The Wisdom of the Garth

On Thursday I snuck out in my (very late) lunch break to hear Garth Nix speak at the Adelaide Writer's Week. He's one of my favourite authors so I was very keen to hear what he had to say. I wasn't disappointed.


Sean Williams (left) extracts the good oil on Garth.

Here's a summary of the things I got from his interview.

1. He thinks he could have written all his books better than he did.

Wow, what a relief to hear him say that. Even now I find myself thumbing through Ghost of Ping-Ling and thinking about all the bits I wish I'd done differently. Like Garth said, there comes a time when you just have to "let it go".

2. His first book didn't sell very well, and his second wasn't even accepted for publication.

I have been a tad stressed about how well Ghost of Ping-Ling will sell. It's easy to start thinking about it in terms of a "make or break" situation. Hearing Garth talk about low sales for his first book took a huge amount of pressure off (not that GPL is having low sales, or high sales. It's too early to have any idea yet). I should say, for those who don't know, Garth's third book "Sabriel" was a huge success (and one of my favourites).

3. He wrote many of his books while holding down a busy job.

Yep, when he said this I felt like the only person in the audience. Finding time to write would have to be one of my biggest struggles at the moment. Lately it gets squeezed in to an hour or so at around 8.30 pm, but many days of the week I don't even get that. It's easy to start thinking that successful books are only ever written by full-time authors. Clearly that's not the case.

4. He writes what is "on his heart", not what he thinks/is told will be be most commercially viable.

Always good to be reminded of this. I have another series that's bursting to get out of me once I've finished Tales of the Blue Jade, and it's completely different in audience and style (though it is in the same world). Perhaps it would be "safer" to keep writing in familiar territory, but that's not what I'll be doing.

5. Every time he starts writing a new book, he worries that he might have lost his ability to write. (I'm cheating a bit here, because Garth didn't actually say this on Thursday, but I heard him say it in another interview so I thought I would include it here.)

Yep, that could have come directly from my mouth too. It's definitely an exciting venture when you start on a new book, but there's always that fear lurking in the background as to whether you can pull it off again. If Garth feels that way after all his successes, I guess a newbie like me has all the more reason to feel exactly the same (if not worse).

So there you go. All in all, an extremely rewarding lunch-hour!

A Light To Guide Me

At same stage in the distant past I worked out a very important truth about writing, something that has helped me on numerous occasions and just this evening came to my assistance yet again. The truth is this:

If you're bored writing something, people will be bored reading it.

I wrote a lot of stories when I was a teenager, but I hardly finished any. The reason was that I always got bogged down in the opening pages trying to set up the world. I would give the back-story on both the setting and the characters, the preamble about how such and such a person ended up where they were at the beginning of the book, and so on. By the time I'd scribbled my way through five pages, I was so fed-up with the whole thing I never wanted to see it again. I was bored, and had I been cruel enough to subject a reader to my efforts, they would have been bored too. 100 percent guaranteed.

Now I'm older and grayer I know you should never worry about back-story, but instead start with action and weave in the background later. Grab your reader's interest early and never let it go. Still, tonight, while I was banging out the first draft of Jeweller of Rassylon, I found myself sinking into that familiar sensation of tedium, as if my fingers were made of lead on the keys. And the reason? I'd moved from a section of action to a section where the next bit of action is set up. Dillen moves from A to B. He sits down. He thinks about this and that. He looks to see what's around him. He thinks some more. So boring I can hardly repeat it here for fear of nodding off.

Thankfully, I had my rule to guide me. I ditched 500 words of Dillen thinking and sitting and looking, and replaced it with about four sentences of essential set-up, linking action scene A with action scene B. And you know what? It was fun to write, and I'm pretty sure it will be a lot more fun for the reader to read too.

What's Inside the Box?

In your fantasy novel, a character walks into a room. It's an office of some kind, perhaps that of a petty official in the service of whatever government rules the land. You describe the room – a desk, chair, cupboard, window. It’s generally spartan, no decorations, a few maps on the wall, a small wooden box set neatly on the desk. This box will be never be mentioned again. It’s not part of the story, and you only include it in your description to indicate that the office, while bare, is in use.

Here's a question. What's inside the box?

Sure, the box is never opened, never comes into the story, and will be forgotten by the lead character the moment he/she leaves the room, but does that mean it's unnecessary for you, the author, to know exactly what the box contains? Is this a vital detail – or is it just something you can skip over while you move onto the exciting parts of the story?

Imagine, for the sake of argument, that you have given consideration to the contents of the box. It contains a writing kit – two quills, two bottles of ink, and a blotter. This is an office, after all, so it's no suprise to find it contains writing implements. Now you can forget about the box and move on.

Or can you? The thing is, if it’s a writing kit in the box, that poses a number of other questions. For one, what does the official write on? You’ve made no mention of any paper lying around, no books or documents. Why would a desk hold writing equipment if there’s nothing to write on? An office desk without paper seems odd, even in a fantasy world, and needs to be explained.

But does this society even have paper? Paper was invented by the Chinese sometime around the 2nd century AD, spread to the Islamic World, and reached Europe in the Middle Ages. Before that, expensive materials like animal hide (vellum, parchment) and even silk were used. Documents produced with these materials were greatly valued, and were the exclusive property of the rich.

If the society of your novel is pre-paper, that would go a long way towards explaining why there are no documents or paperwork on the desk. Perhaps the records this official handles are stored elsewhere, and brought in only when his attention is needed. Perhaps he hardly ever sees documents, and the writing kit is more of a badge of honour than a functional tool.

