There are few things likely to get writers of any genre - whether fiction writers or journalists (or those of us who have a foot in each camp) - as riled up as issues of grammar.
All right, I may be exaggerating. There may be more pressing issues to discuss: pre-emptive strikes on Iran, the current financial meltdown, the height of Gwyneth Paltrow’s heels... These are all worthy of our time; but there’s just something about grammar.
Those of us attempting to eek out a living from the written word are understandably protective of the tools of our trade, just like any other profession.
The difference is that while a painter may lovingly look after his collection of brushes, he is unlikely to be presented with Joe Bloggs using them to spread glue in his scrapbook collection of beer mats of the Western Hemisphere.
Yet those of us who use words daily have to endure cavalier misuse everywhere we turn. However, most of us try to be philosophic about it and be satisfied by mumbling under our breaths something about the loss of the eleven-plus (even if we’re far too young to actually know what the eleven-plus was).
The real trouble starts when writers disagree among themselves. Just like the miss rule in snooker or the off-side rule in football (or for that matter, all the rules in American Football), no one really seems to agree on certain interpretations or even worse, be able to explain them to others.
A few weeks ago, I got a call from someone to say that they had spotted a mistake in my website - I had written: “...in the mean time feel free to follow my work...” They were adamant that “mean time” should be one word, while I was convinced it should be two.
Now I am not suggesting that this resulted in pistols at dawn (more like lattes at lunch), but there was a healthy debate which finished without agreement.
While I was sure I was right, I thought I’d better check. So I looked it up and saw that in the context I had used the phrase I was right. Just as I was wallowing in my self-satisfied moment of righteousness, I got a call to say that my doubter had looked it up and he was right.
This raised a question that writers and journalists can discuss until the cows come home (as long as they come home before the pubs open): which grammar book do you use?
I was using The Oxford Writers’ Dictionary while Claimant B was using the Longman Guide to English Usage. If they can’t agree, how are us lesser mortals supposed to?
I have always found the Oxford book a good guide; but of course you also have to take in to account any house style - whether you’re writing for a particular newspaper or for a publishing house.
Neither of these books will help you write better, though; only more accurately. If it’s a matter of style, I really don’t think you can beat Harold Evans’ Essential English for Journalists, Editors and Writers.
These musings on grammar have been a result of my finally reaching the point in my second draft where I have introduced my new character. His name is Dr Styles and I intended for him to be a professor of English language - and by definition an expert on grammar.
The problem is that as characters tend to take on a voice of their own, I might end up disagreeing over a point of usage and that could cause all sorts of problems.
Time for a re-think.
In the mean time, I will continue to write and offer this piece of advice. Always keep a good style/grammar guide by your side; and if things get a little heated with a fellow scribe, try to have a mature discussion and if you can’t agree, agree to disagree.
Or just throw your grammar guide at them. They clearly need it more than you do.
Friday 25 April 2008
Friday 18 April 2008
Week 30 - Echoes of the Golden Age
I have now been back for three days from my short mystery-related break.
Many people have emailed with guesses as to where I was going. Surprisingly (to me) Baskerville Hall was a popular guess. I’m not so sure that would quite make the romantic getaway I intended - especially as it doesn’t actually exist beyond the pages of Arthur Conan Doyle!
In fact, I was not so far away - in terms of geography at least. I spent three days on Burgh Island, situated off the south Devon coast and the setting for Agatha Christie’s Evil Under The Sun (and the inspiration behind And Then There Were None).
Within seconds of setting foot on the island, it was clear that this was no ordinary hotel. The owners have taken its Art Deco design and gone the whole way with a 1930s theme. There was a superb band playing songs of the era http://www.artdecomusic.co.uk/ and dinner was black tie with the ladies in ball gowns.
It all made for classic Golden Age happenings, even down to the gathering of the guests in the dining room (albeit without any rotund Belgium detectives in evidence.)
It was a lovely break; but as ever, when you’re in the middle of a writing project, you’re never fully “off duty”. The hotel provided much inspiration and got me thinking about the classics of yesterday. Over the years the novels of writers of the period - especially those of Agatha Christie - have been criticised in some quarters for having “wooden” characters. This has always seemed a little harsh to me - and not really very near the truth.
Obviously, modern crime fiction has moved on a long way from so-called “cosy” murders (although the success of the Agatha Raisin series bucks this trend). Any prospective crime author who ignores the classics of the genre does so at their peril. I have just finished Mrs. McGuinty’s Dead and the characterisation is on a par with many modern novels. It’s certainly worth a read if you are only aware of the author’s more famous works.
Of course, while reading is important, it’s the writing that counts. My short break has reinvigorated me and I returned home itching to get back to my book. It is beginning to tighten up now and the second draft is starting - slowly and sometimes painfully - to resemble a novel. This week will see me introduce my long delayed new character and hopefully he will add that final ingredient to the book so that it all begins to gel together.
