Books – Page 2 – Penstricken

Pants, Plants and Plans: A Beginner’s Guide

Posted on 05/08/201807/08/2018 by Ndrw

If you’re the sort of person who spends a lot of time reading up on story writing, you’ve probably heard myself or other writing bloggers talk about the differences between planners, pantsers and plantsers. It’s a spectrum we writers are all spread out across, separating those on the one extreme who plan everything before they write from those who pants their way through their story (that is, they write ‘by the seat of their pants’, making up the story as they go along with absolutely no forward planning whatsoever). And of course, slap bang in the middle of the spectrum, we have Plantsers (because it’s a combination of the words ‘planner’ and ‘pantser’, see?).

We all naturally gravitate to one side or another on this spectrum. However that doesn’t mean we can’t choose to plan, pant or plant even if it doesn’t come naturally to us. After all, we might be tempted to think that one method is inherently better than the others, and that we should try this.

We might even be right. For my money, I think there are some situations where planning is more appropriate and others where pantsing is more appropriate. I’m not going to tell you categorically that any one method is better than another* but there are pros and cons to each. If you’re struggling with whatever method comes naturally to you, it may be time to try a different approach. And so, what follows is my own ~~short and ill-informed~~ concise analysis of each approach, comparing pros and cons as evenly as I can.

Planning

Strengths: Planning everything in advance saves buckets of time. If you already know exactly what is going to happen, how it’s going to happen and who it’s going to happen to, all neatly ordered into chapters and scenes, you won’t waste time writing lengthy portions of narrative you won’t use. You can also rest easy in the knowledge that your first draft won’t have too many large plot holes to sort out.

This makes it easy to work to a schedule. If you know you can knock out 1000 words a day, you can reasonably well estimate that it will take you about three months to complete a draft, especially in those first drafts, because you won’t get stuck about what to write.

Weaknesses: it’s easily the most strict approach to writing. The writer must be disciplined enough 1) not to begin writing a draft too earlier and 2) not to deviate from the plan when he does start drafting. This does not suit everybody. Many authors find it sucks the pleasure out of writing and stifles the imagination, as new ideas insist on being heard throughout the writing process.

Tips for Planning: Be disciplined. Plan everything and resist the urge to draft until you have completed all your chapter outlines, character biographies, the lot. When you finally do begin to draft, don’t deviate from the plan. Add nothing, change nothing, remove nothing. Write it exactly as you planned it. Remember, dear planner, you’re not making art. You’re constructing an intricate machine.

Pantsing

Strengths: This approach to writing allows the imagination to run wild. Most people who write stories tend to do it because they’re people who like to dream, to create and to give artist form to their flights of fancy. Pantsing lets you do just that. I often find that, while pantsing can produce a lot of excess material, some of it can even be later recycled to create a whole new story. Many of my story ideas have come from material I rejected while pantsing an earlier work.

Weaknesses: If you’re serious about writing for any reason other than as a hobby, you will probably find this approach seriously undermines your productivity and success, especially if you’re writing anything longer than a short story. Pantsing out a novel length story in a couple of months is easy in theory but it is doomed to be full of half baked themes, plot holes and other inconsistencies that will need to be fixed before they can pass over any agent or publisher’s desk. You may find yourself virtually starting from scratch when you come to do your second draft, assuming you ever reach the second draft stage.

Tips for Pantsing: Don’t get too attached to your work. A draft that has been fully pantsed will require a lot more editing than a meticulously planned draft. While killing your darlings is always good advice for any writer, pantsers will probably find themselves producing a lot more darlings (because their imagination has been given unlimited credit in the sweetie shop) that have to be killed (because their story will be full of things that simply don’t work).

Plantsing

Strengths: Plantsers have the best of both worlds. They are anchored to a plan but they are not enslaved to it. If the author wants to make changes halfway through writing their draft, or if they identify problems with their story, they can simply adjust the plan as they go along. The imagination is thereby given space to work but is also kept under a tight leash.

Weaknesses: It’s probably the hardest method to strike the correct balance with, even if you do find yourself naturally gravitating towards it. Planners know to write nothing until their story is fully planned out and pantsers don’t give a rip if their story doesn’t make sense in the first draft, but plantsers must learn to bring these two extremes together and make them work in harmony. It is difficult to create a systematic approach to plantsing and will be largely figured out by trial and error. This can be time consuming and frustrating.

Tips for Plantsing: Plantsing is not creating a plan then disregarding it, nor is it writing a draft then making a plan around it. Both of these are a waste of time. Plantsing involves blending these two seeming opposites in a way which allows you to work to your strengths, while still enjoying the benefits of both extremes. For example, you might pants out a few zero drafts to stimulate your imagination while you plan. Alternatively you might create a very loose-fitting plan (story beats for example, but no chapter outlines) and pants out your novel within the boundaries of that limited plan. You might also decide to forsake character biographies in favour of conducting several ‘interviews’ or ‘auditions’ with your characters to help you get to know them better. The possibilities are truly endless when it comes to plantsing. My best advice is to spend a little time finding an approach which works for you.

Footnotes:

*I know what you’re thinking: ‘if he’s going to be so unbiased in his approach, why has he only got pants in the featured image and nothing else?’ Well the short answer is I just couldn’t find a single picture on the internet which depicted a plan, a pair of pants and a potted plant so I had to pick one. I picked pants because pants are funnier. Sue me.

Thanks for taking the time to read this post. Be sure to leave us a wee comment if you enjoyed it and don’t forget to ‘like’ this post and follow us so you never miss another post. You can also follow Penstricken on Twitter and like Penstricken on Facebook, if that’s what tickles your toes.

Until next time!

ARE YOU AN AUTHOR?

