Writing Your Novel - best-seller TO-DO list

Learn from the Experts, and Weep

Masterworks of fiction awaiting evaluation

Rip it up. All that blood, sweat and booze - wasted. With noble intent and inspired labour you have single-handedly created what must be a literary masterpiece. Surely, justice and honour demand recognition. But, my dear weeping reader, lofty concept has been out to lunch with its close associate, fair play, for as long as there has been paper to write on.

What counts is talented technique, and failing that, just plain old formulaic technique.

In my post of January 8th or thereabouts (let's not get too fussed) titled Writing Your Novel - how NOT to do it, I gave a dozen gold-plated, bottled-at-the-source, from-the-horses-mouth points on the subject of getting it right but, as tiredness and emotion were extracting their inevitable toll, I merely mentioned that a sea of good advice awaited any writer brave enough to seek it. 

This warning was directed at you, yes YOU there, cowering at your desk. And let me say, these accursed suggestions, advisories and commandments seem to breed faster than they can be controlled. So, before the situation gets out of hand, I thought I'd better  table a few more of them.

You will forgive me I hope if one or two of these points bears an uncanny resemblance to what may have been said before, which (and I only just thought of this killer argument) plainly goes to show how tremendously apt, indeed vital, they are.

What follows has been gleaned from both my own extensive and interminable enlightenment as a writer and from sleuthing in the works of others. Needless to say, this no. 2 list is not (groan) definitive.

Something big turns up

Oh yes, for as long as people have had the quill in their hand, there has been no shortage of writing advice. Note carefully however: these sowers of wisdom have already made it big. They have been embraced at every level or whatever level is important to their success. Not only does this tend to confirm in their minds that what worked for them is undoubtedly going to work for you as you struggle in the literary mire, but that as a consequence they are entitled (should the mood take them) to proffer, ah, whimsical solutions to your dire problems.

Thus, in our avid, not to say, pathetic quest for our writing grail, we will encounter pronouncements of such momentous eminence that we can do aught but be awed by them, as follows:

• Take a pencil to write with on aeroplanes ... (preferably) two. If both pencils break, you can do a rough sharpening job with a nail file (Margaret Atwood).
• Do not place a photograph of your favourite author on your desk, especially if the author (has) committed suicide (Roddy Doyle).
• Don't have arguments with your wife in the morning, or late at night (Richard Ford).
• Get lucky ... stay lucky (Ian Rankin).
• Don't write in public places ... it should be done only in private, like any lavatorial activity (Geoff Dyer).
• Work in the morning ... the afternoon ... and go back to work until bed-time. On Saturdays ... watch an old Bergman film ... (and) no going to London, no going anywhere else either (Colm Toibin).
• Stop reading fiction - it's all lies anyway ... if you haven't (read a great deal of fiction in the past) you have no business at all being a writer of fiction (Will Self).

Well, they must have their fun along the professional writing journey (although I acknowledge that much of their advice not shown here is first-rate), except for Will Self, who thinks he really is giving good advice with the kind of quote we see above. What a comfort it must be to know that your utterances are the definitive word.

As an antidote to designer-label advice from Big Name authors, I suggest, nay hint, that the gems that follow from an obscure non-entity such as yours truly may chime with aspiring and, how to put it, modestly recognised writers of fiction.

Craft a strong or intriguing or engaging story. Is your story worth telling at all? Would anybody care if the whole thing was lost on the train home? Remember - not all news is newsworthy (have I said that before? - if not, I should have).

Tell your story in a straightforward way, preferably linear, starting at the beginning and in accordance with in-time events, progressing to the finish. This is so simple it seems stupid to say it at all. So, be warned: flash-backs and fast-forwards must be handled skilfully, in order not to confuse, and in any case limited to the essential.  If it's backstory, dialogue or reminiscence may be a better alternative to some plodding, exhaustive flashback.

Make your characters interesting or at least worth having an opinion about. Readers don't have to like all the characters but there must be a spark in all of them, unless you are really and truly portraying a dullard. A good tip is to ask yourself why that character is there - what's their purpose? If you can't quickly give a good answer it's time to question their presence in your story.

Scene stealer upsetting scripted order of events.

Of course, major characters need lesser beings to act against, to compare favourable with, to give contrast. But you've got yourself a book you didn't plan on if a 'minor' character displays tendencies of running away with the story. Maybe that protagonist of yours is the colourless accessory to the action taking place somewhere else? What's this book about anyway?

