Reading and Writing—Two Essentials for a Happy Writer!

This week Edge Author Dave Cousins asks how much does the ability to write, depend on your dedication as a reader.

Finding time to write alongside the demands of a family and a job—even if that job is being a writer—can be a balancing act. Before I was fortunate enough to be published and had to squeeze writing time into early starts, late nights, train journeys and lunch breaks, I sometimes found that I didn't have time to read. Free time was so scare, it seemed more important to spend it creating my own stories rather than reading somebody else's. I eventually found that logic to be somewhat flawed – in my case at least. Now I firmly agree with Stephen King, who said, “If you don’t have time to read, then you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write.”

It may look like I'm taking it easy with a book.
In reality this is an intensive training workout!

Over the years I’ve noticed that when I’m not reading every day, my writing flows less freely. An obvious analogy would be the sporting one: that reading is an important part of maintaining a level of writing fitness, like an athlete training every day. When I’m reading a lot, my writing feels natural, instinctive – fitter, if you like. Or as The King puts it: “Constant reading will pull you into a place where you can write eagerly and without self-consciousness.” For me, it’s about filling my subconscious with words and stories – the rhythm of sentences and paragraphs, the pace of a well spun yarn.

“Every successful writer I know is also a great reader.” – Robert Cormier

When I started to write, I worried that my own stories, or rather my voice, would start to sound like whatever I was reading, but that didn’t happen. Instead, I find that reading somebody else's words helps to clear my head, and stops me thinking about my own for a while, so I'm fresher when I return.

But what about you? Here at the Edge we are always interested to hear other people’s experience. How does reading sit alongside your writing? Does it help? Does it interfere? Does it matter what you read? Leave a comment in the box below and let us know. Thanks.

Meanwhile, here are a couple of posts you might enjoy by fellow Edge authors on a similar theme:

Reading For My Writing by Miriam Halahmy

Writing Tips Part 6 by Sara Grant

Dave Cousins is the author (and sometimes illustrator!) of a number of award-winning books for young people. Visit www.davecousins.net for more info.

Writing Tips 2 by Dave Cousins — 15 Ways to Write a Story!

Welcome to Part Two of the EDGE WRITING TIPS series. Each week, a different Edge author will be sharing a few nuggets of writing wisdom. We hope you find them useful! 

This week, Dave Cousins shares his tips for 15 ways to write a story …

If you would like a copy of 15 Ways to Write a Story! for your own reference, or to use with students, the file can be downloaded for FREE as a Powerpoint or multi-page PDF here.

If you have any specific writing questions, let us know in the comments below and one of us will get back to you as soon as we can. 

Thanks and happy word wrangling! 

Writing Tips from the Edge—Dave Cousins' 8 Rules of Research.

Yesterday evening I sent off the final files for my new Charlie Merrick book; on Monday, I start work on the second draft of my next teen novel. The story and characters have been buzzing around in my head while I finished the illustrations for Charlie, so I'm really excited at the prospect of spending more time with them. There is however a slight caveat—now I know the skeleton of the story, this draft will need some research. For me, research sometimes feels like ‘homework’, and it’s frustrating when a ‘fact’ gets in the way of a good story! At the same time, inaccuracies and inconsistency can push the reader out of a story, so it's important we spend the time to get it right. 

     Therefore, as a reminder to myself as much as anything, I decided to put together a few thoughts about research. 'Rules' might be pushing it a bit, but I couldn't resist the chance for some alliteration in the title!

1. GETTING CAUGHT UP IN THE WEB

The spark for my second novel, Waiting forGonzo, was to explore the impact of a teenage pregnancy from the point of view of the girl’s younger brother. The story takes place over nine months and is loosely structured around the pregnancy, which meant I had to keep a close eye on key moments on that timeline—hospital scan dates; changing symptoms; at what point the ‘bump’ starts to show, and so on. All this information was readily available online.

     Something to bear in mind when doing internet research—if you are writing a book based in the UK, make sure the information is from a UK website, as treatment methods and procedure can vary in different countries. For UK medical matters, the NHS website (www.nhs.uk) is a good place to start, offering a huge database of symptoms, treatments and a Health Encyclopaedia.

     There is probably some time-honoured rule stating that the best research comes from first hand experience, and I wouldn’t argue with that. But sometimes, it’s simply not possible. For example, finding out what it actually feels like during the different stages of pregnancy was going to be tricky for me! Instead, I talked to my wife and other female friends; I read pregnancy magazines and borrowed a stack of books from the library.