The weeks are beginning to pass at a quicker and quicker pace - and it’s with a mixture of excitement and abject terror that I realise that I have just reached week 30. While all this Golden Age reminiscing is fun, it’s time to pick up the pace and get down to the serious slog of writing.
After a cocktail, of course.
Many people have emailed with guesses as to where I was going. Surprisingly (to me) Baskerville Hall was a popular guess. I’m not so sure that would quite make the romantic getaway I intended - especially as it doesn’t actually exist beyond the pages of Arthur Conan Doyle!
In fact, I was not so far away - in terms of geography at least. I spent three days on Burgh Island, situated off the south Devon coast and the setting for Agatha Christie’s Evil Under The Sun (and the inspiration behind And Then There Were None).
Within seconds of setting foot on the island, it was clear that this was no ordinary hotel. The owners have taken its Art Deco design and gone the whole way with a 1930s theme. There was a superb band playing songs of the era http://www.artdecomusic.co.uk/ and dinner was black tie with the ladies in ball gowns.
It all made for classic Golden Age happenings, even down to the gathering of the guests in the dining room (albeit without any rotund Belgium detectives in evidence.)
It was a lovely break; but as ever, when you’re in the middle of a writing project, you’re never fully “off duty”. The hotel provided much inspiration and got me thinking about the classics of yesterday. Over the years the novels of writers of the period - especially those of Agatha Christie - have been criticised in some quarters for having “wooden” characters. This has always seemed a little harsh to me - and not really very near the truth.
Obviously, modern crime fiction has moved on a long way from so-called “cosy” murders (although the success of the Agatha Raisin series bucks this trend). Any prospective crime author who ignores the classics of the genre does so at their peril. I have just finished Mrs. McGuinty’s Dead and the characterisation is on a par with many modern novels. It’s certainly worth a read if you are only aware of the author’s more famous works.
Of course, while reading is important, it’s the writing that counts. My short break has reinvigorated me and I returned home itching to get back to my book. It is beginning to tighten up now and the second draft is starting - slowly and sometimes painfully - to resemble a novel. This week will see me introduce my long delayed new character and hopefully he will add that final ingredient to the book so that it all begins to gel together.
The weeks are beginning to pass at a quicker and quicker pace - and it’s with a mixture of excitement and abject terror that I realise that I have just reached week 30. While all this Golden Age reminiscing is fun, it’s time to pick up the pace and get down to the serious slog of writing.
After a cocktail, of course.
Friday 11 April 2008
Week 29 - ...and the winner is...
When you undertake a project that will last a year, there are always going to be good and bad weeks.
This has been a good week.
As the banner at the top of this blog states, I am now the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook Official Blogger for the next 12 months.
This came about after I bought a copy of what is the writers’ bible back in early September. I read on the inside cover that they were holding a competition for the best blog dealing with a writing or illustration experience. As I was just about to start my 52 week crime novel odyssey, it seemed a moment of Kismet. So I entered and last week heard the news that I had won.
I have received many congratulations - which is nice, including a message from Greg & Kate Mosse and Keith, designer & owner of Scrivener. http://www.literatureandlatte.com/index.html
Definitely a good week.
Of course, the writing world continues and I have still been working through all the structure issues of my first draft, hacking away at its rock face to create something that might resemble a second draft.
Lest my recent success goes to my head, the second draft is proving to be harder work than I imagined. I am hoping that this is because the earlier chapters will need more work because of how the book developed later. Progress has been so slow that I have not got to the point where I am introducing the new character I mentioned last week.
I have just six weeks before the end of this stage when the actual re-writing begins and I still have 24 chapters to work on. Hopefully, the structure will need a lot less work as I progress, especially as I am going away for a few days - taking Kate Mosse’s advice for a bit of distance. http://www.mosselabyrinth.co.uk/advice/28.asp
I will be staying in a hotel that has been the location for one of the great detective novels of the twentieth century. It should be a great experience and will hopefully inspire me to infuse a little of that golden age magic into my modern detective novel.
In the best traditions of the genre, you will have to wait until next week to find out where I have been - and what it was like!
Whatever happens over the next six weeks, I know that a lot of hard work lies ahead, so I will have to turn down all the requests to attend premiers and royal banquets that will result from my blogging success. Sadly, I have yet to receive an invitation from Carla Bruni.
Never mind. It’s still been a good week.
This has been a good week.
As the banner at the top of this blog states, I am now the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook Official Blogger for the next 12 months.
This came about after I bought a copy of what is the writers’ bible back in early September. I read on the inside cover that they were holding a competition for the best blog dealing with a writing or illustration experience. As I was just about to start my 52 week crime novel odyssey, it seemed a moment of Kismet. So I entered and last week heard the news that I had won.
I have received many congratulations - which is nice, including a message from Greg & Kate Mosse and Keith, designer & owner of Scrivener. http://www.literatureandlatte.com/index.html
Definitely a good week.
Of course, the writing world continues and I have still been working through all the structure issues of my first draft, hacking away at its rock face to create something that might resemble a second draft.