But if this is the case, why would there be maps on the wall? Pre-industrial maps were hand-drawn, and usually considered works of art in their own right. They also tended to be very large. Any pre-paper map that sits on your fantasy office wall is likely to be worth a fortune. Is it really going to be left pinned up on the wall of a minor bureaucrat's office? Unlikely, to say the least.

So, in order to maintain reality, the maps have to go.

But having established that your society is pre-paper, other questions need to be answered. For one, how is news exchanged in your fantasy world? It can’t be by newspaper, or letter (except by the rich), or posters in the town square. Could it be by town criers – people who journey from township to township, standing in the village squares and proclaiming the events of the land? Could it be by minstrels – music makers who compose songs about current events and sing them in taverns and other public places? If so, how do these minstrels and criers get their news? How do they travel? How current is the information they bring? What sort of news is it?

Again, none of this information may ever reach the pages of your story. Not directly, anyway. It will reach the pages of the story in other, more subtle ways, because this kind of isolation influences the way communities of people evolve and develop.

It’s easy for us to forget that widespread and easy communication is a very recent invention. In the pre-technological world, cities and towns needed to exist with a great deal more autonomy than modern times. It was either that or face extinction. If Grud Tonguestealer and his merry band of raiders decided to come out of the mountains and attack the nearest city, it could take days for the alarm to reach other settlements and for aid to come. If the city didn't have strong leadership, heavy fortifications, an effective army, and some sort of early warning system, it would quickly have been reduced to rubble. These towns and cities needed to be able to stand on their own, at least long enough for help to arrive.

This autonomy needs to be considered in fantasy cities, too. How does this autonomy look to your fantasy hero as they roam the streets? What sort of military presence does he/she see? What sort of early warning systems are visible – lookouts on towers? Beacons? Riders clopping through the streets carrying news from the outer garrisons? On a slightly more abstract level, how does this autonomy look in the eyes of the occupants of the city? Do they revere the lord of the city more than the lord of the land? Do they identify themselves as citizens of the Kingdom/Empire or as citizens of the city? Where are their loyalties, their frustrations?

I could go on forever, but I think I’ve made the point.

It might seem insignificant for the author to know what’s in an unadorned box on a desk in a minor official’s office – a box that plays no part in the story and is only mentioned once in a brief description. But nothing could be further from the truth. In fantasy, as in real-life, details do not stand in isolation. Stating a fact – whether it be the contents of a box, what someone is eating for dinner, even the colour of their shirt – opens up a wider net of links and facts that must be explored and explained. It’s this coherence that gives a fantasy world depth and realism, and makes it the type of place that could function completely if it were ripped from the pages and transplanted into some lonely corner of the real world.

Time to look again at our writing. Any boxes left unopened?

Golden Editorial Moments

Seeing as I'm in an editing state-of-mind at the moment I thought I'd share ten of the best errors I've found during recent or previous editing of my own manuscripts (GPL, MMA or other works-in-progress). They are in no particular order, although my favourite is unquestionably number 10 (mainly because I found it two nights ago).

1) Non POV character's facial expressions are described even though characters are in a pitch-dark room.

2) Characters don't eat for four days but never complain of hunger.

3) A horse gallops for eight hours.

4) Characters don't sleep for two days but never complain of tiredness.

5) The Moon is full twice in a week.

6) An 80 mile journey is carried out in two days (on foot).

7) A major injury is forgotten the next day.

8) Fires are lit effortlessly without tools/implements/matches.

9) The Sun sets in the East.

10) A character uses an axe to chop the leg off a table so the table-leg can be used to try and break through a rusted iron bar (this one might require a moment's thought).

All I can say is how glad I am I caught these!

Rejections...

At the moment I'm going through a bit of a spell of rejection letters. I've had one from ASIM, one from Strange Horizons, and yet another "your story did not win" from Writers of the Future to add to my collection. At the same time, I've been reading a brilliant collection of short-stories (a collection of brilliant short-stories?) called Australis Imaginarium. If you haven't taken a look at it, I strongly recommend grabbing a copy from here.

Reading the anthology has helped me keep the rejection emails in perspective, because the more of those stories I read, the more I understand why my own efforts didn't make it. That's not to say my stories were bad, because I don't think they were. They just weren't anywhere near the standard of the ones I'm reading. Far from being discouraged by that, it's encouraged me to keep writing and to keep striving for improvement.

One thing I do need to work on is endings. I find it much easier starting a short-story and getting the whole thing rolling than I do coming up with a satisfying conclusion that wraps everything up nicely. My endings tend to be abrupt, or in some other way fail to complete the journey I've embarked on. I think I'm getting better, but still a long way to go¹.

¹I hope that wasn't too abrupt an ending for this post.

Nomenclature, and Other Diseases of the Knee.

Coming up with names is one of those mixed joys. I prefer it to nutting out a plot, or fleshing out a description, or dreaming up a character for the first time, but that doesn't make it a trivial or easy task.

A name is pivotal to a story. A name should be interesting, unique, and it should capture a sense of the place or person to whom it is ascribed (imagine if Darth Vadar had been called Cyril. Spoils the effect completely).

Because I know it's a difficult task, and should be approached carefully, I usually do very little naming in any of my early drafts. Instead, I use place-holders, memorable words that I can easily find and easily replace at a later date. With my current work-in-progress, I went even further, and used the same name - Barney - for every new thing or person. The village of Barney, Master Barney, the River Barney etc. (I really hope none of these slip through). Most times I'm not quite so extreme, and I'll attempt to come up with different place-holder names for each character or location, usually something like "Bill" or "Ted". It takes slightly more thought, but makes it much easier when I get to the end and do a global search-replace with proper names.