     When faced with a mouth-watering pile of research material, it’s tempting to spend weeks scouring every page of every book to ensure you don’t miss a single shiny nugget of information. STOP! You have a story to write. Having fallen into this trap myself many times, I now use the following strategy:

1. Start with a quick scan through all your materials—use Post-it notes to flag any pages that look useful, but resist the temptation to start reading and taking notes. 

2. From this initial overview, select just two or three core volumes on which to base your research. Read these in depth and make notes.

3. It’s likely you’ll still have gaps, but now, you can search your remaining resources for the specific pieces of information you are missing and ignore areas you have already covered in you core research.

I find that this technique saves time, and stops me covering the same ground with multiple sources.

     My pregnancy research quickly established that people’s experiences vary dramatically. I collected many fascinating, and often very funny, accounts of what it’s like to be pregnant. Unfortunately, most of these never made it into the book. It’s always hard to leave out gems you’ve uncovered, but you have to be ruthless—if it doesn’t help the story, it shouldn’t go in. You can always include these extras in a blog post, or in a DVD style bonus features section at the end of the book, or on your website.

2. CHECKING YOUR WOUNDS

A number of characters in Waiting for Gonzo have accidents. Again the NHS website was a good place to check symptoms and treatment. However, you can lose a lot of time searching the web. A good tip is to set a timer, so you don’t spend hours chasing a link.

     I was lucky enough to find a friendly doctor via Twitter who has been kind enough to check my stories for medical accuracy. This is invaluable when it comes to details and specific questions you’ll struggle to answer online. For example, knowing the questions an A&E doctor would ask; who else would be present at a consultation, and so on.

     Watching realistic hospital dramas in films and TV can be useful in this regard too. It also means you can watch TV and honestly claim to be working! For example, a number of scenes in Waiting for Gonzo take place in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Due to the nature of the work they do, I was unable to visit one, but I did find a documentary series about a baby care unit on BBC iPlayer. The programmes revealed huge amounts of information about what goes on, who is likely to be around, what staff wear and how they talk. I was also able to hear what the location sounded like too, something I wouldn’t have got from photos alone. It was the next best thing to actually being there and gave a real feel for the location which helped immensely when it came to writing the scenes. I then sent the pages to a friend who works in a NICU to make sure I hadn’t made any errors.

3. CHICKENS AND EGGS

For me, stories always start with a spark for a character or situation. Usually I get a burst of ideas about where the story could go, but if I don’t know enough about the subject, I’ll do some research as the results will inform what can happen. As soon as I feel I know enough (not everything, just enough), I do a first draft—writing what works for the story and not being afraid to add details that may be inaccurate. This draft will usually reveal further gaps in my knowledge, so I’ll do more research to fill these, and also check any stuff I made up. This process repeats over numerous drafts until the story is close to completion, at which point I recheck my facts and if possible get an expert to read what I have written to make sure the story rings true.

4. THE IMMERSION TECHNIQUE

While working on a book, I cover the walls above my desk with information I collect—location photos; character castings; words and phrases that capture the mood or key ideas of the story; reminder notes and, with Waiting for Gonzo, the timeline with all the relevant dates and plot points.

     I also gather the research photos for my current project into a screen saver folder on my computer. This means that when I’m not actually typing, the machine starts displaying reminders of my locations, characters etc. It’s a great way to stay immersed in the story world, and because the slideshow chooses images at random, it sometimes throws up an aspect I’d forgotten about, which in the past has triggered a helpful idea.

The man in the milk bottle mask!

5. ALL IN THE NAME OF RESEARCH

The most unusual piece of research I’ve ever undertaken was for the Nyctal masks worn by Oz and Ryan at Fight Camp in Waiting for Gonzo. I researched mask making on the internet, and then adapted one for the creature I had invented for the story. But I had to check it would work, so found myself actually making a mask from a plastic milk bottle. Then I wore it round the house for an hour—just to see how it felt. Did it smell? Get sweaty quickly? What could I see and hear while I was wearing it? Information that really helped when writing the scene.

6. LOCATION SCOUTING

I like to invent place names for my stories, but my imaginary locations are usually based on somewhere real. Crawdale in Waiting for Gonzo is a mixture of North Yorkshire and Mid West Wales. I treat this research like scouting for film locations, and take lots of photos and video—walking Oz’s route home from school for example.

Researching Oz's walk home in Wales.