I’m looking for authors (especially, but not limited to, new and/or indie authors) whose work I can feature here on Penstricken over the coming year. It will simply take the form of a quick Q&A about yourself and your work via private message or e-mail and, of course, a link to where we can all get a copy of your work.

I’m open to interviewing authors of almost any kind of story, provided your work is complete, original and of course, fictional. I will not consider individual short stories/micro-fictions, however I am happy to feature published anthologies or entire blog-sites of micro-fiction, provided you are the sole author.

If you’re interested, or want to know more, be to sure to drop us an e-mail or message us on Facebook/Twitter.

App Review: Goodreads Android App 2.0.2

Posted on 29/07/201828/07/2018 by Ndrw

Anyone who is serious about reading is bound to come across Goodreads sooner or later. They might not like it or see the point of it, but they’ll encounter it. And if they happen to sign up for the bookworm’s social network, it won’t be long before they get emails asking them to download the Goodreads App.

Personally, I’ve used Goodreads on and off a couple of times throughout the years. It’s a handy place to read reviews on almost every book ever published and it’s quite a good place to discover new things to read. It’s also great for those people who feels the need to organise and display everything they’ve ever read on the internet like it’s some kind of virtual trophy room.

Anyway, today I got an email asking me to download the new and improved Goodreads Android App.

‘Yes, I will.’ I thought. ‘And then I’ll tell all my faithful readers exactly what I thought of it, mwahaha!’

So, first impressions: it’s much easier on the eye than it used to be. In fact, it’s much easier on the eye than the actual website itself. The home page is a clear and simple single column consisting of your name, your books (ordered into shelves and neatly compressed so that you don’t see all your books on the homepage), your friends/groups and all your updates. Everything you could possibly want to do is accessible from the sidebar menu (again, this is hidden unless you open it) and a single icon for all notifications on the top right. There is also a search bar for looking up books.

App: minimalist layout

Website: display ALL the things!

There isn’t much in the way of new features. Just a few badly needed improvements on the old ones, making version 2.0.2 oh so much more pleasant to use than the older ones.

One of the newest features (also available on the website) is the ‘Explore’ page. ‘Try the new Explore page!’ The Goodreads blog says. ‘Browse books trending on Goodreads, new releases hot off the presses, and community-created reading lists across every genre’, it says. So I did, I tried it. It was alright. I don’t know if it’s new as much as newly packaged, but it’s still worth a look if you’re looking for something new to read. If you live in the US you can also use the Explore page to get deals on books by your favourite authors or from your ‘want to read’ shelf sent directly to your inbox.

The ‘My Books’ section has also been improved to make it somewhat more customisable. Books can now be sorted in order of title, author, average rating, number of ratings, publication year and a whole bunch of other things. As far as I can tell, doing this on the app does not in any way affect the order of your books on the website. You can also use the ‘My Books’ section to access your Kindle notes.

Another feature that has been added to the ‘My Books’ section is the ability to add additional dates for when you read a book. This is handy if you’re the sort of person who likes to re-read books. On the surface, this feature is very intuitive and easy on the eye however when I attempted to add a second set of dates for a book I had previously read, I discovered I had to add a finishing date at the same time, which was a little annoying though hardly the end of the world.

As before, the app has one major advantage/annoyance (delete as appropriate) that the website does not have: the ability to use your phone’s camera to scan a book’s bar code, and use that information to automatically add said book to your Goodreads bookshelf. If you do it that way, you even stand a fair chance of finding the correct edition of your book! Alas, even with this new and improved version of the app, it still took about a hundred attempts at holding my camera perfectly still and exactly the right distance from my book just to scan a single bar code, however when it finally did scan, it did scan accurately. You can also scan front covers, which is nice. Covers are a heck of a lot easier to capture with a camera if, like me, you’re not a photographer and you do not have arms of stone.

All in all, not a bad app. There isn’t a whole lot of new features to scream about and it’s certainly not perfect but it’s much easier on the eye than before and runs a lot more smoothly. It’s hardly blown my socks off but it’s alright.

My rating: 🌟🌟🌟

Until next time!

ARE YOU AN AUTHOR?

If you’re interested, or want to know more, be to sure to drop us an e-mail or message us on Facebook/Twitter.

Theme: The Truth Behind the Tale

Posted on 01/07/201827/06/2018 by Ndrw

I once read somewhere (and I do wish I could remember where so I could give proper credit) that we story-writers are in the entertainment industry; that the primary goal of the story-writer is to entertain. While I basically agree with this statement, I think it’s also true that the best stories all have something real to say.

This is where theme comes into play. The term can be a little bit broad sometimes so just to be clear, when I talk about a story’s theme, I am referring to the meaning(s) or dare I say, the message(s) of the story. What fundamental truth(s) are you conveying in your idle fantasy? What aspects of real life are you exploring? And equally as important, how are you conveying that truth?

Let’s look at the easy(ish) bit first: identifying your theme (we’ll come back to how to convey your theme later). Themes can take many forms: it can be a moral lesson (e.g., ‘don’t do drugs, kids’), a particular idea or belief (‘the meaning of life is such-and-such’, ‘God is like this’, ‘socialism/capitalism is destructive in this way’, etc.) or it can be a general portrait of a particular subject (friendship, poverty, religion, etc.). Depending on how you write, you may have decided on a theme before anything else (that is to say, your initial idea was something like ‘I want to write a story about domestic violence’) or the theme may have come about as a natural byproduct of your story. If it’s the latter, you might be tempted to ask yourself: ‘do I really need to identify my theme(s), since they occurred purely by happenstance after I began writing the story?’.

