Words Are Not Enough

Writing is all about the words, right? Well actually, not exactly.

When I first started writing I thought this was the case - I could reel off twenty thousand words without really trying, some of those words were good, some phrases were clever, some ideas interesting - but mainly it was boring, indulgent, telling authorial voice. That's when I began to realise there's a whole heap more to writing than just words.

In fact, the words themselves should sit on a deep reservoir of imagined constructs - places, buildings, characters, plots etc. that could be expressed in words, but equally don't have to be - a story can be told without words (dance, pictures etc.), some aspects of characterisation can be lain down with photographs, places can be modelled - examples from my own work are when I sketched out the floor-plan of a house, or dealt out some cards to drive a poker-playing scene.

What the narrative should be doing is revealing these constructs through the story. The narrative should merely be a window on a much broader story-world. Think of the books that have really engrossed you - you really get the feeling that the story-world is living and breathing beyond the page, both in terms of time and place, and that the characters had a life before you met them. There's a maxim I've read that says - don't bring your research to the page - which is essentially encapsulating what I'm talking about here - don't show everything you know.

The truth is, the bulk of that 'reservoir of imagined constructs' we could express in words, and are probably very likely to, we may even do so in a first draft before editing - we may be talented enough not to have to define the constructs at all - but they need to be there, behind the narrative. James Scott Bell calls this the 'iceberg effect' - whereby what the narrative reveals is merely the tip of the iceberg. The reader doesn't need to know the workings of the reservoir, but the writer does, and the better we know it, the more real those elements we do reveal will feel to the reader.

So, if you get tired of staring at your computer screen - draw some floorplans, deal some cards, take some photographs, even dance around - it's all part of writing. It isn't just about words, but your words will be better for it.

The Sound of One Hand Clapping

You start with an audience of one – yourself. Sometimes you think what you've got to say is great, sometimes you think it's terrible, sometimes you haven't got a clue either way.

So you push it out to your number one reader – your lover perhaps, a family member, a close friend. Maybe you trust them, maybe you don't. Maybe they tell you want you want to hear, maybe they don't.

So you push it out wider, to your crit group, other friends. Sometimes they love it, sometimes they hate it, sometimes they don't say anything at all.

Maybe you go further - put it online, a blog, a writer's community, an online slush-pile – before you know it, hundreds of people have read your writing; you have more feedback than you know what to do with, sometimes people agree, but most often their responses are different, unique, and completely surprise you – like they were reading a different book.

You're looking for the answer, the goal, the signpost that says, do this, and your work will be finished.

You begin to realise that while the whole world can have an opinion on your work, it's only you that can fix it. This is your story, your voice, your insight – the creative responsibility lies with you, and you alone.

You write to be read – don't forget that – you have to take your audience seriously and listen to what they say. But the truth remains, while anyone can read your work, only you can write it.

And it won't be finished until it's published. And probably not even then.

The Power of Dreams

Had a writer's dream last night. For some reason, I was attending a student theatre production - which had a lot of guys in it far too old to be students - when Janet Street-Porter (yes, I know) presented me with an annotated copy of the first grown-up thing I ever wrote - a play about King Arthur I composed in my early twenties. It turns out the production I was watching was Janet's version of my play.

I was stunned to be presented with something I'd written from my past, and was moved to tears by a new musical scene she'd added - a requiem - interesting to note, it wasn't one of my scenes!

But I discussed it with Janet, and remarked how I was much wiser now about writing, and that my play was written straight from the heart, without the designing, contriving, rewriting and reworking I indulge in now.

And I woke with a fear that perhaps I'd lost my true voice over the years - I rushed to my computer, and re-read some of my most recent work, and was somewhat reassured to find it wasn't all appalling - but still, a doubt remains.

My current opus started with one of the most vivid dreams of my life. I rarely write my dreams down - I know a lot of writers keep a dream diary, and perhaps I should start - but I wrote this one down - I think you'll understand why when you read it.

