First Blog Post: Reflections on Good Writing (1/3/24)
In terms of looking at writers of current popular novels, it seems to me that good English, or good writing, is by no means the most important factor. In fact, it is no longer common and sometimes not even necessary at all. There have been many popular books written in recent years which neglect conventions and contain limited vocabulary, poorly worded sentences, and avoidable exposition.
Books like The da Vinci Code and Fifty Shades of Grey are among the last of novels which could in any way be termed literary. Yet they each gathered a wide readership on account of an ingredient, or ingredients, that appeal to huge numbers of people. While Fifty Shades of Grey operated by exploiting a fascination with pleasure inducing sexual manipulation, The Da Vinci Code is more interesting. It operates through a long series of consecutive “cliffhanger” moments, enticing the reader with the promise of continual revelations, always just around the next corner. Yet it is somehow too addictive to act on the resentment it induces at the same time and discard it. It also capitalises on general interest in the lives and figures of Leonardo da Vinci and Jesus Christ. For me, it exploits key elements in creating a popular novel, those being intrigue and suspense.
Shakespeare tends to be seen as the greatest of all playwrights. For me, he is not only that. He is many other extraordinary things as well. He is also, for me, the greatest poet. His use of metaphor and his field of reference are awe inspiring. But he possesses at least two other qualities which I deem far more crucial than any of these. These are, in my opinion, his skills with regard to plot and character development. In particular, I admire how he combines the two. I think the best examples are King Lear’s descent into madness, Iago’s ruination of Othello, and MacBeth’s growing desperation. In each case there are varying degrees of clouded judgement on the main character’s part, running in tandem with a plot, or plots, which determine a cruel fate for each of them. This is the key factor for me, the plausibility in change of character, running alongside a suspenseful plot. Though these are plays, many of their principles apply as well to novel writing.
Second Blog Post: How much or how often does a serious writer write? (1/4/24)
I did a particular writing course twice in my twenties. Both times, about halfway through the course, the teacher called on each participant to say how many hours and/or words they wrote in a week or a day. He first stated the amount that he did and referred to it as standard. I think it was between six and eight hours a week. The participants, each in their turn, gave some slight variation on the amount of time he suggested. On the second occasion I did the course, I stated that I did about half of what he suggested. He sneered and said it was not enough. The truth is, I do a lot less.
I remember watching a documentary on Joseph Campbell. He spoke of a student of his who complained about the amount of core and suggested readings he prescribed for his particular course in the college where he thought. It was madness, the student stated, to imagine that anyone could read that amount of material within the individual semesters. “But,” Campbell said, “you have the rest of your life to read it.” That, for me, is the best and healthiest approach to take towards writing as well. If you want to be another Stephen King, or even G.R.R. Martin, perhaps you should listen to people who emphasis quantity over quality. But, if you would like to try to emulate writers like Kazuo Ishiguro, or the Brontë sisters, and write only one or a small number of published works, then it can only be a mark of ignorance for someone to class you as a lesser writer or a non-writer.
If someone has written a single brilliant short story in the course of a long career and it is their one unpublished piece, are those few thousand words not worth more than many more thousands of words of mediocre published prose? Is one half-written masterpiece, the sole output of a so-called failed writer, not better material than endless volumes of published pure hogwash? Is he and or she not more of a writer than someone who measures success, to an exclusive degree, in terms of popularity and book sales? Is it more important to you to finish what you’ve written or to perfect it, until such time as it meets the limit of your current capabilities? Lastly, in truth, writing is, in my opinion largely about pain too, about painstaking corrections, and the drive to push through them.
Third Blog Post: On Getting Ideas (1/5/24)
People say write what you know and count your blessings if that coincides with current trends in terms of popular novels. I say follow the trends and figure out a way to make them relevant to what you know, and to write about them that way. Be prepared to learn about these subjects. Educate yourself and see if you can’t tie these issues into any territory that’s more familiar to you, and that will spark you own genuine interest. If you can do this and be enthused by it, then write, I say. If you want to get published, write for the market. Otherwise, you could spend decades unpublished.
