Week 17 - Can I Ask Who's Speaking?

Now Christmas, New Year and the January sales are out of the way, the writing life is settling back into a good work routine.

I am managing to keep to my Chapter a week plan - albeit with many coffee-supported early morning starts. But all in all, I have established a pattern of writing six days a week and hitting my word target almost without fail.

And that is where a problem arises.

I may have ticked the quantity box; but how am I doing in the quality stakes?

This is a tricky one. My Chapter total and word count are there on screen in black and white (or black and yellow in my case). That’s great, but now I have achieved that level of productivity, I am plagued by that one question that haunts all writers at one time or another.

How do I know what I am writing is any good?

There’s gut instinct of course; there’s the opinion of any friends or family you may choose to show your work to; and there’s even those services that advertise their wares in writing magazines. All have the potential to offer advice of differing levels of merit (although let’s face it; if your own mother says your work is terrible, you’re in trouble.)

The truth is that an author is often the worse person to judge their own work - we are just too close. So what do we do?

I think the answer to this is stack the odds in our favour. By this I don’t mean bunging an agent a handful of notes while tapping the side of your nose; but rather following some general guidelines to make sure that our work hits all the right buttons.

One of these which I find most useful, is making sure each main character has some kind of distinctive dialogue trait. This doesn’t mean a catchphrase or the like, but rather something that helps the reader identify who’s talking. It might be a certain character ends most sentences with a question (the written equivalent of the dreaded Australian intonation). Then again, they may use a phrase more than others in the book.

You don’t need to go over the top, or you will risk plummeting through the abyss that is cliche; but a little verbal twitch can do wonders for your writing.

In her 52 tips for writers, Kate Mosse calls this process using a “trigger” to help cement a character’s identity in the minds of your readers. See more here: http://www.mosselabyrinth.co.uk/advice/16.asp.

It’s a great idea - and one that will go someway at least to answering the question of whether your work is any good.

And if your mother still hates it, don’t worry. You may have been adopted.