5 Things I've Learned About Characters

Characters. Where would a story be without them? They're the meat and veg in your stew, the cards and presents on your birthday, the software on your computer. Put simply, a story triumphs or faceplants on the quality of the characters acting it out, so it pays to get them right. In my years as a writer I've written characters for short stories, stage plays, musicals and now for novels, and if there's anything I've learned it's that, however different they may be, there are a lot of principles about writing them that stay the same across the board. This is my attempt to smoosh some key things I've learned all over one virtual page.

Let's do this.

1 - Characters come in three flavours.

Okay there are certainly more once you get into sub-types and stuff, but for the moment we're trying to keep things simple. 

The first, and most obvious, are the Main Characters. These are the folks who drive the plot; whenever they perform an action the plot is moved forward in some way as a result of what they do (or, in some cases, don't do.) The ideal amount is generally between 2 and 5 - that's not to say you can't have more or less than that, but if you do you're making your job a lot harder. Main Characters most obviously include the protagonist, the antagonist and the POV character, but can also include love interests, sidekicks, mentors and shadows.

Next we have the Minor Characters. These are just as important to the plot as Main Characters and can even have their own agenda within the plot, but their role is merely to assist (or hinder) Main Characters in moving the plot forward - they don't have any direct effect on plot events themselves. Gollum in Lord of the Rings is an example of a minor character, because even though he constantly schemes to get the One Ring back (which could otherwise paint him as the Antagonist to Frodo, a Main Character) he's doing it for his own reasons and not as part of the overall plot of defeating Sauron and ridding Middle-Earth of his evil influence. For Minor Characters, between 5 and 10 is usually the most manageable amount. Having more than 10 is... not impossible, but certainly harder to micro-manage, and having less than 5 is fine - as long as it doesn't leave you with more Main Characters than Minor ones. If that's the case it's highly likely some of those Mains aren't really Mains after all, and need demoting for the good of the plot.

And finally we have the Extras, otherwise known as walk-ons or, in Star Trek parlance, Redshirts. These guys are mostly used for the practical stuff of filling space and performing background grunt work while the Main and Minor characters get on with plot stuff. Crowds are extras, along with retail and service staff in places your characters visit, police and emergency service crews and any other random strangers that pop up for one scene and then vanish, never to be seen again. There's no limit to how many of these you can have, so long as you recognise the expendability of their role. Which brings me neatly on to:

2 - The Extras are supposed to be nobodies.

You can make them quirky, you can give them a personality - but don't make them interesting, and definitely don't make them more interesting than a Main or Minor Character. Lots of us do it; make a walk-on we kind of fall a little bit in love with, so that when he finally gets his big moment we give him a killer line of dialogue, or have him do something super-quirky and memorable, because we want our readers to love him as much as we do. And that's the problem. Succeed and what you have is a frustrated reader, getting distracted from the real story and the real characters because they're too busy wondering what happened to that cool walk-on that showed up for five seconds and then disappeared into the ether. 

So curb the love and treat 'em mean. Don't even give them names in most cases; there's no reason for a janitor to become Fred the Janitor if all he'll be doing is scrubbing toilets in the background while the other characters do the cool stuff. Extras should be little more than walking and (occasionally) talking meat-props. That's why in movies and tv shows they only appear in the end credits rather than the opening ones. Showbiz. It's brutal.

3 - Serve up your characters like you'd serve up a good meal.

As in one course at a time, not the entire three courses dumped on one massive plate. In other words, don't introduce too many new characters at once in a single scene. Imagine you're at a party. You know the host, but you don't know any of the other guests invited, so he offers to introduce you to them. "Here they all are," he says, rounding them up into one giant herd. "This is Jim and his wife Sally, and this is Mark, Jim's boss, and that's Mark's flatmate June, and this is Frank who works with Sally and that's his wife Shelley, who's actually Mark's sister-in-law..."

How much of that did you actually take in? Next to nothing, probably. That's because it's too much information too fast - and, crucially, too early. You don't know any of these people yet, so you have no reason to care about them one way or the other. The host would have done better to let you meet Jim and Sally first, allowing you to speak with them for a while, then bringing in Mark and June a little later, and then waiting for a while after that until Frank and Shelley came over to talk to Sally and then introducing them...

The reader doesn't need to know who everyone is right off the starting blocks, so the best time to introduce any new character is at the first point they do something important in the plot. That usually limits things to, ideally, no more than three per scene. Extras don't count toward that quota, and you can also get away with including characters the reader has already met - but go easy on the number of 'active' characters you have in any one scene at a time. Because then you'll need to...

4 - Beware of Character Jump-Scare Syndrome.

This commonly happens in novels and short stories, when dialogue occurs between two characters while there are other characters in the scene as well (who aren't extras, because again, extras don't count.) These non-participating characters might be avid spectators of the exchange between the two speaking characters, or they might be ignoring them and doing their own thing in the background. Either way, the longer the focus stays on the dialogue between the two speaking characters, the more the non-speakers disappear into the wallpaper as far as the reader is concerned (since they're only 'seeing' what's being described on the page.) This means that when they finally do pipe up and make their presence known again, the effect is similar to them suddenly popping up out of the floorboards like Fenella from Chorlton and the Wheelies - "Whoa! Where did he come from? Was he still there all this time then?" 

There are some little touches you can employ to lessen this effect. One is to have the non-participators join in a bit - even if it's just the odd line here and there to agree or disagree with something one of the speakers has just said. Another is to have the POV character observe and comment on the non-speaking characters' reactions to whatever has just been said (and if that POV character is also one of the speakers, that might in turn influence the way she responds to what's been said.) Alternatively if the non-speaking characters are ignoring the speakers and doing their own thing, the POV character could equally comment on that (might she be annoyed they're not interested when they should be - or alternatively worried that they might hear something she thinks they shouldn't?)

