I was recently interviewed by the Welsh/American website Americymru, and seeing as I've nothing much to report by way of news, I thought I'd put it up here.
Hey, it's my Blog, why not, right?
So here it is, enjoy...
Americymru interview.
Cheers peeps!!
Reg.
Sonntag, 18. August 2013
Montag, 22. Juli 2013
News, writing tips and a missing, "Thank you"
News !!
I have none.
I'm still floundering at the impasse,
itching to write but not quite finding that extra jot of motivation to put
finger to keyboard.
I've had an unfortunate run of One Star
reviews recently, all likening my work to pornography, filth etc. etc. etc. I'd
like to take them seriously, I seriously want to, but I can't.
So, you One Star Review Writers, I apologise now for laughing when I read your critiques, AND for sharing them to my friends so they can snigger at your grammar and non-existent punctuation as well.
Punctuation and grammar mean nothing, until
you start being nasty. It's just the way it is.
Life Tip #43: If you're losing an argument and you don't want to back down, try picking the other person up on their grammar, as that will always score points, or provoke your antagonist to fisticuffs, which is a sort of win in itself.
Right, on another note, I've still heard
nothing concrete about the anthology with Paul, or the paperback version of
"The House in Wales
Recently someone made contact with me over Facebook
to ask if I could help with a book they were writing. They were a friend of a
friend, who had warned me in advance they were going to write, so I wrote back.
I told the nice lady there was no way I
could proof read her work because a.) I haven't the time and b.) My knowledge
of the English language is pitifully sad, considering I'm trying to be a
writer!! Anyway, I gave her a few ideas and my mandatory reference to Allan
Guthrie's, "Hunting down the Pleonasm", and I haven't heard anything
since.
Is it me, or was I being naive in expecting
an answer, a brief thank you for nodding her in the right direction? Even
a smiley would have done.
Anyway, I digress.
Allan Guthrie, an editor for Point Blank
Press, wrote this down in 2004, and I think it's positively THE best set of
guidelines for anyone who wants to write a novel. This is what people who go to
creative writing lessons are taught, and they have to pay for it. So I thought
I'd put them down for you to read. The next time you read a book, perhaps
you'll be able to identify some of the points in the writer's craft?
Hunting Down the Pleonasms by Allan
Guthrie.
I can’t stress strongly enough that writing is subjective. We all strive for different goals. Consequently, we all need our own set of rules—and some of us don’t need rules at all! Personally, I like rules. If nothing else, it’s fun breaking them.
1: Avoid pleonasms. A pleonasm is a word or phrase which can be removed from a sentence without changing its meaning. For example, in “Hunting Down The Pleonasm”, ‘down’ is pleonastic. Cut it and the meaning of the sentence does not alter. Many words are used pleonastically: ‘just’, ‘that’ and ‘actually’ are three frequently-seen culprits (I actually just know that he’s the killer can be trimmed to I know he’s the killer), and phrases like ‘more or less’ and ‘in any shape or form’ are redundant.
2: Use oblique dialogue. Try to generate conflict at all times in your writing. Attempt the following experiment at home or work: spend the day refusing to answer your family and colleagues’ questions directly. Did you generate conflict? I bet you did. Apply that principle to your writing and your characters will respond likewise.
3: Use strong verbs in preference to adverbs. I won’t say avoid adverbs, period, because about once every fifty pages they’re okay! What’s not okay is to use an adverb as an excuse for failing to find the correct verb. To ‘walk slowly’ is much less effective than to ‘plod’ or ‘trudge’. To ‘connect strongly’ is much less effective than to ‘forge a connection’.
4: Cut adjectives where possible. See rule 3 (for ‘verb’ read ‘noun’).
5: Pairs of adjectives are exponentially worse than single adjectives. The ‘big, old’ man walked slowly towards the ‘tall, beautiful’ girl. When I read a sentence like that, I’m hoping he dies before he arrives at his destination. Mind you, that’s probably a cue for a ‘noisy, white’ ambulance to arrive. Wailingly, perhaps!
6: Keep speeches short. Any speech of more than three sentences should be broken up. Force your character to do something. Make him take note of his surroundings. Ground the reader. Create a sense of place.
7: If you find you’ve said the same thing more than once, choose the best and cut the rest. Frequently, I see the same idea presented several ways. It’s as if the writer is saying, “The first couple of images might not work, but the third one should do it. If not, maybe all three together will swing it.” The writer is repeating himself. Like this. This is a subtle form of pleonasm.
