Ten More Tips for New Novelists #writers #writerslife #amwriting

Some more suggestions for debut authors, or those who are just starting to plan their first novel ... I haven't written one of these posts for a long time but I've read, or started to read, a lot of books since the last and I've come across a few points that I felt worth a mention.  As ever, I often recognise these mistakes because I made them, too!  One or two I've talked about before, but these are important basics that can't be underlined too often.

Just for the record: this is not an article about marketing or how to become a best seller.  It's about writing a decent book.  Who knows; if you do the latter, the former might follow!   

For ease of reading, I shall refer to the writer as 'he' and the reader as 'she'.

1.  Is that it?
Give the ending as much thought and planning as you do the beginning.  In writing advice articles there is so much focus on hooking the reader in with the first paragraph, but few mention the ending.  Why is this?  Maybe because if you don't hook the reader at the beginning she'll never get to read the fabulous, jaw-dropping end twist ~ fair enough, but it's such a disappointment to read a basically good book with an ending that reads like the writer's been told he has to finish it by noon or he can't go to lunch.  

The last few pages are the bit that will stay in the reader's mind when she turns the last page and tells her friends/tweets about it.  Or reviews it.  A lacklustre, rushed ending might turn a 5* review into a 4* one; by the end, your reader might not even remember that neat hook on the first page. 

Ends that make me go 'ouch':

• When all the storylines are too neatly tied up, with characters finding sudden and out-of-character solutions.
• When you expect a crescendo and get a fizzle - if the book's of a type that has built up to a finale all the way through (the discovery of whodunnit, the reunion, the arrival at a destination, etc), you've got to make it a real belter.
• All the characters getting an HEA.  Too unrealistic, unless it's a romcom, which is unrealistic by definition, and happy to be so.  Generally, it's much better if one or two are left hanging/a tad bittersweet.
• Plot twists that haven't been properly worked in all the way through; the ones that read as though the author thought of it while writing the previous chapter, or the publisher said, 'give it an unexpected twist at the end so we can advertise it as having a blow-your-socks-off plot twist.'
• I love cliffhangers, but if you want the reader to dash straight to Amazon to buy the next episode, it's got to really pack a punch.  Like, on the edge of a cliff.

 
2. Get connected
You may not use social media much, and think of it as something you nip onto twice a week to tweet about your books and have the odd chat with other writers, especially if you're over fifty—you grew up in a time before Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/whatever became as much a part of everyday life as the phone, the telly, or ... okay, breathing.  But if you're writing a novel set in the present day about characters of forty and under, you need to be aware of how big a part the internet, generally, will play in their lives.  

I recently read an otherwise jolly good book in which the world was falling to pieces because of a pandemic, and the main characters, who were in their early thirties, followed its progress on the network TV news.  You know, like they would have done 20 years ago.  Uh-oh.

Pic from Charlie Brooker's Nosedive, Black Mirror Series - if you haven't seen it, do - it's brilliant!  On Netflix

3.  Don't overdo the speech quirks
Okay, so your Californian surfer dude will call you 'man', as may your Geordie fella down the pub.  But not in every sentence.  Your parent may call his son 'kiddo', but not every time he talks to him.  Your teenager will, no doubt, say 'like' and 'awesome' a lot, but you should probably delete a fair few of them in your rewrites; it's better to err with great caution in all cases, as overdoses of these quirks can be irritating for the reader.  In my most recent books, some of my characters are Geordies.  I allow myself one 'howay' per book.  Even if they might say it more than that, you have to be careful not to make characters look like caricatures (I've just re-read one of my older books and realised I did this - made me cringe, badly!).  And please, don't have foreigners say 'how you say' before coming out with a hilariously incorrect English phrase.  It's totally 1970s sitcom. 

