Character and Plot, getting the balance right'

A Workshop from Nina Milton in Pembrokeshire, Wales

Photo courtesy of Jenefer Llewelyn

A workshop for those who enjoy writing fiction at any level with Nina Milton, author of In the Moors.

Some writers like to work with characters, others prefer to work with their plots. In this two hour workshop, Nina will help you create a good balance. 

Nina has worked with the Open College of the Arts for several years, tutoring, assessing, workshopping and writing course materials in Creative Writing.  She has been publishing short stories and children's books for thirty years and has wonmany literary prizes.

Her most recent book 'In the Moors' was published last year to critical acclaim.

Information

Event date	Saturday 13th September 10:30am
Until	Saturday 13th September 12:30pm
Ticket Price	£10.00
Location	Ty Solar

To book for this workshop go to 
http://penfrobookfestival.org.uk/tickets-pf/workshops-for-writers/49-character-and-plot-getting-the-balance-right-with-nina-milton

to find the location Ty Solar Rhosygilwen Mansion, Cilgerran, Pembrokeshire, SA43 2TW, United Kingdom  go to http://retreat.co.uk/about-rhosygilwen

MAGEE AND MCBRIDE; BAILEY'S WOMEN PRIZE CONTENDERS; Nina's Authors of the month

Magee and McBride. Both women writers. Both with first novels. Both Irish. Both shortlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction 2014.

Although Audrey Maggee  and Eimear McBride are different writers, with fiction that stands at extreme poles in the use of language, I don’t think either can help but be influenced by the long shadow of James Joyce.  

http://www.audreymagee.com/the-book.html

Audrey Magee is a journalist, and choses to bring a journalistic style to her first novel, The Undertaking. Magee says she’d been brewing a novel about Germany in the war since she studied in Germany and went to view a concentration camp with a Jewish acquaintance. She says she wanted to understand the war itself, and how people get caught up in war. And the title she’s chosen perfectly describes both the personal story in the book, and the setting she’s chosen for it; the advance on Stalingrad.

She says she met the aged ‘protagonist’ to her first novel in the restaurant he ran. He told her the story of how he’d married a photograph of his bride in a ceremony carried out by an army chaplain. The purpose of the marriage was to secure the leave for the groom and a widow's pension for the bride. 

In the book, Peter Faber marries Katherina Spinell and gets his leave. He is introduced to her father’s Nazi friend, Dr Weinart, who brings chocolate cream cake baked ‘by one of the Fuehrer's bakers’. Peter spends his honeymoon evenings beating up Jews and pushing then into the waiting trucks, and his nights making love to his new wife.

Magee says her decision to write in a taut, understated style was deliberate because she likes that sort of reading but also, as this new generation engages with the past, looked for a fresh way to explore the 2nd WW...and what it felt like to be a German at that time.

What she achieves is to create emotion in her reader without being emotional at all on the page. I found the darkness and the dry, bleak tone disconcerting, even frightening. 

A considerable section of The Undertaking follows the advance of the German Eastern front towards Stalingrad. We see the siege through Peter’s eyes; starvation and disease and finally surrender – he has to carefully argue through the act before he can give himself up. 

In the meantime, Katherina’s brother dies when he returns to the front still plagued by his battle fatigue, and their mother sinks into a deep depression, fuelled by the eventual discovery that her son-in-law has escaped death by surrendering. At home, the raids on Berlin lower the fortunes of the Spinell family, which had been increased by the removal of Berlin’s Jews to the camps. Katherina and Peter’s child dies of meningitis and, as Russia takes over their part of the city, she is raped.

This brings us to the ending, which was the only part of the novel I didn’t enjoy. I felt it was rushed and poorly thought through. I won’t spoil it for you, it’s enough to say that, in the body of the novel, the failure to explore the emotions of the characters – or rather the technique of exploring them only by reportage and dialogue – works well, bringing an honesty to the writing and reflecting the emotionless way the Jews of Berlin are dealt with…’Bloody thieves, the lot of them,’ says Katherina’s mother when she discovers the Jewish-owned apartment they move into is bereft of jewellery. ‘They swallow it, you know. To hide it from us.’ But this lack of emotion doesn’t work at the close of the novel. I needed to see what the parties were thinking, and without the technique of interior monologue, there was no doing that. So we are left with decisions that felt weakened by our lack of participation in them. 

