This morning, stuck on Sheffield’s new Inner Ring Road, my passenger asked me what I was doing this weekend. It was the kind of question that is asked without any real desire to elicit information. It’s what linguistic professors call phatic conversation.
“How are you?” is a classic example. No one who asks really wants to know that your knees crack with a sound reminiscent of a starter’s pistol; that the egg sandwich you had for lunch is repeating more often than Dad’s Army on UK Gold; or for that matter that you’ve been feeling a little down of late and could do with a hug.
Thus it was this morning when I responded to the enquiry about the impending weekend by saying: “Well actually, I’m going to see a tree.”
The rest of journey passed in silence.
To be fair, it was probably not the answer they expected – “oh, nothing much…” would have been nearer the mark – but then they did ask…
As it happens, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Last Christmas my mother was gifted a tree to be planted in her name by the Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust. This weekend, I am taking her to see it on an open day.
All well and good, I hear you say, but what’s that got to do with writing a crime novel?
Admittedly, I have taken a rather tortuously convoluted route to my point (although it has nothing on Sheffield’s new Inner Ring Road), but at least I have arrived where I want to be (unlike Sheffield new Inner Ring Road…)
As I head towards the end of my second draft (and the denouement of my plot), the descriptive passages recede to be replaced my more and more dialogue. It’s a natural evolution of the writing process and helps increase the sense of immediacy, but is does bring the quality of your characters’ dialogue into sharp focus.
More so that anywhere else, it is vital that the dialogue is realistic. Any false notes would bring the reader up short and instantly diffuse the tension. So how do you make sure your dialogue is as realistic as possible?
Simple – listen to people speak. There’s no substitute for it…but remember, you can be too realistic. If you wrote exactly how people speak there would be dozens of “errs and umms…” as well as countless contradictions.
Selective realism is what we’re after as writers; so in the case of dialogue, you will also need to take on the role of editor.
After all, when someone asks you what you’re doing at the weekend, there’s no need to tell them you’re going to see a tree.
Especially if you’re stuck on Sheffield’s new Inner Ring Road…
Friday 27 June 2008
Friday 20 June 2008
Week 39 - What's It All About, Malfi?
Among all the emails I routinely receive in a week (African “businessmen” asking me to let them have my bank details so I can become rich; offers of help to improve sexual prowess; press releases for tinned fruit...) there was one from Ian in Dundee.
It was a request for help. Apparently, Ian is writing a crime novel and although he has a synopsis and has completed a first draft, his second draft is adrift in a sea of uncertainty.
And he thinks I can help.
I’m flattered, but I can’t help but think that sometimes this blog gives a rather rosy view of the state of my own endeavours. That’s probably for two reasons: firstly, I am always trying to put a positive spin on my week’s work, after all, no one wants to read a weekly sob story; and secondly, I tend to write the thing on a Friday afternoon - a time when it’s almost impossible not to be approaching a level of unrestrained bliss.
The truth, of course, is that this whole second draft malarky is no picnic. Or at least it is a picnic, if it resembles one of those school trip picnics when I camped in an ant-infested field, got sun burnt and David Hutchinson threw up all over my potted meat sandwiches.
One of the problems Ian seems to be suffering from is a common one: when you’re writing your first novel, you really have no idea what to expect. Yes, we can guess it will be hard work; we accept we probably won’t get quite as much sleep as we’d like; and the manager at Starbucks is probably going to wish we spent more time buying drinks and food and less time nursing our small ( sorry, tall) black coffee that went cold a few hours earlier.
But beyond this, we don’t really know what to expect.
I referred Ian to Kate Mosse’s tips for writers: http://www.mosselabyrinth.co.uk/advice/intro.asp These are always instructive, but I especially thought that her week 39 tip might help. She discusses John Webster’s Duchess of Malfi (if you haven’t seen/read it, do) - and makes reference to the famous speech where the Duchess inverts our expectations to such dramatic effect.
This is often a good idea. When I have a character who isn’t going anywhere and has become about as interesting as an insurance seminar, I make them do something out of character that will surprise the reader. Now I am not suggesting you turn your mild mannered spinster into a drug crazed snow boarding assassin, but perhaps she could have been a spy in the war; or have once been suspected of a terrible crime...
It doesn’t have to be too dramatic, but it will breathe new life into your work and may just get your book back on track.
After all, that’s the ultimate aim: to finish the book and hopefully sell a few copies and perhaps even make enough money to write the second book.
Speaking of getting rich, now where did I leave my bank account details...
It was a request for help. Apparently, Ian is writing a crime novel and although he has a synopsis and has completed a first draft, his second draft is adrift in a sea of uncertainty.