Answer: yes, you do. After all, whether it was your intention to write a story about lies, sex and/or murder or not, your audience will pick up on these themes if they’re there. And believe me, if you’ve written a half-decent story, there will be at least a couple of naturally occuring themes. It’s unavoidable. Has one of your characters been pursuing a love interest who doesn’t reciprocate his feelings? Then your theme is unrequited love. You may not have intended it, but it’s there, growing wild in the tulip patch that is your story. Depending on how your characters behave, it may also become a story about obsession, harassment or rejection. Therefore, since it’s almost impossible to write a good story without a theme or two popping out of the mix, it’s worthwhile identifying your theme so that you can make it work for you. Themes may be naturally occurring, but they shouldn’t be allowed to grow wild. Once you’ve identified them, you can use them to really enrich your story.

How you convey your theme is something else entirely, and will depend largely on the kind of story you’re writing, but the best advice I can give you is this: avoid sounding preachy. That’s not what people want from a story and it will certainly annoy your reader, even if they agree with you. Don’t misunderstand me, you should be bold in communicating your ideas, but there’s a way to do it and a way not to do it. The chances are your readers came to your book quite comfortable in their own opinions. If you want to change their opinions, you’ll need to do it with tact and subtly. Show them the truth by the events of your story.

In the same way, avoid soapboxing (yes, I just made that term up). This is when you turn your characters into a soapbox from which you casually throw out your opinions on controversial subjects, usually in the form of internal or external dialogue. e.g.:

Pro-abortion soapboxing: There was a small group of nuns standing outside the hospital, clutching pictures of the Madonna and Child. Isobel shook her head. Didn’t these outdated old crones realise that a woman has the right to make decisions about her own body?

Anti-abortion soapboxing: There was a small group of nuns standing outside the hospital, clutching pictures of the Madonna and Child. Isobel shook her head. It saddened and amazed her to think that in this day and age, there was still any need to protest what was clearly the legally sanctioned murder of unborn babies.

Soapboxing won’t only annoy your reader, it will actually undermine your story. Remember stories and characters must develop. A story never ends where it began, because the characters therein must develop (even if that ‘development’ involves a downward spiral of self-destruction). If a character’s strongly-held beliefs are relevant to the story, they ought to be challenged throughout that story (and probably, although not necessarily, altered in some way by the end). Therefore, if you begin with absolute statements (‘such-and-such is evil!‘) you’ve nowhere to go but contradiction or compromise (‘such-and-such isn’t so bad after all’ or ‘I’m not sure what I think about such-and-such now’). You could, of course, end with an absolute statement (‘Jeanie thought such-and-such was okay, but now she knew it was evil!‘) but that is a very lazy way to write. If your audience was truly drawn into Jeanie’s plight throughout the story, they’ve probably already come to the conclusion that such-and-such is evil. They don’t need you to lecture them.

If, on the other hand, your character’s opinions are not not relevant to the overall story, ask yourself why you’ve included them. There may be a legitimate reason to include them (e.g., characterisation), but if it’s nothing more than an opportunity to soapbox, chop it out. Air your controversial opinions on Twitter if you must, but don’t let it ruin your story.

Remember, your audience didn’t come here to learn your opinions. Your audience doesn’t give a rip about your opinions, even if they happen to share them. Instead, focus on telling the story. Make it as true as you can and fill it with believable, sympathetic characters to whom your reader can relate. They’ll start to understand what it’s like to be in that position and will begin to think. And that’s all you can hope to accomplish as a writer: provoke thought. You cannot force someone to believe something. You can only offer them the truth as you see it.

Until next time!

ARE YOU AN AUTHOR?

If you’re interested, or want to know more, be to sure to drop us an e-mail or message us on Facebook/Twitter.

Author Interview: Sharleen Nelson (part 2 of 2)

Posted on 10/06/201807/06/2018 by Ndrw

SPOILER ALERT

While every effort has been made to avoid spoilers in this post, anyone who has not read The Time Tourists by Sharleen Nelson is hereby advised that this post may contain a few unavoidable spoilers.

If there’s one thing I love, it’s a truly imaginative story. As a story about a time travelling private detective, The Time Tourists by Sharleen Nelson definitely fits that category!

I had the pleasure of interviewing Sharleen, whose debut novel The Time Tourists is available to buy on Amazon and other retail outlets. This is the second half of that interview. Click here to read the first half.

Let’s talk some more about your characters. Teddy is probably one of the most messed up characters I’ve ever come across. He’s absolutely vile in many respects and guilty of some pretty awful crimes yet there is also something pitiable about him. How do you go about developing a character like that?

He started out being just this borderline sociopathic neighbourhood bully with a kooky mother. We do feel sorry for him at times because, after all, he is this sort of confused teenage boy who wants to be good–he is envious of Imogen’s family. He would like more than anything to be their boy and have a normal life. But on the other hand, his mother has been doing unspeakably vile things to him since he was a child. He knows he will never be able to recapture that innocence and he also doesn’t feel like he deserves to be loved and he takes all that rage and pent-up anger and directs it at Tiffany. But just when he was beginning to feel better about his life, she shows up with the news that she is pregnant. He liked his job. Niles was mentoring him. He was thinking about a career. But Tiffany ruined everything. His reaction was obviously to get rid of her. In developing Teddy, I read up on sociopathic behaviours– antisocial behaviour, deceitfulness, hostility, irresponsibility, manipulativeness, risk taking behaviours, aggression, impulsivity, irritability, lack of restraint–and combined that with a narcissistic, abusive mother–and voila! Teddy.

You mentioned earlier that Imogen had her own opinions about things. Throughout The Time Tourists, the audience is privy to a lot of Imogen’s strongly-held beliefs about a whole range of controversial subjects from abortion to Darwinism. Do you think it’s important for authors to use their protagonists to make points on important real-life subjects?