Although Eimear McBride is English, (she was born in Liverpool but moved to Ireland when she was tiny, growing up in Sligo and Mayo), she approaches being under Joyce’s shadow in a very different way.  She says Joyce  “pointed the way for her”, and that there is still plenty of room left in modernism (at least I hope so, she admits.) Her book won the inaugural Goldsmiths Prize for fiction as well as being on the shortlist for the Bailey Prize.

As a writer, she approaches her techniques by using audaciously radical and challenging language. Certainly, this must be the most ambitious and furthest reaching piece of stream of consciousness that has been attempted recently, notwithstanding Ali Smith’s contributions. She says she felt there were areas of language, especially writing in a stream of consciousness, that hadn’t been explored, for instance by taking a step back from consciousness, to the moment when thoughts are conceptualized…or even before they are;

Feel the roast of it. Like sunburn. Like a hot sunstroke. Like globs dropping in. Through my hair. Spat skin with it. Blank my eyes the dazzle. Huge shatter. Me who is just new. Fallen out of the sky. What. 

This allows the emotion to hit you slightly after the physical reaction hits you, making the read a physical experience. Being brought right into the narrator’s mind is, however, a disjointing, sickening and often frightening experience. McBride’s subject matter is harrowing, even if her plot is simple, almost derivative – a child watches her slightly older brother succumb slowly to brain cancer, while she explores, via rape and family abuse, her growing sexuality But the rhythm of the language is simply something else...it drags you in like a Wagner aria, so that you both love and hate what you’re reading at the same tine. 

http://textpublishing.com.au/books-and-authors/book/a-girl-is-a-half-formed-thing/
to hear the interview with McBride

The title is equally interesting as in Magge’s work,  for  A Girl Is A Half-formed Thing describes both the extravagant, disconcerting, jumbled-up language and the way the pace is broken over and over again, as well as the broken life of the protagonist. This amazing rhythm allows you to do an incredible thing....understand exactly what is being said.

One of the most interesting things about this first novel is that it was written almost a decade ago. Unsurprisingly, it was rejected by publisher after publisher, until the Galley Beggar Press took it up. These small, independent publishing houses are bringing us some of the best works around; I’d cite Jane Rogers, whose The Testament of Jessie Lamb, which was taken up by Standstone Press and went on to win prizes. 

I want my students to read both books and compare them; ask how they as readers they react to the experiences provided, what go on to ask how the writers achieved these outcomes, because both these original novels do surprising things with our emotions, and are examples of truly exceptional first books. 

A SUMMER OF SPEAKING; NINA'S PROGRAMME OF EVENTS 2014

The summer of '14...a summer of events. I have talks, appearances, workshops and events to announce.

 MEET THE DRUID AUTHORS 

In June, I’m in Glastonbury, as part of the Golden 50th 

Anniversary of the Druid Order - OBOD. http://www.druidry.org/.  This is a four day event,  From 6th to 9th of June. As part of this, on Monday 9th of June at 1pm, I am hosting a MEET THE AUTHORS event in the Avalon Room on the High Street, Glastonbury; a chance to hear from a panel of published druid authors and find out about successful writing and some avenues for publication.  https://twitter.com/Druidry

PENFRO LITERARY FESTIVAL

I’m also at PENFRO LITERARY FESTIVAL this year, this is always held at Rosygilwent in Pembrokeshire; http://retreat.co.uk/about-rhosygilwen 

I’m running one of the  Saturday Workshops on Saturday 13th September. There will be a a wide range of workshops on offer and the opportunity to meet and exchange experiences with writers of all genres. On Sunday I’ll be at the Book Fair, with other local writers, illustrators  and publishers,   On  Saturday evening, starting at 8pm Penfro have a very special event indeed. – the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, together with the Chaired and Crowned Welsh Bard, Ceri Wyn Jones, reading their poetry.  Other events confirmed include: Mererid Hopwood on 'The Eisteddfod Chair and Bardic Crown.'; David Llewellyn on 'Searching for Nuggets' – finding a gem among unsolicited mss; David Wilson on 'Landscape Photography in Black and White';  a Welsh language children's event; and David Seer on 'The Life and Writing of John Seymour' Go to http://penfrobookfestival.org.uk/this-year-s-penfro-festival

WELLS LITERARY FESTIVAL

In October I’ll be speaking at the 

Wells Literary Festival! 

