Four master-skills to make your writing a cut above the rest

Everybody talks about 'showing' and 'telling', far less about 'suggesting', but it’s the things that are suggested, the subtleties that lie within the spaces in between that will make your writing far more than the mere words you type.

But the very attempt to define and articulate those things can kill them dead – trying to create recognition in the reader can lead to cliché, foreshadowing can become foretelling, subtext dragged into the front-story.

The key is deftness, your touch must be lightweight – and in truth when you're in the creation phase, you're best not to think about them at all, concentrate on your characters and story, and developing your skill, and these things should happen. You can then tweak and refine them later.

But for the master-technicians amongst you, here are four subtle techniques deconstructed.

Defamiliarization

A great term to impress your writer mates down at the critique group, coined by the Russian Formalists to describe the technique of representing familiar things in unfamiliar ways. Too often writers try and arouse our interest by detailing ever more unique and preposterous plots, places and situations, while the true master will describe to us what we already know, but in ways we never thought of, simultaneously triggering recognition whilst also throwing new light on our own lives.

If you give something its name, say an apple, then you borrow all the cultural and linguistic baggage the reader carries with them. They will know the object you have named, and with their own particular associations - but if you describe that object as if you'd never encountered it before, you will be using defamiliarization. It's often used for comic effect, or to make ludicrous something we take for granted – a love scene can become gruesome, a murder scene poetic. Anything is possible.

Essentially defamiliarization is the process of describing something not as it is, but as it appears to be to the observer – this will not only say something new about the object itself but also about the observer who describes it.

Foreshadowing

Foreshadowing really means just good writing. It's what makes plot developments plausible and character transformations believable. If your male lead has been a stay-at-home house-husband for the entire novel, we're not going to buy it when two pages from the end he suddenly reveals his ninja-like skills in a vigilante kill-crazy rampage – if that's going to happen we have to see the essence of that within his character right from the start; we have to see the makings and beginnings of that transformation.

Mood and setting are often used to foreshadow events – very often you watch a movie and you know five minutes after the intro sequence that it isn't going to have a happy ending.

Foreshadowing should not be confused with foretelling – foretelling is much more explicit e.g. 'The day I died started normally enough…' Foretelling can provide narrative propulsion, but it's not a subtle technique, whilst foreshadowing is - the reader shouldn't be aware they've been 'foreshadowed' – perhaps just a sense of foreboding.

Subtext

Subtext is the difference between what appears to be happening, and what is actually happening. It's most easily explainable within the context of scenes, which I've discussed a number of times before. It's the thing that will make a dialogue scene truly great, and the lack of it the prime reason for ropy dialogue.

Dramatic Irony

This is a simple enough technique, but a very powerful device for creating suspense and/or anticipation in the reader. Dramatic irony is where the reader is aware of events that the characters aren't. If the reader knows there's a madman with a knife in the bedroom of the hero, but the hero doesn't – then you have created anticipation in that reader.

My example isn't particularly subtle, but it can be used with subtlety. If the reader has knowledge of a character - say he has dubious sexual intentions – then for our vulnerable heroine to throw herself at his mercy has more dramatic power than if we knew nothing about him.

If you can inject your writing with some of these elements, then you're well on the way to greatness.

Watch this space for a post about things that great writers DON'T do.

Why being unpublished is great

It can be hard to take yourself seriously as a writer if nobody else does, and it can be hard for others to take yourself seriously if you're not published.

So how can you keep your head high and your sanity intact when everyone else thinks you're delusional? Here's how to endure that indulgent smile people usually reserve for the completely deranged when they discover you're an unpublished 'writer'.

No-one has to know you're a failure

There's something to be said for acting the part if you want to be the part, but the great thing about being unpublished is no-one has to know you write. If you're serious about something, you're going to do it irrespective of what anybody else thinks, so why tell them? Who needs readers anyway?

No 'second book syndrome'

You don't have to worry about writing a second book that's shitty, because you're still writing/working the first shitty one.

You won't get panned

It's bad enough when your critique group dumps on your writing, but get published, and the whole world will dump on it. People you don't even know. People who actually get paid to dump on you.

It's still someone else's fault

If you were published and no-one liked your book, you'd have to face up to the fact that you were talentless – but when you're unpublished, it's just because those agents/editors are too stupid to recognise your genius.

