Columns – Writing Quips and Tips
A writer passes on the lessons she’s learned to make your writing better. Jo-Anne Richards muses on the challenges and excitement of a writer’s life.
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Writing Quips and Tips
Writing and rewriting - it’s now or never
I recently read that, before he begins a new novel, EL Doctorow writes 60-or-so pages of dialogue between his main characters – then throws them away and starts again.
I don’t know how he does it. It must break his heart. But I do understand why.
Having just finished a rough draft of a new novel, I have been giving him a lot of thought lately – and wishing I had his discipline (not to mention his talent).Reading my manuscript from beginning to end, I can see how the voice of the protagonist, and the novel as a whole, develops as I gain confidence. At the start, my protagonist is a tentative being, just drawing her first breaths in the world I gave her. By the end, she is more confident in her skin. She speaks and reacts in a way that is more true to who she is.
Writing Quips and Tips
Writing about it is a lot like having it
If you’re self-conscious about sex in real life, you’ll be so on the page. You’ll hide coyly behind the frills of metaphor.
And if you’re over-confident, you’re likely to charge at the task and batter it with clinical description. Either way you’ll be cringy.
Since we were on the subject of sex in literature, (Last week’s blog on why no one writes about sex anymore), it occurred to me that sex in life is a lot like sex on the page. And learning to write about it can show us quite a lot about having it.
Writing Quips and Tips
Plunging and grinding doesn’t make a story
A judge for this year’s Booker prize, commenting on the state of the British and Commonwealth novel, said no one was writing much about sex anymore.
“It’s as if they were paranoid about being nominated for the Bad Sex Award,” he said. He was referring to the now famous, and little wanted award by the Literary Review. He added that “a lot of people” were writing about “taking drugs, as if that was a substitute for sex”.
The Bad Sex Awards were inaugurated in 1993 in order to draw attention to, “and hopefully discourage”, poorly written, redundant or crude sex in fiction. The intention, they say is “not to humiliate”.
That might not be their intention, but it must be absolutely mortifying even to be nominated. Yet I wonder if it is the Bad Sex Award that’s discouraging sex scenes.
Writing Quips and Tips
Characters - in life and on the page
There’s a story about a novelist whose characters borrowed heavily from life. He wrote a moving account of a family dominated by an overbearing matriarch.
He was most concerned about his mother’s reaction. Would she forgive him? Would it split the family, and make him an outcast?
Shortly after it appeared, his mother summoned him. Sweaty palmed, he appeared to receive her judgment.
Writing Quips and Tips
It’s hard and lonely - and Oprah’s unlikely to be involved
People have funny ideas about creative writing.
Either, they believe anyone capable of stringing two words together can put together a 90 000-word novel. (“She writes really good proposals / sales documents /memorandums”.) If they just put their mind to it.
“If only we had the time you do.” (Spoken with a rueful sigh.)
Or: “Old Jimbo’s retiring in September. He’s going to write his book.
That’ll keep him busy for October, but what he’ll do from November I’m just not sure.”
Writing Quips and Tips
Genre doesn’t dictate quality
I recently saw this brilliant response to a criticism of chick lit. Michelle Gormon is a chick lit writer herself, published by Penguin. Her article appeared in The Guardian.
“Critics cite many reasons in their dismissal of the genre, reasons that ostensibly aren’t rooted in literary snobbery. ‘The problem’ with chick-lit, I’m told, is that it doesn’t deal with the real issues that women face. Well actually, some of it does. From sibling rivalry to infidelity, addictions to poor body image, a woman can take her pick within the genre if she wants to. And the rest of it? It’s meant for pure indulgent enjoyment, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
“But why insist that chick-lit reflect the issues facing its readership when no other genre is measured by the same yardstick? It isn’t expected of science fiction, crime, mystery, historical fiction, or even most literary fiction. Women didn’t flock to buy We Need to Talk About Kevin thinking, ‘Gosh, my son is in prison too for picking off his classmates with a crossbow. That’s the book for me.’
Writing Quips and Tips
Imagination doesn’t negate the truth
Writers are a lot like actors.
They need to be able to draw on their own experiences to understand others. And to express these in a compelling way that enables their audience (or readers) to believe in them.
Just to draw out last week’s theme a little more, this means that writers – novelists and non-fiction writers –are equally in the business of seeking out the truth.
Just because novelists use their imagination, doesn’t mean they’re not exploring their inner selves, and their time and place in history.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez says: “There’s not a single line in all my work that does not have a basis in reality.”
Writing Quips and Tips
Fiction isn’t falsehood, and history isn’t truth
“Fact” is trendy.
Non-fiction sells more than fiction. And when you talk to people about reading, they will often declare sternly that they prefer to “read facts”. They want to “learn” or “improve”, or whatever.
In fact, there’s not as much difference between the two as you might think.
Writing Quips and Tips
Reading as construction work
If writing is a blueprint which we, as readers, turn into cathedrals or palaces, then isn’t it also a route map?
Writing Quips and Tips
There’s nothing passive about reading
Reading is not a one-way process. It’s far more active than a writer imparting and a reader receiving.
The way to get the most from any reading experience is to accept that readers bring as much to the book as writers do.
As readers, we bring a complete psychological engagement to the task. That’s why movies of books we’ve read are never satisfying. Someone else has filled in the holes – and not as satisfyingly as we did.
Reading is construction work. The writer provides sketchy, incomplete blueprints so that each reader can build a different world.
Writer Alberto Manguel calls it the"intelligent and inspired reconstruction … using reason and imagination … to translate it on to a different canvas, extending the horizon of its apparent meaning beyond … the declared intentions of the author”.
