Creative Writing Exercises For Dummies E-Book

Maggie Hamand

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 605

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Turn your inspiration into a story with clear, expert guidance Creative Writing Exercises For Dummies is a step-by-step creative writing course designed to hone your craft, regardless of ability. Written by the founder of the Complete Creative Writing Course at London's Groucho Club, this activity-based guide walks you through the process of developing and writing in a wide range of genres including novels, short stories and creative nonfiction. The book includes writing prompts, exercises, mind maps, flow charts and diagrams designed to get your ideas flowing. You'll get expert guidance into character development, plot structure and prose, plus extensive insight into self-editing and polishing your work. Whether you're a new writer with a seed of an idea you would like to develop, or are looking to strengthen your creative writing skills, this book has you covered. Covering every aspect of narrative, from setting initial goals to formatting a manuscript, Creative Writing Exercises For Dummies provides the tools and instruction you need to make your story the best it can be. * Learn to spark your imagination and sketch out ideas * Create compelling characters and paint a picture with description * Develop your plot and structure and maintain continuity * Step back from your work and become your own ruthless editor The rise of e-books has opened up the publishing world, even to non-established writers. If you have a story you're dying to tell but aren't sure how, Creative Writing Exercises For Dummies is the clear, concise solution you need.

Leseprobe

Creative Writing Exercises For Dummies®

Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, www.wiley.com

This edition first published 2014

© 2014 Maggie Hamand

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Creative Writing Exercises For Dummies

Visit www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/creativewritingexercises to view this book's cheat sheet.