I haven't edited it, (other than removing a sex scene for decorum's sake), so you'll have to forgive me for that, but I think the rawness compensates -

"Having a sense of having given up work and everything - still possess a few trappings of the ratrace - clean shirts etc - setting up home without shelter on a boat near some water - more like a barge - under a bridge near the house of commons. (sex-scene deleted) Slight feelings of guilt but more awareness of dangers of unprotected sex. This new carefree life seems great - except it quickly palls.

I immediately notice that the trappings I brought with me from my former life start to go missing, and I am increasingly aware of the hopelessness of trying to hold onto anything of any value - my new underclass associates have no respect for the notion of possessions - but not quite in Rousseau's noble savage sense. Eventually a gang of heavy's come over to my new home (the barge - curious how the stepping onto this floating platform signified the start of a new life) they take one of my new companions and start to savagely beat him 'off camera' - I know there intentions are to steal what they can so I pretty much show them where my nice clothes are so they can take them, and narrowly avoid a beating.

Next scene is on a sloping grassland - I'm surrounded by (a large group) my underclass associates and now have lost all my ratrace trappings. Everyone is sitting around and there's a palpable air of disatisfaction and impending violence - I start to walk to lessen the chance of violence occuring.

Eventually I walk away from this group with a female companion, who is caring, intelligent and comforting. We approach the Houses of Parliament, we are in a fenced off cultivated garden, beyond the fence are the Houses, and beyond that a seething mass of Londoner's going about there business (again the distinction between me and the ratrace workers). We discuss the distinction between the rulers and the ruled, as represented by the actuality of the scene I've just described.

Next scene is back at the barge, which now seems to have some walls and a roof and is more like a house. I am better dressed and now have another male companion along with my female friend. We have assumed some semblance of our former selves (perhaps we have our jobs back?) having realised the underclass lifestyle was not for us. Our old friends want a piece of the action - once again having no respect for what we have earned, it's simply that we have and we should give to them, which they state as such with a heavy undercurrent of threatened violence, although this is never explicit. The threat combined with a sense of realisation that we don't need most of the money we earn we agree to give it to them - in fact we end up giving them nearly all of everything we earn.

So I find myself trying to bridge the gap between the two way's of life - but the moral of the story seems to be that this cannot be achieved. Eventually the whole environment becomes grey and derelict, people are dead and those still alive are running around on killing sprees. I try to survive, but my female companion tells me not to be afraid, and that death will bring relief from the hardships this life-cycle. I, and my female companion, are killed by a running man with an axe. There is no pain, I fall to the ground dead but I am still aware, but without the fear of violence that I have had for most of the dream because I am already dead. Eventually I can get up, my companion and I are in a kind of yard, with a wall in front of us (all concrete grey) with a rectangular doorway through which my attacker had come before moving off to the right after killing me. We walk through this doorway and the world (which is now a world of undecorated porticos and austere Romanesque courtyards) and everything has regressed to a state of pre-Roman enlightenment. One man with dark, curly hair is suggesting we use the particular courtyard we are in for gladitorial-like games. The promise of the new world is tainted as the cycle of violence is about to commence again..."

Yep, pretty intense stuff, but as worthy a genesis of a novel as anything, I'm sure - sex, violence, fear, desire, character arc, story, and portentous ending. Maybe I should stop using it as a starting point, and fictionalise the dream itself.

How significant do you think dreams are as material for a writer? Do you believe they give us insights unavailable to the conscious mind? Do you believe in Jung's idea that they contain ancestral memories?

From Nothing to Something – 5 ways to build plots

It feels like a long time since I created the plot for The Chicken Factory - that initial genesis of an idea, a character, a voice, a theme, that becomes the starting point for a novel. You do have to allow these things space to develop organically, but when you actually sit down and begin writing the thing, there comes a time when you have to figure out what's going to happen, and perhaps more importantly, why it happens.