That's where the fun begins. When it comes to picking non place-holder names, these are some different methods I've found useful:

1) Pure invention.

Sometimes I'll come up with a name by just rattling sounds and letters around in my head and seeing how they form. Many of my favourite names started life this way, like Ping-Ling, Tajni and General Magoda. It can also help to work through the alphabet, using each letter as a starting point for a new word.

Be aware, though, that this approach has a potential sting in the tail. On a few occasions I've come up with an absolutely wonderful name, only to find out later it's come from another book, or a film or some such place. At some point I've read or heard it and, having sunk into my subconscious, its raised its head when I've tried to dream up of a new word.

That's not necessarily a bad thing in itself, but originality is a pretty good thing to strive for. One way to reduce the chances of this happening is to Google any name you come up with, just in case.

2) Language Dictionaries.

Because my current series is set in an Asian themed world, I've made a lot of use of Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Thai language dictionaries to help me pick names. Most times I'll change the word slightly, so that its origin isn't immediately clear, but sometimes I'll use it as is, if I particularly love how it sounds. You could do the same with German, French or just about any other language dictionary you can think of. They're a huge resource for words and names you wouldn't otherwise hear in everyday usage.

3) Maps.

This is something I've recently discovered, and I think it's become one of my most useful methods for coming up with place-names. With the advent of Google Maps, it's easy to take a virtual cruise over any landscape you want, checking out landscape names and picking and choosing what you like. Again, as with language dictionaries, you can change as you wish¹.

4) Online Name Generators.

I can't say I'm completely sold on these, but I have used them to generate a fairly major character name in one of my works-in-progress. The idea is you can enter a series of constraints (male, female, locale, genre etc.) and the computer will spit out a fantasy name. You can check out one of them here. They're actually strangely addictive...

5) Other Odd Places.

I picked the name of one of my lead characters, Koto, from the working-name of a microprocessor I was helping to design at the time. It's amazing how many sources of great names there are if you keep your eye out for them!

So there you go, a summary of my current methods for finding names. I'm sure I'll stumble across others as I go along. As always, feel free to share some of the methods you've used. I'd love to add to my list!

¹As a (hopefully) interesting aside, I recently flipped to a map at the beginning of Sean Williams' The Sky Warden and the Sun, and was surprised to see a number of strangely familiar names. It took me a moment to realise they were all based on town-names north of Adelaide - "Boliva" instead of "Bolivar", "Three Wells" instead of "Two wells", "Long Sleep Plains" instead of "Wild Horse Plains", "Lower Light" instead of .. well, "Lower Light". Then I remembered -- Sean Williams grew up in Whyalla, a town north of Adelaide. He would have seen each of these names on road-signs as he drove into the city along Highway 1. The only reason I know this is that I grew up in Woomera, also north of Adelaide, and I used to see the same signs too.

I felt strangely privileged at this discovery, like I've been let into a great secret!

We Write. And Then We Write Some More.

Description is one of those difficult things to get right, at least for me. I often find myself labouring over a small descriptive paragraph for hours, and still not being happy with the result - whereas a passage of dialogue or action can slip onto the page with minimal effort and remain almost unchanged throughout all the subsequent drafts.

The difficulty, I think, is not so much giving the description -- "the room had an altar and a stool, a wide arched ceiling, and three small clay leprechauns all in a row" as giving it in a way that reflects the viewpoint character's perception of the scene, the way he or she would naturally look upon it, how their eye would be drawn, and what their mind would do with the information received. "There were three clay leprechauns in the corner, like the type Uncle Herbert used to have at the foot of his bed. But there was no bed here, just a stool set before a marble altar, and a wide ceiling like the type the old Reformatory School had in its dining room."

The character here is filtering the information, noticing the most noticeable first, and only noticing the rest in terms of his/her efforts to understand the presence of the first. All the information is filtered through their own experience, their own sense of the world as they see it. This stops the description feeling arbitrary, like a list, and anchors it more firmly in the point-of-view of the protagonist.

The other thing about description is selectivity - working out what's worth mentioning and what's worth leaving out. When I was about twelve, and I used to write adventure stories, I would describe everything. "The man was about six feet tall, with blond hair and a square jaw, blue eyes and a droopy moustache. He was dressed in jeans and a polo-necked shirt, with a poka-dot hankie hanging out one pocket, and a pair of boots caked in mud from top to bottom. He had an unlit pipe in one hand, and a pistol in the other."

Way too much information for the reader to process, with the result that the scene is muddied, rather than painted. The trick, I think, is to pick two or three key details, again the sort of thing the protag would most likely notice, and let the reader fill in the gaps. If I were describing the above character, I might say something like this:

"He looked like one of those bush types, with a droopy moustache and square jaw, and boots caked in a thick crust of mud. Then I saw the pistol, hanging limply in his left hand. Thankfully, there was no hostility in his blue eyes, nothing to make me think he would raise it."

Gone is the hanky, the pipe, jeans, height, hair and shirt. I've still kept the pistol, boots, moustache, jaw and eyes. The hope is that the reader will have enough information to form a mental picture, and that they will fill in the gaps of any information missed. As the narrative continues, other details can be introduced, and the reader's picture is either confirmed or slightly adjusted (but hopefully never jarred). The overall result should hopefully be a clearer idea of scene, but even more importantly, a sense that the reader has an involvement in the story, that they are in some sense drawn in and caught up in the narrative process. In the end, that's what makes reading infinitely superior to TV or movies, where all the information is given to you on a plate. (Incidentally, I think that's why movies based on books are so frequently disappointing, because we feel as if our own private world has been reinterpreted by another, and not necessarily very well.)

