Health and Safety for Writers?

I took this photograph in a disused pottery in North East France. It's a lovely old health and safety notice positively steeped in period atmosphere.

Roughly translated, the exhortation reads, All injuries must be declared – good guidance for writers of fiction, perhaps, as often what makes characters interesting is not their qualities but their short comings, not their strengths but their weaknesses. A bit of emotional damage can be irresistibly attractive to a reader and therefore good material for an author. The tragic flaw – the trait which traduces a hero – is a key factor in classical drama, so when you are working on a character, remember to focus on their imperfections – declare their injuries, if you like – because that is where growth and change can occur.

Protective Clothing for Writers

In Scotland recently we visited Ballindalloch Castle, ancestral home of the MacPherson Grant family whose ancient coat of arms is carved above the entrance.

I was intrigued by the family motto: Touch Not the Cat Bot a Glove, which I take to mean don't do anything rash with out protecting yourself first (or something to that effect).

It might be a good motto for writers – there are a number of things it's worth protecting yourself from, not least your own expectations. The competition for attention from traditional publishers is extraordinarily tight and it is easy to start writing what you're sure will be the defining novel of the 21st century in the belief that it is only a matter of time before a contract is on the table, when this may not be the case. Even published authors with great track records are turning to self publishing now.



You may also need to inure yourself to criticism. If your work does find an audience, there is no guarantee that everyone will like it and adverse comments can be wounding.You might also have to protect yourself against the consequences of success: the stuff of dreams may turn out to be a nightmare of tight deadlines, increased demands on your precious writing time and having to cope with the pressure of repeating previous triumphs.


If you want to write, nothing will stop you, but it's worth remembering that living creatively makes you vulnerable – if there's a cat about, then reach for the glove...

How to Create Tension – Am I Keeping You in Suspense?

Suspense is the tension that is created when you are waiting for something to happen. You might be waiting for news of a loved one; you might be waiting to see if the creak on the stair which sounded suspiciously like a footfall sounds again; you might be waiting, lottery ticket in hand, to see if your numbers have come up. Often, it's a period of magnified inactivity which anticipates a moment of action.

What interests me about suspense, which is often so gripping for your reader, is that it usually occurs when nothing is actually happening.

If this is a contradiction that you'd like to explore further in your work, why not write a scene in which nothing at all takes place, but the tension is excruciating?

Franz Kafka: a Dead Man Writing

I'm sitting in my shed at the bottom of our garden with the doors and windows open, revelling in what passes for peace and quiet in an inner-city. Next door's runner beans are dying, but the ash trees which thresh and rustle overhead have survived the dieback blight so far. Apart from the odd insect zithering amongst the flowers, and the gulls which trace the vapour trails high above, I'm completely on my own, certainly beyond the reach of the front door bell.

That's how I write – in isolation. I can't bear any distraction: the view from my window is hard enough to resist. How JK Rowling managed to write the first volume of the Harry Potter series in a cafe beats me. As Franz Kafka once said, "I need solitude for my writing; not 'like a hermit' - that wouldn't be enough - but like a dead man.”

So here I am, sitting at my laptop like a dead man, but feeling very much alive...

What's the perfect environment in which you would like to write?

Twenty Questions about Characterisation

Do you remember playing that car game, brilliant for long journeys, where one of you assumes a character and the others have to guess who it is by asking twenty questions? When we were little we whiled away hours playing it on the autobahns and autoroutes of Europe, but it has other applications too and can be particularly useful for a fiction writer in search of a protagonist.

When you are in the process of fleshing out your hero or heroine, you might consider submitting them to the same sort of interrogation (and it's also the kind of thing you can do on long car journeys!)

1. When were you born?
2. Where were you born?
3. Do you have brothers and sisters?
4. What is your happiest memory?
5. What makes you saddest?
6. Where do you live?
7. What do you do for a living?
8. Have you had other relationships?
9. Do you consider yourself an extrovert?
10. Do you have secrets?
11. How good is your self-esteem?
12. What is your attitude to your appearance?
13. What is your proudest possession?
14. What are you most ashamed of?
15. What are your politics?
16. What makes you angry?
17. What is your best quality?
18. What do you value most in other people?
19. What do you yearn for?
20. What keeps you awake at night?