Table of Contents

Introduction

About This Book

Foolish Assumptions

Icons Used in This Book

Beyond the Book

Where to Go from Here

Part I: Getting Started with Creative Writing Exercises

Chapter 1: Preparing to Create Your Written Masterpiece

Planning for the Writing Journey

Setting your writing goals

Locating the appropriate genre

Creating the right title

Discovering the scope of your book

Silencing the inner critic

Reviewing the Creative Writing Process

Taking your first steps

Gearing up for the long haul

Writing in a spiral path

Using creative writing exercises

Living with Creative Confusion

Allowing yourself to make mistakes

Writing what you want to write

Chapter 2: Sketching Out Ideas

Getting Your Creative Juices Flowing

Starting with your first thoughts

Creating a mind map of ideas

Brainstorming: Creative idea sessions

Moving Beyond Words withObjects and Images

Keeping a scrapbook of ideas and materials

Finding images related to your project

Using objects to enhance your writing

Considering the Level of Research Required

Part II: Realising That Character Is Everything

Chapter 3: Developing Your Characters’ Backgrounds

Creating Seriously Deep Characters

Detailing your character’s family tree

That reminds me! Exploring characters’ memories

Seeing into a character’s CV

Setting out a character’s timeline

Using Diaries, Letters and Reminiscences in Your Writing

Chapter 4: Creating Drama through Dialogue

Recognising Great Dialogue

Drafting and Developing Dialogue

Talking about dialogue basics

Getting up close and personal: Face-to-face dialogue

Ringing the changes: Phone conversations

Making the Best Use of Dialogue

Deciding where and when conversations happen

Creating and handling conflict

Hinting at what’s hidden: Subtext

Chapter 5: Embodying Your Characters

Building a Body for Your Characters to Inhabit

Inventing and describing major characters

Rounding out minor characters

Getting Under a Character’s Skin

Thinking about emotional make-up

Coping with sickness

Constructing Characters’ Activities

Surrounding Your Characters with Physical Objects

Owning up to your characters’ possessions

Choosing what to wear

Chapter 6: Developing Your Dialogue-Writing Skills

Conveying Individuality and Character through Dialogue

Feeling for foreign accents

Dealing with dialect

Nailing down your use of slang

Getting quirky with speech quirks

Don’t All Shout at Once! Coping with Crowds

Producing Effective Speeches and Monologues

Imparting information

Interviewing and making presentations

Going it alone: Interior monologues

Chapter 7: Conveying Characters’ Thoughts in Style

Exploring Ways to Set Down Characters’ Thoughts

Dramatising Characters’ Thoughts and Feelings Effectively

Thinking in the real world

Gesturing towards body language

Capturing a character’s inner voice

Enjoying the Flexibility of Free Indirect Style

Chapter 8: Choosing and Using Different Points of View

‘From Where I’m Standing’: The Importance of Taking a View

Experimenting with Voices and Viewpoints

Using ‘I’, the first-person voice

Using ‘you’, the second-person voice

‘He said, she said’: Using the third-person voice, limited to one character

On the outside looking in: Employing an outside narrator

Five third-person narrative styles

Adopting More Than One Viewpoint

Choosing the number and type of narrators

Balancing and structuring your viewpoints

Chapter 9: Creating Complicated, Well-Rounded Characters

Adding Layers to Your Characters

Revealing depth through experiences

Remembering basic human needs

Looking at different areas of your character’s life

Workplace relationships

Passing the time with hobbies and interests

Confounding expectations and creating contradictions

Depicting Sexuality and Gender

Risking the wrath of your grandmother: Writing about sex

Finding the right words

Considering Other Ways to Add Character Depth

Employing lies, half-truths and evasions

Sharing and keeping secrets

Multiplying misunderstandings

Part III: Painting the Picture with Description

Chapter 10: Navigating the Locations in Your Stories

Choosing and Conveying a Setting

Making your characters feel at home

Travelling to exotic lands . . . by book

Creating a Location’s Fine Detail

Using maps for realism

Imagining and recording the finer points

Inventing Your Own World: Fantasy and Science Fiction

Chapter 11: Appreciating the Power of the Senses

Creating a Colourful, Meaningful World

Giving associations to colours

Colouring in scenes and characters

Listening to Sound and Music on the Page

Sensing scenic sounds

Making musical moments

Sparking Emotions with Smell

Tantalising with Taste and Food

Feeling Your Way with Touch and Texture

Chapter 12: Getting Things Done: Describing Action and Activity

Watching Characters Tackling Everyday Tasks

Homing in on domestic life

Working at creating a work life

Chilling out to reveal character at play

Writing Dramatic Action Scenes

Choosing the best words for action scenes

Controlling a huge cast

Portraying Violence and Its Effects

Chapter 13: Building Character with Objects and Possessions

Giving Your Characters Significant Possessions

Choosing objects to use

Owning objects(and being owned by them)

Remembering to Use Objects to Spark Memories!

Representing Characters: Objects as Symbols

Same object, different meaning

Making use of magical objects and superstitions

Getting(metaphorically) emotional

Experiencing unexpected meetings with objects

Creating Clues to Your Character

Using objects to stand in for aspects of your characters

Seeing things in the dark

Chapter 14: Using Description to Create Atmosphere and . . . and . . . Suspense!

Adding Ambience and Atmosphere

Choosing your words carefully

Enhancing character and atmosphere with description

Foreshadowing Events for Suspense

Omens and prophecies

Anticipating the future with objects and events

Writing in All Weathers and All Year Round

Working with the weather

Using the seasons

Handling the Uncanny

Seeing ghosts

Dabbling in doubles

Conjuring up curious coincidences

Receiving visions and visitations

Creating suspense in your sleep: Dreams and premonitions

Chapter 15: Managing Metaphors, Similes and Symbols

Employing Metaphors to Deepen Your Writing

Entering the world of the metaphor

Finding a controlling metaphor

Avoiding metaphor clichés . . . like the plague!

Personifying: A heading that jumps for joy!

Substituting Similes That Fit Like a Glove

Appreciating the strength of a simile

Making the best use of similes

Standing for Something with Symbols

Using universal symbols

Investigating individual symbols

Dreaming up some dream symbolism

Delving into the deepest of meanings

Chapter 16: Describing the Ineffable: Saying What Can’t Be Said

Handling the Ineffable: When Words Fail

Defining the difficulties of the inexpressible

Attempting to communicate subjective experiences

Revealing the Mysterious with Literary Devices

Defamiliarising to see the world anew

Experimenting with the rhythm of sentences

Listening to the sounds of words

Using the Contradictory to Communicate the Ineffable

Playing with paradox

Creating ambiguity

Part IV: Developing Your Plot and Structure

Chapter 17: Writing a Gripping Opening

Introducing the Art of the Opening

Starting somewhere, anywhere

Locating a great place to start

Avoiding common mistakes

Discovering Openings from the Greats

Making a statement: Philosophical openings

Speaking from the start: Dialogue openings

Intriguing readers with odd-narrator openings

Holding on for an exciting ride: Dramatic events

Beginning with a bang: Firing-squad openings

Setting the scene with descriptive openings

Waking up your readers: Science-fiction openings

Going for the obvious: Statement-of-fact openings

Chapter 18: Plotting Your Way to Great Stories

Intriguing Readers with a Core Question

Propelling Your Plot with Motivation and Conflict

Revealing characters’ motivation

Creating conflict

Handling Plot Coincidences – with Care

Keeping Readers on Their Toes

Making twists and turns

Delivering shocks and surprises

Chapter 19: Making Good (Use of) Time in Your Writing

Working with Time in Conventional Narratives

Jumping over the dull bits

Stretching out with sagas and lifetimes

Living life in one hectic day

Looking Over Your Shoulder at the Past

Handling flashbacks

I knew that would happen! Writing with hindsight

Playing Around with Time

Leaping into the future

Mixing up time

Travelling through time

Chapter 20: Structuring a Longer Work of Fiction

Dividing Your Work into Parts, Chapters and Scenes

Partitioning into parts

Chatting about chapters

Writing complete scenes

Linking Different Narrative Threads

Spinning subplots

Trying different subplot structures

Playing with Structure

Becoming more complex

Chapter 21: Tightening the Tension to Enthral Readers

Introducing the Art of Creating Suspense

Investigating Ways to Turn the Screws

Pushing the narrative for tension’s sake

Sowing clues into the story

Constructing cliffhangers

Creating a gap in the narrative

Chapter 22: Expanding Your Ideas into Larger Narratives

Expanding Your Work with the Characters

Connecting with new characters

Involving characters in new plot lines

Complicating your characters’ lives

Weaving characters into new timeframes

Using Narrative and Plot to Expand Your Story

Bringing in big themes

Threading together themes and subjects

Spanning events with a bridge story

Chapter 23: Approaching the Grand Finale: The End’s in Sight!