But if none of the above tactics work, or they just aren't plausible for the situation... why are these non-participators there at all then? Their input clearly isn't needed, so get 'em offstage. As a boss, you wouldn't pay an employee to just hang around in the background doing nothing, and there's no reason to let your characters to get away with that either. If they've got nothing to do, find some excuse for them to leave or even don't put them there in the first place. Make them work for their moments in the spotlight. Speaking of which...

5 - Some characters are just third wheels.

Why have just one jokey sidekick when you can have a wisecrackin' double-act for compadres? One jobsworthy minion when you can have a jobsworthy minion and his jobsworthy boss? More character goodness just multiplies the fun, doesn't it? Erm....no, actually. The only thing that gets multiplied is the wage bill - and as the boss of your story you already know that's not good business sense. There's no point in having two characters on the same side of the battle perform exactly the same function, because no matter how interesting they are to write, they're not interesting to read. It's like being made to eat two Full English Breakfasts when you've only got room for one. It typically happens in the form of comedy/villainous duos and loyal companions - either on the hero's or villain's team - and while they might help to beef up the buddy tally, if they're not bringing anything useful to the plot they're dead weight.

Fortunately there's an easy way to spot those kinds of unnecessary duplicates. Take the dialogue attributed to both of the suspect characters and swap them around, so A is saying all of B's lines and vice versa. It should sound weird and like they're both acting completely out of character, saying and thinking things they would never normally say or think. If it doesn't... they've just secretly cloned themselves, and your story would be made stronger by eliminating one of them.

Another variation of this is the Soundbite Dispenser. They're easy to spot as well - most often minor characters, they hang out in the background until their moment comes to deliver a whip-smart, uber-wise or hil-ariously funny line, before slipping back into the shadows again until their next killer bit of dialogue. They're basically an extra with delusions of grandeur, who contributes absolutely nothing to the plot but somehow got awarded all the perks of being the resident smart-ass/wise person/comedy loser without actually putting in any of the hours. And yeah, I'll admit it here because I can - it hurts taking them out of your story. Been there, done it, worn the *sadface.* But if slicing them out doesn't change a single detail of any plot or sub-plots going on in your story... face it, he's wasted meat-space and he needs to go.

Like I already said, showbiz is brutal, baby. But on the bright side, at least you can divvy up his cool lines amongst the remaining cast members.

_______________________________________________________________________________

As a writer, your job is to be the most horrible boss in the world to your characters - and that's a hard thing to do when you also love them all to bits. No wonder we're all a little bit bonkers. But if the end result is a stronger story, your little pretend people will forgive you. So be hard, be ruthless and be cruel. Like the evil little story-maker you were born to be, bwa ha haaaa......

*vanishes in a puff of purple smoke. To cackle and eat chocolate.*

Writing and Videogaming: A Marriage Made in Heaven or Hell?

We all know the media has something of a love-hate relationship with gaming and gamers - as in, they love how much they can get away with hating them. Whether that's on the PC, the PlayStation, XBox, Wii or any of the other game-playing doodahs, in the eyes of the chattering media classes gaming and gamers are responsible for all of society's problems and disasters.

Global Recession? That'll be all those bloody World of Warcraft players, buying their +5 Swords of Awesome with fake money in a fake world instead of their real money in a real world. Terrorism? That'll be the GTA players, racking up driving offences and bonking pseudo-human hookers in a fake Los Angeles. Polar ice-caps melting? Well.... that's probably gamers' fault as well, spending too long playing games and -  and overheating their plasma screens or something...

But the media aren't fools. They know they can't go ranting about a large section of society without presenting some sort of 'evidence' that what they're saying has some very specific scientific types nodding their heads and looking slightly perturbed. That's why they point to various 'studies' that have been done, suggesting that playing computer and console games will, in the long term, almost maybe lead to entire generations being incapable of communicating with other humans except in monosyllabic grunts, or bashing them in the face with a baseball bat and then running off with their wallet.

These 'studies' have been performed on children, so that tabloids like the Daily Mail in the UK can print articles with headlines like 'Computer Games Turn Children into Drooling Vegetables.' They've been done on adult males in the 16-25 age bracket, so those same tabloids can say things like 'Violent Computer Games Turn Sweet Innocent Young Men into Savage, Gun-Toting Criminals.' Whenever a violent crime takes place - particularly one where innocent people die - the first thing certain sections of the media leap on is the perpetrators' collection of video games. "Look, he played Call of Duty and Halo! That's how he learned to be a psychopath! "Ah, so the fact that he managed to get hold of an actual shotgun had nothing to do with it then...?

 (It always amazes me how many of the people that want violent videogames banned are the same people who will defend to the death their 'constitutional right' to keep a firearm in their house. You can't shoot real people with the guns in a videogame, guys... just sayin'...)

Yes, this type of nonsense does irk me because, as well as being a writer, I'm also a gamer. And so is my husband, my son and most of our friends. My son loves Minecraft, Dragon City and Plants vs. Zombies, and is doing very well at school in spite of The Studies' dire hypothesis that he should be semi-literate and have the attention span of a wasp. My husband plays Call of Duty and all the GTA series, and has managed to remain a mild-mannered Chartered Surveyor instead of morphing into Mr. T from The A-Team.

And me? Well, Gems of War is my main squeeze at the moment, but I like me a bit of  RPG-ing action as well, along with very occasional dips into online MMOs like The Elder Scrolls Online and DCUniverse Online (I am the very definition of 'casual gamer' in that sense; not so much 'love 'em and leave 'em' as 'likely to stand them up if they try and hold me to an actual, proper date.' I've heard of this concept that you can have 'maximum-level characters' in these games, but it's not something I'm ever likely to achieve.)