4.  Talking of rewrites....
.... if you're not prepared to do loads and loads of redrafting or revising, over and over again, so that you're fed up with the sight of the thing and know some of it by heart, you're probably not ready to write a novel.  You need to be able to edit your own work, before you give it to your editor, if you have one.  I still find sentences and paragraphs that could be written more succinctly on drafts 6 and 7 of any novel I write, and you will, too.  If you don't redraft enough, the book won't be as good as it could be.  'Being a writer' isn't about feeling madly creative and scribbling down this wonderful story that's bursting out of your head, then giving it over to someone else to turn it into something publishable.  It's about knowing how to make it publishable yourself.

5. Whose point of view?
Even if you're writing in 3rd person point of view (POV), writing from inside the character's head rather than from the viewpoint of an omniscient narrator gives the reader much more opportunity to connect with the character.  And watch out for head hopping - this is when you flit from one POV to another with no gap in between.  For instance, if you're describing the row between Sean and Max from Sean's point of view, and then tell the reader that 'Max was furious', that's head-hopping.  You've hopped from Sean's POV into Max's.  Sean will not know that Max was furious, because he is not inside his head.  You could say that Max looks furious, but not that he is.  Only Max knows how he feels. 

6. Get Your Facts Right
By this I mean checking that the flower Gavin is picking is actually in bloom in May, before he picks a whole bunch of them.  Or that Sean could actually drive from Leicester to Manchester in one hour.  Of course we sometimes get facts slightly wrong; I do, we all do, but it should never be because you were too lazy to look it up.  If you're not absolutely sure what a word means, check it.  I find myself doing this every single day, still.  If you don't know how the butler would announce the arrival of the duke, find out.  Don't rely on your editor to do it.  Not only is it lazy, but what if they don't know?  Again: your book should be the best it can be before it goes to the editor/proofreader.

7. Talking to yourself.
Do you?  Really?  I mean, other than uttering the odd expletive when you bump into a door, or urging yourself to get on with something?  Maybe you do have the odd little conversation with your own head here and there, but, generally, people don't have out loud, lone conversations discussing the whys and wherefores of a problem, down to the very last detail.  I've read these in a few books lately, and the last one made me abandon the book.  Don't do it.  If you need your character to be pondering something on his own, use inner dialogue.  It's 100% more convincing.

8.  Beta readers
If you use beta readers, make sure they're people who will can comment on the book objectively; by this I mean those who will understand the difference between personal preference and whether something works or not.  Also, be careful not to only choose friends who will tell you it's great because they don't want to hurt your feelings.  I've beta read on a couple of occasions, and on one of these I sent the author back a list of all the stuff I thought needed looking at.  She said, 'Thanks, this is what I need.  Everyone else just told me it was brilliant.'

9. Proofreading
Can't be said often enough - don't skip this stage.  Ever.  And get a proofreader who knows what they're doing.  You need someone who knows how to punctuate properly, and understands stuff like when words should be hyphenated, put in italics, have capital letters, etc.  Get recommendations, don't believe website blurb.  Your friend/spouse who is good at English is not the person to do this, unless they have experience.  Sorry, but you really will have to pay out to get it done properly.  If you want some recommendations for good editors and proofreaders, feel free to ask me.

10.  Paid promotion
Okay, this one is about the marketing side: if you've seen a book advertising/promotion service that looks promising, check it out first by asking some of the writers featured if it really does increase sales.  There are literally hundreds of book promo services around today, and some of them do very little for you.  I get targeted by some on Twitter who offer to do so many tweets for me for X amount of money.  Often, they have thousands fewer followers than me, and they haven't read my books, so how can they possibly tweet about them in an authentic fashion?  There is no point in paying them to do Facebook posts for you if these posts are not targeted towards hundreds of readers who are interested in your genre.  Etc, etc.  Always, always research!

That's all for now, folks.  Good luck!

Seven myths that can hold new writers back: HERE 

Dark and Complex ~ The House of York

**The House of York is just 99p/99c from Jan 31 - Feb 6 (2017)**

The House of York 
(click title for Amazon link)

Thanks very much to all the lovely people who've bought it already ~ and another enormous thank you to those who have read and reviewed in its first week ~ I was so relieved to get seven good reviews in seven days!

