WRITING TIPS – PART 7 FROM EDGE WRITER SAVITA KALHAN

For the past six weeks the Edge Writers have been sharing their writing tips. Here’s a brief run-down, but to get the full benefit of their wisdom, check out their blogs here on The Edge:



Bryony Pearce – Go be a DORK – as in Day-dream, Observe, Read, and Query, and most importantly to then Write.

Dave Cousins – Amongst his fifteen amazing writing tips, one of the most important is to ENJOY what you’re writing.

Katie Dale – People watch, listen, carry a notebook, enter writing competitions, and READ, READ, READ.




Miriam Halahmy – When you’re drained, take a complete break and do no writing at all until you’ve recharged your batteries. It’s a risk well worth taking.






Paula Rawsthorne - My tip would be to gather tips and ‘rules’ from the various writers that you admire (and some you don’t) and then see what works for you.




Sara Grant - My top writing tip – Buy LOTS AND LOTS of great books – and study them! The only creative writing teachers you will ever need are on bookstore and library shelves.






And now it’s my turn to share mine. Last year I blogged about Pulitzer Prize winner Jane Smiley. “Nobody asked you to write that novel.” These words were said to her by a friend and they resonated with her in a way that they resonate with many writers, and have done so for me.



Writing is such a close and personal encounter with your imagination that to lay it out in the open for others to read, criticise, and, hopefully, enjoy is a major deal. But that’s what writers do. So bearing that in mind, I have only two writing tips to add to all the other great tips from the Edge authors.


Enjoy the process of writing regardless of the rewards. Don’t think about whether those rewards might involve getting a publishing contract, winning awards, receiving accolades, getting big advances, because you may be in for troubling times. The writing process itself can be hard work, all the more harder if you’re not enjoying what you’re writing, trying to write or rewriting for the seventh time!

Be patient and persevere. Being a writer also means being in for the long haul. The publishing industry is nothing if not slow and long-winded. Nothing happens today or tomorrow; nothing happens without several people in a publishing department being totally committed to your book, and then they have to get it past several other people in other departments such as Sales and Marketing. So bide your time and don't ever give up.

We hope you’ve all enjoyed our WRITING TIPS series. Please do come back to us if you have any questions or leave us your thoughts in the comments section below. 

HAPPY WRITING FROM THE EDGE!

 

 

WRITING TIPS #4 ...Take a break....by Miriam Halahmy

I know that everyone says, To be a writer you need to write.

And I say exactly the same in my workshops all the time.

But at the end of last year I ground to a complete halt. I had written a book a year for five years, plus 19 scheduled blogposts each year and umpteen guest and extra blogs, I write on social media most days, I also review books and write occasional articles for books and journals and I write poetry.

That part of my brain and my body which is the writer bit of me rebelled.

So I stopped.

Completely.

For over two months.

I did other things like walking in the woods and seeing family, especially the new grandbaby, I visited friends and I went to my beloved Hayling Island and walked the route of the old railway line - the Hayling Billy.

Ah ha  you're thinking! But were you happy - that writer not writing?
No - I had all sorts of mixed feelings - I'm not writing a novel, will ever I ever write a novel again, will I want to, what will I do instead - etc., etc., etc.
So was my soul and my confidence and my creativity shot down in flames?

Sometimes it felt like that and a sort of numbness too.
But....
THEN.....

KERCHING!!!

It changed...

All those feelings inside me that come together to make me a writer.

I wrote a poem.

I wrote a picture book text and then I wrote another one. A whole shiny new genre for me and a flutter of excitement ( you know that feeling writers) began to blossom inside me again.

I wrote other things too.

.

If you feel stale, if you have no ideas, if you have been writing for a very long time and you feel drained, then I would thoroughly recommend a complete break from writing. I mean - DO NO WRITING AT ALL.

Because it works - just as your body needs a prolonged rest after illness or extreme stress,

so does your writing part.

It is a risk - I know it is.

You might be under enforced deadlines - I wasn't.

It is scary.

But I cannot recommend it highly enough. 

My batteries are recharged. I am writing new and fun and good and creative and more than anything else - I am enjoying all my writing again.

If you choose to give my writing tip a try - good luck and stick with it. The outcomes will amaze you.

www.miriamhalahmy.com

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! 

"Nobody asked you to write that novel," by Savita Kalhan

“Nobody asked you to write that novel.”

Those were the words of one of Jane Smiley’s friends. These words resonated with her the way, I think, they resonate with many writers.

When I read these words in an interview with Jane Smiley, I thought: I must pin these up on the wall where I can see them every day when I’m working, especially when I’m stuck, frustrated, or blocked in the current WIP. Because they are so true – nobody has asked me to write this current book. Nobody. I made that choice all by myself. I signed up for it without any prodding or persuading on anyone else’s parts but my own. But those words are a good reminder when the book isn’t going exactly the way you want or expect it to, and when it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere at all!



Moo, The Greenlanders and A Thousand Acres, for which she won the Pulitzer prize, are just a small selection of books by Jane Smiley. She’s been shortlisted for the Orange Prize, written short stories, written for young adults, written crime, historical, epics, as well as essays and non-fiction. In her interview, she offered five tips to writers, which are not dissimilar to the tips I would offer. Every so often it’s good to step back from the writing process to not only remind yourself of why you’re writing but also to remind yourself of the world beyond your manuscript.




