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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Lebensstil
- Sprache: Englisch
Unlock your creativity and choose the genre of writing that suits you best Do you have an idea that you're burning to get down on paper? Do you want to document your travels to far-flung places, or write a few stanzas of poetry? Whether you dream of being a novelist, a travel writer, a poet, a playwright or a columnist, Creative Writing For Dummies shows you how to unlock your creativity and choose the genre of writing that suits you best. Walking you through characterisation, setting, dialogue and plot, as well as giving expert insights into both fiction and non-fiction, it's the ideal launching pad to the world of creative writing. Creative Writing For Dummies covers: Part I: Getting started * Chapter 1: Can Everyone Write? * Chapter 2: Getting into the Write Mind * Chapter 3: Finding the Material to work with Part II: The Elements of Creative Writing * Chapter 4: Creating Characters * Chapter 5: Discovering Dialogue * Chapter 6: Who is telling the story? * Chapter 7: Creating your own world * Chapter 8: Plotting your way * Chapter 9: Creating a Structure * Chapter 10: Rewriting and editing Part III: Different Kinds of Fiction Writing * Chapter 11: Short stories * Chapter 12: Novels * Chapter 13: Writing for children * Chapter 14: Plays * Chapter 15: Screenplays * Chapter 16: Poetry Part IV: Different kinds of Non-fiction writing * Chapter 17: Breaking into journalism - Writing articles/ magazine writing * Chapter 18: Writing from life and autobiography * Chapter 19: Embroidering the facts: Narrative non-fiction * Chapter 20: Exploring the world from your armchair - Travel writing * Chapter 21: Blogging - the new big thing Part V: Finding an audience * Chapter 22: Finding editors/ publishers/ agents * Chapter 23: Becoming a professional Part VI: Part of Tens * Chapter 24: Ten top tips for writers * Chapter 25: Ten ways to get noticed
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010
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Creative Writing For Dummies®
Table of Contents
Introduction
About This Book
How to Use This Book
Foolish Assumptions
Conventions Used in This Book
How This Book Is Organised
Part I: Getting Started
Part II: Introducing the Elements of Creative Writing
Part III: Writing Fiction
Part IV: Exploring Non-Fiction
Part V: Finding an Audience
Part VI: The Part of Tens
Icons Used in This Book
Where to Go from Here
Part I: Getting Started
Chapter 1: You and Your Writing
Writing as Well as You Can
Examining Why You Want to Write
Identifying the Kind of Writing You Want to Do
Discovering Your Own Specific Talent
Practising Your Writing
Putting in the hours
Reading and re-reading
Overcoming Obstacles
Silencing your inner critic
Thinking creatively
Letting the Ideas Come
Offering Tips for New Writers
Don’t worry about publication
Write for yourself
Draft, don’t edit – yet!
Don’t write too fast
Pace yourself
Put aside your ego
Playing with Words
Making verbs stronger
Taking out adverbs and adjectives
Writing in different tenses
Avoiding cliché
Doing writing exercises
Learning from imitation
Developing an ear for good prose
Chapter 2: Getting into the Write Mind
Finding a Time to Write
Writing in a Room of Your Own
Clearing the kitchen table
Retreating to the garden shed
Tucking away in a corner
Finding a place nearby
Writing in cafés and libraries
Assembling Your Writing Tools
Avoiding Distractions
Overcoming the Blank Page Syndrome
Understanding the causes
Writing your way off the blank page
Dealing with writer’s block
Separating Drafting and Editing
Developing a Routine and Sticking to It
Using a notebook
Storing and filing ideas
Keeping track on your computer
Learning to Live with a Degree of Chaos
Realising the importance of not knowing
Taking time to develop your ideas
Chapter 3: Finding Material to Work With
Writing from Experience
Realising your own wide experience
Mining memories
Making use of other people’s experiences
Writing what you – and other people – know
Engaging Emotions
Taking a Step Back
Trying Techniques to Transform Your Experiences
Making use of myth and reality
Being selective
Jumping in time
Transforming fact into fiction
Part II: Introducing the Elements of Creative Writing
Chapter 4: Creating Characters
Defining Different Kinds of Characters
Discovering Where Characters Come From
Detailing Clues about Your Characters
Portraying Personality
Fleshing out your character’s . . . well, flesh
Sharing a character’s thoughts and feelings
Letting actions speak for your characters
Listening to how your characters talk
Revealing Character Indirectly
Gathering friends and enemies
Choosing a name
Avoiding Stereotypes and Tapping into Archetypes
Diversifying stereotypes
Uncovering archetypes
Chapter 5: Discovering Dialogue
Remembering that Dialogue is a Two-Way Street
Distinguishing Voices
Creating natural rhythm
Constructing a voice
Talking in Varied Situations
Getting into he said, she said
Speaking face to face
Talking on the telephone
Containing a crowd
Creating a Dynamic
Keeping it short
Paying attention to place
Revealing the Subtext
Using Accents and Dialect
Rendering foreign accents
Remembering historical voices
Laying Out Dialogue
Chapter 6: Choosing a Narrator
Defining Voices
Focusing on first and third person
Surprising with the second-person voice
Finding the Right Point of View
Going personal with first person
Representing one character’s view
Switching perspectives
Being the all-seeing and all-knowing narrator
Deciding How Close to Be to the Character
Handling Multiple Narrators
Chapter 7: Describing Your World
Recognising the Power of Description
Signposting importance
Noting the details
Being authentic
Using All the Senses
Employing the Tools of Description
Comparing with similes and metaphors
Exploring symbols
Creating a Sense of Place
Tantalising with exotic places
Imagining fantasy places
Creating Mood and Suspense
Chapter 8: Plotting Your Way
Listing the Seven Basic Plots
Seeing the classic plots in everyday life
Managing main plots and sub-plots
Plotting Consciously and Unconsciously
Thinking things through ahead of time
Writing off the cuff
Merging conscious and unconscious plotting
Keeping focused
Asking the Central Question and Including the Essential Elements
Seeing character as plot
Balancing plot and character
Revealing motivation
Handling connection and coincidence
Delivering a punch
Hooking Your Reader
