Category Archives: Writing

Chapters: Numbers or Names?

29/04/2019 Paul Leave a comment

It’s recommended by writing gurus, that a cliffhanger teaser at the end of a novel, can generate interest in the next book, which set me to thinking about how a fictional story is organised.

I finished my fifth novel at the end of 2018. I’ve applied the same format to all of my books, a template that makes it easy for me to navigate around where I’ve been and where I’m going.

Aiming for the recommended 80,000 words of my crime genre, I produce an average of 38 chapters that vary in length from 1,800 to 4,000 words. The longer chapters have two or three section breaks—I love section breaks—a great way of suggesting connections in a plot.

I number and name my chapter headings, (Chapter 37—Under the Skin), which may be a bit belt & braces of me, but there’s a method in my eccentricity. The main reason is, to help the reader remember where they are, and also a named chapter acts as a hook to pull them in.

From my experience as a librarian, I know that readers use odd reasons to reject a book…too many pages, too many chapters and chapters that are too long. I’m kind of playing the odds here, for polls of readers show that it’s mainly women who read anyway, and most readers of crime fiction are female, and there are more older readers than young. Hopefully, my anticipated demographic of readers will appreciate me keeping things neat!

I’ve observed from the novels I’ve been reading, that most use numbered chapters, with only a few having titles. Some dispense with chapters completely, and the text is laid out in paragraphs and section breaks. A few separate the story into parts, to describe things from a different point of view or when there’s a chronological gap.

There’s been a trend recently, to have chapters alternate their POV. Gone Girl and Girl On A Train did this with each chapter bearing the name of which character was speaking.

I don’t think that it’s always the author who chooses how to lay out their chapters, as there may be editorial decisions made by the publisher to have the layout conform to a house style.

How do you organise your story?

Writing

Getting Mad, Baby! What angers you about writing?

29/04/2019 Paul Leave a comment

Since returning to creative writing six years ago, I’ve scrambled up several steep learning curves to do with the business of writing. These include formatting, book cover design, marketing the ebooks I self-published on Smashwords and Amazon and the all-important lessons of how to write a synopsis and query agents.

I made another round of supplications to the ‘gatekeepers’, in February, after spending the previous two months editing my fifth novel. As any writer knows, that feels like wading through porridge, but there’s still a discernible feeling of achievement in having polished a manuscript.

I’m at a stage where I feel like I’ve created a potentially commercial product—which is how I’m increasingly coming to view my novels—rather than taking joy in them as a readable story. Despite this confidence, I know I’m a nobody, an unpublished author looking for his first publishing contract. Any marketability I have comes from where I live in Cornwall, which is popular as a holiday destination and from being the location of the successful television adaptation of Winston Graham’s Poldark stories.

I know that some bestselling authors are poor writers, but what makes me mad is that if my manuscript was submitted to the gatekeepers by a media celebrity (who’s already got fame and wealth), then it would be snaffled up immediately. Commercially, it’s the way of the world in publishing that someone with an existing high profile, a ‘platform’, will be more attractive a risk than someone anonymous who will take more effort to promote—but it still makes me mad!

It’s proof that no one cares what you’ve written. Would-be readers are more enticed by already knowing who the author is, than anything to do with the quality of the story. As an example supermodel/supertwit Naomi Campbell has ‘written’ several novels and biographies—I don’t know if she’s read them!

That’s what makes me angry—realising publishing is a business and has little to do with art.

How about you?

Writing

Success, then Failure

29/04/2019 Paul Leave a comment

I had doubts about posting the link to an article by Merritt Tierce, for it makes rather depressing reading. Most of us are still chasing our first book deal or struggling with how to market our self-published books, so to hear that a critically acclaimed novel made only modest sales is disheartening.

I Published My Debut Novel to Critical Acclaim—and Then I Promptly Went Broke

It certainly put the author in a quandary, for she realised that all the praise in the world doesn’t help to pay the bills. She’s experiencing a form of writer’s block, where she wants to write but has to earn a living by working for others.

As she says:

“I AM A WRITER WHO’S ASHAMED TO NOT KNOW HOW TO MAKE MONEY AS A WRITER.”

