Writing Your Novel - how NOT to do it

So, You're a Writer Now

Forged from the fires of incompetence (those flaming piles of rejected scribblings emptied from the waste paper basket), my first novel, Bad Day in Byzantium, has just been exposed to public adulation via the ebook publishing platform Smashwords. (Getting the manuscript ready is what kept me from blog posting for the last five months, so you can see what a task 'final' revision can be and how necessary it is to do it thoroughly.)

Genius (and friend) at work (thanks Schulz)

But what a triumph this novel is! Everything's there - people doing things, or not; thoughts being thought; feelings being felt; outcomes occurring; scenes being set; moods changing; some weather stuff; and a bit with a dog (no, sorry, someone has done that before) - I could go on, but it would require a spoiler alert.

Suffice to say, it was a masterpiece even at the conception stage and my critic assures me it is everything she thought it would be. Just what, exactly, she thought it would be has yet to be discussed in a free and frank manner.

Anyhoo, how did I so ably demonstrate my transcendent genius? I did it by ignoring the safe, universally acknowledged, sure-fire-success rules of writing. Ha, ha - take that, you beige and cowering international best sellers!

(I know it's early in the piece, but my critic insists I tell you that my abject ignorance of savvy writing rules may have had just a tiny bit to do with it.)

With global acclaim and honours imminent and inevitable, not to mention that the book was FINISHED, it seemed amusing to browse through the good-writing directions, however strident, of those stalwarts of the literary establishment who seem to have done OK by their craft ... oops, art.

What a horror story that survey was. I was STUNNED - I'd done it all wrong!

Creative, but wrong

You cannot imagine, dear reader, how many points there are to look out for. In an attempt to extract sense from chaos, I plumped for the following selection from the how-to-do-it list:

1. Is the story any good? Well I thought so, but I would, wouldn't I. Then the doubt set in - what if it had been done before (which is bad enough) but what if someone else had told the story much better than I? Oh God, unoriginal and uninspiring!

2. Is there clear and progressive story development? Oh dear. I knew I'd suffer for my meandering, tangential, parallel story lines habit. What went down a treat at the flower-power book club had no future in the hard-nosed world of publishing.

3. About the protagonist - the leading good-guy - is there one?  There was, among the cast of characters, a leading good woman with whom everyone could sympathise. Would that do? But then I'd willingly given the limelight to many other characters and finally killed her off. That's not what is supposed to happen to heroines. Bad move.

4. On the other hand, is there a strong baddie or evil force? At last, a box I could tick - definable baddies, one especially so (and who caused the heroine so much trouble until she triumphed over him). Good move.

5. Is there a strong plot to carry the story along? Ah, not as such. Despite it all being linked, the build-up is a little hard to see. And then there are the time shifts. Even my valiant attempts to avoid confusion in the events happening at different times might not assist my reader. Note to self: next time start at the beginning, proceed logically through the middle, and finish at the end. Simple stupid!

6. Does the story capture interest from page 1 and keep it all the way? No, if you like airport novels; yes, kind of, if you have a quirky streak. I expect that the moments that are best described as quiet will not hold the attention of those readers who want ‘unputdownable’. You can’t write for everybody.


7. How about the characters - variety, strong impression, individual voice? Yes, pretty much. Please, oh please, save us from characters who do not move us at all. All is lost when a reader says 'I couldn't care less about any of them'. We don't have to cuddle up to  them all, but we must feel something about them. But a word of caution: a lesson I nearly did not learn was to have at least one character who was likeable. Being a cynic has its downside.

8. Does the dialogue make you cringe? Some actors can make the reading of a shopping list exciting but do not put readers through the agony of shopping-list dialogue. This I knew, but how did I do? Relatively well (said cautiously), if assuming roles, whispering speech and finally walking around the study declaiming loudly has anything to do with it - and it does. So, if my dialogue doesn't work I can only put it down to bad writing, which is always possible.

9. Is there action, dramatic occurrence, conflict? What does the reader expect?

They have ways of making you borrow

A retired SAS captain may hope for nations blown to smithereens; a librarian may want a miracle cure for the sick dog - or is it the other way around?

Anyway, in a quiet, not to say somnolent, location there is murder, rape, persecution, exploitation and other vexing activity, so I suppose I managed a Pass on that one.

10. A successful story connects with its reader, right? RIGHT, but how? Well, you might say, if you have a picture of who your reader is likely to be then your chances of communicating effectively with that individual are greatly increased. But fiction is not journalism - it's harder to spot the audience. Doesn't mean you shouldn't try, after all, popular literary careers have been built on canny targeting.

So, we come to it. I confess, I ignored this wise counsel and just blasted away, hoping (in the rare moments I thought of it at all) that someone apart from me would like the way the book was written. Some useful steps were taken: the order of events was slightly altered; dialogue was sharpened; overly verbose description of places and people was trimmed; and - this came as a revelation - I took up the technique of asking myself if what I had said was really what I meant to convey (there were some very necessary rewrites, I can tell you).

In the end, the book was better but I fear I have still indulged myself too much and doubtless will pay the price. My defence is that if hardened publishers really have no clue as to what the public will like, how the hell can I ever know.

