James Killick's Blog

How professionals generate story ideas

noreply@blogger.com (James Killick) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 00:04:00 +0000

If you're going to make a living writing then one great story idea is not enough. You have to keep churning them out. If you manage to get the attention of an agent or editor with a great piece of writing they will want to know what other ideas you have in your bank. I know this because a Television Story Producer and Script Editor told me. Here's what else I learned from them on how to collate a story portfolio.

Stories must be realer than reality

Reality is a great resource but just because something happened in real life doesn't mean it's going to be believable on the page. Sure, people do crazy unpredictable things in life but in your story-world actions must be motivated and believable in the context in which you create them. People just won't buy it otherwise.

Imitation rarely results in success

Genre and medium conventions always apply if you want to write in those genres for those mediums but don't slavishly copy writers you admire. It's originality and freshness that will make an editor sit up and notice. Remember, these people trawl through acres of new writing. Give them a reason to pick yours.

Practice active listening

You're a creative right? Words should just tumble out of you right? Wrong. If you're looking for ideas you should shut-up and listen. The only words coming out of your mouth should be those open questions you ask when someone is telling you an interesting story.

Research

You don't have to write what you know but you should know what you write. Just enough research to stimulate your imagination and give authenticity to your work – no more is required.

Separate generation and evaluation

Be clear – if you're creating ideas don't start assessing them or trying to work them too early – just keep those ideas coming. One exceptionally good idea is worth ten crap ones. Hell, one good idea is worth a hundred crap ones. So keep those ideas coming. You never know, todays crap idea may actually look pretty good tomorrow.

Develop a writers' network

It's a lonely business, but it doesn't have to be. Don't be afraid to phone a writer friend and talk ideas through. It's just an idea, and ideas can be tested and improved by talking them out with people who understand what you're about. Exercising ideas like this will help generate new ones and take the originals into places you might not have got to alone.

How to make good writing great

noreply@blogger.com (James Killick) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 23:31:00 +0000

You're probably sick of hearing that good writing requires well-drawn characters, exhilarating plots, conflict on every page and lots at stake - but that's really like saying what makes a great pizza is flour, eggs and tomato - we all know it takes a little more than that. Besides, a cursory analysis of what readers really like (i.e. what they keep buying) is a heady combination of story, romance and milieu.

Writing is exceptional when it becomes far greater than the sum of its parts – when the reader forgets the words and sees nothing but the world behind them; when the characters and plot become so entwined that you couldn't pull them apart. When you can't, in fact, see the science behind the magic. But how can we hope to achieve that?

Not easily, if at all. We have to start with the craft – this is the foundation of all great writing – but we can become obsessed with the craft itself and forget that it's just a means to an end. We can't win the race until we learn to drive, but let's make sure we don't stay in the pits fondling the gear-stick forever. We mustn't forget to look beyond the craft and remember why we're doing this. Here are some things to think about to help us achieve that.

Words are in service to your Story

You might want to be a poet, a word-smith, or a lyrical writer – but thinking of your work in those terms is already putting a barrier up between your story-world and your reader. If the reader is in awe of your beautifully constructed sentence she's not really being transported into your story-world or swept away by your characters. If that's the kind of writer you want to be then fine, but it will only invoke a superficial response from the reader, because

Emotion is the key to memorable writing

You probably laugh a lot a books, you may even find sequences breath-taking, but how often have you wept at a book you're reading, how often has your chest ached, and your heart gone out to characters? Not very often, and the books that made you do that are probably some of the best you've ever read. A character simply being emotional will not invoke an emotional response in the reader, a sad event alone will not do it either, because

Characters are inseparable from Story

The story reveals character and the characters make the story – you can have one without the other, and they can both be brilliantly constructed – but it's only when the two are intimately entwined do they really become effective. No one cares about a character without a story, and a story means nothing if it effects no-one. This is why context is the key to an emotional response in the reader, because

The effect of the story is more important than the story itself

A child being killed is a sad story, if you've characterised the mother of that child before you take the child away it's far sadder, if the reader of that story happens to be a mother she's going to feel it even more. Emotion is created in the reader when a cared-for and understood character is subjected to emotional events. Events are emotional because of what they mean to the character - either positive or negative. By doing this, we're on our way to making

Memorable moments

There will be only a handful of scenes, or moments, from all the books you've read which you will never forget, and the majority of these moments (if not all) will be events that had significant emotional impact for a character you cared about.

The effect of story-events on the reader is likely to be heightened if they tap into universal fears and hopes because the reader is more likely to share them with the character, or if the writer has particularly increased the significance of those fears and hopes pertinent to the character, so the reader can share with them through empathy. How best to let the reader understand your characters? Through action, because

Every hero needs a crisis

You don't really know a person until you see them under stress, which means (again) that character is revealed through action (i.e. plot) and the story will be driven by the character's response. Once again, we've come around to the point we made right at the start - that a truly great story is inseparable from its characters.

You see, if we manage that, we'll be famous.

4 ways your protagonist can learn the truth

noreply@blogger.com (James Killick) — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 18:44:00 +0000

It's not just detective stories that require the protagonist to discover hidden truths. An MC actively pursuing some hidden knowledge will provide strong narrative propulsion to any story – providing it is done right. Here are four paths to discovery that you could use in your work.

The chain

This is perhaps the simplest causal structure outlined here, whereby the MC discovers a series of indicators that eventually lead him to the truth. One discovery leads him to a place where he discovers another piece of knowledge or understanding which leads him to another place where he discovers something else etc. etc.

The pieces of knowledge could be a clues, insights into a personal trauma, understandings about a relationship he didn't have before or a mixture of all the above – anything that is appropriate to your story. The key is that each discovery drives the character onto to the next – hence 'the chain'.

The convergence

This is where a series of possibilities are known or suspected by the MC and the story is about him discovering which one of these is correct. In the simplest sense this could be a detective trying to discover the murderer from a fixed set of suspects – the classic Agatha Christie-esque situation – but it could equally apply to a whole heap of other stories. The MC then (either knowingly or unknowingly) eliminates all the possibilities until alighting on the correct one.

You can have all sorts of fun with this set-up – using dramatic irony where the audience/reader knows the truth while the MC doesn't, or keep the reader as ignorant as the MC. Exceptionally clever writers can convince the MC and the reader that one possibility is a dead certainty, only to discover it's false and a least suspected option is actually the case.

The divergence

This is where the truth seems simple to the protagonist but the situation is far more complex than he imagines. A classic example of this is where an event occurs, which could be quite innocuous, but there turns out to be a massive conspiracy behind it. With 'the convergence' the solution is simple and manageable, but with 'the divergence' it is anything but. Perhaps the MC can do something about it, perhaps the reality is so large (or cosmic) that he can do nothing at all. One way to make a distinction between 'the convergence' and 'the divergence' is that in the former the problem gets smaller and more is known, but in the latter, it gets bigger.

The thunderbolt

Probably the simplest and cheapest device of the lot – where the knowledge comes right out of the blue for the character. This can be a twist (re. Sixth Sense) or reveal (Darth and Lukes' relationship) – and can provide dramatic interest or insight, but used alone will not provide narrative drive unless it leads on to the more causal structures outlined above.

Obviously your not compelled to use only one of these devices, you can use them all – and it's worth noting that these aren't the only ways to provide narrative drive. Mash it up and use of many of them as you can, and you'll be half-way to writing a story that's unputdownable.

Happy New Year and good luck.

Four ways to kill narrative drive

noreply@blogger.com (James Killick) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 23:49:00 +0000

If you took all the books that were ever written and laid them end-to-end you'd have a very long line of books – the point being that with so much to read if you're lucky enough to have a reader take a look you don't want to give them any excuse to put your book down and move onto the next – but if you insist, here's four ways to do it.