     Video is useful because you capture sounds too — birds, traffic, a nearby stream, the crunch of feet on gravel. I try to look around and focus in on things I might want to include later. I’ll often dictate notes out loud as I’m recording, which draws funny looks from people, but is useful for capturing details that won’t be on the film—the fact my knees ached from the steepness of the hill; the way the wind felt like it was trying to tear my clothes! Months later I can watch these location videos before writing a scene, and it takes me right back there.

     Google Maps Street View is great for checking routes and what places look like without actually visiting! The 360° feature means you can literally look around and take screenshots—almost as good as being there with a camera in your hand. Of course you don’t get the full sense of a location, but it’s a superb way to visit places quickly and cheaply!

7. YOU'LL NEED A COAT ON TODAY …

Stories often take place in a non-specified time of year, but make sure you don’t forget crucial calendar events that would register in your character’s lives. For example, Waiting for Gonzo took place over 40 weeks, which meant I had to acknowledge Halloween and Christmas. I find that these events often provide a setting for a scene, or even a useful plot-point. Anchoring your story to real calendar events can give it a strong sense of reality.

     I also find it useful to keep in mind what time of year my story is taking place. Knowing whether an evening scene happens on a dark winter’s night, or a balmy summer’s evening will affect the mood and how the events unfold. For example, a car’s headlights dazzle your heroine and cause her to crash her bike. But it’s a summer evening and still light—you’ll need to rethink the cause of the accident. www.timeanddate.com is useful for finding out what time it gets dark at a particular time of year. (Click on the Sun&Moon tab and enter the month, year and location.) It’s a detail, but getting it wrong can pull the reader out of the world you have created. Plus, taking a moment to consider these things before starting a scene can really draw you into the moment and inject greater depth into your writing.

     A few years ago I started keeping a weather diary—daily notes on what the light was like; how the trees looked; how cold it was and what people were wearing. Now, I’m not suggesting you should include ‘weather reports’ in every scene—unless it is crucial to your story, of course—but deciding what conditions are like will inform how your characters feel and what could happen to them.

8. AND FINALLY …

Research can be great fun, it can bring our characters to life and inform what happens in our stories, it can provide us with settings so real, our readers will be able to smell the air as they turn the page. But don’t get lost in its maze of magical mysteries—research is there to support our stories, not the other way around.

--------------------------------------------------------------

I hope some of the above will be of interest. I'd be interested to hear other people's thoughts on research. Why not leave a comment below with your top research tip.

Dave Cousins is the author of a number of award-winning books for teenagers and children. For a more information, sounds and videos, visit davecousins.net

Battling the Beast by Savita Kalhan

Writing a synopsis of a book is very different to writing an outline. An outline is something a writer might write as an overview of their manuscript, usually for his or her own benefit. He or she might write it before beginning their manuscript as a plan, or after the first draft to delineate the story arc, to check for inconsistencies, and to ensure all the loose ends are tied up.

 

A synopsis is a different beast – a beast I’ve been battling with over the last few weeks. I’ve been in the process of finishing a manuscript and rewriting two other novels, which has meant writing three synopses. It has to be my least favourite part of the writing process – I’d rather clean the house top to bottom, or, given the choice, work on a short story instead. But writing a synopsis is a necessary evil and essential when submitting a manuscript to a publisher or to a literary agent. They will read, hopefully, the three sample chapters and when they finish those the synopsis will tell them what happens in the rest of the book.

So, where to start? I’ve said before that when I finish a manuscript I stick it in a drawer and try to forget about it for a while, so that when I take it out to read and edit, I’m seeing it with fresh-ish eyes. The time before you take your manuscript out of the drawer is probably the best time to write the synopsis as you’re not too close to it. The main story-line is still in your head, but not all the little ins and outs of the plot, or all the little details you might be tempted to include that will make it harder to get the synopsis down to a page or two.

A synopsis has to include the story line, the emotional or psychological journey of the main characters, the story arc, the genre, the tone, and it must also include the ending. Everything must be shown to be resolved by the end of the synopsis.

So, it’s a tricky thing to write and there are lots of things to think about when writing it. There is help at hand, though. Nicola Morgan’s book Write a Great Synopsis is excellent. There is lots of advice available online too. I read all the books and took all the advice because it’s so important that each element of the submission package is the best it can be.

