PLOT OUTLINE OR SYNOPSIS; Which do you need?

 Plotlines and Synopses 

People often get muddled when referring to the plot outline or synopsis of their story. There is a huge difference between the two. Until you are ready to market your work, don’t attempt to write a synopsis, and refrain from calling any outline you write a synopsis, even in your own head. 

 A synopsis or proposal should not be written until after the work has been completed (at least in the first draft)  – it’s the overview that other people want to see, not something that you should work from. 

Meanwhile, as you create the work, you’ll need an outline of some kind (even if you are the most avid of ‘character-led’ writers). You can call this a plotline, plot outline, plot map, story outline...whatever you like, so long as you don’t call it a synopsis!

Try this Kitchen Table Exercise 

• 3Draw a representation of an ECG – the line your heartbeat takes electrically – on a sheet of paper. (You don’t have to be medically exact!). 
• This pattern is also an excellent plan of a good plot.
• Try to slot the plot of your story (short or long,) into the cardiogram.  
• There should be peaks or climaxes, where the action and drama rise to a point, and resting phases, which are absorbing to read but allow a rest between the action. 
• As we get to the middle of the story, the heart rate should increase, and the peaks shoot a little higher, reaching their highest point towards or at the end, just as your reader's heartbeat should increase as they 'get into' your story and begin to turn the pages faster.
• Take a look at what you've got. Did your plot go up and down?
• If you have to admit your story is in asystole, (a flat line), your story is as dead as the patient on the table. 
• If it seems to have fibrillation (too fast a heartbeat), you may have too much plot and not enough character development; your reader will want ‘resting phases’ as they read, which is why the pattern has peaks and troughs.
• NB: this is NOT your plot outline. It's an exercise to lead you into creating one.
• Now try Creating a Map of Your Story

 Creating a Map of Your Story

A plot is not just any map; it’s a treasure map. There are instructions for the reader at the beginning, danger (or at least tension) along the journey and a wealth of satisfaction at the end. There are more ways to map your plot than there are...well...plots! 

• Here is a list of just a few of these below:
• Fragmentary notes that jot down the ideas as they come to you. This might include:
• snatches of dialogue
• descriptive passages 
• character sketches 
  
• possible themes
• thoughts on how the story might work.
• A designated note book, with the title of the story on the front. At first, it will contain the fragmentary notes, but as these build up, you will include further techniques, such as those listed below.
• Diagrammatic forms might include:
• Webmaking; jotting previous ideas (including characters and their traits) all over a large sheet of paper, then seeing how they join up.
• Clustering; writing one phrase (or the title of the story) in the centre of a large sheet of paper, then using a ‘freewrite’ technique to create clusters of further thoughts. Each new thought comes out of a previous one, until it is exhausted. You then return to the first phrase and start again, so filling the paper. Afterwards, watch for the important clusters to jump out at you.
• Mindmaps, which spring out of brainstorming
• Character sketches, look for events, obstacles, opposition and conflicts to shape plot
• Lists that you might develop as the idea developes
• Timelines are useful, especially for longer stories or stories that use flashback a good deal. In this case, why not create a timeline of the plot and a timeline of the story (see the illustration above)
• Index cards, where your ideas can be shuffled around in front of you
• A pegboard or whiteboard technique, where you put things up, move things round and rub unwanted ideas out.

As you write, keep  asking:

• What is my character’s goal and how important is it to them?
• Who is my character’s opponent, and how much of a threat are they?
• What are my character’s obstacles, and how am I going to space them out in the novel, so that there can be peaks and lulls in the dramatic tension?
• Have I at least an idea about the final conflict, and how it may lead to a satisfying conclusion for my character?

Creating an Arc

However you start to gather ideas, most writers then want to pin these fragmentary thoughts to some sort of template or plotting device.  In his book Writing a Novel, Nigel Watts recommend the ‘eight point arc’, suggesting…every classic plot needs to pass through eight phases… Here are his eight points; 

• Stasis; the base reality, and the ‘status quo’ of the story. A ‘day like any other’ (although it might also contain conflict or opposition) 
• Trigger; an event, beyond the control of the protagonist, which turns the stasis from average to exceptional
• The Quest; not just about fantasy; the trigger will generate the quest which may take up
  the journey of the story
• Surprise; this is often an obstacle or conflict, but it could be pleasant; the heroine meeting the hero, for instance. A surprise definitely helps ‘middle slump’ 
• Critical Choice; a brick wall in the protagonist’s path means they have to make decisions. This is where causality is most necessary, otherwise the story can descent into chaotic coincidence.
• Climax; in literary theory, this is any great moment of intensity – the peak of a conflict situation. Watts give this example of the middle three phases…if the surprise is a burglar…the critical choice of the householder is self-defence, the climax is the burglar being hit over the head…
• Reversal; a story is better for having reversal, sometimes call the peripeteia in literary theory. Watts points out…if the climax does not result in reversal, a question is raised: is there a purpose to the climax other than as spectacle? Of course, you can have spectacle in your story, but it is plot event, rather than plot development. 
  
