New Classes

Hi,

I've been busy preparing a new beginner's course. It is only available at the moment in areas local to my base: Stoke-On-Trent and Newcastle-under-Lyme. The course is aimed at beginner's, although more experienced writers are welcome if they want to take part in a practical environment in order to hone some of their skills.

All classes are hands-on with practical exercises practised during the two hour sessions, and designed to cover a 5 week period. For more information on the courses, visit my new website: The Write Course.

Mind Your Adverbs

I’m sure if you’ve done any reading about good writing, you’ve come across advice that suggests that you should be careful with descriptive words. It is a common criticism of novice writers’ work that the prose is over-littered with adjectives. However, the problem lies more, in my opinion, in the liberal use of adverbs. What’s the difference?

At the most basic level, an adjective describes a noun or pronoun whilst an adverb describes or modifies everything else. Although this is a crude and elementary definition, and of course, it can get a little more complicated than this, this simple distinction is enough to help most people determine which is which.

Often the biggest problems lie with adverbs that end in –ly (i.e., quickly), rather than simple adjectives like red.

For example, you will often see sentences written something like:  He quickly grabbed his briefcase and ran out the door. Or: Excitedly, she ripped open the envelope.

I’ve done this myself, particularly on first drafts, and I think it is born of a need to try to make clear to the reader how something was done. As writers, we want the reader to understand completely how we see the scene unfolding. But there are two things to consider. First, the reader is often more capable of understanding this from the context, and, second, there is often a much better, more interesting, way to get the information across.

Let’s take another look at the first of the examples above: He quickly grabbed his briefcase and ran out the door.  Here, quickly is the villain. Quickly is an adverb, and in this case, totally unnecessary. The word grabbed already implies a quick action, so quickly adds nothing to the action. In fact, this is often true of many of the adverbs that are over-used.

The same is true of the second example. Ripped, in this context, implies that the action is performed with either great excitement or, possibly, anger. You might think that excitedly informs the reader of which, but, if you consider the rest of the prose, it is likely that clues to which are already present.

Readers are often intelligent enough to ‘get it’ from the rest of the text. For example, if the protagonist of this sentence had already been known to be waiting for the results of a recent interview, then ripped implies that she opens the envelope in a state of high excitement. On the other hand, if she was dreading the results, another verb would tell us this, such as hesitated (She hesitated as she opened the envelope).  Finally, the context might have made the action so clear that you may not need any verb other than a simple opened.

If you find that your writing is criticised for having too many adjectives or adverbs, or if you simply want to avoid this criticism, take a look back at your prose. You might find that you can either remove the offending element, or reconsider the active verb, and you should find that your writing is a lot clearer and much improved.

Of course, you can also have too many adjectives: the big bad brown angry bear. Again, a little judicious pruning might improve your prose. Of course, you may also be guilty of lazy word choices. For example, a huge stone, could be written as: a boulder. And, it would be wise to be careful with all of your descriptive terms.

But, in my experience, adverbs are the greatest villains so mind your adverbs!

Dialogue

Dialogue is an important part of your prose, it is one of the elements that helps to create character. But one common mistake that many beginner (and sometimes not so beginner) writers make when reporting dialogue is to write too correctly.

If you listen to people speaking, each person has their own idiolect (way of speaking) and this is not always just a case of their accent. Some people use long, complex and meandering phrases, others speak in few words. Some people hesitate a lot when they speak, or never finish a sentence. Others may use a more comprehensive vocabulary or repeat themselves often.

A lot of writers enjoy people-watching, we are interested in the way people behave. But have you done some people-listening lately? The next time you spend time in a cafe, or waiting for train, or even at a bus stop, try just listening to people as they chatter around you. Try to make out the different ways of speaking of each of the participants. If you can do so discretely, you may even want to make a note or two on particularly interesting aspects of their speech. Maybe one takes charge of the conversation and doesn't leave much room for the other interlocutor. Or perhaps one speaks in clichés. Often you will find that it's what someone doesn't say that's the most intriguing. Do women speak differently than men? Do the young speak differently than the old? I think you're getting the idea.

Now, when it comes to your own writing, it is important to make the characters come alive through their dialogue. As with all aspects of your prose, dialogue should be there for a reason. You should try to give the impression of natural dialogue without confusing the writing with too many ums, and ahs. One or two will give your reader enough information to be able to get the point if your character is hesitant or shy.

Your character does not need to speak in correct English. Too many beginner stories are spoiled by having characters speak as they would write, but we don't do that in real life. So listen as carefully as you watch to learn how people speak to each other.

Let's look at an example:

'Hello, Marie,' said Sally.
'Hello, Sally,' said Marie.
'Did you go to meet Harold at the train station?'
'Harold was not at the train station on time.'
'When did Harold get there then, Sally?'
'Apparently, he arrived almost an hour later than he was supposed to. So I had already gone when he arrived.'