And he thinks I can help.
I’m flattered, but I can’t help but think that sometimes this blog gives a rather rosy view of the state of my own endeavours. That’s probably for two reasons: firstly, I am always trying to put a positive spin on my week’s work, after all, no one wants to read a weekly sob story; and secondly, I tend to write the thing on a Friday afternoon - a time when it’s almost impossible not to be approaching a level of unrestrained bliss.
The truth, of course, is that this whole second draft malarky is no picnic. Or at least it is a picnic, if it resembles one of those school trip picnics when I camped in an ant-infested field, got sun burnt and David Hutchinson threw up all over my potted meat sandwiches.
One of the problems Ian seems to be suffering from is a common one: when you’re writing your first novel, you really have no idea what to expect. Yes, we can guess it will be hard work; we accept we probably won’t get quite as much sleep as we’d like; and the manager at Starbucks is probably going to wish we spent more time buying drinks and food and less time nursing our small ( sorry, tall) black coffee that went cold a few hours earlier.
But beyond this, we don’t really know what to expect.
I referred Ian to Kate Mosse’s tips for writers: http://www.mosselabyrinth.co.uk/advice/intro.asp These are always instructive, but I especially thought that her week 39 tip might help. She discusses John Webster’s Duchess of Malfi (if you haven’t seen/read it, do) - and makes reference to the famous speech where the Duchess inverts our expectations to such dramatic effect.
This is often a good idea. When I have a character who isn’t going anywhere and has become about as interesting as an insurance seminar, I make them do something out of character that will surprise the reader. Now I am not suggesting you turn your mild mannered spinster into a drug crazed snow boarding assassin, but perhaps she could have been a spy in the war; or have once been suspected of a terrible crime...
It doesn’t have to be too dramatic, but it will breathe new life into your work and may just get your book back on track.
After all, that’s the ultimate aim: to finish the book and hopefully sell a few copies and perhaps even make enough money to write the second book.
Speaking of getting rich, now where did I leave my bank account details...
Friday 13 June 2008
Week 38 - Second Drafts and Other Assorted Topics
As I reach the two thirds stage in my second draft, the Q word is starting to raise its head.
That’s Quality of course.
Structurally, the book is beginning to pull itself into shape; characters have been embedded and the plot gaps and contradictions have been ironed out.
But is it any good?
If I am honest with myself, I would have to answer: “I don’t know.”
That, of course, is one of the central problems we face as writers.
It’s an odd thing, but I often read published novels and just accept that they’re of a certain standard because they’ve been published. But when I think about it, their dialogue can be clunky; the plot resolution can be as satisfying as watching a movie via dial up internet access; and the characters are as memorable as that Powerpoint presentation you sat through last week on paperclip overspend...
Yet the operative word in all that is, “published.”
Assuming the author’s father/husband/old school friend happens not to own the publishing house, the chances are that they thought it was good enough.
So who’s wrong?
The answer is no one - taste is about as subjective as it is possible to get (just look at teenagers and their bottom revealing jeans, or the whole of the 1970s for that matter).
The simple fact is that we are not always the best placed people to assess our work. It’s a bit like learning the guitar: we know how it should sound - and we know how it sounds when we hear it played well, but when we strum the strings, it sounds different.
We need to develop our inner ear...we need to have some belief...and sometimes we just need to let rip like an Eric Clapton encore.
I think I’ll dig out that Derek and the Dominoes album.
That’s Quality of course.
Structurally, the book is beginning to pull itself into shape; characters have been embedded and the plot gaps and contradictions have been ironed out.
But is it any good?
If I am honest with myself, I would have to answer: “I don’t know.”
That, of course, is one of the central problems we face as writers.
It’s an odd thing, but I often read published novels and just accept that they’re of a certain standard because they’ve been published. But when I think about it, their dialogue can be clunky; the plot resolution can be as satisfying as watching a movie via dial up internet access; and the characters are as memorable as that Powerpoint presentation you sat through last week on paperclip overspend...
Yet the operative word in all that is, “published.”
Assuming the author’s father/husband/old school friend happens not to own the publishing house, the chances are that they thought it was good enough.
So who’s wrong?
The answer is no one - taste is about as subjective as it is possible to get (just look at teenagers and their bottom revealing jeans, or the whole of the 1970s for that matter).
The simple fact is that we are not always the best placed people to assess our work. It’s a bit like learning the guitar: we know how it should sound - and we know how it sounds when we hear it played well, but when we strum the strings, it sounds different.
We need to develop our inner ear...we need to have some belief...and sometimes we just need to let rip like an Eric Clapton encore.
