3 Not-Obvious Writing Gremlins that Can Really Mess up Your Stories

The world of writing is awash with rules, and some are shouted louder and more often than others. Never use adverbs, avoid passive voice like the Ebola virus, show don't tell, etcetera etcetera... if you haven't heard these at least once in your life before, trust me, you will the moment you emerge from the nuclear bunker you must have been living in up until now.

Of course rules aren't always a bad thing. The three above are actually good, when used sensibly and as and when applicable rather than obeyed 100% of the time, forever to the power of infinity. In terms of writing they were invented for quality control, to help writers create the best work they could so that readers could have the best experience... well, reading it. And that, ultimately, is what us writers strive for (isn't it?)

But some of the little glitches that crop up in stories don't really fall into the category of 'rules.' They're more like gremlins, i.e. only a problem in certain circumstances (like - um, getting them wet or feeding them after midnight? Okay, bad analogy...)

At first glance, you may look at the following list and, for at least some of them, think "Seriously? Who's going to notice that?" But that's how they do their damage. Readers - especially readers who aren't writers, and therefore haven't been bombarded with a metric tonne of rules and regs about writing - will still feel their effects, but they won't know why. 'I don't know, something about the way it was written just irked me,' is the usual vibe that's communicated by those who tossed a book aside because they just "couldn't get into it," or "it bored me." Leaving aside examples like those who try to read a Barbara Cartland novel when they hate Romantic Fiction,  many readers feel this way because something in the writing keeps knocking them out of the story world and back into the I'm-reading-a-book world. And these little gremlins might not be obvious, even to the reader, but they're there....

1 - Oom-pah-pah, oom-pah-pah.... jeez, this tune is boring.

We all know about the umpteenth Deadly Writing Sin of Repetition. Poor old E.L. James got called out on it in her Fifty Shades series, with her heroine's 'Inner Goddess'-ing and 'Oh My'-ing. (Every writer in the history of forever has that problem by the way, before we all get too smug. The only difference between us is how ruthlessly we edit our pet phrases out of our work before it sees the light of day.) Other variations on this theme include overuse of the same type of body language; that permanently windswept hero might fuss with his hair in a million different ways, but when he does it to express every emotion he ever has, in every possible circumstance... well, he's got bigger problems than just looking like a raging narcissist. These types of repetition are obvious, because the words are acting more like pictures for the reader, and they're seeing that same damn picture over and over again.

But a more subtle form of repetition is more like music, in that it messes with the rhythm of sentences - most often dialogue, over paragraphs, scenes and even whole chapters. It's a bit like listening to a Black Lace song (click on that link at your own risk.) Once you've heard one verse and a chorus you really don't feel a need to hear any more... but still it goes on... It happens when you use the same sentence structure for each line of dialogue, over and over again. Here are some examples:

EXAMPLE 1:
"I never killed your wombat," said Jane.
"But you were the last one to see him alive," said Tom.
"That doesn't mean I killed him," said Jane.
"Jane loved Flopsy like her own child," said Barry.

EXAMPLE 2:
"Well," said Mary, "how are we going to open this tub of Pringles?"
"We can't," said Harry, "when both of us have broken our nails."
"I wish," said Mary, "we'd never gone to that cowboy manicurist."
"But then again," said Harry, "she did give us great spray-tans."

EXAMPLE 3:
John straightened his tie. "I'll show that clown mascot who's boss," he said.
Susan patted his arm. "Ronald McDonald won't know what hit him," she said, smiling.
Ted picked up the briefcase. "You're supposed to meet him at noon. What time is it now?"
Miranda looked at her watch. "Eleven twenty-five," she said.

Did you feel the plodding rhythm as you read them? Each example may have had different approaches to where they put the dialogue tag/action beat, but they were always in the same place, over and over again. After just a couple of lines it starts to sound like a nursery rhyme, which is only fine if that's what you're writing. To avoid this effect, it's better to mix and match where you put your tags and beats (and indeed, miss them out entirely when it's obvious who's speaking anyway.) However, this can be difficult when you have more than two people in conversation at once, and is when Example 3 is most likely to occur. Readers need to know exactly which character is saying which lines of dialogue, and in cases where a two-plus group aren't 'taking turns' to speak, putting the tag/beat anywhere other than right at the beginning of the dialogue can feel too late to impart that vital information. Making your characters' speech patterns more distinct is the key to this problem, so readers can guess by the tone and word usage who's talking. And you can cheat it a little bit by having a couple of non-tagged back-and-forths between two characters every now and then before letting a third jump in. You can also mix up Example 2 and Example 3 placements; as long as the dialogue before the tag/beat is short (just one or two words) the reader won't have to wait too long to figure out who's talking.

2 - "What did you do to the house, Honey?"

 'For weeks Hermione had been coming in through the front door and flopping straight onto her living-room sofa after a hard day's work at TaxidermyRUs. Until that fateful day... she magically acquired a hallway! It wasn't there before, but at some point between the end of Chapter Five and the beginning of Chapter Six the Builder Fairies paid a secret visit, and now she has to navigate an entire new set of interior architecture before she even sees her beloved sofa. As if she didn't have enough problems, what with the gravity-warp from that giant wormhole threatening to swallow up Chingford in less than a week from now...'

Do not think for a minute that readers won't notice something like that. There are Star Trek fans out there who complain when one of the redshirts has 'the wrong insignia for their rank' on their uniform, so you betcha life there'll be readers who notice when you doof up with the layout of your settings. Of course there'll be many who don't, but for those who do it not only yanks them out of your story-world as they try to recalibrate, but they lose a little trust in you as an author. After all, if you can't get little things like that right, how are you going to get us to the finale of this novel in one piece?

