Writing Tips - 2

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My Background:
I’m an Author.
I have five full novels, an anthology of short stories and a collection of seven short stories published, plus a number of stories and articles published in magazines and one multi-author anthology. UK US
I work as a professional Editor for a small Indie Publishing House.
I have a few years’ experience in publishing.
I was Editor in Chief of a large online magazine (approx. 100,000 hits per month at its peak).
My second novel, Cruel and Unusual was entered for The Orange Prize For Fiction in 2012.
I’ve written screenplays for movies and at least one of my stories has been made into a film.
I have a page on IMDB.

I've been asked for the links to my books. If you click the green text in the background blurb above, you'll get to the links.

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Pictures either with permission or from Google free to use image search

Writing a book is easy...

I can tell you how I write a book. I can tell you how other people write their books, that’s easy, it’s researchable – anyone can find that information. I think the reason you’re reading this is because you want to learn how YOU write a book.

I’m going to try to help you with that.

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Yesterday I received a comment from
@erebus

I disagree with one thing you said, "Is my story worth telling? Of course, if it’s not, then your journey ends right here. If you don’t think it’s worth telling, then no-one will think it’s worth reading."

I read popular crap all the time. As in crap that for some reason is popular. Granted creating something you don't care for often comes off as soulless, but some people can do it. Not just in book form either, the world is filled with creations hated by its creators but loved by fans.

I'm using the comment as the start to this tutorial because it's a valid observation.

...creating something you don't care for often comes off as soulless, but some people can do it.

The people that can usually pull off this 'trick' are experienced writers, more often than not. Those that know what will be read, devoured and enjoyed by readers. They probably don't like their efforts, but they have the experience to 'get away' with that. Because this is a tutorial of sorts for not-quite-as-experienced writers, my advice stands.

If the new and inexperienced writer doesn't think it's a good story, they are usually right. That's not to say they should never try writing again, but more to leave that story alone and try on a new one.

My advice of never throw any piece of writing away holds true too. You're allowed to go back. That one story that wasn't good enough the first time around may yet prove it has legs when your experience has developed . Keep it and go back to it. With fresh eyes, you may just see a different way of telling that story.

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There’s an unusual tip of starting from the end.

I don’t, but I can see the merit in the advice.

I’ve read books and manuscripts where the first few chapters are great – the story runs smooth and everything looks like it’s going to be a winner. Then the next few chapters falter and by the middle and certainly the end, the writer has obviously run out of steam, the enthusiasm has waned (or died) and you can tell that they just want it all to be over and done with so they can get it off their hands.

Knowing how your story ends gives you a great advantage. You can work backwards and make fascinating facts fit in with the story. You know what happens to your character, how he defeats the problem the whole story revolves around and therefore, getting him there should be a cinch!

Not only can you work out how to get your character to the satisfying end, but you can also work in ‘foreshadowing’ too. Introducing something into the story near to the beginning that your character needs in order to complete his task.

J K Rowling is a master at foreshadowing. Just take a look at the Harry Potter films where foreshadowing appears (it’s especially noticeable in the books). A future character’s motorcycle is used to carry the baby Harry Potter to his aunt and uncle’s house. That mentioned character becomes a main character in a number of future books.

Talk about looking ahead!

As I mentioned yesterday, for a complete novel, you must have a start, a middle and an end.

To help with your novel (and sometimes, shorter pieces), an outline can be invaluable.

Any good book has a plot, of course, but to keep it all straight, avoiding plotholes and ‘convenience props’ (for example, a character needs to get himself and his companions across the country and one of the other characters conveniently happened to have stolen credit cards about their person). I really did see a film with that exact occurrence.

A rough guide to where the story is going, to make sure the plot doesn’t fall apart and start meandering.

An outline, if followed quite closely, will also be useful later, when you need to write the synopsis to send out to agents and publishers. Keep hold of it, save it in the same folder as your novel.

An outline, as well as a synopsis should have a brief overview of the action in each chapter.

Give yourself pacing for the action and story so it can develop over each segment of the book (not necessarily each chapter if you find that too constricting).

If an idea comes to you, jot that down too. I put my new ideas at the bottom of the page I'm working on, it keeps it fresh in my mind because I can see it even as I'm writing. Once I use the idea, I delete it.

Make sure you have interlocking events and characters so the reader feels they can see all the action at every turn (makes for great page-turner books). What I mean by that is:

Antagonist (Main bad-guy character) does something which impacts upon the second protagonist (Main good character’s side-kick), causing difficulty or conflict between both main and secondary protagonists, giving another turn in the plot as well as something else to contend with and solve before the end.

With everything, don’t set this in stone, allow room for expansion, adaptation and spontaneity - improvise!

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I suppose you’re going to ask if I do all this?

The answer is no. I didn’t do any of this for my first book Deadlier, but for my second book Cruel, I had reams of printed-out research material, I had charts of the phases of the moon taped to the wall where I wrote and I knew what was going to happen at the end.

For my third book, I knew where I was going with the story, I had a great ‘hook’ because of real-life events (the riots in the UK and the events of the ‘Supermoon’ and calamitous events the world over) and I wove them into the book.

For Ash’s story, the book I wrote in its entirety on Steemit, I pretty-much winged it. I sat down every morning at the same time each day and I wrote around 1000 words. I have no idea how I managed it, but I’m sure the encouragement from everyone following the story played a massive part in the success of the experiment.

But you know what? Ash and the Favour Man has evolved a little since I wrote it. I didn’t notice until prepping it for publication, but I wrote the first part in first-person perspective.

Amazon UK
Amazon US

This is how Ash and the Favour Man starts in book form.

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You know the saying:
It takes a village to raise a child?
This is the story of one child the village let down - badly let down.

Piss

She worked from the age of nine years old. OK, maybe not a full-time actual job since she was nine, but she always grafted. She decided one day it was what she was going to do and she went out and did exactly that.
She wasn’t old enough – or big enough – to get a paper-round. She didn’t have a bike to run errands (hence the need for a job). She would always say yes if the old-folk on the street wanted a letter posting or a loaf of bread and a tin of beans fetching from the shop.
The other kids, especially the bigger ones, either ignored the shouts or couldn’t hear over their own boisterous noise. She seemed able to tune-in though, and always abandoned the game she was playing in order to get that gig.
She saved every last penny she got from those little errands and chores. The only sweets or treats she had were given instead of the cash she preferred.
No kid had much, but she seemed to have even less.

On occasion, she’d get taken for the 5p or so promised, but she got to know which ‘canny old bird’ did that, and the old woman earned the privilege of taking her own damn letters – even to the point where the girl walked right past her at the garden gate, ignoring the letter waved in her face. The girl was going to the shop for one of the neighbours and would have passed the post-box, but the old woman had performed the tried and tested, “I’ll give you a penny when you come back,” and disappeared off into her house before she had chance to collect her ‘wage,’ once too often, and as far as the girl was concerned, the old woman had died.

Before the girl was nine years old, she had the cynicism to blank adults if they pissed her off. What a skill-set she was developing.
Then, she dropped lucky. Robin, a kid she kinda knew, told her to follow him, he knew a bloke that wanted someone to work for him.
Yes, she did wonder why she was being offered a favour. She also wondered why the kid hadn’t taken the job and why he was offering it to her.
So, with those questions tumbling about in her cynical mind, she followed anyway.
She had to trot to keep up, small for her age, and skinny, she knew there was little chance of landing a job that needed a bigger or stronger kid.

More tomorrow.