Archive for category Writing
Notes From a Hospital Bed
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Non-writing, Writing on December 19, 2011
A few days ago I had to go into hospital for a minor operation. Like most people, I was nervous and tried not to think
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about the actual procedure. Instead I tried to focus on the more pleasant things – such as choosing which book to pack to fill the time before I went down to theatre, going shopping for new slippers (fruitless – they were all old ladies’ styles!) and the relief I would feel when it was all over. If I had dwelt solely on the operation I would have been stressed, anxious and maybe I would’ve chickened out of the whole thing altogether.
Sitting in the ward in a backless gown, thick white anti-embollism stockings and paper pants (too much information – sorry!), it struck me that it was all a bit like attempting a novel. The thought of the huge task of slogging away at 80,000 words strikes fear, anxiety and stress into the heart of any writer – and scares many of us away from starting chapter 1 at all. But taking our eyes off the task ahead and instead concentrating on the preparation (character sketches, plot, chapter outlines etc) and allowing ourselves (brief!) flights of fancy to a future book launch party makes things less daunting – allowing us to slip into the actual writing without too much worry, just as I slipped under the anaesthetic (well, after a couple of attempts by the anaesthetist at finding a vein for his needle).
So don’t let that unknown black hole of hard work frighten you off attempting a longer piece of writing – concentrate on the pleasanter bits to ease yourself into it.
NAWG Short Story Competition 2011 Critique
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Competitions, Writing on December 14, 2011
A couple of months ago I entered the National Association of Writers’ Groups short story competition and I paid £3 extra for a critique by Linda Lewis. The story I sent had already been in 2 competitions (without success!) but I am fond of it and decided it deserved one more chance.
Again, it came nowhere but this time I found out why. Linda was very gentle but constructive in her comments. She explained that the story didn’t include enough information about the heroine to enable the reader to care what happened to her. Essentially I was writing about a lonely old lady in hospital but I didn’t explain why she had no visitors or what she’d done with her life (all rather obvious stuff when I look at it now). Linda also said that this kind of story had been written many times before (and I thought my idea was original!).
So now I know where I went wrong. I still like the story so I’m going to add some background information and try to think of a twist to make it a bit more unique. Then I’ll look for somewhere else to send it.
Linda writes a regular column in Writers’ Forum magazine and is offering a critique service through her website (don’t be scared – she knows how to phrase things kindly!).
Every little helps…
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Successes, Writing, Writing Exercises on December 9, 2011
Writing is a frustrating occupation with little reward. It’s easy to get fed up with the rejections, the publications that
don’t bother to reply at all and that blank piece of paper which refuses to be filled with wonderful prose.
So why do any of us keep writing? Why do we pick up a pen or drag ourselves to the keyboard day after day? Is it the pleasure of losing ourselves in another world (in which case it would be easier to just pick up a book written by somebody else)?
Hope is what keeps me going. Hope that the editor might like this article pitch, hope that this story might win the competition or this reader’s letter might bag me the star prize.
This hope is fired by small incidents and minor successes along the way – things that cheer me up when the bigger prizes are eluding me.
One of these was my writing group’s Christmas meeting last week. Our new program secretary, Moira, organised a fun competition for a piece of writing containing the phrase ‘It happened every Christmas’ – with prizes from her attic store cupboard. We all took some food (there was way too much food!) and listened to everyone’s entries. We had fiction, poems, memoir and articles. Moira had the unenviable task of awarding the prizes. I received a scented candle in a pretty box (pictured). It may not be an award to add to my CV but it gave me a boost.
A couple of days ago I met up with my writing buddy, Helen. She didn’t award me any prizes but I did get inspired from our chat about plans for 2012. I came away knowing that I have to produce a certain amount of finished work otherwise I’ll let the side down.
Finally, I’ve been shortlisted in the latest Emerald Writing Workshops competition. It’s good to see a couple of other familiar names on the list – fellow blogger, Susan Jones and Sharon Bee who runs the Fiction Addiction website. Fingers crossed for us all!
So, maybe I haven’t won the Booker this month but there have been plenty of little things to keep me going!
Book Reviews
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Books, Writing on December 5, 2011
Read any good books lately? As writers we should all be bookworms too and what better way to practise concise writing than with a book review?
A book review requires the ability to:
- Summarise a plot (without giving away the ending!)
- Pass an opinion on various aspects of the book – it’s construction, characterisation, use of language etc.