Creating suspense
Foreshadowing
Springing surprises
Chapter 9: Creating a Structure
Dividing Your Work into Chapters and Parts
Creating chapters and scenes
Using acts and scenes in plays and screenplays
Making verses and stanzas
Following the Three-Act Structure
Making a good beginning
Keeping the tension going in the middle
Ending well
Writing within a Timeframe
Lining up a linear narrative
Going linear with flashbacks
Writing backwards
Jumping around in time
Leaving a gap in the narrative
Connecting short stories
Telling a story within a story
Going around in circles stories
Chapter 10: Rewriting and Editing
Producing the First Draft
Trying different techniques
Letting it go and coming back later
Becoming Your Own Editor
Correcting common English errors
Ensuring that the structure’s sound
Finding a Trusted Reader
Getting the right reader
Heeding what your reader says – but not too much
Part III: Writing Fiction
Chapter 11: When Less is More: Crafting Short Stories
Defining the Short Story
Writing the Short Story
Structuring a short story
Making every word count
Joining stories together
Exploring Short-Story Genres
Finding Story Ideas
Entering Short-Story Competitions
Considering some competitions
Making your story stand out from the crowd
Finding an Outlet for Your Short Fiction
Literary magazines
Anthologies
Women’s magazines
Science fiction magazines
Radio
The Internet
Growing a Story into a Novella
Chapter 12: Writing the Novel
Aspiring to the Literary Novel
Considering the characteristics of the literary novel
Exploring experimental fiction
Writing Commercial Fiction
Romancing the fiction
Uncovering crime and detective fiction
Increasing the excitement with thrillers
Imagining science fiction and fantasy
Embracing horror
Trying erotic fiction
Chapter 13: Once Upon a Time: Writing for Children
Dispelling the ‘It’s Easy to Write for Kids’ Myth
Before Schooling Begins: Writing for the Under 5s
Following the three ‘Rs’
Sounding out words
Making things come to life
Showing coping skills
Learning to Read Alone: Writing for 5- to 9-Year-Olds
Captivating the Confident Reader: Age 9 to 13
Moving Towards Adulthood: Teenagers
Retelling Old Tales
Crafting Comic Books
Considering Non-Fiction for Children
Chapter 14: Penning Plays
Setting Up the Dramatic Structure
Sticking with the classic three-act structure
Getting started
Recognising that plays are about language
Putting a Play Together
Sorting Out Types of Play
Formatting Your Script
Seeing Theatre Spaces
Writing for Radio
Using sound
Utilising music
Tapping into Resources for Playwrights
Playwriting competitions
Sources for new playwrights
Chapter 15: Writing Screenplays
Breaking Down the Stages of a Screenplay
Starting with the synopsis
Moving on to a treatment
Speculating on a Screenplay
Adapting an Existing Story
Securing Options
Formatting a Screenplay
Writing for TV
Chapter 16: Rhymes and Reasons: Writing Poetry
Getting Started
Considering the Elements of Poetry
Writing in rhyme
Keeping rhythm or metre
Separating poems into stanzas
Listening to the Language of Poetry
Looking into imagery
Hearing sounds
Finding a Form
Offering prose poems
Choosing blank verse or free verse
Performing Poetry
Getting Your Poetry Published
Part IV: Exploring Non-Fiction
Chapter 17: Breaking into Journalism
Writing the Facts: News and Features
Working through the five Ws
Giving the story structure
Following some rules of news writing
Putting out Press Releases
Penning Features
Evaluating Reviews
Lining up Columns
Transcribing Interviews
Pitching Stories
Getting the market right
Making contact
Considering Radio and Television Journalism
Regular, immediate radio
Internet radio
Television journalism
Chapter 18: Writing from Life
Writing about Yourself
Finding the Form
Revealing misery memoirs
Sharing letters, journals and diaries
Inventing the autobiographical novel
Writing about Others
Entwining biography with autobiography
Choosing your subject
Researching your biography
Considering different types of biography
Structuring Your Book
Chapter 19: Crafting Narrative Non-Fiction
Exploring the World of Narrative Non-Fiction
Writing Narrative Non-Fiction
Research your subject
Focus on people
Reflect on what you know
Involve the senses
Add dialogue
Create a structure
Examining Genres within Narrative Non-Fiction
Adventure
Autobiography and memoir
Biography
Essay
History
Medical and scientific
Reportage
Travel
True crime
Chapter 20: Travel Writing: Tales for Armchair Explorers
Reporting about Places: Travel Journalism
Doing the Actual Travelling
Finding free or cheap travel
Finding a good destination
Writing on the journey
Tackling a Travel Book
Choosing a genre
Getting a concept
Chapter 21: All About Blogging
Making Your Blog Work for You
Choosing a format
Finding a clear and interesting title
Paying attention to your posts
Avoiding pitfalls
Setting about Blogging
Opting for a hosted blog
Blogging on your own website
Making your first post
Publicising Your Blog
Making use of RSS feeds
Telling your old friends and making new ones
Using your blog to publicise you
Part V: Finding an Audience
Chapter 22: Finding Professionals to Publish Your Book
Getting to Know the World of Publishing
Being absorbed in mainstream publishing
Adding in the advantages of a smaller publisher
Examining the selection process
Fitting into slots and schedules
Looking at How Publishing Houses Are Organised
Editorial
Publicity
Art
Marketing
Production
The sales team
The distributor
The rights team
Tallying the Mathematics of Publishing
Print runs
Understanding trade discounts
Being Accepted into the Publishing Process
Finding Out About Agents
Realising how agents work
Approaching an agent
Sending in your manuscript
Getting Your Book Ready to Send Out
Knocking your book into tip-top shape
Consulting an editorial consultancy
Doing It Yourself: Self-Publishing
Vanity publishing
Self-publishing
Printing on demand
Chapter 23: Becoming a Professional
Joining a Writing Circle
Attending Writing Courses
Providing an overview
Evaluating criticism
Signing on for adult education courses
Taking certificate and MA courses
Paying for private courses
Going on a residential course or writing holiday
Stealing away to a writers’ retreat
Focusing on Literary Festivals
Attending Bookshop Readings, Events and Launches
Getting Your First Work into Print
Letters
Life articles
Literary magazines
Anthologies of new writing
Entering Competitions
Part VI: The Part of Tens
Chapter 24: Ten Top Tips for Writers
Write for Yourself