  
• Resolution; the completion of the plot, where a new status quo is established.

Aristotle and Freytag

It's probable that Watts developed his 8-point arc from the very first thinking on creating a structured plot. That may go as far back as Aristotle, who used the the term 'mythos' to denote plot and describing it as ‘the arrangement of incidents’. 

By studying Aristotle and the Greek playwrights, Gustav Freytag developed a plot pyramid in the 19th century, dividing story into five dramatic elements.

A Introduction
B Rise, or rising movement
C  Climax
D  Return or falling movement
E Catastrophe

The pyramid looks like this––   
                         

Gustav Freytag, from Die Gartenlaube (1886)

Be aware that a plot-based triangle  does not have to have the perfect symmetry suggested above. A crisis could arrive sooner, and often arrives further on in a story.

Almost all plotting structures and methods have evolved from Freytag’s Pyramid, but over time the original terms have slightly changed, especially our approach to the ending, ‘catastrophe’, refers mostly to a dramatic tragedy, and although you may certainly be writing one of those, it’s also possible you’re aiming for a happier end. 

Nowadays, you’re more likely to see:

A) Exposition, Stasis, or Ground State

B) Complication or Inciting Incident

C) Crisis 

D) Anticlimax or reversal

R Resolution or dénouement.

However, triangles beats, point-arcs etc, are not the only way to plot. Here's three  ideas that might suit your story better; 

1. Storyboarding. Film directors assemble a series of photographs or drawings on a storyboard, moving these pictures about, rejecting some and adding others until the relationships between them, and their relevance to the story, are clear. Writers can make storyboards in the same way. Use a large sheet of paper or new unlined notebook –use pin men if you’re not a natural artist.
2. Start with the characters It’s an excellent idea to plot through your characters, and you can do this as you write, but the problem will arise that you won’t quite know what will happen next, and you can trail down the wrong route for a long time without realizing – although some of these trails need to happen – they are a form of plotting in themselves. You might like to look at the alternative methods of creating plot maps above, to use alongside this method.
   
3. Fruitcake. Take a bowl, stir in a freewritten sentence– one that will grab you. Add handfuls of the ideas in your head – however feeble – while you continue to stir your freewrite. Pour in any of the list above of "Fragmentary notes". Feed in settings, themes, obstacles, problems, new characters, more problems and emotions. Keep writing. Add other problems. Open up to other possibilities. Keep stirring, and bake.

Finally, don't forget Cause and Effect 

Causality is a massive part of the plotting mechanism which will have a riveting effect on the plotting of your stories. Readers love to see the ‘story build up’, as events, thoughts, behaviour etc., set up in the early moments of the story, connect, build and develop the story. Causality is linked closely to the motivation and personality traits of the characters. As the plot unfolds causality results in a process of significant change which gives the reader regular emotional hits, until the conclusion is revealed. Using causality, a plot builds up from incidents that impact on one another. These incidents should not be a series of unrelated events. Causality will help you get a patterned, driven, tight plot that takes the reader on a journey via the motivation of the characters. Causality also helps you guard against implausibility; if the character’s motivation and conflicts are always directed by cause and effect, the writing will be far more believable. It is by combining causality with conflict that the strongest plot affects are gained. Conflict allows the ‘screws’ of cause and effect to tighten towards the end of the story. The reader knows all the complexities will be sorted, but they can’t for the life of them see how. A good ending will generally spring that sort of surprise; the ‘how’ of making a satisfactory and (if the author wants) happy ending, where the character has survived his ordeals, and learns and grows as a person. Using a learning/growing outcome often helps the plausibility of the story, and leads to a satisfying end, because the main character will have mostly sorted things out for himself and be responsible for most of the good outcomes. 

How is your plot going?

