Structure -- Keep It Simple

Yesterday I was reflecting on the fact that overwritten prose is no substitute for truth in writing - it's a law which I think applies on the macro as well as the micro scale.  Just as an overblown phrase or paragraph can be used to compensate for a lack of clarity in thought, so a structure that is too tricksy can be used to disguise a fundamental weakness in the story you are telling.

You can tie yourself into complicated knots: say that you find it difficult to generate intimacy and intensity in the third person, so you switch to the first, then you find that you need more than one viewpoint in order to convey your plot, so you introduce several other first person narratives, then you find that it's all too confusing and consign half of what you've written to the back story because you're not sure what else to do with it.  By the time you've reached this point you've lost sight of your original vision and your book is in tatters. Your time would have been better spent addressing your original difficulty,  finding where the fault lines lie and testing them out, rather than over-elaborating everything to avoid the issue.

Description -- the Real Deal

Write for truth, not for effect -- it's a cardinal rule.  I read a phrase in someone's blog: water remembers you, and it struck such a hollow note, largely (I think) because it is inaccurate. Of all the elements, it seems to me that water is the least capable of remembering, because it's freeflowing and ever-changing.  Stone could conceivably retain an impression (I'm talking metaphorically here, of course) and fire could scorch something into your memory, but water?  Even with artistic license, it's too great a leap for me to take. and because it isn't accurate or plausible, it leaves me with the unavoidable impression that it's been written purely for effect, which immediately debases its value.  It's a kind of narcissism, and therefore to be avoided.

The best description springs from close observation, worked upon by imagination and intuition. Your goal when writing should be emotional and linguistic truth; by comparison, anything else is a kind of counterfeit, and who wants that?

How to Respond to Feedback

Having just received notes on a recent draft of my novel back from my agent, I would say this: take all praise with a pinch of salt, and any criticism very seriously indeed.

Onwards and upwards. new doors (or ancient ones) are always opening...

How Not to Write an Identikit Heroine

When I first started writing, a friend of mine told me that the prospect made her nervous.  "You'll put me in one of your books," she said uncertainly, "Won't you?"

But actually, in my experience, it doesn't work like that. In the Observer this weekend Barbara Ellen wrote an article about a survey which asked nine thousand women to make a celebrity-based composite of the Ultimate Woman.  The popular response mixed Keira Knightley's cheekbones with Kate Middleton's hair and Angelina Jolie's lips and the result was a spooky android - someone who looked as if she had had industrial grade silicon inserted in all the wrong places.

You can run the same risks in fiction.  If you borrow a bunch of characteristics from people that you know, apart from making them jittery and traducing various friendships, it's possible that you will end up with a character who is never more than the sum of their parts. In literary terms it can be a false economy, a shortcut to a two-dimensional heroine, rather than a living, breathing, fascinating and confounding one.  When you're writing, it's almost always better to go the long way round. Jot down everything you know about your protagonist, either in note form, or in little vignettes which show them in action - it's like the small talk which helps you to get to know someone you've just met: while you're chatting away, before you know it, something will catch your interest and you'll want to get to know them better.

Both as a writer and as a reader, I think it's more interesting to be given a fleeting glimpse of a character which then seeds itself in your imagination, rather than to be shown the equivalent of an identikit picture (even if she is the Ultimate Woman). Try to avoid transposing people into your stories, as that becomes a literal exercise rather than a literary one. Instead, explore the deep core of your own invention  - it's more mysterious and infinitely more satisfying.

If I Wrote More in the Conditional Tense.....

The New Year strikes me as being a conditional season.  It's full of aspirations (coupled with a dash of self-delusion): If I lost a stone, I would feel better about myself / If I gave up smoking, I would live until I'm ninety / If I tried harder at my writing, my book would be published - you know the kind of thing.

It got me thinking that the conditional is a particularly fragile tense; nothing is certain about it, there's an element of chance, combined with a little bit of endeavour, too.  It's freighted with longing: if only, if only.  It's a dreamy tense, an escapist tense.  It doesn't exist in the here and now, everything about it is hypothetical. It's a tense that subliminally demands -- well, why not,  what's stopping you?  and in the answer to that question lies a whole novel's worth of possibility.

Why not tap into your sense of yearning and try writing a story, or just a paragraph, in the conditional tense.  If I were prettier, he would still love me / If Nick Clegg hadn't handed David Cameron the keys to Number Ten / If...if...if...

Editing - The Ghost in the Draft

I turn sentences around.  That's my life.  I write a sentence and then I turn it around.  Then I look at it and I turn it around again.  Then I have lunch.  Then I come back in and write another sentence.  Then I have tea and turn the new sentence around.  Then I read the two sentences over and turn them both around.  Then I lie down on my sofa and think.  Then I get up and throw them out and start from the beginning.

I thought I'd share Philip Roth's neat description of the writer's life with you.  It comes from his book The Ghost Writer (a must read, if you haven't already). Working at that level of detail would drive you mad in the end, but it gives you an idea of the hard graft involved in getting something right.  If I were to add a postscript to his perfect summary it would be, the next day I put it to one side and work on something different, because this can be an antidote to the obsessive compulsive tendencies of the writing life -- a breath of fresh air, a different perspective.

Roth's dry take on the author's existence is a bracing thought with which to start the New Year: it speaks of focus and dedication and a meticulousness that is essential if your work is to succeed. While trying not to get too bogged down in the detail, make sure you refine and refine and then refine again.

Your Starter for Ten (or Twelve, Actually)

A new year starting, a mass of writing  resolutions to live up to, a new door opening...

Here's a little exercise to give you some momentum now that 2012 is upon us. Take a random selection of five objects: on my desk at the moment I have a diary, a CD, a photograph of somebody acting dead, a letter from a friend I have lost touch with and the access card to my online bank account -- I think they provide a pretty interesting mix.  Spend a little time contemplating your objects to see if they suggest some kind of story to you.  As your ideas start to gel, draft out a rough plot, but don't start writing yet.

Now go back to your five objects and think again.  Imagine another situation/story, different from the first one you came up with, using different characters and different incidents.  Draft that out into a rough plot.

Finally (sorry if this is starting to sound like a recipe, the literary equivalent of put it in the oven at 175° for half an hour) graft your two stories together -- you might like to use one as the subplot and one as the main action, or alternatively decide to give them equal weight - but by knitting two strands up like this, you will devise  a narrative of greater complexity and interest.  When you are happy with the sequence of events, start writing....