Columns: Tag – Novel
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Writing Quips and Tips
Book Research is Like Make-Up
Research is like good make-up. It should make you look better, without drawing attention to itself.
As a writer, you have to do far more research than you’ll every use in your book. But once you’ve done it, you’re tempted to show it off. Resist the temptation.
There’s nothing quite as off-putting as having your characters indulge in a long conversation about the history of Rome, just because you looked it up and you’re damned if you’ll lose it.
Writing Quips and Tips
Writing a novel - how to keep going
“These are notes you may find useful during your rewrite.”
Yes, these actual words left my lips while I was giving feedback on someone’s writing last week. And after four books, it seemed obvious to me. No first draft is ever perfect. A book is the end result, not the first try.
But I’d forgotten their effect on a first-time writer until I saw her collapse, grimacing and clutching for her heart. They’re not words. They’re daggers, poisoned spears.
Writing Quips and Tips
Therapy for Characters
Sometimes it takes a shrink to work out what really makes a person tick – even if that person is a fictional character in the mind of a writer.
Psychologist Pierre Brouard thinks he is probably the first of his profession to be involved in running a writing course.
Writing Quips and Tips
Every writer needs a few - personalities, that is
How many writers does it take to produce a novel? One, but with multiple personalities. And that’s not a joke.
It’s a task that requires several selves – or parts of selves. There’s the intuitive, day-dreaming self who allows ideas and scenarios to drift through her consciousness until they begin to form threads. Then there’s the “medium” self, who allows herself to be taken over by her characters while they’re writing it for her.
When it’s finished, the analytical bitch-editor fires those sensitive selves – who are in love with every word – and get on with murdering the babies. After her, the tenacious self must still believe, all odds to the contrary, that a book is worth fighting for when it starts to be shown to people.
Writing Quips and Tips
Is it really not working, or are you mentally reading it in a funny voice?
There’s nothing quite like the high of a story that’s working.
You get into a zone and the world recedes. It seems more real than the world we’re told to believe is real. And when you finish for the day, you float a little above the mere mortals around you. You feel like you’ve been somewhere they haven’t experienced. You’ve touched something infinitely precious.
That’s when it’s working. As writer Julie Checkoway puts it, when your novel isn’t working, “it just lies there in pieces on the page, leaking vital fluids all over your desk”.
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.