Enjoy the Journey
Be Specific
Show, Don’t Tell
Read and Re-read
Be Open to What’s Around You
Learn from Others
Write and Rewrite
Accept Rejection
Don’t Give Up
Chapter 25: Ten Ways to Get Noticed
Practise Your Pitch and Keep it Short
Ignore the Opinions of Family and Friends
Be Focused
Perfect Your Work First
Don’t Argue with Editors and Agents
Be Modest
Attend Events and Maintain Your Profile
Network Like Mad
Don’t Take a Rebuff Too Personally
Stay Positive and Believe in Yourself
Chapter 26: Ten Pieces of Writing to Inspire You
Short Story: ‘The Dead’ from Dubliners by James Joyce
Classic Novel: Emma by Jane Austen
Contemporary Novel: The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Play: Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Screenplay: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid by William Goldman
Poetry: The Oxford Book of English Verse and The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse
Journals: The Diary of Anaïs Nin (Volume One) by Anaïs Nin
Travel Writing: In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin
Narrative Non-Fiction: In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Autobiography: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Creative Writing For Dummies®
by Maggie Hamand
Creative Writing For Dummies®
Published byJohn Wiley & Sons, LtdThe AtriumSouthern GateChichesterWest SussexPO19 8SQEngland
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Visit our Home Page on www.wiley.com
Copyright 2009 © Maggie Hamand
Maggie Hamand has asserted her moral right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except under the terms of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS, UK, without the permission in writing of the Publisher. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, England, or emailed to [email protected], or faxed to (44) 1243 770620.
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data: A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-0-470-74291-4
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Bell and Bain
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
About the Author
Maggie Hamand is the author of two novels, The Resurrection of the Body and The Rocket Man, and has published a number of short stories which have been nominated for prizes. She is the author of 16 non-fiction books, and her articles have appeared in magazines and newspapers including the Guardian, The Sunday Times, and the Observer. She founded the Complete Creative Writing Course at the Groucho Club in 1998 and is also the Director of the award-winning small independent publishing house, The Maia Press.
Author’s Acknowledgments
I would like to thank all those people who supported me while writing this book, most importantly my husband Jeremy.
Special thanks should also go to Shaun Levin and all the other teachers on the Complete Creative Writing Course from whom I’ve learned so much.
Publisher’s Acknowledgements
We’re proud of this book; please send us your comments through our Dummies online registration form located at www.dummies.com/register/.
Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following:
Commissioning, Editorial, and Media Development
Commissioning Editor: Wejdan Ismail
Executive Project Editor: Daniel Mersey
Project Editor: Rachael Chilvers
Content Editor: Jo Theedom
Development Editor: Kathleen Dobie
Copy Editor: Kate O’Leary
Proofreader: Kelly Cattermole
Cover Photo: © Andy Ryan/Getty Images
Cartoons: Ed McLachlan
Composition Services
Project Coordinator: Lynsey Stanford
Layout and Graphics: Reuben W. Davis, Melanee Habig, Melissa K. Jester
Proofreader: Dwight Ramsey
Indexer: Cheryl Duksta
Introduction
Creative writing may be fun, but it isn’t easy. It requires some imagination, a degree of application and a great deal of effort.
This book gathers together everything you need to know about writing and publishing all kinds of creative writing. It distils my more than 20 years of experience in journalism, novel-writing, teaching creative writing and working in publishing, all in one place. I share the basics – and some of the extras – of writing novels, stories, poetry, plays, screenplays, biography and autobiography. I discuss journalism and blogging and offer pointers on how to get published.
I try to give you the essence of what a life’s work spent in loving reading and writing literature in all its forms has taught me, to help you avoid repeating some of my mistakes!
This book aims to help you gain confidence in your ideas, to inspire you and provide the knowledge and skills you need to get started on your writing journey.
About This Book
Most people who write start off by spending a lot of time alone, puzzling out how to tackle the various difficulties and challenges that writing brings up. How do you know what to write about? Where should you begin? What point of view should you tell the story from? How do you write dialogue that leaps off the page, invent intriguing characters and describe places and objects so that the reader can see them? Should you write your story as an autobiography, or turn it into a novel? And how do you write plays, screenplays and poems, or sell an article to a newspaper?
Unfortunately, if you sit alone in your room, never reading about how to write or sharing your concerns with others, you may find yourself simply going round in circles. You may spend weeks making elementary errors you could have avoided had you known more about how writing works. Most people tackling things in this way find writing so hard that they soon give up, which is a great shame because something unique is then lost to the world.
This book helps you avoid some of the common writing pitfalls and offers practical advice about how to write creatively, no matter what form that writing takes. Each type of writing has its own rules and techniques, challenges and rewards. In this book, I provide the rules and techniques – you get to reap your own rewards.
Reading a lot and thinking about how writing works is vital if you want to write well – reading is the best teacher of how to write. I refer to many different books, plays and films as examples of good writing to illustrate some of the points I make. I also suggest a lot of books to read. I don’t recommend a book, film or play unless I’ve read it or seen it, so inevitably these are very personal lists. You may not like some of these works, but almost all are highly acclaimed, so I’m not alone in thinking they’re great.