I think every author’s approach is different. Each author has their own story to tell. I don’t know that it’s necessarily important, but for me personally, I think addressing real-world topics makes my characters more believable. I read something the other day about the movie Dirty Dancing. Everyone loves that film and it always feels like this very light, entertaining outing about dancing. However, the entire premise for Baby and Johnny getting together at all is because she is called upon to fill in for his usual dance partner after she falls victim to a botched, illegal abortion. I also think that if my characters are going back in time I have a responsibility to provide context and comparison.

If they ever make a film adaptation of The Time Tourists, who would you choose to play the lead characters?

Haha, I actually have thought about this–what author hasn’t? I sort of envision Jennifer Lawrence (Katniss in The Hunger Games) or maybe Emma Watson (Hermoine Granger from Harry Potter)– both seem like strong, feminist-type women. For Herbert Doran– Michael Shannon. He is so intense and awesome. Simon was actually based on a sort of Robert Downey, Jr. prototype, but I think we’d need someone a bit younger for the role. Not sure about Teddy– a method actor, for sure!

The Time Tourists is, of course, the first book in the Dead Relatives Inc. series. Now I know you won’t want to give too much away but I have to ask: what’s next for Imogen?

Imogen will have more adventures in time, of course, but there are a number of loose ends– her mother and father are still lost in time and we may never know what happened to Tiffany, or will we? I envision Mimi Pinky playing a larger role in this second book. Simon will have to also become acclimated to living 100 years in the future and as the new guy in Imogen’s life, I envision some conflict between he and her ex-boyfriend Fletcher. There will be a few other surprises that I’ll keep under wraps. I also see some danger ahead.

Final question: do you have any advice for anyone out there who might be thinking about writing their first novel?

Forget an audience. Write for yourself and don’t censure yourself. What do you like to read about? When I was a little girl, I enjoyed it so much because I was basically telling myself a story. Enjoy the journey. Just like the reader, as the writer I keep going so I can find out what happens next. Say what you want to say and write what you yourself would like to read.

The Time Tourists by Sharleen Nelson is available to buy now on Amazon and other retail outlets.

Click here to visit Sharleen Nelson’s author page.

MISSED PART 1 OF THIS INTERVIEW? CLICK HERE TO READ IT.

ATTENTION AUTHORS:

I’m hoping to do author interviews here on Penstricken over the coming year, especially with new fiction authors. If you’re interested in having your work featured on Penstricken, be to sure to drop us an e-mail or message us on Facebook/Twitter.

Until next time!

Author Interview: Sharleen Nelson (part 1 of 2)

Posted on 03/06/201808/06/2018 by Ndrw

SPOILER ALERT

If there’s one thing I love, it’s a truly imaginative story. As a story about a time travelling private detective, The Time Tourists by Sharleen Nelson definitely fits that category!

I had the pleasure of interviewing Sharleen Nelson, whose debut novel The Time Tourists is available to buy on Amazon and other retail outlets. What follows is part one of that interview. Be sure to check back next week for part two!

You’ve been a journalist and an award-winning photographer for over twenty years. What made you decide to write a novel?

I have always been a writer, ever since I was a little girl. I used to spin stories in my head, complete with an array of characters and dialogue. I started one novel and got about 40,000 words into it, but then couldn’t figure out what to do with the characters, so abandoned it. This particular story started percolating about 10 years ago. My father had died recently and I was pretty devastated. I thought that getting lost in a nice little fantasy might be good therapy.

What was the main inspiration behind The Time Tourists?

Well at the time I was working as a magazine editor/writer at this place called Marathon Coach– they build these million dollar luxury buses. Anyway, in the bathroom were framed prints of local street scenes from around the turn of the century– people walking, doing things, cars and buggies. I remember looking at those and thinking, ‘how cool would it be to just be able to walk into that picture, into that scene and be a part of it.’ I love history. I’m a photographer, and if time travel was real, I would totally do it! The combination of things just sort of meshed and I started forming the story. I didn’t want to deal with the tech part of having a time machine; I wanted it to be more of a magical thing, so that when my character arrived somewhere in time, the universe just filled in everything for her.

Did you find anything particularly difficult about writing this novel?

Yes, I wanted it to be more character-driven, less science fiction. I guess you could say it’s more of a fantasy, but it doesn’t really fit neatly into either genre. I guess you’d call it ‘speculative fiction’. The most difficult part of writing it for me was letting myself get bogged down with plot structure. I knew the story. I never have writer’s block at all, but I wasted a good deal of time organising and reorganising and moving chapters around–should I weave in the backstory? Should it be chronological? Finally, I just decided that I needed to write the damn thing and worry about that later. Once I did that, it all sort of fell into place.

When I first read the synopsis I thought I might be getting a sort of sci-fi/cozy mystery combination but there are actually a lot of different and sometimes very dark themes running through this story making it quite hard to categorise (definitely not a cozy, however!). What would you say was your central theme(s)?

That is a great question! You’re right, it isn’t the cozy tale that one might expect. Of course, as every writer does, I drew things from my own life and I wanted Imogen to be this very real, complex person with opinions about things. I didn’t want to just send her off on adventures without the audience knowing what motivates her. So much of it evolved as I was going along. It’s true what people say, that sometimes characters seem to have minds of their own. Teddy is a very dark and twisted character. He came about from an experience I had when I was 19. I was majoring in psychology and for a time, I volunteered on a crisis line. The phone calls were routed to my home phone and I had a list of resources to recommend to people who called in. One night, a 16-year-old boy called. I wasn’t supposed to counsel anyone, just refer them, but he started telling me this horrible story about how his mother was abusing him sexually and that she would let him use the car if he slept with her. Of course, that stuck with me and not only did it make the reader feel more sympathetic to the Teddy character, he wasn’t all pure evil, but also showed that abuse comes in many forms. It’s not always male perpetrators. I also wanted to explore themes like religion, misogyny, feminism, or what it’s like being a gay person in another time. So I’m not sure that there is a central theme. I just wanted to create characters that the reader could maybe identify with, who have real motivations and real flaws.

