How I Write. Lesson 7

Lessons 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

I have been asked in replies on my blogs, in chat and in person. I've been asked to give tutorials and teach people how to write. I've thought about it, I've considered it and now I've started it.

I'm not sure I can teach YOU how to write like I do, but I can tell you how I developed my own style and maybe, hopefully, that will help you develop yours.

These are my books. It took two years to write my first book - and another nine years to publish it.

My Amazon.co.uk page

Google (free use) images and Pixabay

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Bare basic advice on writing.

The idea – sorry… that needs to be more important… I’ll start again.

The IDEA

That’s the skeleton of your piece – be that story or novel (or film script). You need a structure to hang everything else from.

What do you like to read? Romance, fantasy, horror, crime, - the list of genres and sub-genres is limitless, with more added all the time. If you always go for one particular genre – for example, I go for Horror rather than Romance – then that would be my advice. Go for something that you’ve read a lot about, something you’re genuinely interested in because you are going to be spending a LOT of time with that subject.

Once you have a basic genre, the idea comes into play. With the idea, you’re going to need characters. A hero or heroine – the Protagonist (THE Main character).

Usually, you’ll also need their nemesis, the Antagonist (A Main character, but the ‘bad guy’).

You’ll need characters the main characters can interact with and base their story around – notice, it has now become your characters’ story, rather than yours. Deal with it and get over it… then tell it.

The characters need to be a mix of strong, interesting characters, with a few ‘filler’ characters too. (Remember Star Trek – the ‘Red Shirts’ who always got killed? They are the ‘filler characters’). Try not to spend too much time on fleshing-out those filler characters, save the flaws and interesting bits for your ‘main’ and ‘strong’ characters.

The usual ‘Boy meets girl, girl falls head-over-heels with boy, something bad happens to split them up, things get dealt with and sorted out and they get back together again, all is happy, happy, happy - joy, joy, joy and The End’ is no longer good enough.

We now have other aspects to deal with because it’s now possible for a Vampire to fall in love with a human (food).

THEN that same concept was twisted and a billionaire Dominant could fall in lust with a poor girl and turn her on to the world of domination and she becomes his Submissive – and YES, that is the same story.

An idea cannot be copyrighted. Your idea can be shared (if you want to) because, at the end of the day, it’s the way you tell the story that is the important thing.

“So if it cannot be copyrighted, how come it’s so important?”

It’s so important because you have to have the basis for the story – remember the skeleton at the beginning?

The skeleton of your idea must be complete. You need a beginning, a middle and an end. Just like the skeleton needs a head, a body and limbs.

You have the chance to play ‘God’ here. You get to say how tall the skeleton is. You even get to say how many limbs the skeleton has and even if it has two (or more) heads. It’s ALL down to you. Remember, NO RULES! At least, not yet.

Everyone has a skeleton – everyone starts off with the same basic structure. It’s what you put on to that skeleton and IN TO that skeleton that makes the difference.

If you put the most basic veneer of a story onto the skeleton of your story, it will be nothing more substantial than a ghost – you’ve placed a sheet over the skeleton and that’s it, draped in thin cotton rather than the fine silk, velvets and satins, ribbons and lace it could be clothed in (or leather and PVC).

Here you go then…

You’ve got your characters, and the basic story. OK, Boy meets girl, boy gets into trouble, split up, get back together again.

There’s the skin but the skeleton still looks a bit bony – flesh it out a bit.

The boy comes from a rich/poor family and the girl comes from a poor/rich family - you decide, it’s expected that it’s diametrically opposed of course (complete opposites attract) but it could be two opposing families (cos that’s never been done before).

In all of this, we now have the basis for Romeo and Juliet, West Side Story, Gone With The Wind and a million other best-selling tales – all with the same skeleton of an idea and a basic ‘skin’.

The next thing you need to do is put some guts into it. Back-story, background, difficulties and obstacles all make for interesting reading and all help your characters to become more ‘real’ and then connect with your readers. They need to be interesting and as I’ve mentioned before, they need to have some part of themselves that your reader can lock onto and therefore get behind and root for (or against, your choice).