These are some of the things I've picked up over the years, things that I strive to bring to bear in my own writing. I think that's probably why I find description so difficult, because I'm not simply writing a list, I'm trying to present information through the eyes of the POV character, while at the same time attempting to paint a vivid scene without spoon-feeding the reader or swamping them in detail. And, over all that, I'm trying to write words that flow well, are readable, and carry their weight.

Who'd be a writer, hey?

Written Connection

Andrea has kindly added Cackling Scribe to The Written Connection , a great list of writing related blogs. She has some very kind things to say too. Please check it out!

Has Anyone Seen My Quill?

I've been trying something new these past few days. Instead of using my laptop to write the first draft of MMA¹, I've been writing by hand in a notebook. It's the first time I've written a story with a pen since I was about 14. So far, my fingers are holding up, although I've noticed a long forgotten callus showing up once again on my index-finger. Welcome back, callus.

I've been thinking about trying this ever since I read a post by Garth Nix. He lists a lot of positives for writing by hand -- the main one being portability. For me, it's certainly been handy being able to take my notebook into the coffee shop at lunchtime and bang out 1000 words. Sure, I could take my laptop too, but then I have to worry about power supplies, getting it on my bike with all the other stuff I have to carry, and that self-consciousness I always seem to get when I'm working on my laptop in public (I think it must be some kind of new-writer neurosis).

But the main reason I'm trying it is a bit more subtle. I have a reasonably fast typing speed, courtesy of a course the government put me through when I worked as a clerk in my early 20's. That means I can easily type 1000 words in a very short space of time. You would have thought that's a good thing, but sometimes it's not. Speed rarely equals quality, and all too often I find myself writing whole chapters that will need serious rework, if not a total rewrite, in the second draft.

With hand-writing, I go a lot slower - my current rate being something like 1000 words in a solid hour. Because it's slow, it forces me to think more about what I'm writing, to plan more what the sentences will say before they spill out of my head and onto the page. Also, because it's written in ink on paper, rather than with 1's and 0's, it has a permanency to it -- it can't easily be wiped away with the delete key. Again, that drives me to think more carefully about what I want to write before I commit it to the page.

There's a possible negative too, which I'm keeping an eye out for. Sometimes, in particular scenes, my writing gets into a fast flow. This usually happens in action moments, like fights or pursuits, where lots of things are happening fast and there is little need for detailed description. I haven't reached one of those with the handwriting yet, but when I do, I wonder if I'll find it much harder than if it were being typed. I'll have to see.

Funny thing, this writing business. There's so much to learn, it sometimes feels completely overwhelming. But I think experimenting is a big part of coming to terms with it -- researching what others do, trying it out, and seeing if it fits. If it doesn't, move on to something else. If it does, stick with it, no matter what people tell you you "should" be doing.

It's definitely a fun ride!

¹Yes, I've started again. No, don't ask.

Reading Other Fantasy

I mentioned in the last post that I'd been listening to author podcasts from the Sydney Writer's Festival. In the last one, the interviewer mentioned that many authors go out of their way to avoid reading other fantasy while they're writing, out of fear their work might in some way be influenced.


I must confess, I'd never heard an author author say that before, and it got me thinking. My aim this year is to read a book a month, almost all of it fantasy. So far I'm right on track, perhaps even a little ahead. I've read Garth Nix, Cindy Pon, Duncan Lay, Sean Williams, John Flanagan, Alison Goodman, and I've got a whole host of books sitting in a pile waiting for my attention. I've learned something from every one, whether it's some kind of style tip, or something about world-building, or an example of how to build tension or vividly describe a scene. I'm a firm believer that one of the most important aspects of growing as a writer is to soak in the work of the experts, to see how they do it, and emulate what you can.

The tricky thing, of course, is to do this while still maintaining your own unique style and voice, and I think that's where a lot of authors decide it's easiest not to read anything. And I know exactly what they fear. If I look back at some of my earlier drafts of GPL, I can tell you exactly what I was reading at the time. When a bumbling wizard appears on an island, talking about IME's, or Indeterminate Magical Effects, I was reading Harry Potter. When a witch appears, and insists the main evil protagonist plant a kiss on her cheek before she gives away any information, I was reading Discworld. And when Dillen makes a decision that, for all intents and purposes, appears to be a betrayal of his friends, I was reading the Hobbit - specifically the bit where Bilbo gives away the Arkenstone.

I like to think that I've gone past that, however. Surely by now I've put enough words on the paper and sprouted enough gray hairs to be able to recognise when somebody else's style is creeping into my writing. Surely.

But is it still there? What if it is, and I can't see it, and in five years time I'll look back and recognise bits of all the books I'm reading this year and cringe horribly?

And now, I'd be really interested to hear what other people think. Do you avoid reading other works while you're writing? Have you found stuff from your reading creeping into your manuscript unbidden?

Don't be shy! Fire away.

On Outlining (Oh No, Not Again!)

I've been listening to some great author podcasts recently, courtesy of Valerie Khoo and the Sydney Writer's Festival (you can find them on iTunes if you want to check them out). Yesterday, I listened to Fiona Mcintosh, a fellow Adelaidian who has a phenomenal reputation but whose books are yet to reach the top of my burgeoning reading pile. She had some interesting points to make about the writing process, and particularly about the outline vs. writing by the seat of the pants approach (I know, I'm still harping on about this).