 Do let KitchenTableWriters know, by talking to us all through our comments page. Look forward to hearing from you! 

 

STARTING TO WRITE: The Secret Rules of Writing Golden Dialogue

Want to write better, snappier, clearer, more empathetic…in fact…golden dialogue? 

There are rules that help you succeed. They're not exactly 'secret' but certainly they can only be found 'under the counter'. Here they are.

Handled with energy, dialogue can turn a good story into a winning story.  Readers like a lot of dialogue because it spaces out the words on the page, easing the reader’s eye, but it is also one of the best ways of creating living characters. Dialogue is crucial to modern writing and can be as fast-paced and exciting as action.

Perhaps a definition of what dialogue is might get us started. Dialogue always takes place between at least 2 characters, just as real conversations involve at least 2 people. 

If you are a little uncertain that the dialogue you write enables your characters to build their personalities and engage with their readers, you might try the series of exercise we are going to look at in this blog and take note of the Seven Golden Rules we're going to examine. 

The First Golden Rule:

Dialogue must never be written for its own sake

This is one rule that will help you construct conversations you can be proud of: To prevent your characters unwittingly breaking this rule is simple. Always be sure that any conversation you create has at least one of the following functions:

• Impart information 
• enrich the characterization
• move the plot along 
• develop the characters further within the story 
• further the complexities of the plot 
• crank up the pace,
• enhance the theme or core truth 
• reflect relationship changes and emotions

Kitchen Table Exercise one

Take your notebook to a specific location of your choice where people move or linger, such as a gallery, a country park, a shopping mall. Sit with your notebook closed and observe the way people use the area, listening to snippets of conversation, but also inventing the ‘follow ons’ you don’t actually hear. Think about body language especially, and also reactions to the place. Try to see the place through the eyes of the people there. Start making jotted snatches of dialogue scenes, using what you see and what you hear about you.

Golden Rule two: 

For dialogue to feel natural, it can’t ever be natural. 

Real conversation is dull and repetitive. People stutter, or forget a word. They don’t quite catch what others say, interrupt themselves with inconsequential, often illogical comments, and go off the point, changing subjects, becoming irrelevant. Real people trip over their words and produce poor syntax that sounds unintentionally comic. In fact real speech is 80% inconsequential; humdrum data of living, and at least 10% more is in shorthand, because we know the other person so well, we don’t need to use full speech to get in tune with them – it’s how we human’s mostly communicate. 

Having listened to people chatting in the mall, you will now be aware that prose dialogue cannot be transcribed directly from real speech – the writer must edit it. As well as smoothing over the verbose cracks, this editing should smooth the ride by breaking up longer speeches with description, action and observation.

To put this succinctly, for dialogue to feel natural, it can’t ever be natural. This is something that is learnt as one reads, writes and listens, and the more dialogue one writes, the easier it becomes. Try listening to conversations then transposing them into dialogue to help enhance this skill.

Start a new piece of dialogue between two characters you're working with, or would like to create. But instead of setting it out in the normal format for dialogue, set it out as a script. To create a strong rhythm, emulating the simple A, B, pattern for your two speakers. This can be very liberating, and should at least persuade you to create a scene, with dialogue, if you find yourself generally writing exposition. It will also encourage the dialogue writer who is having trouble with Rule Two  to get into a good A B tempo. Make sure you are naturally changing the line length of each speaker at will__________________________________________________

Golden Rule Three;

Dialogue should be pertinent to the character’s personality.

Don’t allow the character to talk with your voice; they need their own. Don’t allow all the characters to sound the same; this is an ‘early’ mistake and one that can be spotted by reading your work aloud. Try to ‘get into the shoes’ of the person speaking, so that it’s their words on the page…not the writer’s. Allow various characters to have differing speech patterns, but do not go overboard with this; it can lead to reader irritation. Be particularly careful about accent or dialect; use one small thing that can exemplify the speech pattern and leave it at that. Keep well clear of phonic representation. If you read Christopher Brookmyre’s crime fiction, you will see a master of this skill at work, but his passages of lowland Scottish dialect are often difficult to follow.

Kitchen Table Exercise Three

Place a character you’re working with, or hoping to work with, in a situation where they have to talk. Think about how they would react. Not how you'd react, but them. 