8: Show, don’t tell. Much vaunted advice, yet rarely heeded. An example: expressing emotion indirectly. Is your preferred reader intelligent? Yes? Then treat them accordingly. Tears were streaming down Lila’s face. She was very sad. Can the second sentence be inferred from the first? In context, let’s hope so. So cut it. If you want to engage your readers, don’t explain everything to them. Show them what’s happening and allow their intelligence to do the rest. And there’s a bonus to this approach. Because movies, of necessity, show rather than tell, this approach to your writing will help when it’s time to begin work on the screenplay adaptation of your novel!
9: Describe the environment in ways that are pertinent to the story. And try to make such descriptions active. Instead of describing a book lying on a table, have your psycho-killer protagonist pick it up, glance at it and move it to the arm of the sofa. He needs something to do to break up those long speeches, right?
10: Don’t be cute. In the above example, your protagonist should not be named Si Coe.
11: Avoid sounding ‘writerly’. Better to dirty up your prose. When you sound like a writer, your voice has crept in and authorial intrusion is always unwelcome. In the best writing, the author is invisible.
12: Fix your Point Of View (POV). Make it clear whose head you’re in as early as possible. And stay there for the duration of the scene. Unless you’re already a highly successful published novelist, in which case you can do what you like. The reality is that although most readers aren’t necessarily clued up on the finer points of POV, they know what’s confusing and what isn’t.
13: Don’t confuse the reader. If you write something you think might be unclear, it is. Big time. Change it or cut it.
14: Use ‘said’ to carry dialogue. Sid Fleischman calls ‘said’, “the invisible word.”
15: Whilst it’s good to assume your reader is intelligent, never assume they’re psychic.
16: Start scenes late and leave them early.
17: When writing a novel, start with your characters in action. Fill in any necessary backstory as you go along.
18: Give your characters clear goals. Always. Every scene. And provide obstacles to those goals. Always. Every scene. If the POV character in a scene does not have a goal, provide one or cut the scene. If there is no obstacle, add one or cut the scene.
19: Don’t allow characters who are sexually attracted to one another the opportunity to get into bed unless at least one of them has a jealous partner.
20: Torture your protagonist. It’s not enough for him to be stuck up a tree. You must throw rocks at him while he figures out how to get down.
21: Use all five senses in your descriptions. Smell and touch are too often neglected.
22: Vary your sentence lengths. I tend to write short, and it’s amazing what a difference combing a couple of sentences can make.
23: Don’t allow your fictional characters to speak in sentences. Unless you want them to sound fictional.
24: Cut out filtering devices, wherever possible. ‘He felt’, ‘he thought’, ‘he observed’ are all filters. They distance the reader from the character.
25: Avoid unnecessary repetition of tense. For example: I’d gone to the hospital. They’d kept me waiting for hours. Eventually, I’d seen a doctor. Usually, the first sentence is sufficient to establish tense. I’d gone to the hospital. They kept me waiting for hours. Eventually, I saw a doctor.
26: When you finish your book, pinpoint the weakest scene and cut it. If necessary, replace it with a sentence or paragraph.
27: Don’t plant information. How is Donald, your son? I’m quite sure Donald’s father doesn’t need reminding who Donald is. Their relationship is mentioned purely to provide the reader with information.
28: If an opinion expressed through dialogue makes your POV character look like a jerk, allow him to think it rather than say it. He’ll express the same opinion, but seem like a lot less of a jerk.
29: Characters who smile and grin a lot come across as deranged fools. Sighing and shrugging are also actions to avoid. Eliminating smiles, sighs and shrugs is almost always an improvement. Smiling sadly is a capital offence.
30: Pronouns are big trouble for such little words. The most useful piece of information I ever encountered on the little blighters was this: pronouns refer to the nearest matching noun backwards. For example: John took the knife out of its sheath and stabbed Paul with it. Well, that’s good news for Paul. If you travel backwards from ‘it’, you’ll see that John has stabbed Paul with the sheath! Observing this rule leads to much clearer writing.
31: Spot the moment of maximum tension and hold it for as long as possible. Or as John D. MacDonald put it: “Freeze the action and shoot him later.”
32: If something works, forget about the rule that says it shouldn’t.
I can’t stress strongly enough that writing is subjective. We all strive for different goals. Consequently, we all need our own set of rules—and some of us don’t need rules at all! Personally, I like rules. If nothing else, it’s fun breaking them.