The very few authors who have earned great wealth from writing is a reflection of the disparity in income, wealth and influence of society—1% control a disproportionate amount.

Writing has always been a tough way to earn a living, and there are plenty of well-known authors who struggle to make ends meet:

From bestseller to bust: is this the end of an author’s life?

Kind of makes me glad, that I’m used to being poor!

How about you?

Writing

Writing Tips from Successful Authors

29/04/2019 Paul Leave a comment

From the Guardian, a useful article full of wise advice from well-known authors.

My best writing tip by William Boyd, Jeanette Winterson, Amit Chaudhuri and more

I like what Blake Morrison has to say about going with the flow, embracing change when new ideas appear about how to tackle a scene. After all, if the writer isn’t intrigued by what’s going to happen next, why should the reader care?

Writing

Writer’s Block

29/04/2019 Paul Leave a comment

I don’t recall talking about this fearsome obstruction before, and I came across an opinion by the great Philip Pullman, with which I heartily agree:

‘I don’t believe in it (writer’s block). All writing is difficult. The most you can hope for is a day when it goes reasonably easily. Plumbers don’t get plumber’s block, and doctors don’t get doctor’s block; why should writers be the only profession that gives a special name to the difficulty of working, and then expects sympathy for it?’

I’ve never suffered from being ‘blocked’. I didn’t do any creative writing for years, but that was more down to depression and a lack of self-belief. I know that it could be argued that not believing in yourself is the cement that holds writer’s block together, but there are still techniques to get things flowing again.

If I stop feeling the creative flow, slipping out of the groove, I’ll do something else. Editing is always there, and it’s sufficient purgatory to encourage a return to creative writing. An alternative is to make plans for future novels in my series Cornish Detective crime novels, jotting down ideas and web addresses for relevant research in folders on my desktop. I find that writing poetry or song lyrics sometimes frees up ideas relevant to my WIP.

If you are affected by writer’s block, just consider what it’s made of. It could be a great big block of sugar, which (forgive the crudity) will dissolve if you just pee on it. By that, I mean release your inner demon— writing down what makes you mad about books in general, how you hate specific characters in your story and how the hell did that author get published when you can’t find an agent? Your anger is mightier than any temporary glitch.

A more genteel way to destroy an obstruction is to go around it. If you’re stuck on chapter 18, throw some paper airplane messages ahead for what occurs in chapter 20. Whether you’re a ‘planner’ or a ‘pantser’ you’ve still got an idea of where your story is headed, so jot down key phrases you intend to use, chuck in an unexpected development or think of a way to include a favourite word you’ve always wanted to use.

Creating a book is like taking a walk in a forest—there’s more than one path through the trees.

Have any of you been blocked, and how did you deal with it?

Writing

Why do you write?

29/04/2019 Paul Leave a comment

I’ve completed five novels in a series about a Cornish detective. I’m making plans for the sixth story and am feeling optimistic about the future. I don’t feel like I should be doing anything else, other than writing.

I recently read Haruki Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, which while about running, is also revealing about his creativity. Murakami is very good at letting the reader into his thought processes, something he also does with the characters in his novels. Their internal dialogue is gripping, and it’s something I try to emulate with my novels.

This article in Flavorwire, where famous authors give their reasons for writing, made me ponder my own motivations for writing.

15 Famous Authors on Why They Write

I agree with what they say about it being a solace, source of happiness, a delight and a way of expressing myself on something. It also has a feeling of making my mark, leaving some trace of who I am. I’m not suggesting that I’m striving for immortality, for it’s a sad fact that a tiny number of writers are remembered by name through history.

How many of you have heard of J.P. Marquand?

He was a hugely successful writer in the early 20th century, reaching millions of readers and winning the Pulitzer Prize for literature, yet today he’s forgotten. I came across him as an answer to a crossword clue, which might be an apt comment on the transience of success.

So, why do you do it?

Why do you write?

( Showing off is a good reason!)

Writing

When Do You Stop Writing?

29/04/2019 Paul Leave a comment

I’ve gradually refined my working method, since returning to creative writing six years ago. With my first novel, I did some editing as I went along, but the bulk of it gripped me like a grizzly bear after I’d typed ‘The End’. Five months of editing saw me interacting with my story as a recalcitrant object, rather than an interesting crime novel, as I hunted down punctuation errors, repetitions and clumsy phrasing.