COME BACK NEXT WEEK FOR PART 2.

The Time Tourists by Sharleen Nelson is available to buy now on Amazon and other retail outlets.

Click here to visit Sharleen Nelson’s author page.

ATTENTION AUTHORS:

Until next time!

Writing a Good Character Description

Posted on 20/05/201816/05/2018 by Ndrw

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times: characters are the beating heart of every good story. Good characters, more often than not, make for a good story. That means you need to write a character with strong goals, strong motives and a clear problem to overcome. We know this. Nevertheless, it also goes without saying that your characters must all have a physical appearance, which you can describe to the reader (unless, of course, you’re writing some highly ambitious piece of supernatural fiction where all your characters are non-corporeal beings who never interact with physical reality as we know it).

Let me tell you right now, there’s an art to describing characters. Do it right and your audience will have such a vivid image in their minds that they’ll swear they’ve actually met your character. Do it wrong and you might just produce one of the most pedestrian scenes in your entire story. Nothing drags the pace of a narrative down quite like a long winded description of Jimmy’s hair colour, eye colour and whatever unremarkable clothes he might be wearing. I say it’s better to have no physical description than a bad one.

If you give a simple description of height, weight, hair colour, eye colour and so on you will not only bore the reader to tears but you will also, in the most long-winded way possible, tell us nothing significant about the character. Instead, focus on distinguishing features and other details which help us to really get to know the character. Let us refer, once more, to the master, John Steinbeck. He described his character, Lennie Small, in this way:

A huge man, shapeless of face, with large, pale eyes, with wide, sloping shoulders; and he walked heavily, dragging his feet a little, the way a bear drags his paws. His arms did not swing at his sides, but hung loosely and only moved because the heavy hands were pendula.

(John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men).

If you’ve read Of Mice and Men, you’ll know there are two essential things to know about Lennie Small: 1) he’s a large and strong man and 2) he has a childlike mind. These two facts form the basis for his entire plotline from start to finish. Is it any surprise, then, that Steinbeck’s description emphasises these qualities? Just look at the adjectives/adverbs: ‘huge’, ‘large’, ‘wide’, ‘heavily’, ‘heavy’. All these words signify bigness. Notice, incidentally, that Steinbeck never says ‘tall’, nor does he give a specific height. After all, Steinbeck’s purpose is to emphasise how physically imposing Lennie is but not all tall people are imposing. Whether Lennie is tall or not is unimportant. What matters is that he is huge.

Similarly words like ‘shapeless’, ‘pale’ and ‘hung loosely’, used to describe his face, eyes and body language all have a certain vacant quality to them. The bear metaphor is especially powerful, as bears are animals which are known to be physically imposing but not frightfully intellectual. Nothing in this description is superfluous. It tells us everything we need to know about Lennie. We can imagine unimportant details like his hair colour for ourselves.

Another important thing to consider is how subjective/objective your word choice is. Objective language sticks to the facts. For example: ‘Johnny had brown eyes’. Subjective language is based on one’s personal impressions: ‘Johnny had eyes of the richest chocolate’. Or alternatively, ‘Johnny had eyes like a pair of dirty brown pebbles’. Striking the right subjective/objective balance can be hard and will be largely dependent on your narrative POV. As a rule, First Person and Third Person (Limited) narratives can and should include a generous dose of subjective language, since we are being given the personal impressions of a particular character. We want to know whether or not the narrator is attracted to or repelled by the character in question. Third Person (Omniscient), on the other hand, should be more reserved with its use of subjective language. But that’s only a guideline.

One last tip: use vivid but precise language. Consider again Steinbeck’s description of Lennie. The word ‘pendula’, used to describe the movements of Lennie’s arms, creates a very sharp image in the reader’s mind. After all, we’ve all seen the lazy, mindless but unceasing swing of a pendulum that hangs from a clock, powered by nothing but simple physics. We can imagine that motion so clearly that it is easy to picture Lennie’s arms as they swing in a way that more bland language might not have been able to convey. Beware, however. Don’t let clever sounding words get in the way of a description which is also precise. Steinbeck is a master of description not only because of the vivid imagery he employs, but also because the imagery is so very appropriate. If simple language creates desired effect, use it. Don’t bamboozle your reader with ~~peripheral~~ unnecessary purple prose, especially not if it is less precise than simple language. You will lose your reader’s attention if you do. Instead, aim to use words and metaphors which convey an accurate and vivid image in the most direct way possible.

Remember, your reader doesn’t really care what your character looks like. They care about who your character is. So when you describe your character’s looks, cut to the chase. Keep it snappy, keep it sharp and most importantly of all, keep it relevant.

ARE YOU AN AUTHOR?

If you’re interested, or want to know more, be to sure to drop us an e-mail or message us on Facebook/Twitter.

Super Snappy Speed Reviews – Books (Vol. 3)

Posted on 11/03/201810/03/2018 by Ndrw

SPOILER ALERT

While every effort has been made to avoid spoilers in this post, anyone who has not read: Uncommon Type: Some Stories by Tom Hanks, The Seven by Peter Newman, Goldfinger by Ian Fleming, A Touch of Frost by R.D. Wingfield, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ by Lew Wallace or The Green Mile by Stephen King is hereby advised that this point may contain a few unavoidable spoilers.

