Harriet Smart's Writing TipsThe following mini-articles are taken from Writing Recipes, an e-book that comes free with my Fiction: The Facts e-book. I hope you find them helpful.
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How to make fiction: a complete course in miniatureIf someone asks me, "I want to start writing but I don't know how", this is what I tell them.Diagnosis: check why you want to write. This is an important motivational factor. There needs to be an internal pressure, a yearning to create or a need for self-expression. External pressures (money, fame or just to show someone you can) are good, but you will need the internal desire to really boost your rocket fuel. Overcome your initial fears by starting free-form writing practice, doing exercises and collecting ideas in a box. You will need a notebook, pen and maybe a shoebox. Write on a computer if you prefer but the physical reality of notebook is very comforting. Write regularly and warm yourself up nicely. Edge gently towards the subject or style or genre which keeps drawing you back. What you are reading is a good clue. If you're not reading but watching endless movies and deconstructing them, you might be thinking of writing a screenplay. Are you a poet? A mystery writer? A short story writer? Is it autobiography you want to write? Explore the possibilities. Read lots of books about writing. Read lots of fiction of the style and type you enjoy and read outside the subject just to stop yourself getting blinkered. Find an idea: a situation, a character or a theme that really excites you. You want something that makes you breathless with possibility. Fall in love with your idea. You need to adore it because you are going to be married to it. Begin to work in an informal way, perhaps in your notebook or using some of the Writer's Café tools, on the following areas:
Brainstorm out and record potential scenes. Or just use a regular piece of paper. For example: the scene where David confronts his father about his mother's departure; the shoot-out in the ice cream parlour; the embarrassing dinner party with Cousin Lulu. These don't have to be put in any particular order. This is your writing larder. Try and overstock it. If you have more scenes than you need, so much the better. You can pick out the best ones later. If you have Writer's Café, arrange scenes on storylines. Fiddle with them until you have your perfect outline. Suddenly you'll find your plot is coming into focus. Then you can write up each scene, digressing where necessary when better solutions come to you. This will give you a first draft. Or you can export your outline into your favourite word processor and work on each scene in there. Remember you don't have to start with scene one and work through in order. You are like a movie director. You can shoot your scenes in the order that comes to you. If you want to write the end first, do that. Find what works for you and remember there are no rules. Just keep writing and don't criticize yourself either. That comes later. Wow, well done! You have a first draft.
What is writing practice and why do it?Writing is like playing the piano - the more you do it, the better you get. However, concert pianists don't spend all their time working on the great concertos and sonatas. They spend a lot of time warming up and training their muscles with scales and finger exercises, to get the stamina and fluency needed to tackle a big work. It's the same with writing. You can't write War and Peace just like that. You have to do some practice. What I mean by practice is doing an exercise or timed writing on a topic, or simply writing about what matters to you from day to day in a journal. All these things will increase your stamina and fluency, make you comfortable with the concept of writing, decrease your general performance anxiety and give you lots of inspiration for bigger projects. But I think the name is a big downer. Perhaps we should attempt a psychological trick and rebrand it as writing 'play'.How do you play at writing? Find a comfortable spot and a quiet time. This could be your bedroom, with the door locked, a favourite spot in the back garden, a café or a pub. All you need is 30-60 minutes, preferably everyday, but don't beat yourself up if you can't manage this. However, it is quite addictive, and the comfort of the act itself may help you to stick to it. If I don't write in my notebook everyday I feel quite deprived and miserable. It has helped me over some horrible life spots. Choose where you are going to write. I like a notebook and a pen - the physicality of it helps me, but a PC can do just as well - and it does have the advantage of being really fast, so that when you get going, you really do get going. If you are a notebook fiend like me, you have all the pleasure of choosing notebooks, but be aware those gorgeous notebooks sold in stationers these days are perhaps too beautiful. There is something inherently inhibiting about desecrating handmade paper in a luxurious leather binding (or made out of an antique sari or banana leaves, or whatever). To write in them would be like spray-painting on the front of St Paul's Cathedral. So you need a notebook that you have warm feeling about and that is functional without being an artwork in itself. Natalie Goldberg, to whom I owe much of this wisdom about notebooks and whose books I heartily recommend, chooses books with silly covers - Mickey Mouse, cowgirls etc., so that she cannot take herself too seriously. This is sound advice. Another trick I have found is to use loose sheets of paper, sometimes A4 folded in half and turned sideways to make a mini-book or something rather like a Victorian letter. This is so small a space to fill and so portable that it is instantly reassuring, and because you are not writing in a book, you really lower the bar of your expectations, which is always a good thing, as it does not allow the monster of self-criticism to rear its ugly head and stop you in your tracks. I find music really helps. Film music can evoke a particular mood. Have a topic to hand so that you can get going straight away. Compile your own list of favourite topics or if you have the Writer's Café software, use the prompt tool. You could try playing with the obstacle generator to come up with a difficult situation to write about. Or you might chose three words at random from the dictionary or a line of poetry and see where that takes you. The trick is not to come cold to the table. Have the card (i.e. your subject) in your head before you even sit down and pick up your pen. Ideally walk across the room and think "I am going to write about that summer when I felt jealous of my sister because she was going out with Andy Duncan", or "I am going to write about the idea of a Don Juan". Write down your subject if you like or, better still, make it the first line of what you write. "I am going to investigate what I feel about Don Juan. The Don Juan story fascinates me because I wonder whether I would fall for that sort of guy if I met one..." The idea is to find a juicy subject that will get you thinking and imagining and making connections that you would not usually make. The act of writing, swiftly and without thinking too much about it, can get you into this state faster than you think. Write for ten minutes and then have a little pause. Then start again, on the same subject if you like or another if that one didn't get you going. Don't read what you have just written. Just carry on, keeping your hand moving (as Goldberg so memorably says) or your hands if you are using your PC. Don't worry about quantity or quality. Don't judge, just write. Remember, no-one else is going to read this. You are