Category Archives: Tips on Writing

They Can’t Die!

 I overheard a conversation recently about the TV program Endeavour. Someone was complaining that the show had reached a point where the lead character was in danger.

“And we knew he wouldn’t die,” they complained, “because this show was a prequel. We know that Endeavour lives, he was seen as an older man in the TV show Morse.”

I’ve heard this sort of thing before, and it’s wrong. It misses the point. It’s not how stories work.

No one expects James Bond to die. No one ever expected Charlie Brown to ever kick the football. And surely no one expected Voldemort to be triumphant…

In most stories, the reader knows that the hero isn’t going to be killed, but that doesn’t matter. A journey is no less entertaining for knowing what the destination is going to be. Not every trip has to be a mystery tour.

There’s something almost reassuring in this, in following a story where you know what’s going to happen. This is what children in particular find pleasing in fairy stories and nursery tales, the repetition in the tale as Goldilocks tries the chairs, the porridge and then the beds and each time it’s the last choice that’s just right

A writer follows a curve and takes the reader with them. Some writers complain that people don’t want true innovation, that their stories are rejected because they’re too original. They may be right. But as I’ve written on this blog in the past, that’s the way the market works and the market is always right.

But there’s something else, too. Knowing when to repeat, knowing when to follow the conventions, that’s part of a writer’s craft. It makes peeling off into unknown territory so much more satisfying…

The Perfect Scene

Here’s one of my favourite passages in modern literature. In it, Sue Townsend describes Adrian Mole spending Sunday at his Grandma’s house. I suspect that many other people my age will recognise the scene from their own childhood. Nothing else I’ve read captures a sense of time and place so well.

Many writers have a temptation to throw unusual words or extravagant sentences at their ideas. This passage show that real genius is capable of simplicity:

Archers omnibus. Egg, bacon, fried bread, the People.

Roast beef, roast potatoes, mashed potatoes, cabbage, carrots, peas, Yorkshire pudding, gravy.

Apple crumble, custard, cup of tea, extra strong mints, News of the World.

Tinned salmon sandwiches, mandarin oranges and jelly, sultana cake, cup of tea.

Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years by Sue Townsend

Six Tips on Writing First Drafts

  • A first draft is about getting it written, not about getting it right. Don’t spend too much time on it
  • Think of an artist painting a picture – they get the basic outlines and then fill in the details later. That’s what a first draft should be – broad daubs of paint
  • Stories have a habit of hitting a wall as you write them. Don’t sit there sweating about how your hero will escape from the pit: just get on with writing the next part. A solution will occur to you eventually. It always does.
  • Don’t lose touch with your subconscious. If you can’t think of the right word, or phrase, or character, or description… miss it out! You can always add it in later.
  • Stephen King recommends finishing a first draft in a season (spring, summer…). Okay, that might not be possible for a part time writer, but even so, get it done as quickly as possible
  • Many writers find the first draft the painful part. The real pleasure of writing begins when you can take your time licking that first draft into shape…

See Also

Six Tips on Narrative Voice

  • Writing in the First Person is harder than it looks: the narrator defines the sort of story you write. Compare the way the intelligent Katiniss Everdeen tells her story in The Hunger Games with that of the much less aware Riddley Walker in the novel of the same name.
  • There are very few stories written in the Second Person, something which makes those few attempted stand out and say something. Unfortunately, the thing they are usually saying is that the writer has just been on a course.  Best avoided.
  • Stories written in the Third Person offer the most flexibility, and are the best choice for the beginner writer. Of these…
  • The Third Person subjective is the easiest: here you can describe individual characters’ thoughts and emotions from the inside.
  • Third Person objective is harder: here you describe the characters from the outside, you’re not privy to their thoughts – rather like watching a film.
  • Third Person omniscient is the easiest but seems very old fashioned and lacking in skill. Most importantly, Editors don’t like it!