The best editor that I’ve ever seen, by far, could not make it as a writer. I wondered why for the ten weeks I spent doing his course. His knowledge of conventions and guidelines was excellent. His corrections were fair and accurate. He could write well. But, in the end, I considered the nature of his suggestions to me. They were all valid, and there were many of them. He made no apologies and gave no encouragement, because he didn’t want to lie or give false hope to anyone. He was, in short, negative and incapable of deception, regarding himself or anyone else.
If you cannot believe in yourself when things are at a low ebb, and a low ebb, or an enthused feeling, is for you a regular enough state of mind, then I think you will struggle. A certain amount of self-deception is more than helpful, I think. For me, it is crucial. The editor I speak of could not fool himself to the necessary degree, in my opinion. He became too disheartened or despondent, because he was no less thorough in correcting his own work and, I guess, psyched himself out. He could not put aside his high standards, and just write.
Franz Kafka, before he died, told a friend of his to destroy some of his writings after he passed way. But the friend, it seems, read them and felt that they were good. So, he had them published after Kafka’s death and they were received with much acclaim. Criticism has its place, for sure, but the perseverance born out of a sometimes illogical or unwarranted degree of optimism, or a desperate hunger, or both, are by far the most important factors if you want to succeed. It may look hopeless from the point of view of cold, rational analysis, but the fire inside never dies in those individuals who cannot or will not accept failure. That is, writers who do not stay too deflated.
The chances, even in writing a novella, that the intricacies of the entire plot will occur to you in full detail before you set anything down on paper are slim. Planning is good, but mental planning alone, unaided by the necessary application of sitting down and filling a blank page on a regular basis will not amount to anything. If you are having trouble with writer’s block, consider the following: The challenge in life and writing is not to steer the perfect course, but to steer the course as best you can, heedless of both your inner critic and the verdict of others.
The best way to be creative is to ignore your inner critic (for the first draft at least) and to become good at ignoring it. If you’re worried about how to say something, for instance, don’t worry. Just say it. Worry about how to say it afterwards, if you have to. The chances are that you will be on your own, so it is not like anyone will be offended.
Often people psych themselves out by imagining too big a picture, or too concrete a picture, or thinking in too conventional a way, i.e. I must start at the beginning and progress in a consecutive manner. Sometimes it is good to delay the question of where an idea fits. Just write it. Ideas and creativity go hand in hand with each other and, while I want to supply the basics of novel writing, I hope as well to convey something of the creative process. Also, I think it can help not to envisage even slightly larger pieces of writing as being whole in themselves, at times. I would consider that I may not have written the rest of the plot-line yet, or else I may even have written some of it already. It helps to just write, I think, and then to sometimes draw separate prewritten pieces together.
It appears to me there are three main sources of ideas. As I see it, these are, firstly, ideas taken from one’s personal history. Secondly, there are ideas taken from the collective history of humanity. The other main source I believe in are ideas that emerge within an individual in an independent manner. These have elements within them of the first two categories. But their source(s) are difficult to trace, even for the person whose ideas they are. Charles Dickens is, I think, the main writer I’ve come across who was most often inspired by such ideas. Most of the rest of us, most of the time, must make do in larger part with the other two categories, outlined below.
Examples from the first two categories include dreams, TV series, movies, documentaries, plays, pictures, paintings, poetry, music, lyrics, dance, fiction and non-fiction books, journals, newspaper/current affairs articles, internet pieces, dissertations/theses, and PhDs, etc. as well as general writings throughout history. This includes fields such as history itself, including politics and nature of human conflict and relations, geography, psychology, business, science, religion, criminology, mythology, folklore, legends, fairytales, fables, parables, and allegories.
For me, the most fruitful source of ideas are other ideas that already exist (some in the above forms). They may be manipulated and combined in such a way that they are so unrelated to their source(s) of inspiration that they become their own original pieces. That is, if you combine enough different ideas and tell your story in a much different way, that is yourstory. I don’t think that can be disputed. That, to me, seems to be how most, if not all stories are created.