1: Avoid pleonasms. A pleonasm is a word or phrase which can be removed from a sentence without changing its meaning. For example, in “Hunting Down The Pleonasm”, ‘down’ is pleonastic. Cut it and the meaning of the sentence does not alter. Many words are used pleonastically: ‘just’, ‘that’ and ‘actually’ are three frequently-seen culprits (I actually just know that he’s the killer can be trimmed to I know he’s the killer), and phrases like ‘more or less’ and ‘in any shape or form’ are redundant.
2: Use oblique dialogue. Try to generate conflict at all times in your writing. Attempt the following experiment at home or work: spend the day refusing to answer your family and colleagues’ questions directly. Did you generate conflict? I bet you did. Apply that principle to your writing and your characters will respond likewise.
3: Use strong verbs in preference to adverbs. I won’t say avoid adverbs, period, because about once every fifty pages they’re okay! What’s not okay is to use an adverb as an excuse for failing to find the correct verb. To ‘walk slowly’ is much less effective than to ‘plod’ or ‘trudge’. To ‘connect strongly’ is much less effective than to ‘forge a connection’.
4: Cut adjectives where possible. See rule 3 (for ‘verb’ read ‘noun’).
5: Pairs of adjectives are exponentially worse than single adjectives. The ‘big, old’ man walked slowly towards the ‘tall, beautiful’ girl. When I read a sentence like that, I’m hoping he dies before he arrives at his destination. Mind you, that’s probably a cue for a ‘noisy, white’ ambulance to arrive. Wailingly, perhaps!
6: Keep speeches short. Any speech of more than three sentences should be broken up. Force your character to do something. Make him take note of his surroundings. Ground the reader. Create a sense of place.
7: If you find you’ve said the same thing more than once, choose the best and cut the rest. Frequently, I see the same idea presented several ways. It’s as if the writer is saying, “The first couple of images might not work, but the third one should do it. If not, maybe all three together will swing it.” The writer is repeating himself. Like this. This is a subtle form of pleonasm.
8: Show, don’t tell. Much vaunted advice, yet rarely heeded. An example: expressing emotion indirectly. Is your preferred reader intelligent? Yes? Then treat them accordingly. Tears were streaming down Lila’s face. She was very sad. Can the second sentence be inferred from the first? In context, let’s hope so. So cut it. If you want to engage your readers, don’t explain everything to them. Show them what’s happening and allow their intelligence to do the rest. And there’s a bonus to this approach. Because movies, of necessity, show rather than tell, this approach to your writing will help when it’s time to begin work on the screenplay adaptation of your novel!
9: Describe the environment in ways that are pertinent to the story. And try to make such descriptions active. Instead of describing a book lying on a table, have your psycho-killer protagonist pick it up, glance at it and move it to the arm of the sofa. He needs something to do to break up those long speeches, right?
10: Don’t be cute. In the above example, your protagonist should not be named Si Coe.
11: Avoid sounding ‘writerly’. Better to dirty up your prose. When you sound like a writer, your voice has crept in and authorial intrusion is always unwelcome. In the best writing, the author is invisible.
12: Fix your Point Of View (POV). Make it clear whose head you’re in as early as possible. And stay there for the duration of the scene. Unless you’re already a highly successful published novelist, in which case you can do what you like. The reality is that although most readers aren’t necessarily clued up on the finer points of POV, they know what’s confusing and what isn’t.
13: Don’t confuse the reader. If you write something you think might be unclear, it is. Big time. Change it or cut it.
14: Use ‘said’ to carry dialogue. Sid Fleischman calls ‘said’, “the invisible word.”
15: Whilst it’s good to assume your reader is intelligent, never assume they’re psychic.
16: Start scenes late and leave them early.
17: When writing a novel, start with your characters in action. Fill in any necessary backstory as you go along.
18: Give your characters clear goals. Always. Every scene. And provide obstacles to those goals. Always. Every scene. If the POV character in a scene does not have a goal, provide one or cut the scene. If there is no obstacle, add one or cut the scene.
19: Don’t allow characters who are sexually attracted to one another the opportunity to get into bed unless at least one of them has a jealous partner.
20: Torture your protagonist. It’s not enough for him to be stuck up a tree. You must throw rocks at him while he figures out how to get down.
21: Use all five senses in your descriptions. Smell and touch are too often neglected.
22: Vary your sentence lengths. I tend to write short, and it’s amazing what a difference combing a couple of sentences can make.
23: Don’t allow your fictional characters to speak in sentences. Unless you want them to sound fictional.
24: Cut out filtering devices, wherever possible. ‘He felt’, ‘he thought’, ‘he observed’ are all filters. They distance the reader from the character.