See things through your character’s eyes. You don’t need to link this with any writing you’re doing at the moment. This time, use what you’re seeing and hearing alongside what you are imagining. Now is your chance to allow your character to speak as this individual might. Think about this person before you start, and all the way through writing the piece. Allow them to speak to another character, or in some other way, if it helps.____________________________________________

Golden Rule Four: 

Be careful how you impart information

Although Golden Rule One states that dialogue can be used to impart information, keep that fact hidden, otherwise speech will sound ‘stagey. Staged dialogue is speech where we overhear characters telling us something the writer wants the reader to know, but the characters already know, usually in creaking speeches...

‘How are you Mary?’ asked Sue. 

‘Well,’ said Mary. ‘Since the death of John, six months ago, I’ve been very depressed.’

How do you overcome these problems? One way is to use interior monologue:

‘How are you Mary?’ Sue knew that Mary had been depressed since John’s death, but

even so, she was hoping for more than a grim sigh in answer to her question. 

‘No better, to be honest with you,’ said Mary.

Another is to wrack your brains for a more ‘natural’ approach:

 ‘How are you Mary?’

 ‘No better.’

 ‘What is it now...six months?’

 ‘Yes. But it’s like John’s about to walk in the door any moment.’

Another approach I recommend is not to worry too much about imparting this sort of information in the first place. Readers like mystery, even if the story isn’t actually genre mystery. They like to be teased, so long as the mystery is solved somewhere along the line:

‘How are you Mary?’

‘No better.

‘What’s it now? Six months?’

Sue gave a grim sigh. ‘Feels like six years sometimes and six hours at others.’

Here's another place stagy dialogue rears its head:

‘As you already know, Henry, the polyribodigestive test tube results are outstanding. And you also know that we’ve found a guinea pig for the transplant experiment among the staff  - at least, when we say guinea pig, of course, we mean flunky.’ Henry’s assistant leered at him...

Kitchen Table Exercise Four

Search through previous pieces of your writing to find some dialogue that now, you might consider 'staged'. Try rewriting it. By treating characters and their dialogue as if the story grew organically out of the world they inhabit, you will find yourself naturally only giving your reader only just enough information detail. ‘Just enough’ can be interpreted as ‘far less than you first imagine they’ll need’. For a start, you don’t want to write down to them, or treat them as fools. But also, they will be quite happy to read along, delighting in finding the details are revealed bit by bit, in just the same way as the example of Mary’s bereavement. 

Golden Rule Number Five 

Who Should be Talking?

It is a standard guideline, especially for short stories, that a conversation should not be reported directly on a page unless a key (focus) character is in it – in other words, characters your story cannot do without. Clearly, both the protagonist and the antagonist are essential characters, but it is up the writer to decide which other characters are key. In actually deciding this, it is quite a good idea to pose the question the opposite way round; which of your characters could actually carry dialogue as the main character in that scene? Crucially, the template is that no scene, no conversation, should take place without one or more facets of the First Golden Rule; and if only minor characters are in that conversation, that is unlikely to be so to any degree.

Kitchen Table Exercise Five

Take any piece of writing you are working on, or any you have completed. Look through it, to check to see who  is driving any dialogue and whether they are an essential character. If you find any dubious conversations, ask yourself; does this work? Do I need to re-evaluate the need for this conversation? Is the dialogue going to hold a reader? Does it follow Golden Rule One?______________________

Golden Rule Six:

How speech tabs should be used

Careful handling in the use of ‘tabs’ – the ‘he/she saids’ of dialogue – will really help your dialogue to have a great rhythm and flow. .

 

Tags are the verbal additions that describe who/how the dialogue functions. They are sometimes very hard to get just right. The secret is to use ‘said’ as much as you possibly can. This is because it is almost invisible and readers skip over it. It is a functional necessity that does its job like a postman...never really seen. 

If you can get rid of a tag altogether, that often creates fast-past dialogue – very useful if the scene is also fast-paced.  Also try to break up the tabs by using actions to get a good rhythmic flow… ‘It think it’s time,’ Simon took a sip of his espresso, ‘to talk about the contract.’  By sticking to ‘said’, you will avoid overuse of other tag verbs (muttered, added, chattered, etc).The less you use, the smoother and more readable will your work be; even the most common tags (asked, called, whispered etc), should be cherry-picked; try not to have more than a couple in any patch of dialogue. Some verbs should never be used because they don’t function well as tags at all – laughed is the most common of those...it is almost impossible to laugh and talk at the same time. Chuckle and smiled can be ‘got away with’ but constantly check that certain characters don’t spend all their time smiling as they speak, for instance. Oh, and don't ruin all that good 'tab' work by adding an adverb. Don't tell us the character said something 'bravely'; show us that bravery through the words they use. 