See Also

Six Books Every Writer Should Read

  1. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud
  2. The Art of Fiction by David Lodge
  3. Solutions for Novelists: Secrets of a Master Editor by Sol Stein
  4. The Turkey City Lexicon (You can find it here)
  5. A Dance to the Music of Time: vol.1: Spring by Anthony Powell
  6. The book which inspired you to become a writer. Ask yourself, what makes it so good?

I also now recommend a seventh book: The Pointless Rules of English.  Read more about it here on my blog.

See Also

Blog Chain: All the Things You Are

Thanks to Chris Beckett – Arthur C Clarke aware winning author of Dark Eden and too many excellent short stories – I’m a link in a chain. The idea is that writers answer four questions on their blog and then nominate one or two other writers to do the same thing. You can see Chris’s answers here.

And here are mine:

What am I working on?

I’m just completing Cosmompolitan Predators! for Aethernet Magazine, after which I’ll begin Dream Paris, the followup to Dream London. I’m also working on a series of stories set in the Recursion universe, the first of which will be appearing in print soon. And lastly, Penrose 3 continues its slow progress towards completion

How does my work differ from others in its genre?

How does it differ? I must admit, I’m more fascinated by the similarities. What is it about a genre that means you can take two very different works like, for example, the Foundation Trilogy and The Handmaid’s Tale and say that yes, these are both SF (even if one of the authors may claim otherwise… ).

As for differences? I don’t write heroes, I tend not to write competent people. I’ve always been struck by a line in a Pulp song “Do you want to see how common people fail?”. Golden age SF featured competent scientists and engineers solving problems. Those were great stories, but the protagonists never struck me as being particularly authentic or representative.

There are problems to be solved in my stories, there is (I hope) fascinating technology, but the protagonists don’t understand how things work, there are no easy answers. I don’t write about sewer operators saving the Earth, I write about how groups of people make a difference, sometimes better, sometimes worse.

Why do I write what I do?

Because that’s the way my mind works. I get ideas all the time and I write them down to be used later, but every so often one idea collides with another and I suddenly get really excited and I just have to begin writing.

How much of the path of a book is made up, and how much is fixed by my experience and personality? I feel as if I’m creating when I write, but often when I rewrite I think of a good idea and I include it, only to find a few pages later that I’d already done that on the first draft.

I think that a lot of writing is just improvising around a well established series of chords. To take a Jazz metaphor, we’re all just blowing to “All The Things You Are”.

How does my writing process work?

Basically, I write something every day. I write down ideas, I write down scenes, I write down conversations I’ve overheard on the tram and then I keep redrafting. I’m always writing in time snatched between other responsibilities, but I still need to book in longer stretches when I can draw things together undisturbed.

If you’re interested, there’s lots more on my writing process here on my blog.

And so that’s me done. Here are the next links in the chain, two excellent but very different writers at two very different stages in their careers:

Philip Palmer is a screenwriter, radio dramatist, novelist and producer. His screen credits include THE MANY LIVES OF ALBERT WALKER and THE BILL. For radio his plays include THE KING’S COINER, BLAME, and THE FAERIE QUEENE. As a writer of SF novels he is responsible for considerable galactic carnage; his five published books are DEBATABLE SPACE, RED CLAW, VERSION 43, HELLSHIP and ARTEMIS. Philip is the founder of Afan Films.

He has a part time role as a lecturer at the London Film School, on the MA Screenwriting course.

Fletcher Moss was an Alderman of Manchester who upon his death over a century ago, bequeathed a beautiful botanical gardens to the people of the city; a noble and generous gesture. This Fletcher Moss has significantly less to recommend him – he’s an Assistant Headteacher at a school in Greater Manchester who needed a pseudonym for the writing he fits in between lesson planning, marking and rattling around the M60 in his second-hand Citroen. The Poison Boy (2013) is his debut novel. The Night Wardens (2015, fingers crossed…) is on the way

Why I Write

I can tell when someone I’m teaching is going to be a programmer, I can tell it by the way they lose themselves when they stare at the screen. They’re not thinking of the syntax, they’re lost in the problem.