There are dozens of other interesting questions you could pose and while some are more simplistic than others, all of them will get you thinking about your character and may even send you off in an unanticipated direction which, in my experience, is where the interesting stuff is to be found...

Monet, Monet, Monet...

Because it's high summer (!) I thought I'd share with you this picture of Monet's garden at Giverney just north of Paris.

He is reputed to have regarded it as his greatest work of art and if you gaze at it through half-closed eyes you can almost see his impressionist brushstrokes at play. There's light and shade and texture and tone and colour all in this little thumbnail image. There's a sense of composition too, with the two paths running in parallel and the tulips bursting forth in between. The effect is deceptively simple, but if you look at the way the blue contrasts with the pink and the prickly rose bushes oppose the softness of the tulips, you begin to get a sense of how complex the design really is – and that's before you take account of the olfactory delights the garden – the symphony of different scents.

I'm not sure that there is a creative writing lesson here, except that Giverney is extraordinarily beautiful in a number of different ways and that it is an expression of one man's vision - much like a good book. It's a source of inspiration, and there is a kind of education to be had as well, if you start to look at the structure of different areas and how they interact as a whole. Perhaps today's little homily is about being receptive to what you see, about being attuned, about seeing the creative potential in your surroundings, no matter what they are...

Fracking for Fiction

"There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it's like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges."

Ernest Hemingway's description of the creative process sounds a bit like fracking to me – occasionally you strike oil and out comes the black gold in an effortless stream, but more often than not you're drilling into rock, setting your charges and then blasting away. The British Government called a halt to some experimental fracking in the north-west of the country because it seemed to be causing minor earthquakes. The compensation of a good day's writing, even if it involves some difficult detonations, is that the effects of it can sometimes feel seismic. It's one of the few things that really does make the earth move.

Telling the Difference Between Showing and Telling

This is a tough one, the mistake most writers, but new ones in particular, are most likely to make: telling the reader something, rather than bringing it to life by showing it happen. In a sense it's the art of dramatisation; it's certainly the raising agent that turns a sloppy mix of eggs, butter and flour (or characters, plot and language) into a light sponge (or gripping read).

Here are a couple of examples of what I mean:

John was a tall man. Hmmm. Doesn't really do much, does it? But John shouldered his way into the room, ducking his head from habit; he was used to the feeling of being too large for most interior spaces. Without directly commenting on John's height, the writer has shown the physicality of his size and a little of how it makes him feel, so not only are we seeing John in action, we are getting a hint about how his appearance affects his behaviour and his thinking. Although the description is longer than John was a tall man, it is doing far more work.

"I wish it would stop raining," said Jane gloomily. "It's been like this for days." In this example the writer is half way there, as dialogue can be a help when you want to avoid bald statements and this short speech is a better description than simply saying It had been raining for days. There's more to extract here though, especially in terms of the effects of the weather on Jane and what it tells us about her mood. How about, "I wish it would stop raining," Jane leaned her forehead against the window, her breath flaring against the glass. She traced the path of a single raindrop through the condensation with an idle finger, noting how the paint on the frame was cracking and that small rifts were filling with moss. "It's been like this for days." She paused, waiting for a response, but nobody answered her. She breathed on the glass again, trying to make the weather disappear..." By exploring more fully just what gloomily might signify, a great deal of additional atmosphere and context has been added to the scene: the single raindrop perhaps equates to a tear, the cracked paint filled with moss implies neglect and decay, the fact that Jane's finger is idle and that nobody responds to her her remark suggests her boredom and isolation. The resulting image has infinitely more detail and more depth.

To try and prevent yourself from slipping into the trap of telling something rather than showing it, remember that good writing will always do more than one thing at a time - it will comment on the interior as well as the exterior, will describe physical and mental states, or use the particular to throw light on the general. This is partly because as an author you always want your work to have a two-fold effect on your reader - you want to make them think and feel...

A Small Slice of Research Lite

I love a good bit of research to get me going with a book, whether it's set in the present or the past, whether it's fiction or non-fiction, digging around for information is a great stimulus of the creative juices.  Things that I unearth can often help in the development of character and certainly can influence the course of a plot. Because I love research so much, I'm really sensitive to the danger of piling all the knowledge that I've rootled out into my story.  Including something because you've gone to the trouble to find out about it isn't a good enough reason to run the risk of weighing down your narrative.

