Category Archives: plot

Show me, don’t tell me.

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I know this old chestnut comes up time and again, but I’m revisiting it again because it still causes problems, particularly for those new to the writing game.

Every writer will have come across the expression, ‘Show, don’t tell’, whether it’s in a creative writing how-to book, during a writing tutorial or in an on-line forum or blog. It has become a cliché in itself, but what does it actually mean to the fledgling writer? It’s a surprisingly tricky concept to get the hang of, so let’s pick it apart and examine it.

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Circle of Motivation

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All writers need to understand the motivation of their characters. Strong motives produce convincing storylines; weak motives make for flimsy and unconvincing stories. Your characters’ problems and desires contribute towards their motivation; but these must be logical and believable. In fact, they should be inevitable; your characters should have no choice but to act in the way they do otherwise weaknesses and holes in the plot will be revealed and the reader will not be convinced.

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It’s writing,Jim, but not as we know it.

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It’s been one of those weeks where, on reflection, I would say that I’ve got no writing done at all. Sure, I’ve written stuff; in fact I’ve been busy writing stuff all week. But I’ve made very little progress with the actual writing of the new novel and there’s been almost no output of a creative nature (by that I mean made up). However, when I think about it, I haven’t been idle.

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Making Crime Pay

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This week I’ve been plotting a whole new novel. I read a lot of crime and I’ve wanted to write a novel that includes a crime – not particularly a whodunit, but one that hinges on a murder – for a long time, and a story has been slowly developing on the back burner. But I’ve always been a bit reticent. Have I got the necessary brainpower to work out all the intricacies and tell a story without inadvertently revealing the secret or the perpetrator?  It’ll be very easy to drop hints unintentionally, even reveal the whole façade, if I give a character some knowledge they shouldn’t or couldn’t have.

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No time to write? No excuses.

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On the premise that you can’t edit a blank page, get something written down. If you’re experiencing the same kind of angst as me – too much to do and not enough time to do it in – consider this piece of advice I read a while ago: if you gave up just one of your soaps every evening and concentrated on writing something instead you would have the best part of a novel by the end of the year. Now, I’m no-one to talk, I’m a sucker for quiz programmes and whodunits myself, but there is some merit in the idea.

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The Write Title

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I always find it a problem to come up with appropriate and relevant titles for my work. My imagination stalls when called upon to produce something pithy, apposite and meaningful. Some writers I know can’t put pen to paper or finger to keyboard without having first decided on the title. Personally, if it were possible to have a profusion of computer files and folders all labelled ‘Working Title’, I’d be there. Sensibly, this is no way to operate, so I’ve been thinking about where we can find inspiration when we’re stuck.

We can link the title to a scene in the story, the historical period it’s set in or that mysterious discovery the whole plot hinges on. The message of the story, the mood or the scenery can all be reflected in the title.

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Beware of the Librocubicuralist

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That’s an unnecessarily long word, a bit of a tongue-twister, so what does it mean?

It’s a personal thing. These days, I may describe myself as my partner’s significant other, but I’m also a librocubicuralist. It’s not an either/or situation; I can be both, because the definition of the word is ‘someone who reads in bed’. Though how I’m going to introduce that nugget into my novel is anyone’s guess. I’ll have to file it with runcible, hirsute and discombobulate until a suitable occasion presents itself.

But I digress…..This post was supposed to be about A Literary Ramble.

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Character Building Stuff

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It’s important to give your main characters a personality, otherwise they’ll appear two-dimensional. They’ll all sound the same and the reader will find it difficult to differentiate between them. You want the reader to care about your characters (and to be honest, why would anyone carry on reading unless they did?) and to empathise with them. So the reader need to know what drives them. Characters need a context, a goal; maybe a challenge; certainly a history.

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How long is short?

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I’ve been reading some Mary Higgins Clark short stories recently. Well I say short, but the first story in the volume is 50,000 words long. The others incline more towards the 4-5,000. Which begs the question, how long is short? I’ve heard of people e-publishing ‘novels’ of 5,000 words, which isn’t even a novella, but I suppose that’s the beauty of an e-book: it can be any length you like. And if you’re writing material that feels natural at this amount of words, where else are you going to get it published? Certainly the old, established markets for the short story are gradually drying up – women’s magazines are a prime example. More and more magazines are dropping their fiction pages in favour of real life, how-I-overcame-this-dreadful-situation-and–lived-to-tell-the-tale type stories.

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In Conversation

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What’s the difference between dialogue and conversation? In creative writing, dialogue may only be a conversational exchange between two or more people, but it’s got to have purpose, otherwise it’s just chat. Conversation is the way people talk; dialogue contributes to the plot. Dialogue must move the story on, by revealing something about the characters or the plot. Good dialogue is the mark of a fine writer; forced and clunky dialogue betrays the bad.

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