This is why when it comes to novel writing, if you’re looking for inspiration, I’d say read some novels you like. Then look for answers with regard to your own questions. This handbook may generate some questions and, in an ideal world, at least some partial answers. I would look for the POVs (explained below) in each scene and create the odd scene summary of episodes that grab me. If you have enough of your own material to examine, it may be better still. I would outline the spine of books and replicate or combine different spines, with different characters and outcomes.
I mention these examples as a way to form broad ideas. I would only go so far in pulling apart the inner workings of material that is not my own. Many writers of plays, screenplays, novels, etc. dissect other works to form general guidelines as a sort of formula to try and ensure consecutive successes. If this were even halfway possible someone would have come up with a definitive outline a long time ago. It would have been made definitive by proven results.
Fourth Blog Post: More on Getting Ideas (1/6/24)
For me, the best way to learn is not to get bogged down in a mire of analysis of other texts. It is to write. That is how to develop your own intuitive grasp of how you write a novel. If you write for long enough – decades even – you will begin to feel what is right and what is wrong, what to put in or take out, what to summarise in a couple of sentences and what to make into a scene.
Those who have continual success tend not to write formulaic accounts on how to achieve it. I think it is lazy to assume they just don’t want to give away their secrets. They are probably more interested in engaging in more creative projects. I imagine it is also difficult to articulate the details of that process. It seems that it is in large part intuitive. But the mind is both a muscle and a sponge. You can soak up those elements that can be translated and, as regards broader creative theories (impossible to outline in specific terms that apply across the board), you can adapt the general hints and incorporate them into your own creative process.
The advice in this blog is my interpretation of general guidelines I have learnt, mostly from others and their writing, but also some things I feel I have worked out for myself. It is conceivable that someone could apply all or close to all of the guidelines and still have no success. It is also conceivable that someone could apply none or close to none of these guidelines and still have significant success as a commercial or literary writer, or as both. For instance, a multiply published teacher of writing might commonly ask of his students, “Who is telling the story at this point?” This is because they think it is inappropriate for the author’s actual voice to intrude into or take over the narrative at any point. Yet this could be asked at times of Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, even very early on, which is I in my opinion one of the greatest novels of the 20th century and a huge success.
As an example of creativity, I have a twelve-year-old friend who likes to read and write. He takes scenes form the books he reads and changes the characters’ names. Then he thinks of a scenario from his own life, or a cartoon, or comic book, or TV programme he has watched or read in the recent past, and he tells that story with those characters, changing the nature of each character to suit his story, or vice versa, or combining two or more of his source stories. He sometimes conflates characters or drops other ones in order to make the plot of his story work.
I sometimes underline certain words or short passages in a book and use them as triggers to jot down my own paraphrased understanding of such fragments. I try to compose a few small pages in a notebook based on such triggers. This provides words, which have to be shaped and put in context. But words are words. They’re valuable, even if they end up not being used in the end piece.
If you write in trickles, don’t give up. A few paragraphs here and there can be useful. Collect them and think about them, while on a walk, or in bed, or over dinner. Imagine how you might combine some of their elements, in some sequence, to create a scene. A lot of the time some kind of physical event needs to occur in a scene. It may not need to be too dramatic, but it should for the most part be accompanied by dialogue. The main aim, I think, is to avoid synoptic writing. If there is too much synopsis or summary, without action and dialogue, the scene may need an injection of these. Or some of its elements could be dispersed into other scenes, and some lost. If a middle scene of three is dull and can’t be enlivened, then I would relate that content in two scenes.
If you’re worried about not writing enough or not being able to write enough, trick yourself. Use any minor idea that comes to you and sit down and compose a really short piece about it using as few words as you can to write it. Even if you don’t fall for the trick and write a bit more than you expected, you will still have something, which can always be built upon again. Also, don’t limit your conception of writing. If you can’t get a scene or scenes right, consider placing characters from a different scene in the original scene and seeing if they yield more dialogue and/or deeper psychology than the original characters. The form of any such new scene need not be fixed either.
