More than Writers

It’s difficult to avoid magazine articles, blogs, books, even, that present the world and individuals as either Left-brain or Right-brain dominant. It all sounds so neat and tidy, as if the brain research has uncovered a key component of human personality left undiscovered for…yonks. Pictures of neurones firing away when presented with images of spreadsheets (left brain) or Monty Python (right brain) are compelling. Thing is, we like (i) neat and tidy (ii) and eccentricity. Or am I just talking to Brits?  Here’s a spoof conversation between two writers: ‘Tell me, Jarvis, how do you plan your novels?’ ‘I’m so glad you’ve asked me Martine. Not because I know the answer, but the intonation of your soft Dublin accent has given me an idea of a character I’ve been wrestling with…’ ‘I didn’t expect that! I’ve known you a long time, Jarvis, but I’ve never quite understood how you prioritise character and plot. You know, I was speaking to our mutual friend, Isaac, last week. He imagines fiv...

I write lists. My current TTD (Things To Do) list, has 16 items on it and 6 are crossed out. The list has not been updated since the start of the Paris ’24 Olympics – I’m glued. Glued no more so than by Team GB women’s quadruple sculls last-stroke victory beating the Dutch crew on the line.  But here’s my non-rowing question: do the boats move backwards or forwards? It’s like many deep questions in life. Last week I started a heated discussion by asking whether the top of a plain chocolate digestive is the biscuit or the chocolate. A similar question divides writers: what comes first Plot or Character? I’m working on a novel. Thus far I’ve written the first draft, had a beta-reader (daughter 3), re-drafted, sent to an editor (book sliced in two), back to my beta-reader and further changes, and finally submitted to a publishing group. A comment arose re: ‘information dumping’. In other words, I’d given insufficient attention to my characters' inner worlds, motivations, and personali...

Image Credit:  All images created in Book Brush using Pixabay pictures. I want my writing to show a clear sense of who my characters are so it is their voices you hear and not mine.  A tip I picked up years ago, which has stood me in good stead, is to remember it is the character’s story, not yours.  You, their creator, are merely the conduit through which their story reaches the world.   Does that sound a bit pompous? Not a bit, Allison, I hear you say. It’s a lot!  Okay, but do you really want your author voice butting in disrupting the flow of the actions and dialogue of your created people (or alternative beings? I’ve written from the viewpoint of a mother dragon - as you do - so no species discrimination here, thank you). Hmm… no then. So how to do that?  My way in here is to ensure I know my characters well enough before I write their stories. I do that with a simple outline. Below is something I’ve used as a template. Character Name Character Type ...

  After hearing Paul Kerensa at the  ACW Zoom event in October, I decided to sign up for his six-week online course. Paul has such an engaging and generous nature; it really was a joy to listen to him each week. There over twenty of us at the opening session. Paul invited us to introduce ourselves and he gave an overview of what the course would entail. He was very interested to hear what the participants wanted to get out of the course and was happy to tailor it as the weeks went by. Session 2 was about Character & Relationships – finding a character’s funny and/or testing their limits. Then using the connection between different characters to bring those traits out. There was also a discussion about characters in non-fiction. I’m writing memoir but had not thought of myself as a ‘character’ in the story. That’s going to be so helpful as I continue editing. Sessions 3 and 4 were about Story Structure – we spent these two sessions discussing the various different ve...

Our characters become a part of us Having shelved the novel for the past few months, I picked it up yesterday and started reading it. Before long, I began restructuring sentences and swapping words in and out, correcting grammar - you know the type of thing us writers spend forever doing. (I’m assuming there will come a time when I have to say – that’s enough! No more changes – send it to the publisher!) However, what struck me most was how much I’d missed my characters. They are extremely important to me and I care about each and every one of them no matter whether they have a main or a bit part in the overall story. I know so much about them, often far more than I divulge to the reader. I know their strengths, their weaknesses, their nasty habits, their dreams and aspirations, their purpose. All of them have a past and all of them are on a journey. This must be the closest I’ll ever get to playing God. Wow! What a parallel! Is this how God, our creator feels about each on...

As I am writing this I am printing off my latest novel – all 72k plus words of it – for its first major read-through and edit.  Does anyone else become excited when they do this?  It is still incomplete, as I know I have at least three chapters missing, but I feel so muddled by all the new pieces I have written during frantic November NaNoWriMo writing that I have to see it to know what I am crossing out before I even begin to consider the missing chapters. I notice I have made a mistake though – I have forgotten to number the pages, so that will be fun if I drop the lot before punching holes in them and loading them into a lever arch file.  Even the chapter numbers won’t help as I succumbed to ‘New Chapter’ and even ‘Chapter ???’ with the number of question marks growing as I became lost in the effort of getting the story down before I forgot my ideas. Very soon comes the true craft of writing; the cutting, chopping, shaping, rewriting, checking, editing, moulding....

Day 8 of NaNoWriMo.  For anyone who doesn't know about this, it is briefly described as a month of writing like crazy to produce 50,000 words of a first draft of a novel. It is named National Novel Writing Month and takes place in November.  The name is wrong, of course, probably born out of a grandiose scheme to stretch to a national organisation. But the organisers were short-sighted - the idea caught on and is now international with writers taking part across the world.      I am undertaking it this year because I am too busy to write - which sounds ridiculous.  But busyness consumes me and freezes me into inactivity when I am tired, so that I achieve nothing in my writing.  Therefore my work-in-progress has been shoved in a corner and stayed there, blocked in, while I attend to the mass of things that the inner director in me says are more important.      But if God has urged me to write, t...