You know the rules by now! After all, we’ve already had super snappy speed reviews for books [2], TV shows, films, computer games and even the Star Trek movies. And so today we’re back for a third dose of super snappy book reviews. As before, the books I have reviewed here have been selected entirely at random from my ever-growing book collection and do not necessarily have anything in common apart from the fact that they are all books. They are not necessarily books that I particularly liked or disliked, nor are they sorted into any particular order.

As always, these reviews only reflect my own personal opinions and impressions, sliced, diced and minced into a few short sentences. So without further ado…

Uncommon Type: Some Stories by Tom Hanks

Yes, that Tom Hanks. His debut collection of short stories was decidedly okay. He almost lost me in the first story Three Exhausting Weeks when he used emojis, and the overall flow of the narrative was a little clumsy at points throughout the collection (too many unnecessary profanities for my taste) but there was enough high quality material in there to keep me reading until the end. For me, his writing demonstrated a wonderful creativity but was just slightly deficient in the subtle use of language which can turn an excellent story into a beautiful work of art.

I expected worse but I hoped for better.

My rating: 🌟🌟

The Seven by Peter Newman

I swore I would never review this book; not because I don’t like it, but because there is just so much Peter Newman love on this website [2] [3] [4] [5] and on my Twitter account [2] [3] [4] [5] [6], I was getting scared he might think I was some kind of weirdo stalker and call the police on me. But what can I say? These books were chosen at random and this is what came up so, here we go. A nice, measured, critical review of The Seven:

I LOVE THE SEVEN. It is an excellent conclusion to an excellent series filled with sharp characters, a vividly imagined dystopian setting, nicely seasoned with just the right amount of comedy relief. I don’t know if I love it quite as much as the first book but I still love its socks off.

My rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟

Goldfinger by Ian Fleming

The original novels upon which the James Bond movies are based tend to be quite hit or miss. Some of them are unputdownable thrill rides which have you on the edge of your seat from cover to cover. Unfortunately, Goldfinger features waaaaaay too much golf for my liking.

I’m not knocking golf. But this is a spy-thriller for goodness’ sake and my main memory of it is Bond playing golf with Goldfinger. Fleming devoted not one, but several chapters to describing this single round of golf in considerable detail. I won’t lie to you, I started skipping whole paragraphs after a while. It’s not often I say this, but just watch the film instead.

Bored, James Bored.

My rating: 🌟

A Touch of Frost by R.D. Wingfield

There are some things I loved about this novel and there are some things I did not love about this novel.

I loved the useless, bumbling and irreverant Frost character and, to a lesser extent, the Mullett character and the interplay between them. The overall plot was good and reasonably well paced.

I did not love the poorly handled third person omniscient narrative which told us almost everything every character was thinking. Nor did I love the crude and at times downright sleazy humour Wingfield invoked. The female characters are all presented as cheap sex objects and the males without exception are chauvinists at best, often making crude jokes about rape and other sensitive topics.

My rating: 🌟🌟

Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ by Lew Wallace

If only all Christian fiction was as excellent as Ben-Hur; for Christian fiction it is, though it is so far removed from the modern genre that it is barely recognisable as such. This novel’s got it all: conspiracy, revenge, romance, adventure and even chariot racing. Themes of family, friendship, gender, slavery and life-after-death are all explored in a way that leaves the reader thinking long after the book has been finished. The characters are excellent, especially the protagonist (Judah Ben-Hur) and his childhood friend turned arch-nemesis, Messalla. I should warn you that there is quite a lot of theo-philosophical discourse between various characters. Fortunately, I like theo-philosophical discourse and it is executed in such a way that it does not seriously harm the pacing of the story.

My rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟+ ∞

The Green Mile by Stephen King

When I reviewed the film adaptation of this novel, I gave it a glorious 5 stars +∞; a rating I give only to those stories which (in my opinion) set the standards for their particular genre. But a good film adaptation will never be born of a bad novel and the same is true here. The Green Mile is an excellent novel; by far my favourite by Stephen King. It might be something to do with the fact I’m not a particular lover of horror but I don’t think so. This novel has vibrant characters, detailed settings and a beautiful first person narrative in which the protagonist describes events that happened in his past as well as events that are happening to him now, as he writes the story decades later.

My rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Until next time!

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Novelist: A Handy App for Planning Your Novel

Posted on 04/02/201803/02/2018 by Ndrw

I have always said that to write a novel, or any significantly sized piece of writing, a writer must be willing to park himself down at his computer and write. There is no quick fix for writing. No easy button you can tap on your phone and make a high quality novel pop out.

I still believe that. But that’s not to say mobile apps can’t help you in your quest to write a story, especially when you’re on the go and need a simple, orderly means of gathering together all those little plot bunnies that jump into your head at the worst possible moments. For that reason, I’ve been trying out a nice little app I discovered on Google Play called Novelist by Alessandro Riperi.

Is it a good app? Yeah, I would say it is. It won’t make your breakfast for you and it certainly won’t make you the next John Steinbeck, but it has all the basic functionality needed to help you get you from a plot bunny to a complete chapter outline with little fuss.

Let’s look at a few of its features.

The first thing you will get when you open the app for the first time is a little spiel explaining how to use the app. After that, you go straight to the home page and — as far as I can tell — you never get the little introductory lecture again. The home page itself is a pretty self-explanatory window displaying all of your projects (which you can illustrate with an image from your device’s memory, if you’re that way inclined), including a pre-loaded ‘tutorial’ project which you can edit and tinker with to your heart’s content (don’t worry! If you make a total mess of the tutorial project, it’s easy to generate a new one from the menu on the home screen).

Once you create a project, the app takes you through three stages: ‘plotting’, ‘outlining’ and ‘organising’, apparently with the idea that you work through these three stages in order.