- Share any emotional impact that it had on you – did it make you laugh, cry etc.
Writing book reviews won’t make you rich but it might earn you a free copy of a book and get your name out there.
Book reviewing opportunities:
- Waterstones – if you’ve got a Waterstones card (i.e. a free loyalty card – no need to buy anything) then you can enter regular draws for pre-publication copies of new books to review. There are usually 25 copies of each title to give away and I’ve been successful in the draws several times. If you receive a book then you just post a short review on the Waterstones website (and it doesn’t have to be good). Details of the books currently on offer are here.
- Take A Break’s Fiction Feast – each issue carries a 70 word ‘My Favourite Book’ from a reader. £20 is paid for each one used.
- The Saturday Guardian are asking ‘What have you enjoyed reading in the past 12 months?’ Email them no more than 150 words to readers.books@guardian.co.uk to arrive no later than Sunday 11 December and preferably write about a recent title. A selection of the reviews received will be published – no payment but the kudos of appearing in a broadsheet newspaper.
- Your own blog/Facebook/Twitter etc. – in these days of zero publicity budgets, authors need all the help they can get so if you’ve enjoyed a book, pass the word on! (and someone might do the same for you one day)
Tragedy
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Events, Writing on November 7, 2011
My daughter’s school was offering a ‘community’ lecture on Tragedy by Professor David Robert of the English
department at Birmingham City University. I haven’t studied English Literature since my O’ level in 1979 (Julius Caesar, Lord of the Flies & Keats’ poetry – you never forget those books do you!) so I thought it was about time to broaden my horizons.
Wikipedia tells us that tragedy is ‘a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure’. This definition seems to make anyone that has ever enjoyed Hamlet or Macbeth heartless and cruel! But David explained that watching a tragedy is a catharsis because we see someone in a worse situation than ourselves. The hero who suffers a tragic end can be seen as scapegoat. His demise makes us feel good because we didn’t suffer such a terrible end – he does the suffering for the rest of us.
David took us on a whistle-stop tour of famous tragedies through the ages from ‘Oedipus Rex’ to ‘Death of a Salesman’. Then he gave a mention to the current popularity of disaster movies such as ‘The Day After Tomorrow’, which can also be seen as tragedies.
Tragedies are mostly written by men and this could be because there is a more certain self-destruct pessimism about the world within the male psyche (and they call us the moody ones!).
So where is all this taking us in the context of our writing? Well, I’m not sure really unless you’re a playwright since tragedies seem to be generally written for performance rather than as a narrative. I had hoped that learning about the greats of English Literature might inform my own writing but I can’t see People’s Friend or My Weekly falling over themselves to buy a tragedy!
But it wasn’t a waste of time because it broadened my horizons and I got a certificate of attendance!
By the way if there are any English scholars out there do correct me if I’ve got anything wrong here.
Novel Writing Booster Kit with Martin Davies
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Authors, Events, Writing, Writing Exercises on October 24, 2011
The other Saturday I attended a novel-writing ‘booster’ workshop with the author, Martin Davies at Mackworth library.
The aim was to build on what we had learnt earlier in the year at his ‘starter’ workshop .
Martin set lots of exercises to get the pen moving over the page and thus prove to ourselves that ‘writing’ isn’t some wonderful magical gift that you must have in bucket loads in order to succeed – instead tenacity is one of the qualities most useful to a writer.
Once again Martin was very generous with his advice and I came away with the following tips jotted down:
- If a minor character is feeling 2-dimensional, give him an unusual hobby to flesh him out
- Before you begin your novel, write a 2 sentence or ‘elevator’ pitch – and repeat this exercise at regular intervals to make sure you’re not going off at a tangent
- The odd observed detail will bring your settings and characters to life – not swathes of description
- When setting a scene, mention one big thing e.g. the mountain that dominated the landscape, and one small thing e.g. the cigarette burn on the table-cloth.
- Finish the first draft without looking back over your work AT ALL
- In preparation for the second draft print out the manuscript and read it through, marking any corrections/changes as you go – don’t change anything yet because you’ll lose the momentum of how the story flows. When you’ve read & marked to the end you can begin changing the text. Repeat this as many times as necessary.
- Read aloud to check the flow of the story.
- Write what you feel excited and moved by.
- Don’t tell other people what your novel is about – it will make it feel stale to you.