I would categorise Fiona as being at the extreme fringe of the anti-outlining faction. When she starts to write, she has no idea about anything - who her characters are, what will happen to them, where it will happen, what the world looks like, and so on. All of this, she insists, leaps out at her as she goes along, and the numerous loose and dangling threads have never failed to order themselves in a semi-miraculous manner, right towards the end of the book.

Now, while I don't subscribe to that approach (see recent posts), she did make one very interesting point. In her view, the main problem with outlining is that when you're outlining, you're not writing, and therefore you're not bringing the story forward. In her opinion, even writing a noodle-soup of dud ideas is better than not writing at all.

The reason this hit such a chord with me is that since I identified my need for an outline, I feel as if the book has ground to a halt. Sure, I've been spending time thinking about it, what happens and the backstory and so on, and I've come up with some interesting thoughts and ideas. But up until the last few days, I haven't written anything. My word count has stopped at 22,000, like a dodgy odometer on an old car.

While this might be good from the point of view of planning, it's not doing a lot for my piece of mind. There's something wonderfully satisfying about churning out the words, not matter how bad they might be. It shows you're progressing, you're actually getting somewhere. It boosts your confidence, particularly when the days are flying past and you have a sneaking suspicion the delivery date of June 2011 will be here before you know it.

So, enough outlining for me. A few days ago I picked up the dog's breakfast of a 22,000 word manuscript and resumed, although my recent planning means the story has a vast discontinuity (I plan on going back and fixing up those 22,000 words last). As of this moment, I'm at 29,000 words, within sight of the half-way mark. And it feels good. I feel like a runner who's had to spend a few weeks recovering from an injury, and can finally get on the track again and blow off the cobwebs.

I think in the end it comes down to balance. It's important to spend time outlining and planning, but you need to learn to recognise when it's time to start writing. It's OK if there are plot points yet to be clarified, or characters who are vague, or you haven't quite nailed down the landscape. All you need is a skeleton, a loose idea that you can build on as you go.

I think I've reached that point. Onwards we go.

A Change of Tack.

Remember how I waxed lyrical about my Driving Without Headlights approach to writing – the method of not using outlines that worked so well with The Weight of Souls? Well, 22,000 words and several months later, I’ve come to the conclusion that I got lucky on that occasion, and that writing without an outline is more often than not a recipe for wasting time.

I started Mapmaker’s Apprentice with a solid idea of its beginning and end, and a burning ambition to write 1000 words per day until I’d come up with an 80,000 word initial draft. Things started off well, with the first chapter looking pretty good and the whole thing flowing well. But, by the time I reached the 20,000 word mark, the whole thing had become a veritable bird’s-nest of oddly-placed plot-points, disjointed conversation and wobbly characters. If I squinted down the road hard enough, I could clearly see a total re-write sitting in a deck-chair in the distance, waving at me and grinning.

That's not to say everything I've written has been a complete waste of time, or would have been if I had kept at it. By the end, I’m sure I would have had little bits and pieces that I could have tinkered with, ideas that came from nowhere as I bravely battled on. But now I think I can achieve the same thing in less than half the time and with less than half the effort, simply by spending some time working on a constructive outline before I begin writing.

*Sigh*. I never thought I’d say that. Many would say it’s glaringly obvious that writing with an outline is better than travelling blind. But I was so keen to try an exciting new method, and so convinced it would pay dividends, that I pressed on regardless. Now I know better.

Part of the problem has been a misunderstanding of how an ‘outline’ type approach should work. I had pictured a series of bullet points – something along the lines of “Fred walks into bar. Fred gets into firefight with Sheriff Dwayne. Fred shoots Sheriff Dwayne. Fred spits in spittoon as he ambles out.” Every time I’ve used this kind of thing, it’s been hopeless. It’s just too low-level, too detailed, and it fails to take into consideration the way characters have a habit of bouncing off each other and the situations you put them in, often leading to them acting differently to your initial expectations(the scoundrels! Don't they understand who's boss?).

But now I've seen a new method that's kind of half way between a bullet-point outline and a blindly written first draft. I first saw it mentioned in a blog-post by my writing-friend, Jonathan Danz. The idea is that, rather than churn out a blow by blow outline of the flow of action, the author should start by summarising the book in 15 or so pages, a summary that will contain the main themes of the book as well as the ways in which the characters develop from beginning to end. It’s almost like writing that first draft, but in micro-form, therefore saving a lot of time and avoiding a lot of unnecessary and certain to be changed detail. This summary then serves as a high-level roadmap, allowing detail to be fleshed out with a clear idea of the underlying drivers of action.

I saw something similar in a page by Garth Nix, where he explains his process for writing a novel. He describes the first stage as a kind of gestation of ideas, a time of thinking and musing on the story. From this, he writes a chapter by chapter outline of the book, with each chapter summarised in a few sentences. Again, this is not a blow by blow detail of what happens, but a condensation of the main events and themes of each chapter. Armed with this, he moves to the next stage - the long, hard slog of writing.

Garth mentions that he fully expects to depart from this outline, but that having it gives him a sense of security, a sense that he knows where he wants to go. I can certainly relate to that need for security. It's terrifying to launch into a book without really knowing what happens, doubly so when the manuscript happens to be contracted. What if you never do work it out? What if the ideas never come together in a coherent way, and all you end up with is mush? Starting with an outline means you know (or, perhaps, are fairly sure) that's not going to happen, and any deviations from the outline can only be because you've come up with something even better. Very good for your peace of mind.