If you have real-life settings in your story your job is slightly easier, since there are ready-made photos, maps and even floor plans of most places thanks to the wonder of sites like Google. For made-up locations, you'll need to draw your own maps. Yes you will, don't look at me like that. I've had to draw my own map of the secret underground base in Redemption, so that a) I could figure out where all the different areas should be and b) so I can then remember where I've put them. I spent hours on that map and looked at it loads of times since, but even now I still have to refer to it to find out if, say, my characters really would have to walk past the lab to get from the mess hall to the library.

Obviously it's nice to get all that info right first time... but you won't, so don't sweat it on the early drafts. Make it a bona fide editing pass in its own right later on, where you can go through a more polished draft looking specifically for those kinds of doofs. You'll be glad you did - and so will any eagle-eyed Trekkers who read your work. (Not 'Trekkies,' by the way. They don't like that, apparently.)

3 - Behold, the amazing multi-tasking superpowers of Octopus-Man!

'Kargo the Barbarian hacks and slashes his way across the battlefields of Doodah, his battered shield smeared with goblin blood and his sword all covered in entrails. When he finally storms his way into Castle Dropnuts he spies the fair lady Britnea, and is overcome with love for her. "Fair lady," he says, "forgive me for my intrusion. I may be naught but a lowly Barbarian, but I am still capable of rocking your world. Please accept this gift as a token of my love." She gasps and blushes as he presents her with a single, perfect red rose...'

Whoa, hang on a minute, where did that come from? Was he hiding that rose up his kilt somewhere? (And with all those thorns.... ooh, doesn't bear thinking about...) And what happened to his hulking great sword and shield?

Okay, that was a bit of a daft example, but sometimes when a character has a prop of some kind and there's a long portion of action or dialogue happening, it can be easy to forget that, until you say otherwise, they're still holding and probably even using that prop. The same thing can happen with having them do some mildly strenuous activity like chopping wood for the stove outside the front door, and then in the next moment they're somehow in a chair on the porch, chillaxing and cracking open a beer.

It happens most often when you have long sections of dialogue and interaction between characters, where it's easy to get so lost in the drama of what's being said you forget what they were actually doing before the conversation started. So it pays to make a note of what each character is doing and holding at the start of each section, and make sure you either keep those details consistent or add in the necessary 'transition business' if you want them doing and holding something else by the end of it.  You don't have to get silly about it - "Ted put down his cup on the table that was next to him and then got up out of the chair he was sitting in so that he could walk over to the closed door on the other side of the room before putting his hands on the handle and opening it..." - but unless your characters are wizards don't have them conjuring things out of thin air, turning them into something else in the blink of an eye or making them randomly disappear while they teleport to the other side of the building.

I'm sure there are some people out there reading this and thinking "this is pretty pedantic stuff here - nobody cares about little things like these, surely?" They do. Just look at some of the one-star reviews on sites like Amazon and GoodReads. It's easy to dismiss those who rage about the continuity errors in films and tv shows as nerds and obssessives - but the bloopers they spot only appear on screen for a few seconds at best. The average reader can take far longer within the page to spot any of your continuity errors - which means they don't need to be uber-observant to pick them up. The result? Many more chances for you to look like the prize wally if you don't take the time to check that stuff before you publish your masterpiece.

What other Gremlins would you add to this list? Do you have pet doof-ups that you routinely make in early drafts? Feel free to share in the Comments.

What Keeps You Writing..?

To any Writer With A Capital W, the above looks like a very simple question with an equally simple answer. We keep writing because we have to, because it’s what we were meant to do, because, if we stop writing for any period of time, we actually get cranky and more than a little bit cheesed off with our lives, the world and… well, existence in general.

In that sense, it’s like choosing a career path; starting at intern and working your way up the medical profession to become a respected consultant, for example. You have to be a certain kind of person with certain particular qualities to not only want to go in that direction, but to keep wanting it as you rise up the ranks and then continue to enjoy it once you've got there. It’s definitely not for everyone, but the ones it is for have the same passion for it as a Writer (with a capital W) has for writing.

But that’s not what I mean with this question; I'm going deeper than that. Three levels deeper, actually. So let’s take them one at a time…

Level One: What keeps you writing what you write?

For those of you out there making a living from what you write already this is obviously a no-brainer – it’s what pays my bills, dear. You know what you do works for that purpose, so you carry on doing it so you can… afford to carry on doing it. The Circle of Life! (Well, at the very least the circle of making a mostly enjoyable living, I would hope.) For you guys, that carrot is a real one, and you know it’s real because when you’ve reached out for it in the past you were able to grab it and take it.

Unlike the yet-to-be-published writer, who can only hope the carrot they’re reaching for isn’t just a fanciful illusion that exists only in their yearning writer’s imagination. What keeps you yet-to-be-published writers chasing that carrot, pushing through that nagging fear that it’s not really there at all?

I’ll use myself as an example, purely because I’m here now and ready to answer any questions I might ask me. My ‘area’ in the past was song lyrics – for straight-up commercial songs, for two full-length musicals and a lot of parody lyrics. That’s where the bulk of my writing experience lies, while Redemption is and will be my first completed novel. It’s a hell of a switch –  in terms of genre, expected writing style, size of finished work… just about everything really. Who’s to say that, just because I’ve had some success writing lyrics, I’m also capable of writing a decent novel? Ultimately, for all the effort I’m putting into it, I might suck as a novelist.

I can write lyrics for a complete song, start to finish, in two hours if I put my mind to it (and my personal best is twenty minutes – but that was a really good day…) So the idea of spending more than two years now on one project is… well, it’s been an adjustment, to say the least. Jeez, no wonder I’ve worried about being crap at it! Why am I making life so hard for myself? I could just go back to writing lyrics instead – stick to what I know, and cherish that feeling of finishing something without watching entire birthdays fly by…

But for some reason I can’t. I’m still hell-bent on completing my novel, scene by scene, chapter by chapter – even though the process seems so agonizingly s-l-o-w compared to writing lyrics. What the heck is driving me? What is that intangible thing that keeps any aspiring-to-be-published-writer plodding down the road towards that carrot-that-may-be-just-a-mirage on the horizon?

