Category: Books

Fiction reveals truths

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Reality obscures

How does a good fiction writer reveal the truths that reality obscures? There are two ways: by what she tells us, and by what she leaves out of the story.

The story the reader finally reads in your book is like the 10% of the iceberg above the waterline. The rest, the 90% below water is the blood sweat and tears that went into the 10%. All the things the writer knows about the story but left on the ‘cutting room floor’.

So what should be left out? Big blocks of back-story,  The boring bits, the mundane everyday things that happen, the bits of dialogue that translate to ‘Hello, how are you?’ and the ‘Fine thanks. Hasn’t it been hot lately.’ Unfortunately, there’s always lots of interesting information about the characters, lots of intriguing research and darling little scenes. But, anything that slows the pace of the story, anything that drops the reader out of the story, anything that allows the reader to remember that sleep is essential, that phone calls need to be made, housework must be done, that’s what’s left out. Padding, filling, fluff, waffle, anything repeated…you got the idea.

So, what’s in the tip of the iceberg? The story, the whole story and nothing but the story.

Someplace to go…

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Reading

The setting of your story can be almost as important as character and plot. The same story set in different times and places can change it completely while demonstrating that despite the advances in technology and differences in lifestyle, humans are basically the same no matter where or when we live.

Fairy Tales have always triggered the imagination of writers, becoming some of the most popular tropes like Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast. Echoes of these stories can be heard around the world in every conceivable time and place.

Jane Austen’s original classic English Regency romances have been rewritten or “updated”, set in different times and places with varying degrees of success. Even adaptations for movies based on Pride and Prejudice vary widely from the miniseries of 1995 (starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth) and the 2005 movie (starring Keira Knightley and Matthew MacFadyen) to variations like the 2004 Bollywood movie Bride and Prejudice, or the London of Bridget Jones’ Diary. Each has a very different feel and atmosphere while telling more or less the same story.

Look at the novels of Agatha Christie. She definitely knew how to make setting work for her story. Murder is murder whether it happens on a train, a river cruise, an island or in the middle of London such as of Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, And Then There Were None and Sparkling Cyanide.

As a reader, I am grateful to writers everywhere who can spirit me away from the dentist’s waiting room, the sickroom, a long commute or a relaxing holiday to anywhere in the world or outside it from deepest darkest space, anywhere in time or to the familiarity of my own town and time, making stories come alive.

Books v Movies

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Movie

There is a lot that writers of different persuasions can learn from each other despite their differences. Books and movies both have advantages and disadvantages when we’re talking about story.

Starting with the most obvious, the time taken to watch a movie is (usually) much less than that necessary to read the book of the same story, and a movie gives the watcher more aural and visual information which a reader must imagine. The writer, on the other hand, has much more scope to insert information which it’s impossible to include in a commercial length movie.

Commercial considerations and the particular skills of writers, publishers, screenwriters, directors, actors and editors of each version will shape the final book and movie. Whether the book or the movie of a story is better often hangs on personal preference and those commercial decisions.

A writer of books will always need to read and analyse as many stories as possible to continue learning and keep up-to-date with their craft. However, analysing movies to study story is efficient and effective as anyone who has watched Casablanca over the course of a day with Robert McKee can attest.

I highly recommend Alexandra Sokoloff’s website Screenwriting Tricks for Authors to anyone wanting to learn more.

 

Writing

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Take the pen and write

There are many reasons to write down the thoughts in our hearts and heads.

When I was a child we moved around a lot. My mother, poor woman, told me that she moved 26 times in 23 years, in the latter years with up to seven children in tow. Letter writing was something we did because we loved receiving letters. Mum and her family wrote and received letters addressed to “Dear All” which were circulated to keep everyone up to date with the news. But they were nothing like receiving a letter addressed to me personally, so I wrote quite a lot of letters to various friends and family.

Putting pen to paper makes you focus on the subject at hand. Often, when I’m confused, I go to pen and paper in order to work out what I feel, what I want and how I can achieve it. There’s something about the act of dragging a pen across a lovely pristine piece of paper which forces you to think deeply, drawing up from the heart what normally hides there.

Writing a book, telling a story and following a theme, asking yourself “what if” also has the same effect. It can also fire up the imagination, often resulting in the legendary 3am epiphany.

Until you can explain something, I’ve been told, you don’t fully understand it. Ideas and concepts are like that. Especially early in their careers, writers need multiple drafts and rewrites to refine and clarify their stories and even then, sometimes what ends up on the page surprises the writer as much as the reader.

Good books and their secrets

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Secrets

There are many ways to make your book a pageturner. Here are just some.

  • Craft suspense whatever your genre. Make each scene and chapter a cliff-hanger, leaving the reader with questions for which they need answers.
  • Create a delicate balance between what your reader knows and what each character knows.
  • Foreshadowing what is to come creates anticipation.
  • Lead and mislead your reader at appropriate times.
  • Language and word choice create mood and atmosphere.
  • Lush writing involving all the senses creates an emotional response in the reader.
  • Dripfeed your story, allowing your reader the satisfaction of piecing most things together for themselves.
  • Use pacing wisely. Vary the pace at which the story moves, sentence length and structure to build to a climax or relax the reader before a shock or surprise.
  • Raise the stakes both external and internal for your protagonist, then set a clock ticking on a time limit.
  • Use twists and turns to keep the reader curious.