You're going to need a hero or heroine (or both), for want of better words. This character - what they want, what they do, how they react, how others react to them - is the driver of the plot. They are rarely the entire story but they are it's focus and main interest. Conrad's Nostromo is a story about Nostromo; Proulx's Shipping News is a story about Quoyle; Stow's To the Islands is a story about Herriot; Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces is a story about Ignatius J Reilly. All these novels employ strong and convincing supporting casts but at the end there is no doubt who owns the story.

There is, of course, such a thing as the ensemble story, featuring several co-protagonists. No one character dominates but you'd better be sure you give your readers a story they can engage with and an ending that rounds things up for the characters or on a theme or both, or those readers will rightly say, as they metaphorically snap the covers together, 'so what'. And chances are that they won't bother to read you again.

So, have a conclusion, an ending which satisfies the reader. The task facing the protagonist needs to be brought to fulfillment. He or she should win in some way or another.

A story is not worthy of its name if it just sits there and sulks. 'I went to bed, I slept, I got up.' Where's the movement, action, drama, interest? 'I came, I saw, I conquered' has more potential but as a one line grab it still lacks the essential element of struggle. A story needs conflict, forces which thwart the protagonist but are, through struggle, finally defeated. Obstacles must be overcome. The hero must prevail in the face of difficulty.

What obstacle?

This need not be violent and destructive. Redemption, justification, happiness, call it what you will, may come in subtle forms. And we've all read books which do a fine job over four hundred pages or so of leaving us with no denoument at all, no conclusion, or at least a collection of possibilities still asking the question 'how does it all turn out?'. This is not a recommended technique for beginning writers. It is very unlikely to be the direct route to bestsellardom.

A dash of romance can help. Forgive me - I can hardly believe I said that, being an active disciple in the romance-avoidance movement. Perhaps I should have modified this guideline by saying that romance is OK if it shuns sentimentality. Preserve us at all costs from the poor-me bleeding heart who unashamedly peddles love-related sentimentality.

And yet, many a best-seller is ripe with the indulgence of other kinds of emotion - pain, suffering, victimisation, cruelty, rejection etc. Is this blatant exploitation of human sympathies? Who cares, say the marketers. If you can make 'em laugh and make 'em cry you've got a winner. I'm fighting hard not to believe this but ...


If you must write sex, write it well, although I'm dammed if I know why this 'rule' counts. We have before us innumerable descriptions of sex which are the fodder of the Bad Sex Awards (BSA). This means that this drivel has already been published (therefore having received the tick of approval from agents and publishers) and will, due to its further exposure via the BSA publicity machine, no doubt go on to further sales success.

So that's what's down there! - tireless research bears fruit

Does the sex writing conundrum reveal a deeper truth? Is it better to simply be noticed, for anything at all? That media junkie, Rose Hancock, said that there was no such thing as bad publicity. Perhaps she's right. It hasn't hurt many a popular writer. I think (he said, steering a wide course around that zillion seller Multiple Grades of Dull Writing) of Sebastian Faulks' Birdsong which nearly made me puke at the sheer awfulness of its sex scenes. Cringeworthy is too mild a word to describe it. Pity Faulks didn't stick to the trench warfare bit, at which he was very good.


If the story can be kept simple, do it. Plot twists, unexpected event or reactions, layered or parallel lines of progression, veiled meaning, psychological complexity etc. are all very well but they risk confusing the reader. The story should never be so fractured or dense that the reader loses interest. To write a novel that alienates the reader means you are entertaining only one person - yourself.


Write clearly. We know that English is a rich language and that many authors write to a literate audience but this does not mean the indulgence and deliberate use of abstruse words and phrases, forms of construction or concepts. You might understand it all but much of your potential readership won't.

Then there is the matter of deep and meaningful writing. The picture you see, the feeling you experience, may be very clear to you (or perhaps even nebulous but powerful), but is that what you have just written about on the page? Make sure that the intangible thing that so moves you is expressed in a way that allows the reader to understand it too. There is nothing to be gained from baffling the reader. If you are clear in your own mind as to what it is you mean to express then you will find a way to make it clear to your audience.