Level Two: what keeps you writing that specific thing you’re writing?

This relates not just to the fact that you’re writing a novel, but that you’re writing that novel. You’re investing a heck of a lot of time and effort into this one story burning a fire in your brain that ultimately… people might never bother to read. Or all the ones that do read it don’t like it -- hate it even, to the point where they vow never to read anything else written by you ever again. That thing you just spent ages toiling and sweating over? It was a bad idea, chum. Should’ve gone with something else entirely.

Ouch. Now they tell ya’…

I know many writers (including myself) talk about these stories as being tales they have to tell, that almost have to be extracted from their minds and released into the world before they can sleep normally and carry on with their lives. They even say things like “I don’t care if it never gets published or no-one ever reads it, I'm still going to finish it because I have to” (I know that, because I've said it myself, about Redemption.)

It’s easy to motivate yourself into writing something that’s guaranteed to work out just fine. But what about that thing that “will probably never get published, because no first novel is ever good enough to get published...”? How do you make yourself believe that’s still worth slogging your guts over? I suppose the argument is that you can’t write the novel that will get published until you've written all the ones that won’t first – but that’s like telling a kid if he doesn't keep eating all those Brussel sprouts he’ll never get to eat the ice-cream… someday. Sooner or later most kids just say “Y’know what? I don’t want the ice-cream that much anyway.” And stop eating their sprouts. But what about the ones who don’t? What is that magical thing that keeps them shovelling down the sprouts?

Level Three: what keeps you writing that specific thing you’re writing… when you’re getting sick to death of trying to write it?

Okay, so you've got through levels one and two – but this one’s the real toughie. Because this level happens even with the stories you’re most in love with and most desperate to tell. All of us writer-types are in on this secret; writing a labour of love is a roller-coaster ride, and on the downward-sloping parts even trying to put one sentence in front of the other – without the results looking like the work of a monkey after a bottle of Jack Daniels and a spliff – is harder than sucking porridge through a straw. That’s when your Inner Grinch pops up, and tells you there’s only one reason it’s suddenly become so hard; it’s because this story sucks, and you suck too… and y’know what? You’re probably always going to suck, because you’ll never get past writing stuff that sucks because you know you suck soooo much…

(Or is that just me? Not that I’d wish it on anyone else of course, but I’m kind of hoping it’s not…)

This level is the reason I – and probably a gazillion other writers out there – have a Novel Graveyard somewhere on their hard drive. And a secret pile of half-filled, handwritten notebooks in a musty-smelling cardboard box in the loft. All of them containing stories that begin full of fire and promise, before slowly petering out and being left to die in the pit of their own loneliness somewhere around Chapter Four. Maybe they really were stories that were never meant to be… but even if they were, ultimately the Grinch won.

Redemption is the first novel that my Grinch has thus far been unable to kill. I finished – actually finished! – its Draft One, and, even though it’s been hard going, I am still squirreling my way through Draft Two. And I am in no mood to give up on it – someone or something will literally have to kill me to make me do that. My Grinch has still been making regular appearances, acid-raining on my parade with the schadenfreude of all his previous attempts. And, in low moments, I still listen to him and feel sad and hopeless for a while. But then I punch him in the face (metaphorically of course) and carry on writing. What’s changed this time around? What is it about this story that’s making me believe in it so deeply, where I didn't or couldn't believe in the ones I attempted before? What is that special ‘thing’ in every writer’s first completed novel that kept them believing this was the one they should put a ring on?

Why am I even asking these questions anyway? It’s certainly not because I know the answers (sorry if that’s what you were hoping.) To be honest I wouldn't even know where to begin. Maybe it’s better not to have a definitive answer anyway. Sometimes analysing something too deeply is the surest way to kill it – in the same way the Victorians thought knowing how butterflies lived required chloroforming them and sticking their corpses on pins.  Or maybe it’s just something that can’t be defined by some sort of formula for human behaviour – “So, you want to actually finish a novel? Try X + Y = screw you, Grinch!”

So I'm putting it out there because I'm wondering if any of you have any theories. I’d love to know, seriously. ‘Cause even if we don’t manage to come up with any answers, it’ll be nice to know if we’re doing similar sums to get there.

6 Reasons Your Reader Doesn't Like Your Hero

A story isn't just about plot - it's about characters as well. Memorable protagonist characters (or heroes) are what make readers stick with a story, if only because they have to know whether or not they make it to the end of the plot. But sometimes those characters are memorable for the wrong reasons.

Most of us can probably think of at least one book they've read (or film they've seen) where they were left thinking "Y'know, I would have loved that story a lot more if I hadn't constantly wanted to kick that character right in his Crumple Zone." A badly-drawn hero can ruin the most exquisitely-crafted story. It's something I've had to think about a lot while writing Redemption, and so I decided to put the good guys in that through some rigorous testing, just to make sure they didn't fit any of the offending criteria (and so I could fix them quick-smart if they did.) What follows is by no means an exhaustive list, but picks up on some of  the deadliest of  Protagonist Sins...

1 - Your Hero is Super With A Capital S
Protagonists are of course allowed to have amazing powers and abilities if that's the kind of story you're writing. Readers love a truly badass hero, after all. But there's a big difference between 'badass' and 'invincible.' Joss Whedon's Buffy Summers, I call you to the stand. Now don't get me wrong, I loved me a bit of Buffy as much as the next person  - and there was plenty to love about that series - but one thing that always got to me was her apparently titanium-built body when it came to scrapping with monsters. I mean, seriously - that girl was supposedly a 'normal' high school girl who just happened to battle vampires for a hobby; she was bloody tiny, probably barely even a size 6. And yet whenever she got punched, kicked or even, on numerous occasions, thrown across a room by angry behemoths from the underworld, when the fight was over the most she got to show for it was a couple of cutely asymmetrical facial boo-boos. Are you kidding me? She should've ended up in hospital with at least a couple of broken ribs for half of those ass-kickings!

