Crowvus Book Blog

Saturday 16th November - Characters - Part Three - Nature/Nurture In some way, all my creative writing reflects my fascination with the nature or nurture debate. As one of six children, I've seen how people can have the same upbringing, the same love, the same nurturing and the same opportunities, and yet turn out to be very different people with very different interests and skillsets. In  The Backwater , I enjoyed exploring the similarities between Rebecca and the father she's only meeting when she’s twelve years old.  Dance With Me  – the book which is coming out next year – is about someone who's going around developing new relationships rather than being with the ones nature has provided her with. I think when you set up a character, you do have to think about where they come from. Obviously, you have to think biologically in something like eye colour but, for the most part, the character you create is as unique as you are. Still, you can't ...

Thursday 15th November - Choosing Your First Reader Some of us write books we never intend the world to see.  Writing for yourself is absolutely fine, but many of us like to imagine someone reading our books.  Sometimes we dream of hitting the Bestseller List, which everyone queuing down the street on release day, or sometimes we imagine our books in the hands of a certain someone. Whichever the dream, your First Reader will most likely be someone different, but their role is nonetheless important.  Your First Reader will be someone who you have to convince, but also someone you trust.  They should at least have an appreciation of the style and genre in which you're writing, but they don't have to be avid readers of it. Here are a few things to consider when choosing your first reader: Trust - This is the *most* important thing.  When sharing a manuscript, you're opening a little window onto your soul.  All writers, whatever they claim, but an ...

Settings and Locations.  Rural Landscape. How to weave words into settings?  The temptation is to be a bit heavy-handed with the adjectives - but then you end up with one of those bumpy rugs instead of a neatly woven delight to walk on!  George Eliot, in The Mill On The Floss , brings alive the landscape and setting and soon conveys the importance of the river without the use of clunking adjectives. I'm reminded of the Lucy Boston stories about her beloved Hemingford Grey.  In The Children of Green Knowe she explains that the river is a lively inhabitant. If a writer is able to animate aspects of the countryside, then there is little need for poetical description. Once a river, a tree, or any other part of the landscape comes alive, then the story/account is accessible without the need to unravel unnecessary packaging.  Don't get me wrong - I've played games with poetic prose so that music sings from the page but I'm also aware that the same music drowns o...

Writing Personifications Most of us talk to people not inanimate objects, or else (in the case of people like me) we talk to both.   But sometimes inanimate objects are central to a story’s plot.   For example, if you’re writing a mystery or crime novel, your characters want to maintain a certain air of unknown.   They will probably become known for the coat they wear, or the car they drive.   As authors we can throw our readers a hint by personifying these inanimate objects. When I think of the power behind a good use of personification, I always think of the parable of the blind men and the elephant.   It’s our human approach which makes us see things in a certain way – within the confines of our own understanding. Metaphors are central to writing this way.   Don’t say: the car had wing mirrors like ears, ready to hear its master’s voice Instead go for: the car’s wing mirrors were ears, ready to hear its master’s voice Here are a ...

Tuesday 12th November - Writing Goals: Yey or Nay! I think the important thing when setting writing goals is not just to be realistic, it's also to be ready for the fact that – even when you're very realistic – things may not work out the way that you want them to. The late great John Lennon says that “life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans”. Whatever plans you make for your writing are going to end up going slightly by the wayside because of other things that are happening to you in your life. For example, I am currently dictating this blog onto Microsoft Word whilst lounging with a cold compress over my eyes to get rid of the stress headache I've got from a day of teaching combined with an evening spent at school preparing for the HMI visit next week. At the front of my school planning book there is a list of things I want to get done this year, and a lot of those are creative writing based: I want to get my book ready ...

Monday 11th November - Dialogue In my world, this is one of those necessary evils. Writing dialogue is a bit of a poisoned chalice. Do you go for how people really talk? Or do you go for how people can read and understand it? My lasting memory of Wuthering Heights is the use of a written-in Yorkshire accent, whereas most people remember the story! Perhaps because of this, dialogue is something I've always felt strongly about! Dialogue tells your reader a great deal about the character. For last year's Book Week Scotland, Crowvus hosted an event called Consequences, in which other people gave you your characters  through their own words ( it's free to read here! ). One of the toughest things about it was fitting in the words your characters had to say. After all, writing a story with a man and a woman in a place with a certain ending - that's pretty vague. But as soon as the words were introduced, the vague characters became 3D: you could hear  their voices. As...

Editing One of the things that is a real privilege about being from a family of writers is having the opportunity to read raw, unedited first drafts. There is something very exciting about how those first thoughts and forays into a deep, rich imagination make the transition from brain to paper (or screen). I’m told that I’m bad for laughing at the mistakes that people make, and a first draft is always a great opportunity to do that too! The best example was almost certainly one of my own: High Fantasy novel I wrote as a child/teenager/young adult: The king was returning from a big battle and about to enter the capital city with his annihilated army. Naturally, he was concerned, so he said, “how can I tell them that their sons and fathers will be returning?” So, since then, I’ve been known for missing out “not”s in sentences. Of course, when you have passed that exciting First Draft Stage and you’re beginning to look at preparing the book for going out into the wider wor...