Can you tell anything about the characters from the way they speak? From just this snippet, could you tell who was speaking if it wasn't for the speech tags (i.e. said Sally)? Can you see how the two characters speak too correctly? Of course, maybe you intend them to. It is possible to have one or more characters who speak this way, but it should be a deliberate choice, and, preferably, not the way every character speaks.

Try for some variation, however small (rhythm, sentence length, pauses, ums, colloquialisms, contractions, etc.), then you are more likely to create dynamic dialogue. Done well, your readers will be able to identify each speaker from their dialogue alone. But don't go over the top, unless you are going for comic effect, or it is justified by the situation.

I'd suggest that this is a very uninteresting passage of dialogue, and I don't just mean because of the subject. Still, let's see if there is anything we can do, without changing the meaning or the important information (what important information, I hear you say, well, let's pretend), to make it a bit more exciting.

'Hi.'
'Oh. Hello, Sally,' said Marie.
'So, did you get there on time?'
'Huh?'
'To meet Harold. Did you get there on time?'
'Um. Well, he wasn't there.'
'You're joking!'
'Well, at least, not, um, not when I was.'
'What d'you mean?'
'Well, turns out he was about an hour late. So we, um, kind of missed each other.'

OK, so this isn't the most inspiring of conversations, but hopefully, you can see that the dialogue is already a lot more interesting. It is more like people might really speak. Maybe, you've noticed that Marie is a little less sure when speaking than Sally.

So, if your character is quiet and shy, she might speak very little and she may use hesitations. However, if your character is strong and loud, then he might talk a lot, using long sentences. A young person might speak almost in monosyllables, whilst an older one might speak with old-fashioned terms.

So, take a look at your dialogue and try to see what you can do to make it sound more like your characters(s). This will help bring your characters alive on the page and your writing a little more exciting.

Apology

Dear readers,

I know that I haven't been around for a couple of weeks, but I've not always been able to get to my PC or find time. I've been very busy casting a movie in Leeds, writing my novel for my MA, editing a book for another author, planning my adult writing workshops, and, running workshops for kids at Manchester Art Gallery. However, I am hoping to be able to add more to this blog at the weekend.

What Point of View?

Let’s imagine for a moment that you have written a little bit of something. It may be a paragraph or two, or a page or two, or maybe even a complete short story. If you haven’t, then write something now. Something short will do.

Now that you have a passage written, take a look at it. What point of view have you chosen to use?

If you have written a lot of ‘I did this’ or ‘I did that’, then you have used the First Person point of view (POV). If, however, your sentences look more like: ‘He did this’ or ‘She did that’, then you have used Third Person POV. You may even have been adventurous and used ‘You did this’, which is the Second Person. If you have a mixture, then you may want to begin by rewriting your passage using only one of these points of view.

Most of us feel more comfortable with either the First or the Third POV and will often find that we tend to begin writing in whichever one feels most familiar to us, perhaps modelled on our reading. But, take a moment before you go on, to think about whether you actually have the best point of view for the piece.

It can sometimes be useful to rewrite a new piece using an alternative point of view, and maybe even again in a third. Sometimes you will find that a different point of view has a different feel to it, and it may be that you feel more comfortable or inspired by using an alternative.

Of course, each point of view has its advantages and disadvantages. A first person point of view can only be told from the perspective of the character who narrates the story. Otherwise, the piece may feel awkward and confusing to the reader. However, it can feel more personal than the third person can, particularly if you are writing something that involves a lot of inner dialogue or the thoughts of one character.

Third person can allow a little more distance between the narrator and the reader: to experience the story from a little bit further (or a lot further) away, to observe it from the outside, so to speak. It also makes it a little easier to handle multiple character perspectives.

Second person is something a little rarer. It can be used in an attempt to make the reader feel completely absorbed and complicit, as if the events in the story are happening to them. However, it can be quite a difficult point of view to handle well and may be better attempted once you have some experience under your belt. But feel free to experiment with it. It can produce surprisingly interesting results.

Here is an example of a short passage in two different perspectives. Examine them and see if you can detect any differences in the way you respond to each of the points of view.

First, let’s start with one of the most common - the third person perspective:

Data was an android with human features but pale skin. His dearest wish was to be more like his human friends and he worked hard at replicating their emotions and humour.

Now, let’s try this with the first person. Note, one can’t really describe oneself without resorting to cliché, so a complete rewrite will be required:

Being an android, I have no real feelings, but I would dearly love to be more like my human friends. Every day, I stand in front of my mirror in an effort to replicate their emotions. My attempts at humour, however, appear to need much work.