Buuuuuuut.... (you knew that was coming, didn't you?)

One of least productive time periods in my life for writing - heck, for pretty much anything, if I'm gonna be brutally honest here - was the four years I spent playing a certain game called World of Warcraft.

Looking back, I can see now that I was pretty cheesed off with my life. I was in a job I hated; a dull, dull office job where you could barely blow your nose without having to fill in a form, doing those menial hamster-jobs that never have an actual end to them but the world will still apparently fall down if they're not done, day after day until the end of time. I worked full-time Monday to Friday, while my husband's full-time job meant he had to work weekends - so we next to never had any free time together. We'd only recently moved to the area we were living in, and most of my work colleagues were a lot older than me and had families, so I spent most weekends on my own, catching up on chores and then... well, bumming around trying to find something to do until my husband came home. Now of course I wish I'd used that time to write - and sometimes I did, when the mood struck me. But most times it was easier to log on to World of Warcraft and lose myself in that for a few hours.

Because here's the thing; unlike real life, World of Warcraft - and indeed all other massively-multiplayer online games - reward you every step of the way for taking part. Sure, grinding to get those xp points can be dull as hell - but once you earned those points they're yours, and they are your guaranteed ticket to levelling up. And levelling up, in turn, is your guaranteed ticket to getting better gear, becoming faster, stronger and better and gaining access to a ton of other privileges not offered to the lower-level players. You put in the effort, you get the rewards; no debate, no procrastination. It's a fair, unprejudiced system for success.

Real life doesn't have a system like that. In real life, you can slog your arse off day after day for years, accumulating experience points by the trolley-load, and still never seem to level up. No wonder they're addictive for people who feel like they're treading water, just going through the motions of living. If I actually counted up the hours I spent pretending to be a cartoon hero in a make-believe computer world the total would probably horrify me. I could have spent them learning to become a better writer instead. But hindsight is like a plaster cast; only useful when you've already broken your leg.

I gave  up playing World of Warcraft when I finally quit that soul-sucking job. I haven't played it since, and haven't missed doing so. Didn't need it any more once the root cause of my misery was gone. And while I have discovered The Elder Scrolls and DCUniverse Online since, my writing is now my focus in life so I make sure that I do things in the right order; writing first, gaming when everything else is done. In fact, after a good session of writing the thought of playing an MMO feels more like a chore than a reward and I often don't bother.

I've seen certain writing and time management books that advocate shunning gaming completely, proclaiming it a deadly time-sink that will suck you in and lure you away from your writing or whatever projects are dear to you. Having experienced that siren call for myself, I get what they're saying but at the same time I believe they're thinking too simplistically. If you're reasonably okay with your life - and by that I mean you're not so drained of spirit that you go to bed most nights thinking about the next morning with a sinking heart - you can be a dedicated writer, artist or whatever and still play computer games in your leisure time. Even the most workaholic of writers need regular doses of non-writing fun.

If you are finding computer games addictive, I'd argue there are things missing from your real life that need fixing before you can even start to break any addiction to gaming, and working on those issues first will probably solve the gaming addiction as a natural by-product. If you have good intentions to write but somehow always end up gaming instead, change your schedule; be firm with yourself and make a plan to do x amount of writing before you're 'allowed' to play your game. And then stick to that plan.

But don't feel you have to give up gaming completely to have any hope of being a 'proper' writer, artist or whatever. Gaming is not evil like the media would have you believe, and it doesn't mean you're a hopeless loser who'll never amount to anything. Just ask Chuck Wendig, Rhianna Pratchett, Charlie Brooker, Jakub Szamalek, Dara o' Briain...

My Top 10 Writing Books in 2015

Since the New Year is upon us, I decided to take a look back at some of the books I've read over 2015 and loved -  specifically the ones about writing.

I thought it was going to be an easy choice. In fact, I thought maybe I might have to cut the list to seven, or even just five, because I don't read that many of those books... do I? Well, a quick look at my Amazon 'Your Orders' page for 2015 soon put that notion to bed. As it turned out, picking just ten from the stack I've read this year was the hard part. I've read loads of 'em - usually a chapter or two over breakfast, as a motivational bum-kick before starting a day's writing session. It's surprising how many you can get through in a year when you do it like that.

They haven't all been hits with me, of course. Some just left me feeling depressed and useless - not because they were inherently 'bad,' but because they just weren't suited to me or the way I naturally roll when it comes to writing. Which is why I wanted to give a massive shout-out to the ones that did rock my world, since I'm reasonably sure I'm not the only writer out there who loves to make characters that build plots for you, falls at the more organised end of the Pantser Scale and prefers to encourage other writers whatever their level of experience or skill. So let's dispense with the ado-ing and get started - in no particular order...

1 - Bird By Bird (Anne Lamott.)

This is one of those books that regularly appears on the lists of other authors' must-read books for authors, and I having finally read it myself I can see why. Her philosophy that life is writing and writing is life is similar to Nathalie Goldberg's, but without the heavy overtones of Zen Buddhism that permeate the latter's books (I'm a huge fan of Nathalie myself and don't find it hard to mentally distance her advice from her religious enthusiasm, but I know many others who are turned off by it.) Smart, funny and with a more earthy tone to the self-deprecating honesty, this book is full of practical advice and encouraging without sugar-coating. Yes, writing is bloody hard work and often for very little reward, but that's okay - and it needs to be okay if it's what you truly want to do.

2 - 5 Editors Tackle the 12 Fatal Flaws of Fiction Writing (C.s Lakin, Linda S. Clare, Christy Distler, Robin Patchen, Rachel Starr Thompson.)