LordDeathmetadata — An example character profile using metadata.

Under ‘plotting’, we have a space to create all those elements which are fundamental to story-writing: characters, locations (settings), themes, key events and so forth. These are referred to as ‘items’ in this app, which are easy to customise with a title, synopsis, text and images as you see fit. All of these items can be tagged, duplicated and shifted from one category to another. Best of all, each of these items comes with the option of including metadata, allowing you to quickly list all the vital details of your character, setting or theme. You can also add ‘notes’ and ‘text’ to each item, though I must admit I’m a little fuzzy on why these are separate features.

Under the ‘planning’ tab, you are invited to organise your story into scenes. You create new scenes in a similar way to how you create items in the plotting section, with a title and a synopsis. As before, you have the ability to add text or notes to each scene, however you do not have the ability to add images or metadata. What you can do is tag your scenes with the items you created in the plotting stage; not a feature I personally find useful because that’s just not the way my brain works but I know it will suit plenty of other writers down to the ground.

Finally, the ‘organising’ section allows you to organise the scenes you have created into chapters/sections as you see fit. The order of these scenes and sections can be easily jiggled about until you are happy that you have a full-blown chapter layout. The only real drawback here is that you can’t see any of the details about the scenes you created in this section apart from their titles and synopses. Apart from that, it makes it an absolute joy to organise and re-organise the order of your sections, chapters and scenes.

Plotting (locations)

Outline

Organising

There’s something else I love about this app: it’s free. Okay, I know that’s not technically a feature but still… it’s an actual, truly, honestly to goodness full version that’s absolutely free. Not ‘free, but hey, we’ve got a better version that’s not free’; not ‘free for the first thirty days’; not even ‘free as long as you tell us where you live and watch a bunch of ads’. In fact, I haven’t even seen any ads! It’s just FREE. I am so happy I could weep.

In summery, if you’re looking for an app to write your manuscript on, this isn’t it. I don’t think it was ever meant to be used for that purpose. But if you own an Android device and are looking for a clean and simple way to develop an idea into a fully fledged chapter outline, including character profiles and all that other marvellous stuff that planners love so much, this app is definitely worth a look. It’s free, easy to use and covers all the story-planning essentials without forcing you to watch any pesky little ads. Go and get it!

My rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟

Until next time!

ARE YOU AN AUTHOR?

If you’re interested, or want to know more, be to sure to drop us an e-mail or message us on Facebook/Twitter.

50 Quotes About Writing

Posted on 28/01/201826/01/2018 by Ndrw

Well, we’ve already had fifty quotes about fiction in general so today it’s time for another fifty quotes, this time providing advice, encouragement and general reflections on the process of writing. So without further ado…

‘I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.’ — Douglas Adams
‘There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.’ — Maya Angelou
‘There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.’ — Ernest Hemingway
‘Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.’ — Mark Twain
‘If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.’ — Stephen King
‘It’s hell writing and it’s hell not writing. The only tolerable state is having just written.’ — Robert Hass
‘We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.’ — Anaïs Nin
‘Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.’ — E.L. Doctorow
‘A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world.’ — Susan Sontag
‘You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.’ — Madeleine L’Engle
‘If a story is in you it has got to come out.’ — William Faulkner
‘You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.’ — Saul Bellow
‘I’m not a very good writer but I’m an excellent rewriter.’ — James Michener
‘You only learn to be a better writer by actually writing.’ — Doris Lessing
‘It is a very cool thing to be a writer.’ — Bryan Hutchinson
‘You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.’ — Ray Bradburry
‘If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.’ – Toni Morrison
‘Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.’ — Louis L’Amour
‘Substitute “damn” every time you’re inclined to write “very”; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.’ — Mark Twain
‘The only writer to whom you should compare yourself is the writer you were yesterday.’ — David Schlosser
‘Step into a scene and let it drip from your fingertips.’ — M.J. Bush
‘Growing up is highly overrrated. Just be an author.’ — Neil Gaiman
‘Be ruthless about protecting writing days, i.e., do not cave in to endless requests to have “essential” and “long overdue” meetings on those days.’ — J.K. Rowling
‘What doesn’t kill us gives us something to write about.’ — Julie Wright
‘There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.’ — W. Somerset Maugham
‘When asked “how do you write?” I invariably answer “one word at a time.”‘ — Stephen King
‘Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.’ — Isaac Asimov
‘Writing is show business for shy people.’ — Lee Child
‘It is perfectly okay to write garbage –as long as you edit brilliantly.’ — C.J. Cherryh
‘If you’re writing stuff, you’re a writer. If you’re not writing stuff, you’re not a writer. If you publish ten thousand best sellers, all of which get made into films, then stop writing, you’re no longer a writer… Similarly, if you are writing with any kind of regularity, you are a real writer. You might be a professional or only an amateur, but you are a writer. Really.’ — A. Ferguson
‘If you want to change the world, pick up your pen and write.’ — Martin Luther
‘Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else.’ — C.S. Lewis
‘Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.’ — William Wordsworth
‘Imagination is like a muscle. I found out that the more I wrote, the bigger it got.’ — Philip José Farmer
‘I write to find out what I’m talking about.’ — Edward Albee
‘Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon.’ — Raymond Chandler
‘You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.’ — Annie Proulx
‘Don’t be a writer. Be writing.’ — William Faulkner
‘Writing is like giving yourself homework, really hard homework, every day, for the rest of your life. You want glamorous? Throw glitter at the computer screen.’ — Katrina Monroe
‘Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.’ — Natalie Goldberg
‘To write well, express yourself like the common people, but think like a wise man.’ — Aristotle
‘You can make anything by writing.’ — C.S. Lewis
‘I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters that I am not. I write to explore all the things I’m afraid of.’ — Joss Whedon
‘I need solitude for my writing; not “like a hermit” — that wouldn’t be enough — but like a dead man.’ — Franz Kafka
‘Writers don’t make any money at all. We make about a dollar. It is terrible. But then again we don’t work either. We sit around in our underwear until noon then go downstairs and make coffee, fry some eggs, read the paper, read part of a book, smell the book, wonder if perhaps we ourselves should work on our book, smell the book again, throw the book across the room because we are quite jealous that any other person wrote a book, feel terribly guilty about throwing the schmuck’s book across the room because we secretly wonder if God in heaven noticed our evil jealousy, or worse, our laziness. We then lie across the couch facedown and mumble to God to forgive us because we are secretly afraid He is going to dry up all our words because we envied another man’s stupid words. And for this, as I said, we are paid a dollar. We are worth so much more.’ — Donald Miller
‘Some writers enjoy writing, I am told. Not me. I enjoy having written.’ — George R.R. Martin
‘A word after a word after a word is power.’ — Margaret Atwood
‘A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.’ — Thomas Mann
‘Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That’s why it’s so hard.’ — David McCullough
‘Serious writers write, inspired or not. Over time they discover that routine is a better friend than inspiration.’ — Ralph Keyes