You can make your mistakes in private

…while you work-through your enforced apprenticeship. If you stick to it long enough, irrespective of whether any publisher notices, you might get good at it.

You'll learn to be happy writing

Or give up trying. Point being, if you're a real writer, you'll keep doing it anyway. Publication be damned.

A Writer's Quick-fix Toolkit

In an ideal world we'd have a lifetime to work on each one of our stories and reading some of the writing advice that's out there, most commentators seem to think that's exactly what we've got. Sure, we'd love to spend forever making it perfect, but some of us have jobs, dependants, mortgages and maybe even deadlines.

But what can you do when the end is near (be it the end of writing time, the looming deadline, or simply the yawning grave) and your story's still horrendous?

Well providing you have enough critical distance to know what's wrong, here are some quick fixes that will at least move your work from the truly atrocious to the somewhat tolerable.

Sluggish Pace

Five minutes of hell is better than five days of it – which is something to bear in mind when writing a story. Even if your work is truly appalling, if it zips along nicely it won't appear so bad as if it's as sluggish as hell.

So how do we create pace? True pace is created by rapidly moving events told in an economical and engaging way. But this takes time and skill to perfect, so what can we do when our backs are against the wall? Simple – keep it short – short sentences, short paragraphs, short everything. A load of white space on the right will make a quicker and therefore pacier read. And if the reader can think 'ok, it's bad, but at least I can finish it before lunch, and you never know, it may actually get better' you're one step closer to greatness.

Unconvincing Characters

Chances are you've thrown everything into your main character and everyone else is a plank. Or maybe your MC is a plank too - a story-world of planks. So what can you do when you need to inject a little believability into your characters? Imagine what you would do if you were that character in that situation. It will be far more convincing than the current unmotivated action, and you never know, you may discover your characters in the process.

Nothing Happening

Six years of effort and you've found yourself with 900 pages of internal monologue where nothing actually happens. Ouch. And some agent has just requested the full manuscript. Double ouch. So how can you quickly get a story when you've got nothing? Motivate the MC by either giving them something they want (or something they don't want i.e. a situation to get out of) and then make them attempt to get it in the most direct and obvious way. Then stop them. Then get the MC to make the next obvious and shortest route. Then stop them doing that. Keep doing it and before you know it, you've got a plot. It's quick, it's dirty, it's better than nothing.

Utterly Uninvolving

This will probably be due to a combination of the above things, but if you've managed to get some moderately convincing characters, a workable plot and reasonable pace and it still reads like a funeral durge, then it's got to be down to story-telling technique.

So what can you do if you're the worst story-teller ever? Don't despair – there's a fix for that too – and it involves extricating yourself as much as possible from the text. Eliminate all authorial flourishes, narrative summary, directorial explanations, metaphors and similes. Aim to tell your story as clearly and straightforwardly as possible and let your characters speak for themselves.

And the good thing about that is, if it's still abominable, it will all be their fault.

How to let a scene write itself

Ever look at a scene you've written and realise it's as dull as ditch? Or worse, sat down to write a scene and don't know what the hell to write?

Me too. Sometimes you get so mixed up with what you've written, or what you haven't written, that you forget what it is you need to write.

But if the scene has the right elements it should pretty much write itself – but what are those elements, and how can you ensure your scene has them?

Let your characters make the drama

It's all too easy to write a scene that all about the lead character; a scene that show's off her loveable side; that reveals a dark truth about her past, a scene that allows her to rant on while all the other characters sit there and nod lifelessly. Sure, it's her story, but that doesn't mean that the characters she interacts with haven't got their own life journey to deal with. How many conversations have you been in where anyone actually cares what anyone else is saying? Most times people are just waiting for their turn to speak. The point being, every character is the lead in their own story.

If you put two or three fully formed characters together, with their own goals, frustrations, unrealised ambitions and unspoken hatreds, something will happen – those characters will react to each other and chances are they'll make a scene all by themselves.

Try and see the scene form every character's point of view. If you're still discovering your characters while writing your scene, a good short-hand technique for making a more realistic exchange is to imagine what you would say, think or do, if you were that character in that scene – and make sure you do it for each character.

Invent a dramatic situation

Yep, fully formed and complex characters will be interesting enough to watch, but why not turn up the heat by also putting them in a dramatic situation? Let the car break down on the way to the wedding, the child get lost in the park, the toast get burnt. Character is revealed by what people do much more so than what they say, particularly when they act under stress. The late, great Kurt Vonnegut said, a scene should do one of two things - advance the story or reveal character – and I'm not going to argue with that.