So, feeling wiser and grayer, I’ve put down my 20,000 words of literary spaghetti, and picked up my moleskine notebook. I’m now working towards building an overall picture of what I want to happen in the book. So far, I know how I want each of the characters to develop over the course of the novel. I also know what information I want to reveal that pertains to the overall series. From this, I’ve managed to build a skeleton chapter outline, which I’m currently tinkering with as I think about characters and details. All being well, by the time I start writing again, I’ll know exactly where I’m going. I’m certain that, by the end of the process, I’ll have a much better product than I would have done with my no-headlights approach. Fingers crossed!

Uncle Pete's Sagely Writing Tips

I'm currently head down tails up doing edits for Ghost of Ping-Ling, but I thought I'd briefly surface for air, as well as to share a couple of useful pointers I've picked up on my travels¹.

You know how it is when you've been working on a paragraph/chapter/book so long you can quote it in your sleep, and you've lost all objectivity as to how it sounds and whether it makes sense. Sure, you could give it to someone else and let them take a look. Or you could put it in a draw and throw away the key for six months.

But if neither of those solutions are practical, here's two suggestions.

1) Change the font.

It sounds ridiculous, but it works. If you change the font of a block of text, it helps you look at it with fresh eyes, no matter how many times you've stared at it in the past. I usually work in TNR, and I find changing to Courier works wonders.

2) Listen to it read.

That doesn't mean you have to get someone to read it out to you (of course, if you have that luxury, that would be wonderful). There are plenty of free text-to-speech converters available on the web. They have very listenable voices, and can usually be adjusted to male or female, British or US etc. I paid $50 for the one I use, but that way I get full functionality - which means I can translate my entire book to an mp3, stick it on my ipod, and listen to it anywhere and anytime I like. Money well spent.

So there you go. Some tips I've picked up. Hopefully they'll be of some use!

Now excuse me while I dive back into the dark depths of Lake Edit. If only I could find my scuba gear.....

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¹ I've picked up so many useful tips from reading other people's blogs, I thought it must be my turn.

How Long Does it Take to Tell a Story?

Somewhere along the line, I read that a YA book by a first-time author should never be more than 80,000 words. I think it had something to do with the cost of publishing verses the risk of the unknown, as well as the (apparent) ideal length an average young-adult wants to read.

So, always keen to take on good advice, I've tried to keep to this length in all my writing, and have usually managed to come in almost exactly on target (by dumb luck rather than careful planning, I can promise).

But then recently I've read two books by first-time authors that are more in the region of 200,000 words. The first is Wounded Guardian, by Duncan Lay (well worth a visit to his blog, he gives some great advice), and the second is book 1 of the Monster Blood Tattoo series. Perhaps the 80K rule is one of those things that generally applies, but can sometimes be broken.

For me, though, I've always been comfortable with the 80,000 word target. I think if I tried to write something bigger than that, I'd probably end up fluffing it out with unnecessary detail and would only bore the daylights out of the reader, rather than adding anything of value. Perhaps that's just my style, or perhaps that's the length of book that I prefer as a reader (not to take away from either of the excellent titles referenced above).

Or perhaps it's the nightmare of having to edit a 200,000 word manuscript. I'm finding 80,000 words challenging enough as it is!

Weight of Souls

Tonight I finished draft 0 of The Weight of Souls (insert joyous music and cheering crowd noises). I have to say, it turned out much better than I had hoped, and I'm now a firm convert to the Driving Without Headlights approach.

So many times, I started with a rough idea of what I wanted to happen, but when I sat down and allowed myself to type as my thoughts came, the story went in directions I would never have thought of in a planning session. Whether this is because of some strange operation of the subconsciousness, or the natural outcome of allowing the characters to be themselves, or some other reason that could well be debated by cardigan-clad academics over a few glasses of red, it worked.

Now I have to print out the draft and get it bound. Then I get to immerse myself in the scintillating delights¹ of the editing process.


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¹ There is absolutely no sarcasm here. You will absolutely never find sarcasm on this blog. Absolutely not.

Driving Without Headlights - Revisited

I recently mentioned that I was starting my next novel - The Weight of Souls - without using any kind of outline and without stopping to review or edit as I went. This approach is completely new for me, and I was deeply cynical as to whether it would work. Nonetheless, I thought I'd give it a go.

In the end, I reached about 31,000 words before giving up. In my mind, the story had descended into a twisting morass of plot-ends, shallow characters and repetitive action. I was all set to write a blog post confirming that, for me, the non-outline approach doesn't work, and I now needed to start over from scratch. Presuming, that is, I ever had the heart to return to The Weight of Souls.

Then, a funny thing happened. A bit over a week ago, I sat down late one evening and decided to read through the 31K words I had written. I was fully expecting to cringe at every turn, and perhaps find myself unable to reach the end before giving up in disgust. Instead, to my utter amazement, I thought what I had written was quite good - very much worthy of first draft status. Yes, the characters are shallow and need a lot of fleshing out, as does the description, environment, and the overall back-story. But the plot works well, and most importantly, the voice and feel that I had hoped would come across appears to do so.

The next day, I got stuck back into it. As I write this, I'm sitting at 41,000 words, and aiming to finish the draft by New Years. That means I'm writing something close to 2,500 words a day, but I now feel encouraged that this approach can indeed work, and I'm not totally wasting my time.

I can now see the advantages of using this method, and I think I'll stick with it for the time being - provided the final result for this novel is what I would have hoped.

I'm enjoying it enormously. Even better, it's helping take my mind off my continuing wait for news of Ping-Ling. The manuscript has now been sitting in a publisher's office (at least, I hope that's where it is and it didn't get lost in the mail) for approaching 12 weeks, and I no longer have any fingernails left. Any distraction is very welcome.