The afternoon of Sunday 12th of October is when the winners of the Wells Short Story, Novel Writing and Poetry Competition Prizes are announced and presented with their prizes; I’ll be there to give a talk.

The festival is packed with amazing names, so why not come for the day and enjoy the buzzing literary atmosphere.

http://www.wellssomerset.com/search/entry1132_wells_festival_of_literature.html

CREATIVE WRITING STUDY VISITS WITH THE OPEN COLLEGE OF THE ARTS. 

The OCA are becoming well known among their students for excellent creative writing study visits, and this autumn the Creative Writing department are offering several. These give students the opportunity to hear authors  reading their work, and to spend time on their own writing in the company of other students.

In addition to developing each student's own creative and technical capabilities in a variety of genres, you'll be able to get together with other students and build informal support networks. The study visits also can inspire you to leave the place in which you usually write and gain new impetus for your thinking and writing in new places and with new people.

Language, character and setting

Tutors Nina Milton and Liz Cashdan 

Friday 5 September, 11am-4pm at The Workstation creative business centre, Sheffield

Saturday 4 October, 11am-4pm at The Bristol Folk House adult education centre, Bristol

Come to meet LIz Cashdan, one of the foremost Northen poets, and In the Moors novelist Nina MIlton. Both tutors will be reading their own work. 

Students will write a piece of propose or poetry based on character and setting, with the encouragement to experiment, take up new strategies and enjoy writing both within and outside their comfort zones.here will be pair work for peer critiquing, whole group discussion and separate prose and poetry groups for students to read their own work. 

There are more workshops at http://www.weareoca.com/study_visits/creative-writing-study-visits-listen-write-critique/

I'm on a Virtual Tour!

I'm joining the virtual tour of writers which is speeding around the globe, faster than the sun. I was invited on board by http://jackie-news.blogspot.co.uk/ and you can read her virtual tour on that site. She was invited by http://suemoules.blogspot.co.uk/ and now I've invited other writers on board. Here is my tour;

What am I working on?

I’m right at the end of the first draft of my third novel in the Shaman Mystery Series, all of which are set in Somerset, focusing on the little town of Bridgwater. In the first book, In the Moors, Sabbie Dare, who is a therapeutic shaman, meets the big love of her life, Detective Sergeant Rey Buckley, Despite his scathing opinion of her abilities to solve crime, she is determined to discover why her client Cliff is being charged with the murder of a child; she is so sure he is innocent, but what sort of proof does she have? She uses her shamanic abilities and finds herself inside a dangerous world of cruelty, obsession and madness. Library Journal said of the book… Sabbie Dare is the most compelling protagonist I’ve met this year, and Milton’s tale is riveting…

The second book in the series, Unraveling Vision (US spelling) comes out this winter. Sabbie is trying to help young Romany Mirela Brouviche find her missing sister. She’s still besotted with Rey, but he is caught up with two murders on his patch, and instructs Sabbie to stay well away from his cases…and away from him. Naturally, Sabbie does the opposite. Her headstrong nature leads her right to the heart of trouble.

Terri Bischof, the acquisitions editor at Midnight Ink says of Unraveling Visions…I loved the manuscript.The Shaman Mysteries are among my favourite series. I look forward to book three very much! Again, this is a great book!

So now I am working on the third in the series. This doesn’t yet have a title, and I’m certainly not going to reveal the plot, but I can tell you that the focus of the action moves to Glastonbury, and that all the themes you associate with that mystical place can be found in the story. As before, Sabbie has a hard time keeping away from danger. As she says in In the Moors,  “I’m the sort of person who has to poke their finger into all the holes marked, ‘do not insert’.”

How does my work differ from others in the genre?