The above does not mean a return to the language of the first grade. Dumbing-down is not the aim of the exercise. Just write your fiction so that you limit the number of times the reader has to reach for the dictionary and for pity's sake don't write so esoterically that he/she feels like disemboweling the book in frustration and rage.


Avoid deep psychological dissection and literary breast-beating. Your readers don't want to know all that stuff. They want a good story told well. Leave off being a clever dick. You are far better served by practising the craft (art?) of being an effective writer of riveting fiction.

Employ a balanced mix of dialogue and narrative. Both are needed. Too much continuous dialogue confuses the reader in a he said/she said tennis match duel. Too much narrative, especially in interminably long paragraphs, risks boring / antagonising the reader and stalling the drive of the story.

Dialogue needs to be real. I don't mean the translation of patois or accent (there's a minefield there unless it's done with skill and restraint), rather a reflection of the way conversation should sound in the reader's head. Tricky, I know. We are trying to avoid stilted, essay-perfect speech but likewise not making a direct copy of how people converse face-to-face.

Victor Borge in full flight

Talk is full of repetition, incomplete sentences, jargon, short hand, nonsense, and feelings verbalisation (ah, the wonderful Victor Borge and his phonetic punctuation - pure genius). Depicting street speech would drive a reader mad.

The approach to narrative is highly individual. Some writers are spare, others florid. Some stories require extensive narrative, others would choke on it. When it comes to description of places, persons and actions we can find successful exponents of the minimal to champions of the excessive. It has been said that too much description denies readers the delicious exercise of imagination, as well as putting the brakes on the advance of action, while too little description leaves them floundering in an ocean of unknowns.

And don't start me on this show-not-tell mantra. It's hammered in at creative writing classes as the commandment Moses hid behind his back. We all know, for example, that telling the reader that Mr Cuddly is really a cruel, vindictive bastard is less effective that writing the incidents that show he is a cruel, vindictive bastard.

Principles of fine writing receiving careful scrutiny

But I cannot tell you how many praised authors employ the tell method and nobody says 'Oh naughty you, breaking the golden rule.' I suppose it is as Sarah Waters has said: 'Talent trumps all. If you're a really great writer, none of (the) rules need apply.' For what it's worth, I think it is also true that if you are a stand-out crappy writer of stuff people want to read, you likewise can forget the rules, if you ever knew them. Your audience most certainly doesn't and what's more, doesn't care.

Make your research an understatement. You may have trekked half the globe, turned albino ransacking gloomy archives,  and alienated legions with in-depth interviews, all to make your story authentic, but keep a firm grip on it. Use it with restraint. Your research serves the story, not upstages it. No matter how fascinating the information may be, most readers will not thank you for inserting into your fiction a diversionary treatise on the form and function of the neolithic penny whistle. Anyone who will thank you is not reading your book - they are up to their necks in tomes about the neolithic.

Humour engages the reader, so use it where you think it will work. But perhaps you are a naturally amusing writer, in which case the humour will come out of its own accord. I'm not talking jokes here. What I mean is whimsy, comic irony, self-deprecation, grim laughter, the release valve of natural living, the repartee that makes us human.

And serious fiction has room for some humour, or should. It makes the story more approachable, more survivable, when the weighty message is mitigated with an occasional light touch. I was on my knees, begging, for any character at all to see a comic slant to anything which assaults us in Cormac McCarthy's The Road. How else could I avoid chucking myself under a bus (same feeling when viewing Ingmar Bergman films).

Viewer of Ingmar Bergman film in typical joyous mood

Well, now that it's time to say goodbye, now that it's time to yield that sigh, I think I'll go to the vault and try to put my hands on that slapstick standby, Leonard Cohen at the Circus. But fear not, I'll not abandon you without a final word on the weid world of writing. Note well this shining gem of insight:

'Only bad writers think that their work is really good' (Anne Enright).

How To Be Published - Writing Badly Enough

The Grey, Bland Line to Publishing Success

Forgive me. My words might seem rash but sometimes urgency overrides prudence. If you do not know it already it is high time you did:

Fabulous stuff. A triumph of, ah ... packaging

• forget noble intent;
• spurn finely tuned wordcraft;
• avoid stylish turn of phrase;
• reject agonising revision;
• eschew imaginative treatment;
• a plague on distinctive voice;
• and renounce pursuit of quality, wherever it may reside.

The aim of the game is mediocrity.