Withhold information

A sure-fire way to maintain reader interest is to not tell them stuff, right? That way they'll keep reading just to find out, right? No. Utterly, utterly wrong. Giving the reader a question she wants to know the answer to is not the same as withholding the interesting stuff until the end. If you don't put the interesting stuff at the start then, well, the reader just isn't going to be interested enough to keep reading. It's obvious really.

The key is to give the reader interesting stuff right from the start with the promise of more interesting stuff and then keep delivering interesting stuff right to the end. Nobody said this was going to be easy.

Nothing Happens

The power of your voice, the detail of your description, the depth of your characters, all mean nothing if nothing ever happens. Your voice will quickly become droning, your descriptions pointless and your characters irrelevant and uninteresting if not tested by events. 'What happens next' is the simplest mechanism for narrative propulsion – don't be afraid to use it.

Uninteresting Protagonist

So your MC is a humourless plank? Or a spotless do-gooder? Or a bore? Or two-dimensional mouthpiece for your own Freudian hang-ups? I don't want to read about that sort of chump and neither do you. So don't write them.

Predictability

Your scenes should be the natural consequence of previous scenes, and your ending should be inevitable but not predictable. If the reader has your plot figured by page 2 they are less inclined to read on to find out what they know already.

This doesn't mean you can't play with the form – many great stories start with the ending already known (which can have a propulsive effect of it's own), but unpredictability must remain - why and how did this known ending happen? How is this story going to get to that point. Inevitable but unpredictable.

Ok, so that's how not to do it - here's how to actually do it.

Good luck.

How to create great content for your blog

noreply@blogger.com (James Killick) — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 00:12:00 +0000

Producing regular content for your blog can be a daunting task. It can also be a difficult psychological shift for new bloggers to assume the position of authority required to blog with confidence, or to believe that anybody will be interested in what they've got to say – particularly if the last thing you feel like is authoritative or interesting. But the truth is, for your blog to get read, you have to have great content and you have to deliver it in an authoritative and interesting manner. Pretty much like any kind of writing. So how can you produce authoritative content without feeling like a fraud? And how can you talk about stuff without coming across as a pontificating bore? Here are some ideas.

State the obvious

Just because you know something doesn't mean everybody else knows it. Don't be afraid to talk about things that seem obvious to you – there's a whole internet out there and quite a few people who won't know what you know. The added bonus of explaining something obvious is that you'll automatically be an authority on the subject. Believe. Know how to tie shoelaces? Someone doesn't. Know how to make toast? Someone doesn't. You get my drift. A 'How to...' post title always gets a lot of interest because a huge amount of internet traffic is people seeking information – particularly about things that are so obvious that they are afraid to ask their mum/wife/boss about in case they laugh.

Recognise your successes (and your failures)

Getting through your day is a success. Getting enough money together to pay the bills and feed the kids is a success. Getting this far into my blog-post is a success. Recognise these successes and use them as material. 'How to get through your day without killing your boss' is a post anybody would like to read – detail the mechanisms you use to avoid boss-homicide, no matter how trivial they seem. Readers will empathise with situations they recognise, no matter how trivial-seeming they are to you.

Write what you don't know

To produce regular blog-posts requires a lot of material. Eventually you'll come to a point where you feel like you've blogged about everything you know or have ever experienced (in fact, you haven't, but that's beside the point) – this is the time you have to start making shit up. If you've blogged about everything you know now it's time to blog about what you'd like to know. This is an opportunity to broaden your horizons. You've blogged about how to cook risotto, but you'd like to know how to cook a curry – learn how to cook the curry and then blog how to do it, or blog how you learned to cook it, or how you failed to learn how to cook it. All of these things are lessons that readers of your blog could learn from. Obviously you're going to have to do a little research for these kind of posts, but hell, you'll be learning about stuff you want to learn about as well as delivering interesting content.

Write the post you'd want to read

When stuck for ideas come up with a great-sounding post title and build up from there. 'How to fly to space with only a saucepan and a hairclip' is a title that's going to get hits. The challenge then is to come up with the content to support the title. Build five bullet points to support the title, then use these bullet points as sub-titles to support with content. You'll find that as you start writing ideas to support your headlines you may come up with better ones – don't be afraid to change them – the punchier or more interesting the better. Ok, flying to space in a saucepan is a tricky one, but I used this mechanism to produce this post and some of my more audacious (and popular) posts.

Just do it

I'm frequently surprised at what posts get a lot of interest – posts I dashed off shame-facedly go viral, while lovingly crafted sure-fire winners get ignored. Sometimes you've just got to take a chance with a post. Ones you think controversial may barely raise an eye-brow and others you think harmless may kick off a shit-storm. The lesson here is a bad post is better than no post at all – because you never know, that post you thought was hopeless may actually end up being the post that puts your blog on the map.

How to keep on writing when it all seems pointless

noreply@blogger.com (James Killick) — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 23:06:00 +0000

No-body is reading it, no-body is buying it, no-body cares – so why bother? What's the point in pressing on wasting your rapidly diminishing time on earth pursuing a hopeless cause? Why would you do it? Why would anybody do it? Here's why...

Someone's got to do it

So it might as well be you. How you going to live with yourself when the guy who lives two streets down from you with half your talent makes the big-time because he kept plugging away while you gave it all up to focus on your office-admin career? You're not going to feel very clever then. Give yourself a chance, keep yourself in the mix, and you'll keep improving in the meantime.

Practice makes perfect

All those years writing and being ignored aren't wasted – because all that time is spent improving your craft – by the time you do hit the big-time you'll be bloody good. Not only that, you'll have an immense backlog of work to publish which, perversely enough, everyone will think is great now you're famous, even though they wouldn't touch it with a barge-pole before.

What the hell else you going to do?

Let's face it, who wants to be in office-admin their entire life? It's not like your other job is 'rock-god'. Giving up the writing moves you from the person-with-shit-career-and-little-hope category into the person-with-shit-career-and-NO-hope category. Which one would you rather be in?

You're going to do it anyway

Writing gets under your skin - if you're the real deal, you're going to keep doing it no matter what, so get a smile on your face and keep on keeping on. If you're going to quit later, you might as well quit now and get on with the rest of your life, because a quitter is a quitter.

An unpursued dream is never fulfilled

Dreams aren't cheap. You can't buy them in Tesco. You have to define them, hew their likeness from stone with your bleeding hands then eternally pursue them as they fly from you like phantoms. Chances are you'll never catch them, chances are you won't even know where to look, but I'll tell you one thing for sure, you won't find them in the office-admin department.

What you have to (un)learn to be a writer

noreply@blogger.com (James Killick) — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 23:31:00 +0000

Writing isn't just about finding the time and motivation to sit down and write. Your writing has to be good; other people have to want to read it and like it – that's the difference between 'writing' and 'being a writer'. The first is just writing, the second requires readers.

That wasn't obvious to me when I first started. It never crossed my mind that my writing wouldn't be any good once I actually got round to doing it, or that other people wouldn't be desperate to read it and pay me good money for doing so. Harsh lessons were learnt, assumptions reconstructed, and some lessons unlearned. Here's what I would have told my younger self.

Unlearn:

Every word you write is precious

A lie. Most likely every word you write is rubbish. It's probably safest to assume that. Writing isn't just about producing words, it's about reworking them, rewriting them, and a lot of the time just plain cutting them. Sometimes a blank page makes more sense than the drivel you've just typed out. Believe it.

Sometimes you have to write 'off the page' to make a character or a story or a world more convincing. You have to write details around the edges – stuff that the reader (if you ever hope to get any) will never see, but will add authenticity and depth to the words they do see. In fact, get over this words thing – they are just the medium to convey the world, story and characters you create. If you want to be a poet, fair enough, but for fiction writing words are the last resort.

A good answer now is better than a perfect one later

So grab the first idea you have and quickly bash it into an argument. Start by telling them what you're going to tell them, then tell them, then tell them what you've just told them. Right? No. So very wrong.