Although my books fit the standard definition of ‘crime thriller’ because, to quote a Kirkus Reviews, each is a… fast-moving thriller likely to draw in readers…the main character, Sabbie Dare, who is single and not yet thirty, is not an officer of the law, or a pathologist, or even a private eye. She is a therapist, and a shaman. She walks between worlds and can bring back amazing understanding from the otherworld. In this way, she tries to help her clients with their problems.

Sabbie has an open heart, and gains the strength to get through life with her shamanism and her pagan beliefs. She struggles with the memories of her difficult start in life – she can hardly remember her mother and has never met her father. But she is adept at inviting trouble into her life – which bodes well for the further books in the series!

I am a druid; a pagan path which takes me close to the earth and into the deep recesses of my mind. Shamanic techniques help me in my life - in fact they changed my life. I have first hand experience of how amazing the otherworld is, if you care to journey to it, and that gave me the idea that a shaman would be well-placed to find out the deepest causes and motivations which lie at the heart of crimes. 

The themes of the books are always hard-hitting, but Sabbie balances this with her her belief in simple living; she grows veg and keeps hens in her town garden. 

Why do I write?

When I was five, my infant school teacher Mrs Marsden read a story to the class. It might have been the fable 'The Mouse and the Lion', but I can't really remember. Then she asked the class to write their own stories, and as I chewed my pen, I had an early epiphany. I was dumfounded. For the first time, I realized that the books I loved had actually been written by real human beings. Before that, I believe they must have fallen from some sort of story heaven. It was a revelation – from then on I was scribbling down stories all the time.

I wrote my first novel at the age of fifteen. Well, okay I started to write a novel which I never finished. I then took to writing short stories, which I began publishing a few years later in women’s magazines. I have also written for children. In the past, faced with the difficulty in getting things published, I have actually tried to give up writing! Unfortunately, I couldn’t do it. I was too hooked.

How does my process of writing work?

It’s a lot more structured nowadays. Having to produce a book in a year really concentrates the mind. While I’m planning the story, I try not to actually write anything until I’m absolutely ‘bursting’ to do so. Luckily, that moment arrived this time at the beginning of November 2013, so I enrolled on NatNoWriMo, and got 60,000 words down in 30 days – about half the novel. I battle on until I have a first draft, trying not to read it through or start again unless absolutely necessary. I put the manuscript away and get on with life for a while; at least two weeks, longer if possible. I then read it through. I try to do this in hard copy so that I can make notes, but can’t ‘fiddle’ until I’ve finished reading. I’ll work through it again at that stage, and, if I’m happy with it, I’ll send it to Lisa, my wonderful agent. She will tell exactly what she thinks of it! I know her words won’t be pretty, but they will be exactly what I need to hear. Usually she has a chopper in her hand at that point, and a lot of dross will disappear as I rewrite. Finally, it’s finished. I’m usually shuddering by then; 120,000 words is a lot of writing and rewriting. But I do know that when Lisa says ‘it’s ready to go’, then it really is ready to go, which is very reassuring.

Opposite is a great summary of the writing process; I loved Jackie Bigg’s pin-up and here it is; it sums up the creative process perfectly (thanks, Jackie)!

Unravelling Visions

The two detectives had arrived as the body was trundling on a gurney over to the white tent where the pathologist waited like an adjudicator at some macabre contest. The woman was found stripped of any clothing and the technician had thrown a green sheet over her poor mutilated and rotting body for that short journey, but the gurney jerked as its wheels stuck to the walkway, which was so burning hot it was melting the policemen’s thick soles, and the woman’s head slid to the edge, her heavy locks falling free, as if she’d just unpinned them. Despite the river weed and silt, her hair was still glorious; as black as a nighttime lake, not tampered by bleach or dye. 

Detective Sergeant Gary Abbott had stepped forward, his hand outstretched, and touched the woman’s hair, crying out like a distressed relative. “Take care with her, for God’s sake!”