In truth, at the time I started The Chicken Factory I really didn't know what I was doing, and took the long scenic route to understanding how to generate a story and build that into a plot that could carry a narrative for the duration of a novel.

I discovered yesterday that I had the presence of mind to write it all down in an unobtrusive little text file. Here are the fruits of my labours – but first, a definition.

Story versus Plot – a distinction

In 'Aspects of the Novel' E.M. Forster marks the distinction between story (what happens) with plot (why it happens) – this is a distinction that is useful to a novelist. Forster is in good company here – Aristotle in 'Poetics' describes plot as 'the structure of the elements' i.e. what ties the story elements together. When I started I had a whole heap of scenes that I'd invented, dreamt, or cribbed from my own, and other people's, experiences - so I had a story, but no actual plot.

I hate to admit it, but I wrote the whole first draft without a plot, without a 'structure of the elements', and boy did it show. After some hard lessons learnt, I compiled a list of methods to help me build the plot I so sorely needed.

1. The Robert McKee Method

Present the protagonist with a problem, get the protagonist to perform the most obvious solution that involves the path of least resistance, prevent this solution with a different larger problem and repeat. Drama exists in the difference between what the protagonist expects of the world, and what actually happens i.e. the difference between an expected reaction from the story world when the protagonist acts, and what actually happens.

2. The 'Theme' Method

Is it possible to write a story about a certain subject, without compromising that story? Is the story to have a message (i.e. propaganda), or simply be about a certain subject? If there is a message, then the story and character must be developed simultaneously with that message in mind - a message driven story is restrictive, and care must be taken to ensure that the story is a natural consequence of believable character action, and that the characters are believable and complex and not just polarised representations of the different sides to the argument - the characters will just become mouth-pieces in this case. Plot and character must be developed within the context of the theme. If the message is not set, but the subject matter is, the story and characters can be developed more freely, but must still be relevant to the theme being explored.

3. The Character Driven Plot

If the writer were to develop fully-formed characters and place them in conflictual situations then drama would necessarily follow, particular if the characters themselves are conflictual. This involves the writer having a full and complete understanding of his characters before he starts. This is a method addressed by Orson Scott Card in his book 'Characters and Viewpoint'.

4. The Situation, or 'What If' Driven Plot

Stephen King, in 'On Writing', states that he never plots a novel - he just thinks of a situation (e.g. what would happen if I put a best-seller writer in the hands of his psychotic number one fan?), and writes on from that point. Stephen is an exceptionally prolific writer, and has an undeniable story-telling talent. Unfortunately I don't have that ability, and have had to develop my own strategy for creating an interesting plot.

5. My Method

Or rather, the method I actually used when faced with my appalling first draft and cobbled together from the wisdom and experience of more successful writers. My method uses the distinction Forster makes between plot and story. Story is the scenes and their sequence; plot is the narrative connection between these scenes, and justifies their inclusion in the narrative. This means that one scene is a natural and inevitable consequence of previous scenes. The plot may demand that some scenes be cut, or new ones written.

The process distilled is: 1 - establish characters; 2 - invent scenes; 3 - write story to justify the inclusion and ordering of those scenes - stages 1 and 2 generally occur simultaneously.

Character naturally has an impact on scenes and plot, and these will change as the characters develop because they will drive the narrative, and as a consequence present new scenes. Previously envisaged scenes may need to be dropped as characters develop too - you can't force them to do something against their nature.

This worked for me, because it allowed me to make use of my half-formed characters and my stack of un-related story scenes. I was then able to knit these all together, while still allowing myself room for both to develop and evolve during the writing.

How do you generate your plots? Or do you just write it all out? Is there another plot creation method I've missed? Let me know.

Hooked by Les Edgerton – a Review

It could be just me, but it seems that Americans take a much more pragmatic approach to the production of literature than Europeans. All the most affecting books on writing I've read have come from across the pond, and most things I've read about writing from British authors tend to stress the more esoteric side of the process, or, as in David Lodge's excellent The Art of Fiction, take an approach closer to literary criticism.