Driving Without Headlights

Since I finished GPL, I've plunged into my next project, an adult fantasy called The Weight of Souls. My aim has been to finish the first draft by the end of the year, giving me a target of 1000 words a day between now and then. As of tonight, I'm sitting at 23,000 words, a bit under where I need to be seeing as I ended up taking a couple of (desperately needed) weeks off.

My approach to writing this draft has been similar to that advocated by NaNoWriMo, as well as most of the authors whose blogs I follow. I call it the "Driving Without Headlights" approach. The aim is to sit down and write, with only a minimal outline and just a cursory idea of where the story is going to end up. You never go back and revise, and you don't stop to read what you've written. You keep ploughing on until you reach the end of the first draft, at which point you sink your teeth into what will almost definitely be an enormous amount of revision, if not a near-total rewrite.

The philosophy behind this approach, I think, is that too many people get bogged down in editing or preparation, and end up never getting the book finished or, sometimes, even started. Characters and situations also have a bad habit of doing their own thing, bouncing off each other in such a way as to make any planning and outlining null and void. I can testify to this, because I've seen it happen in everything I've written, and it's certainly happening in my current work in progress.

It's the first time I've used this approach, and I see it as an experiment as much as an exercise in producing another novel. At the moment, I'm not convinced it's the best way to write a book. Sure, using this approach will help you get the draft finished. Sure, it will avoid wasting time planning something that's unlikely to go in the expected direction anyway. But I'm wondering whether the end result will be little more than an elaborate outline that took several months to write and, when you sit down to do the editing, will only have to be replaced by a 'proper' draft. I've even seen authors refer to this first, pell-mell draft as "draft 0", knowing it won't be good enough to be graced with a number "1".

At times, when I'm writing the Weight of Souls, I'm totally clueless as to where it's going or what's supposed to be happening, though I have a string of loosely associated ideas in my mind for what I want to occur. Because I'm not reading back over it, I'm worried that, when I do, I'll shake my head at the absolute morass of dead ends and dragging narrative, loosely cobbled together with the ragged remnants of what once seemed such a good idea, and I'll have to start over totally.

Of course, I could be wrong, and I'll end up being pleasantly surprised. It's definitely an experiment worth carrying out, if only to find out whether this style works (or doesn't work) for me.

Be Thankful for the Gatekeepers

Here is a recurring nightmare. If you're an aspiring author and this doesn't give you cold shivers, you should take your own pulse. You may, in fact, be dead.

It’s happened. The phone-call you’ve been waiting for has finally arrived. Your book is being published! And not just one; you're offered an advance on two more. It’s more money than you ever imagined; apparently, there is much excitement about your manuscript, and expectations are high.

You tell your friends, your acquaintances, your neighbours, anyone who will listen. People around you get bored with your constant jabbering about your book, but you don’t care. You’ve reached the unattainable. You have arrived.

The launch comes. It’s a big deal, you've invited as many people as you could think of. Artwork from the book is draped about the hall, red wine is flowing, a pile of brand-new novels stands guard next to a chirping cash-register. As you sit and sign copy after copy, your face flushed from wine and the heat of the occasion, you reflect that life couldn’t possibly get any better than this.

The next day, you start checking the review pages on all the sites you can think of. You check them five times a day, in between writing book 2 in the series. Nothing. Why can’t people read faster than this? Finally, a review. Your fingers tremble as you click the link to read it. Not good. Whoever this person is, they didn’t really get your book at all. Their review cuts like a knife, but you shake your head and force yourself to get over it. It’s only one person’s viewpoint, after all.

The days pass, and you find yourself ringing a few friends who have the book, on the pretence of idle chit-chat or a discussion about an upcoming social event. They say nothing about the novel and, in the end, you come right out and ask. After a moment’s silence, they say “Yeah, it was really good. I really enjoyed it.” But it sounds forced, awkward, and they seem keen to get you off the phone.

More reviews, each as negative as the last. Words begin to make regular appearances – “trite”, “mediocre”, “unoriginal”. Who are these people with such a damning view? Did they read your book or just the back cover? You tell yourself not to worry, it's a bad patch. The positive reviews will come soon. But they don’t. Three stars out of five is the best you get, and that’s from someone who gives five to almost everything. There’s a tone of mockery and laughter about the reviews, and a constant refrain rings like a bell in your ears: “How on earth did this get published?”

Meetings with your publisher are less than encouraging. She reassures you that sometimes books take a while to get moving, and that many great novels started off this badly. You ask for specific examples, but she simply plays with her pen and purses her lips. As time passes, she is more open. Sales are worrying. Sales are very worrying. At this rate, it looks as though you won’t earn back even a tenth of your advance.

The crunch. A meeting is called with your publisher and a very stern-faced company CEO. The talk is direct and brief. The company will not be publishing the second or third book in the series. The title has not lived up to expectations. The market has made its view abundantly clear.

Now, you don’t mention the book to anybody. Your greatest hope is that they will forget. You’ve tried to publish again, a different genre altogether, without mentioning your previous publication history. But it’s always the same. “You’re the author of that book, aren’t you?”, and the conversation is over.

And, in those bitter moments, when you sit and stare at the unopened box of books on the floor of your study, your mind always comes back to one thing. Why did that publisher tell you it was good enough? Why did she tell you that you were ready? Why did she open the door to failure and humiliation rather than snapping it shut with a quick form-letter rejection? Even you know, now, that your book is utter rubbish. You've learned so much in the interim, you're certain you could write a best-seller. All you need is a chance, a chance that will never come, because you only get one.