As you can see, first person has limitations but it can be quite an intimate and revealing perspective, and it may even make it easier to express the character’s voice for some writers.

Third person can allow more freedom, and it can be written in a way that is very close to the first person, a style that remains with the experiences of the one narrator. But it can also be used for a more omniscient (all-knowing, God-like) perspective where you can move around, at will, from the head of one character to another (often called head-hopping). However, take care when using the latter, as it can be difficult to keep the writing coherent and often takes a skilled hand to pull off.

As for second person, well, this article is written from that perspective. But, maybe you can try rewriting my invented sentence above, or one of your own, to experience the effect for yourself.

This is only a very brief introduction into the subject of Point of View, and I will write more on the subject in later articles. But, for the time being, I am going to treat my audience like my blog – beginning and new to all this.

Free Writing

Talking about storytelling leads me naturally on to the subject of Free Writing. This is simply the name for a particular exercise designed to help you get into the creative mode and free up your imagination (as well as get your fingers moving!).

So, you sit down to write and maybe find yourself stumbling; you can’t seem to think of anything worth writing, or maybe something that you would tell to someone easily feels awkward when faced with a blank page. But don’t worry - writing is a little bit like exercise – the more you do it, the easier it becomes. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that when you write frequently you never get writer’s block, or that procrastination (a chronic writer’s condition) becomes a thing of the past. It’s just that, as you begin to write, no matter what it is, the words begin to flow. And the more you do it, the easier it becomes.

So, whether you are a new writer, an aspiring writer, or even a more experienced writer, the key to getting started is to write – anything - everything. Whatever is swirling around in your brain at the time, let it out. It doesn’t even matter whether you use punctuation or grammar. In fact, it may be best to use as little ‘thinking’ as possible – just write. Sometimes, even just a few words about what you are feeling helps to get the brain and the fingers in synch, working together to produce words, and after a while, you begin to find the words flowing. Not just the words, but also the ideas.

© Gordonsaunders | Dreamstime Stock Photos & Stock Free Images

It may be that, as you write you are inspired by a creative thought, or a story, or even a sentence. You decide to abandon whatever it is that you have been writing and begin to develop that new idea further. This is fine. This is to be expected. It’s what happens to me almost every time I sit down to write. It is, if you like, the whole purpose of the exercise.

Once inspired, let that ‘exercise’ go, and continue to follow whatever inspiration follows. The initial words were only the tool to help oil the creative cogs. Even once you begin truly writing, it may be that you need to go back later and change, delete, or edit, but this is fine, just keep going at this stage. Sometimes, if you begin to ‘edit’ too soon, you can lose that flow; your creativity can become shackled by logical thinking.

Once you get into the swing of things, begin to tell your story, whatever it is, whatever form it takes: diary entry, story, poem, article, memory, anecdote – it matters not. Just go with it and you will soon realise that you do have stories to tell.

If you are a new, and perhaps nervous, writer, this can be a good way to begin, to get over the fear. But, even experienced writers can use the ‘write any old rubbish’ to connect with the more creative side of their brain and focus on what they want to produce.

Our lives are full of distractions and we constantly have to listen to the logical ‘left-brained’ side of our intellect. But, by free writing, we can make a transition and connect with our creative brain. I imagine it as lying somewhere in my subconscious yet I don’t always know exactly where that is, so I need a conduit, a way to bring it to me. And free writing is often a good way to invite it forward.

So, what are you still doing sitting here reading this? Go on – write something!

There’s a storyteller in all of us

Being faced with a brand new blog is almost as difficult as facing a blank page. With the page, sometimes, you feel you can’t think of anything to write. A new blog is slightly different in that there is so much to write, but where do you start?

I’ve decided to begin at the very beginning. All writing comes from a need to tell a story. It does not matter whether this is a true story or a piece of fiction, a piece of advice or a report. In essence, they are all telling stories.

If you ask a room full of people how many of them would describe themselves as storytellers, you might find one or two hands raised in response. Yet, what few realise is that we are all storytellers. It is the basis of most of our conversation.

If you’ve ever complained about your horrendous journey into work; if you’ve ever explained why you can’t make it to a social gathering; if you’ve ever shared your feelings about that great film you watched last week; if you’ve done any of these things, you’ve told a story. It may be a true story, it may be slightly embellished or exaggerated, it may even be an outright fib, but it’s a story all the same.

So, if you have an urge to tell stories, but think that you don’t know how, just begin by writing down the little stories of your own life. It might be something you did, a thought, an opinion on something that happened in the world, a note about the people you have met during the day, or an event on the way to work. It doesn’t really matter as long as it gets you writing.

All humans are storytellers: if you think, if you talk, if you use social networking, you are telling stories. So now that we’ve cleared that up and you know you can tell stories, what’s stopping you?