I’ve finished my synopses-fest now, and turned my hand to writing a blurb, a pitch and even a tweet for each novel. It’s a very interesting exercise to do, as well as being useful. But it’s also quite a challenge – particularly the tweet, which only allows you 140 characters! If you can get the essence of your novel into 140 characters, then writing a synopsis should be a doddle. 

Twitter @savitakalhan

www.savitakalhan.com

 The Long Weekend book trailer

Writing Badly by Guest Author Conrad Mason

Hello Edge readers, and thank you to the Edge for having me! I thought I'd write about one of the most important steps I took towards becoming a published author: writing badly.

It's well known that many authors get through several 'drawer novels' before they finish one that's fit to be published. I have drawer novels too, except that none of mine are longer than a few paragraphs. I've started hundreds of stories, but for years I never got further than the first page.

The trouble was that I was so determined to write beautiful prose that I never got anywhere. If you spend a quarter of an hour crafting each sentence, how can you ever finish a 300-page book? I had no idea how the professionals did it. Presumably they had some special skill that I lacked. 

Then I read a book called How To Write A Novel by John Braine. It's got some startling pieces of advice in it, some of which I've chosen to ignore ('try not to get married or permanently entangled before your novel is finished'). But overall it's the most inspiring book about writing that I have ever read (and I include On Writing by Stephen King in that – although that's also wonderful).

Here's the epiphany bit: 'With the first draft all that matters is writing the maximum number of words.'

It felt dangerously illicit – was I really allowed to obsess over word count and throw quality out of the window? I had to find out. I set myself a goal of at least 300 words a day, every day, and I kept writing. No checking back. No obsessing over details. No stopping, no matter what. There were times I lost my way, but I just carried on, writing bad sentences and even bad scenes in the knowledge that I'd go back and fix them later. The editor part of my brain was screaming at me all the way, but I ignored it. John Braine had set me free!

Of course, what I got at the end was a mess. Half-formed characters, awful prose, plotlines going nowhere... But that didn't matter because it was 50,000 words of mess. Something that I could edit, and hone, and turn into a novel.

I think the problem before was that I had been trying to write and edit at the same time – and for me, separating those two processes made all the difference. In the first draft I allowed my ideas to come tumbling out as fast as possible, no matter how incoherent they were; then in the second draft I picked them apart and put them back together again.

So to this day, if I'm ever struggling to write well, I just write badly instead. I'd rather do that than write nothing at all.

The Demon's Watch by Conrad Mason is out now in hardback, published by David Fickling Books. 

And rather well written it is too ….

Follow @conradwrites on Twitter and see The Demon's Watch trailer at www.conrad-mason.com

Caring For Awkward Characters – by Guest Author Nik Perring

This week we are delighted to welcome Nik Perring as our guest author at the Edge. Nik is the co-author of Freaks! and the author of Not So Perfect.

For me, Story is all about characters. A story is, in my opinion, what happens to the people in it. They shape it, by their actions and their circumstances and how they react to them. You can’t have a story without characters. 

So, as an extension of that, I think it’s fair to say that you can’t have a good story (however you qualify that) without having a good main character, or ensemble. And how do decide who your characters are going to be? Well, that’s the difficult bit, isn’t it, especially when we don’t find out who they really are until we’ve seen how they’ve reacted to the troubles that are put in front of them in our stories. 

For me, the best characters are the ones we can see a bit of ourselves in. Empathising is important – we have to care, one way or another, about what happens to the people we’re reading about - but what can be equally important is recognising the traits we might wish we didn’t have, or the ones we dislike to see in others. And I’m not really talking about the broad character types – the bullies, the tyrants, the liars – though they can all make for being exceptionally interesting – I’m talking about subtler things. I’m talking about things like insecurity and selfishness, about vulnerability and not quite understanding the world as, it would appear, the rest of the world does. I’m talking about the characters who struggle, who worry, who might be anxious or uncomfortable, or awkward or just plain weird. 

I’m talking about the things that make the characters real, that make them human in the same ways we are, and that’s what makes us care what happens to them. Because, really, that awkwardness, that sense of not quite fitting in – it’s something I think we’ve all felt to some degree at some point in our lives – and that’s what makes us, us. 

But it’s not just about empathy, nor is it only about honesty. It’s so much more than that – it’s about opportunity. As I said earlier, if our characters are interesting and good, then there’s a good chance our stories will be too.

Nik Perring is the co-author of Freaks! published by The Friday Project (HarperCollins) and the author of Not So Perfect (Roast Books). 