How to Use This Book
This book is intended to be a companion for you as you explore the process of creative writing. I include exercises to help you try for yourself some of the techniques I describe. I believe that you learn to write by writing, and not just by reading a book about it. Try out the exercises and see what happens!
Reading some of the books, watching some of the plays and seeing some of the films I suggest is a good idea. Setting yourself some simple targets, such as reading a poem a day and finding some time to write each week, is also helpful.
You can read this book in a number of ways:
If you’re a complete beginner, thinking about writing creatively for the first time – or perhaps the first time since you left school – this book gives you the grounding you need. You can start at the beginning and work your way through to the end.
If you have a great idea and some experience of writing but have got bogged down, this book can help you to get unstuck. You can select the areas in which you feel you need guidance and read those first.
If you’ve written a lot and sent your work out but you don’t seem to be getting anywhere, this book can help you ask the right questions about what you’ve written, and find the right answers.
If you want information about how to get your work into print, this book has the information and tips that you need to approach agents, newspapers, theatres, film studios and different kinds of publishers.
Foolish Assumptions
In writing this book, I make some assumptions about you – the person who’s reading this book. I assume that you:
Enjoy reading books and magazines or watching films and plays, and that you think about what you read and watch.
Have a fairly serious intention to learn about and do some writing.
Have a reasonable amount of self-discipline and are prepared to create some time to write.
Don’t expect to write a work of genius right away and make a million from the first piece of writing you attempt.
Conventions Used in This Book
This book uses various typefaces to highlight different bits of information. For example, I use italics when a term is first defined, bold for a key term in a bulleted list and monofont for website addresses.
You also see grey boxes from time to time. These sidebars contain information that you may find interesting but isn’t essential to understanding the text. So, you can read them if you want to, but you aren’t going to miss anything crucial if you skip them.
How This Book Is Organised
Creative Writing For Dummies is divided into six parts.
Part I: Getting Started
These chapters take a look at what you need to be able to write, including the motivation, tools and techniques – and also the rewards!
Part II: Introducing the Elements of Creative Writing
This part of the book gives you the nuts and bolts you need to write creatively. It looks at the difference between autobiography and fiction, shows you how to create characters, handle point of view, write dialogue, invent your own world and plot your way through a story.
Part III: Writing Fiction
These chapters look at all the different kinds of fiction writing: short stories, novels, plays, screenplays, children’s books and poetry. They define the different genres within fiction and consider how to connect with your readers.
Part IV: Exploring Non-Fiction
These chapters cover all the different kinds of non-fiction writing, which are still essentially creative, such as journalism, autobiography and biography, memoirs and journals, narrative non-fiction, travel writing and even the new big thing – blogging.
Part V: Finding an Audience
The chapters in this part guide you towards thinking about your writing in more commercial terms, and help you to identify a market for it. They describe how the world of publishing works, and look at how to get an audience, agent or publisher for your writing.
Part VI: The Part of Tens
This standard part, found in every For Dummies book, contains lists of writing tips and books you should read and why.
Icons Used in This Book
The little drawings in the margins, called icons, highlight information that’s especially interesting, important or both.
Important advice is highlighted with this on-the-target icon.
This icon indicates information to keep in mind while you’re reading a chapter or for the rest of your writing life.
Information highlighted with this icon helps you to avoid mistakes and points out approaches that can get you in trouble.
This icon marks illustrations of points I explain in the text. Sometimes an example makes an explanation come to life.
These exercises help get you writing and encourage you to try out some of the techniques I talk about.
Where to Go from Here
You have several options at this point:
You can flick through the chapters and read something that interests you, which highlights an area that you’re having problems with or covers an aspect of something that you’re working on.
You can start by reading the contents and selecting those parts of the book that seem most relevant, missing out any areas that don’t seem useful to you at the moment.
You can start at the beginning and read through to the end. Don’t worry if you pay greater attention to some bits than others – your focus clearly depends on which kind of writing you’re most interested in.
You can keep it on your desk and use it as a reference book, to refer to frequently while you’re working on your writing.
You can take this book and use it any way you choose, such as picking chapters at random, reading it from back to front, using it to sit on while you meditate or even throwing it across the room when you’re feeling frustrated with your writing. Don’t worry – we’ve all done it!
Finally, whatever you choose to do with this book, I hope you find it useful. Enjoy!
Part I
Getting Started
In this part . . .
Writing is a skill, and like any skill you need to find the best way to do it well. Even published writers continue to hone their skills. The best way to start improving your writing skills is by reading a lot, especially the kind of work you’d like to write yourself. You need some tools – pen and paper, a notebook, a computer or a laptop – and you need to find a place to write and a time and routine that suits you.
This part gets you started and gives you some much-needed support and encouragement.
Chapter 1
You and Your Writing
In This Chapter
Finding out why you want to write
Discovering what sort of writing is for you
Developing your talent
Creative writing starts with you – with your imagination, personality and interests. Only you know what you want to write about and how you like to work. Only you can choose to spend time working at your poetry or prose to help your words communicate to others.
Listen to yourself, not to others, and be prepared for surprises. This chapter encourages you to get started on a journey of discovery and to develop the attitude you need to carry your chosen task through to the end.
People often ask, can everyone write? Well, (almost) everyone can write, in the sense of creating a sentence and then stringing another after it, and so on. However, in contrast with other artistic skills, such as playing the violin or painting in oils, or crafts like pottery and carpentry, people sometimes fail to realise that writing for an audience – writing to communicate to others – also requires study, hard work and practice.
We all spend our lives telling stories, and in that sense everyone does indeed have a book in them – or, if not a whole book, then at least a tale or two – but that doesn’t mean to say everyone is prepared to work at it in such a way that, as a piece of art, it communicates itself to other people. This book gives you all the tools you need to take yourself seriously as a writer and develop your craft as best you can.