The point is, if readers come to believe your hero is going to walk away from every instance of brown stuff hitting the fan with little more than messed-up hair, why should they continue to worry about them whenever that happens? And, following on from that, if they don't worry about them when they're in trouble - why should they care either? "He'll get himself out of it 'cause he always does, no need to stick around to find out..." And that's when they toss the book aside. So if your heroes are doing dangerous stuff, don't be afraid to hurt them sometimes. And I mean really hurt them - like 'short vacation in A&E'-type hurt them. They might hate you for it for a while - but your readers won't.

2 - Your Hero is a Shining Example To Us All
Your hero is patient and kind and tolerant. She's funny, smart and multi-talented; everyone loves her and respects her and the only people that don't are the villains - booo, nasty, bad villains! She's the girl every other girl wants to be and every man wants to be with.... yeah, hurry up and pass me that sick-bag, please.

Think back to your high school days for a moment. Remember that girl who was The Most Popular Girl In The School, who looked immaculate and got straight A's in everything and was Head Prefect and always got the lead in every school production? (Clue: there's always one of those in every high school in the world, and it's never you.) Did you feel as if life was that bit more worth living if she thought of you as a friend? Or did you spend the whole time hating her guts while simultaneously feeling vaguely guilty about it?

Exactly. Same with readers and oh-so-perfect characters. Readers will follow a character to the ends of her world if they can relate to her - if it feels like she could be us, or we could be her. Most of us know our own faults and vices even if we don't shout about them to the world, and so we can't relate to perfection in human form. Characters who never show a less-than-perfect side make us as readers feel inadequate by comparison - and are dull as hell to boot. So give your Little Miss Perfect (or Mr - because there is a male equivalent) some honest-to-goodness flaws to balance out the awesomeness. It doesn't have to be anything major - something we could take the piss out of her for on girls' nights, for instance. Most of us do that with our real-life friends and still love them anyway. And you want your hero to feel like a friend to your readers.

3 - Your Hero Gets What She Wants With The Power Of Beautiful
This is otherwise known as Disney Princess Syndrome. Yes of course your protagonist is allowed to be drop-dead gorgeous if your plot demands it - after all, there are real-life people like that so it's not like you'd be defying any universal laws or anything. But things go screwy when your hero wields her gorgeousness like some kind of ramped-up superpower. If everyone around her is falling in love with her because she's sooo beautiful, if people drop everything and move mountains for her just because she chose to point her beautiful face at them and they were helpless to refuse her - if evil henchmen who've been tasked with doing evil things to her find at the crucial moment they simply cannot go through with their evil plan because they looked upon her loveliness and their evil heart spontaneously melted into a puddle of mercy... just, no. That era has gone, folks - we're living in the modern world now, where women can work and vote and - and have opinions and stuff.

The male equivalent of this is of course the super-stud, who has every woman falling hopelessly in lust with him at first sight. A popular staple of action thriller stories, this guy generally gets to have a lot of sex, with women he only met thirty seconds ago but whose knickers spontaneously combust when he smiles at them. And naturally, the sex he provides always rocks said women's world - to the point where they want to be his babe while at the same time being totally okay with the idea that he's probably screwing legions of other random women as well...

Repeat after me: HOTNESS IS NOT AN ACHIEVEMENT. In real life OR in fiction. It's just a circumstance, like being born into a rich family (or the Western World instead of the Third World, if you want to be really blunt about it.) Sure, it has its advantages, but as far as I know, no-one's managed to cure cancer or bring about world peace with it yet (dream on, all you Miss World contestants.)

Some authors have tried to get around this problem in what they imagine to be a very 'creative' way. Does this sound familiar? The character constantly refers to herself as being average-looking - plain, even. Her hair won't do what she wants it to, her clothes aren't right - oh trust me, she, like, totally knows she's nowhere near as pretty as every other girl on the planet. And honestly, why every single person who lays eyes on her immediately wants to date her is, like, a total mystery to her... guess it's just one of those tiresome things she has to deal with in her life...

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO. For the love of humanity, do NOT do that. If Angelina Jolie did that, you would have to fight an urge to slap her impossibly flawless face - and don't you dare deny it.

By all means let your hero be hot. But please, please don't let that be their only life skill.

4 - Your Hero's Life Consists Of Standing In A Crapstorm With No Umbrella
Every story needs conflict; it's the engine that drives it. But what makes conflict interesting is seeing what your hero does when faced with it. And if all she does is sigh and suffer her way through it, while everyone else around her does all the hard work of Solving That Shit... she's not a hero and she aint even a saint -  she's just a wimp, pure and simple. An emotional parasite who sits on her arse staring forlornly at the aforementioned Shit, instead of getting up off it and giving that Shit a kicking. (Hmmm... as analogies go that one's pretty disturbing, but it does fit so I'll leave it with you...)

There are people like that in real life - you might even know someone like that. That one who always seems to have ninety-nine problems but doing something about them aint one. You suggest solutions to their problems - even offer to help - but they always brush your offers away and ignore any advice given to them, spouting convoluted reasons about why nothing suggested would 'work.' So the problems remain, and get worse and more complicated - and all they do in response is sigh and look pained and 'soldier on.' In real life, even if you started off being sympathetic you eventually get fed up and leave them to their misery, feeling that if they're never prepared to help themselves then some part of them must want to be the eternal martyr. It's the same in fiction. Readers won't get behind a 'hero' who never fights back - or worse, lets all the other characters do all the fighting for her. Don't have her being 'rescued' by everyone else and his pet chihuahua all the time; let her grab the tools to solve her own problems. Or at the very least, give her the determination to go and find them herself.


5 - Your Hero's Life Is Just, Like, A Neverending Suck of Sucky Suckness
Yeah, being a Hero sucks a lot of the time. A large part of your job description involves being thrown into the depths of all kinds of Hell on a regular basis, purely for the entertainment of those folks called Readers. And yeah, not even the most hard-hearted of those readers would blame you for complaining about that sometimes.

