Image by Alan Levine , via Flickr Writing novels tends, on the whole, to be a solitary occupation. Novelists will occasionally team up to produce a jointly-authored book (Katherine Kurtz and I have written 7 books together), but such projects tend to be the exceptions rather than the rule. This isn’t necessarily so in other realms of creative writing. When it comes to writing TV and/or radio scripts – especially comedies – a good many famous works in the genre are the fruit of teamwork involving two or more writers. For example, in the late 1930’s, the celebrated comedy duo Bud Abbott and Lou Costello hired vaudeville aficionado John Grant to help them script their material, collectively producing classic routines like Who’s On First? Similarly, Jack Benny’s reputation as a radio comedian was build on gags he scripted with the aid of behind-the-scene writers like Bill Morrow and Ed Beloin. More recent examples of comedy-by-collaboration can be found in the British SF come...

Image by Alan Levine , via Flickr My husband is nothing if not diversified in the range of his creative enterprises. Board game enthusiasts, for example, will recognize the name Bob Harris as the creator of the classic fantasy board game Talisman . 1 Following the world-wide success of Talisman , Bob a made the lateral move into writing Y/A fiction when our friend Jane Yolen invited him to be her co-author for Queen’s Own Fool , a tale of Mary Queen of Scots (Philomel Books, 2000), the first of eight successful collaborations. And thereby hangs the tale of how he made yet another lateral into script-writing. Bob has always been a fan of vintage American radio comedies like the Jack Benny Show , Amos and Andy , and Duffy’s Tavern . In the wake of writing Queen’s Own Fool , it occurred to him that the life of Mary Queen of Scots, which affords so much serious dramatic material, might on a lighter note provide the basis for a uniquely Scottish sitcom. In 2003 he mentioned t...

Photo by Biking Nikon SFO , via Flickr My husband and I were recently editing the first draft of his latest Y/A comic fantasy novel. 1 Because these books are being published in Britain, one of the minor, but besetting issues has to do with conveying measurements like height, width, depth, weight, and distance. When Britain entered the EEC in 1973, the government agreed to adopt the metric system. Since then British children have grown up using millimetres, centimetres, metres and kilometres in place of inches, feet, yards , and miles ; milligrams, grams , and kilos in place of ounces, pounds , and tons . The metric system works brilliantly in modern scientific and industrial contexts, including contemporary and futuristic fiction. However, if you’re writing a fantasy novel, the use of metric terminology seems incongruous, not to say anachronistic. When I read a sentence like The dragon stood twenty metres tall or The golden sword weighed three kilograms, the effect r...

Photo by Dennis Jarvis , via Flickr As noted in last month’s post , we all want our readers to become immersed in the world we are creating. Using sensory imagery is a key element when it comes to bringing your fictional world to life. One effective technique for “translating” sensory impressions into words is to use figurative language. The term figurative language encompasses a barnyard of rhetorical devices. The twin work-horses in the stable are metaphor and simile, with style points for originality. Your average junior high school English student can be excused for trotting out a sentence like The stars were like diamonds scattered across against the black velvet sky . Aspiring writers need to aim higher. It’s no big deal if one of these old chestnuts finds its way into your first draft, but make yourself a mental note to upgrade your figurative language the second time around. A good metaphor or simile depends on a single bold stroke of the imagination that establi...

Photo by SuperFantastic , via Flickr We’ve all heard the phrase “taking a plunge”. It metaphorically denotes an action tantamount to falling/jumping off a cliff into deep water. The person who “takes a plunge” (voluntarily or involuntarily) ends up completely immersed (if only temporarily) in a new environment. Reading a book involves “taking a plunge” into the world the author has created. If you’re the author of the book, you want your reader to become immersed in your story asap. This holds true, regardless of genre. Whether you’re writing a crime thriller, a fantasy epic, or a piece of literary fiction, it’s important that you should give the reader a strong sense of place and time and atmosphere. Which brings us to the issue of descriptive technique. For your first draft, it’s perfectly fine simply to write whatever first pops into your head. For your next draft, however, you owe it to yourself to review your diction (word choice), figurative language (metaphors...