Preparing for the End

Climbing aboard the story arc

Bringing all the threads together

Building up to the climax

Producing Your Story’s Highpoint: The Climax

Understanding the climactic scene

Changing everything in a single line

Answering the central narrative question

Throwing in the unexpected

Writing the Final Scene

Tying up loose ends

Choosing your type of ending

Perfecting Your Last Line

Looking at types of great last line

Coming full circle

Part V: Polishing Your Product: Revising and Editing

Chapter 24: Reviewing and Rewriting Your Work

Reacquainting Yourself with Your First Draft

Leaving your first draft alone for a while

Reading your work in one go

Speaking up: Reading your work aloud (but perhaps not in public)

Making Major Changes to Your Initial Draft

Taking a different viewpoint

Changing character and location names

Altering the story’s structure

Considering other large reworkings

Restructuring Your Story: Second Draft

Working on the overall structure

Weaving in those loose threads

Checking the timeline

Fixing fundamental flaws

Chapter 25: Whipping Your Work into Shape

Looking with a Fresh Pair of Eyes

Searching for the obvious and the obscure

Dealing with redundant characters

Considering the order of scenes

Cutting Redundant Material

Stopping overly long dialogue

Trimming interior monologue

Keeping your back story to yourself

Getting to the point: Avoiding summary

Giving out too much information

Adding Necessary Details

Making Your Writing Sparkle

Weeding out clichés

Tightening up your sentences

Chapter 26: Polishing Your Work for Publication

Carrying Out Your Final Read-Through

Correcting continuity errors

Spelling and punctuating correctly

Spotting grammatical errors

Making the Presentation Professional

Complying with publishing conventions

Displaying dialogue

Part VI: The Part of Tens

Chapter 27: Ten Top Aids for Writers

Getting a Notebook – and Using It!

Keeping a Decent Pen on You

Having a Good Dictionary and Thesaurus

Buying the Best Computer and Printer You Can Afford

Blocking Out Your Writing Time in a Diary

Investing in a Desk and Chair

Putting Up a ‘Do Not Disturb’ Sign

Surrounding Yourself with Great Books

Backing Up Your Work Regularly

Drinking Coffee – But Not Too Much!

Chapter 28: Ten Great Ways to Stay the Course

Bribing Yourself with a Major Reward to Finish

Promising Yourself Minor Rewards for Meeting Targets

Banishing the Inner Critic

Finding a Supportive Reader

Accepting the Bad Days Along with the Good

Writing Every Day

Taking a Writing Course

Joining a Writers’ Circle

Searching for a Mentor

Believing in Yourself

About the Author

Cheat Sheet

Guide

Table of Contents

Begin Reading

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Introduction

Creative writers come in all shapes and sizes. Put the stereotyped bespectacled introvert, hunched over a desk in a dusty attic, out of your mind: no ‘typical’ writer exists. Whatever your background, age or current situation, if you have the enthusiasm and discipline, you can become a writer.

I designed this book to help you write a novel, a collection of short stories or a piece of narrative fiction or non-fiction. I made it as practical as possible, filling it with exercises and examples from the greats so that you can progress from your first vague ideas through to a completed manuscript.

Without doubt, writing is difficult. One of the main obstacles is that it’s a lonely business and often no one’s around to help or support you along the way. Plus, creative writing techniques are poorly taught at school, and most education seems designed to drum the creativity out of you, with its focus on grades, results and ticking the right boxes. This regimented approach makes being creative later in life difficult.

All children are naturally creative, and I believe that adults are at their happiest when being creative too. However, taking up an art or a craft after you’ve finished your education is often hard, because you haven’t had the initial training or practice you need. For physical pursuits, you may no longer have the manual strength or dexterity you had as a child (for example, it’s hard to be a musician or dancer without physical strength and if you haven’t put in the early training). Also some arts or crafts are expensive to practise – paint and canvas can be pricey, sculptors need costly materials to carve into. But writing is something that everyone can do, at any age.

You’ve picked up this book and are reading this passage, and so you’re clearly interested in creative writing. I encourage you to use this book to turn that interest into a concrete reality.

About This Book

I’ve been leading creative writing classes for 15 years, and I love teaching almost as much as I love writing. One of its pleasures is coming up with relevant texts to illustrate particular topics and devising interesting exercises that help people to develop new techniques and their craft.

Over these years I’ve collected a large bank of texts and exercises that have worked well in class, and I’ve been able to ditch quietly the ones I tried that didn’t turn out to be so helpful. I know that the exercises in this book help writers to take their projects forward, because I’ve seen the great results. Many of the students who’ve taken my courses started off with a vague idea and, by progressing through the different levels from beginner courses to advanced workshops, ended up with complete drafts of novels. If you work your way through all the exercises in the book, in whatever order you choose, you can achieve the same.

Often I read through a final draft and see the exercises I set during the classes blended skilfully into a complete narrative. By completing all the exercises, these writers have been able to start with the opening pages, develop their characters and storyline, and tackle all the different aspects of creating good fiction. Some of these novels have finally been published. One or two have even won prizes.

Seeing these writers take their first tentative steps into fiction is a pleasure and a privilege, as is watching them progress as they gain confidence and develop their voice and their skills. All the writers who finish their projects realise that writing takes a huge amount of commitment and hard work. They also learn to trust their instincts about what they want to write and the way they want to write it. They were willing to learn and remained open to feedback and new ways of working. You too can be like them!