These days, after completing my fifth novel, I edit assiduously as I go along. Some writing experts recommend using a word processor not connected to the internet, which I understand if you’re easily distracted by emails and social media, but I prefer to research facts close to writing about them. I do tons of fact checking beforehand, two months worth for my last story, but there are still times when details need refining.

In this way, I don’t trouble myself with reaching a set word count each day. Nor do I worry about finishing a chapter. Instead, I’ve taken to leaving off writing when I reach an intriguing development that poses questions of the protagonists. This usually happens after many hours of writing, when I’m also feeling weary.

Several famous authors recommended a similar approach, including Ernest Hemingway, who stopped when he still had an idea about what might happen next but didn’t want to empty the well of his imagination. There’s a difference between dropping anchor to moor safely, and foundering on a reef.

I’ve also adopted a trick suggested by Thomas Edison: Never go to sleep without a request to your subconscious. In this way, my brain sometimes offers solutions to a predicament while I sleep, that I wouldn’t have thought of when awake.

When do you stop yourself writing?

Writing

Stealing: My Confession

29/04/2019 Paul Leave a comment

It’s been said by various fine minds, T.S. Eliot, Steve Jobs and Alfred Tennyson included, that: ‘Good Artists copy; great artists steal.’

I don’t mean plagiarism, where long sections of a previously published work are lifted and used by an inferior writer; there have been many examples of that through the years.

Nor do I mean the alarming theft of whole ebooks which are hijacked, given a new title and published online under a pen name by ratbags wanting to profit from an author’s hard work.

No, I’m referring to when we read a phrase or see a literary technique that we can ‘borrow’ and turn to our purpose. To a large extent, we writers are magpies picking up anecdotes, interesting snippets of language and overheard conversations to decorate our own nests.

We’re always ‘on’, especially with a WIP, alert to possibilities. Just recently, I came across a couple of choice descriptions in a novel and a poem. One was in Tim Gautreaux’s fine novel The Missing where he described some dilapidated store fronts ‘faced with cupped pine boards bleeding nail rust’. I loved the idea of old dried-out timber bleeding nail rust, so purloined it to add to a scene where my protagonist detective visits a seemingly abandoned ramshackle farm, only to find the farmer dead inside, sitting mummified at his kitchen table.

A charming poem An Hour by Polish bard Czeslaw Milosz spoke of the ‘zealous hum of bees’. Yoink went I, adding it to my opening chapter where a mysterious woman is lying among the heather on a hot summer day, before going to a rendezvous with a man who will murder her.

That’s my confession!

Have any of you stolen anything juicy recently?

(Fess up—it’s good for the soul)

Writing

Finding ‘The Others’

29/04/2019 Paul Leave a comment

The latest bulletin from Zen Pencils was delivered to my inbox this morning. It’s a piece of advice from Timothy Leary, the counter-culture psychologist, author and pioneer of psychedelic drugs, about how we need to search to find ‘The Others’—fellow members of whatever tribe we belong to.

102. TIMOTHY LEARY: You aren’t like them

Then I wondered, in a whimsical way, about how I’d recognise a fellow writer out in the wild. Would they be like me, somewhat distracted and living in their fictional world, scribbling down ideas on a shopping list as they navigated the supermarket aisle. Possibly they’d be muttering to themselves, as dialogue was tried out and rejected.

In a library or bookshop, an author with a work in progress might have an expression that mixed delight at being among books, along with annoyance when they saw the works of a writer they despised and whose success they didn’t understand.

For my own part, I spend so much time alone indoors writing and editing, only venturing outside for a couple of hours a week to shop for food, that I sometimes feel like a creature on parole from a zoo’s nocturnal collection. A bushbaby blinking at the light, wondering at all of the people going about their normal business.

Paul Pens

Category Archives: Writing

Chapters: Numbers or Names?

Getting Mad, Baby! What angers you about writing?

Success, then Failure

Writing Tips from Successful Authors

Writer’s Block

Why do you write?

When Do You Stop Writing?

Stealing: My Confession

Finding ‘The Others’

Real Write, Real Edit, Real Publish