Until next time!

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Should You Use Profanity in Your Story?

Posted on 21/01/201820/01/2018 by Ndrw

I’ve been reading Tom Hanks’ Uncommon Type: Some Stories. It’s not really my intention to review it here today (not least of all because I haven’t read it all yet), but I will say I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the quality of his writing. It doesn’t read like an actor trying to make a few extra quid by writing a book. It reads like something written by a professional author who knows a thing or two about writing quality stories. In short, I’m enjoying it. But something else about it surprised me: the language. There’s a lot of profanity in there and for some reason, I expected Tom Hanks’ work to be a little bit more family friendly. Don’t ask me why. Maybe it’s just because I’m hearing it in Woody the Cowboy’s voice.

Anyway, this all got me thinking about the use of profanity in fiction. We authors walk a fine line between realism and rudeness, especially when it comes to writing dialogue. Where do you draw the line?

Well… it depends.

The first and most obvious thing is to consider your audience and what they expect from your story. Certain audiences tend to go for certain genres, and as such, the level of profanity in your work will often be largely dependent on your genre. If you have a real aversion to using any profanity whatsoever in your writing, the simplest way around this is to stick to those genres which tend to have less profanity in them. Alternatively, you can always sit down and watch the soaps for inspiration. Really, I’m serious. Emmerdale, Eastenders and Coronation Street are simply chock full of characters having heated arguments about adultery, betrayal, crime and all sorts of other grim subjects without a single f-bomb being dropped.

giphy — Image source: http://gph.is/1c3k48L

However, let’s assume you are willing to use some profanity in your story. There might be lots of reasons why you use bad language in your story. In Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Spock makes frequent (mis)use of mild profanity in a vain attempt to fit in with 20th century human society. Here it serves a very simple function: comedy relief (even though The Voyage Home is pretty light-hearted anyway). It also works, because it’s done in a fairly subtle way. Bad language is also often used to add a sense of anger or urgency to a character’s dialogue. It is, therefore, an undeniably useful tool for some authors.

A word of warning, however: profanity has the power to augment your story or to utterly ruin it, perhaps more than any other technique you might use. A measure of bad language may or may not be appropriate if you’re writing for adults, but bad language is not the defining characteristic of a good adult story. It is simply a tool that you may decide to use or not use as you see fit. Overusing it, as with any other literary technique, can destroy your story. The fact is, profanity loses its power very quickly. The more often bad language is used, the more desensitised the reader becomes to it. What began as a striking technique with which to shock or amuse the audience quickly becomes nothing more than a few pointless extra words which ruin the flow of the narrative.

‘But in real life, some people do swear ten times in a single sentence!’ I hear you cry. ‘How can I make my dialogue realistic if I water it down?’

It can be tempting to think this. On the surface it seems perfectly rational. However, any seasoned author knows that dialogue in fiction is actually very different from the way real people talk from day to day. Dialogue flows. Dialogue makes sense. Dialogue is to-the-point. Even when sub-text is used, what is said remains clear and advances the story in a very definite direction. For this reason, profanity may sometimes be necessary but it should be carefully measured, lest it lost its power.

In real life, people talk rubbish. They say things they don’t mean. They’ll change the subject. They’ll utterly misunderstand the subject and, you know, they’ll like… how can I put it? They’ll, I don’t know, they’ll– respond in inappropriate ways. You know, like, you’ll say something and they’ll say something back and it’s obvious they’ve not understood you because what they’ve said back doesn’t make any sense. Like that time I was talking to Sandra about fly fishing and she… [insert long winded, irrelevant anecdote here]. They’ll misuse pacific words, mishandle slang and make such a mess of their utterances that it frankly beggars belief that humans are able to communicate verbally at all.

In the same way a real person might swear twenty times per sentence, but if you want to fictionalise that person, you’ll probably want to tone down his language lest it ruin the flow of your narrative.

One last thing to bear in mind: You’re never going to please everyone. What matters, therefore, is you, your story and your intended audience (not necessarily in that order). Ask yourself, why am I using profanity here? Is it really necessary to make my story work? Am I comfortable using it? Will it produce the correct response in my intended audience (forget your ‘unintended’ audience; you can’t possibly please everyone), or will it bore/offend them? Ultimately, you have to decide for yourself what’s appropriate. Personally, I find less is usually more when it comes to profanity, but maybe that’s just me.

Until next time!

ARE YOU AN AUTHOR?

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