If you have dreams of being published, no matter how good a writer you think you are you need this book. I challenge any writer of any level to read this and not find at least one of the chapters highlighting one of their own guilty weaknesses. The good news is, the examples of each flaw, the reasons why they are flaws and the fixes for them are all clearly explained, in depth and in a way that's easy to understand. I learned a lot from this book, and would recommend it as a go-to for when you hit the Draft-Two-and-beyond stage of any fiction project.

3 - The Story Book (The Story Series 1) (David Baboulene)

This is one of those books where, the further you read, the stronger you get the feeling of a light bulb switching on in your mind. To mangle a well-known LOTR quote: 'One does not simply walk into reading The Story Book.' David Baboulene is an author and scriptwriter, and he goes deep into the history, psychology and mechanics of storytelling, incorporating strategies used by the most successful screen and stage writers and showing how they are useful for the novelists' toobox too. And it's all written in an easy, conversational way that entertains rather than lectures - I had an absolute blast reading this book. This is much more than just a book of writing advice; it will change the way you look at stories when writing and reading them.

4 - Into The Woods: How Stories Work and Why We Tell Them (John Yorke)

Another book that delves into the history and psychology of storytelling, but this time from the angle of the unifying themes that define the best stories. Many of us writers have heard about that thing called 'The Hero's Journey' and the variations on the premise that there are only [insert random number here] stories in existence and every story ever written is just a variation of one of them. John Yorke may start from those ideas, but his exploration of them is more compelling and offers much deeper insights - like The Story Book above, this will change the way you look at the magical process of storytelling. And the fact that he explores the theories of telling stories by telling it like a story makes it all the more fun to read.

5 - How to Be an Imperfectionist: The New Way to Self-Acceptance, Fearless Living, and Freedom from Perfectionism (Stephen Guise)

I know I know - that title just screams 'happy-clappy self-help let's all go hug a tree,' doesn't it? Don't let it put you off though - it's about as far from crystal-clutching and mantra-chanting as you can possibly get. Stephen Guise is a writer himself and the advice he gives, while applicable to any area of life, is particularly useful to other writers. If you're a procrastinator, a harsh self-editor, or you've ever beaten yourself up about your puny daily word count/lack of motivation/inability to focus, this book might just hold the cure. If you've read other books about letting go of perfectionism and found they did zero to help you I especially recommend this book, because his tips and suggestions really are different from anything offered before, showing ways to work with and 'trick' your inbuilt perfectionism into playing ball rather than striving to eliminate it from your psyche altogether. And best of all, he sounds like a friend who's been there and done it, rather than some therapist with psychology degrees and wind chimes hanging in his window.

6 - Voice: The Secret Power of Great Writing (James Scott Bell.)

I'll admit, if I see a book written by James Scott Bell I'm gonna be interested; I've read quite a few of his books in the past and he never lets me down. This is another cracker, tackling that elusive quality that's often lauded as the X-factor of great writing but rarely analysed and picked apart to find out what it actually is - until now. What I love about this book - and indeed all James' books - is that they fill you with a sense of "Yeah - I can do this!" as you're reading them, and this one delivers in spades. Thanks James, for making one of fiction writing's most mealy-mouthed must-have virtues into a set of goalposts we can actually see.

7 - Fire Up Your Fiction: An Editor's Guide To Writing Compelling Stories (Jodie Renner.)

Another great resource for when you hit the second-draft-and-beyond stage of a novel, laid out in a way that's easy to understand. Covers all the classic no-nos we all know and 'love' plus several that might not seem obvious until they're picked apart (which Jodie does in a clear and entertaining way.) I've read a couple of her other books too, and, like James Scott Bell, she's becoming another of those authors that I trust to deliver.

8 - Master Lists For Writers: Thesauruses, Plots, Character Traits, Names, and More (Bryn Donovan)

A last-minute entry to this list, since I only bought it yesterday, but as soon as I looked through it I knew it had to appear here - even if it meant ousting one of my original Top 10. This book is an awesome idea, finally - finally! - executed properly, in a way that makes it fit for the purpose it's designed for. I already own a few of these 'data-list' type books, where the principle behind them is that you can use them as a kind of Rosetta Stone for emotions, body language, gestures etc. For the most part they've been... not that useful, full of lazy repetitions and cross-references and notoriously badly laid-out so that you have to hunt through half the book just to find what you're after. This book gets it right, with well-defined categories and a wide variety of suggestions for each of them. It even covers areas many of the other list books don't, like suggestions for settings and popular historical time period references.

9 - Nine Day Novel-Authorphobia: Laugh at Your Fear of Writing: Suck Less for Author Success (Writing Fiction Basics Book 0) (Steve Windsor)

Normally, if a book has any kind of numerical target in its title ('Write a bestseller in 30 days!' 'How to earn a million dollars writing Kindle books!') I avoid it like the Ebola virus it all-too-often is. But I did the 'Look inside!' thing on Amazon with this one and it was immediately obvious this one was different from the usual snake-oil out there. Put simply, it's bloody hilarious, and, in spite of its audacious title, offers practical and down-to-earth advice about getting in the right mindset for writing a novel instead of actually trying to complete and publish one in the titular nine days. Rather than using soothing words and empowering mantras to help you over your fear that you suck at writing, Steve uses straight-up humour and self-deprecation to get you laughing at your insecurities instead. Read this book for the sheer fun of it; if it doesn't get you giggling you are officially dead inside.

10 - The Audacity to be a Writer: 50 Inspiring Articles on Writing that Could Change Your Life (The Best of Positive Writer)

This book is actually a collection of the most popular posts to the Positive Writers website, from various regular contributors. It packs a lot in, and is nicely laid out so that you can dip in and out, reading small chunks at a time without losing the overall thread. If you already know the Positive Writers website (I didn't but I've certainly bookmarked it after reading this book) you'll know what sort of thing to expect, and it's great to have all the best golden nuggets all gathered together in this little treasure chest. This is the book to pick up and dive into whenever you're swirling in the cesspit of writer insecurities.