It's understandable that after decades of schooling you'll be surprised to have any ideas at all, but that doesn't mean every one is worthy of a full manuscript. Stop thinking of everything you write as some kind of essay crisis, and start giving yourself space to have ideas – bad as well as good. Illogical thinking is more productive than logical thinking when generating ideas.

Being cool is being critical

"Hey, look at that dweeb – he stayed in all summer working on his lame-ass fantasy vampire trilogy while we played Sonic the Hedgehog and ate cheeseburgers. What a dork!"

So that dork spent his early years working on his dream while you fucked about. Who's laughing now?

Life is about consumption

Don't confuse pleasure and happiness. Pleasure is an iPad, happiness is a netbook. Anything without a keyboard is designed to suck your money and time away from you. As a rule of thumb – no keyboard equals evil. You want to be a writer, stop consuming and start creating – all the time.

Learn:

The craft

You think you're a rebel? You think you're a free-spirit unbound from the trappings of decades of form and craft? You think you're avant-garde? Or are you just someone who can't be arsed to learn? You need to know the rules before you can break them. You need to understand why something works and works well before you can presume to do it better.

Don't waste time discovering you're not a genius. Save it and stand on the shoulders of the giants who've gone before you – read, learn and understand. Master the form and then you'll be free to be as rebelish or avant-garde as you like.

A lot of people like different stuff to you

Believe it or not you are not the centre of the universe – what you think is not what everybody else thinks. The fact that you found it entertaining to produce ten-thousand pages of turgid prose regarding a little-known historical character does not mean anyone will find it entertaining reading it. You want to be a writer then you have to realise it's mostly about them, your readers, not you, the turgid prose writer.

Love the act of writing

Because that's what you'll be doing mostly, and you may spend your whole life doing it without recognition or reward. Do it for love not money and you may be starving but at least you'll be happy. Concentrate on writing well and who knows, someone might end up paying you for it.

Maybe I'm glad I didn't know all that before I started because if I had, I might never have done.

Why story beats character everytime

noreply@blogger.com (James Killick) — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 23:23:00 +0000

Something has to happen – whether you write for page, stage or screen – because if nothing's happening, no-one is caring, no-one is sticking around, everybody is taking their hard-earned time and money and spending it elsewhere.

But story is cheap, right? Real literature is about character right? Stories are just for kids and action movies right?

Wrong.

Story is the foundation of everything

It doesn't matter how fascinating a character is, or how deep they are, or how well developed or good looking, intelligent or sexy - no-one cares. You could meet the most fascinating person in the world but you wouldn't give a monkeys because you'd never know it if nothing happened.

The point is, you can tell a story without character, but you can't tell a character without story.

There are three levels to story

Plot-driven writing has a bad rep. It's not serious literature. It can't be a serious movie if it's narrative drive is plot. Serious literature has to be 'character-driven'.

Don't believe it.

Story is deep, real deep. First there's what happens – the incidents, the scenes, the events. This is what E.M. Forster calls the 'story' – this happens, then this happens, then this happens. Kids love it.

Then there's the 'plot' – what Aristotle calls the 'structure of the incidents' – not just what happens but why it happens. This is harder to do – because one incident has to be a natural and consequential follow-on from all the ones that have gone before it. Harder for you but easier for the reader, because now you are beginning to create narrative drive.

Then we have what Peter Dunne calls the 'story' (as opposed to Forster's notion of story) – the story is who the plot happens to – the effect of the plot on the characters. This is the real story, and this is the real purpose of characters within stories. Shit happens to them, and then we get to see what they're really like, because...

Character is revealed through action

Someone wiser than me once said 'every hero needs a crisis' - because if they don't have a crisis, they're just a regular schmoe. Every dog needs his day. In fact, it doesn't have to be a crisis, it can just be a situation – a character will reveal himself through how he reacts to that situation. You want to really get to know (and develop) your character? Put him through the mill, and see how he shapes up.

Because Aristotle said so...

And I've found no reason to disagree with him.

Don't get me wrong about character - character is king, but story - story is god.

Four lies the internet tells you about writing

noreply@blogger.com (James Killick) — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 21:51:00 +0000

Yes it's true – the internet lies to you. It poses as an oracle but spouts vacuities. It promises knowledge and delivers platitudes. It offers an audience but gives nothing but loneliness. It hints at success but smacks you with despair. But worst than all that, it can make you believe the following.

You are a brand

You thought you were a person, a unique snowflake with a distinct and idiosyncratic view on the world. In actuality you're just a brand - like a roll-on deodorant. It doesn't matter about quality; it doesn't matter about vision or voice or art or craft. No passion. No love. No wrestling with demons of doubt and truth. No late nights staring at empty pages, words bleeding from your fingertips like sweated blood. No carving through inanities with the broadsword of truth. None of that. You just need to be a powerful and recognisable brand that suggests all those things. Then you'll have a career.

Right.

Your writing is a product

Like toilet-cleaner or cat-litter – your writing is just a product. Utilitarian. No need to aspire to greatness, to delve deep into yourself to discover empathetic and universal insights into the human condition. Your work is just a unit-shifter, a money-maker – standardised, compartmentalised, marketed. An agent or editor hasn't got time to judge your work by its merit, they need to be able to quickly label it in the context of the current market – are you the next Larsson? The next Rowling? The next King? If not, fuck off.

Right.

Your audience is a platform

Not individuals, but a mob – in fact not even a mob – a group of people dehumanised to the point where they are no more that just a stage from which you can propel your career. How engaging. How understanding. How perceptive. A platform? That's right, a lump of concrete that will recognise your brand and buy your product by the truck-load.

Social media is essential

So you can connect with other tossers who tell you that you are a brand, that your work is product to be sold to your platform.

That's enough of that - get out there and mix it up with the real big, bad, ugly human-race.

Oh yeah, and you're all snowflakes to me.

Five ways to banish drama from your scenes

noreply@blogger.com (James Killick) — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 22:10:00 +0000

In case you ever find yourself writing a scene that's breathtakingly dramatic, here are five ways to ensure you bring it back down to earth and wash it clean of anything remotely compelling.

Drama is not debate

Come on, admit it – the real reason you became a writer is because you have so much to say but no-one ever listens. It's ok, it's understandable. Writing provides a way of ramming your opinions down your readers' throats with no chance of a comeback. Cunningly get your characters to talk about the issues you wish to educate the reader about - even better than that, use your characters as mouth-pieces for your own opinions. Character is secondary to the things you want to say. It's called your distinct voice - use it.

Drama is not then but now

Drama is not what has happened but what is happening. Remember that and you're in danger of entertaining – stop right there – it's not about them, the readers, it's about you, the writer. Crafting an immediate scene takes time and effort and life is too short for all that. Better to get your characters to statically discuss traumatic events from your own life thereby exorcising your demons as if they were the character's own. Genius. This also means you won't have to spend countless hours inventing backgrounds and providing motivations for your characters.

And what's the point of showing when you can tell? Telling allows you to interpret for the reader and prevents them using their own imagination. You don't want them sullying your intended purpose with their own interpretations.

Drama is not what is being said but what is happening

Yep there is a difference, and it can get confusing - therefore remove all action from your scene. Some writers are masterful at a sub-textual drama lurking beneath the words the characters are saying – the characters' words belying their wants. Subtle, and deeply pretentious. Why waste an opportunity to directly express the issues you, the author, have to express? This is about educating the reader with your superior and refined opinions, not entertaining them with complex chicanery.

Drama is not scenery

...but scene – a subtle distinction the self-obsessed writer can happily ignore. Here's an opportunity to really practice your purple prose with pages and pages of pointless description. Be careful to avoid heightening the drama by describing relevant details - focus on the irrelevant – this ensures that you highlight for the reader your exquisite wordsmithery without letting anything (like drama or story) get in the way. With exhilarating drama people don't notice the words used to convey it – and that's the last thing you want.