It’s like playing the piano. When I’m doing that, that’s all I’m doing. I should say, when I’m doing that well, that’s all I’m doing. I’m not reading a series of notes, I’m not trying to remember what the next chord is, I’m simply playing music.

And that’s what it’s like when a story is going well. Everything just flows, I’m listening in to a group of characters and writing down what they’re saying. I’m not making it up, I’m just writing down what it has to be.

That’s why I write. It’s not so I can read reviews of my books, or to blog about how hard those deadlines are, or to boast about my position on Amazon. I write because when I’m writing that’s what I’m doing.

Creativity 1: Groupthink

On a number of occasions, usually when I’ve been at work, I’ve been part of a group asked to think up a new slogan or tagline.

I’m never exactly sure what people mean when they talk about creativity, but I’ve never known these mindmelding exercises result in it.

First, someone comes up with a slogan, let’s say “Tony Ballantyne Blogs Better”. Then someone else comes up with another, let’s say “Tony Ballantyne Tells it Like it Is!”

So there we have it, two slogans, perhaps not the best ever, but at least they work. Then the group will take sides and argue for their favourite slogan, and it will look as if things are going nowhere…

And then the same thing always happens. Someone will look up with an inspired expression and, in excited tones, will announce they have solved the problem.

“I’ve got it!” they will say, “Why don’t we put the two things together? Why don’t we say Tony Ballantyne Blogs Better to Tell it Like it Is!”

There will be a pause and then nearly everyone will nod and declare what a good idea it is. The only two people who won’t agree will be the ones who came up with the original slogans.

Combining the two slogans is not a good idea.

Firstly, the slogan is now too long.

Secondly, it now contains two ideas – one too many.

Now, I quite agree that creativity can sometimes arise through the process of combining two or more seemingly disparate ideas. But I would also argue that joining together two sentences without any thought for what they mean may result in something new, but that’s not the same as being creative.

Six Tips on Submitting a Story

  • If you don’t submit a story, it will never be accepted
  • Read the submission guidelines
  • The editor is always right. If they found your story boring, unconvincing or unoriginal, then that’s their opinion.
  • If you want to know what the editor finds interesting, convincing and original, then read the stuff they choose to publish. If you don’t like it, then you’re submitting to the wrong market.
  • Everyone hates having their work rejected. Every writer has their work rejected. Successful writers are the ones who learn from past rejections and keep submitting.
  • The best thing to soften the pain of a rejection is to be working on your next story

See Also

My Emacs Writing Setup

A few years ago, due to the interest in my post on Writing Tools, I published an HTML document on my Emacs writing setup. 

I continue to use Emacs to write, however I’ve now adopted Doom Emacs. You can read about my Doom Emacs Writing Set Up here.

If you want to know how I plan and plot stories, you may find the document interesting.  You’ll probably find it more interesting if you use Emacs yourself.

A Note on Emacs

I think of Emacs as a text editors’ tool. As I spend most of my life working with text, either programming or writing, I want to do it as efficiently as possible.

It first struck me when I was editing my novel Divergence just how inefficient I was being in pressing the arrow key and waiting for the cursor to get to where I wanted. That got me thinking about the time spent deleting text, transposing words, moving around paragraphs… I realised there must be a quicker way.

And then I remembered Emacs.

It makes sense for someone who spends most of their time manipulating text to learn a group of obscure key combinations. It saves time and increases productivity. Learning to use Emacs properly reminds me of playing Jazz on the piano. I’ve learnt all those chords and runs and fills so that I can use them without thinking when I’m improvising. Likewise, I’ve practiced using Emacs key strokes such as M-f, M–M-c and C-M-<Space> so often I use them without thinking when editing. I rely on M-/ to complete words, and I can’t do without M-h and C-e to select and move around text.

I practice using Emacs because it makes me a more productive writer. If you’re interested, I’ve written up some of those tips and exercises on my Emacs Workout.