The truth is, the last thing a writer who's wrestling with his text needs is esoteria – what he needs is an almost messianic clarity to guide him through his self-doubt and uncertainty. This is why I think writing books with an agenda, with an author on a mission, are the most useful to the practising writer – even if the advice isn't necessarily appropriate for the work, at the worst the argument can be tested and refuted and the writer comes through with a stronger understanding of his own work, at best, the messiah may just be right.

Les Edgerton in 'Hooked' keeps it simple – he's setting out how to advise you to write openings that will get you read, and eventually published. He doesn't pontificate, he's actually gone and asked a load of editors and agents about it, and publishes their responses. He's also been in the position of being rejected countless times, and shares his experience of how he's changed those rejected submissions around and actually got them published.

And boy, is Les on a mission – backstory, set-up, static description get short-shrift here – by his own admission he sometimes exaggerates for emphasis – but he makes his point well and powerfully. I particularly like how he takes examples from high literary fiction, more general fiction, and film. He's not afraid to look genius in the eye and attempt to deconstruct what makes it work, but he's not so high-brow he can't apply the same analysis to more popular works.

One thing Les is above all, is optimistic – he dedicates this book to all the writer's 'who didn't give up', and while he's playing to the gallery a little here, this attitude pervades the writing. He uses a phrase that particularly resonated with me 'if you're green, you're growing' – by which he means, if you're not perfect, you're can only get better – an encouraging thought if you ever look at your work and think it's appalling.

In summary, this is one of the best books on writing I've read, there are echoes of other writers here (Robert McKee particularly) but he adds plenty more and his particular focus on beginnings for novels makes this a must-have for any author serious about getting editors and agents to read their work.

Thoroughly enjoyed, and heartily recommended, but more importantly than that, reading this work and applying the ideas to my own writing has significantly improved it – which is, after all, what a writer is after.

In Search of the Stellar Opening Line

The importance of a great opening has really hit home recently, having spent a considerable amount of time on Harper Collins's virtual slush-pile authonomy – when faced with thousands of opening chapters to read, unless you're given some other reason to read on, you will pass on anything that doesn't grab you immediately, that doesn't simultaneously intrigue you and convince you of the writer's ability to tell a story, and an interesting one at that – this has given me some sense of what it must be like for agents and editors when facing their immense, unsolicited slush piles.

I'm also currently reading Hooked by Les Edgerton (which I will review when finished) which stresses this point very powerfully.

When a writing friend suggested that I'd rewritten The Chicken Factory so often that I'd effectively written the equivalent of six different novels, it prompted me to take a look at all the different opening lines I'd used in all the various drafts.

What an interesting exercise! The first thing that struck me (after how atrocious most of them were) was how different they all were, so I must have had some understanding of how important the opening line was, and obviously feeling that I hadn't got it right with each draft. While the first line of the last draft always feels like the last first line, this exercise shows that this is unlikely to be the case, although I do feel like the current one is the best.

I've included all of them here, and while I grant they're are some shockers here (if not all of them, you might say!), I would be really interested to know which one people think is the best – let me know in a comment – it would be great to know if I've got any better, and if my current favourite matches yours. Here they are in no particular order:

1. It’s called a mid-life crisis.

2. My boss is called Bert.

3. The bus in front of me was blocking both of the lanes on the approach to the roundabout.

4. I already disliked the man.

6. My father once told me that life is like a bad back.

7. I hit the brakes hard as the van pulled out in front of me.

8. I always believed that happiness was just there for the taking.

9. Once I allowed myself to consider that I wasn't special, that this world wasn't special, that it was all, quite possibly, a terrible mistake - feeling ignorant or stupid seemed a trivial thing.

10. What is the cause of this insatiable longing for fulfilment?

11. It wouldn't be hard to kick-off a shit-storm in a petrol station – just hose some fuel on the forecourt, dump your cigarette, and walk away.