Sometimes.

But not all the time.

No matter how crap the world your Hero inhabits might be, if she hates everything about it all the time, and has no friends because nobody understands her, and can't get a break in this life because nobody will even give her a chance... well, most readers are going to think maybe her world and everyone it in might have a point.

Yep, as readers, we get it - your poor hero is trapped in a terrible, life-sapping existence that she's desperate to break free from. The whole point of this story is that she will eventually triumph over all of this adversity and emerge vindicated and victorious. But bloody hell, even Officer Ripley in the Alien movies managed to crack an occasional smile in between the face-huggers and mangled corpses of colleagues. No one wants to hang out with a Moaning Minnie for hours on end, and - surprise! -  they actually want it even less in depressing and dire situations, even if they are only fictional.

So give your poor readers a break and let your sad-sack Hero chew on some happy-flavoured bones now and then. Readers won't stop sympathising with them as a result, or suddenly imagine that all their problems must be solved now 'cause they're smiling, so hurrah end of story, yeah? Let your Hero have people she loves and who love her in her life - even if it's just one. Things she does to escape the pain in her life, even if it's only for a while. And dreams that keep her going when all she feels like doing is giving up. Then you'll give your readers reasons to not only want your Hero to have her happy ending, but to believe she deserved to have it.

6 - Your Hero Does Whatever Shitty Stuff She Wants, Because She's The Hero So It Doesn't Count And Shut Up Already
There's a reason your Hero is called the Hero, and not, say, the Wrecker of Other People's Lives. It's because the reader expects the Hero to ultimately Do The Right Thing to solve the problems presented. Now 'right' doesn't necessarily mean 'legal, or 'intellectually logical' - or even 'honest,' in certain situations. But it should always be the thing the hero chooses to do with good intentions - even if it all goes horribly pear-shaped later. And if that does happen - well, the Hero should feel suitably remorseful about it and try to make amends in some way. What she certainly should not do is shout and scream about how it's everyone else's fault instead, or that those people are horrible anyway so they probably deserved it...

I once beta-read a story where the young female protagonist slept with the bridegroom of her best friend the night before said friend's wedding. Naturally she devoted some sharp internal monologue to what a low-down scumbag this man was  - while she enjoyed some rumpy-time with him. Not only that, but because of his selfish cheating ways the heroine now had to avoid her best friend completely in order to not feel uncomfortable about having secretly bonked him, and this whiny, needy best friend of hers just didn't get that at all. She kept phoning the heroine up all the time, wanting to know why her one-time best friend had suddenly frozen her out, to the point where the heroine felt she was being annoying and extremely inconsiderate and told her to stay out of her life and never call her again. And then later on in the story, when that same heroine's mother confessed that the marriage to her father ended because he found out she had a one-night stand with another man, the heroine's reaction was to be mortified that "all this time, I never even suspected my mother was nothing but a common slut"!

And yet the author was dumbfounded when I said I found the heroine completely unlikeable. Like an over-devoted parent, she had indulged her protagonist's every whim, allowing her to have whatever she wanted just because she wanted it and making excuses for her bad behaviour whenever she threw a hissy fit. And, unsurprisingly, that character had subsequently morphed into the ultimate spoiled brat.

Such people aren't popular even in real life, and readers certainly don't want to be forced to root for them in fiction. Yes, anti-heroes with unlikable elements to their personality can often work, along with protagonists who keep on making the same stupid mistakes until they learn the error of their ways. But in the end it always comes back to good intentions. If the Hero is not at least always trying to do the right thing - and she feels no guilt or refuses to accept any responsibility when she does the wrong thing...  well, sorry, but she's not the true Hero of your story. You should fire or at least demote her, and find another character who's better equipped to handle the role.


Well these are just for starters. What traits do YOU hate in a Hero character? I'd love to hear your thoughts, so feel free to leave a comment.

Wherefore Art My Writing Mojo?

Writing is flippin' hard sometimes.

Admittedly it's not 'hard' in the same way as, say, going to war or working in an A&E department is hard...

(I see you amazing people there... what's that you're holding? Oh - the world's smallest violin. Okay, well, that's fair enough...)

No - writing-flavoured 'hard' is a different kind of challenge altogether. Not least because, when it is hard, it has this magical ability to make you feel like you have suddenly become the most stupid person in the universe.

I started learning to talk from about... ooh, fourteen months old, according to my mum. I've been doing it ever since - maybe not as much as more extrovert people, but even when I was shrinking against the wall trying to be invisible I was still practicing in my head. I started learning to write at about five, when I first started school - and I've been doing that ever since as well. With both of these abilities under my belt, that's a lot of years of using words and stuff to get my point across.

So you'd think, after all that time, I'd have got the hang of it by now. And, for most of the time I believe I function quite ably. But, in those dark periods when Writing Gets Hard, it seems as if something freaky happens to my brain.

I know what I want to say. The movie scene playing in my head is very clear; I can see every detail of the action and hear every word of the dialogue. All I have to do is take what's unfolding in my brain and put it down on the page in front of me, right? Simples.

Except, for some reason, it isn't.

It takes me ten solid minutes of word-wrangling to convert one teeny-tiny aspect of the scene in my head into one sentence - and when it's done that sentence reads like someone whose native tongue is Chinese and they only just started learning English half an hour ago. When I read it back, even I think "What the heck does that mean?" I started writing 'The Renegades' because I thought I actually had the ability to do it - what the gubbins happened to my brain between believing that and now?

I can state with conviction that I didn't have this problem with Draft One. Draft One poured out of my brain in a crazy, uninhibited gush and I just spilled it all over the pages like a kid let loose with the nursery paints. That's because Draft One was my happy-fun-go-nuts-and-CREATE! time, when there were no limits and no 'wrong' way to do anything.