Kitchen Table Exercise Six

Spend ten minutes writing a new conversation between two old characters. Perhaps these characters have never met in your previous fiction, or maybe they are already aware of each other. Whichever scenario you chose, make sure this is new dialogue. Free write the conversation first. Then read through it. How did you use speech tabs? Are you already an old hand at getting the dialogue rhythm right with a varied amount of tabs, no tabs, action instead of tabs? Do you mostly stick to 'said'?

Golden Rule Seven:

Dialogue should be brief and clear. fascinating and multi-tasked. 

Brief and clear. Make sure you keep in control of what comes out of character’s mouths. As it progresses, dialogue must take the reader by the hand, and lead their thoughts in the direction you the writer want them to go. This is why it must never ramble away from the point it’s trying to make, even in an attempt to enhance any of the golden rule. Keep conversation tightly on the subject in hand

At almost no stage of your writing should any character speak for more than three or four lines. That is not to say that this character might have a longer speech to give, and yes, they can give it, but they should be interrupted in various ways. Try to allow the dialogue to be visual so we can see the characters as they speak, breaking up the speech patterns with action, interior thought processes, description of character, etc.  But it must never ‘feel’ broken up. To achieve this, create a rhythm to the dialogue sections, a feel that has a lyrical sensation. Avoid repeated beginnings, and break down repetitive ‘tab’ patterns that might annoy a reader. 

Fascinating.  Even if the personality you’ve given your character is dull, their speech should not be. If your reader wants to listen to inane speech, they can tune into a TV chat show! Real conversation is pedestrian or repetitive at times because we have to think on our feet while talking. But characters should stand out on the page, and in the same way their dialogue should be larger (although never more grandiose), than real conversation. Characters (or rather their writer) have the luxury of something the rest of us do not have – the chance to think through what they say and say exactly what they mean (presuming they intend to say what they mean...). Polish and buff their speech to create fascinating dialogue.

Multi-tasked. Multi-tasking in dialogue writing is the major area where real conversation alters significantly from dialogue in fiction. It should constantly be focused on that first golden rule – all dialogue should further the story in at least one way from that list – if you can make that two, or three, you are beginning to understand how to multi-task your dialogue. Don’t just let conversations enrich developing characters, make it move the plot along and further its complexities at the same time. And although not every conversation is going to crank up the pace or enhance the theme of the story, make sure some dialogue achieves this – especially towards the end of a short story and at least half way through a novel. Part of this ‘cranking up’ may also reflect emotions, etc into good measure.

Kitchen Table Exercise Seven. 

Tap into your writer’s imagination by imagining dialogue when you're not at your writing stations Tune in to your character’s conversations. You may find what they say when they think you are out of earshot will surprise you and add richness to your story

While you are still learning your writing trade, it does not harm to check the golden rules each time you’ve created dialogue, especially when this is a longer chunk of conversation between characters, because this can feel a very complex aspect of writing creatively. 

But remember, your first draft does not have to be perfect. You can continue to experiment with dialogue, change it and allow it to grow.

Getting Your Writing Published PART FOUR – Writing Competitions.

Nina at the Wells Literary Festival

One of the most memorable moments in my writing career, was walking up onto the stage to give a talk at the Wells Literary Festival. I'd been a previous winner of their short story competition and I'd been asked back to talk about my experience. This might not be the first thing you consider, when thinking about the benefits of entering competitions, but  it was a huge event on my calendar. 

I mentioned entering competitions right back at the start of this series of 'getting published' because it's one of the very best ways of making agents and editors sit up and take notice of a new writer, especially one who has just finished their first novel. They are a little more likely to read a few more pages of your submitted chapters if they know someone else liked your writing too. 

It is getting harder and harder to publish short stories. The small-press magazines are over-submitted (and sadly, not well read), and most weekly women's magazines have stopped including a short story. For over ten years I regularly had a story in women’s magazines - especially Bella who seemed happy for me to write dramatically about family issues, or sustaining relationships, rather than starting them (Bauer paid very well; I sent my daughter through her half scholarship on my Bella earnings), but now I aim my short stories at the anthology market, which is partly fuelled by competitions, and I recommend you do too, because agents and indie publishers do keep their eye on the winning contributions. 

