EVERYTHING IS DIALOGUE I don’t just mean two people in a book talking, and it being received in written down form. By ‘Everything is dialogue’, I mean that if your writing has the sense of different voices intruding on one another – not always monologuing, not always singing in the same key – it will […]
ALL BY YOURSELF One of the biggest faults in stories by less experienced writers is that they are about extremely isolated people – people who start off by being isolated and don’t end up making much contact with others. This is not, in itself, a bad idea. There have been many wonderful stories about people […]
CONTROL This is something I have only become aware of in the past few years, but I think it is worth bringing it up. If you have a person in your story (we’re back to people, off characters) who has enough money or powerful enough friends to get them easily out of trouble, your story […]
SYMPATHETIC CHARACTERS The following bit is really only for you if you want to write popular fiction – although, if you are aiming for something that sells less well you might be interested in discovering something about the dark arts. I will have to flip over to discussing characters, because the phrase everyone uses is […]
We’re now going to look at some ways you can work on making the people you write about feel real and, if it’s what you need, likeable. PEOPLE? It might be easier to start referring to them as characters, but I’m going to stick with people, so as to keep them on the same level […]
STORIES VS TALES Warning: The picture I am about to draw is in crayon rather than in single hair brushstrokes. However, the overall picture is the important thing, and even more so where you appear in it. (And Mr But will have plenty of opportunities to speak up.) When I say ‘story’, in this context, […]
The first thing you need to write a novel is… Time. The second thing you need to write a novel is… More Time. And the third thing you need to write a novel is… Even More Time. This perhaps seems a bit obvious. But let me explain. Time, More Time and Even More Time are all necessary. […]
Ciaran Carson, the Belfast poet, died earlier this week. I knew him a little bit, and admired him immensely. The one time I went to dinner at his house, he was editing The Yellow Nib, a literary magazine. As we ate, we talked about music. He was a professional – could pick up a penny whistle […]
Most of the examples I have given so far have been quite straightforward, unsubtle. The idea of the runaway bride, although something you might be happy to gossip about, may be the kind of on-the-surface, twisty story that you would never allow yourself to write. But I think that the idea of Story-Time, and of […]
I’d like to move on from my two definitions of a story, but do keep your marked up story-start because we’ll be going back to it. I have tried very hard to find another way to talk about this next bit that avoids the phrase ‘Story-Time’. It has associations – not bad associations – of […]