Drama is not exposition

You go to the trouble of thinking a little about your characters background – you have to make sure you include all that material otherwise you're just wasting your time. You want the reader to know how much effort you've put into this thing. Why show the tip of the iceberg when you can drag the whole thing up and dump it on the page? If you've got the material you'd be a fool not to use it.

The three phases of creativity

noreply@blogger.com (James Killick) — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 22:05:00 +0000

Coming up with enough ideas to drive a novel, play or even a short-story can be daunting – doing it often enough to establish a career can seem an impossibility. The good news is, having ideas is habit forming. Once you start doing it and keep doing it, you won't be able to stop. The key is not to kill an idea before it even starts – if you try to accelerate or collapse the process you'll dismiss good ideas that don't seem immediately relevant to your work. Your imagination is like a sensitive soul at a dinner party – if it keeps getting shouted down eventually it will stop saying anything – what you want is for her to keep babbling away without a care in the world. The secret to achieving this is to allow space for each phase of the creative process.

Creation (of ideas)

Allowing yourself time to just create and capture ideas without forcing them into a story framework allows you to have the craziest ideas. If you're not having to force them you'll find they will grow and develop into pretty amazing things, particularly if you tease and prod them into unexpected areas by asking the simple 'what if?' question. You will know best what stimulates ideas for you – for me it's music – but it's not just the creation of the ideas, it's the capturing of them that's important too. For me a notebook (the analogue kind) is ideal for this – the fact that I'm scribbling away in a book I know no-one will ever read gives me a freedom and security that the cold, hard page of Microsoft Word just doesn't have. The very act of writing these ideas down can also encourage other ideas.

You may have ideas for scenes, characters, emotions, themes or snippets of dialogue or prose – even single phrases. All of them must go in the notebook.

Construction

If you've got a good reservoir of ideas building, you'll start to see connections and possible relationships forming between these ideas. This is the next key phase in building a story (or any creative work) – constructing ideas into a cohesive form. You need to have a certain amount of room to experiment in this phase too – this is why so many writers uses index cards, because it provides a flexible way to try out different relationships and sequences. Allowing yourself room to cheaply and quickly try out different connections will also drive new ideas and push the story into interesting new areas. Allow yourself room to experiment here – you're still not committing to anything – you already have your bag of ideas, all your doing here is trying out connections – nothing is undoable. Even the craziest tangential story-thread may yield something you can pull into whatever or wherever your story eventually takes you. You'll find that particular sequences or connections will resonate – and your story will start to form.

Realisation

If you've done the creation and construction phase then this bit is the fun bit – bringing your creation to life in your chosen medium. This will really be the icing on the cake, bringing all the skeletal elements you've been working on, combining them with voice and style and further nuances – but knowing there's a good solid structure and a strong foundation of ideas to build on.

Any work of any magnitude needs a fertile bed of ideas to grow from. A great piece of advice I once read was 'put every great idea you have into your current work in progress'. A mistake I used to make in my early writing was to have ideas but 'save' them for other projects – with the effect that my WIP was devoid of ideas and appeared sparse and shallow. Don't ration your ideas, use them like a glutton – have faith that you will have more – there's no point worrying about WIP2 if WIP1 is going to be sterile and unimaginative.

Three little words that will save your story

noreply@blogger.com (James Killick) — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 21:26:00 +0000

Like all the hardest things, stories are simple at their core. Most non-writers think that ideas are the most difficult thing about writing - we've all heard people say that they've got a great idea for a novel as if that's the hard work done - but the truth is, ideas are cheap. They lie around for the taking; they can be borrowed, stolen or simply observed – failing that, they can even be made up.

A child makes up story events with infinite ease – this happened, then this happened, then this happened. It's a piece of cake. What's really hard is tying up those things together to make an enthralling story - relating those easy-to-come-up-with story elements into something meaningful.

The good news is, while the story elements can be infinitely various, the relationships between them can be distilled into three words.

And

Not to be confused with 'and then' which puts us in the realm of childlike plotting and simply tells us what happens next. 'And' defines a relationship between story elements and is used to supply background to the story. Plenty of story elements related by 'and' will provide fertile ground from which a story can grow.

For example – Mitch is desperate to have children AND he is frustrated in his work AND he is being inattentive to his wife AND had an affair many years ago AND he has a son he doesn't know about.

Plenty of scope for a story to unfold here – we could continue to add all sorts of complications to Mitch's life to give us further scope for development.

Therefore

This is what will ensure story elements (or events) are consequential i.e. that one will naturally (and inevitably) be the consequence of what has happened before. It is usually a result of characters' needs or wants driving them to achieve their aims.

For example – Mitch wants to be rich THEREFORE he robs a bank. Mitch wants to cross the river THEREFORE he builds a bridge. Mitch wants to seduce the girl THEREFORE he buys some flowers.

'Therefore' supposes a forward driven plot evolution – but you may have a great ending but you're not sure how to get there – this is when 'because' comes in handy. So you want your heroine to be emotionally desolate and stranded in the jungle? Why did she get there? BECAUSE she followed her explorer lover out there who left her for an iguana. BECAUSE is simply THEREFORE reversed.

But

This is how to add complications to your story. Mitch wants to cross the river THEREFORE he builds a bridge BUT it falls down as he's halfway across it BECAUSE he used cheap materials. See what I did there?

Remembering that these three relationships are what tie story events together means we can take all those ideas we've begged, borrowed or stolen and start stringing them together into coherent plots, or we can take one idea and start driving a plot forwards (or backwards) from it using these three magic words.

Give it a go.

Ten questions to ask your characters

noreply@blogger.com (James Killick) — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 21:25:00 +0000

As any Russian Formalist will tell you, defamiliarization is a good thing. But it's not only about presenting known things in a new way to an audience, sometimes you have to look at your work from a deliberately different angle to gain new insights and spot potential weaknesses before your readers do.

Here's a trick I learnt from a director currently working on a reading of one of my stage-plays. She told the actors to ask the following questions of their characters to help them develop the parts.

Initially I felt nervous reading these questions - they drill down to the core essential drama affecting characters and will consequently root out any dramatic weaknesses. Try asking them of your characters.

1. How is your character suffering?

2. What are they doing to resolve their suffering?

3. What do they want for themselves?

4. What do they want of others?

5. What do they DO (verbs/ actions ) in each scene?

6. What fundamentally changes/ has changed for them at the end of the story?

7. What do you see as the dominant idea / concept / theme underpinning the story?

8. What is your character's relationship to that idea?

9. Are there any particular events in the past (distant or recent) that shape the character?

10. What is your character’s picture of the future?

As authors governing an entire work and all it entails (plot, story, characters, setting, structure etc.) we rarely take the time to immerse ourselves entirely in one character's world (perhaps the MC if he/she is lucky). If you are looking for fully developed characters in dramatic circumstances then it might pay to do just that – for all your characters. You may see your story-world in a whole new light.

Are you writing for the right medium?

noreply@blogger.com (James Killick) — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 22:05:00 +0000

It's tough enough getting your writing noticed without making the wrong choice about how best to present your story. Are you so in love with the idea of yourself as a novelist that you're selling your stories short because they'd be better presented in a different format?

There's plenty of ways to tell stories and plenty of markets for them – video games, television, theatre, comic books to name a few – and some of these markets are booming. So how do you know if you've got the right format? How can you be sure that the medium you've chosen is the best showcase for your story and your talents? Here are some questions to ask yourself.

How do you imagine your story?

Do you invent visually? As internal monologue? Via scenes or dialogue? Do you conjure punchy and complete vignettes or meandering plots? Do you imagine deep and wide worlds, or closed domestic dramas?