Foolish Assumptions

In writing this book, I make some assumptions about you:

You enjoy books and reading. All kinds of reading are good, but this book is mainly concerned with narrative fiction and non-fiction – in other words, books that tell a story. Books are about characters, and so I also assume that you’re fundamentally interested in human nature – what people do and why they do it. I refer to a lot of books that I’ve read, and you’ll notice that the same books come up again and again. This is because they’re well constructed, contain characters you can believe in and illustrate many points so beautifully. I suggest you read these books if you haven’t already.You want to write a full-length book. This can be a novel, a memoir, a travelogue, a biography or a collection of stories – anything that has a narrative element. Many of the exercises in this book are equally useful for someone writing a play, a screenplay or any other kind of extended narrative.You want your book to be as good as you can possibly make it. Lots of poorly written or unoriginal books are published and have even sold in good quantities, but I assume that you want to aim for the best rather than imitate the mediocre. Even ‘bad’ books must have appealing aspects to them if they find an audience, but you still don’t want to settle for less than the best you can achieve.You want to work hard and improve at your writing. Writing at any length doesn’t come easily to many people, and creative writing is different from the kind of factual writing that people tend to do in their everyday lives. With this book, you have the opportunity to develop new techniques and ways of writing and to try out new skills. If you come to this book already thinking that you know everything about writing and have already decided exactly how you’re going to proceed, you aren’t going to get much out of this book.

Icons Used in This Book

To make finding your way around this book as easy as possible, I use little drawings in the margins, called icons, to highlight important information.

I highlight important advice and tricks of the trade with this icon.

This icon draws your attention to information that you may want to come back to and bear in mind while you’re writing.

I like to illustrate points I make with concrete examples to make them more memorable. I suggest that you look at the relevant passages in the books yourself.

This book is packed with helpful exercises designed to take your writing forward. Don’t just read about them – do them!

Beyond the Book

As you work your way through the book, don’t forget to look at the bonus material available at www.dummies.com/extras/creativewritingexercises.

You can find the book’s cheat sheet at www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/creativewritingexercises.

Where to Go from Here

You can use this book in a number of ways:

You can go through the contents and find an area that especially interests you or where you feel you need particular help.You can work through the early chapters in each part, which give more basic information, and then read the later chapters.You can turn the page and start reading at the beginning, progressing through to the end.

Whichever way you use the book, I recommend that you do all the exercises as you go. If you complete every exercise in this book, you’ll soon be a long way along the road to completing your writing project.

Best of luck with all your creative writing!

Part I

Getting Started with Creative Writing Exercises

Visit www.dummies.com for free access to great Dummies content online.

In this part …

Set yourself some simple targets that you can use to help you make progress.Look at ways to define the theme of your writing project and to keep yourself motivated.Find useful tools and techniques to get your imagination going and inspire you on your way.Understand the creative process, with plenty of tips to get you started and support you on your writing journey.

Chapter 1

Preparing to Create Your Written Masterpiece

In This Chapter

Starting your creative writing

Thinking about the process

Embracing confusion

The saying goes that all people have a book inside them. Certainly, all people have their own life stories and many want to write theirs down; everybody has dreams, ideas, hopes and fears, as well as a certain amount of imagination. All that most people lack is the courage and know-how to turn their chosen idea into a story that others want to read.

Many people think that if you want to be a writer, you have to leave your job (or never start one!) and sit all day in a freezing garret. In fact, most writers have other jobs as well – because they have to! Writers write in bed in the mornings before anyone else is awake, they stay up late writing when everyone else has gone to bed, they write on their commute to work, they write in their lunch hours, they write in any small bit of time they have. They write because they want to and because they have something unique to say – while still paying the bills in other ways.

Being passionate about what you write is important, because otherwise you’re highly unlikely to find the energy and commitment to finish. A story needs to be burning inside you, wanting to escape. You should love your characters, be fascinated by your themes and want to find out how your story ends.

But good writing is more than just a passion – it’s also a craft. You need to discover the techniques and tips of the trade and then practise them to help you make the project you have in mind as good as it can possibly be – which is where this book and this introductory chapter come in! I lead you through some things to consider before you start writing and discuss the basics of creative writing and creative thinking.

Planning for the Writing Journey

Before you physically start writing, a little preparation is a good idea to get the best out of the valuable time you devote to your writing. In this section I discuss helpful ideas such as setting targets and staying confident, as well as how much you do or don’t need to think about genre, scope and the title of your work before you start writing.

Setting your writing goals

One of the most helpful things you can do when starting any writing project is to set yourself some simple, realistic and achievable goals and targets. Here are a few examples:

Task targets: Such as developing a character, finishing a chapter or planning a scene.Time targets: A certain number of writing sessions of fixed length, such as three half-hour sessions a week.Word targets: A certain number of words or pages, such as 500 words or three pages per week.

None of these targets sounds like much, but you may be surprised how much you achieve if you keep going with them week after week.

If you set writing goals that are too optimistic, you’re likely to fail, which undermines your writing instead of supporting it. The good thing about modest targets, especially at the beginning of a project, is that when you exceed them and replace them with slightly more ambitious ones, you can see that you’re making real progress. If you do find that you’re struggling with the targets you’ve set, revise them downwards until you have something that you feel is appropriate for you.