I've never been so worried about a book before its release, and never been so delighted by some of the comments.  Here are a few that have made my day:

"It is not often that I enjoy reading novels to such extent"

"one of the best novels I've read this year"

"Half-sister Megan was a particular work of genius; Terry Tyler has the gift of evoking sympathy for ever seemingly difficult characters."

"I think this is my favourite book from Terry Tyler"

"Terry's best yet"

The last two came from readers who read my first one, You Wish, via a tweet, and carried on reading all my books ~ never let it be said you can't find new readers via Twitter!

The Book

The House of York is a dark family drama, and complete stand alone, with no connection to any previous book.

Although a drama based on a historical period (like Kings and Queens & Last Child), this is only inspired by, rather than a modern day re-telling, and it's somewhat darker than the other two.... with a dramatic twist at the end which, happily, has taken everyone by surprise (and has nothing to do with historical fact, I hasten to add!).


The House of York ~ a contemporary family drama, spanning the years 1993 - 2014. 

Widowed single mum, Lisa Grey, and wealthy businessman, Elias York, are young and madly in love.  A recipe for happiness?  But Lisa is marrying into a complicated family.  Her new sister-in-law doesn't want to know her.   Middle brother Gabriel's marriage suffers under a cloud of infidelity and gambling debts, while the youngest, Richard, keeps his dark secrets well hidden—and his wife suffers in silence.

Lisa and her mother are bonded by their powerful intuition, but dare not voice their fears about York Towers—or certain members of the family....

Love and loss, abduction, incestuous desires and murderous intent form the basis of this compelling saga in which horrors float just beneath the surface, to bring forth a shocking outcome.

History lovers may be interested to know that The House of York is loosely based on events during the era of the Wars of the Roses.

NOT another 'how to write' article - but it may help new writers...

I've read or started to read many, many self- or indie press published books over the past three years, more since I began to review for Rosie Amber's Book Review Team (my review blog is HERE).

I don't like articles that tell you how to write, generally, because writing isn't a 'by numbers' skill, at which you can succeed if you follow the 'rules'.  However, I have noticed some areas which let down so many debut novels, and I am sure I was guilty of some of them, too, so I thought I'd write this in the hope that it will help a few new writers.

 
Head Hopping
This is when you're reading a scene from Howard's point of view, talking about his thoughts and feelings as he walked into the room, etc, and then the narrative suddenly changes to how Jemima is feeling, instead.  

Part of the skill of structuring your story is in choosing whose POV (point of view) to write from.  Once you've made your decision, hopping into another head half way through a scene, because you want the reader to know that Jemima was no more happy about the situation than Howard, doesn't work; sorry, it's not that easy!  It's confusing for the reader.  A solution would be to write how Jemima appears to feel, from Howard's POV, or, better still, make her mood apparent by her actions and dialogue.  If you want to change POV, it's best to at least give some indication; a gap between paragraphs, asterisks, etc.

New writers who have been on creative writing courses will sometimes insist that they are using the 'omniscient narrator', but you need to know what you're doing, not dot from one to the other at random, otherwise it just seems messy.  It takes a skilled writer to pull it off, and I see complaints from other reviewers about it all the time.

The Difference in 'Voice'
Many of my books are written from multiple first person POVs.  This was not a popular structure when I first started to write, but now it's becoming fashionable, I notice, in traditionally published books, with the result that more debut authors are giving it a go.  Alas, I've found that some writers don't understand the necessity to make a change in each character's 'voice', with Rosemary's section using the same language, rhythm and mood as Jemima's.  I've read male characters to whom the female writer has attributed typically feminine thought processes, women written by male writers who are men in all but name, and books in which all characters share the same attitudes and even the same dialogue 'tics'.

Thus, the writer is actually writing as him/herself, not the character(s). 