25: Avoid unnecessary repetition of tense. For example: I’d gone to the hospital. They’d kept me waiting for hours. Eventually, I’d seen a doctor. Usually, the first sentence is sufficient to establish tense. I’d gone to the hospital. They kept me waiting for hours. Eventually, I saw a doctor.
26: When you finish your book, pinpoint the weakest scene and cut it. If necessary, replace it with a sentence or paragraph.
27: Don’t plant information. How is Donald, your son? I’m quite sure Donald’s father doesn’t need reminding who Donald is. Their relationship is mentioned purely to provide the reader with information.
28: If an opinion expressed through dialogue makes your POV character look like a jerk, allow him to think it rather than say it. He’ll express the same opinion, but seem like a lot less of a jerk.
29: Characters who smile and grin a lot come across as deranged fools. Sighing and shrugging are also actions to avoid. Eliminating smiles, sighs and shrugs is almost always an improvement. Smiling sadly is a capital offence.
30: Pronouns are big trouble for such little words. The most useful piece of information I ever encountered on the little blighters was this: pronouns refer to the nearest matching noun backwards. For example: John took the knife out of its sheath and stabbed Paul with it. Well, that’s good news for Paul. If you travel backwards from ‘it’, you’ll see that John has stabbed Paul with the sheath! Observing this rule leads to much clearer writing.
31: Spot the moment of maximum tension and hold it for as long as possible. Or as John D. MacDonald put it: “Freeze the action and shoot him later.”
32: If something works, forget about the rule that says it shouldn’t.
So now you know, peeps.
All the best.
Reg.
Montag, 24. Juni 2013
Crossroads
I've never really been here before.
I've had days, weeks even, when I couldn't
decide how to move forward with a story, but never with three separate books.
And yet, that's exactly where I am right
now.
The Division of the Damned is crying out for a sequel and I have the plot down as well. However, I want to introduce some more Biblical/Sumerian elements into it and I'm not sure if they're too over the top?
Basically, if you've read,
"Division", you might remember about the war that Lilith started with
the Gods? My idea was/is to make the followers of Lilith into the Fallen Angels
or the Anunnaki, and have one searching for the last splinter of the Tree of
Life, which is stolen from an old Rabbi at Treblinka.
Mmmm, I don't know. The thing is, half the
people loved the Sumerian/Bible thing, and the other half didn't.
Whatever, it'll have to gestate a while for its true form to appear, as I think rushing it would kill the yeast, as it were.
My second idea is here:The Eckton Empire
Have a read if you have twenty minutes or
so, tell me what you think please.
The last plot I have in my head is set in
the south Pacific.
I originally wanted to write a Cthulhu
story, but that's a no go, due to rights and having to pay estates for the use
of Cthulhu.
So, I decided to stick with the south Pacific theme, and set it around the crew of a whaler in the 18th/early 19th century.
The ship stops at an island for supplies, meets up with a tribe who worship whales and blah blah blah, other stuff happens involving kidnapped girls, murderously evil missionaries and schools of angry cetaceans.
So, as ever, now you know.
I've hit a wall and really need to get over
it.
However, if there's one thing I do have, it's time. The "Chronicles of Supernatural Warfare" anthology isn't out yet, and I want to send a few short stories out to other collections. But, before you can send 'em, you have to write 'em... so I better get my skates on.
Take it easy.
Reg.
PS BTW, I reached the 400 Likes mark on my
Facebook page the other day.
Happy days, happy days...
Donnerstag, 6. Juni 2013
America, what's wrong??
The House in Wales
So thank you, every last one of you, who
has written a review.
On the other hand, on the other side of the
pond, it's not doing too well. I have no idea why, but it simply hasn't caught
on over there. This saddens me a tad as I like the idea of some dude in, say, LA.,
reading about my home town. Wouldn't it be great to inspire someone on a
different continent to think about where your home town is, where your family
and past lie? I think it would, (but I've often been told I think too much so
we'll leave it there).
However, that isn't me being deviously
greedy because, well as for money making, it isn't; and if the truth be known
it won't in the near future either. It'd be folly to expect massive profits
without the clout of a large publishing house to back your work, paying for promotion,
reviews from other big authors, distribution to the large book chains blah, blah,
blah. We did try Facebook advertising, and I'd be interested to know if anyone
saw my book on their page as there was no major impact that I saw, but that's
about it in regards to promotion.
That said, there are, of course, subtle
market differences with each genre that affect sales in general.
