Tag Archives: Writing novels

Mar 25 2021

Beginnings and Endings

One of the first books I ever read on the art of writing emphasised the need for a good opening line, opening paragraph and at least ten opening pages to catch the reader’s attention. It’s advice I find difficult to disagree with. Writers need to arouse their readers’ curiosity.

Here are some of the best opening lines that do precisely that:

‘It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.’ — 1984 by George Orwell

‘They shoot the white girl first.’ — Paradise by Toni Morrison.

‘It was a pleasure to burn.’– Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.

‘All children, except one, grow up.’– Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie

And how can we forget those fantastic opening lines from the classics:

‘It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.’–Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

‘Call me Ishmael.’ — Moby Dick by Herman Melville

‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.’ — A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.

One can only wonder at the wordcraft of these classic writers and want to emulate them. However, the best time to do this is not when you’re writing the first draft of your story. It is when you have finished your story and can re-write a suitable start. Firstly, if you try to use a clever opening from the start, you may never get past that opening line. You maybe setting yourself too high a standard, particularly if you’re trying to emulate these classics. And secondly, once you have completed the story, you’ll have a different perspective on how the opening should link to the ending.

That brings me to the endings. There are some writers that can start writing a novel without understanding how the story will end and believe the joy of writing is in discovering that ending. These are the writers who see themselves as ‘pantsers’, and don’t like the idea of plotting in advance. If that works for them, then fine. But I could never write entirely that way myself. Once I understand the what the central conflict of the story is going to be about, the next most important element is the ending. The ending sets the direction of the story, and for me, if I don’t know the direction in which the story is going, and the big points along the way, then I can’t write. That doesn’t mean that I won’t change the story ending during the process of writing if I see a better ending in sight. I’m constantly thinking about it and ways I can improve it. And in three books I’ve published I’ve always managed to improve on my initial ideas.

Story endings are hard to create. They must have an element of surprise, but at the same time give the reader the emotional experience they expected. Many romance novels have a ‘happy ever after’ ending. But that doesn’t mean that they can’t have an element of unpredictability. For me, endings are much harder than beginnings and require just as much polish and finesse as the openings. A good opening maybe a good reason for a reader to buy your book, but a good ending will ensure he buys your next one.

If you’re a new writer or an experienced writer let me know what you think. What is harder, the beginning or the end of the story?

Feb 21 2021

A Decade of Writing

March 2021 will mark an important anniversary for me. It will be a decade since I retired from ‘normal’ work. I was an accountant in the City of London working for one of the largest firms of accountants in the world. It was a job I enjoyed, but working in an accountancy practice is a young man’s job that involves long hours and an enormous commitment. I had reached retirement age, and it was time for something new. Most in my position, would have considered a hobby like golf, sailing or walking. But I’m different.

I had always wanted to write a novel. “Collision” was my first. I always knew I could write. I had written four obscure accounting texts, one of which went to four editions, and I contributed to industry accounting texts on banking and leasing. But I didn’t know if I had the imagination and drive to write a novel. That’s a real challenge.

Well, a decade on, I ‘ve published three novels and am working on my fourth. Four books in ten years is not a great output. But it was never about the output or the money. I’ve learned a lot about storytelling, writing, publishing and marketing, much of which I have discussed in this blog. If you are new to writing I hope the blog I have produced will help you find your way. There are some 84 blogs on the subject.

There are lots of traps for a new writer to fall into. And a number of sharks out there that will promise you help and support for a large fee. Fortunately, I avoided most of them. The truth is that as a writer all you need is a computer and writing software that will output. I would recommend Scrivener (which is about $47) or any other software that can output Epub and Mobi formats. This is not a huge investment.

The only other essential expenses I incur are for editing, cover design and advertising. How much you choose to spend on each is up to you. It’s possible to get a good cover for under $100 on Fiverr. For advertising, I use Amazon Advertising Sponsored Products and keywords, but you need to tread carefully. The largest expense is probably the cost of editing. I do most of the basic editing myself, but a professional proofreader is a necessity for the final proof.

If you’re new to writing and publishing, then you need to understand that there is a learning curve involved. You need to understand dialogue and other writing format conventions, book formatting conventions, advertising and more. It will take time to learn. It took me 20 months to publish my first novel but I was a complete novice at marketing. Even now after ten years I’m still learning about publishing and marketing. The alternative is to undertake a training course to fast track the process. There are a number of good courses out there. But they don’t come cheaply.

If you are a new Indie writer and have a burning question, ask me on the blog. Or if you prefer, email me through my Contact page.

Jun 27 2020

The writer’s toolbox

In this blog I want to look at Scrivener — a software tool that changed my life as a writer, and which today I couldn’t do without.

What does a novelist or writer need in order to write? Comparatively little. Remember Shakespeare only needed a quill, ink and paper. And he did quite well with those tools. Some of our greatest writers of our time used only pen and paper. But today there are so many great tools we can use that make the process so much easier. So I’m always on the lookout for new technology that might make the process simpler and more efficient.

What is Scrivener? Well, you could call it a word processor, and it has all the functionality of a word processor, but lots more. What I love about it is that manages your manuscript in a different way to that of a traditional word processors, by breaking the manuscript down into manageable chunks — scenes, chapters and parts.