Just because I've made the cake, it doesn't mean I have to eat it all;  it's OK to have a slice and leave the rest in the tin for another time. It's the same with facts which you've uncovered.  Use some of them, to give authority to your work, to make it credible and help to bring it to life, but for goodness sake don't cram everything in as that's more like bulimia than writing and won't do you or your work in progress any good.

Breaking the Spell

As a writer, you're an illusionist: you create brave new worlds for your reader and go to great lengths to make them seem as real and as plausible as possible -- that is what writing good fiction is all about.

The subversive in me is interested in the effects of setting up an illusion only to destroy it with a kind of devastating sleight of hand.  It can be the most fantastic plotting device and leave your reader open-mouthed with astonishment. Sarah Waters is an absolute genius at this: without wanting to give too much away, in her novel Fingersmith she creates one reality only to whip the rug from under the reader's feet and reveal another, different one in a way that can leave you feeling a little giddy.

So here's a challenge for you: set a wheel turning  within a wheel -- as you're weaving one illusion, produce another like a string of bright silk handkerchiefs hidden up your sleeve. Fiction is bluffing anyway, but take it a step further and go for double bluff. It can be a circus trick: cue drumroll, cue fanfare...

Normal Service Will Resume...

...but at the moment I'm hidden away in a remote spot without access to the internet - yes, such places still exist and the breathtakingly lovely Helford Estuary in southernmost Cornwall is one of them. It's an inspiring place in which to think and dream and I shall be back at my desk next week refreshed and inspired and ready to rock some thoughts about writing.

See you then.

The Coffin and the Sharpened Stake - Accepting Criticism

I've just sent the first three chapters of my new novel to my writing friend and mentor, so I'm feeling a little unsettled and unstable. I want her to like it, but I don't necessarily want her to tell me that she does, as I don't think that would be helpful or constructive. I need her to find fault with it, to pick it apart forensically with her writer's clinical analysis rather than her friend's warm heart. I hope she'll tell me all the ways in which I can make it better and then, after this savaging, I want her to tell me that if I work really hard at it, she thinks it might have some potential.

I'm not sure that praise, when you're in the early stages of writing fiction, is particularly helpful, although sometimes you need a small amount of sugar to help the medicine go down. David Mitchell put it this way...

“If you show someone something you've written, you give them a sharpened stake, lie down in your coffin, and say, ‘When you’re ready’.”

If you've had a literary pasting yourself and are in need of balm, you could do worse than reading his excellent novel Black Swan Green  (which is where this quotation comes from) – not only will it divert you, it's an exemplary lesson in how to write.

Ghost Writing?

I went to visit my father's grave yesterday. He is buried in a churchyard at the foot of the Cotswold escarpment, in a place that is haunted by memories: of my dad, of my son's childhood which was spent in the village, of life as it used to be and is no longer, yet each time I visit it feels as if it is I who am the ghost. I seem to slip into the uncanny space that exists between the worlds of then and now. When I wander up to the graveyard, or stand at the bottom of our old driveway gazing hungrily up at the house, I feel as if I am the spectre outside the window, the exorcised, the banished.

The reason I'm sharing this with you, the creative writing reason, is because I think it touches on perspective and what you can do with it when you are writing fiction. Received wisdom is that the dead haunt the living, but when I go back to my old "haunts", that isn't my experience at all, for me the reverse is true. I think you might be able to apply this to your own work: when you are tackling point of view within the structure of your narrative, see what happens when you approach it from a different viewpoint. For example, if A is the heroine of your story, try telling it from the perspective of B, or C. To put it even more simply, when you are working creatively begin with the obvious and then do the opposite.

In Praise of Criticism

Criticism stings; it hurts. Sometimes it makes you want to curl up into a ball, block your ears and go lah, lah, lah, lah, lah. It can feel as rejecting as someone slamming a door in your face,

even this poor, rickety, broken thing.

Yet criticism is one of the most valuable things you will ever receive as a writer; far more use to you than praise, which merely affirms, whereas criticism stretches, provokes and inspires. If somebody pays you the enormous compliment of investing time and thought into reading what you have written, don't stick your fingers in your ears and walk away if they tell you they don't like certain aspects of it. Think long and hard about what the problem might be and how you can fix it. I once had an editor say, I can't quite put my finger on what's wrong. How helpful is that? If she had come back and said the scenes are under-dramatised and the characters seem a little frozen, that would have given me plenty to work with.