For example, romance ALWAYS sells. The fairer sex read a lot more than their brutish other halves and hunky, shining knights on white chargers or dark eyed vampires with six packs you could wash your grollies on, will always be a hit with the more imaginative 50% of the world. I take nothing away from the very talented ladies I know who write such literature, but I do envy their automatic fan base :-)
Crime is another that sells well. Gumshoe detectives, (whatever they are?), ghastly murders and the workings of the law enforcement agencies can inspire a spark of interest in even the dampest of minds, (Everton and Man United supporters etc etc.) and if you can come up with a good title, an interesting premise and credible dialogue you're on a winner. Of course, you have to be able to write as well ;-)
No, seriously, these two genres, although
not guaranteed to generate sales, have a large fan base anyway and the couple
of people I know who write in these veins are above average writers and are
doing nicely.
Horror, on the other hand, is in the middle
ground.
It isn't as desired as romance or crime, but it isn't as despised as that pariah dog of the library, poetry, either. Horror is the poor relation, along with fantasy and military history; the working class cousin who demands a beer at a cheese and wine party, or listens to football scores at a wedding, (Hey, that's me!!).
So Reg, I hear you asking, why don't you
write something with an automatic fan base?
My Mam asked that very same question.
"Oh good grief Rich!" My Mam is
the only person I know who calls me Richard. "Vampires and Nazis? Why not
write something nice? Romance sells, you want to be a writer, write something
that sells."
I had no answer for her, well not one that
I could articulate without looking like a petulant 12 year old, ("You just
don't understand, do you?" he said, throwing his teddy in the corner and
stomping off to his room.).
It's a good question, I suppose. However,
the fact is, that just isn't me. I don't think I could look at myself in the
mirror if I, (here it comes, that old cliché), "sold out". I want to
write what I want to write, and romance isn't it, Gumshoe crime stories either,
though I would like to know what a Gumshoe is?
I dabbled with a few romantic scenes in
both books, but an out and out, full on, weepy love fest is just not on.
And that's the best with these guys, (Taylor Street
Casual but dedicated to the joint cause,
which is how it should be in my eyes.
So where was I again?
Ah, yes, The House in Wales America America
Right Reg.
Take it easy peeps.
Reg.
Freitag, 17. Mai 2013
Well, it's out there.
Well, it's out there and to a mixed
response.
In Britain North Wales again, it just felt
right.
HOWEVER, on the other side of the pond all
is not well. Sales are subterranean and the reviews faltering, two 5 star write
ups and one 3 star; in which the reader complained about the ending being too
abrupt. Well, I shouldn't complain, at least he/she made an effort to put down
some feedback, right?
I wonder how I can push it out more Stateside? "Division" picked up nicely there and though Britain
As for what I'm doing now, well it's
complicated.
I started on the sequel to "Division". I have the plot down, some great biblical/Sumerian background mythology and, (I think) some interesting characters to add to the original crew. However... again, that word, I can't seem to find the inspiration to set about it. It'll come, but when exactly I don't know.
I toyed with the idea about writing a story about Cthulhu, the fictional cosmic entity who first appeared in H. P. Lovecraft's short story "The Call of Cthulhu". I had a great idea about the captain of a Whaler in the 19th Century being caught up in the cult of Cthulhu and bringing his crew into danger. My main protagonist was going to be a young lad, and I wanted him to be the only survivor. The thing is though, if I wanted to use the character of Cthulhu, I'd have to ask permission from Lovecraft's estate, who would naturally want money for it. So the idea gasped its first breath and promptly passed away, to be flushed into the sewer of inspirations past.
Never the less, I liked the idea of a 19th Century Whaler in the south Pacific seas, sailing the loneliest oceans of the world, making landfall on remote, exotic islands habituated by natives who follow strange, menacing dogmas. I won't go into what I have, but I'm thinking whale cults, far-flung islands, insane Whaler captains, an impressionable young crew member as a hero and lots of horror. Moby Dick meets Rapa Nui meets Pocahontas, (I
bet that last one threw you).
I've also thought a lot more about my
dinosaurs meets War and Peace story. Inspired as I am by The Game of Thrones,
I've decided the story needs to be broadened; it has to have more background
and characters. I have a few ideas floating around, nothing on paper though.
I'll definitely get back to it sometime, the idea is far too good to let rot.
Right, so that's it. I have no idea when my anthology with Paul Rudd is coming out, there's been a cloak of silence about it. However, I've done a bit of research on the matter, and it seems anthologies don't sell all that well, so perhaps the publishers are hoping the idea will go to sleep somewhere and not wake up, lol.
OK, I'm off to Berlin
I do appreciate it.
Reg :-)
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