Mediocrity rules because it sells. Remember, sales are all a publisher is interested in. They'll tell you it is a business and a hard one at that. Yes, a business where success rests on providing the public with what it wants, the best customer satisfaction quotient the company can deliver. It is no accident that the publisher's 'mission' (Christ, that word makes me vomit) reads like an extract from the corporate blood-suckers bible.

But, my companions of the pen, we understand the publishers' point. We do not expect them to go broke on our behalf when we are unknown quantities in the public mind. We are tolerant of their strange failure to see the connection between the act of simply  publishing our novel and the process of becoming known.

We are, however, mighty bloody pissed off at the lies the publishing industry tells about the necessity for quality writing in opening the door to publishing success.

Seriously pissed off

It's bullshit. They all peddle it - agents, writing course providers, editors, publishers, everyone in the sorry chain. For proof, just look about you. Taking just the tall poppies tells you that quality has nothing to do with getting a book into print.

Enter our dear friend Dan Brown (I'm sorry Dan; this is what happens when you insist on being noticed). Sparing you yet another dissection of the awfulness of his output, I say only that Dan's stuff is bewildering bad, numbingly banal and furiously popular. His publisher has seen to the last-mentioned factor. Was Dan requested to revise the manuscript so as to keep faith with the lofty literary standards of his readers. Rubbish. (Oddly that's what his editor quietly muttered too on the subject of Dan's writing, at least I hope that's what was said.) What the publishing organisation itself said was 'we'll make a fortune'. Dan's drivel, ooops, masterworks, and the public taste are perfectly matched.

If a second prime example were needed, look no further than something called Fifty Shades of Shit. The consensus is overwhelming. It's trash, not even riveting trash. Bit like the visual muzak of an interminable buck's night. But successful, triumphantly so. As we speak, the author's agent and publisher have just parked their Ferraris and are raising glasses of Krug to their combined talent spotting acumen. Yes, there's nothing like fine writing. Those gems in the slush pile make a perfect foot rest for one's Jimmy Choo's.

Erotica writer's agent with week's pay

And so, to today and the big motivational force.

Dipping into some e-published writing I stumbled upon (you'll never guess) classic confirmation of all that is raised above, but at a less glittering level. Nonetheless, the message was the same - write low, sell high.

In the red corner we have two pieces: a US author's South American travel stories, engaging and idiosyncratic, admirably crisp if at times in need of a little polishing; and a British writer's tales of European travel with a husband, a Kombi van and a dog, which, apart from moments of over backgrounding, in an inventive and irreverent style just tantalised the reader(me anyway) to want more. It was good stuff. With a little editing both could have been very good stuff, worthy of main line publishing.

And what do we see in the blue corner: an exploration of a personal journey back to one's roots in Russia by an American author whose literary skill set fell only millimetres short of those in the possession of the great Dan Brown - plodding, predictable, uninspiring. But this piece glowed with professional endorsements and unabashed self-promotion, which is fine if it can be backed up, which it plainly couldn't.

Publishers' ecstatic reception of unknown indie writers

Now there are no prizes for guessing that the relatively unknown writers of good stuff had no main line publishing support but the writer of journeyman pap was a well known and widely published travel author.

Well, we wouldn't want to scare the children and horses by publishing anything with character. In any case, who'd want to alarm the public by giving them what they're not used to, or can't be made used to. Perhaps throw into pot a few 'artistic' works by the egotistical fringe intellectuals to keep us in the running for the big fiction prizes but really, quality writing is full of uncertainties and nobody made money that way. We're sure of it.

Thing is, folks, they haven't a clue what will succeed. Why not have it written well, if they can spot the difference. If they care.

^^^^^^^

And finally, to manfully give a nod to the other side, none of the above is to say writers should not strive for quality, if not to satisfy themselves then in the knowledge that many magnificent literary works have been deservedly published. I would like to think that this was due to the inherent genius of the manuscript being recognised at first glance and then the inevitable production and distribution taking its course. Often not true. However, by means which won't be pursued here, at least these deserving works are available for the public to admire and love, even if they make no money.

Quality writer makes rare sighting of elusive reward

Novel Approach to Design - Kevin McCloud's Grand Plan

A Home is Worth A Thousand Words

That crafty Kevin McCloud has gone to great lengths to conceal what must be, surely, his next blockbusting step. I sense in his series of TV's Grand Designs a clever apprenticeship for the full flowering of his creative genius - the writing of grand fiction.