Writing as Well as You Can
A world of difference exists between writing for yourself and writing for others. Both are perfectly valid, and can be approached in much the same way. Whether you’re aiming to record your experiences for your children, to write for therapy or personal development, or to get a novel published, you want to write as well as you can. Doing so doesn’t mean you need to think of yourself as a genius, but it does involve stretching yourself and learning as much about writing as you can.
When you start writing, don’t think too much about whether your work will get published. After all, on passing your Grade Three violin exam, you may congratulate yourself on having got so far, but you wouldn’t rush off a letter to the Wigmore Hall to ask if you could put on a solo recital. Considering other people’s opinions of your writing – whether they like it, or will be interested in it or whether it will suit the current market – is death to true creativity.
J. R. R. Tolkien spent years writing a history of an imaginary country, inventing languages and mythology and timelines and maps, purely for himself. He never thought anyone else would be interested in it. When his publishers asked him for a sequel to The Hobbit, he used this material as the basis for The Lord of the Rings, a work that went on to become one of the bestselling novels of all time. Completely unexpectedly, something in the deep recesses of Tolkien’s imagination connected with a vast number of people, all over the world. Yet at the time his publisher, Stanley Unwin, was so convinced the novel wouldn’t sell that he cynically offered Tolkien a profit-sharing deal – because he believed no profits would accrue!
By digging deep into yourself and your imagination you’ll find the thing that you really want to write about, that gives you the greatest pleasure and presents you with the greatest challenge – and paradoxically this subject is most likely to be the one that most interests others. So write for yourself and forget about what other people think until much, much later in the process.
Examining Why You Want to Write
Before you begin to write, ask yourself why you want to do so. If the reason is that you think writing’s the easiest way for you to become rich and famous, a bit of a reality check is in order. Every year nearly a quarter of a million books are published in the UK alone. Admittedly this total includes everything from computer manuals and academic tomes, through cookbooks and knitting manuals to celebrity memoirs and mainstream fiction, but it still represents a huge amount of competition.
In addition are all the backlist titles that have been in print for years and are still selling. Of these books, very few sell in sufficient numbers to make anyone much money. In the fiction market, about 25 titles make around 65 per cent of the income, leaving a lot of writers making very little money at all.
Of those books in print, very few are by writers who are household names. To achieve that degree of recognition, your book needs to be filmed, short-listed for the Man Booker Prize or become one of those rare runaway bestsellers that everybody dreams about but hardly ever happen.
Most writers earn very modest amounts, and the majority have other sources of income from work or supportive partners. So if money and fame are your main motivation to write, you’re likely to be extremely disappointed.
Here, however, are some good reasons to write:
Something is nagging away at you that you need to write down, an event from your life, perhaps, that has haunted or puzzled you.
You keep hearing a character’s voice in your head, and you want to find out who it is.
A situation keeps coming to mind – what if this were to happen, how would I feel, what would I do? – and you want to explore it.
You always loved writing stories at school and realise you’d like to feel that pleasure again.
These are all good reasons to write because the impulse is coming from you. This impulse isn’t dependent on anything outside yourself that you can’t control, such as the vagaries of editors or the whims of newspaper reviewers or prize judges or the economic situation at the time your book is published. Your desire to write is dependent only on your imagination, commitment and willingness to learn and develop your craft.
Various theories are propounded about why people write – as a wish-fulfilment fantasy, a form of therapy or a way of achieving immortality and living on after death – and any of these might apply to you. But, ultimately, you want to write because you want to write. And you have to want to. No one’s putting a gun to your head and demanding that you produce your masterpiece. Enough written work already exists in the world, and people can probably do without your contribution. But then, as the famous choreographer and dancer Martha Graham said:
‘There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.’
(Agnes de Mille, Martha: The Life and Work of Martha Graham)
Identifying the Kind of Writing You Want to Do
If you’re drawn to a particular form of expression, then go with it. Some people like to work in miniature, others love the grand gesture – temperament decides. If you love children and reading aloud to them, or have a story in mind for your own children or grandchildren, then go ahead. Many of the best children’s stories have started that way. Or if you love a grand canvas and big novels with sub-plots, twists and turns, go for that. Don’t let other people talk you out of your natural way of writing.
Thinking, ‘I really want to write poetry, but no market exists for it, so I’ll write a novel instead’, is pointless. You may turn out to be a very fine poet but a hopeless novelist.
If you don’t know what kind of writing you want to do, just try out various forms. Get stuck in and write whatever comes up. If you feel that you’d love to write but don’t have any ideas, then just open yourself up to people and situations around you. For example:
Sit in a café and watch the customers. Invent a story about who they are, where they come from, why they’re there, who they’re thinking of, what they want.
Look at your daily paper. Pick a small item from the News in Brief section; use it as the basis for a story.
Go into your garden. Find a flower, tree or view and describe it. Turn the writing into a poem.
Find an old photograph. What does it make you think of? What does it remind you of? Where does it take you in your imagination? Write down your thoughts.
As to the form your writing takes, no rule states that you can’t write both prose and poetry – many writers do. Don’t worry about length when you start; sometimes you start writing a short story and then discover after 20 pages that in fact the tale’s so long and complex that it justifies a novel. Or, conversely, you may start what you think will be a novel and discover that it peters out after two or three chapters and doesn’t have enough material to amount to more than a short story.
Don’t worry too much about your audience either; you may start writing for young children and then find your material is actually adult fantasy. None of these details – length, form or audience – matter. Just write, and let the material take you where it will. You can always go back and change elements later.
Discovering Your Own Specific Talent
Most of us have a particular talent for something – and the same applies to writing. Some writers love plot; they enjoy working out time-lines, organising different strands of their story and weaving it all together. They plot their story on cards or use a computer program to map it out.
Other writers love description; looking at something and finding the best way to capture it in words, and using images to convey its essence to the reader. Some have an ear for dialogue, for how people speak, accents and dialects, and for the silences that lie between the words. Some writers have a wonderful visual sense; others an ear for the rhythm and sound of words.
