Big fat heaps of writing tips

Have you heard that phrase "Make em laugh, make em cry make them wait"?  I've looked it up and there's a few different people are supposed to have said it first. Most convincingly Charles Reade  as quoted in: The Chautauquan , Volume 36,  p. 161,  in 1903),  - hey, scholarship for literature students. I'm feeling smug! Let's think what it means though. What it really means.  Your writing is trying to generate an emotion. If the words you've got down aren't generating an emotion - or preparing for it - then they're not doing the right job. Look at the blurbs for the really successful books - even more for films. They promise that you'll get a massive overload of feeling. You'll laugh until your stomach aches. You'll cry buckets. You'll be too frightened to turn off the lights to sleep.  Even books that claim to be more 'intellectual' are prodding at emotions - you'll feel proud to have understood this tangled and tricky b

Come on, books are brilliant at all sorts of things. Better than films, better than dreams and certainly better than real life. Or have I got that wrong? Anyway. Sometimes I'm lying on the grass and something hits me - a kind of "so that's why books are so amazing!"  To celebrate these occasional moments and to share them out to see whether you agree,  I'm going to collect them as they happen.  Here's the first inspired thought... Books are best at.... retrospective realisation Lovely phrase, eh? I just made it up. I think. This is that moment when you have to cast your mind back - way back - to the beginning of the novel even - and only then does something (everything?!?) make sense.  It's a wonderful thing. You may have had a an eight-hour read and then something just twigs - ah, of course . And it was planted at the back of your mind without you even realising it, ages, ages long ago.   When it fires, you get new understanding - a buried brain cell elec

You've maybe looked back at your own stories and wondered why no-one else likes them quite as much as you do. The first thing to test is whether there's conflict on the page - not the next page and not the one before. This one - and all of them. In great books, even the descriptions have conflict. It's easy to say that, but remember you're human and most of us have an in-built aversion to conflict. In fact the typical novel writer type is probably happiest when they're nicely protected and contained and can write happily with no chance at all of being chivvied and harassed. I mean you don't set your bedroom up so it makes you feel conflicted, do you? So your natural feeling is to work away from conflict and to establish peace. You naturally push for endings and equalibrium, and as we can see in another post or two, nothing should look like it's ended . Conflict in novels Test on every page, then, where the conflict is. There are different kinds - it doesn

Well first thing is - you want to write. Don't let anything stop you. Especially - this is so, so important - don't think that being able to write is something that needs permission.  It doesn't need anyone on a high stool telling you you're a writer. AFFIRMATION it's called, and you shouldn't sit there waiting for it. Whoever you think you need your affirmation from, you don't. If you've got the time and you want to work at improving, nothing else should matter. That's not to say that you shouldn't be tough on yourself. You should. That's the best person to be tough on you. But you're writing with the aim of creating worthwhile writing. (I'm avoiding the word 'good' - everyone has their own 'good').  All you can do is take responsibility for putting something meaningful and well-crafted out into the world. The rest is a different thing, and don't get bogged down worrying about it. Having said that, if you're t

Here's the second of our two first important rules on page turning and it's one that everyone I know totally struggled with, especially when we were all at the beginning. It's about .... well, I'll tell you in a second.   Let's get one really important other rule on the table first. Your reader must never think you're finished.  If it sounds like something's come to a tidy end, then your reader is already putting the book down. It's like going quiet in a music performance and everyone starts clapping politely - then you jump up and say, hang on, no, there's more. It's easily done too, because we all like to put a neat ending on things. We want to get to the ending ourselves and so our characters get pushed into loads of endings. I used to have a real habit of lingering at chapter ends bringing an episode to a luxurious rest. Basically letting your Main Character have a bit of a lie down after the busy episode. But no. Your Main Character can neve

I've discovered something astonishing! It's a secret. It'll make you a great and famous writer when you know it. But you'll have to win that secret from me. You'll have to answer three questions, each more tricky than the last... When you're really into a book, what is it that makes you keep reading? Simple. You want to know what happens next. If your story is going to engage people then there must be no point ever that they aren't both: wishing for the next bit of information to end the suspense hoping it never ends That's a bit of a paradox, I know. You want it to move towards the end but never actually end. But that's how a great read feels, doesn't it?* Unanswered questions in your novel One writer a long time ago, Wilkie Collins, said that there were two things that made readers want to know more information: unanswered questions incomplete actions Let's look at the first. Everything you write should have a question somewhere in the back

I was talking to a friend who was dying to write a novel. ‘Here you go, you’ve done writing,’ she says, 'listen to this.' And before long I’ve heard just how she’s itching to script that random chapter based on the best ever holiday romance kiss when she just got happier and happier and happier all summer long. She seemed to think she’d live it all again by writing it down and that I’d be happy to read it afterwards. ‘Anyone can write a novel. You just write what you know,’ she says. She’s not the only one. It’s tempting to think that - even comforting, I guess. But surely you can't just write your memories - or your fantasies - or a rubbish version of the last book you read - even though these are three of the things you know best. We have memories and fantasies galore and they blot and splash and make pretty patchworks all through our sleeping and waking minds. They're not stories. Story has structure. Really satisfying story has a really satisfying structure. It need

Maybe you're one of those lucky guys who are really, really into one kind of book and know instinctively how to write your own version. You can say, "I love romance" or love mystery, love fantasy. And you can write one. If you're lucky in that way, you may have been writing for ages from the heart, and you've got a novel on the go that's looking like it's got shape. I mean it's got the right CONVENTIONS and they're in an order that works. Conventions! What are they?  So, basic basic: if you're writing a crime novel there's some must-haves.  A criminal for a start. And plot points: well, a crime is discovered - some goodie must find out what the heck is going on before the clock runs out... clue, clue, false clue - reveal (baddie is caught).  If it doesn't have those things, it's just not a crime novel. Love story - you know what the conventions are: two people meet - they split up or are split up - they get back either for ever and

Genre. I've heard it pronounced in totally weird ways (Like the girl in  Atonement  does) and, yes, there's going to be some sneering when it's said.  'Genre.' Well, of course you're not supposed to be so easily pigeon-holed are you. Gotta be more slippery, difficult to pin, a fox evading traps. Genre just puts you in a box. Let's look at it another way though. Genre isn't a box, it's a signpost.  Genre is the sign you're looking for when you're thinking - shall I go there? Genre is like a neighbourhood. Pitch dark alley with red neon signs. A waterfront with palms. A library with a secret doorway. Where do you want to go? I need to make a sign. And the sign needs to suit the neighbourhood.   People who want the turquoise coast and palms don’t want to end up fighting mobsters down grizzly alley.   Yes, yes, there are people who want their dark alley to have palms and a beach at the bottom. But there aren’t so many of them and they’re hard to