Then they need to do things that catch your reader’s imagination and drag them in, whether or not they realise you’ve hooked them is down to your storytelling, but if you’re going to have readers that come back to see what else you’ve written, time after time (and that is true for blog posts as well as stories) you’re going to have to hook them, and hook them good!

My idea started (as I’ve already mentioned) with a roof-line silhouetted by the bright full moon. It could have been a vampire novel, but that full moon did it for me.

Where I went from there had ME hooked, I just had to make sure I also hooked my readers.

So, how did I manage to do that? Of course, the basis is in the story, but it also needed a bit of a twist. Anyone that caught my Halloween stories last year will probably realise I do like a twist in the tale and mine started with the main character.

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She stood with her back to the closed doors of the club; it was very late, almost three in the morning. The last punters of the evening had been persuaded to leave through those same doors less than twenty minutes before her. She asked herself, not for the first time; why did she work here of all places? Her feet hurt and she was forever on a knife-edge, waiting for the next incident to go off. Her weekends were never her own and her sleep patterns were shot to pieces and that was after only a month of working at the night-club.

As she looked around, she saw that a prominent police presence was very obvious in the hope that by being there they could prevent the majority of fracas. Paramedics were also in abundance, in case the preventative measure was not enough. The two groups of professionals were the only visibly sober people in the vicinity and they were vastly outnumbered by drunken civilians.
She knew that the market place of this medium sized town would be bustling with late-night revellers, queuing for a late night snack at the burger vans, waiting for the Night Bus or a taxi or just walking home. The weekend started a few hours ago for most of these people and they seemed intent on making the most of it.

The sky was crystal clear, sprinkled with stars and accompanied by the luminous glow of the full moon, giving a stark, sharp feel to objects and shadows alike. The streets were filthy and littered with debris from the multitude of fast food outlets which flanked the clubs and pubs. She decided as she gazed up at the moon that she didn’t want to have to mingle with the drunks when she was sober. She had had enough of them for one evening and so on impulse she went against going the shortest route to her car and took the road less travelled.

Looking both ways, up and down the street, she dodged in front of a slow moving taxi and crossed over at a trot, bearing right. As the majority of the crowds continued straight on towards the hill down to the market, she swung left at the corner where only a small minority were walking. Even so close to the crowds still milling about on the street behind her, she felt an instant ease with the change of pace. She walked fast, overtaking a small group of young men who she remembered being at the same club where she had been working.

“G’night love!” One of them shouted as she had passed, his reactions delayed by the alcohol he had poured down his throat in the few hours he had been out. She didn’t turn back but shouted a cheerful “Goodnight” and waved her hand at them. She walked down the slope, alongside the high and curved retaining wall which supported the railway embankment. The alternative way she had taken was peaceful and she was calming down after the stress of being on the lookout for trouble all the time at the club. Once around the corner and out of sight of the group still behind her, she cut right, taking an unusual route up through an isolated car park which led nowhere at this time of night. In the darkness caused by absence of any working street lights, the moon’s glow cast deeper shadows than the sun and blanched the colour from everything, but the tranquillity she found only added to her calm.

Looming above the car park was the ancient and sturdy brick arches which made up the viaduct for the railway, she once again gazed up at the moon gleaming above the brickwork. Her attention was diverted by movement to the left of her focus. Some fool was playing about on the railway lines, perhaps fulfilling a drunken dare. She figured that unless he was unlucky and fell, he should be ok because the passenger trains didn’t run this late. The only thing he’d have to watch out for was the freight trains which ran all night, albeit at a slower pace. Still, it was not her problem.

Cutting through a narrow alley at one corner of the car park, she expected to find a high ornamental gate, locked and barring the way. The gate was always locked at night to keep the drunken public out but she had no trouble jumping over it. She made her way with care down a flight of stone steps – more for fear of standing in something nasty than of losing her footing. She walked through a passageway which stank of urine, making her wrinkle her nose at the sour, musky odour.

Halfway through the enclosed alley, she heard a noise behind her. It sounded very much like someone tapping (...as of someone gently rapping...) and her body shivered involuntarily as she listened. She turned to see if she could locate the sound but as she turned, it stopped and she knew that she was being watched. She waited for a moment and then another shudder shook her frame and she turned back to continue her journey at a more accelerated pace.