.

The thing that strikes me most of all is that the work of people who are only just beginning to write creatively tends to lack intensity.  I often think this is because they are so focused on getting the story down on paper that as soon as this is achieved they flop back in an exhausted heap and consider that the job is done (and who can blame them?)


The same process that turns ordinary grape juice into brandy is what turns slack and rather mediocre prose into something taught and exciting: it is distillation.  This means going through what you have written and cutting out every single redundant word, phrase, paragraph, character, chapter -- anything that impedes the flow of your story.  When you have done this, put it to one side for a few days and work on something else (or go for a walk, or a bike ride, or whatever takes you out of yourself) and then when you come back to your draft, see if you can cut out an equivalent amount again.  Having done this, you should be able to cut a further ten percent on your third attempt. The fewer words that you have at your disposal, the greater the pressure those which are left will be under.  They will have to work incredibly hard to tell your story effectively, and you may find that you have to add in a few new and different ones to help the narrative along.

When you're going through this process, try and remember that it's not just economy which makes good writing, it's the urgency you as a writer bring to the telling of your tale....