Mixing genres can be a good way to come up with original ideas. But keep in mind that some of them may not have been mixed before for good reasons. It’s clear that horror and thriller compliment each other. Yet I’ve found out to my cost that, for instance, fictional biography and thriller tend to conflict. If you’re dealing with a character from the stage of his or her youth, it’s often necessary to deal with their gradual evolution. This does not lend itself to the fast pace of a thriller. Even if the time sequence is altered, the content of fictional biography weighs down the pace of the narrative too much. It does not lend itself to a feeling of continuity of form, or a wholeness in which each of the parts are complimentary, across the entire novel.
Fifth Blog Post: Sentences, Adjectives, and Adverbs (1/7/24)
When writing for a general readership, I think it’s best practice to aim for clarity. It seems wise to me not to try to emulate Shakespeare. There are stories, such as Brokeback Mountain, written in a strong poetic manner. But I would suggest its popularity also has much to do with its subject matter. I think it’s more advisable to attempt to emulate writers like Steinbeck, Hemingway, Orwell, Tolkien, Jack London, Ken Follet, Jeffrey Archer, John Grisham, and Mario Puzo.
Where sentences are concerned, the most popular modern-day authors tend to keep them simple. Try and eliminate unnecessary words, unless your approach is quite stylish or overblown on purpose. But that can be very hard to get right. I would also aim to have as few clauses as possible. I would aim to try to impart only one real message in each sentence. I would try not to confuse things. I would think in terms of the subject, the object, and their relationship, where applicable. Or the subject and the action. Or the subject and the information given. I would not try to introduce too many adjectives or adverbs. These, for me, represent extra pieces of information. Too much information is not good, I think. It confuses the reader. Nor is it a mark of talent or ability, but more so of ignorance. There is still huge scope for poeticism in simple, articulate prose (as the above writers demonstrate).
Also, I’d say be content to write many, many unremarkable sentences. They usually need to be grammatically correct, but if so, that’s enough for me. As, for me, they do not in general serve any individual function. Their purpose is to tell the story, in collective groups or as a collective whole. I don’t think it’s wise to be almost screaming, “Please love me!” or “Please pay attention to me!” with your sentences. I think you’ll want to seem more assured than that. If you are capable of mimicking the classics quite well, the success of any story is still dependent, first and foremost, on the story itself, even before the way it’s told. The quality of a good story can be made apparent by a gifted storyteller. Yet, as regards a poor story, it’s difficult to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.
There is a place for adjectives. Dickens uses them well, often in long lists to create effect. Scrooge is a good example of well-used adjectives. The shift of development in Scrooge from the beginning to end of the novel is partly done with well-placed adjectives. Like Shakespeare, Dicken’s portraits of character change tend to be well accomplished. With regard to adjectives, Dickens chooses well. This is important, I think. It has a good effect if an adjective is less common, but not too obscure. For instance, crimson, I think, is often better than red. Yet incarnadine would be too obscure in most cases. Of course, if writing for children of a young age, red is the best choice, for certain, I think. Adverbs, as well, are not the worst thing in the world. Orwell uses them at times. What I would seek to avoid is frequent usage over few paragraphs.
Sixth Blog Post: POV (Character Point of View) (1/8/24)
POV means the point of view of the character experiencing and observing the action of the scene, if there is a character experiencing and observing the action. If so, best practice is to stick with his or her perspective for the full scene, however short or long, and to only break POV by leaving a gap, or Asterix, before the next scene, indicated by going to next paragraph or chapter.
What I want to say in the most ardent way I can is to be wary of people who think that third person limited/close (explained along with omniscience below, both in this and the following section) is the only valid third person narrative perspective. They appear to believe that the POV must at all times be rooted in the main character in any scene. That is, that it cannot at all shift or be loose. There is, I think, a strong element of truth in this. It can be good to see the story through the characters’ eyes. But it is not necessary to filter absolutely everything through the same POV within a particular scene. Even some professional editors don’t seem to recognise any third person alternative, I think because they read only current and, in my opinion, poor literature.
Such people, I think, are influenced by current trends alone or by certain specific contemporary authors. Unless you share their preference and want to write in that style, just be aware that is not the only way. It is not, for instance, the style of Tolkien or Dostoevsky (whose approaches are outlined below). Be careful, or like me, you will end up with a strange halfway-house approach. To be clear, even with a loose or shifting POV, it is still good to have a reasonable element of POV effect. This is achieved by focusing in the main on the central character in each scene and by trying to limit the amount of overall POV characters across the novel in general.