Write down an overall long-term goal as well, such as ‘I’ll have a first draft by this date next year’; it really helps to keep you on track.

Update your goals at regular intervals to keep them relevant and so that you always have something to aim for. Your goals inevitably change as the work develops.

People differ in their strengths and weaknesses: some are planners and others prefer to plunge in and get started. If you’re a planner, plunging in probably makes you feel completely overwhelmed and all at sea, and your story’s likely to peter out quite quickly. Therefore, you’ll find that working out a rough plan or timeline for your story is beneficial, and perhaps even mapping out key scenes before you begin (see Chapters 3 and 19). If you’re a more instinctive writer, and planning is a barrier rather than an aid to progress, just jump in and write every day, and watch your story gradually take shape.

Locating the appropriate genre

Books are defined principally by their genre. Go into any bookshop or library and you’ll find books listed under headings such as action/adventure, children’s, crime, fantasy, historical, horror, mystery, romance, science fiction, thriller, women’s and young adult.

Literary fiction is usually listed under general fiction but is sometimes considered a genre on its own. Literary fiction is hard to define, but the term is often used to describe books that are original or innovative in form, show deep psychological insight and act metaphorically as well as literally – meaning that you can dip beneath the surface of the story and characters to examine themes or issues or to extract multiple meanings. I cover these sorts of issues and techniques in Chapters 15 and 16.

Before you start writing, a good idea is to consider what genre your story will fall into. Also, read some of the most successful examples of this genre to see how they work. Ask yourself the following types of question:

What’s the rough length of books in your chosen genre?Do they tend to be written from a first-person or a third-person viewpoint and do they contain one or several points of view? (Check out Chapter 8 for more details on point of view.)Are they primarilyplot driven(that is, the story is the most important element, and the characters mainly exist to fulfil a role within it) with lots of action (see Chapter12), orcharacter driven(the characters’ choices and actions drive the story) with lots of internal reflection?Is the language simple and direct with relatively short sentences and paragraphs, or are the sentences more complex with more detailed description, including similes and metaphors? (Chapter 15 has loads of info on these figures of speech and Chapter 11 covers using all the senses for intense descriptions.)

Literary fiction tends to be character driven and commercial fiction plot driven, although this isn’t always the case. Many popular and successful novels have well-drawn characters who seem real and that readers can identify with, as well as a well-structured and compelling plot. Thrillers, detective stories and adventure novels tend to fall into the plot-driven category. (The chapters in Part IV have lots of useful information on plot and structure.)

Sometimes people say to me that they don’t want to read other novels in their genre, because they don’t want to be influenced by them. Unfortunately, this often means that they inadvertently write something that’s already been done or that completely fails to match the expectations that readers have when they buy a book in this genre. My mantra is read, read, read! (See the nearby sidebar ‘Taking lessons from other writers’.)

Taking lessons from other writers

You can discover an enormous amount about writing from reading books, novels and stories of all kinds. When you read, think consciously about the way the book is written. Look to see whether it’s divided into sections, parts and chapters. If so, are the chapters short or long, or varied in length? Are the different parts of equal size? How many points of view and locations exist in the story? (Check out Chapter 20 for loads more on structuring your work.)

Look at the techniques the writer uses to convey the way that people speak in dialogue, to describe a scene or build suspense. See how the plot unfolds, how secrets are hidden and how clues are revealed. Examine how events are foreshadowed and surprises created. (Chapters 4 and 6 discuss dialogue, and Chapters 14 and Chapter 21 creating and maintaining suspense.)

Picking passages you really like from a book and imitating them as closely as possible using your own settings, characters and story can be helpful. It helps you to see how really good fiction works. Consider these to be exercises, like a musician playing scales or an artist making a sketch from a famous painting. You don’t even need to put them in your work in progress, although you can use them, often altered, if they fit.

I was once working on a novel based on my experience of working in a women’s prison. The beginning just wouldn’t come right, so in exasperation I picked up a copy of one of my favourite novels, John le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963). It starts with a terse dialogue at Checkpoint Charlie, where the main character is waiting for someone to cross over. I immediately started my novel with a tense dialogue just before the main character meets the disturbed woman who is the focus of the narrative, ditching the first 20 pages I’d written!

However much you’re influenced by other books and other writers – and all writers are – beware of writing something that’s too close to a book that exists already. This can constitute plagiarism – legally defined as the ‘wrongful appropriation, stealing and publication’ of another author’s ‘language, thoughts, ideas or expressions’ and passing them off as your own.

Beware of mixing different genres, and in particular of switching genre mid-novel. A romantic story that suddenly changes into a political satire, or a crime novel where the corpse turns out to have been abducted by aliens, defies publishing conventions and gives readers an unpleasant jolt.

Creating the right title

The right title is vital, because it tells readers something important about the story. You don’t need to have a title before you start writing your story. Many writers haven’t found a title until very late in their project or even after it has finished. Occasionally, literary agents or publishers suggest the title or change the one you already have, and sometimes books have different titles in different countries, especially when they’re translated.