When you begin to write as Jemima after being Rosemary for the last chapter, you have to become her, so you know what she would say, what she would think. In my WIP, for instance, Gabriel is derogatory about others and makes jokes; Phoebe is unhappy and finds communication difficult; she 'talks' in short, flat sentences.  Lisa is a working class girl who became a wife and mother at seventeen, Megan comes from an affluent background and is well read; they do not assess situations in the same way and use different descriptive words, etc, etc, etc.   Think character, character, all the time; it can't just be used as an easy way to provide more information for the reader.  If it doesn't come naturally to you, you might be better writing from all one POV; it's not always an easy structure master.  

Historical Research
I can't emphasise this enough: do your research before you start writing historical fiction, and that doesn't mean reading a few internet articles.  I love histfic but there are few things more likely to make me abandon a book than a character wearing an item of clothing that wasn't in fashion until 100 years later, drinking a cup of coffee before it was introduced into the country, or using a figure of speech that a person of that particular era and social class wouldn't have used.  Obviously you get a bit of leeway when writing from, for instance, the 12th century, because we wouldn't be able to understand a word if the dialogue was written as they really spoke, but it still needs to be believable.  Writing historical fiction is a minefield (my planned 14th century novel is 3rd on my 'to-write' list - nail biting stuff), but it has to be right.

Checking facts
The spelling of an actor's name, the location of a hotel, the date a film came out - it's what Google is for!  If you're having your characters relax at home with a DVD in 1993, make sure DVD players were available in 1993.  Check your own facts, don't rely on an editor to do it or hope that nobody will notice.  If you don't, you can guarantee that someone will point out your error in a review, and the same goes for historical research, above.

There's always some smart-arse who will let you know that Sophie couldn't have been watching Sex and the City in 1998, because it wasn't on British television until 1999.  Yes, I corrected that error just in time! 

Cut the cliches
'getting up at the crack of dawn', 'dancing the night away', 'beat a hasty retreat' ~ etc, etc, etc.  Hackneyed phrases, all of them.  You're a writer.  Find your own way of phrasing it.

Contemporary should really mean contemporary
....today's twenty year olds do not live their lives in the way you did thirty years ago.  Even if you don't use the internet much, know nothing about modern music, or hate all this stupid 'Lol' and 'OMG' stuff, your 2015 eighteen year old character will not agree with you.   Most people under 40 use the internet constantly, as a normal part of their daily life.  I've read contemporary crime novels in which the plots would have fallen apart if the goodie had so much as Googled the name of the baddie before becoming involved with him.

On the other hand, if you're writing a teenager, don't go overboard with teen slang. Most of them talk fairly normally, much of the time, and use 'in' terminology on social media sites far more than they do in everyday speech.  Going mad with phrases you've looked up on some website can look as though you're trying too hard ~ and it's very easy to get it hopelessly wrong.

Publishing too soon
Some writers simply don't redraft enough.  It's not enough just to think of a great plot, plan it out and write it down, then do a couple of read-throughs, altering a few bits here and there.  Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, then leave it alone for a couple of weeks and rewrite some more.  Make every sentence as tight, as well phrased as you possibly can.  Accept that some parts you've written may need taking out, no matter how good they are, if, for instance, they are superfluous to the plot.  One of the main things that often makes me knock off a star when reviewing is simply that a book needs a couple more drafts to tidy up.  I know it's the done thing to moan about editing, but you should learn to love making your book as good as it possibly can be.  And don't forget the proofreading, by someone who knows what they're doing, not one of these cowboys who do it on the cheap - it's a false economy.  There's a good article about this HERE

Feasibility
Even if you're writing fantasy, the actions of your characters still have to be feasible within that fiction ~ a common mistake is to make them act out of character in order to push the plot along to where you want it to be.  This screams 'amateur'; I've read whole books based around an unfeasible premise.  And don't try too hard;  it's not necessary to add in an army of Columbian drug lords, a conspiracy that could bring down the government, and an erotic scene if you're not comfortable writing them.  You don't have to do a Dan Brown or E L James to write a good book that people will want to read.