Even if you want approval for your writing, it might not always be what is best for you, so if constructive and insightful criticism comes your way, seize it as a lifeline - the grit of a salty comment or two might just turn into a pearl one day.

Top Tips for Starting a Novel

I am – I think – on the threshold of starting my Next Major Work. If you detect a note of caution, it's because I'm not absolutely certain that I'm ready to begin, even though I started making notes about possible ideas last May, so I've already had a good forty weeks' gestation and should be ready to give birth.

Which brings me to my first tip: don't start writing your story or novel too soon. This is because you need to be so pent up, so desperate to write it, that you generate enough momentum to keep you going over a period which could last years. Giving yourself plenty of time to prepare will also mean that your ideas and characters are well developed and will therefore spring vividly from the page.

My second  tip is that you should have a reasonable sense of where you're going. I'm always amazed at the number of people who set off on the long creative trek to write a book without having some kind of a route map to guide them. Don't be afraid that having a plan will cramp or inhibit your inspiration – you can modify your work right up until the last minute if you want to and it's a good idea to build in enough flexibility to allow you to respond to the brilliant idea that hits you halfway through. But if you don't give your imagination material to work with – the basis and structure for a story – you may find that you're making impossible demands on it and don't be surprised if it, and your project, run out of steam. If you were building a house you'd employ an architect, who would be there to help you if you wanted to change the position of the kitchen halfway through the build. It's the same with writing fiction. Having a solid structure will support the alterations you want to make, as well as giving you the confidence to be bold and implement them.

My third tip is that you should keep mum: don't reveal what you're writing about to anybody because it will dilute the story you want to tell. The first narration should occur on the page. I wouldn't be too precious about having your idea stolen because, like fingerprints, no two stories are the same and you can't copyright ideas, only words. By keeping quiet about what you are up to, the only expectations you have to deal with are your own and you may find those difficult enough in any case.

My final tip – enjoy what you are doing. Relish every phrase you write. Fall in love with your characters as you get to know them better. Let yourself be giddy with the excitement of it all. Writing is the easy part – the big challenge of how to get your work into the public domain comes later.

The Sessions - A Miniaturist Masterpiece

When you are writing do you work as a miniaturist, or do you prefer a sweeping canvas? Do you go large at every opportunity or hone in on the detail? There are pros and cons to both approaches, but I'm rather a fan of the small scale. I worry that if you describe a major event in an overblown way, you can strip it of meaning and resonance, whereas a single moment fully and subtly explored can become something epic.

That's why I enjoyed Ben Lewin's film The Sessions so much. With tenderness and reserve the film  charts the attempts of Mark O'Brien (John Hawkes), a polio victim in an iron lung, to lose his virginity - a rite of passage so many people take for granted but which for him is the unattainable grail of human intimacy. He seeks the help of sex surrogate Cheryl Cohen Greene (Helen Hunt) who offers a rare kind of sexual service: professional, humane intercourse in a carefully managed series of therapeutic sessions.

Inevitably boundaries are blurred and emotional connections formed, and the ending is bittersweet, to say the least. It's not a sentimental film, nor is it judgemental. Based on real events it is almost, but not quite, a documentary. What stops it slipping into mere actuality is a kind of mild radiance, the small light of the human spirit going about its work.

Helen Hunt's performance is low-key and intuitive, full of unassuming generosity, but the plaudits go to Hawkes. For much of the time we only see his face, so in many ways he is working as a miniaturist too, but in that face every nuance, every flicker of experience is writ large. It's a film about aspiration and achievement, about human contact and kindness – big themes examined through a small, and infinitely touching, lens.

Deep and Crisp and Even?

I'm sitting in my little shed with a hot water bottle on my knee wrapped in a blanket and very toasty it is too.

We are shrouded in snow where I live and when I inched my way down our hill to forage for supplies I was struck by the atmosphere – it's amazing what a bit of disruption can do. People were shovelling the pavements clear, talking to each other, throwing snowballs, helping to push stranded cars, all very different from your average Friday in these parts.