All stories can be told in all mediums – but if you create your stories in the ways above, you should also consider the following mediums respectively: film or comic, novel, stage or screen play, short stories, novel, novel or videogame, stage play.

Where do your writing strengths lie?

Are you struggling through a single POV novel yet your crit group keeps telling you your prose is atrocious? Are you writing a stage-play where your descriptive stage-directions run for pages but the dialogue comes like blood from a stone? If your dialogue scintillates while your prose is abominable, you really should think about writing scripts – likewise, a novelistic play can work but perhaps you should think about writing prose.

What format would suit the story?

You may have planned a deeply internal character driven novel but the story you can't help writing is a highly visual action-hero epic. Is a novel really the best medium for your superhero? Wouldn't he fit better in a comic or a film?

Is your writing restricted by the format?

Is your chosen medium holding your writing back? Is it getting in the way of your story? A good way of telling if you're writing in the right format is if your story and your writing are liberated by the medium you're working within. If it keeps getting in the way then maybe you should try something else.

Would your vision be better developed collaboratively?

A lot of writing is a foundation for the final product – film, stage, tv, comics or games for example. While the god-like control of the story in a novel appeals to some, other writers thrive on the more collaborative forms of writing - or enjoy seeing where an actor, director or artist can further take their work. They may be spurred to greater heights as a writer in consequence.

If you've spend years studying and learning a particular format the thought of trying something else can be daunting – but if it really is the right format for you and your story, the going will be easy. At the very least it's good to mix things up, it will make a change, and will certainly make you a better writer.

Five things the writing experts won't tell you

noreply@blogger.com (James Killick) — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 22:58:00 +0000

You only have to spend a few minutes in the blogosphere to know there's a whole mountain of writing advice you could suffocate under. You could spend your whole life reading it. Perhaps you should. You'll certainly find some value there – you'll also find some nonsense. You'll even find the most blindingly insightful advice that just doesn't apply to you, your muse or your writing - and it may take you six novels following it before you realise that's the case. But amongst all that stuff there's five things the writing experts will never tell you – because if they did you might stop listening. Here they are:

The second draft can be shittier than the first

Particularly if it's your first work and you decide to follow all that advice everyone is falling over themselves to give you. It's not always the case, but it's possible. Just make sure you keep a copy of that first draft - the naïve and childlike and imaginative one you wrote before the over-worked Frankesteinian monstrosity you're currently wrestling with.

Following the rules can make your writing flat and formulaic

You can show rather than tell, start in media res, remove all exposition and backstory, strip all purpley description, give your characters goals and motivations and your scenes conflicts and it will still read like a rejected script for Eldorado. There's no trick to this – writing is not science, it's alchemy. And when you do finally turn that lead into gold, you'll probably have no bloody idea how you did it.

Revising can kill your originality

People know what they like, they know what they think is good writing - and it's not yours. It's the stuff that the establishment picked up on and the rest of the world followed. And your critique group are going to want to make you write like that. And if you follow all the advice they give you, you're going to end up with that Frankensteinian piece of shit that I mentioned earlier, with nothing of you and your originality left in it. Emulation is good, but there has to be a certain amount of 'fuck you' too. So when you revise, make sure it's your story you're revising, not somebody else's.

Flaws are like bad memories

You forget them and remember the good bits. If readers are swept away by the romance, the milieu or the story they won't care about too many adverbs or too much telling or backstory or whatever. No one says Tolkien has too much backstory; no one cares that Harry Potter is awash with adverbs, millions of readers don't give a toss that the Twilight series is one epic expert-writing fail. Do what you do and do it well.

You can't be taught, you have to learn

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against the rules. I devour them – but I do it in order to know them in the hope that I can master them, and one day be free of them. I've nothing against writing experts – as long as their advice is truthful and born from experience and not just dogma they've garnered from other writing experts. One person's truth is, afterall, still truth, even if it's not yours.

But the fact remains - you can't tell between good or bad, relevant or irrelevant advice, until you know enough about writing – or more importantly your writing – to know the difference. And the only way you can do that is to keep writing and to keep making mistakes, because writing experts can't tell you, they can only show you the way. The creative responsibility is yours and yours alone.

But you won't believe me - and you shouldn't - until you've found out the hard way.

How to build a loyal Twitter following

noreply@blogger.com (James Killick) — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 19:52:00 +0000

Sure you can build up an audience by following 40,000 people for a percentage of follow-backs – but wouldn't you rather have people following you because they want to, not because they feel obliged?

What makes people follow and keeps them following?

Firstly, you have to provide great content, all the time. Secondly, you have to get people to notice your great content – then, because your content is great – they'll follow you. All you have to do then is keep serving up great content. Simple, right? Here are some ideas on how to do that.

It's not about you, it's about them

People follow you for their benefit, not yours. Remember that, and give them what they came for.

Tell 'em what they'll get

Unless you're famous, people aren't going to follow you because it's you. Use your biog to tell potential followers what to expect from your 'micro-blog'. It will head-off undesirables but also encourage those who will like the things you're going to say.

Tweet about what you know or what you care about

Only your Mum wants to know what you think about everything – and even that's debatable. Focus on topics that you understand or mean something to you. Knowledge conveys authority. Failing that, passion is always compelling. Tweeting about the colour of your carpet and what your dogs had for dinner isn't going to cut it.

Share relevant content

No matter how big your personality, extensive your wit, or colossal your brain, there really isn't that much you can say in 140 characters. Twitter provides a great entry-point for other web-content. If people get to know that you provide links to good stuff, they'll start to trust your recommendations and stick around.

Retweet intelligently

If someone posts a tweet or link that you dig, retweet it. You'll not only share that good content with your followers, you'll also get the attention of another player who shares your interests and may end up following you and RTing you back. It's a community, people.

Be yourself

Don't pretend to be someone else - nobody likes a fraud.

Don't block tweet #ff

One quick way to get yourself unfollowed - #ff everyone in the world to all your followers. Filling your followers streams with a list of usernames that have no context, meaning, relevance or reason why they should be followed will only end up with people unfollowing you in droves. If you really want to recommend people – pick a select few and explain why people should follow them. Spamming recommendations for everyone is pointless and annoying.

Remember followers aren't fans

And hence they don't want to read your epic chat exchanges with other people they don't know either. Twitter is not a chat service – respond and reply to provocative and interesting tweets – add to the debate by all means - but long, tedious and trivial noise between 'friends' you don't know just leads to unfollows.

Be interesting

People follow people for three reasons: they provide links to great content, they say great things, or the people themselves are great. Combine all three and you're onto a winner.

Anybody else got any Twitter turn-ons or turn-offs?

Why rejection has to hurt

noreply@blogger.com (James Killick) — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 20:38:00 +0000

Somewhere in the blogosphere a literary agent was bad-mouthing a writer for asking the agent not to bother sending a rejection letter if they weren't interested in their work - the writer was only interested in good news. Clearly this 'writer' couldn't handle rejection and wasn't the sort of person the agent wanted on their books. We all know that writing is just one long string of rejections – pre-publication, during publication and post-publication, so this person was clearly not cut out for the industry. Right?

Bollocks. Quite apart from the fact that publicly disrespecting those you make your money from is not only deeply unprofessional but extremely distasteful, I think this writer's approach demonstrates the complete opposite – they are in fact dealing with rejection and by assuming it, addressing the reality of it head on.

I guess the agent's demonstrable lack of imagination in not realising this explains why they sell books rather than write them. I wonder if the agent would have cared if the book were brilliant? I wonder if the agent could even tell...

So all power to this writer for trying to take some power back.

We're told that we have to deal with rejection, it's part of the business, we have to be professional. And we have to be told, by the Rejecters, that this is the case. Just in case we hadn't noticed.