So, what books would you recommend? If there's any you think I should add to my must-read list, please let me know in the comments (my Breakfast Reads need their fuel, don'tcha know...) And I hope 2016 is a marvellous year for you.

Happy writing!

How Writing Rules Can Sometimes do Bad Things to Good People

A week or so ago, I found a thread posted in the Writing Forum of an online writing community I've been a member of for a while. Its title was "Words You Hate/Won't Use."

It started off innocently enough. The Original Poster listed 'gingerly,' 'albeit' and 'fastly' among her no-no words. Others added 'righter,' '-ish' words (like 'tallish' and 'brownish') and the godawful 'moist' (I can totally get behind that one.) There were smatterings of debate as to the dictionary-defined validity of some of the words offered ('fastly' was contested for a good few pages of the thread.)

My own, personal 'oh-hell-no'-word is actually a phrase - and it's entirely my own fault that I hate it because I was the one who over-used and abused it in a novel I started about ten years ago, that limped to about Chapter Five before I shuffled it quietly into the Novel Graveyard on my hard drive. I had two male characters who appeared to have only one way to express troubling emotions, and that was to "rake his hands through his hair." They were both at it, every time things got a bit tense for them, and after seeing that action so many goddamn times in one of my read-back sessions I wanted give them both a buzz-cut and staple-gun their hands into their pockets. This has had a hangover effect on my writing ever since; I can't use it in any of my stories now without feeling a little bit sick in my mouth. (I think I may have one variation of it in Redemption at the moment - or I may have already replaced it with something else and then dissociated from the whole traumatic experience. If it is still there, trust me, it's living on borrowed time...)

So far so conversational. But then things started to get a bit hardcore. Words like 'suddenly' and 'very' came up, along with 'then,' 'got,' 'almost' and 'just.' Not just once, but several times, with many others agreeing with those who put them forward. And adverbs in general, of course - and while we're at it let's not forget the dysfunctional families of 'was' and 'to be' (beGONE, evil Passive Verbs!)

The same little add-on phrases starting creeping in too - you know the kind of thing I'm talking about. 'Using this word in your writing just screams 'amateur'...' 'It's an example of lazy writing on the author's part - there's always a better/stronger word you can use...' And of course the ever-so-humblebrag 'I've made a point of eliminating every instance of that word from my writing now, and if anything it makes my writing stronger.'

Reeeeeaaaalllly? You've eliminated every instance of words like 'very,' 'then' and 'got,' have you? Well, aren't you the Star Pupil of your Fiction Writing 101 Class?

I'm sorry if that sounds snarky... well no, perhaps 'sorry' is the wrong word. Perhaps what I really mean is "I have no wish to upset or offend you, but my brain is rejecting what you just said so hard that this response is projectile-vomiting from my speech-hole faster than anything more polite and less sincere." Yeah, that sounds more me, I'm going with that, thanks.

Pick up a book by any famous-to-insanely-famous author - go on, any book you like. Pick one by your favourite author if you like. It's okay, I'll wait for you until you get back.

Done it? Good.

Now, do you notice a total absence of adverbs, so-called 'passive verbs' and words like 'very,' 'got' and 'then' in their work? To the point where they clearly made it their mission to weed them out like the canker-sore Violations of Good Writing Rules they truly are? Nope, didn't think so. And yet those authors seem to have done okay for themselves - even garnered themselves a bit of respect, you might say.

Perhaps those Fiction Writing Rules hadn't been hewn in fire onto their stone tablets back then - or said authors simply never got around to engraving them on their souls. How lucky all us millennium-generation writers are then, living in a webby-connected world that guarantees we'll never miss the chance to hear them trumpeted loud and long - and as such, be saved from committing such a heinous crime as a wanton adverb to the page...

Yes, my brain is projectile-vomiting again - I should probably calm down now ... *deep breaths, thinking happy thoughts...*

But here's what's winding me up about the Writing Police; how must fledgling writers, new to the craft and eager to stretch their creative wings, feel when they read this kind of twaddle? When basic words like 'very' and 'then' - words we all grew up with and use in our speech every day of our lives - are suddenly signposts to the writing equivalent of a minus score on an IQ test? Veterans don't realise just how damn scary this zero-tolerance attitude can be to the padawan writers. No matter where we are on the road to getting our work in front of readers, we're all in this together, aren't we? We should be helping each other, not finding petty little ways to make it even harder for new members to join the Proper Authors' Club.

Of course when it comes to writing there are things that work and things that don't. Yes, a lot of the writing rules - even this one we're discussing now - were invented for a reason, and being at least aware of them and why they're worth knowing will help you become a better writer. And obviously the staples like spelling, punctuation and grammar are important, because readers need to understand what they're reading.

But these are the technical skills of writing, and there's more to a great story than making sure the i's are dotted and t's are crossed. Even Stephen King, in his book On Writing, follows up his lecture on shunning adverbs with the cheerful admission that he doesn't always follow that rule himself. Why? Because godammit, sometimes that dirty old adverb adds the right pinch of spice to your prose, to the point where it would be more wrong not to put it in.

Getting perfect tens for your technical skills in writing will not guarantee a great story because story is not just science; it's an art. And when you sacrifice your art on the altar of technical perfection, all you end up with is a dead chicken. We don't learn the rules of great writing to slavishly live by them; we learn them to understand when, why and how it's okay to break them.

Readers who aren't writers don't invest huge chunks of their time learning all the Rules of Great Writing, because most of them aren't bothered about such stuff. Unlike fellow writers, they don't read books to critique them; they read them to be entertained. And sometimes, seasoned writers forget that in their quest to define what 'quality fiction' really is.