Competitions are good for individual writers. They can help you work out how effective your writing is, in comparison to the work of others. They can help you push to finish things, and to polish them well. Winning can be quickly effective, gaining you kudos on your writing CV that might help get you a position on an MA course, or even introduce you to an agent. There are competitions for all disciplines and genres, especially short fiction, flash fiction, novel writing, scriptwriting, poetry and writing for young people. 

There are tricks and keys that open the door to getting into competition shortlists. Stories with originality that stand out in some way often do very well. Although ‘quieter’, beautifully written stories can win competitions, stories with a ‘tingle factor’ are bound to attract the judges' attention, especially after ploughing through hundreds, even thousands of similar, often derivative entries. 

Jo Verity, who won the Richard and Judy prize, says this..'I’d been writing for about 2 years. I happened to be off work with food poisoning – whiling away the time watching the Richard & Judy Show. It was the last chance to enter their short story competition (this was before the Richard & Judy Bookclub started) and I happened to have a story ready to go. I posted it off and forgot all about it. A couple of months later I got a call to say that my story was in the final 15 (from 17,000 entries) and could I go up to London the following week when the winner would be announced live on air. It was very exciting. Martina Cole, Suzi Feay and Tony Parsons were the judges. I was flabbergasted when they picked my story as the winner especially as I’d sent the same story out to a couple of competitions and it had done nothing.'

The prize was to have the story published in The Independent on Sunday, under the title Rapid Eye Movement.  The story relates the experience of a depressed young woman who gives up her job and cuts herself off from her family to perfect ‘lucid dreaming’. By the end, she’s spending most of her life in her dream world. 

One of my students came up with a 'tingle factor' story and successfully submitted it, to her absolute delight; Read her blogpost on her experience of entering a competition… here. Like  Jo Verity, my student had also had this story rejected in another competition. So bear in mind, when you don't win, time and again, that the choice of winner is both arbitrary and subjective. Judges are like the rest of us––they have their likes and dislikes. So long as you are sure you've proofread you work carefully, and that the story holds up under scrutiny, do submit it again. 

Prize winners all.

What is that scrutiny? Crucial to a winning short story are convincing characters, a strong and appealing core theme and an ability to provoke empathy or inspiration. Aim for coherent progression, rigorous construction and a satisfying conclusion. Many a fine story lacks ‘closure’, leaving the reader with untidy loose ends or an unresolved mystery. The author A S Byatt, suggests that: 'a good short story knows its ending before it is begun, it is always working towards its end…A good short story establishes its own rhythm at its very beginning, and the reader has a sense of the rhythm reaching ahead, towards the end…'

Read about AM Byatt in this Kitchen Table blogpost 

Make sure every word counts because word count is perhaps  more importance than anything else. Every competition has its rules and you must stick within them. Do not send out your 2,500 word story to a competition if the remit is 'less than 2,000 words'.

It's also best to keep to the short story maxim of 'few characters, little time and a satisfying resolve'. However, many a fine short story has successfully handled a bevy of characters, an extended timeline, or an ending that lacks closure. It might appear, at first glance, to be a collection of vivid but disjointed impressions. But the story still has to be rigorous in its construction; it must be a whole.

Most poetry writers start their publishing career by submitting their individual poems to poetry competitions. Your local library is as good a place to check these out as searching online. When submitting poems, try reading the previous winners’ entries, which give you an idea of which types of poems the judges enjoy. Be sure to read all the qualifications properly, checking for specific writing styles, points of view, settings, and especially length. Naturally, polish your work before submitting Use proper formatting within the title and description areas, and don’t use crazy fonts which will just annoy the readers.Start with smaller and lesser-known poetry competitions first, especially if finance is an issue, where you may have a better chance of being noticed.  If you are submitting your poem by snail mail, be sure to read over the poem after you print it and make any necessary changes.

Finding competitions across the disciplines is not difficult. They are all over the internet, and in every writing magazine. They advertise because most intend to make a profit, hence the entry fee. This often feels excessive, but it covers costs, pays the judges and often allows the prizes to glitter. 

There is nothing wrong with going for those glittering prizes, but the opposition is stiff, so don’t be put off by smaller prizes or contests that offer nothing more than the possibility of being published (especially in print). This always looks good on a growing CV.

Keep persevering…this can often be the best way to succeed. And –– by the way –– good luck!

STARTING TO WRITE: Find Your Writing Guidance With an Easy Click

Find your perfect writing guidance 

with one click!