We have to be sensitive to the world around us, to understand and interpret peoples' emotions and motivations. We have to examine ourselves and our own lives so we can empathise with others. We have to watch sunsets and sunrises, tempests and heatwaves, we have to feel them, observe them, so we can relate them, the feelings they invoke, the sounds and smell of them. We have to understand our pain, examine our joy, reflect on our desires and our hates and our passions because what is true to us will be true to others.

We have to understand but we also have to feel – craft and wisdom is not enough – we need emotional depth – that joy and pain has to be ripped out of us and invested in our characters and our work, because if it isn't, it will be meaningless shit. And when we've dumped all that rawness on the page we have to work it, and work it, and work it.

And then someone rejects it.

And it's going to hurt. Whatever they say.

But be reassured, it means you are, or are going to be, a good writer. Because if you haven't got that sensitivity, you might as well be an agent.

Why you should give up writing right now

noreply@blogger.com (James Killick) — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 20:12:00 +0000

It's a mug's game. Believe me. Here's why:

Nobody takes you seriously

Real person: So you're a writer huh? Wrote anything I would have read?

Writer: I thought you said you didn't read?

Real person: No. Nobody ever does these days, still have I heard of you?

Writer: No, I don't think you would have done...

Real person: Right. So what do you really do?

Writer: I'm a... oh fuck it - I work in insurance...

The money is crap

If you ever make any it's going to be a pittance. The average writer makes 14,000 UKP a year. 14,000. That's right, there's more money in vagrancy.

There's no accounting for taste

There will come a day when you'll finally tell that story as beautifully as you imagined it in your head. It may take you years, it may take you your entire life, but one day you'll do it, and you know what? At least twenty percent of people will still hate it - and that's a conservative estimate – it's more like 25%. Here's the news - most of those 25% work in the publishing industry.

There's a whole industry dedicated to crushing your dreams

The power of fulfilling your dreams lies in the careless hands of others: editors, agents, dramaturgs, directors, critics, reviewers – all there to deter, detest and discourage you from pursuing your hopes and dreams. Most of them failed writers, all of them parasites in the gardens of writers' creativity. All of them self-appointed gatekeepers. Ever bought the Writers and Artists Handbook? Don't bother, it goes like this: 'no unsolicited manuscripts', 'no unsolicited manuscripts', 'no unsolicited manuscripts'. Ok, we get it.

There's a whole heap of rejection

To the point that you either become crushed or sociopathic. Imagine a job where you have thousands of faceless bosses constantly telling you your work isn't good enough, it's just not right, it just doesn't fit, and by the way, you're not getting paid. Dignity at work? That's goddamn inhumane.

So you see, it's time to get the hell out.

Still here? Still going to do it?

Well you best click on the 'join this site' button over there and we'll do it together.

Five things to do between writing projects

noreply@blogger.com (James Killick) — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 23:14:00 +0000

The exhilaration you feel at the end of a project can sometimes turn to self-doubt – do I have another project in me? Will I ever have enough new ideas to fuel another? Couple this with the fact that for a writer, not having the intensity of writing normally associated with the end of a project can feel like a withdrawal - there's a temptation to leap into another ill-considered and under-developed project just to feel that you are 'writing' again.

Don't rush into something just to get your writing fix – the next WIP will come along soon enough – take the opportunity to recharge physically, emotionally and creatively. You'll be a better writer for it.

Here are five suggestions for allowing yourself a breather without losing your writing game.

Wallow in (sub) cultural indulgence

You know those dvd box-sets you've been putting off watching because it would eat too much of your writing time? That guilty romance novel you've put aside because it wasn't relevant to the WIP? The sports events you haven't been watching? Get back into them. Treat yourself. You'll feel like you're relaxing but you'll also be involving yourself with stories and drama without it feeling like work.

Return to your inspiration sources

Go back to the things that seed your imagination, the things that make you the person you are, the things that made you want to write in the first place. For me it's music – the abstract yet emotive quality of it makes me feel things that I want to capture in my writing – for you it may be golf. Whatever it is, go back there.

Get some exercise

Your shoulders are hunched and your stomach is pillowing over your keyboard – it's time to offset all that time spent in the writing chair - you'll feel better for it, will probably have more sex, and it will prepare you for the six months of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome required for the next project. The Ancients believed that the body should be exercised along with the mind – and who doesn't want the body of a Greek god?

Get a life

You know those friends you've ignored? With all their life-history and stories and conversation that would not only be fun to hear about but may just provide you with material. Re-connect. Go out, get drunk - interact with that big bad ugly human-race - and get yourself something to write about.

Don't force it

Germinal ideas are like seeds – they need time to grow – you can feed and water them but don't start digging them out before they're ready. There's a temptation when you have the inkling of a good idea to grasp at it – especially when you're looking for the next project – but you may end up throttling it out of existence. Write it down so you don't forget it (which you won't if it really is a good idea) and let it fester away in the back of your mind. Then get back to your golf.

How to rewrite rapidly and efficiently

noreply@blogger.com (James Killick) — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 21:47:00 +0000

There's no doubting the warm glow of satisfaction on finishing a manuscript and the hope that this is in fact the 'final' draft - even if it's only the first. Chances are it isn't the finished product but it's nice to wallow in the vain dream that it might be - until reality dawns and it's back to work. Sometimes though you don't have the luxury of waiting for reality to strike; sometimes the commission/submission/competition deadline looms and you need to start improving that rose-tinted manuscript ASAP.

Here's what you need to do when your back's against the wall:

Learn to un-love it

Critical distance is the holy grail. Ten years away from a project will give you all the distance you could ever hope for. Unfortunately you don't have ten years. What you need is a brutal critique from a complete stranger who takes an instant dislike to you. Even if what they say is utter tripe, you'll analyse what you've written with a far more critical eye. It's painful this way, but it's faster.

Prioritise

So you get your critical distance and realise that there's not just one or two things wrong but everything is wrong – you can't possible fix all that in the eight hours left before the deadline. The answer is you have to prioritise. What's going to make the biggest improvement to this piece with the minimum effort? Story elements are probably close to the top – and a good beginning and ending can hide a multitude of sins. Next look at characters – are they convincing? Do they have desires and motivations?

Think before you write

You may be tempted to just crack-on with rewriting because time is short and you can't afford to wait – but remember these words – different is not necessarily better. You need to make sure that the changes you are making are actual improvements and not just saying the same thing in a different way.

Try before you buy

Ever had an itch you didn't scratch? A niggling doubt or an idea that just won't go away but you're just not sure it's worth pursuing particularly as time is so pressing? Here's a maxim – niggling doubts and ideas are always worth pursuing. If they turn out to be crap you can bin them and return to the original MS – which you did save a copy of, right? Don't be afraid to save a new version and pursue the idea, while the original version is still nice and safe to fall back on. Here's another maxim – if you have any niggling doubts they are most likely humdinging problems that the fee-paying public will vomit at. Fix them.

Don't dilute your truth

Don't forget why you wrote the story in the first place – in my experience there's more raw truth in the first draft than in any other draft – don't lose that power, just draw it out, expose it, reveal it in better ways – but for crying out loud do not DILUTE it.

Remember what you know

I always forget everything I ever learnt about writing the moment I finish a draft. Because my memory is so abominable I compel myself to ask two simple things:

1. how can I improve this story

2. how can I develop these characters

Because things that are wrong with a manuscript essentially boil down to these two things – a faulty story and under-developed characters.

Destroy to create

Don't be tempted to just fiddle around massaging words and phrases – sure you may feel you don't have time to undergo massive structural changes but if that's what's needed that's what's needed. No amount of polishing is going to fix a turd. The truth is, if you get the structure and story right, the words will fly because you know it's good. Stories with good characters and structure pretty much write themselves.