Hinkley Point

I'm proud and delighted to announce that a new Kindle edition of the second of the Shaman Mysteries by Nina Milton is up and running. Revised and now called On the Gallows it continues the adventures of Sabbie Dare, the Somerset shaman who has burst upon the crime fiction scene. The series is famous for it's dark landscapes, and this second one features the waterways of the Somerset Wetlands, the grim,

Bridgwater Bay (Wikipedia)

bare coastline with its 'drowned forest' and the continually controversial nuclear power station, Hinkley Point. Nina Milton is also known for her wonderfully descriptive and atmospheric shamanic journeys, undertaken by Sabbie in her search for answers. In this book, she meets a wolf by a Roma camp fire;

    'Beware. If a wolf comes in friendship, it will offer you inner strength and the deepest kind of wisdom. But if it comes as your enemy…'

    'What?'

    'It will bring you down by the neck.'

    'Your otter is right, of course,' said the wolf, as it came up to me. 'I will grant you nothing but the right of terror.'

   'I am here to find Kizzy Brouviche, for good or ill.'

    The wolf grinned as I spoke, as if I’d said something that amused it. 'You will listen to me, Sabbie Dare. You will be show directions. Follow, and you will discover.'

    'Where will I find these directions?'

    'There are many that will appear to you.' His tongue lolled

from his muzzle and saliva drooled and pooled on the ground.          'The place of blame. The place of absolution. The dark place. The place of no escape. You will find little in some, and confusion in others. In some you may be rewarded. Do not expect satisfaction from any answer.'

    'Do I know these places? Or seek them out? Should I look in the obvious places first?'

   'That is shrewd. Now you show me your gums, as we wolves say.'...

On the Gallows (Unraveled Visions in the US edition), opens on the hottest day in August, when a young girl is pulled from a Bridgwater wharf, her body so mutilated that it makes identification impossible. Months later Sabbie Dare’s nemesis DS Abbott is found dead after the Bridgewater Carnival. The Bridgewater police are on high alert.

Meanwhile, Romanies Kizzy and Mirela Brouviche have come to England from Bulgaria in the hope of finding their fortune, but soon after Sabbie meets Kizzy at the carnival, the Roma disappears, leaving her young sister Mirela stranded and afraid for her sister. Sabbie is determined to help her in her search, but her shamanic journeys are confusing…her visions unravelled…and they lead Sabbie into dangerous territoriy. This includes being chatted up by immigration worker Fergus Brown, who is reticent on what he knows about the Romany sisters. And while she begins to suspect that the owners of Papa Bulgaria, where Kizzy and Mirela worked, are somehow involved with Kizzy’s disappearance, she also needs to factor in Eric Atkinson, the leader of a sinister cult, who seems too interested in Sabbie's new neighbours, Drea and Andy. Sabbie journeys into Drea's spirit world and is confrontated with a terrifying anaconda. Drea is shocked and distressed by Sabbie’s revelations and shortly afterwards disappears.

Are Kizzy and Drea’s disappearances related? Is Eric Attkinson's cult a danger? What led Garry Abbott to die alone of a single gunshot to the head in a darkened alleyway? Is his death linked to Papa Bulgaria's carnival float of gypsy dancers? Should Sabbie accept a date with charming Irishman Fergus? While Sabbie is facing these questions, she also has to cope with the discovery of her long-dead mother’s family, whose surprising appearance is set to take the wind out of her sails. A disapproving DI Rey Buckley instructs Sabbie to stay well away from his case…and away from him. Naturally, Sabbie does the opposite, on both counts. Her headstrong nature leads her towards romance...and right to the heart of trouble.

Terri Bischof, the acquisitions editor at Midnight Ink says of Unravelling Visions…I loved the masuscript.The Shaman Mysteries are among my favourite series... this is a great book!

Library Journal says...Sabbie Dare is the most compelling protagonist and Milton’s tale is riveting. 

The visceral suspense Milton creates is commendable, not to mention terrifying. I like pairing her work with Elly Griffiths’s  atmospheric English mysteries.

I hope you'll enjoy it too. Of course, if you haven't yet obtained your copy of In the Moors, it is also on Kindle at just 99p; free with Kindle Unlimited.

Writing That Very First Draft

Are you starting to write a longer piece of work for the first time? A novel for young people? A novella or novel? A full-length piece of creative non-fiction?

An article in Writing Magazine this month suggests that writing ‘little and often’ rather than ‘spurge and purge’ is the most successful way to complete that important Draft 1. 