11. If in doubt, CUT, and cut anyway. This advice is touted as a pillar of good writing and even though I had trouble doing it, it seems to me to be one of the soundest things ever said about writing with quality in mind. Examine that word, phrase or sentence, that paragraph. Does it add anything of use? Are there simply too many damned words? That brutally brief writer Hemingway said, more or less, (when he wasn't saying 'less is more'), that most books could be improved by collapsing the first fifty pages into five. I have an awful feeling he was talking to me.

But wait a minute, I hear you say! Some depressingly successful writers blab on as if they were paid by the page (perhaps they are?). If their tome can't jam an industrial shredder it's a dud. For such a saga the word 'cut' is very dirty indeed. And here we come to a sad, chilling, self-harming fact: fine writing and raging success have little or nothing to do with each other. Clearly, once you read my story, you will see that I am pinning my hopes on this truism.

12. What about genre, have you thought of that? No. Well, yes, but too late. I'm stuck with a work which straddles several genres. But would it have made a blind bit of difference if I'd thought first and written later - no. I wrote what I wrote what I wrote and it became itself. This was not a deliberate sod-off to the official publishing fraternity although I acknowledge that the mixed genre plainly presents marketing difficulties. People like to know where to place a book, what it is supposed to be. It makes for a comfortable experience (read 'profitable experience').

...........

Ask me for more tips, I dare you

You are probably exhausted with having to digest this avalanche of critical points - I know I am, especially as I paid them so little attention.


There are more, oh so many more, but what good would it do? I fear your alienation, dear reader. It might put you off the writing game for good ...
... bit like my terminal golfing experience as a teenage hopeful.


It wasn't a practical, on-course transformation, oh no. More terrifying. There, in the newspaper's sporting pages, was the legendary Billy Casper's latest golfing hint, that gem of wisdom which, if followed to the letter, was sure to lift my game into heroic company.

Hint 452-unplayable lie, unless... 

I read it and absorbed the helpful explanatory diagrams. It was possible. Then its awful impact hit me - this was hint number 452! Any game requiring 452 hints was plainly unplayable!!!!!!!

Sooooo, if all the above writing hints are too much to swallow, then I commend to you H L Menken's perceptive analysis, which can be applied to many forms of endeavour. There's only one point to follow and you can't go far wrong. What he said was something akin to:

'Never overestimate the taste of the ... public.' 

Get Writing.
 

Life, the Universe and the Why of Blogging

Your Tireless Correspondent - photo Roman Bonnefoy

WHY? Why am I doing this?

A fair enough question – picture its relevance when attached to 100 metres of rubber with only a teenage bungy master’s breezy assurance that ‘nobody’s died yet’; when sitting the practical examination in Crocodile Wrangling 1; when agreeing to judge Best Bikie Gang tattoo.

Surely, the sedentary sport of blogging is harmless enough: a few words on a page, a generous scattering of wisdom, the odd bon mot, not to forget a splash of paint stripper on the richly deserving. Easy.

Well, here’s the news. YOU MUST BE DREAMING.

Easy is volunteering as a crash test dummy; easy is standing naked in the men's locker room; easy is your first speech for election to office.

I’ve been told that some people would rather lose a digit than speak in public and it seems to me that blogging is a bit like that:  full of terrors. Think of the exposure, the humiliation, the ridicule awaiting your every post, your trivial thoughts, your juvenile analysis, your pitiful expectations, in fact, your entire life and work. And it’s so public. Better to just curl up and die.

So, in a tiresome repetition of the question, why blog? Obviously it’s an experiment, or possibly a dare, maybe my half of a diabolical bargain. Rubbish. Clearly it’s the lesser of many unappetising evils and anyway, I might be in the power of a higher authority, a guiding light pointing the way to redemption via blogging. No?

I can dodge and weave no longer, dear suffering reader (if there be such a paragon in the vast halls of blogdom). It’s ‘fess-up time.

I am, in fact, the victim of simple and brutal blackmail. Blog or I’ll fail you. That’s pretty much the short-short version. In my innocence I signed up to do a perfectly amiable course in media stuff only to be ambushed by this smiling fiend.

He ordered me to tell you things - if I lie I’ll be punished.

I’m interested in too much about which I know little and too little about which I know much.

Apart from that, it’s the (here we go again):

• writing-authors-books bit;
• the my-riveting-travels bit;
• the politics-in-minute-doses bit;
• the history-especially-maligned-warfare bit;
• the quirky-tangential-scatological bit;
• the how-do-I-know-until-I-trip-over-it bit;
• and the directionless-life-full-of-events-I-don’t-understand bit.

Somehow I think that most of it will be the last two bits.

Thrilling. Where will it lead? Who cares?

Like creative hopefuls everywhere, staring at the stage 1 mess they’ve just produced, I describe my efforts as ‘a work in progress’ and pray to the elusive gods that something worthwhile (maybe even readers) will emerge from my labours.

But what if there’s no-one out there? Tell me I’m not alone.

Annual gathering of my enthusiastic followers