But now I'm about a third of the way through Draft Two - and  Draft Two is the time to put on the Serious Pants and say "Right - let's sort this shit out then." This is the stage where I'm supposed to be rebuilding the story foundations so they'll actually take the weight of the unfolding events, making sure all the pieces fit together and that it doesn't look so bloody awful it'll bring down story property prices for the whole neighbourhood. In Draft Two, it seems, there's a wrong way to do everything - and I seem to be pretty damn good at finding them all.

Everything I write looks messy and repulsive at the moment. I almost wish I could just pull out all the story-stuff dancing around in my brain and squish it onto the pages and say "There you are - ta-dah! Screw words and sentences and all that crap -  that's how it's supposed to look." But I suspect that would just look messy and repulsive in an entirely different way.

I have been assured by many writers that this is normal - indeed, some have even gone so far as to say that it's a necessary part of the Draft Two process. (Oh. Hooray then.) But it's not a fun part, no it surely isn't. Writing like a drunk idiot without the actual fun of first getting drunk and then behaving like an idiot is not good for the self-esteem, it has to be said.

But I made myself a promise with this book; I was going to FINISH IT. Come what may. Even if, at the end of all the hard work and effort, it turns out to be monumentally crap. And I intend to honour that promise. Because, even though I don't like how hard it is to get this thing written at the moment, I still like writing it. Crazy-ass writer-type that I am.

So I'm going to keep turning up, keep on truckin' through it and keep on working through the pain. Apparently (according to my writing friends) by doing that I can eventually come out the other side of this Tunnel Of Crapness and into the light of Yay, I Might Be A Writer After All-ness.

Until then, I may have to get emergency supplies of chocolate shipped in. Dig for Victory, and all that...

Writers vs. Writers Who Write

I've often wondered if there was a certain, defining 'thing' that separates the wannabe writers from the real writers.

In this modern era of self-publishing, e-publishing and reality TV shows making 'stars' of the kind of people you wouldn't normally even want to sit next to on the bus (who then go on to 'write' their autobiographies) it seems like just about everybody in the world these days has 'a book in them,' just screaming to get out in all its chest-bursting-Alien-esque glory.

And the e-publishing revolution that's kicking off now potentially brings that birthing process even closer to reality; all those people who can't get past or don't want to deal with 'The Gatekeepers' (otherwise known as publishers and agents) have another way to crash the party. In some ways this is a good thing; they might turn out to be the greatest party animal ever, the one who should've been invited all along. Or they might just be the one who cries for no reason and throws up everywhere before passing out in the flower bed. Either way, the point is that when it comes to getting your work published, it no longer matters if your name's not down - you can still come in.

So now your nan could publish a book if she wanted to - along with your next-door neighbour, your boss or even that weird kid you knew in school who pulled the legs off spiders and ate them. On the whole though, most of them don't. Even if they talk the talk, the majority of them will not walk the walk - or, if they start to, they end up doing the literary equivalent of giving up about halfway through, nipping into the shop for a Mars bar and calling for a taxi to take them back home.

But what is the difference between the people that are really, truly writers at heart - and the ones who just like the idea of being a writer every now and then, when the mood feels right? Is there a difference - I mean, a real difference, like a variation at DNA-level or something? Until some scientist somewhere actually finds it, there's no way of knowing for sure. But I think this article on the i09 site shines a little light on the debate.

It showcases an 'open letter to J.J. Abrams' video, made by one Prescott Harvey who was previously a production assistant on Abram's Mission Impossible III movie. The renowned director has just landed the job of directing George Lucas'/Disney's next Star Wars movie, and Harvey's video basically offers four golden rules on exactly how Abrams should go about the whole thing to make it great.

(I could of course take a minute to laugh myself silly at the breathtaking chutzpah of an ex-production assistant issuing a set of  How To Make A Movie Properly Instructions to a highly experienced and successful director of blockbuster movies. Okay then, I'll admit it - I did.)

And then I read all the comments below the article, from other Star Wars superfans. Loads of comments, all debating the finer points of The Rules as laid out in Harvey's videos; whether they were right or wrong, what other rules should've been added, what they would tell J.J. Abrams to do if they had the chance...

Again, I couldn't help marvelling at the - well, okay, I'll stick to the nice word 'chutzpah*' - of all these hordes of Star Wars fanboys (and girls) essentially telling a famous and highly successful director "do this movie this way, asshole - and try not to mess it up or we'll have your balls on a silver platter." I think I'm probably right in assuming that a fair number of them aren't famous and highly successful directors themselves, yeah?

If I hired a builder to do some work on my house, I'd probably tell him what it was I wanted him to build (well, that would certainly help...) and make sure we were both on the same page regarding what it would look like when it was finished.

What I wouldn't do is give him a giant list of Must Haves, like what cement he should use to stick the bricks together, the best and most efficient way to do all the wiring and where he should go to get all his building supplies to obtain the best quality for the right price. Why? Two reasons:

1 - Because I'm not a builder, and I have no experience or training to be one. He is and has, because that's his job.

2 - If I was a builder, with the aforementioned experience and training, I wouldn't have hired him to do the job. I'd have done it myself.

And I think that, in a nutshell, is the 'thing' that separates the real writers from the ones that are only in love with the idea of being a writer.

Real writers write real, actual stuff, not essays on how other writers aren't doing it the way The Public wants. They don't waste precious time telling the world how they would've written the Harry Potter books, or what Stephen King should do if he wants to make his novels more cerebral; they see a gap, they hunker down and fill it themselves.

I'm not saying there isn't a place for those who tell others how to write rather than do it themselves; some do it for a living and do it very well. I just think it's a good idea to determine which category you really belong in - if only to rid yourself of a lot of unnecessary pain and struggle in the long run. If you are a real, writing writer you can free yourself from the tyranny of keeping one eye on what everyone else is writing and just write what you want to read - because if that's what's in your heart, being compared to what's already out there isn't important.