When you start out writing you really may not know what you’re good at. Trying something new is the only way to find out. Don’t rely on the same techniques that worked for you when you were at school or when you were working as a copywriter; or that you use in letters or emails to friends. Stretch yourself. Try different ways of writing. You’ll never discover that you’re brilliant at writing dialogue if you never try it, or that the first-person voice gives you huge freedom, or that your story works much better if you set it in a different time or place. You’ll never find out that you’re a poet if you never try to write a poem.
As you write, keep these principles in mind:
Trust yourself.
Write what you want.
Try out new ways of writing.
Don’t expect to write brilliantly straight away.
Learn from other writers.
Practising Your Writing
Creative writing’s a skill, and if you work at it, you’ll improve – becoming a good writer is as simple as that. Writers also use a range of techniques, which you too can learn.
Part of the problem with writing is its solitary nature. When you’re working on your own a strong possibility exists that you’ll be reinventing the literary wheel. Through long hours and hard work you may stumble on the truths that other writers have discovered long before you. By talking to other writers, reading books and perhaps going to creative writing courses, you can save yourself a lot of time and trouble.
Putting in the hours
No substitute exists for finding time to write. Whether playing the violin, excelling at tennis or developing computer software, all the outstandingly talented people put in a great many more hours than their less successful peers.
You have to really want to write. Writers become writers by writing, not by wanting to write, thinking about writing or planning to write!
Lots of practice makes perfect
Anders Ericsson studied violinists at the Berlin Academy of Music in the early 1990s. His study concluded that a violinist had to practise approximately 10,000 hours to become really good.
Strikingly, Ericsson and his colleagues couldn’t find any violinists who were naturals – musicians who became outstanding performers without practising for the hours that others did. Nor could they find what are sometimes called grinds – people who practised harder and longer than everyone else and yet didn’t succeed. Every student who put in the hours played at a high level.
Now, 10,000 hours of writing is an awful lot – if you wrote for, say, five hours a day, five days a week, 50 weeks a year, it would take you eight to nine years to put in that many hours.
In practice, of course, many successful writers have written less than this – and other writers may have written more without ever getting into print. However, without doubt, the more you write, the better you become at it.
Reading and re-reading
What teaches you most about writing is reading. Reading is so important because it demonstrates what you’re trying to do; you unconsciously absorb the rules of narrative when you read, and how the author achieves certain effects. Some writers don’t read because they say they’re afraid of being influenced by other writers. In practice, you’re more likely to find that you’ve inadvertently done what someone else has if you aren’t aware of others’ work.
If you’re attempting to be a writer, try reading more slowly – reading with more attention. When you come to a passage where you can actually smell the cabbage soup on the stairs, where time seems to have slowed right down and your heart is beating extra fast, stop and look back; try to figure out how the author achieved this feat. You are, after all, just reading words on a page. If a character walks into a room and you can see the whole scene before you like a photograph, or if you feel you know a character inside out, how she thinks and behaves – again, stop and look back. Look at the words the writer used, what he did to convey this sense of reality. Or if you read a poem and find that you’re crying or suddenly feel happy, or realise that you’re seeing something in a new way – again, re-read the poem to see why this has happened.
Re-read a short story or novel that you’ve read before; not so long ago that you’ve forgotten it or so recently that you remember it in great detail. Choose a book that you remember in outline, and in particular how it ends.
When you first read a book you often gulp it straight down just to find out what happens; the second time you don’t do that because you already know. Already knowing what’s going to happen can help you to see how the writer prepared for it, how she slipped in hints or how he concealed something important to keep you guessing. Re-reading in this way really helps you learn how a narrative works.
Read, read and read! Whether you choose newspaper articles, magazines, advertising slogans on the back of cereal packets, classic novels or contemporary potboilers, fact books or letters and journals, read widely – and think about what you’re reading and the effect the words you read have on you.
Overcoming Obstacles
When you sit down to write, you often find that a whole host of things distract you. First, you become aware of all the chattering that goes on in your head, and the long lists of things to do that you feel you should do before you can justify the time spent on writing. Second, you may become uncomfortably aware of being alone, of having to manage without any help or input from anyone else. Third, you may suddenly discover that when you finally get the chance to write, you don’t know what to say or you can’t put it into words.
Everyone experiences these obstacles, so in this section I look at them in a bit more depth.
Silencing your inner critic
Many people say that when they first start writing they’re convinced that what they write is rubbish. A voice in their heads tells them their work is useless and nobody will read it.
If all the students I’ve taught in my writing courses had given me just one penny for every time they said their work was rubbish, I’d be a wealthy woman.
Your inner critic torments you with thoughts like:
You’re not a real writer, you’re just playing at it.
You haven’t got any talent.
Why bother starting when you’ll never finish?
You should be doing something better with your time.
Writing is self-indulgent and selfish.
This will never get published, so what’s the point?
Parents, teachers, friends or colleagues who’ve told you ‘you could’ve done better’ or ‘this isn’t good enough’ over the years are part of the problem. You’ve probably experienced an education system obsessed with results and tests, where every piece of work was marked and graded. As a result, you now compare everything you write with the work of others and assess it in terms of a range of A* to D-.
One of the flaws of this approach is that grading a creative piece of work is almost impossible. Consider the Impressionist artists who were turned down by the Paris Salon in favour of far more conventional artists of the day. Those artists are now forgotten, while Manet and the rest are recognised as geniuses. Obviously not every piece of rejected writing is a work of genius – far from it. However, judging creative work effectively, especially something innovative and new, isn’t easy.
Most writers, no matter how acclaimed, will tell you that the critical voice never goes away. Even prize-winning, many-times-published writers find the same voice nagging at them when they’re writing. Being aware of the voice isn’t a bad thing, though; if you’re aware of it, you can deal with it.
Good methods for silencing your inner critic include:
Just tell the voice to shut up and go away – out loud if it helps!