So, be a tortoise not a hare, Smiley says. Let the story evolve rather than rushing through the first draft. It’s not a competition as to how fast you can write. This one is easily forgotten in the rush to get the story down as fast as possible. For some writers it works, but for many it doesn’t.





Read a lot. We all know that this is so important, and for many writers it’s what led us to trying our hand at writing in the first place. Reading is important not just for the sheer pleasure of it, but it also makes us aware of the way different writers have crafted their novels, of what’s possible and works.

Look and listen. I’ve often been accused by my family of ‘zoning out’ when we’re out, but they all know that what I’m doing is eavesdropping! Characters in a book are built on the people we know and read about, but also on the people we see and hear, or overhear.

Exhaust your own curiosity about your project before showing it to someone else. I have in the past rushed to show someone a first draft, but over the years I’ve realised that it’s a mistake for me to do that. I need some space and distance between each draft so that I can get some perspective on the manuscript. When I do have the manuscript read by someone else, I’m usually ready, albeit somewhat anxiously, for an honest critique and constructive criticism.

Focus on enjoying the process. This is so important, and, most of the time, I love the writing process – why else would I do it? The rewards? Well, I’ve come to realise that if I thought only about any rewards, then I may well be in danger of living a life of permanent disappointment.  But then how does one persevere? It’s hard to continue writing day in day out without sight of some reward at the end of it. Which is why, I suppose, if I didn’t love the process of writing, I would eventually stop writing altogether.

Jane Smiley's book, Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel, promises to be an interesting read. She wrote the book to help her overcome her block. She set out to read and review a 100 books. With each book she talks about why it succeeds as a novel, or doesn't, and discusses her own work, offering tips and advice.


What keeps you going as a writer?

  
 

 Savita's Website

Savita on Twitter

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.

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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

2012 Review: Books, Libraries and Writing – A Year on The Edge

In the final blog post of 2012, Edge author Dave Cousins takes a look back over a few highlights from the last twelve months at the Edge.

The year started with a flurry of Edge books hitting the shelves: Sara Grant's Dark Parties, my own 15 Days Without a Head, plus Someone Else's Life and the first two titles from the Fairy Tale Twist series from Katie Dale. January also saw the first of two guest posts by Caroline Green.

As the year draws to a close, I'm sorry to have to write that our national library service is still in a perilous state. The current government seems either unaware or ambivalent to the vital role libraries play in society and has done little to stop closures and reductions in services across the country. To mark National Libraries Day in February, each of the authors at the Edge wrote a short piece in support of libraries.

March saw the publication of Illegal – the second book in Miriam Halahmy's trio of books set on Hayling Island. Author Mary Hoffman wrote: "Miriam Halahmy has pulled off a difficult trick - a second novel as good as her first."

During events we are often asked for writing tips, so in April the Edge scribes each offered a nugget of wisdom we hoped might be useful to fellow writers young and old.

Late Spring saw a trio of fine authors guesting at the Edge. We were delighted to welcome Nik Perring, Jane McLoughlin and Conrad Mason. If you missed their posts the first time around, here's a chance to catch them again.

Edge authors and the My Voice Libronauts in Warrington

The Edge Summer Tour kicked off with a trip to meet the My Voice Libronauts in Warrington. This was followed by events in Blackheath, Hounslow and Westminster. The final date saw Dave and Sara performing a double-act of live storytelling at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in August.

We are keen to have a wide variety of voices at the Edge, and were pleased to invite a quartet of book bloggers to give their perspective of teen and young adult fiction. Read what Paula from PaulaSHx, Beth from Page-Turner, Cicely from Cicley Loves Books, and Jeremy from Book Engine had to say.

September saw the publication of Another Life – the eagerly anticipated third book in Keren David's trio of urban thrillers that started with the acclaimed When I was Joe. More good news followed, with the announcement that new Young Adult imprint Strange Chemistry will be publishing Bryony Pearce's The Weight of Souls in the UK and US in August 2013.

We rounded off the year with A Night on the Edge at Foyles bookshop in London, in association with Foyles and the Youth Libraries Group, plus an impressive line-up of  award-winning guest authors: Ruth Eastham, Celia Rees and Anne Cassidy.

Paula and Bryony at the Leeds Book Awards

We are delighted that a number of books by Edge authors have been recognised with award nominations in 2012. These include: SCBWI Crystal Kite (Dark Parties, winner); Cheshire Schools Book Award (Angel's Fury, shortlisted); Leeds Books Award (Angel's Fury, winner 14-16 category  and The Truth About Celia Frost, winner 11-14 category); Anobii First Book Award (15 Days Without a Head, Dark Parties, Someone Else's Life, all shortlisted); Sefton Super Reads Award 2012 (The Truth About Celia Frost, winner); Branford Boase (Angel's Fury, nominated); Carnegie Medal 2012 (Hidden and Lia's Guide to Winning the Lottery, both nominated)

Finally, a huge thank you from everyone at the Edge for your support, for visiting the blog and leaving comments. We hope to see you again in 2013.

Happy New Year!

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.