Alternatively, if you're the back-seat driver writer, who prefers to analyse what others have written and suggest ways to fix it... well, recognising that means the pressure's finally off you completing that novel/screenplay you've been slogging at for years (and years and years...) just so you can hang out with the writing writers. Don't worry - it doesn't mean you'll get disowned, or that your membership to the writing club automatically expires; if nothing else, you could have a fine career as a beta reader, and they're like gold dust in the writing world. You'll just need to accept that, while other writers will be happy to listen to and respect your opinions about their work, they may still prefer to ultimately do things their way in the end. And if they do, it doesn't necessarily make them an idiot/arrogant/stubborn.

So, for the purpose of discovering which of the two flavours you are, I offer the following litmus test:

Imagine you've been given a glimpse into the future - and discovered that everything you write will sink without trace. Even if you do get anything published you will make no money from it and remain a complete unknown - even if you self-publish it. Forever. Everything you write. Knowing all of this to be true, an absolute certainty - do you still keep writing the stuff anyway?

If you answered 'yes' - you're a real, writing writer. Pull up a chair and get cosy.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
*Best definition of 'chutzpah' I ever heard, courtesy of comedy actress Maureen Lipman: little boy pees through the letterbox of a house and then knocks on the door to ask the occupants how far it went.

The Sound of (Multimedia) Silence

Aaah... TV. The internet. Newspapers and magazines. Books. Computer games. Where would we be without them all, eh?

Ever tried finding out for yourself?

There is a fabulous selection of books by Julia Cameron called 'The Artists' Way'; each one is basically a course-in-a-book that... well, I suppose the best way to describe them is to say they change your attitude to exploring your creativity. (If you're someone who dreams of getting into a creative field but has guilt/confidence issues about investing your heart and soul into it, you need to read at least one of these books. You will be forever glad you did.*)

Anyway, one of the exercises given to you as part of that course is to take what amounts to an 'information vacation.' For one week, you must abstain from: watching TV, surfing the web, listening to the radio and reading. Yep, that's one whole week - the whole seven days, baby.

The reasoning behind it is that all these forms of multimedia fill up your creative brain passively, with stuff you didn't necessarily ask for - like junk mail or spam in your Inbox. After a while your brain gets so used to being bombarded in this way it gets lazy and stops thinking up ideas for itself - and that's when your creativity gets stale and unoriginal. So what you need is a purge - a Media Detox Diet, to give your creative brain some quiet time to fill itself up with its own, new thoughts and ideas.

I first attempted this exercise several years ago, with a group of online writer friends. And I think we were all perturbed and sceptical in equal measure. A group of writers, not being allowed to read? How was that even humanly possible? And if anything, I think we were all fully expecting to be less inspired at the end of the seven-day period, not more - after all, without our daily diet of news and entertainment, where would all those creative sparks come from? Thin air?

The next step of course was clarifying The Rules. Being creative types, there were a lot of things we thought of that "maybe didn't really come under the remit of 'media' as such..?" *hopeful face.* So here's what we came up with regarding what was banned and what wasn't:

# TV - No dice; non-negotiable. That big flashing box stays OFF, 24/7, for the whole seven days. (And yes, DVDs and videos do count as 'TV!')

# RADIO - As for TV. It is, after all, basically TV without pictures.

# MUSIC - Anything instrumental is fine. Anything with lyrics - sorry, banned.

# COMPUTER - Internet is banned completely - and yes, that does include FaceBook, Twitter, Tumblr et al. You can write a blog entry, but you can't read any - same goes for emails. Computer games: puzzle games like Tetris and Jewel Quest - yes, okay then, but no cheating and reading the game rules/credits/options menu! Any games with characters/quests/storylines/dialogue - no way. Banned.

# READING MATERIAL - All books, magazines and newspapers are banned. And yes, so is anything on Kindle or other eBook gizmos (we didn't have them then, but they would have been nixed if we had.) Recipe instructions ('cos you've suddenly, inexplicably, taken a massive interest in cooking...) - you big cheater! No!  You can read the backs of packets if you desperately need to be sure you're reconstituting those instant noodles just right - but save your Great British Bake-Off ambitions until the end of the seven days.

Oh okay then... you can read road and street signs - but for safety and navigational purposes only, y'hear?

# SUPPLEMENTARY RULE - Regarding engaging in conversations with friends, family and colleagues about any of the above (i.e. "Soooooo..... anyone catch what happened on Downton Abbey last night then? 'Cos I missed it...") Obviously it would be next to impossible to prevent other people discussing all the things you're currently banned from indulging in - but if you are encouraging them this WILL be considered cheating.

How harsh all of the above sounds depends very much on your own lifestyle. For me, the TV part was pretty easy; I don't watch much telly anyway, and I've never really been one of those people whose entire week is ruined if they miss an episode of a programme they like. Same with radio - and even the music ban wasn't hard while I could still listen to instrumental stuff. Computer games - little bit harder, since I'm partial to the odd RPG or two, but doable. The biggest killer BY FAR was the reading part; swearing off magazines, newspapers and books for seven days was cold turkey of the highest order. And although the internet ban wasn't tough for me back then, I reckon if I did the exercise again it definitely would be now.

But I guess the million-dollar question is... how did it go?

Well, the first day was fine - "yeah, no probs, I can do this..." Day Three and I was beginning to wonder if reading the nutritional information on tins of beans really counted as cheating, because - oh! that stuff was fascinating..! By the time I got to Day Five I had rediscovered several crafting hobbies and was stringing beads and weaving scoubidous with a slightly manic expression on my face. And trust me, I was starting to effin' hate Jewel Quest.

But by the time I completed Day Seven I was actually sad the exercise was over. The multimedia vacation truly had felt like... a vacation. I realised just how much time there really was in the average day - without multimedia, there's loads more of it. I really did have the time to write a novel if I wanted to; it had always been there, I'd just never known how to look for it before. And, far from my Information Detox Diet leaving me with a head full of nothing, my brain was practically bursting with new ideas and scenarios. It had filled the void, all on its own. My friends all reported similar results, and many of us resolved to repeat the exercise again in future, whenever we felt blocked or stale as writers.