Use a meditation technique – when the voice comes into your head, just say to yourself ‘that voice’, and put the thought aside. The voice will return over and over again, but don’t get upset, don’t beat yourself up, just gently put it aside and get on with what you’re doing.
Try to counter negative thoughts with positive ones. Talk to people who are supportive and encouraging. If your friends or family suggest that you’re wasting your time or that you’ll never get published, just don’t talk to them about your writing. Talk to people who know what writing involves and can help you along the way.
Give your inner critic a name. Call it something stupid or a name you don’t like. Think of it as a boring, tedious figure you might meet at a party. Then get rid of it.
Just get on with the writing. Decide that you can deal with the voice later.
Thinking creatively
Being led to believe at school that only one right answer exists for every question can create a creativity-blocking problem for writers. Remember putting your hand up in class and giving an answer that made everyone laugh? The ‘right’ answer was the one in the teacher’s mind or in the textbook. But your answer wasn’t necessarily wrong – maybe it was just more original and creative.
No artists or scientists ever came up with something new by doing what was expected of them. They all broke the rules and produced the ‘wrong’ answers according to the theories and expectations of the time.
Suspend logical thinking. Logic can kill the creative flow of new ideas. Of course, you do need to apply logical thinking in many situations, but writing isn’t one of them. Think laterally, backwards and back to front – or don’t think at all.
Letting the Ideas Come
Most great ideas don’t come when you’re sitting at your desk trying to feel inspired. Putting pressure on yourself and hammering away at something isn’t conducive to coming up with a solution. You’re concentrating so hard on the problem that your mind has no space for an answer to emerge.
Use these tips to help you come up with ideas:
Take time to relax. Going for a walk, reading a book or relaxing in the bath may inspire a really great idea. Or you may suddenly find a solution to a problem blocking your writing. Alternating periods of working at your writing with relaxing activities is important.
Realise the importance of doing nothing. Make some empty time in which to think.
Today people are so surrounded by noise and activity that they seldom get time to let their minds free-wheel. Even when on the bus or train, people use mobile phones, listen to music or read the paper. Try doing nothing but staring out of the window, watching the world go by. Or try sitting in the park for half an hour at lunchtime, observing the pigeons, trees and people. Or sit at home on your own with a cup of coffee for just 20 minutes and relax.
Remember to play. Ideas can also be generated by play. If you can make your writing fun, you’ll find dreaming up good ideas much easier. If you think of writing as a game to enjoy, rather than a task to be completed, you’ll find yourself becoming more creative.
Ask ‘What if?’. Many great innovators were successful because they asked ‘What if?’ and didn’t stop with the first answer that suggested itself. ‘What if?’ is a great question for a writer. What if a man discovers the secret of extending life? What if someone tries to steal the recipe for the drug from him? What if a rival pharmaceutical company decides to have him killed?
Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. All creative activity involves making mistakes. People who don’t make errors never achieve anything. Sometimes mistakes can ultimately be fortunate; you may not only learn from them, but also reinterpret them to write something much more original than what you’d originally planned.
Offering Tips for New Writers
Many new writers fall into common traps that can block their writing or make the process more difficult. Instead of finding out the hard way, through trial and error, take note of the tips in this section to avoid these pitfalls and get your writing life off to a good start.
Don’t worry about publication
When you start out, worrying about whether anyone will like or dislike what you’re writing is pointless. Don’t fret about what genre your work fits into or what kind of sales it may achieve. And thinking about which publisher to send your piece to before you’ve even completed it really is a waste of time.
The minute you start thinking about sending your work to an editor, agent or publisher, you can feel that person sitting on your shoulder and criticising every word you write. You start altering it to squeeze it into narrow genres, make it the right length or ensure the material’s less revealing of yourself.
Writing what you want and enjoying the process is what’s important.
Write for yourself
When you start writing, at some point you’ll ask yourself ‘Who am I writing this for?’ You may decide that you’re writing a piece for your friends, ex-lover or dead grandfather. Maybe your novel’s intended for posterity, for your children’s grandchildren. Or you may desire to share your experiences, joys and pains with people your own age or in your current situation. Agents and publishers may be lurking at the back of your mind. Or possibly you’re setting your sights on a huge global audience.
No matter who you think you’re writing for, the mere fact of thinking of them probably hurts your writing. Thinking about who’ll be reading what you’ve written is the fastest way to completely freeze up.
You are writing for yourself. Always bear in mind this quote from writer and critic Cyril Connolly:
Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.
You always write best about your own private obsessions and things that interest you. Many well-known writers have said that they wrote their books because they were the kind they’d have liked to read themselves but couldn’t find in bookshops or libraries. Follow this approach and write the kind of book you’d enjoy.
Draft, don’t edit – yet!
Many beginner writers don’t realise that writing is actually all about re-writing. When you begin, you’re drafting, not producing a final script. Drafting is producing initial material that you then work with, refining, editing and polishing as you go. Drafting is a bit like producing clay, which you then shape into your pot or sculpture. Without the clay, you have nothing to work with and can’t be creative. So when you begin, simply get some writing done, whatever it is, and no matter how relevant or irrelevant it seems to your final project. At the beginning stage of writing, you really don’t want to think too much about what you’re doing; you can always go back later. Just keep writing, and see where your drafting takes you. Don’t be critical at this stage. (See Chapter 10 for more on rewriting and editing.)
Don’t write too fast
Writing too quickly is one of the biggest mistakes many beginning writers make. They rush along, typing away at a rate of knots, with their eye on the end point – aiming to complete a whole novel, memoir or biography in a few weeks. Generally, this approach won’t work. A few writers manage to write very quickly, but usually only when an idea has been incubating for a long time and they’ve been bursting to get it down on paper. For most writers, the process is much slower.
Writing quickly, in long bursts, means that you won’t enjoy it. Your shoulders get stiff, your fingers feel like they’re falling off, you dislike what you’ve written and you run out of steam.