They recommend that you either:

• Set an achievable number of words per day (say, 500) and write this without fail (even Christmas Day if possible!)

or

• Make a resolution to write something ever day, even if it’s only a paragraph.

little and often or spluge and purge

This is good advice; advice that seems to conflict with the ethos of NaNoWriMo, an annual, international novel writing project that asks subscribers to write 2000 words per day for whole of  November. This is 60,000 words done and dusted, and for me, last year, it worked really well. It meant that by the end of January I had almost completed my third novel’s first scribblings; Draft 1. However, it’s not the entire picture, and NaNoWriMo’s theory of ‘spurge and purge’ isn’t all that far away from the far less rigorous suggestions in Writing Magazine. 

The crux of both methods is regularity. In the past, every novel I’ve written, both for children and adults, was attempted sporadically, and this, I now realize, is what puts the biggest handbrake on completing a project. Every time I returned to my slowly growing body of work, I discovered that I hadn’t touched for far longer a time than I’d realized. I had to get back in the grove everytime I started writing, yet again finding the right voice…remembering the plot…reading through enough past writing to get me going again…and that usually led me to unnecessarily edit what had already been drafted and tinker with sections that, later, I removed anyway, rather than battling on with the next part of the story.

For this new project, I’m writing as often as I can. I’m not letting the story slip out of my mind for more than 24 maximum at a time. Even a paragraph is better than a day with nothing done. 

If you commence a longer piece of writing, it is most likely to fail if you can’t write it regularly; every day if possible. With that fundamental in place, it then doesn’t matter much whether you attempt a socially crippling 2000+ words or a tiny little paragraph; the important thing, I’ve found, is to write as a routine. To think of that little daily task in the same way you think about cleaning your teeth.

I started with zero words and had 60,000 on month later; two months after that I’m so close to the end, it’s frightening. But even 250 words a day for a year will net you 90,000 words. That’s a novel, folks. Think about that for one moment. Just 250 words a day.

Of course, nothing is quite that simple. Those 90,000 words (which is the amount I’ve complete in 3 months of Draft 1 work) are not going to be perfect. What you do have (and where I am right now) is a first attempt that is a concrete foundation draft you can now work on. Mind you, ‘concrete’ is not the right word at all. A ‘plasticine draft’ is a better way of looking at it. Something you can mould into the novel of your choice.

My thoughts and written notes on my 90,000 words look like this;

• Some of the words/paras/chapters will have to go
• Some new words – ideas, enrichments, changes – will have to be accomplished
• Some parts will have to be moved; juggled about
• Some character profiles need alteration, or souping up
• Some characters should be removed from the stage altogether
• Some of the work needed will be very bitty; sentences taken out, conversations rearranged, names changed.
• An overall view of the draft will point up the sagging sections and where further dramatic tension should be added - not to mention whether the overall thing works!
• Although I thought I was writing things in the order I wanted them, I haven’t done so; this suggests that it’s not necessary to write things in the right order at all at Draft 1 stage.

These changes, taken from the beginning again, constitute Draft 2. Bear in mind, I haven’t written my ending. This is because, as I headed rapidly in the direction of the last 20 or so thousand words, I realized the ending I’d been visualizing was foggy, lacking in tension, and was probably unworkable. So I made the decision to stop at 90,000 words and start on Draft 2 without a resolution. This, I have to say, is proving a good decision; already my ideas are clearer and more dramatic; they continue to shape and change. In the meantime, as I work through the novel, adding new ideas, pumping up the drama, reshaping and fine-tuning characters and taking out the dull bits, I’m getting that ‘overview’ that was impossible during Draft 1, because I didn’t read backwards at all. 

Hopefully, when I reach in Draft 2 the point where I broke off after 90,000 words in Draft 1, I’ll find myself pummelling ahead towards the finishing line, now clear in my mind how my ending will work.

As I go, I do edit – to be honest, I can’t help it. In my opinion, if you see that a full stop is missing, you’d be daft not to put it in. But Draft 2 is not the editing draft. Don’t waste time thinking it needs to be perfect for delivery to an editor. There is going to be a mighty lot of work to do in drafts 3 and 4, before anyone other than your tutor or writing group sees a word. 