I'm Nina Milton, and this blog is all about pulling out the laptop or the pen and pad to get going with your writing. And then, keeping going with your writing...just as you always wanted to, but never quite managed. 

I've been writing crime fiction, children's books and prize-winning short stories for over a decade now. I'm a member of the Crime Writing Association, I hold an MA in Creative Writing,  I'm a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy andhave extensive experience in teaching creative writing and assessing at degree standard. I have written current course materials for the Open College of the Arts Degree Course in Creative Writing so if I can't help you, I'll probably know someone who can.

This week, I've been busy collating all my creative writing blogposts. It's been hard work, but at least it's heading for a storm outside so it took my mind off the weather! So now you can find the post that relates to YOUR writing problem or concern at the click of your mouse. In the past 10 years I have written about every writing topic from character and plot to pitching your novel and finding a writing soulmate. It's all there; have a browse through...and if you can't find the one writing subject you want to know more about...just contact me on my blog, below, or in an email (to the left of the home page). You can start right now, just click here…

The Kitchen table writers' Guide to Starting to Write; and Keeping Going.

Or go the the banner above the blogposts to click on the right page, where you will also see the route into other specialist pages, including my children's books, short story reads, and more about paganism, shamanism and druidry.

How Do you Read?

 How do you read?

Do you focus on the author's message and line of argument, evaluating modes of writing, such as voice, theme, structure, plot, narrative point of view, character, use of dialogue? Or do you just get sucked right in, so that you’re there, in the writer’s world?

I love the way reading feeds and refreshes me, and I wonder if readers like me filter their reading through their previous experiences, opinions and misconceptions. But there’s also bring an ability to get lost in the narrative, even when it is patently nothing like your experience of life. Most people surface-read, which leads to superficial retention, and poor comprehension, of the text. Deep reading uses the skills of analysis, synthesis and problem-solving, but does it  'spoil the story'?

I've just read the Booker winner, Milkman, by Anna Burns, an Irish writer who has produced a clever and absorbing book about 'the troubles'. Set, perhaps, in the 1990s, and located, perhaps in a Northern Irish town locked in sectarian dispute, it's about an 18-year-old girl who is pursued…stalked, almost… by a member of the IRA looking for a bit of eye candy for his arm. There's hardly any violence described, and yet the atmosphere is heavy with the idea of violence and death. I loved it, and fully recommend it, but it would be an easy book to skim read, being rather dense and there are only six chapter over its 350 pages). None of the characters are referred to by their real names...our protagonist is 'middle sister', a previously rejected boy as 'Somebody MacSomebody, and her lover as 'almost boyfriend' But it deserves to be read slowly, with thought. It's subtle, but under its skin there is clarity.. What it tells you about the troubles, are the things no news report could tell you.  Don't take my word for this, though. Here's Claire Kilroy  in The Guardian… Milkman calls to mind several seminal works of Irish literature. In its digressive, batty narrative voice, it resembles a novel cited by the narrator: Tristram Shandy. It is Beckettian in its ability to trace the logical within the absurd. 

I looked at my last two pieces of reading and asked did the reading hold me? Did I feel the passion of the writer? Did it explain itself to my satisfaction? Did the story increase reading pleasure? Or did my mind wander away from the page? However, this might be true of viewing story too. I read  The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood  in1985, and now I’ve watched the TV drama The Handmaid’s Tale.  This was faithful to the story, but included other character’s perspectives in the episodes, dedicating some episodes to quite periphery characters like the husband and the wife. 

Reading a novel alongside a play or film demonstrates how differently prose fiction and dramatic script can be. I’ve done this too with the film Arrival; it blew me away and I immediately got the book of short stories it comes from on my Kindle. The original,  Stories of Your Life by Ted Chiang, is basically the same story, but the screenplay reimagining the landscape and made more of a final twist.  

Arrival  (2016 screenplay by Eric Heissere) is a film that had its genesis in short story Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang 2002, Tor Books) I saw the film, watched the ‘extras’ on the DVD and bought the book of short stories, I was so enamoured with the film. Having read the story on the page, I asked myself about the way the adapting writer approached the challenge of taking a long short story into a movie. For instance, there is a massive, esoteric plot twist at the end of the film, which in the book, is known by the reader almost from the start. The theme of both is linguistics and precognition, which is slowly revealed in the film, but fully apparent from the start of the story. The filmmaker reimagined the sci-fi element so that it was far more pleasing, visually. The poster does not give away any of the subtle of story, the theme or even that there will be a mystery within it, revealed at the end. It is focused on its stars, in the hope they will sell the movie. The ET spaceship, which is visible to the left, is not clarified, except as an UFO which is being threatened, or attacked, by the US helicopters. The film is a complex emotional drama, and very beautiful in both script, structure, and art work, but it’s almost as if the poster wants to hide this, instead giving the wrong impression that this will be like most sci-fi movies. Which it is not. 