Write around the edges

Sometimes what's wrong with a story isn't what's written on the page but what's not written off it. Chances are your characters are flat because you haven't developed them. Odds-on that your scene isn't working because there are no points of conflict. Most likely your unconvincing character actions are because you haven't developed a justification (read motivation) for that character. The fact that your story is dull is probably because you don’t have one. Feed those characters and story with off-page development. Believe me, it's not wasted time – I recently spent a day and a half developing a character's background and it allowed me to fix a scene with a three line change.

Good luck.

How to write critiques that don't kill

noreply@blogger.com (James Killick) — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 16:38:00 +0000

There's a reason why messengers get shot. Nobody likes bad news – particularly if it's a list of perceived problems with a project someone has spent months slaving over, spilling their blood, guts and personality into it. To a writer exhausted by lack of sleep, persistent rejection and a life of lonely unappreciation 'sorry I just don't get this character's motivation' is likely to be the last nail in their coffin. It doesn't matter how long you've been in the business, the first reaction to a penetrating critique is at best defensive, at worst homicidal.

So before stepping into that emotional minefield you need to get your shit together – here's how:

1. Establish credentials

Sometimes you'll be giving feedback to someone you already have a relationship with, but often you may find yourself working with someone you don't know, or worse, someone who doesn't know you. Make sure you make them aware of your past experience with critiquing and/or successful writing projects, perhaps even giving them examples of your work. Bad news is bad to take from anyone, so don't give them a chance to dismiss your feedback out of hand, otherwise you're wasting your time.

2. Establish trust

If the writer thinks you're going to post snippets of their germinal projects online for trans-global mocking, or maybe even talk about them in the pub, it's hardly going to help strengthen what is an already fragile relationship. If the writer thinks you're not going to be sensitive to their hopes, ambitions and fears they may not end up submitting again. You need to be trusted and taken seriously.

3. Establish terms

Some writers just can't take it on the chin. My erstwhile writers' group had at least two full-on lost-it arguments that I know about, one of which involved me. If you've spent four hours working on a critique only to be shouted down by the writer every point you make then everybody's wasting their time. Make sure you work out with the writer the best way of delivering the crit – in person, over the phone, in writing, or a combination of all. That way you give the writer an opportunity to deal with the truth on their terms.

4. Understand the story

Remember that you're not writing your story – they are trying to write their story - and you are trying to help. Sure, you would probably enjoy a car-chase right through their Mills&Boon romance but saying so is no help to anyone. Leave your ego and your writing ambitions at home, try and understand the story they are trying to tell, and see what you can do about helping them tell it.

5. Look for the positives

Disrespecting someone's writing is easy. You can't help but notice all those problems in someone else's work that you can't recognise in your own, but your criticisms will be given far more weight if you can also recognise good writing, promising story-lines, and intriguing characters. Make those points too.

Sometimes your faced with a piece of writing so atrocious it's impossible to find any good in it whatsoever. Invent something. You need to sweeten the pill so that the bad news will be taken seriously - then hopefully next time you read it you will find something positive to say.

6. Don't react to defence

I don't care who you are – the first reaction to a bad crit is a defensive one – with the best will in the world, it's hard not to justify your creative choices – 'I had to write that passage abominably because...'. When faced with a writer defending the indefensible take a breath, smile sweetly, and move on to the next point.

7. Tell them what they need to know, not what you think you know

So you may have just learnt about deus ex machina, defamiliarization, subtext, dramatic irony, in media res, foreshadowing, foretelling, inciting incidents and god-knows-what-else, but no one cares. Don't pontificate about what you think you know, look hard at the work in question and tell the writer what they need to know.

8. If in doubt, leave it out

If you're not sure about a point it's probably not worth making. They'll be more than enough for you to pick on, so don't weaken the points you feel strongly about by articulating the ones you don't.

9. Don't make it personal

Treat it as a learning exercise. Assume that the writer will ignore everything you say. Focus on developing your understanding and your expression. Anything else (like appreciation) is a bonus. There's no point in getting shirty because the writer doesn't love your crit. Years later they may, but right now they just hate you.

10. Do it properly

Nobody crits the critters. A well-written and penetrating critique takes time and effort. To analyse the story, identify problems, suggest improvements, and hardest of all, express these (potentially wrong) ideas in a way that's understandable and communicable to an audience that most likely doesn't want to hear them takes skill. Make the effort – it's not just the writer who'll benefit if you do it well. You'll learn about good writing from the analysis process and you'll also recognise your own weaknesses far more easily when you see them in the works of others.

Performing open-heart surgery on a scene

noreply@blogger.com (James Killick) — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 12:06:00 +0000

Some scenes are born easily, some are dragged kicking and screaming into the world; some are born beautiful, some as ugly as sin. So what do you do when your scene looks more like Frankenstein's monster than Adonis?

Scenes are the heartbeats of story, the essence of drama – and sometimes (most of the time) they're going to need some work beyond the first draft. But as any surgeon will tell you, you need to know what to expect beneath the surface when you make that first cut. To that end here are the four elements of a scene.

Purpose

This, essentially, is the point of the scene – the reason that it's included at all. If you distil the scene down to its dramatic purpose you may find that it has none at all, in which case you cut it. You may also find that the purpose of the scene may be better served by another scene. Whatever the case, understanding what the purpose of a particular scene is will allow you to develop the best way of presenting that purpose.

The four purposes of a scene are as follows (in order of importance):

1. To progress the story

2. To reveal character

3. To introduce a character

4. Exposition

The more of these 'reasons' your scene is serving, the more purposeful the scene will be.

Context

Context is how the scene relates to the rest of the story. Many novice writers fail to grasp that a significant part of the power of a scene is due to what has come before it or what the scene implies will come after. In classical storytelling there is a beginning, a middle and an end to all stories – and all those elements depend on the others to have any meaning at all. Scenes should be a natural consequence of what has gone before – this thread of consequence is narrative. This is why scriptwriters have notions of 'inciting incidents' (suggesting future scenes) and 'obligatory scenes' (scenes demanded by previous events). All these types of scenes are defined by how they relate to other scenes – in other words, their context.

Action

This is what actually happens in the scene. This should be obvious, but many writers produce lengthy scenes where nothing happens at all or are merely expositional. This isn't enough no matter how scintillating the dialogue or interesting the exposition – something has to happen. How can you define if something has happened? Something must have changed for the characters within that scene – it doesn't have to be something epic, it just has to be something of dramatic significance. Small details can have massive dramatic significance. Massive actions can have trivial significance. It's the consequence of the action that's really important.

Situation

This is the setting – the location – in which the scene takes place. While the situation itself can be dramatic, and indeed the scene itself should be, it is possible to divorce a scene from it's setting – it is in fact the most loosely-coupled of the four elements to the scene. Despite this, it's foolish to ignore the dramatic possibilities of setting - juxtaposing a location which carries a particular emotional resonance with a scene that's carries the opposite emotion can heighten a scene or comment upon it – a marriage break-up scene in a children's playground for example. Also emotion could be reinforced by a setting that complements the action of a scene.

But situation is not just about location – it's also can carry a certain amount of dramatic business of its own – a plane diving out of the sky, a sinking ship, or a precarious cliff-edge all have significant dramatic potential divorced from the action of a scene. Now imagine my marriage-breakup example scene occurring in one of these places.

Armed with this information you now should be able to understand what's going on with any scene you write, and what you need to do about it to make it excellent.

Some more useful links about scenes:

How to fix a crap scene

How to let a scene write itself

The scene-deck - a story-building technique

How to write a compelling opening

Five reasons why blogging makes you a better writer

noreply@blogger.com (James Killick) — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 21:31:00 +0000

Apparently there's only one reason to write a blog – to build a 'platform', which you can then convert to customers to buy your 'product'.

Right.

Aside from the fact that anyone who thinks of their potential readership in those terms doesn't deserve anyone's time or money, thinking of your blog in terms of 'platform' is a little like obsessing about how to get published before you've learned to write.