Don’t look forward to much at all, it will only lead you to despair. Just keep the small, direct task in mind – writing those tiny bits every day is what will get you there. If you haven’t written Draft 1, with its red herrings, blind alleys, stone walls, wild goose chases, 2-dimensional characters, creaking conversations and other imperfections, you effectively have nothing; you don’t have any plasticine to work with.

Preperation counts for a lot

I must say one thing about preparation, though. We’ve just sacked our decorators, here at Rhos Hill, because they failed to do the preparation necessary and their coat of emulsion peeled off the walls (still internally damp from external continual rain!). Preparation is everything, whatever the task. Before you start to ‘write a tiny bit each day’ or take the challenge of 2000 word-a-day splurge, be sure to resolve that you have some sort of pathway to tread. 

It is my strong advice that you don’t start with the notion that ‘the ideas will come if I write’. What will come is a brick wall. Even if your plan for the story could be written on the back of a till receipt, or pitched in a 20 second elevator ride, make sure you have that plan. Before I started NaNoWriMo, I talked the ideas I had through with my husband and with other writers. I started a notebook, filling it with disparate thoughts. I created a rough timeline and pinned it up. I named my main characters and did little sketches about them. This was partly to create stronger characterizations, but also successfully to see where they’d fit into the prototype plot and where they might move it along. The best ideas spring out of who the characters are and what they’re doing to enrich the story. After all, that’s how our real-life stories work; they work via the people we know, love, like, hate, or tolerate.

A word to my students – all writing students, really. When your tutor or mentor reads and assesses your submitted pieces of work, they set up a paradox for my neat little template of writing a novel by not stopping and not looking back. The tutor will mark your work and suggest changes in the understanding that you’ll deal with their feedback. This is a dilemma; do you spend precious writing time sorting out the little redrafts of 3000 or so words, trying to bring Draft 1 work to Draft 2 level before you've finished your first draft? Or do you ignore the feedback and battle on with the novel? 

The obvious best plan of action is to keep to your resolution of writing every day; on…and on and on…until you have your entire Draft 1. Stopping to work on little snippets the tutor returns will only hold up your progress and might even curtail it altogether. You can only take this plan of action, however if your tutor isn’t expecting to see ‘set homework’. And if you’re an OCA student, intent on being assessed for your work then you simply must stop and deal with the feedback as it comes, or at least towards the end of the course. 

The happy medium solution is to put aside a certain number of hours for redrafting, utilizing the suggestions you like. As an example, I would suggest that every time you have some writing space, you return to some of the tutor’s comments, find the relevant sections and work on them. But do this after you’ve written your daily new lot of words. That way you’ll make even faster progress, because what you learn from redrafting completed assignments, using tutors’ comments, will be of value when you write on. 

I wish you luck with your long-term writing endeavour; I do hope you wish me luck with mine. 

Starting to Write Short Stories

Short strories can be read on any medium;
 book, magazine or electronically

In a previous blogpost on the short story, I looked at how the short story works today and wondered at its level of popularity. I do sometimes worry that the only people who read the short story are people who write, or want to write short stories. Even worse, some people start writing short stories only as a practice run for writing a novel. But the short story is a form of literature in its own right, able to strike directly into the heart and mind without preamble. The compulsion to tell stories is a very powerful and ancient one which continues to have a place in our modern culture. Commuters on the New York subway still read the latest short fiction, as they did a hundred years ago, proving just how strong a means of expression it is.

There’s nothing wrong with getting on and putting pen to paper if you have a story in your head, but at some point, it makes sense to define what a short story is. Of course it should entertain, engage, provoke empathy and possibly inform or even inspire, but that doesn’t set it apart from other forms of creative writing – a play, for instance.  And the modern short story as it’s been developed since the beginning of the 19^th century is also very different to the stories we tell over a dinner table…or the retelling of a legend, for instance. 

Short stories can demonstrate how diverse, joyful, outrageous comic, sad, illogical, cruel, and mysterious the human experience is – it should be a snapshot; a moment of illumination – enclosed in a capsule, entire to itself, drawing its being from a single point of emotion or wonder. Or, to quote Isobelle Carmody, a microcosm and a magnification. 