I think there is – wait for it – a creative writing lesson here. It can be extremely beneficial to disrupt your story from time to time, so why not play the narrative wild card and have a protagonist die or be unmasked; or you could turn received wisdom on its head; or perhaps engineer a plot catastrophe? Anything that gives the status quo a good shake-up. You will find that this makes your characters respond differently to one another and your reader respond differently to your novel. If your prose is deep and crisp and even for too much of the time it could have a muffling effect, just like the snow outside my window...

...so don't be afraid to put the cat among the pigeons.

Creative Contradictions

Jean Cocteau once observed that, "the spirit of creation is the spirit of contradiction," an interesting avenue to explore on a Wednesday morning. You can think about this in a number of different ways. Writing fiction is often an exercise in polarity. You establish a status quo and then explore something as far removed from it as you can credibly go: taking your hero from a place of safety and normality to one of danger and uncertainty, giving yourself as much scope is possible to examine the terrain that lies between. In the course of a good story, the protagonist should move from  ignorance to knowledge, weakness to strength, emptiness to fulfilment and his state at the beginning should be as different as possible – contradictory – from his state at the end in order to give the journey resonance and meaning.

However, when you are writing creatively, contradiction needn't necessarily confine itself to exploring opposites. Cocteau was an iconoclast, out to subvert all kinds of assumptions, something you can do to great effect when you are writing fiction. You can upset your readers' notion of what the story might be about by whipping the metaphorical rug from under their feet, or you can confound your characters' expectations (both in terms of plot and other people) of what might happen next, or who exactly they are dealing with.

You could also try contradicting your own instincts as a writer – don't reach for the comfortable phrase or the first response, turn your default settings off instead, and do something different. Try working in a genre that is new to you, or write about a character you wouldn't be seen dead with in real life, or have a go at poetry if you would normally stick to prose. You might find your own expectations are restricting you, so have a day of being contradictory and see where it takes you...

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

...Eleven Pipers Piping, an apt reminder that when you are writing fiction your prose will have a music all of its own. We are born with an innate sense of rhythm and the more you write the more you will develop a feel for the words you use. You will become conscious of the power of syllables and stresses, how to combine words of different length so that they don't just sound right, they look good on the page. You will see that the same applies to phrases then sentences and even paragraphs: that infinite variety doesn't just put a spring in your writing, it helps to build tension as well. Your awareness of the percussive quality of words will grow, so that you will instinctively use soft sibilants in the gentler passages of your work and harsher consonants in upbeat sections. As you master these concrete aspects of writing, you will gain in confidence and start introducing imagery into your work – a bit like the melody in a piece of music. Working like this at a more abstract or symbolic level is what helps to fire your reader's imagination.

As you can see, it's tempting to think of writing as orchestration, but the idea comes with a major health warning: if you become too conscious of the music in your voice, it will lose its magic. Your writing will become mannered and strained and too self-aware, an act of narcissism rather than creativity. To avoid this try and think technically rather than aesthetically, be objective not subjective, so that your stern editor's eye will stop your work from becoming self-indulgent.

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

...Eight Maids A-Milking... that's to say, eight young women doing something typical of their daily lives. When you're writing fiction and about to introduce your hero or heroine, it's important to show them in action. There are two reasons for this: firstly, it will make the picture you paint of them more vital and alive. You should avoid at all costs the cliche of having a character contemplating their reflection in a mirror, or a shop window, or wherever - it's been done to death and will reveal little of them other than their basic appearance. Far better to show them in dynamic mode, having a blazing row, or an achingly solitary drink, or walking away from someone that they love. Immediately you have parachuted your reader into the middle of a situation which, if you are skilful enough in developing it, will fire up their curiosity to know more.
As well as showing your main character in an engagingly vibrant fashion, it is also helpful if they are doing something which is typical of them: you want to encapsulate the ordinary world they inhabit in a way that contrasts with, yet at the same time anticipates (nobody said it was easy) the drama of the story which is about to unfold. In terms of maids a-milking, think Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy's novel opens with the local parson telling Tess's hopeless old father that he has discovered the family is descended from a noble line, information which sets in train a series of events leading to Tess's encounter with Alec D'Urberville, who turns out to be her nemesis. Tess herself is first seen at the Mayday dance, dressed all in white to symbolise her purity, though she is the only girl wearing a red ribbon, anticipating the bloodshed that comes later in the story. In the opening scenes, Hardy provides us with a lens through which to view the story as a whole.