Too much domestic/mundane detail
The reader doesn't need to know that Jemima got up, put on her dressing gown, cleaned her teeth, went downstairs, put the kettle on, made a cup of coffee, sat down, drank it, made some toast, ate it, then heard the phone ring.  Neither do they need to hear Howard say "Hi, how are you this morning?", or Jemima answering, "Not so bad, how are Marjorie and the kids?"  Or, indeed, Howard answering that Marjorie is feeling a bit under the weather, before he finally gets to tell Jemima the point of that part of the story, ie, that he's just discovered his brother is having a sex change.  I bet you were as bored reading that as I have been reading similar in some novels.

A sentence to summarise the scene would be enough, or even cut the whole passage and have it start with Howard's speech.  "Jem.  You're not going to believe this.  Ron's decided he wants to become Rhonda."

Information-heavy dialogue
Oh, we've all done this one: giving background information by way of dialogue.  It's dreadful if done badly, and so, so hard to do it subtly enough.  Here's a ludicrously bad example:
"How are you, Jemima?" asked Howard
"Oh, not so bad.  Life's been much calmer since Reginald started his new job at a Bridges & Houseman, Architects, and we moved out to Sussex."
"I'm so pleased for you," said Howard.  "Marjorie still can't believe her mother left us the farm in her will, and I told you that her brother, Leopold, used his connections to get Marjorie an exhibition at a new gallery in Sloane Square, didn't I?"
"Oh yes, that's the one where Gilbert, used to work, isn't it?  You remember Gilbert, our next door neighbour?"
You get the picture.  Dialogue is for realism, character illustration, plot development, suspense, humour - just about everything except supplying the reader with chunks of information.  Find another way of doing it!

Not sorting out common errors
.... and, sadly, some proofreaders don't sort them out, either.  Here my three (un)favourite offenders:

• Using 'I' when it should be 'me' - this is so common.  I've written an article about how to make sure you get it right, HERE.
• WAS SAT: "Claire was sat at the table eating her breakfast".  Wrong, wrong, wrong.  Should be "Claire sat at the table" or  "Claire was sitting at the table", depending on the rest of the passage.  Ditto 'was stood'.
• Apostrophes ~ you'd think everyone would get them right all the time by now, wouldn't you?  But these are errors I see over and over again: 1970's.  CD's.  DVD's.  Yo-yo's.  Mini's.  These are just plurals and, thus, do not need apostrophes.

I hope this has been of help to some people!

New books and telly bits....

I'm in the middle of writing a new novel at the moment ~ nearly finished the first draft, 114k words long so far ~ and so I've been a bit slack on the blogging front!  Stuff keeps occurring to me that might evolve into a blog post, but none of it has yet (I really must do that one about internet dating, though), so I thought I'd stick it all together in one post ~ two book bits and two telly bits!

Edward of York meets Elizabeth Woodville ~ Elias and Lisa in my new novel!

The new novel 
I'm writing another one taken from a story from history, like Kings and Queens and Last Child; this time it's the Wars of the Roses.  It's a stand alone and not in any way connected to the Lanchester Family of the other two.  This time, it's only based on the story rather than retelling it.  I did start off with the total retell, but it was far too complicated, with too many elements of the original that wouldn't translate into 21st century life.  I got to 30K words in before I accepted that it wasn't working, and completely rewrote - not an easy thing to do!  The working title is The House of York; it concerns only one family.  It's much darker than the family drama/romantic suspense of Kings and Queens and Last Child, with a strain of psychopathic murderous intent (or two) running through it, and the suggestion of sinister happenings from early on!  I hope to publish it in October (though at the moment I am convinced it's a load of talentless garbage that should never see the light of day) (it's a writer thing.....).