He blogs at http://nikperring.com and tweets as @nikperring, and his characters tend to be very awkward and very weird indeed.

Eight Top Writing Tips from the authors at The Edge

During school visits we are often asked to give advice to aspiring young writers. With that in mind, each Edge author has agreed to supply one nugget of writing wisdom from their personal bag of tricks.

You may notice that some of the suggestions contradict each other! That's OK – all writers work in different ways. Try them out and see what works for you. We hope you find them useful.

We'd love to hear your writing tips too, so please leave us a comment below.

Sara Grant
author of Dark Parties

"Never give up! I always wanted to be a writer but never thought I could because my spelling was appalling. My creative writing assignments were returned covered in red ink. (This was in the time long ago before personal computers and spell check.) But I kept writing and reading and learning. If you want to get published, your way will be paved with rejection. JK Rowling was rejected something like 20 times before she found the right publisher. Some really amazing writers give up too soon. Getting published takes practice, patience, persistence – and a little luck. If you want to be a published writer, my best advice is never, ever give up!" 

Miriam Halahmy
author of Hidden and Illegal

"Read until your eyes ache. I wanted to become a writer as soon as I could read. I wanted to create my own stories and reading was one of the most important things in my life. But to find out how to become a writer you need to read as widely as possible. If you want to write paranormal romance, read political fiction; if you want to write thrillers, read chick lit. To find your voice as a writer you need to read across every genre and every style. While you are reading you have already embarked upon your career as a writer."

Keren David
author of When I Was Joe,
Almost True and Lia's
Guide to Winning the Lottery 

"Take time to daydream. Switch off the television, the computer, the phone, the X Box. Spend time in your own head, thinking about the characters you've created. It's the best way to let a story grow." 

Bryony Pearce
author of Angel's Fury

"Read everything, read like mad, read stuff you know you like and stuff you think you might not like, look at history books, autobiographies, biographies as well as fiction - they're great sources of inspiration and show you another way of writing.
Then, when you want to start writing ... stop reading. Take a break from other people's work and give your own ideas a chance to properly percolate. 

Don't compare yourself to other writers. Just get plotting, get writing and see how far you get."

Paula Rawsthorne
author of The Truth
About Celia Frost

"My advice is to enter reputable writing competitions! Look for them on the internet, in teen magazines; ask your school librarian, look on the BBC website. It could be a competition to write a poem, a piece of flash fiction, a short story, the opener of a novel- whatever it is will provide a great motivator to get you writing! Competitions usually give you a theme, a word count and a deadline. All these elements help kick-start your work. It's great to know that just by entering, your work will be read by people who know what they are on about. When I'd just started writing, I entered a BBC short story competition and won – this gave my 'writing confidence' a tremendous boost and spurred me on to keep writing; entering competitions could do the same for you."

Savita Kalhan
author of The Long Weekend

"If you're stuck for ideas about what to write - write about what makes you angry, or happy, or sad, or fearful, or excited, or moves you in some other way, and then read it back to yourself, or even read it aloud and record it and listen to it. If you find it moving it means you are in sync with your character's feelings, and the chances are other readers will be engaged with the story too." 

Dave Cousins
author of
15 Days Without a Head

"Think with your hands! Work out your story by writing. You can sit for hours chewing the end of a pen trying to plan the perfect opening or work out what happens next. If you simply start writing, solutions will often present themselves on the page. 

Re-drafting Rules! Don’t worry too much on your first draft. Give you story space to emerge. Have some fun, try things out, allow your characters to misbehave! In the next draft, you can decide what works and then start to craft the structure and the words." 

Katie Dale
author of
Someone Else's Life

"I agree - read read read as much as you can, and enter writing competitions - the feedback and confidence boost can be invaluable, plus mentioning a competition win or commendation in a covering letter can really open doors. Five of the eight Edge authors were chosen as winners of the SCBWI Undiscovered Voices competition, which provided a huge boost to our careers. Plus, I recommend trying to write in a range of different genres and styles. When I was first starting out I was asked to write a short story for the How To Be A Boy anthology, and I freaked out "How can I write as a boy? I've never been a boy!" But actually it was incredibly liberating, great fun, and really expanded my imagination. So if you usually find yourself writing paranormal romance with a girl narrator, try writing a dystopian adventure with a boy narrator, or historical fiction from the POV of a dog! It might seem daunting at first, but give it a try - you never know where it'll take you!"

We'd love to hear your writing tips too, so please leave us a comment below.