You need to slow down. Advance in small steps. Relish the process of writing. Try writing longhand, enjoying the feel of the pen on the page. Try writing in a place that you like – perhaps in bed in the morning, in front of a roaring fire or in the garden. Think about the words you use and the way that you use them.
Initially writing brief pieces, short stories, vignettes or poems can be helpful. Polish these efforts and really make them work. Even if you want to embark on a long project, think in terms of breaking it down into short and manageable scenes or chapters. Then get writing.
Pace yourself
At first, writing little and often is important. Just get down some ideas, a few lines or phrases, a paragraph or two. Don’t expect too much of yourself to begin with. Even if you aim to write a whole book, going slowly is still the best approach. Consider, even if you only write just one page a day, after 365 days you’ll have 365 pages – enough to make a complete first draft. If you launch into a whole chapter or section right at the beginning, you may well find you can’t sustain this writing pace and become discouraged or run out of steam.
You may feel that you can complete a short piece in a morning. But even a line or two of poetry, a phrase that works, a beautiful or surprising image, can be a real achievement.
At least to begin with, little and often works best. Aiming to write for ten or fifteen minutes every day and achieving it is better than setting yourself the target of writing for a whole morning or evening and then feeling that you’ve fallen short. As you get into the writing process, you’ll find that you can keep at it for longer.
Set yourself targets, but keep them simple.
Put aside your ego
Forget your ego. If you’re writing for fame and fortune, to get your own back on people you feel have slighted you or because you want to show off your skills, you’re not likely to produce your best work.
Instead, put aside all thoughts of what will happen to your writing. Try moving forward humbly, taking small steps, advancing bit by bit, working hard and trying to learn as much as you can from the people who’ve gone before you. Enjoy the journey and do the very best that you can.
Playing with Words
The English language is one of the richest in the world, with a huge vocabulary to draw on. Apparently English contains over half a million words – and yet a normal working vocabulary uses only about 15,000 of them.
Most writers could benefit from expanding their vocabulary. You don’t have to use long, obscure words when a more familiar one is appropriate, though – doing so can just seem pretentious; but, as a writer, having more words at your disposal is useful. Words are your tools, and some you may not know will do the job far better than the ones you do.
If you’re reading and come across a word you don’t know the meaning of, stop and look it up. Too often you may think you sort of vaguely know what the word means and move on. You only realise you don’t really when someone else asks you to define it.
As a writer, you should really love words. Collect good ones and store them away for future use.
Try these playing with words exercises. Write down a list of words that you really like and love the sound of. Construct sentences around them.
Get a dictionary and find a word you don’t know. Read the definition. Write a couple of sentences using the new word.
Making verbs stronger
Using strong verbs is one of the quickest ways to invigorate your writing. You may be tempted to be lazy and use an obvious word such as ‘went’. Think of stronger words, depending on how the person went: did she stroll, rush, limp, hobble, leap, ride, glide, shuffle?
Avoid using the passive voice. ‘The man stroked the dog’ is stronger than ‘The dog was stroked by the man’.
Taking out adverbs and adjectives
An adverb is a part of speech used to provide more information about a verb (a word describing an action); for example, ‘Mary sings beautifully’ or ‘The midwife waited patiently through the labour’. Deleting the adverbs is one of the best ways to strengthen the verbs you use because you have to make them work harder.
Taking out all the adjectives also makes your writing more punchy. An adjective describes a property of a noun; for example, ‘The hairy dog stank’. Think about how you can communicate what you want to say without using lots of adjectives.
Writing in different tenses
When you start writing, you can be confused as to whether to write in the present or past tense. Try out both ways of telling a story or writing a poem.
Actually, the choice of tense is arbitrary because, in a narrative, the ‘past’ isn’t really past and the ‘present’ isn’t really present. Only the reader’s time, as she reads your work, is real.
Using the present tense gives an immediacy to a piece of writing; events seem to be happening now. The present tense can also be useful in a story in which you’re switching between two timeframes, for instance a ‘now’ in which the character is remembering and a ‘then’ in which the remembered event happened. The present tense is often ideal for poetry, but it can be hard to handle in a long narrative and may even seem clumsy and contrived.
Avoiding cliché
A cliché is a worn-out phrase, a figure of speech whose effectiveness has been lost through overuse and excessive familiarity. If you use clichés too often, your writing will seem dull and uninteresting.
However, don’t let the thought of using clichés get you down. Most writing uses them occasionally. Only when a text is littered with clichés are they problematic.
When you’re drafting, clichés can be a kind of shorthand to help you convey what you mean. You can replace them later with fresher images – if you can’t, try deleting the phrases entirely.
Doing writing exercises
When you’re learning to write, completing some writing exercises – short pieces to get you going and help you try out different ideas and techniques – is a great idea. Try the exercises in this book and see how you get on.
Attending a writing class can be helpful. Your tutor can give you lots of exercises to complete and you may have to read your work to the group, thus gaining useful feedback to help you develop your writing skills.
Writing exercises resemble playing scales to a musician. Often people say they hate practising scales, but I loved them when I first learned the violin. I knew all the notes so all I had to do was try to make the warmest, fullest, loveliest sound I could. Writing exercises are the same. You know what you’re meant to do, so you can concentrate on the way you do it without worrying about creating an idea or fitting it in to what you’re already writing.
Exercise pieces don’t need to be finished or highly polished. They’re simply ways for you to explore techniques in your writing and help you develop more confidence in your craft.
Learning from imitation
New writers are often terribly afraid of plagiarising – of copying others’ work. As a result they refuse to read good fiction because they don’t want to be influenced by it.
This situation’s a great pity. Many, many writers have been influenced by the rhythm and powerful language of the King James Bible. Many others have been influenced by reading the work of Shakespeare, Jane Austen and other great writers. You can learn a vast amount by imitating the techniques of great writers.