May Angelou said in her autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you. 

I can identify with that. Story is massively important to humans. Lisa Crone has been re-examining the human experience of story, demonstrating that the brain craves story, not for ‘entertainment value’, but because it allows us to plan for the unknown. She believes that very early man listened to stories and processed them as ‘simulators’ which might point out ways to approach and survive the unknown and unexpected. The reason we get so ‘lost’ in books, storytellings and dramatisations is a deliberate ploy on the part of our brain…it’s a surge of the neurotransmitter dopamine that’s triggered by the intense curiosity that that an effective story instantly engenders…we don’t turn to story to escape reality, we turn to story to navigate reality because story translates big ideas, dry facts, abstract concepts, into very specific scenarios… watch her TED talk Wired for Story here.

Everything we read isn’t story, however. I noted down everything I’d read (and written and heard) in a 24 hour period, from 6.30 am to 10.30

All the stories are in red.

READ emails on phone

READ Weather  “ “

READ Cookbook for recipes

READ some of  The Lie of the Land by Amanda Craig

WRITE shopping list

WRITE emails online

HEARD The Radio 4 Story of the Week

READ Guardian (some of it)

READ seed packets

READ plant food box

WRITE My Welsh Homework

READ the Welsh handbook at Welsh class

READ The Snow Child, by Eowyn Ivey, first chapters

READ internet info on The Power

WATCH the news at ten

READ (in bed) The Waves.

In Death of an Author, Roland Barthes argues that readers should ‘liberate’ their reading, from the ‘interpretive tyranny’ of the critical reader, who first looks at the writer, their ethnicity, politics, religion, even personal attributes and relates these to the read. For instance, if the writer was a known 30’s fascist, then that would be immediately taken into consideration to be part of gaining the meaning. As we’ll be doing textiles later, I liked this quote…text is a tissue of quotations, drawn from innumerable centers of culture, rather than from one, individual experience. The essential meaning of a work depends on the impressions of the reader, rather than the passions of the writer; a text's unity lies not in its origins, or its creator, but in its destination, or its audience.

I like the idea that the reader is as important as the writer. And in a way, I think most people do believe the reader can and should interpret what they read, in just the same way as one interprets modern dance, a sculpture or artwork, or even an installation or video art, such as Battle of Orgreave by Jeremy Deller, which I talked about in a previous blogpost review. I can certainly be swayed by what people say about a book, and often don’t buy one if there are bad reviews (although I might borrow it). 

The approach in Death of an Author works well for literature written by people we’ll never known or have chance to understand, possibly because they are long dead, or a recluse like DJ Saligner. He seems to argue that a writer's views about their own work are no more or less valid than a reader’s interpretation, as real as the author's intention. It certainly eliminates an issue of reviewing/discussing/interpreting books – how anyone can ever know what the writer intended? It also makes a point with regard to the way women in the past had to publish under a male name, like the Bronte sisters, or anonymously for other reasons, as JK Rowling did, when she wanted to see how her crime novel would be accepted. Of course that ‘rouse’ could only work once the real name of the author was revealed, otherwise The Casual Vacancy would have dropped like a stone. On the other hand, readers don’t seem to be interested in this as a literary argument; they don’t really ‘utilize it’. Otherwise, the Radio 4 favourite, Book Club, wouldn’t be so loved. In this programme, you are told in advance which author will be attending with a studio audience, who will ask questions about the author’s recent work. For the same reason, Book Festivals, are massively attended. We all want to hear what the author says about their own work.

If you'd like some help with reading more widely, deeply and passionately try these books; 

The Novel Cure: An A to Z of Literary Remedies by Ella Berthoud 

Jacob's Room is Full of Books: A Year of Reading by Susan Hill 

Maps and Legends; Michael Chabon

Reading like a Writer, Francine Prose

The Child Books Built by Frances Spufford.

The Year of Reading Dangerously: How Fifty Great Books Saved My Life by Andy Miller