not submitting it for publication. It does not represent your one shot at the big time. It is just writing for the sheer love of it. It is for pleasure and not pain. You do not even have to read what you have written yourself. In fact it's best not to. Put the stuff aside and only look at it a few days later. You might be surprised at yourself - and impressed. How to seduce your readerOnce upon a time all stories began "Once upon a time." This simple formula was enough to get people listening and it still works for small children, but the rest of us need a little more encouragement. After all, we have plenty of entertainment choices these days. We can surf the web, play computer games, switch channels, or pick up another book. So you have to make sure you get their attention right on the first page. In short, you have to lure them into your story.This process of entrapment is usually called the story hook, but I prefer it to see it as the act of seduction. Here is an excellent example: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."This is the very famous opening line of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Elegant and concise, it takes you by the hand and leads you into the story. There is no messing about. There in the first line of the novel, the story question is laid out clearly: we have single men of good fortune and we want to know who is going to marry them. That's why we want to read this book, after all - for the marriage plots and the love stories. But Austen goes one further in keeping our attention on her page. The line is witty and playful, just like the heroine of the novel we are now going to read. She flatters us with her humour, feeling we will understand it. We are invited into her world with a joke. You can almost imagine some attractive, detached observer smiling at you and saying such a thing, beckoning you into a more intimate and seductive conversation. Just considering the power of this single line makes me want to stop writing and go and read Pride and Prejudice again. Often it is said that a story should start with a explosion or something equally high-octane. Jane Austen proves to us that this is not always the case. There are other ways to enchant, excite or intrigue your reader into wanting more.
How to write a first draftTo get to the stage you can start a novel or screen play:
Have the characters ready to go: all the suggested techniques for developing characters and their back-stories are ideal for notebook/writing practice topics. It is much easier to write a tricky scene when you know your people inside out, when you know how they will react and behave (or not behave, as the case may be). You need to internalise the characters, by which I mean that they need to become part of you. There has to be a sort of passion about this. They should produce strong feelings in you. You must love them or hate them, and certainly you must understand them deeply. Indifference is fatal. It may seem like a cliché to talk about romance writers falling in love with their heroes, but that sincerity is key to the popularity of the genre. Readers want to be able to sense emotional reality in all fiction, not just in romance novels. Without emotion, without passion, it is just words on the page. You might as well be writing a report for work, full of turgid, time-wasting jargon. Sort out your story before you start. Some writers you may read about claim not to have the least idea where the story is going when they start. This is, I suspect, a partial truth. Such writers are usually time-served craftsmen who can plot on the hoof because they have an innate sense of what a story demands. They also use the first draft to try out the plot and probably do a great deal of rewriting and restructuring. This is a risky strategy for beginners, though, as going wrong is a real confidence basher. For a confident, fluent fiction writer there is the inner knowledge that things can be put right later. But if you are starting out this requires a lot of faith. So I would suggest that working out your story in advance is a very good idea. You can use StoryLines for this. Then you will be able to concentrate on writing the story in the most effective way if you don't have to worry about what the hell happens next. Writing is like travel. An outline can vary from a rough set of directions to a detailed itinerary, and there is actually no obligation to stick to it. If you have spent time developing an outline, don't feel that it is a legally binding contract. To return to the travel analogy, it is a suggested path and that's all. If you see a different and better route through the mountains when you are there, allow yourself to take it. You may even end up at a different destination. Think of the outline as a helper, not a dictator. There comes a moment when the material is ripe (like cheese or a fruit) and you will find yourself better able to face the Himalayan trek that is the novel or screenplay. Break it down into small, manageable chunks, scene by scene rather than chapter by chapter. Don't set yourself daunting objectives. For example you might decide "I will write a chapter this weekend," or equally "I am going to write the scene when Lucy learns that her father is a bank robber." Set a low achievement threshold and then if you pass it you will be pleased with yourself rather than cross with yourself for failing. Look forward to writing the scenes before you sit down to write them. "I can't wait to do the scene when Helen confronts Gus about the sale of the painting. She's going to be so mad with him and of course he can't tell her why he had to do it." Imagine the scene running in your head like a movie. Do it several times. A good time to do this is when you are lying in bed, just before you go to sleep. Then when it comes to write it will just be like describing something that already exists rather than creating something new. This will feel much less daunting and you are more likely to suceed in your objective. Try not to be critical. Just write the bit you have set yourself and be pleased with yourself for completing that task. Don't read it back. Just move on to the next task. Let yourself go if you like. If you want to describe everything in the room, this is your chance to do it. If you want to go over the top you can. Editing comes later. If you overwrite you will have plenty of material to pare down into something really effective. Try, if at all possible, to enjoy the experience. Even if you are churning up nasty emotions (and I hope you will be) try not to be afraid of them but take it as proof you are writing well. If things go well and you get into flow, remember to allow yourself to wind down again. You can feel very flat when you come down from a high of writing effectively and it is often necessary to schedule some debriefing activity that doesn't require the emotions or intellect. When you write fiction not only are you using your left brain but your right brain, and your heart as well - and that is a combination that is both addictive and exhausting. Expect to feel restless, but drained and a little strange. Don't let anyone else read it when you are still working on it. No matter how well meaning the person, they are bound to say the wrong thing and skewer your confidence. Consider signing up for Nanowrimo or some such scheme (novel in a month). This gives you a sense of community and the chance to write just for the hell of it. In fact Chris Baty, the founder, extols the virtues of quick and dirty writing, and I agree with him. If you don't give yourself much time to think you won't be critical and the story will be everything.
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