So... if you're worried you've become a slave to multimedia I'd say give this a go. Alternatively, if you're pretty sure you're not a slave to multimedia I'd say give this a go, because - ooh boy - you might just get a surprise. You'll find out just how big your life - and your creativity - can be. At the very least, you'll discover you have much more 'spare time' than you ever imagined.

If you feel like picking up the gauntlet, let me know how you get on...

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*Embarking on an Artist's Way course is a totally worth-it exercise in improving your writing - or indeed any other creative endeavour - provided you are able (and willing) to make the time for it. If you're living a completely manic life where you don't even have time to drive over the flowers on your way to Somewhere Important, never mind stop and smell them, attempting the steps of this course will just make you depressed and frustrated with that life. (This may be a great thing if you were secretly looking for a reason to ditch your max-stressful routine for something more spiritual - not so great if it's the only way to get your bills paid.)

You Need To Write Badly Before You Can Write.

There's a lot of fear involved in writing fiction. One of the biggest is that, as a fiction writer, you might, y'know - ssshhh, say it quietly - actually suck.

If a footballer has a rubbish season where he doesn't score any goals and... I don't know, plays football badly in whatever way that works (don't judge me - I'm not a football fan so I know squat about the game, okay?) people will almost certainly say he's a rubbish footballer. But unless he's been getting up to the kind of scandalous-private-life stuff that keeps the tabloids in business, it's very unlikely they'll also say he must be an arrogant, badly-educated, horribly-flawed person, who's cheapened the good name of football for all the real, proper footballers out there who've worked hard to get where they are and have real talent... in other words, he'll be judged on what he's failed to do, not on how he's failed as a person.

Aaah... if only being a writer worked like that. But it doesn't.

This is because it is universally believed that, as a writer, you are what you write. And I think that's sort of true. I don't believe any fiction novel is a direct window into a writer's soul (otherwise the local cop shop should be deeply worried about people like Stephen King...) However, I think it certainly is true to say that, with every word you write, you're saying to the world "This what moves me, what hurts me, what makes me laugh, cry and get angry - this is why I think the way I do." That's very personal, because you're baring your soul  - and it hurts deeply if the overwhelming response to that act of bravery feels like the bully kid from The Simpsons pointing at you and going "Ha ha!"

When I was fifteen I wrote a short story. I'd written many short stories before then - even won a couple of competitions in fact - but I was particularly pleased with this short story because... well, unlike most of the ones I'd written before it, this one wasn't written specifically for anything, like a competition or a school assignment. I wasn't confined by pre-defined boundaries like subject matter or word count; it was just me writing about what I felt moved to write about, using as many words as I needed to tell my story. It came straight from my teenage heart, uncensored and raw, and when I finally wrote 'The End' in that pastel-papered A4 pad I decided it would be the first - heck, maybe even the best - of a collection of short stories I planned to write and publish. Like a real, proper writer.

A few years passed before I picked up that pastel A4 pad and read that story again. I'd been writing other stuff in the meantime and pretty much forgotten about this bygone 'masterpiece,' so you can imagine how excited I was to read it again and get that warm and fuzzy feeling about how good I was - even back then - at writing really emotional, sensitive stories...

Hoooo boy... was I ever in for a massive kick in my egotistical pants...

It. Was. DREADFUL. It read like a melodramatic, clichéd tale of "this poor heroine's life is TERRIBLE 'cause everyone around her is being SO UNFAIR - but - ha! In the end her life turns out to be BRILLIANT and everyone else's life is HORRIBLE 'cause they were so mean to her - so YEAH, CHEW ON THAT, BIG CRUEL WORLD!"

I had to face facts; it was not the great, emotionally-charged nugget of literary marvelousness I'd fondly imagined it to be; it was a whiny, self-pitying rant against everything the average moody teenager thinks is JUST NOT FAIR about their TERRIBLE LIFE... And - ooh, hell yeah - I was mortified that I'd ever written such drivel. So mortified in fact, that I spent the next twenty years writing other things instead; comedy stories, light-hearted plays and musicals, parody lyrics - anything but serious, gritty stuff. I made the decision that writing about things that affected me emotionally was something I should just never, ever do ever again... I clearly wasn't cut out for it, because look at the dog-poo I produced when I tried...

There's no doubt that godawful teenage story should never, ever be published. But it's only now I'm older, with more writing experience under my belt, that I realise it absolutely needed to be written. I had to get it out of my system; that and many other works I wrote in later years when I first began to dip my toes in the waters of Serious Writing again. To get to the clear, pure emotions of the story you really want to tell, you gotta purge an awful lot of sewage first...

It's only now, as I'm writing Draft Two of The Renegades, that I'm starting to regain the courage to dig into my emotions again. I've discovered an uncomfortable truth about this novel, which it took me a while to realise and may explain why it's taking me so long to write it; like that angst-ridden short story of my teenage years, telling this tale is requiring me to  delve into raw and vulnerable areas of my inner psyche. But I'm not that inexperienced teenage writer anymore; I 've learned a lot, both about writing and about life in general. This time around I can use all that pain and struggle with a more balanced perspective than I had back then.

So I guess that's my Musing For Today; when you first begin to dig deep and write from the heart, for a while you may only dredge up piles of steaming shit. But never let that make you afraid to keep doing it. Baring your soul in your writing is scary as hell, yes it is - but you have to keep doing it badly before you can learn how to do it well. Feel the fear of writing shit and do it anyway - and when you're afraid that everything you write for the rest of your life will be shit, write some more! Because the alternative is writing from 'behind the wall' - telling without showing, talking without understanding. Trying to tell your story without letting your reader peek into your soul is cold, dead writing. And your apprentice-level shit may be smelly, but at least it'll keep you warm until you can come up with something better.

And you will, Padawan - with time, practice and patience, you will...