Each scene has a scene card associated with it, where you can use a heading and couple of lines of text indicate the contents of the scene on the card. And Scrivener allows you to toggle between, viewing scene cards (like a cork board), as traditional outline format, or as a continuous manuscript of the full text. Thus Scrivener encourages you to write in a scene structured way. And if you decide to change the order of the scenes you can simply drag and drop them into the new order. So as you write you can stand back from the detail to view the scene cards, or outline, to give you a helicopter view of your story structure.

Could you do the same thing in Word or some other word processor. Yes, possibly. But you might need to create perhaps up to 80 separate files for each scene and keeping track of them might be a nightmare. With Scrivener you can move from one scene to another in a click, and move scenes around just by dragging and dropping them.

You can also operate with a split screen, where you can have two scenes open on screen at the same time. So you could refer to your earlier scene as you write. Or you could use one of those screens to show your character and location templates or other research information in your research files.

There are also some important features about text handling, such as automatic backups of files. There is also an ability to take snapshots before editing a scene. So you can compare the edited version against the original, or rollback later if you’re not happy with the edit. Another feature is a floating scratch book that allows you to take notes as you go along. And there is an ability to attach notes, and labels to each scene card. For example, you might label each scene by the point of view (POV) character. This would enable you to view a collection of scenes as one document for each POV character.

Once you have completed your manuscript you can compile these scenes together and output the detail to a variety of different formats including, html, rtf, docx, doc, pdf, mobi and epub formats as required.

I could go on and on about the detailed features of Scrivener. There are many. And there are many good reviews of the software on the internet. But if you are interested it would make more sense to take up the free trial and look for yourself. There are also lots of you-tube videos that will give you a start on how to use it.

Are there any downsides to this software? If you want to use some of the most powerful features of the software then there is a learning process. And I’ve heard that some writers have been turned off by this. All I can say is in my case it was well worth the effort. I’ve been using Scrivener now since 2011 and I’ve published three eBooks and print books using it.

In the next blog, I will look at some of the other technology aids a writer can use to make themselves more efficient.

 

Nov 8 2019

Editing — my tools and techniques

edit manuscriptIn the first of my previous blogs on editing, I looked at the lessons that I had learnt a long time ago from the world of business book publishing. In the second blog I looked at what I had to learn more recently to adapt to publishing fiction.

In this blog I want to look at the editing tools and techniques I use. It is not meant to be a comprehensive review of all the software tools available. It is my personal choice of what works for me.

I retired from the accounting profession in March 2011 and decided to write my first novel. One of my first decisions was to buy an Apple MacBook, and the application Scrivener that I had heard so many good things about. I wasn’t disappointed. The software is amazing. After using Microsoft’s Word for over two decades I had finally found my ideal writing tool for writing books. I published my first novel, Collision, in October 2012; my second Alien Hothouse in November 2015; and my third AndroDigm Park 2067 in April 2018.

There are many powerful utilities in Scrivener, but for me the most awesome is that you write in scenes and can move the scenes about by dragging and dropping them. And as each scene has it’s own summary card you can easily switch presentation to a cork board mode, or outline mode and see your story set out in a visual way. For planning purposes, you can map out the major scenes of the story to see the cards across your screen. And when you have completed your first draft you can export a scene list to a spreadsheet file for further analysis of the scenes. This is invaluable when trying to carry out a development edit. It gives you a scene list and the key actions, features and turning points of the story.

It follows that my next important tool is a spreadsheet. I have a great love for the power of Microsoft’s Excel (as most accountants do!). But these days I can accomplish most of the scene analysis I need to do using Apple’s Numbers.  By visualising the story in a columnar way, you can see all the important elements of the story set out.

Now for detailed editing. I perform all detailed editing in Scrivener, so the in-built  spellchecker is the starting point for any edit. However, spellcheckers don’t pick up all errors such homonyms (eg to, too, two) which may be spelt correctly but used in the wrong context. And they don’t pick up a host or errors such as poor grammar, inconsistent use of  hyphenation, capitalisation, punctuation marks and poor style. There are programs that can help the writer identify these issues. The major ones are ProWritingaid, AutoCrit, and Grammarly, but there are many more. Some of these applications have free on-line versions with limited functionality (e.g. ProWritingAid, EditMinion, Grammarly, Ginger and Hemingway).

My preference is the premium version  of ProWriting Aid. Like many of the systems it has a version that works by uploading files onto the internet. But I prefer the standalone version that works with Scrivener. To me, the ability to edit Scrivener files directly gives the system the edge over other applications as I don’t need to convert files back and forth.

Edit software will never replace the need for a professional editor. But such software can help the writer to identify potential problems, inconsistencies and poor style. But not all suggestions generated from this type of software will be appropriate. It is up to the writer to determine how they deal with them.

However much you use these software aids there is a still need to carry out the most detailed review of the text as objectively as you can. This is best achieved by leaving the manuscript for a period of time before undergoing this review. It can also help to use different reading mediums: screen, paper and audio (getting the software to read to you). And by changing fonts and page sizes.

You will also need a good dictionary and style manual for reference. I personally use the Oxford English Dictionary and New Oxford Style Manual for reference, as I write British English rather than American English. But I have at least another ten books on grammar and editing to refer to where necessary.

Editing is an intensive process. It is difficult to look for all types of problems in one pass-through of the text. A different approach is to focus on different types of problems  in each pass-through. For example, the final pass might just look at punctuation problems. As explained in the quote from CJ Webb in the first of these articles.

Edit your manuscript until your fingers bleed and you have memorized every last word. Then when you are certain you are on the verge of insanity… edit one more time.

If you want to be writer, you need to be able to edit. Successful writers are all re-writers.