Take, if you will, the word 'fiction'. Hold it firmly in your mind as you picture the elements of Grand Designs' episodes: the people, the inspiration and intended direction, the journey to realisation, the dream made manifest and Kevin's estimation of the project's achievements. Inherent in all these elements is the essence of fiction - unreality.

My case, undoubtedly brilliant in conception, rests on hard-nosed stuff like this:

The people are dreamers - that is, they construct a false future based on hope, imagination and good luck. This is our ideal scenario, they say. We know that with good will, effort and obliging, otherwise-fickle forces (eg. weather, local authorities) we can create our vision. And I admire them. Just as well they start high because the process is enough to bring low the most optimistic dreamer, to destroy the most determined of fictions.

Inspiration is insubstantial, its chief feature being feelings, a sense of something, the vibe. Look no further for motivating factors than:

Well, you wanted a place near the sea

• wanting to live in a castle;
• yearning to revisit the cosiness of childhood;
• escaping the misery of suburban mediocrity;
• animating a modern nirvana;
• seeking the self-sufficient eco-wonder;
• living the style statement;
• resurrecting the noble relic;
• grasping at the life-crisis bolthole;
• and the old favourite, demonstrating the conspicuous success story.

All of them are the expression of powerful imaginations at work - a notional construct.

The journey is full of little deceptions, otherwise known as the pressures of reality producing further fictions. Think of such things as:

• the environmentally pure salvation of the old barn that needed a hundred tons of concrete to stop it collapsing - 'oh well, I s'pose we do now have a heat sink';
• the price blowout on the super-insulating glass forcing the amputation of bedroom three - 'you know how the kids will love bunking together';
• the post-sale discovery that the Ministry of Defense has the final word on your tower conversion and that word is No - 'just as well, I think I'm afraid of heights';
• the country idyll assaulted by unreliable suppliers, capricious local authorities, sniping neighbours, incompetent builders and lousy real-world access - 'we love the house, just perfect for us',

Drafty, tricky driveway, yes, but look at that view

... and there are so many more.

It only seems shaky

Built for a thousand years - dammit

As for the result, the manifestation, of all this wishin' and hopin' and plain hard work, that's the biggest fiction of all. Our dreamers stand proud and defiant before their new ideal home, all smiles and gratitude that they seized the opportunity and came through triumphant, fulfilled, enlightened and happy. And in the shadow of that contentment we detect the defensive lie. What they really mean is:

• this was hell and we're completely over it;
• it's too small or cold or large or dark or ...;
• we can't afford it;
• the place doesn't work the way we thought it would;
• will we ever get rid of the builders;
• our friends are so far away now;
• that flat roof will never stop leaking;
• so avant garde, darling, but have you seen that place near Candida's,

... and so it goes.

Caught in the middle of all this alternative reality, indeed interpreting it for his hungry audience, is Sir Kevin. Knowingly or not, he uses many of the classic markers of successful fiction writing - clear heroes and villains, character development, driving plot, challenges and triumphs, resounding conclusion. Program by program, via the process itself and the state of mind of the protagonists, Sir Kevin practices the craft of fiction creation.

Are you listening

But here's the sting in the tail, and you can blame my cynical streak if you like (after all, you may be right to doubt my findings), but the most audacious fiction is that perpetrated on we poor viewers. KMac is playing with us. As occasion arises, he warns of daunting problems of destructive potential and the dire and imminent consequences of the clients' folly. This is what happens when amateur dreamers indulge themselves, he says.

But it is constructive drama-mongering. It is setting up exaggerated conflict and difficulty for the purpose of engaging our emotions. Kevin is creating a fictional thriller. And how do I know this? Because at episode's end his eloquent summation overflows with praise of the vision, commitment and accomplishments of the 'dreamers'. There, he says, what were you worried about? Things turned out just fine. It's a triumph - it's a grand design.

Unless, like many good novelists, he's hiding his true feelings. Unless we poor deluded fools, the viewers, are silly enough to think we know what he thinks. Yes, the fog around our host is lifting ...

... as a writer of fiction Kevin McCloud has no need to wait on the future: he's already there.