So, to all you writers-in-training out there, don't let yourselves be intimidated by The Rules - or the folks who sigh and tut at you when you 'break' them. It doesn't mean you're a bad writer and there's no hope for you, and it definitely doesn't mean you should give up on your dreams. You don't have to ban every adverb, talk exclusively in Active Voice for every single sentence or slavishly follow any jackbooted clusterbag of Thou Shalt Nots. Yoda said "Do or do not. There is no try." For writing, I would amend that to "You learn much more by doing than you ever will trying not to do."

Just keep doing what you do, for as long as you love doing it. And trust that, the more you do it, the better you'll become at knowing when you can improve your work by following those pesky rules - or equally, by not following them. Your choice. Your story.

Your rules.

Why Being a Writer means Learning to Care Less

Whaat? That's not right, surely?

Writing is about baring your soul - you 'open a vein and bleed onto the page,' as Hemingway is widely rumoured to have said (although there's plenty of evidence that Walter Wellesley 'Red' Smith actually said it before him.) We write about the human condition; the frailties, the hopes, dreams, joy, anger and despair of life. How can we do that if we have the empathy of a lump of granite?

Relax, I don't mean that kind of not caring. Pretty much impossible to purge that from a writer's soul anyway. We're born to notice stuff, think deeply about that stuff and then be compelled to write about it - and caring about it comes with the territory. No, I mean the kind of caring that can destroy a writer's career before it's even begun, and has certainly done for the dreams of many an aspiring one -  caring about what people think of you as a writer.

There's a kind of poetic cruelty in it really. While you're writing your novel or whatever you must care like the mother of all Care Bears. You must care about every moment of every plot event. every hint of subtext, every word of character dialogue... you must care...

Right up to the moment you've finished and you're ready to reveal your work to the world. And that's when you're supposed to immediately flip your Care Switch to the 'off' position, so that when the dissenters, naysayers and folks who just plain don't like what you spent a huge amount of time caring your arse off about can descend upon it and pull it to pieces like the contents of a KFC Bargain Bucket. And you can smile sweetly and thank them for their 'feedback.' Because don't we all know that "all feedback is good feedback?" As somebody somewhere said that one time...

While I've been writing Redemption, I'll admit I've been having the odd fantasy moment. Some people dream of winning the actual lottery; I've indulged in dreams of winning the book publishing lottery and having gazillions of people reading Redemption and loving it. And heck, part of the reason it's taking me so long to write it is because I want to make it as good as I can in order to have the best odds of even knocking at the door of that dream. To have a best-seller... that must be truly awesome, right? The ultimate high for any writer.

And then I remember how that went for E.L. James.

When Fifty Shades of Grey first hit the readersphere it was the red-hot, New Awesome Thing in the world of books. Everyone who was anyone had read it or was reading it, it sold in the squillions and every living creature in the western world except perhaps garden insects had heard of it. Everyone wanted to talk to Ms. James, the 'shy housewife' who had written it apparently on a whim, powered by little more than divine inspiration (we-ell. okay, maybe a little Twilight inspiration thrown in as well) and good old-fashioned determination. She was a freakin' legend, and her book was a resounding call-to-arms, both for the neglected lady-readers and the aspiring writers longing to be her...

For about.... ooh, the first five minutes of its published life. Remember that? Most people don't, 'cause that's how short that time period was.

Suddenly, as quickly as it arrived, the tsunami of PR turned from positive to very, very negative. It was amateurishly badly written! It painted a horribly inaccurate and offensive picture of BDSM practitioners! It set a terrible example to young girls - that wanting to be with a douchebag who abused and uber-controlled you was totally okay if he had washboard abs and truckloads of cash to splash! And then the hate trickled down to Ms. James herself; she was the bad writer of the bad, bad books - and probably all kinds of weird as well...

In no time at all, it became trendier to say that either you had read her books and hated them, or you hadn't read any of her books and would never lower yourself to do so. (Even if the fact that it and its two follow-up books made their author ridiculously rich suggests there are a hell of a lot of liars out there.) But Ms. James didn't change a word of the text in the time Fifty Shades went from Hero to Zero. All that changed was the viewpoint of first the media and then the media-gobbling public. So if that kind of nuclear manure-strike can happen to someone who, on balance, wrote a phenomenally successful trilogy in terms of both notoriety and sales... well, what hope is there of escaping derision and mockery for the lesser-known and practically invisible writers? Like... erm, me for instance?

Does E.L. James care about all the mean things people have said about her and her work? Dunno - maybe we should ask her after she's adjusted her posterior on that pile of money she's probably sitting on right now. But for us lesser-known and aspiring writers there is no bottom-cushion of wonga - and there may never be - so we're probably gonna care that little bit more if we 'fail.' And if we care too much, we may believe it's Fate's way of telling us we're not meant to be writers and we should quit while we're ahead, before we embarrass ourselves any further.

We must not care enough to believe that.

Us writers write because we have to. We write because it's who we are as much as what we do. And it's only when we're brave enough to write things we fear people don't want to read that we can dig deep enough to write our every best stuff. We have to care enough about our writing to not care what criticism we attract from those who read it. This is about more than just growing a thick skin to cope with it when it arrives; it's about shutting your ears to the negative voices telling you not to take that risk in the first place.

Some of the greatest writers in history have written stuff intentionally designed to piss certain sections of society off. That, in part, is what makes it great writing. If you write to be liked then you're basically King Canute, screaming at a tide that does what it damn well wants to. You can't please all of the people all of the time, as the saying goes. So you might as well say what you mean and mean what you say.

Be you. Because there's no-one else better suited to the job.

Because Even Dedicated Writers Need a Break Sometimes.