And yours, my friend, is gone.

Knowing When to Give Up

When is it time to give up on a book and move on to something else? This is a question I think about a lot, particularly as my current project has been going on for more than eight years, and is still not ready for submission.

It's not an easy question to answer, and the water is further muddied by the mix of advice out there in internet land. A recurring theme is that you should never get caught up on "The Book" - the single work that drains years of your time and will probably never venture beyond your own bookshelf. On the other hand, there's also plenty of advice about how to self-edit, how to improve a book to increase its chances of publication, and how you should never, ever, ever give up.

According to popular legend, Jo Rowling spent several years trying to get Harry Potter published. I wonder what would have happened if, after a year or so, she'd decided it was time to move on, put Harry in a box beneath the bed, and gone off to write a story about a girl with a crush on a vampire, or something like that.

In the end, I have no answer to this dilemma, other than to say I think there is wisdom in both sides of the argument, and the truth probably lies somewhere in between (otherwise known as a 'cop-out'). For myself, I currently have one other book bubbling around in my head, and it's something I'm excited about and I'm desperate to get in to. But I've decided to do one last pass on Ghost of Ping-Ling, hopefully finish it in the next few weeks, then feed it to the machine. After that, I can get my teeth into something new in the six-months or so before I hear something.

What about you? I'd be really interested to hear other people's wisdom on this subject - don't be shy!

The Wording For Today

Here's a short passage from a book I'm reading at the moment - Sabriel, by Garth Nix, arguably one of the greatest fantasy authors alive today.

A small figure was busy climbing over the gate, nimbly avoiding the spikes that were supposed to stop such activities. She dropped the last few feet and started running, her pigtails flying, shoes clacking on the bricks. Her head was down to gain momentum, but as cruising speed was established, she looked up, saw Sabriel and the dead rabbit, and screamed.

... here's another, this one from a bloke called Tolkien ...

A nice pickle they were all in now: all neatly tied up in sacks, with three angry trolls sitting by them, arguing whether they should roast them slowly, or mince them fine and boil them, or just sit on them one by one and squash them into jelly; and Bilbo up in a bush, with his clothes and his skin torn, not daring to move for fear they should hear him.

... and a third, from a lady named Jo ...

Harry tried to turn back towards the gryffindor goal posts; he had half a mind to ask Wood to call time out - and then he realised that his broom was completely out of his control. He couldn't turn it. He couldn't direct it at all. It was zig-zagging through the air and every now and then making violent swishing movements which almost unseated him. Lee was still commentating.

To get these quotes, I stood up and grabbed three books from my shelf, then flipped to random pages until I found what I wanted. It didn't take long, maybe twenty seconds.

Why?

Recently, I've noticed a pattern in some of the reviews I've been reading on OWW. Someone, somewhere, has put it in people's heads that words ending in "ing" (technically known as present-participles) should be avoided at all costs, and that any sentence featuring the word "was" is automatically passive.

Now, I'm certainly no expert, but I don't need to be. All I need to do is point to the above three quotes. By my count, there's a total of 13 "ing" words, and 5 clauses with the word "was", just in this little selection, the one that took me all of 20 seconds to find.

Here's my understanding, and the quotes above back me up. No word is, in itself, bad. Every word in the English language is there to be used, nothing should be avoided. What should be avoided is overuse - where a word rattles around so frequently it becomes an irritation, a buzzing in the reader's ear. That doesn't just relate to "was", or words that end in "ing" - any word can be overused, and most writers have their pets (mine is "just").

Present-participles are used to express parallel, as opposed to sequential, action. "John picked up the book, looked around, then scratched his head." is sequential. It contains no "ing" words, but if you ask me, it's artificial and stilted. "John picked up the book, looking around and scratching his head." is parallel, three actions are happening together at the same time. In my opinion, the sentence is more alive, more natural. To discourage the use of such helpful verbs, simply because they end in "ing", is (as a teacher of mine used to say) really rather silly.

As for "was" - I think part of the problem is a general misunderstanding of the definition of a "passive" sentence. In a passive sentence, the subject has something "done to it", rather than the subject itself doing the action. Example - "The book was read by John." The subject (the book) has something done to it (it is read by John). Therefore the subject (the book) is "passive" - it just sits there and allows itself to be read. "John read the book." Here, the subject of the sentence (John) is performing the action (reading the book), the subject is therefore "active" - and so is the sentence.

Note (and I think that herein lies the confusion) that the passive version contains the word "was", whereas the active version does not. But it's not the presence or absence of "was" that makes the difference - it's who is acting and who is being acted upon. A sentence can feature the word "was" and still be perfectly active - as in: "A small figure was busy climbing the gate" or "It was zig-zagging through the air".

I don't normally clutter up these blog-posts with writing advice, simply because I don't feel qualified to give any. But I think this is a good encouragement for us to be wary of what we hear, and to think carefully before taking on board advice that could well be deeply flawed. There's nothing worse than a writer becoming hamstrung - their natural style restricted by a fear of using "forbidden" words. Writing is hard enough as it is.

So, if in doubt, go to the greats. Pick up the books on your shelf and see how the so-called rules you have heard stack up. With the likes of Garth, John and Jo on your side, you can hardly go wrong.

Update - I sat down tonight to read more of Sabriel, and this is the first sentence that greeted me.

Gray mist coiling upwards, twining around him like a clinging vine, gripping arms and legs, immobilising, strangling, merciless.

I am resting my case.