When writing historical fiction in particular, but also as good practice at other times, I find it helpful to try to tie the POV character to an action while establishing the setting as early in a scene as possible. That is, I would start with something like, “Paul moved with heavy breath into the wooded grove. He …” Again, I feel that this kind of approach orients the reader at an early stage within the scene, which for me is best. It also makes the POV character the centre of the scene, which rather than having the scene be the focus, tends to be the preferred approach of those who prioritise character development. But if you are a literary writer, like Tolkien, it may be appropriate to talk about the weather and landscape first.
But what many people do not like is a limited third person perspective (sometime called “close third”) where the POV character, or characters in many scenes, passively observe events or act only in an external sense. This is where the POV is more of a meaningless appendage near the beginning of different paragraphs, rather than a portal into the character’s internal world. This is a key feature of novel writing. Whereas Shakespeare’s characters provide the reader with soliloquies describing their own internal state, writers like Dostoevsky in particular give the reader that internal world. His characters do not explain their own internal psychology. No, they exhibit it through their thoughts, as indirect and realistic representations illustrating to the reader how those characters feel. By indirect, I mean that the thoughts are relevant to or about the situation, but they are not soliloquies explaining the character’ own state of mind. They are authentic thought processes.
For instance, in Crime and Punishment, the protagonist, Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, having committed a double murder, is in turmoil. His thoughts race and this is clear. His mind jumps upon and seizes anything he can think of that might implicate him. For instance, he turns out his pockets, in a feverish manner, and finds bloodstains on the inner lining. But Dostoevsky focuses not so much on external elements, but on his portrait of the mindset of a recent murderer. Having said this, Crime and Punishment is more omniscient than close. But like Tolkien in The Hobbit andThe Lord of the Rings, the line is quite blurred at times, with the focus still resting in the main on the central character/protagonist. This allows the greatest freedom, while still anchoring the story.
Seventh Blog Post: More on POV (1/9/24)
This is the distinction in so far as I can work it out: Omniscient third person narratives tend to have a key figure who is the main focus of the novel, but the author may drift away from them and their internal experiences of the unfolding story onto things like the landscape and weather, or into the minds and experiences of other characters at odd times. Whereas third person close is told in a way where most, if not all, of the story is filtered through the consciousness or POV of the main or central character(s).
It seems to me to be a good idea to introduce a strong enough element of close third into omniscient third narration. Yet it appears acceptable to stray into another character, or characters perspective too, at times, if writing in third person omniscient. Jane Austen, I think, is a good example. But it seems to be done in a well-balanced way, and with eloquence.
To me, third person close is sometimes claustrophobic. But many people read in large part in order to experience someone else’s, or other people’s, internal worlds. For me, the quality of the writing is the most important thing. They would say the inner feelings are a mark of good quality writing, but I would still prefer articulate language over poor-quality English, even if the author somehow manages to create deep and interesting characters despite his or her lack of vocabulary. The ideal scenario is to write well and to also convey the internal feelings of POV characters.
POV creates an anchor for both the reader and the author. It creates a familiarity with a character, or set of characters, and knits the action together on a single spindle. This creates a strong sense of orientation, a crucial factor. It engages the reader, which is key, and the key way to engage the reader is through your main character(s). Telling the action through their lens makes it more interesting, more hooking, and keeping the reader on the hook is essential.
But, at times, with someone like Mario Puzo, for instance, he breaks strict adherence to the one POV in a scene, i.e. he shifts to a different character’s view. It seems to me this is sometimes unavoidable. For me, the religious application of general rules or guidelines is not necessary and wholesale insistence upon their observation is encouraged only by amateur writers. I don’t mean ignore them in full. I try to adhere to them most of the time. But they are not, for me, set in stone. Lastly on this point, again, I think it’s generally better to limit the amount of different POVs. Yet even if they are erratic in nature, a good or compelling story can compensate, I think. An alternative, if you feel there are two many POVs, is to create an extra layer of a single POV character narrator who is connected to each of the other characters in a physical sense throughout the novel.