You can take your title from different aspects of your story:

Name of the main character or one around which the plot pivots: For example, David Copperfield, Jane Eyre, Ethan Frome, Mrs Dalloway, Emma, Rebecca. You can also use a character’s profession (The Piano Teacher, The Honorary Consul, The Secret Agent, The Professor, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, A Man of the People) or some kind of description of them (The Woman in White, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, A Good Man in Africa, The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year).Relationship between two characters: For example, The Magician’s Nephew, The Time Traveller’s Wife, The French Lieutenant’s Woman, Sons and Lovers, The Spy Who Loved Me.Significant place: For example, Wuthering Heights, Mansfield Park, Revolutionary Road, Middlemarch, Solaris, Gorky Park.

Theme of the book: For example, War and Peace, Crime and Punishment, Pride and Prejudice, The End of the Affair, The Sense of an Ending.

Biblical or literary quotation: For example, East of Eden, Gone with the Wind, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Present Laughter, The Darling Buds of May. Or you can adapt one, for example, By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept.Significant object: For example, Brighton Rock, The Golden Bowl, The Subtle Knife, The Moonstone, The Scarlet Letter.Central element of the plot: For example, The Hunt for Red October, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Around the World in Eighty Days, Looking for Mr. Goodbar, The War Between the Tates, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.Word or phrase buried deep in the story: For example, in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, the phrase comes on the last page.

Titles arrive in all sorts of ways

The now famous titles of many books weren’t the author’s first choices: George Orwell’s 1984 was going to be called The Last Man in Europe, To Kill a Mockingbird was going to be Atticus before Harper Lee decided the title was too narrowly focused on one character, and Jane Austen’s original title for Pride and Prejudice was First Impressions.

Books often have different titles in different countries, even when they share the same language. For example, Laurie Lee’s Cider with Rosie was published in the US as Edge of Day, and Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. The Bridges of Madison County was originally published with the title Love in Black and White, and only became a bestseller after the title was changed.

The title can be the first thing that comes to an author, though. Jonas Jonasson, author of The Hundred-year-old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared, so loved the title after he thought it up that he felt compelled to write the book itself!

The title you choose highlights in readers’ minds a certain element in the story. For example, The Hobbit’s alternative title was There and Back Again, which emphasised the journey the main character takes.

Don’t let not having a good title stop you from getting started or indeed finishing your book!

You may not find the final title of your story or novel for some time, but try this to help you get at least a working one:

Make a list of different possible titles for your story from each of the preceding categories. Think about which one you like best and why.Pick a working title for your story. Having one to hand often helps even if you decide to change it later.

Discovering the scope of your book

Don’t worry too much about fixing the scope of your book before you start writing or even while you’re drafting it. Many writers find that their story changes and grows as they write it. A novel you begin as a light-hearted romance may take a dark turn when the handsome love interest turns out to be concealing a terrible secret; a crime story can transform into an exposé of the poverty and suffering of a marginalised community; a straightforward thriller may turn out to have a supernatural element.

Sometimes only at the end of a draft do you really know who your characters are and have a good idea of where the story is going. So just keep drafting and leave editing and rewriting until much later. You can always go back and transform the first part of your story so that it fits in with your later discoveries, or expand your original idea to accommodate a new idea or additional characters (see Chapter 22).

If your story takes an unexpected turn, don’t stop yourself from writing. If you block yourself because you want to stick to your original idea or are surprised by some of the material coming through, you’ll almost certainly find that all the life goes out of your writing.

The foreword to the second edition of JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (1955, George Allen & Unwin) begins with the words: ‘This tale grew in the telling’. Tolkien started writing a sequel to The Hobbit, but the story took over and turned into a massive three-volume epic aimed more at adults than children.

Silencing the inner critic

I believe that drafting out your entire story before you start to edit anything is best (I discuss editing in Chapters 24 to 26). I read about novelists who write a thousand words in the morning, edit their text and then move on the next day. This may work for experienced writers (though not all), but it’s seldom useful when you’re starting out. As soon as you look at your work, that voice starts up in your head saying, ‘This is rubbish; it’s never going to work. You’ll never make it as a writer. Go back and change everything.’ Somehow, you have to find out how to banish that voice!

The best way I know to get rid of that voice is not to edit at all while you’re at an early stage. Just keep writing. Resist the temptation to go back and look at what you’ve written previously, unless you really have to check a fact such as what name you gave a character or on what day of the week a certain event happened. But don’t get out that red pen or turn on the word processor’s track changes function and start going over your work, because you may soon find that you have no writing left! You have plenty of time to go over what you’ve written when you get to the end of your draft.

Reviewing the Creative Writing Process

In this section I have a look at the various stages involved when you want to write a novel, a piece of narrative non-fiction or a series of short stories.

No single right way to set about any creative process can apply to everyone: different people find that different methods of working are best for them. At the beginning, just try out a few different ways of working until you find what clicks with you.

Taking your first steps

When you start writing, the important thing to do is just to gain confidence.

Get a notebook, pen and paper or the kind of computer that suits you – laptop, tablet, desktop – and jot down ideas, anecdotes, sketches, key phrases, character outlines and memories. Write down anything you like, as long as you’re writing. If you have a particular project in mind or a story that you want to tell, just write down anything connected with it. At this stage, you simply want to get your pen moving or some words on the screen, so that you have some material to work with. I talk more about recording and using ideas in Chapter 2.