Image by Oliver Symens , via Flickr Not long ago, I came across a folder of materials I used while I was teaching at the University of St. Andrews. Among the files was a questionnaire I devised for my Creative Writing students to help them assess their own work from the perspective of an editor (or, as in this case, the members of their academic examining committee). There are four categories of five questions apiece: Plot,Characterization, Setting and Atmosphere, and The Writer’s Craft . It occurs to me that this self-assessment questionnaire might be helpful to fiction writers in general who are trying to gauge whether their manuscript is ready for submission. A) Plot Does the work feature a strong/striking central idea around which the action of the plot revolves? Is the central concept sufficiently robust to be conveyed in a single "pitched" paragraph? Is the action well-paced, reflecting a balance between incident and exposition? Does the main pl...

Photo by Jackie , via Flickr In last month’s post on expository technique , I identified reportage as the most utilitarian, least evocative mode of exposition. By way of supporting evidence, I provided parallel passages demonstrating alternative strategies for relaying expository information to the reader. By force of habit on my part, these passages were all written in third person. But what holds true in third person doesn’t necessarily apply in other modes of narration. On the contrary, there’s a case to be made for arguing that reportage is the very essence of first person narration. This is owing to the narrow restrictions in first person vision and perspective. Information pertaining to setting, atmosphere, backstory and plot can only be layered into the narrative through the medium of the narrator’s self-expression. First person reportage is thus both highly selective and highly subjective. The challenge for the writer is to establish the first person narrator as an au...

Photo by Reck via Flickr Even experienced authors struggle with exposition from time to time. To begin with, there are issues having to do with ratio and proportion. Provide too little expository information, and your story will lack texture. Provide too much (or provide the wrong kind), and you risk weighing down the narrative with excess baggage. 1 Writers get migraines trying to decide which facts are vital to story development, and which facts can be left on the cutting room floor. Next there’s the issue of expository technique. The most straightforward tactic is reportage. With this method, the writer uses authorial overvoice to provide the reader with compact parcels, as needed to move the narrative along A typical example of reportage-in-action would read something like this: Meg and Walter Clancy had three children. Laurel and Lucy were normal healthy kids, but Jeb, the youngest, was diabetic. He had to have a special diet and needed two insulin injections a...

Image by Jason Rogers , via Flickr When it comes to attracting readers in a book shop, there are four factors in play. The first three are external: your title, the cover art, and the blurb on the back. In conventional book publishing, command decisions concerning these external aspects of the book are generally dictated by people in the marketing department of the publishing firm. 1 The remaining fourth factor is the book’s opening paragraph. Here is where you-the-author come into your own. Your first paragraph of your first chapter is what gives a prospective reader the first real taste of what the book is about. It’s important to be aware of this, and not squander the opportunity to captivate the prospective book-buyer and clinch a sale. Anybody can come up with a prosaic first paragraph. There’s no great effort of thought involved, and the results are often about as interesting as reading an office memo. It takes imagination to rise above the purely functional. T...

This post was first published here on August 17, 2012. Whenever we open our mouths, we access a vast reservoire of linguistic reference material – words, phrases, and idiomatic expressions - that we’ve acquired in the course of our daily lives. Some of the most colorful idioms available to us are derived from the realm of slang , defined in the OED (rather amusingly) as “ The special vocabulary used by any set of persons of a low or disreputable character. ” Slang is the register of language invoked by fringe members of society (teenagers and street gangs, tramps and thieves, common soldiers/sailors, peons and low-lifes of every description) in order to mock, defy, devalue, or otherwise outmanoevre The Establishment. For this reason, slang never fails to pack a punch. This precept holds true in fiction. When characters speak, they should communicate more than they say . I.e., their believability as characters is dependent on whether the writer can endow them with a mode of ...

Photo by Killy Ridols , via Flickr In the real world, we are all slaves to linear time. Waking or sleeping, whether we like it or not, we have to live through every minute of every day. Only a relatively small proportion of what we experience on a daily basis is interesting enough to make it worth remembering. An autobiography detailing every moment of the writer’s life would make excruciatingly dull reading. If I were going to write my “life’s story”, I’d focus only on the high spots. Much the same principle applies in fiction. Writing your first draft is a bit like “living” the plot a day at a time. But when it comes to Draft Two, what you leave out can be as significant as what you put in. Like a kid skimming stones across a pond, sometimes you want your story to leap from point to point. The actor Robert Morley (1908-1992) used this “shortcut” technique to comic effect in his various memoires. In Around the World in 81 Years , he sums up his early career with drol...