So now I’m trying to pluck up the courage to go back to the Pocket Novel that I completed in the summer. I need to turn that rough first draft into something comprehensible – or maybe I’ll decide that it’s rubbish and bin it! But, as Martin said, no writing is wasted – it’s all practice for better writing.
Character or caricature?
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Authors, Books, Writing on August 15, 2011
Cover of Filthy Rich
Many thousands of words have been written on how to create believable characters that will attract the reader’s empathy. Well-honed characters make the reader turn the page and ultimately they linger in the mind long after the book has been finished.
But sometimes authors appear to break the ‘rules’. I’m reading Filthy Rich by Wendy Holden and several of the characters within this novel are more caricatures than characters with whom that the reader can identify. There is:
- Alexandra – the stereo-typical footballer’s girlfriend. She’s all shiny bling and would-be celebrity.
- Beth – an American desperate to mingle with the English aristocracy
- Morag – the local eco-warrior who insists on an earth closet at the allotments to provide free fertiliser
Initially, I felt these cartoon-like people gave the book a shallow feel and I was tempted to give up on it. However, there are some ‘real’ people in the book – the headmistress who’s falling in love with the widowed solicitor, Mary who’s struggling to save the local stately home plus 8-year-old Sam who’s being fostered. As I got drawn in to the story of the believable characters in their fictional Derbyshire village, I realised that the ‘caricature’ people served a purpose:
- They add humour
- They unite the other characters in their battle against them (or against the earth closet in particular!)
- They provide plot lines as their over-the-top activities impact the village
So maybe it’s not necessary to make every one of your characters totally authentic. If you want to lighten the mood, advance the plot or bring other characters together then it could be alright to go OTT once in a while.
Plus it could be fun to let your imagination run riot and create a really way-out caricature!
Coffee Break Fiction for Women’s Magazines
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Markets, Resources, Writing on June 13, 2011
Last week I was a guest blogger for the Writers’ Bureau. I chose to do my post about writing sub-1000 word stories for the womag market, in particular The Weekly News, My Weekly and Take a Break/Fiction Feast.
If you’re interested in writing for these magazines then read the full post by clicking here.
Anyone who is a student (or a temporarily lapsed student like me!) of the Writers’ Bureau is eligible to apply to be a guest blogger – just log in to the student community section of the Writers’ Bureau website for details. If chosen you will get a link back to your own blog – so if you’ve got something to say, it’s worth having a go.
Writing Serials for Women’s Magazines (Episode 2)
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Events, Resources, Writing on April 18, 2011
More tips picked up at Joanna Barnden’s highly informative course on writing serials for women’s magazines:
Each episode of a serial needs a cliffhanger to make the reader buy the next edition of the magazine. The cliffhanger has to leave the reader wondering about what has just happened or desperate to find out what is going to happen next. It should open up the story for lots of possibilities in the next episode rather than answering any questions or tying up any loose ends.
Try to do this by revealing something that suddenly changes the reader’s assumptions about the story line, such as a dead body, a person who is not what he seemed or dropping in a face from the past. Alternatively leave your character in a perilous situation, for example in charge of a runaway horse or at the mercy of a gun man in a post office hold-up.
I mentioned in my previous post that it is the opening episode plus further episode by episode summaries that sell a serial to an editor. Joanna referred to this first episode as the ‘pilot’ that really has to ‘wow’ a very critical audience. This episode should try to include all your main characters. There are 2 obvious ways of doing this:
- Have everyone get together at a big important event such as a party, funeral or on a coach journey. Show how they react to each other and the event they are attending.
- Have a crisis (such as a road accident, outbreak of war) and show how the different characters react to it.
Following on from this, the episode summaries need to be concise and easy to read. Around 500 words per episode is sufficient. Also include a cast list with your submission listing a very brief sentence about each character. Finally, write a short summary of the whole story. This should be similar to the blurb found on a novel or DVD.
Three magazines currently use serials:
- People’s Friend – around 10 episodes with a total word count of 60,000
- Women’s Weekly – serials of either 3 or 4 parts of 3800 words each, they want ‘serials that reflect life but in a way that is utterly compelling’
- My Weekly – they don’t always run one but prefer 3 episodes of 2,500 words each
Once a magazine has accepted the first episode and summaries you will usually be asked to submit each episode in turn to the editor. She may request changes to get things just right before you move on to write the next episode. There is no need to write the whole serial ‘on spec’.
So there you have it – serial writing in a nutshell!
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