The interior of the Hydro Hotel, Eastbourne, UK. For when you need to
get your Downton on!

It was Stephen King who famously said that he wrote every single day except Christmas Day and his birthday (and even then later reneged on including his birthday.) Ernest Hemingway agreed with him, along with Kurt Vonnegut, Ray Bradbury and scores of other great and good writers. Haruki Murakami had this to offer:

'When I'm in writing mode for a novel, I get up at four a.m. and work for five to six hours. In the afternoon, I run for ten kilometers or swim for fifteen hundred meters (or do both), then I read a bit and listen to some music. I go to bed at nine p.m.'

(Oh good. Thanks Haruki, because I was starting to worry that my typical routine didn't look Jeremy-Kyle-Show-slothful enough compared to other writers, but you've fixed that for me nicely now, haven't you?)

The point they're all making - and the one that's echoed by millions of writers, writing teachers, writing blogs and the metric tonne of all the writing advice that's out there ever - is that 'proper writers' write every day of their lives, no matter what. That, like breathing, slacking off for a few days is fatal. Because your creativity is like a muscle that, if not subjected to its regular routine of push-ups, will burst like a bag of blancmange the next time you try to lift a Mars Bar out of the fridge.

And yeah, I get what they're saying. I was once a huge advocate of this thinking myself, to the point where I'd feel guilty if I 'missed' a day of writing (and then spent an anxious bedtime trying to convince myself that commenting on that blog post did so count as 'writing.') I was that annoying one that said things like "even if you just write a bit in a journal about how you can't seem to move forward on your w-i-p, you're still exercising that creative muscle." I still think that's true, by the way. And I still see the wisdom in writing every day, even if it's only a teeny-leetle bit...

However...

I had an experience a couple of months ago that prevented me from doing that for almost a week, when I was hospitalised with cellulitis and blood poisoning. Although I tried to minimise the inner self-flagellation for it at the time, the unwanted hiatus didn't do a lot to dispel my belief that taking a break from writing every now and then made it harder to come back to that writing afterwards - in fact, if anything it reinforced it. But... it wasn't disastrous. Kind of like falling off the wagon with a diet really; okay, I finished off two portions of half-fat cheesecake because - hey, look! half the fat! - but I got through the stodge-cravings for the next couple of days... and look, I haven't morphed into a female Homer Simpson after all. So yeah, taking that break from writing wasn't ideal, but it certainly wasn't a catastrophe...

But then a writing friend of mine pointed out that, actually, a week lying in a hospital bed unable to walk, in severe pain, with a high temperature and having three different types of antibiotics intravenously pumped into your limbs is not most sane people's idea of a 'break.' (Virgin Holidays certainly aint offering it as a package, that's for sure.) 'Breaks' are meant to be - well y'know, devoted mostly to doing fun stuff, preferably with loved ones, at a reasonable level of general health. And, she added, since I hadn't had one of those kind of breaks for a stupidly long time, I was talking out of an orifice that wasn't my mouth (she's kinda blunt like that, bless her weird-shaped sports socks.) Maybe what I needed was a break - an actual one, with fun and stuff - rather than just a medical interruption.

And then it came to pass that my son got a chance to go on his first residential school trip, i.e. staying for a couple of nights in a kid's camp with all his school chums (and four teachers with the stress tolerance of a Mother Theresa and Bear Grylls hybrid, I would imagine.) Which meant that, while he and his mates were off rampaging through forests and terrifying the local wildlife, my husband and I could have a couple of days off from being Mum and Dad. The world was our oyster - for two whole, glorious days!

Well, Eastbourne was, to be precise. Okay, so it wasn't exactly Vegas, but it was two days in a four-star hotel with a view of the beach.... in November, admittedly... with breakfast and a two-course dinner in the evening thrown in. Entering the hotel felt like stepping onto the set of Downton Abbey, and all of the other guests looked old enough to have been around in that era (well, it was Eastbourne...) We got to eat proper, posh food - the kind of posh where you have to pretend you understand the sort-of-frenchified descriptions of it in the menu (and then don't even mind when it turns out to be something completely different from what you thought it was, because it still tastes amazing anyway.) We got to sleep in a posh bed in a posh hotel suite, being ordinary humans instead of Mum and Dad. And we got to meet (and people-watch) the kind of characters you can only find in a hotel trapped in a 1930's time bubble, in a town rated in the top ten for retirees, in November. It was flippin' bliss, let me tell you.

But most of all... I didn't do any writing at all. None. Not even a postcard. For two whole days.

I still took the tools - and the good intentions - of course. I had the Kindle, the blank notebook and the assortment of pens shoved in the suitcase, ready to whip out at the first hint of holiday fun downtime. But... I suppose I just had too much fun, because they stayed in my suitcase for the whole two days. And did I feel guilty? Oh heck yeah - when I remembered to... which wasn't that often, if I'm honest...

But here's the weird thing. Since I came back from those two days of skiving off writing, my daily word count has doubled. It's like my mini-holiday has given my brain a mojo infusion; I've always loved the story I'm writing (not a lot of point in writing it otherwise) but now I'm back to loving the process of writing it as well. For the last two or three months that had - well, not gone exactly, but certainly needed increasing amounts of chocolate waving under its nose to tempt it to come out and play.

So Stephen King, Kurt Vonnegut et al (and especially YOU, Mr Haruki)... I salute your dedication, I really do. You are writing superheroes and no mistake. But I... am not. It would seem I need more time off writing than Christmas Day and my birthday, and now that I know my creative abilities are not going to shrivel up and die in the space of a couple of days, I'm going to take that time out when I need it.

And next time I might even send a postcard or two.

Why it's Okay to say "Na-NO, Wri-Mo!"

It's that month again. The one that comes around every year and messes with the brains of writers.