One thing that I really love about writing short stories is that there are not many fixed rules. You have carte blanche to create something original every time. If you read through the Unchained Anthology, you’ll see that diversity proved with every new story. 

Of course there are guidelines. The main ones are;

• use a small cast of characters
• keep the timeline as short as possible
• have, a single theme
• resolve your story satisfactorily
• every word has to count

Having sorted out a single theme, never wander away from the central point, as, for instance an anecdote might do. A short story is never an anecdote (which is an account of a probably true, often humorous, possibly exaggerated incident), while a modern short story has a narrative arc which builds tension throughout or towards the end and finishes with a resolution. The narrative must demonstrate a coherent progression towards the satisfying conclusion which, by definition, is never far away.

Even so, many a fine short story has successfully handled a bevy of characters, an extended timeline, or an ending that lacks closure. It might even 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.

There is only one rule that can never be broken, and that is length. A short story has to be short. But how short? Are there minimum or maximum word counts that short fiction must sit between? The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms describes the short story thus: “A fictional tale of no specified length, but too short to be published as a volume of its own, as novellas sometimes and novels usually are. A short story will normally concentrate on a single event with only one or two characters, more economically than a novel’s sustained exploration of social background. This isn’t just a good definition, it’s great advice: concentrate on a single event with only one or two characters. Doing this, at least to begin with, will prevent you from falling into many of the concealed pits that have been dug across the short story writer’s path.

The blank page or screen can represent a terror to many writers, not just writing students. But there are strategies you can employ to overcome any problems with writer’s block. What I love about creating short stories, is the opportunity it gives me to conjure small moments out of my own imagination. Although, like everyone else, I sometimes chew my pen and wonder what the heck to write about, the fact is, ideas for short fiction are everywhere – look out the window for inspiration – look around the room. 

When we were asked to write on a specific theme – that of library – for the Unchained Anthology, every single member of  Bristol Women Writers came up with an amazing story. For me, almost immediately I heard about the theme, the idea of writing about the library at Alexandria came into my mind because I’m interested in the tarot and wanted to investigate the legend of it being created to represent the books lost in the fire, but also because Hypatia was an amazing, but rather forgotten, female role model and writing about her was appealing.   

So finding the clue to starting your story can be as simple as being ‘told’ what to write about, or choosing one random word, or, as writers often do in a workshop environment, choose a picture or photo and allowing the story it tells you to develop into a piece of short fiction.

The anthology can be ordered from Amazon
 or from the Unchained website (details below) 

One way I get started, which I recommend, is by sifting through a shoe box full of a miscellany of clippings, photos and picture cuttings. Every so often, I add things to this box; a quote I liked, a newspaper story, a postcard from a friend or any other material that may be of later interest in your writing. 

For my story The Library at Alexandria, from the Unchained Anthology celebrating 400 years of Bristol Libraries, I took out a cutting I'd saved from a magazine about the historic facts about the ancient library at Alexandria in northern Egypt. As I read it, I looked at the wonderful photo of a bust of Hypatia which inspired me to think about how a woman in my own world might be engender such an aura of charisma. I try to get ‘a moment of illumination’, and some part of a narrative arc revolving in my head before I open my notebook and write. Then I often start with notes which, given chance, build like a lego structure into the beginnings of an narrative arc. I like to be ‘bursting to write’ before I properly begin – then I freewrite for as long as I can without stopping, even to think too much.

If you’re desperate to write a short story, I recommend you try this method. \

A shorter version of this post can be seen at 
http://writersunchained.wordpress.com/2014/01/21/short-stories-how-long-and-where-from/

Forget plot, perspective and dialogue!

A new blogpost up from me on the open college of the arts blogsite!

A level three student of mine, Jo Wells, made a simple, but valid comment in her reflective commentary recently. She had included a well-realised and imaginative scene in her assignment work, and wrote that this… came out of an exercise where a person becomes invisible… I never forget the benefit of exercises and free-write. Most exercises can be arranged to include some aspect of what is currently being written.

go to

http://www.weareoca.com/creative_writing/forget-plot-perspective-and-dialogue/

to read the rest of the post.