Lest my recent success goes to my head, the second draft is proving to be harder work than I imagined. I am hoping that this is because the earlier chapters will need more work because of how the book developed later. Progress has been so slow that I have not got to the point where I am introducing the new character I mentioned last week.
I have just six weeks before the end of this stage when the actual re-writing begins and I still have 24 chapters to work on. Hopefully, the structure will need a lot less work as I progress, especially as I am going away for a few days - taking Kate Mosse’s advice for a bit of distance. http://www.mosselabyrinth.co.uk/advice/28.asp
I will be staying in a hotel that has been the location for one of the great detective novels of the twentieth century. It should be a great experience and will hopefully inspire me to infuse a little of that golden age magic into my modern detective novel.
In the best traditions of the genre, you will have to wait until next week to find out where I have been - and what it was like!
Whatever happens over the next six weeks, I know that a lot of hard work lies ahead, so I will have to turn down all the requests to attend premiers and royal banquets that will result from my blogging success. Sadly, I have yet to receive an invitation from Carla Bruni.
Never mind. It’s still been a good week.
Friday 4 April 2008
Week 28 - Hello Again
The next stage has begun.
After a few days’ diversion around the byways of note collation and overdue filing, I am back on the main road. I have started my second draft.
As I have previously mentioned in this blog, I am now in uncharted territory and am learning as I go. The current stage is planned to run from now to the end of the first week in May and is focused on structure.
What this means in practice is that I am back on the computer and going through my notes from my read through of the first draft and making changes where necessary. So I am adding and expanding scenes, as well as the strangely addictive experience of cutting scenes. I have just expunged a character from my novel and while in my head she still inhabits the same landscape she did before, she is no longer evident in the book.
The theory is that I make no changes to the prose until the big final stage (10 whole weeks) where I will be fine tuning and polishing my words. It’s actually quite difficult to leave sentences alone when it’s clear they need a little work; but I am trying to stay focused on sorting out my structure.
The next 5 weeks will hold some real challenges. I have to introduce a brand new character at some point and then work him in to the rest of the book. I must admit I have put this off and now that the time is almost here, I am still not sure how I am going to do it.
I just know that somehow I will.
That’s the beauty of working to a deadline - a big one as in the 52 weeks I have given myself to write the novel - but also the smaller ones along the way.
It’s also what makes all the hard work and caffeine abuse worthwhile. Whisper it quietly in the earnest world of letters, but it’s actually quite fun. Knowing that there’s a character waiting for me to give him life and make him interact with others is a strange but exciting feeling.
I also need to weave a new plot strand into the earlier part of the book and this is proving quite challenging - but I have the next week to sort this out, so I will let you know how I get on.
Of course, that’s one of the problems you face with a second draft. You already have a book in place - written in black and white and it can be painful to undo - or even delete - work you slaved over. What’s also noticeable is that as I am back at the beginning of my book and am revisiting scenes that I wrote six months ago, I am making some surprising discoveries.
It’s just like meeting old friends - it’s great to catch up, but sadly some have aged better than others. Of course, that’s life.
And fiction.
After a few days’ diversion around the byways of note collation and overdue filing, I am back on the main road. I have started my second draft.
As I have previously mentioned in this blog, I am now in uncharted territory and am learning as I go. The current stage is planned to run from now to the end of the first week in May and is focused on structure.
What this means in practice is that I am back on the computer and going through my notes from my read through of the first draft and making changes where necessary. So I am adding and expanding scenes, as well as the strangely addictive experience of cutting scenes. I have just expunged a character from my novel and while in my head she still inhabits the same landscape she did before, she is no longer evident in the book.
The theory is that I make no changes to the prose until the big final stage (10 whole weeks) where I will be fine tuning and polishing my words. It’s actually quite difficult to leave sentences alone when it’s clear they need a little work; but I am trying to stay focused on sorting out my structure.
The next 5 weeks will hold some real challenges. I have to introduce a brand new character at some point and then work him in to the rest of the book. I must admit I have put this off and now that the time is almost here, I am still not sure how I am going to do it.
I just know that somehow I will.
That’s the beauty of working to a deadline - a big one as in the 52 weeks I have given myself to write the novel - but also the smaller ones along the way.
It’s also what makes all the hard work and caffeine abuse worthwhile. Whisper it quietly in the earnest world of letters, but it’s actually quite fun. Knowing that there’s a character waiting for me to give him life and make him interact with others is a strange but exciting feeling.
I also need to weave a new plot strand into the earlier part of the book and this is proving quite challenging - but I have the next week to sort this out, so I will let you know how I get on.
Of course, that’s one of the problems you face with a second draft. You already have a book in place - written in black and white and it can be painful to undo - or even delete - work you slaved over. What’s also noticeable is that as I am back at the beginning of my book and am revisiting scenes that I wrote six months ago, I am making some surprising discoveries.
It’s just like meeting old friends - it’s great to catch up, but sadly some have aged better than others. Of course, that’s life.
And fiction.
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