Anything's possible in fictional worlds

Blue-eyed Blonde Exposes the Body Publishing

Writer Beware - just when you thought it was safe to be published

Newly minted writer of the novel Malarky, Anakana Schofield (it took her a dozen years to be an overnight success, as the bitter quip goes), has added three great questions to the long list about the weird world of being a published writer. What winds her up is the publicising malarkey.

Question 1: Why isn't it good enough to have your words do the talking?

Waiting on your every word

Surely the personal trivia and peccadillos of her life have no place in an article about her book? Can the public really be interested in knowing why, let us suppose, she has to be half naked to write scintillating prose.

15 - 0

Answer 1: Well aware of the blindingly obvious, she offers it up, that newspapers want colour and the more lurid the better. Who knows what might be exposed to illuminate the prose and, gosh, none of it can hurt in flogging the book or the newspaper.

15 all

Question 2: Why does the author become an indentured slave of the publicist, chained to a desk and condemned to write promotional pieces for NO money?

30 - 15

Answer 2: Again, she knocks down her straw man with the revelation of the modern disease, the persecution pandemic, whereby the haves further screw the have nots.

Who could not agree that it's a despicable arrangement but know this (the media multinationals know it) - in all the world there cannot be a more willing slave than the (average) freshly published writer, unless its the unpublished writer.

I fear that the time will come when not only will the train driver be unpaid to drive to Scotland, not only will he have to tout for passengers, but he will have to supply the damned train in the first place. Or is that called self-publishing?

30 all

Question 3: Why is the media obsessed about how to write and thus be successful rather than how to read and become a more fulfilled thinker and person?

40 - 30

Answer 3: Ah, here Schofield rips away the curtain of inspired deceit - encourage the poor sods to write their way to fame and, more importantly, fortune. That way they support the system, they become the system, and if they fail (as most will) they will be diverted from that higher plane of thinking that realises that writing is the new opiate of the masses. Anyway, that's what I took her to say.

40 all.


It all leads to some Thoughts ...

Today's successful writer is a commodity, or at least is in possession of qualities and features which are amenable to brand creation. If the writing is good, so much the better, but don't let's get bogged down with that distraction. As far as the ninteen-year-old directors of the marketing department are concerned, it's preferable if their prospective literary genius is:

1. female - the pictures are prettier; everyone knows women are more sensitive, perceptive, relevant etc; in same-sex relationships lesbianism is liberating, modern and saleable ( whereas male cohabiting is clearly smutty, deviant and time-worn).
2. young - the pictures are prettier; obvious prodigious early talent with lots of development time to be exploited; less cynical about the enigmatic ways of publishing.
3. connected - the pictures are prettier (since such a person is far more likely to smile as they are far more likely to be published than a random nobody); the book blurbs are enlivened by the name-dropping of lots of already famous people; there may be personal advantage to be had from association with the rich and aforesaid famous.

Ticking the boxes - female, young ...

So, dismal truth though it might be, it is odds-on that the media won't give two hoots about your personal life, not to mention your writing, if you are old (ie. over 35), male, unpublished, plain and penniless. Seems Anakana Schofield has avoided some of these drawbacks.

As for me, there's no hope. To the above discouraging indicators I must add (sob) baldness! Oh, the obscurity.

Snapping the cap back on the bottle of anti-depressives and moving right along, I often hear the phrase 'there's a book in everyone'. All I can say is thank Christ there's only one book in most of us and moreover, why-oh-why was the damned thing ever published? Moreover again, why-oh-why are so many books published from proven, consistently bad writers?

It's simple - they are comfortably bad, reliably bad, profitably bad.

Publishers reward these walking gold mines with ever more opportunities to foist trash on their grateful public. Everyone who matters wins. What weirdo thought improving the mind and soul by means of good reading was worth the breath it takes to say it? Nobody makes a cent from learning to read well. And why bother to write well?

Hold on, that's it, that's the answer!

Fame, here we come

How hard can it be to whack together

• a leaky plot,
• cardboard characters,
• infantile dialogue,
• boring digression,
• confused genre,
• worthless themes,
• numbing language
• and pointless climax?

Oh dear, seems like a lot to get wrong. Am I talented enough to write rubbish?

You bet - there's money riding on it!

So, away with all that well-meaning angst - bring on journalists prying into my private life; welcome free servitude to the great  publicist; embrace conspicuous enrichment via splurge-writing of anything and everything.

The way to the top is to lower the bar!

I'll have the lot - serve it up

GAME, I think.

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.