Sometimes when you start a project you have an idea of a key scene: maybe two characters meeting, having an argument or confrontation, or a character discovering something, someone having an important realisation, or a dramatic event taking place. Sometimes ideas come from a family story or something that happened to you or someone you know. If this type of situation applies, begin writing from these starting points.

At this point, don’t worry about the quality of what you write: just begin somewhere. The more you get down on paper or on screen, the more confident and skilful your writing becomes. Developing your writing voice takes time, and so don’t hurry it or expect too much too soon.

If you find that you’re constantly struggling to get started at the beginning of each writing session, try leaving a sentence unfinished so that you can complete it when you next sit down. Alternatively, try making a list of ideas. Usually, getting started takes a while, but then your mind is buzzing by the end of a session and ideas arise more freely – so take advantage of this to help you get started next time.

Here’s an exercise to ensure that you always have a repository of ideas to turn to whenever you’re stuck. Write down three of the following:

Significant memories from your character’s past: These can be adapted from your own memories. Check out Chapter 3 and Chapter 19 for how to use memories.Facts about your main characters: Check out Chapter 3 for how to give them convincing backgrounds and Chapter 5 for detail on creating them physically. Chapters 4 and 6 guide you through teaching them to speak.Objects your main character possesses: Chapter 13 has several tips on this aspect.Incidents your main character can experience: Read Chapter 18 for all about plotting events for your characters.Desires or fears of your main character: Chapters 7 and 9 discuss providing characters with complex inner lives.

Gearing up for the long haul

Writing a whole book is going to take you a long time, and so don’t put undue pressure on yourself by trying to get it all done too quickly. Slow and steady is the best way forwards. If you’re always rushing ahead to get onto the next scene, you don’t allow yourself the challenge and the pleasure of going deeply into the scene that you’re writing now.

The fashionable Buddhist concept of mindfulness is really useful for creative writing, because you want to create a space in which you and your characters deeply experience the ‘now’ of your story. If you’re constantly thinking back to previous scenes and worrying that they aren’t good enough, or stressing about what on earth you’re going to write next, you can’t slow down and concentrate on what’s happening to your writing or your characters in the present moment.

Every paragraph or page that you write is an important step towards your goal.

Writing in a spiral path

Writing a book isn’t a linear process: you don’t start at the beginning and go in a straight line towards the end. On the contrary, sometimes you seem to be going backwards rather than forwards, round and round in circles or not going anywhere at all!

I prefer to see my writing as being like walking on a spiral path, sometimes facing backwards, sometimes forwards, but always moving slowly towards my goal. You get a whole lot of writing done only to discover yourself back with the same scene or dilemma or conflict that you were wrestling with earlier. However, you’re never exactly back in the same place, because you’ve learned a whole lot more about your characters and your story in the meantime, and so you can write the scene again better than you did the first time around.

Using creative writing exercises

The single most helpful tool for developing your creative writing skills is to do creative writing exercises: quick, focused pieces of work that you can complete in 5 to 20 minutes. This book is chock-full of such useful exercises designed to illustrate different aspects of the writing process.

When doing these exercises, I suggest you get started right away and just jot down the first thing that comes into your head without thinking too much about it. These spontaneous and unedited thoughts are often the most useful. As you get used to doing the exercises, jumping in and writing straight away without much prior thought or effort gets easier and easier.

Sometimes you don’t see the point of an exercise or feel that what you’ve written is never going to fit into your story. This doesn’t matter. You almost certainly learned something useful and are mastering techniques to put into use at another time or in another place. Don’t worry if the results of the exercise don’t always seem that great – they’re quick writing exercises and no one is expecting prefect prose!

Some of the exercises involve random prompts or elements you can introduce into your story. One problem with writing is the feeling that you have to supply all the ingredients out of your own head, which isn’t the way real life works – after all, you don’t choose the weather, who sits next to you on the bus or what strange object a friend will leave behind in your house! Read Chapter 13 for more on creative use of objects in your stories.

Using random elements from your environment enables you to create a more complex and lifelike story, as well as giving you new ideas that you can often connect in a fresh and original way.

Living with Creative Confusion

In a non-creative project, having lots of notebooks and computer files with slightly different versions of the same thing is a bad sign. But creative projects, particularly in their early stages, benefit from this level of uncertainty. Having five separate start plans and three endings is fine (I discuss writing openings and endings in Chapters 17 and 23), as is having no clear idea of on what day of the week different events in your story happen.

Resist the urge to ‘tidy’ your work as you go. A far better idea is to keep writing and then return when you have a first draft to make your final selections and examine the finer details. Don’t expect your writing to come out perfectly first time. You have to adjust to a certain amount of chaos. Many people resist the messiness involved in producing creative work, but it’s inevitable if you want to produce something worthwhile.

Writing in chaos doesn’t mean, however, that your writing space has to be a complete tip (although mine often is when I’m in the middle of a project). Some people just can’t work in a messy environment. However, others can’t work if everything is too neat and tidy. Find out what kind of person you are, and don’t fight against it.