I think I’ll dig out that Derek and the Dominoes album.
Friday 6 June 2008
Week 37 - Poop Poop
Today I said goodbye to an old friend.
When I say old, he was only two years old; and when I say friend, I really mean a car.
Our two year old Land Rover has been replaced - a victim of ever increasing road prices, tax and repair bills. Not, I concede, the greatest tragedy in human history, but slightly sad all the same, because I didn’t want to change the car.
Not that there’s anything wrong with the new car - in fact it’s a car many people would probably prefer to a Land Rover: sleeker, nippier and more stylish.
But that’s my point.
While the new car is the kind of car people would expect people of my wife and mine’s age to own, the Land Rover always said: my job is what I do, but this is where my heart lies...the great outdoors.
Yes, it’s only a car; but it made me think about the whole writing process (bear with me, the link’s not as tenuous as it first seems).
I am now almost half way through my second draft and as I sit here in Starbucks, it occurs to me how we are often not what we appear to be. Not I grant you, the most original thought ever produced by a cognitive being, but then it is 7.30 in the morning.
From all the emails I get (ignoring the rather dubious ones I get from a Spanish woman who suggests I send money as she knows a publisher in Spain) most people who are doing what I am doing - writing a novel - are not full time writers. They work in banks, council offices, travel agents and so on.
When people they work with see them on a day to day basis, do they have any idea what they’re thinking about? If they wonder at all, perhaps they would guess they’re thinking what to have for dinner or what they would do if they won the lottery.
Would they ever imagine that they are trying to figure out how to strangle someone with piano wire; or how high a cliff can be for you to survive being pushed over; or how your boss’s recent vapid comment could provide a clue to his identity as a murderer...
Would they be surprised? Would they care?
Possibly; possibly not. But that’s not the point. The point is that as writers we live in a largely internalised world and one of the things this (hopefully) teaches us, is that the least likely person may be penning some serial killer classic or diabolical crime (have you ever seen anyone look less like the kind of person who can think these things up than Agatha Christie?).
We know that how we look does not relate to what we do or write. It seems like an obvious lesson, but one that many people seem to have forgotten in our homogeneous times.
We are not what we do to pay the rent, we are what we want to do to pay it; just as we are not the car we drive, but where we want that car to take us.
Which is why I’m sorry to see the car go.
Just like when people find out that you’re a writer, the car surprised people and upset their expectations.
And it was great for driving through puddles.
When I say old, he was only two years old; and when I say friend, I really mean a car.
Our two year old Land Rover has been replaced - a victim of ever increasing road prices, tax and repair bills. Not, I concede, the greatest tragedy in human history, but slightly sad all the same, because I didn’t want to change the car.
Not that there’s anything wrong with the new car - in fact it’s a car many people would probably prefer to a Land Rover: sleeker, nippier and more stylish.
But that’s my point.
While the new car is the kind of car people would expect people of my wife and mine’s age to own, the Land Rover always said: my job is what I do, but this is where my heart lies...the great outdoors.
Yes, it’s only a car; but it made me think about the whole writing process (bear with me, the link’s not as tenuous as it first seems).
I am now almost half way through my second draft and as I sit here in Starbucks, it occurs to me how we are often not what we appear to be. Not I grant you, the most original thought ever produced by a cognitive being, but then it is 7.30 in the morning.
From all the emails I get (ignoring the rather dubious ones I get from a Spanish woman who suggests I send money as she knows a publisher in Spain) most people who are doing what I am doing - writing a novel - are not full time writers. They work in banks, council offices, travel agents and so on.
When people they work with see them on a day to day basis, do they have any idea what they’re thinking about? If they wonder at all, perhaps they would guess they’re thinking what to have for dinner or what they would do if they won the lottery.
Would they ever imagine that they are trying to figure out how to strangle someone with piano wire; or how high a cliff can be for you to survive being pushed over; or how your boss’s recent vapid comment could provide a clue to his identity as a murderer...
Would they be surprised? Would they care?
Possibly; possibly not. But that’s not the point. The point is that as writers we live in a largely internalised world and one of the things this (hopefully) teaches us, is that the least likely person may be penning some serial killer classic or diabolical crime (have you ever seen anyone look less like the kind of person who can think these things up than Agatha Christie?).
We know that how we look does not relate to what we do or write. It seems like an obvious lesson, but one that many people seem to have forgotten in our homogeneous times.
We are not what we do to pay the rent, we are what we want to do to pay it; just as we are not the car we drive, but where we want that car to take us.
Which is why I’m sorry to see the car go.
Just like when people find out that you’re a writer, the car surprised people and upset their expectations.
And it was great for driving through puddles.
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