Scenes are about what's happening, not what's being said

You might think it's all about dialogue but it isn't. Dialogue is what's being said while the real stuff is going on – which may be either action or sub-text. There's a scene in the first series of The Wire where McNulty and Bunk are visiting an old and stale crime-scene. They say nothing but 'fuck' to each other throughout the whole scene, but what is actually happening is that they slowly come to realise through a number of stages exactly what happened at that crime-scene while they're saying it. One of the best scenes ever written, and all they say is 'fuck'.

So always ask yourself, what's actually happening in this scene? If you can't answer that question, that will be why it isn't working.

In summary

A scene is all about what's happening, and who it's happening to – if you know those two things intimately, the scene will write itself.

Eight Writing Lessons from Larsson

Love him or loath him, there's no denying his sales, and only the most ardent refusenik could say his novels aren't compelling and interesting. So what's the secret?

No secret, just good story-telling techniques:

An effective prologue

After two chapters of info-dump in the first 'Girl' novel, Larsson had learnt his lesson by the second. He starts with a disturbing, intriguing and immediately compelling prologue, the full meaning of which is only realised much later in the novel, and with an interesting twist. The lesson for prologues? Provide an immediate hook, keep them relevant, and use them to provide narrative propulsion by foreshadowing.

Tell don't show

There are whole swathes of 'telling' in Larsson's novels – but the truth is the material is so interesting you don't care. Lesson? If your story is that good you can tell it how you want.

Convincing story-world

Larsson achieves this in two ways – firstly, he knows his material - his journalistic background adds weight to his depiction of Blomkvist's world and allows the reader to surrender to the story; his research into security tradecraft and hacking is deep enough to be convincing. Secondly, he drops in a lot of incidental details that add colour and depth to the story-world – the light, the weather, what characters are wearing etc. – but he drops these details in deftly amongst the most driving narrative, so they don't slow down the pace. Lesson? Authoritative material and convincing detail will encourage the reader to surrender to your world and therefore your narrative – not so much write what you know, but know what you write.

No purple prose

Hardly a metaphor or simile in sight. I don't know about you, but there's nothing that turns me off a story more than a ropy metaphor, nothing that makes me more aware of the author, and perhaps more ominously their talent or lack of it, than an unconvincing simile - and if you can't move for the things, you know the author is really trying a little too hard. Lesson? A telling, truthful detail is more compelling than an author demonstrating lyrical skills.

Keep two characters that should be together apart

He did it in the first book and he did it in the second – he kept Salander and Blomkvist apart but revealed to the reader that these guys just had to get together to effectively bring the story to a close. It's a device frequently used in romance novels – Larsson shows it can be used just as effectively in a thriller. The lesson? When two characters are in need of each other, keeping them apart provides narrative propulsion.

Sex (without emotional complications)

Blomkvist can sleep with Berger and her husband doesn't mind, Salander has friends who are happy for her to drop by when she's feeling horny with no suggestion of commitment. Perhaps it's just me, but sex normally comes with a whole heap of emotional strings and complications and expectations, so it's fun to inhabit a world where it comes a little easier than that. Decoupling sex and emotion for me rips out a lot of dramatic potential from a story, but Larsson keeps it interesting. Still, it makes for quite a sterile view of sex, particularly when placed alongside the sex-crime elements of the books.

Jump-cut between narrative threads

Jump-cutting is a cinematic device where the narrative immediately switches to another thread without transition. It keeps things pacy and interesting because narrative focus changes before interest can wane. It works particularly well in narrative form as it's a good vehicle for dramatic irony, whereby the reader knows things that the characters don't. Larsson uses this device particularly well to keep the pace up and also to heighten dramatic tension, but Larsson adds something extra - each narrative thread is essentially different aspects of the same story, so the reader doesn't have to re-engage with each thread, which can be a disadvantage of jumping between threads. Lesson? Use jump-cutting to add pace, dramatic irony, and further exploit the dramatic potential of your story.

Everybody loves a mystery

It's as old as the hills but there's no doubt that this is a major propulsive element of Larsson's novels to differing degrees. How often have you sat through a dodgy TV movie just because you had to find out what happened in the end? Larsson captures that but manages to tell you a compelling story in the mean time. Lesson? Well, you can figure that one out for yourself…