Consider these tips to help you create some order in the chaos:

Get different coloured notebooks or one with different coloured pages. Write plot ideas in the blue notebook (or on the blue pages), character things in the red, random observations in yellow and so on. This approach makes finding something you’ve written far easier later on.Give chapters working titles. Do so even if you aren’t going to keep them in the end.Write a brief summary of what happens at the top of each chapter. This helps you to find key scenes easily.Number and title computer files for easy reference. Group them in folders and subfolders.Keep everything. Buy box files and folders to store your material.

One area in which you may need to be systematic is in sorting files on your computer. Because you can’t access things on a computer at a glance as you can with a notebook or typescript, you can easily lose track of what you’ve written. Create folders with headings such as ‘notes’, ‘sketches’, ‘characters’ (use the names of your main characters) and clearly number each draft. Give chapters a working title in the file name so that you can identify what each chapter is about with no hassle.

Allowing yourself to make mistakes

People learn by making mistakes. Many creative breakthroughs occur when you make a mistake. If you keep going along a safe track, you never discover the exciting avenues you may have gone down if you’d allowed yourself a little more latitude. It’s a bit like tourists who stick to the main areas instead of exploring the interesting backstreets where they may discover a charming café or hidden gem.

You often need to start a story or try out a scene in a particular way in order to discover that it isn’t working. You’re working without knowing enough about the world of your story, and so you’re bound to make false starts and go down dead ends. Sometimes you may go down a side turning and realise that lovely as the scene you’ve written is, it doesn’t belong in the narrative you’re currently writing. You can always file these scenes for later in the story or for another project. Sometimes, however, you discover something absolutely vital to your story that you hadn’t realised before. Unless you write the scene, you’ll never know which way it’ll go or whether it’ll introduce something new and exciting into your story.

The more you write, the more you develop a kind of instinct that helps you discard certain options in advance. But when you begin, you really don’t know what’s going to be best, and you never will know – unless you try out different approaches.

Almost all writers create far more material than they ever use in their final version, but this doesn’t matter. What you see in the finished book is a bit like the one-tenth of an iceberg that appears above the surface of the water. The rest of the material may be hidden or discarded, but it’s still a vital part of creating your story.

If you like to plan, you often find that your story refuses to stick to the structure you work out in advance. Maybe you planned that halfway through your novel, character A would divorce character B, but when you get there you realise that your character would never have the courage to confront his wife. You then have to restructure the second part of the book, and the result is usually far stronger than if you’d stuck to your original plan.

Think about making a film: it usually needs a large number of ‘takes’ to get a scene absolutely as the director wants it. And some of the items that ended up in Picasso’s wastepaper basket have been sold for huge sums of money!

Writers who’ve made ‘mistakes’ and had to correct them include Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Ian Fleming, who both killed off their heroes, Sherlock Holmes and James Bond, only to have to backtrack later. The inventor of Sherlock Holmes needed some ingenuity to explain how his character survived what seemed a certain death. When JRR Tolkien wrote the original version of The Hobbit, he hadn’t yet decided that Bilbo’s ring was the One Ring, and so Gollum wasn’t overly upset when he lost it. After publishing The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien had to go back and correct this incident for all future editions of The Hobbit.

Writing what you want to write

One of the most important things I want to stress is that when you start out as a writer you must write what you want to write and not allow yourself to be persuaded by anyone to write anything else. Even if you’re not sure precisely what you want to write, and your thoughts seem a bit confused at first, don’t change what you’re writing in order to comply with other people’s ideas; after all, you’ve not written your novel before, and so some uncertainty is inevitable.

You write best when you write the kind of fiction you like to read. Many novelists say that they write the books they want to read – the books didn’t exist before, and so they had to create them!

Use this exercise to help you clarify what you love about other people’s books:

Make a list of your top ten favourite books of all time.Mull over what you love about them: characters, plot (see Chapter18), setting (see Chapter10) or perhaps a mixture of all three.See whether you can spot any similarities in theme, structure or writing style.

Nobody’s forcing you to write; you do so because you want to, for its own sake, and not because you feel that you ought to write or you think it’s going make you rich and famous. So if you’re going to take the time and trouble, you may as well write the book you really want to write and not the book you think will appeal to others.

Books and writing are personal. Some writers I can’t stand and others I love, and the books I love sometimes leave other people cold. Some books were bestsellers in their time but have long been out of print and forgotten, while other books that were rejected or reviled at the time are now highly respected. Some people will like what you write and others will hate it.

Don’t try to please everybody, because you won’t. As the saying goes, in trying to please everyone you almost inevitably end up pleasing nobody.

Never worry about what anyone else may think of your work. As soon as you do, you start restricting your writing to fit in with what you think others would like or consider appropriate, or to conceal aspects of yourself you think people may disapprove of.

In particular, don’t worry about what literary agents or publishers may think in the early stages of a project. When you begin, you’re so far away from being published that thinking about it in any way except as a distant and ultimate goal is pointless. It often just causes you to freeze and give up.

Many people think they have to write in a special way when they’re writing fiction, to develop a distinctive ‘voice’ or ‘style’ that impresses people. Many published writers do have an individual and recognisable style, but usually they took many years to develop it. I think that all writers have their own voice, just as you can usually recognise everyone you know by the sound of their unique, individual voice. The best way to develop your writing voice is simply to write as clearly, directly and unaffectedly as you can.