 
Get in there quick!
I had a new review for Kings and Queens the other day from a lady called SuzM that amused me.  She said she'd had a similar idea; the reason it made me laugh was that she said "I turn my back for 30 years and someone else goes and writes it".  Nice one, SuzM!  I know what she means.  Three years ago I wrote a novel called The Other Side.  At first, it appears to be the stories of four different women, but gradually the reader becomes aware that the characters are all the same person, living the parallel lives possible if different decisions had been made.  A short while after I published it the wonderful Kate Atkinson brought out her excellent Life After Life, which made me want to shout, "but I did it first!".  Oddly enough, mine has not been so wildly successful as Ms Atkinson's ~ now, I wonder why that is??!!  I'm glad, however, that my paltry offering was published earlier, so I didn't look as though I was trying to emulate such a literary maestro.  And the moral of this story is - if you have a good idea, do it quickly before someone else does it first!

And now... 

Treme

I'm currently watching this excellent HBO show on Amazon Instant Video and highly recommend it!  It's about New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and is made by the same people who did The Wire; the Wikipedia link is HERE.  It's highly acclaimed by those who know their stuff about this tragic time, and the music is wonderful, of course.   Here's a link to the theme song/sequence ~ watch it HERE!

Fans of The Wire will enjoy seeing Lester Freamon and Bunk Moreland in starring roles, with appearances by Slim Charles, Prez, Ziggy and the bloke who played Bubble's anti-drug sponsor/buddy, Waylon!  You can also spot Michonne from The Walking Dead - and Elvis Costello!

Mad Men 

I meant to write a whole post about the final episodes of this prince amongst TV shows, but it never happened.  What did you think?  I loved it!  I found the gradual shift from the optimism of the 1960s to the attitudes of the 1970s so well portrayed, but also kind of sad; I felt nostalgic for the 1960s even as I was watching the way in which Don and Roger and co found the transition difficult as they grew older and less in tune with the popular culture of the time.  

Well done to Peggy for the nabbing the suddenly-sexy-again Stan Rizzo...

....but I couldn't bear what happened to Betty - I thought the makers of the show were saying 'don't smoke, kids, this is what will happen'.  Sooooo sad!  I hoped they'd give her and Don another scene, though perhaps they had their farewell in that secret interlude a series or so back....  Great idea to have Roger finally copping off properly with Megan's saucy mum, but I wished they'd given Joan more than a business to keep her warm at night.  Still, they had to echo the ideals of the time - the early 1970s was, after all, one of the golden ages of Women's Lib, and who better to be its poster girl for the series than the strong-and-independent-but-still-sexy Joan?  

Best of all, of course, was the way in which the psychological car crash that is Don Draper finally embraced the 1970s....  and yes, he cried and hugged too! 

His walking out in the middle of the stifling corporate meeting was one of his finest moments... but don't you want to know what happens next??!  Thanks, Emma, for reminding me about the old 1971 Coke advert being played at the end ~ a reflection of the zeitgeist for the purpose of something completely at odds with it, an inspired choice of ending!  Here's my favourite character top ten, in case you haven't already seen it.

Missing you already!

New Year's Resolutions....

Do you still make them?

I don't.  A cold day in January when you might not be at the peak of your energy/positivity levels (to say the least) is not the day to stop doing things you like, or to start to demand great things of yourself.  Also, the giving stuff up type don't work because most people can't deprive themselves of things they love to order; you break bad habits when the time is right for you to do so, not because the calendar's flipped over.  You might suddenly get in the zone for dieting, or capture out of nowhere the willpower to give up smoking, on some random Wednesday in April, not on January 1st.

My thoughts on some popular NYRs:

• Losing weight - well, I first made this one on January 1st 1972, I think, and did so for many more years, sometimes successfully, sometimes not.  Obviously never that successfully or I wouldn't have kept making it for 43 years!
• Giving up smoking - see paragraph above the starfish picture.
• Going to the gym - signing up for a gym in January then not going is such a cliche I'm not even going to mention it (oops...).
• Be a nicer and more tolerant person generally - that will work until something really gets on my nerves, which might be in about two hours' time when I'm in Morrissons.

Happy new year, peoples!  I hope y'all have a good one, and celebrate the evening in whichever way you see fit.  I shall be sitting in bed watching The Walking Dead, and will probably not even notice when the clock strikes midnight!