In the real world, human communication doesn’t depend exclusively on the spoken word. On the contrary, the non-verbal aspects of communication in any conversation entail a whole range of signals – both voluntary and involuntary - including vocal inflexion (pitch, intonation, changes in breathing), facial expression , and body language (posture, gesture, manner of movement). Consciously or unconsciously, these non-verbal aspects of communication bespeak our moods, intentions, personal likes and dislikes, social attitudes, and responses to any given situation. Playwrights have the luxury of being able to rely on their actors to supply all the relevant details of intonation and body language to bring a scripted scene to life on stage. In fiction writing, however, the writer has to inject occasional descriptions of body language into the text to show us how characters are reacting to circumstances. This kind of detailing enriches the tone, atmosphere, and texture of the story ...

Photo by Craighton Miller , via Flickr In my last posting , I outlined the merits of using Third Person Omniscient narration if, like me, you’re a writer who enjoys working on large canvases. That said, if your novel features parallel plot lines and an ensemble cast of more-or-less equally important characters, there’s no law that says you can’t Mix Things Up , either by using multiple First Person narrators, or by utilising both First and Third person narrative technique in alternating sections of the same book. Mixing Things Up is not a post-modern innovation. 1 This trend was spear-headed by the celebrated Victorian novelist Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) in his hugely-successful sensation novel The Woman in White. More recent maestros in the use of mixed narrative voices include two writers of Young Adult fiction: Jonathan Stroud and Elizabeth Wein. Stroud’s exemplary work is a four-volume fantasy set in parallel gaslight version of Europe. 2 Here, all social and politi...

All Seeing Eye in the Monastery of the Holy Cross, Jerusalem Photo by Ze'ev Barkan , via Flickr I’ve always loved adventure fiction. As a child, I read and re-read novels like Dumas’ The Three Musketeers , the works of Raphael Sabatini, and C. S. Forrester’s Hornblower chronicles. Adventure novels like these feature (a) multiple point-of-view characters; (b) parallel events taking place in multiple locations; and (c) complex action set-pieces: hair-breadth escapes, elaborate ruses, natural disasters, and fight sequences—everything from a one-on-one street brawl to a full-scale clash between rival armies. When I started writing (at the age of 10), I instinctively followed my favorite models, not only in terms of content and structure, but also in terms of writing technique. It wasn’t until I got to high school that I discovered I was using Third Person Omniscient narration. The term “omniscient” comes to us from the Latin omnis (all) + scire (to know). In Third Person Omni...

Photo by Ryan Wick , via Flickr As noted in my previous post , in First Person narration, the angle of vision is “single-track”. The central character is also the story-teller who addresses the reader directly, uses first person pronouns for self-reference, and recounts events in his/her own words. In Third Person limited narration, the angle of vision is similarly “single-track”. There is only one focal character, and our access to plot developments in channeled through his/her personal perceptions, experiences, and discoveries. But there the similarity ends. In Third Person Limited narration, the focal character is being viewed through a telescope wielded by the author. And this makes a Critical Difference. In Third Person Ltd. Narration, the character is oblivious to the fact that he/she is under observation. Meanwhile, the author plays the role of an on-the-scenes reporter operating under cover. Like a Nato observer, he/she uses third person pronouns when reporting n...

Image by Joel Montes de Oca One of the fundamental decisions a writer has to make involves selecting the narrative voice(s) best suited to carry the story. The three most common candidates for adoption are a) first person singular, b) third person limited, and c) third person omniscient 1 Each of these options affords a different range of narrative possibilities. To start off this series of posts on narrative voice, we’ll be considering the pros and cons of writing in first person . First person is the most subjective of the three angles of vision cited above. This subjectivity makes it an especially popular choice among writers of middle grade and young adult fiction. For one thing, writing in first person is more economical in terms of word count than the other two options. For another, first person narration gives the reader direct access to the thoughts, emotions, discoveries and experiences of the focal character. This access enables younger readers to ident...

As Carola Dunn illustrated in her recent post , in traditional publishing the author is sometimes at the mercy of her editor. One of the benefits of (and problems with) self-publishing is that the author-publisher gets an overruling vote against the editor she hires. Look at all the pretty colours... (a screenshot of the multiple edits of a now-deleted scene) As a history major, I was taught to seek multiple sources of information, and, even with my own fictional brain-matter, I don’t feel comfortable until I’ve had several opinions on it. Since I had the budget, I decided to hire two editors for Madison Lane and the Wand of Rasputin , knowing that I might be tempted to outvote a single editor, but two against one would show me there really was an issue that needed fixing. I also placed a request for teenage beta-readers. And the final member of my team would be proofreader Julia Gibbs . My editors, Sally Odgers and our own Debby Harris , both picked up on an “incomprehensib...