So before you start putting the cart before the horse - or worse, giving it up before you even start - here are five reasons to write a blog even if no one else ever reads it.

Regularity

Having to produce something of quality regularly can be quite a challenge, but it's an excellent habit for a writer to form. Whether you blog daily, weekly or monthly blogging requires discipline to compel yourself to do it – and that discipline rubs off elsewhere.

'But I already produce 5000 words a day. I don't need more discipline' says the failing writer. Ok, but there's a big difference between producing 5000 words of drivel no-one is ever going to read and a taut 500 words that will be published online and possibly read by everyone.

Consistency

You're only as good as your last piece of writing.

Regular blogging instils the need to keep producing consistently readable stuff, and with that need you are compelled to develop skills that improve consistency: style and voice, the ability to make the mundane interesting, the obvious less so – all of which is useful wherever and whatever you write.

Relevance

Once you start publishing blog-posts for others to read, you start caring about your readers – what they want, what they like, what interests them and what they respond to. You start to realise that your headline not only needs to be attention grabbing, but that it also needs to indicate the content of the post. You start to understand that writing isn't about pontificating about what you think you know, but about what you can say and how you can say it in such a way that your readership actually gives a shit.

And how the hell to you know when you're starting to succeed at all these things? When people start (and keep) reading what you're saying.

Idea Generation

Probably one of the most useful things about having to find something to write about regularly is that you learn to germinate ideas rapidly and repeatedly. This coupled with the skills outlined in point 2 means that everything starts to become potential subject-matter. It can seem daunting to have to come up with post ideas all the time, but for a writer to be in the position where she doesn't know what to write about it or how to write about it is never a good thing – regular blogging helps you get over that.

Thought Cohesion

There's nothing like realising how little you understand something the moment you try and explain it to someone else. There's nothing like realising how badly formed your ideas are when you start to articulate them in writing - you learn to smarten your ideas up pretty quick. Blogging doesn't mean you have to be the authority in the area you blog about – you can use it as an opportunity to develop your knowledge and skills in a subject you'd like to understand more about. You want to know about early nineteenth century armadillo racing? Then do some prep and write a blog-post about it – and do it in such a way that's interesting and compelling.

Isn't that exactly what writing is all about?

What theatre can teach about storytelling part 2

noreply@blogger.com (James Killick) — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 22:04:00 +0000

Imagine sitting alongside a reader as they experience your story, watching their reaction to key events and characters, seeing when they laugh or cry, gasp or tense with excitement. Picture yourself noting when they frown, switching off for passages you spent months crafting, observing the point where they disengage altogether and go and so something else more preferable. Now imagine doing that with a hundred people. Welcome to writing for the theatre.

As David Mamet says – you can never be smarter than the collective intelligence of your audience – so what can we learn from them?

Engage and entertain above all else

Nothing focuses the mind like being face-to-face with the very people you're supposed to be writing for. Typically there's a huge chasm between the writer and the reader – with theatre this isn't the case. Sitting amongst a hundred people who are watching your story really leaves you very little room for lame writerly excuses – you understand the importance of engaging your audience and then entertaining them for the duration of the story. Everything else is a luxury.

The effectiveness of dramatic irony

This is when the audience (or reader) knows something that a character doesn't. The very contrivance of the theatre – that the audience is watching a simulacrum of life that actors are acting out through story – really demonstrates how powerful a device this can be. It can create suspense, anticipation, desire – essentially the want in the reader to see what happens next. That's what we're after right? Let's use it.

The primacy of plot

Aristotle knew his onions. While character is the essence of drama, true character is only revealed through dramatic action; dramatic action requires the character to be put into dramatic situations, and a string of dramatic situations have to be naturally consequential – and thereby a plot.

A story with no characters can be endured – characters without story is just a chat-show.

Those old-stagers weren't kidding

Telling, exposition, and background are boring. Immediate dramatic events happening to engaging characters on stage now is exciting and worth paying money for.

Get over yourself

This is not your platform. Nobody wants to know what you think about the world. Nobody cares about your politics or the issues you think need to be addressed. Perhaps if you write a good story they will – but not yet. Right now all they care about is point 1. Right now all they want is to hear a good story populated by believable and compelling characters. Truth cannot be draped over a story like a blanket but emerges by digging down to find the universal elements of the human condition. Achieve that and you'll say much more than you ever could by just opining.

Where to find drama in your writing

noreply@blogger.com (James Killick) — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 21:44:00 +0000

The answer, according to most advice on writing, is to have 'conflict', but conflict is not a particularly helpful word, it's both general and limiting; it's not specific and in fact refers to only one scene-making technique available to writers. Drama – by which I mean compelling story events – can certainly grow out of conflict, but it can also grow out of difference, disparity and contradiction.

The one thing that all of these terms have in common is that they rely on the existence of two states. Conflict is one way to create drama from them, but a character desiring to move from one state to another is also a potentially potent form of drama – from pauper to prince, from slavery to freedom for example. Further drama can also be drawn out by complicating the relationship between the two.

The key is, it's not the states that are interesting but what happens between them. It's the space in between - the gap between the two - where drama will grow.

Here are six relationships that can be used to create drama in your scenes without every one having to be a combat-zone.

Between expectation and reality

Imagine a man making breakfast. He turns the gas-hob on and clicks the ignition button – it doesn't work. We have a gap between his expected response from the world and the actuality - a mini-drama. He goes to turn the hob off but the knob comes off in his hand - another gap between expectation and reality. He goes to the door to open it but its jammed shut – increased drama. He opens the window but the fire-escape has been ripped from the wall.

You get the picture.

Between desire and satisfaction

Any romance writer will tell you that the key to creating compelling narrative is to keep the ideal lovers apart for as long as possible. But it doesn't just have to be love – any delay between desire and fulfilment creates drama. What's particularly useful about this technique is that it also creates narrative propulsion.

Between desire and duty

A further complication of the previous drama – the protagonist wants something so very badly but duty denies it her. Betrothed to one person but you fancy someone else? The law preventing justice? Politely enduring the pointless inanities of a relative while the girl of your dreams slips out of your life?

Jane Austen was so very adept at this. Intensely powerful dramas without a fistfight in sight.

Between the actual and the possible

This vignette covers a whole raft of dramatic possibilities. It is dramatic because it allows for a transition, for a difference to be made, a hero's journey. The shift does not have to be a good one – it can be dark and tragic. Macbeth is driven by what he and his lady believe is possible. It's the difference and their knowledge of it that drives this drama.

There is all sorts of fun to be had here – whole acts can be written about just getting a protagonist to appreciate what is possible before he even goes about trying to make it a reality. To use granddaddy Shakespeare again, the witches serve this purpose in Macbeth.

It's also more interesting when the protagonists, while striving for a particular possibility, end up somewhere else entirely.

Between truth and its impact

The truth is always good, right? The truth will always set you free? Well, maybe - but a whole heap of pain and suffering may have to accrue along the way. Drama always ensues when the truthful choice is loaded with potential collateral. So you see your friend's wife with another man – you going to tell him if you know he's going to leave and the kids don't get to see their daddy so much? You know the janitor at work has a criminal record - you going to tell the boss when you know he has six kids to feed? It's called drama, my friends.

Between character and circumstance

A worthy source of drama used by storytellers as diverse as Stephen King and Anton Chekhov. A character thrown out of their comfort zone and placed in challenging situation can be the basis of an entire novel – a device frequently used by King. Chekhov's technique exploits the same relationship but in a much different way – his characters are stifled and disempowered by their circumstance, and he mines this rich vein of dramatic potential.

So, when faced with a flat scene, don't immediately resort to a man walking in with a gun – consider the two states that are at play and your characters relationship to those states, and the scene will write itself.

And if the scene still stinks, it maybe that you're missing these elements and it's not a scene worth writing anyway.