I'm talking of course, about NaNoWriMo.

Like teenagers in a How Cool Are You Competition, writers are asking other writers all over the Interwebbyworld "Are you doing it? Have you done it before? Did you get to third base last time? D'you think you'll get there this time?"

So, with that in mind, let's get this out of the way right here, right now... if you're 'doing it' this year - well done you. No seriously - and sincerely - it's a massive thing to undertake, and having the danglies to do so, even if you don't expect to succeed - in fact, especially if you don't expect to succeed - says a lot about your determination and strength of character. And it gets you writing like a thing possessed for a whole month, so yaay for anything that gets people passionate about writing! For a whole thirty days of a randomly-chosen month...

(Dammit, I nearly made it to the end without any hint of snark... I was soooo close.... )

Sorry. I have certain feelings about NaNoWriMo. Y'see, for me it's like having a delicious but huge chocolate cake, and being told that the whole darn thing is for you - yes Preciousss, only you! - but you only have this teeny-weeny time period to eat the entire thing. Now I love me a bit of chocolate cake as much as the next chocolate addict... but what I don't like is being given ludicrous conditions for eating that cake. Especially when the reasons for those ludicrous conditions arose as a result of some random somewhere decreeing "It will be done this way, because that's where my Pin of YOLO landed when I covered my eyes and stuck the point into my Page of Car-azy Rules!"

Thanks for the lovely chocolate cake - much appreciated, believe me - but I will eat it when, where and how I want to - and in a way that doesn't end in me being violently sick and hating chocolate cake for... I dunno, a very long time. Like maybe even weeks.

Not only that, but I watch some ( not all - but definitely some) of the other competitors in this cake-gobbling competition and... well, they make me sad. They take that chocolate cake and they go "Yeah! I'm-a gonna do this!" (probably in a Mr. T-type voice.) And then they go "nom-nom-nom-nom-nom" and succeed in eating the entire cake. And then they are stratospherically pleased with themselves, because it's the only time they ever eat chocolate cake at all, never mind this much in one go. They have basically done a Bear Grylls with the chocolate cake challenge, i.e. done it purely for the sake of being able to tick it off some mental list of Things I Must Do To Be Totally Awesome, rather than for any love of chocolate cake itself.

Which means that, once it's done... well, that's it. No reason to eat chocolate cake again now unless... oh, I dunno, maybe I'll do it again next year, just to maintain my awesome, y'know? But no, not as a regular thing. Why would I  - what's so awesome about eating chocolate cake normally, in smaller, non-awesome quantities, all throughout the year? Pffft, that's for losers!

Some of these Bear Grylls-cake-scoffers take the level of self-congratulation a step further. So impressed are they at the phenomenal amount of cake they managed to ingest in such a short period of time that they decide the world should see that cake for themselves - like, really see it, and right now, before their guts have had time to extract all the goodness from it and decide if it was a healthy, nutritious cake or not. So they barf it all right back up again, in a nasty, slimy pile and cry "Look! Look at what I just did! Behold its awesomeness - bet you couldn't produce anything like that!" And then they get really, really cross with anyone who points out - however tactfully - that it's just a pile of cake-sick. "What the hell do you know, lightweight? D'you know how long it took me to make that? I'll tell you - hardly any time at all! Because I made it in NaNoWriMo 'cos I'm that awesome!"

These are the type of NaNoWriMo-ers that make me feel sad. They're otherwise known as - perhaps unkindly, perhaps not - 'wannabe writers.'

You can spot them a mile off. They talk abut NaNoWriMo as being their 'chance,' their 'opportunity' even their 'letter of permission' to 'finally' write that novel. As if all the mysterious embargoes that were somehow preventing them from writing it in any of the other eleven months of the year are suddenly magically lifted just for November because... um, somebody somewhere said so, and lots of people agreed.

So, when November the first cracks open, they 'know' they've got the next thirty days to be awesome writers. Thirty days of wearing the ball-gown and dancing with prince before - bong! The clock chimes midnight and they turn back into pumpkins again. Those thirty days must seem like precious jewels of time to those writers, and the pressure to use them wisely and come up with the goods must weigh heavily.  Because remember, this is their one chance to finally write that novel...

Sadly, these are the writers that are least likely to know the cold, cruel truth about NaNoWriMo - and probably wouldn't want to believe it even if you told them, because it destroys the metaphorical summit they're heading for in their mind.

You CAN'T finish a novel in thirty days.

You can certainly write 50,000 words in thirty days, as per the NaNoWriMo brief. But calling those 50,000 words a completed, publishable novel is like calling a dead cow a T-Bone steak. There's a heck'a-load of other processes gotta happen before you can serve that thing up for public consumption, and that can take anything from weeks to months - maybe even years. Or maybe even... never. Because, even after lavishing all the time and love in the world on it, it may still just... y'know, not be good enough to publish. At all. Ever.

Seasoned writers know this, of course. They know all about rewrites and multiple drafts and beta readers - and rejections and then more rewrites... They're also the ones who don't wait for each November to rock around before they start word-painting. They're more likely to take NaNoWriMo for what it really is; a jolly game to get writers in the mood for barfing up a first draft as quickly and crazily as they can. It's a calendar-based motivational tool, nothing more.

So if you have 'writer-friends' in your life who try to nag you into doing NaNoWriMo, or berate you for 'wimping out' of doing it year after year... maybe it's because you're already writing stuff all the time instead of just waiting for November. And y'know what? If you are, it doesn't even matter if you're not hitting the magic word-count of 1,667 a day. You're proving you're in it for the long haul - which is what you need for writing anything worth publishing. There's a reason the tortoise won the race and not the hare.

That's why I'm not doing NaNoWriMo this year. I'm gonna be too busy writing.