Science Fiction writer Simon Morden writes violent novels. Another War (2005), was shortlisted for a World Fantasy Award, and 2007 saw the publication of The Lost Art which has been shortlisted for the 2009 Catalyst Award for best teen fiction. He’s currently writing his next novel, ‘Equations of Life’, which he tells us is set in a future London packed with refugees, armoured nuns, Stalin-lookalikes, and seriously hard-core science. So how does he do it?

It’s easier than writing sex

The funny thing about writing violent scenes is that I find them so much easier and satisfying than writing sex scenes. But when I say funny, I mean it in an ironic, slightly disturbing and profoundly sad way. Why is it that I’m more at ease describing the moment of death, of desolation, of decreation, than I am a joyful coupling that holds the promise of new life?

It doesn’t reflect well on me, perhaps, but I’m not alone in this dichotomy. It’s not for nothing that there’s a Bad Sex award – given for crimes against literature – but no Bad Violence award.

It’s all in the drama

Much of the reason for this is that violent scenes are full of drama, intense emotion, and split-second critical choices. Capturing the essence of the scene is simply more straightforward than writing many other types of scene: it isn’t the problem of trying to capture every last detail, so much as deciding what to leave out since there is so much of it.

Random acts of aggression?

There is a problem, however. It could be argued that the modern world divorces us from violence and death. Most of us live in a society where rare acts of random aggression are the only times we encounter the squalid nature of the reality of knives, guns and fists, and death is often clinical and removed from the abrupt shock of trauma. It is important not to purvey an unrealistic, cartoon-style violence. People get hurt in fights, and it’s an unreasonable assumption that if a chair is used as a weapon, it’ll be the chair that breaks and not the victim’s skull.

Do your research

‘Keeping it real’ is your duty. Talk to the police – you might be able to go out on patrol with them – or with the staff at the casualty department at your local hospital. Veterans of our all-too-frequent wars aren’t likely to gloss over the facts, either. We have their memoirs, but also their memories. All I have to do is remember my father-in-law’s stories – a veteran of the Spanish Civil war, Dunkirk, Singapore, the Atlantic convoys and D-Day – if I want to be reminded of the reality of conflict.

When violence becomes pornography

It is true that violence in books is commonplace and often pornographic, simply present for the sake of being present: a filler, a convenient and familiar bridge for the plot to cross over on its way to the last page. It’s not a writing habit you should cultivate. But there will be other times where scenes which include violence are necessary parts of the story: they show the nature of the characters and move the plot forward in an entirely natural way, arising from decisions made and paths taken earlier on.

I have some rules of thumb I bear in mind when writing – flexible enough to withstand the impact of my imagination, and hopefully robust enough to keep me from pornography.

Violence needs to be a consequence of the plot

Raymond Chandler’s way of spicing up a plot was to walk a man with a gun into the room. But it was Chekov who nailed it with his rule regarding the gun over the mantelpiece: if you show it, you have to use it. Chekov knew that a plot device has to be shown before it comes into play – something called foreshadowing. So while entirely random acts of violence might happen to your characters, it will only appear so from their point of view: the act itself will have been planned by someone, somewhere, and there should be pointers to that in your story.

The act of violence needs to have consequences

That violence itself should have consequences for your character shouldn’t be something that needs stressing, but it’s often forgotten, often deliberately in order to serve an unrealistic plot. If your story is set somewhere with a functioning police force, violence will have legal sanctions (writers of soap operas, please take note). If it’s set in a more lawless environment, blood feuds and tribal or gang loyalties will play a part. Even in a war zone, there will be rules of engagement: a battle is not a free-for-all. And all this is aside from the medical, physical and emotional aftermath of conflict, which must be treated as seriously as the actual act itself.

It needs to be true to the characters

Your characters are allowed to be unskilled at physical combat, lousy shots, faint at the sight of blood and be generally terrified by the chaos of violence. They are also allowed to remember their training, take a deep breath and keep calm while all about them are losing their heads. That still leaves room for extraordinary bravery, appalling cowardice, gracious mercy and utter depravity – but what they bring to the fight is what they have inside already, regardless of what they take away.

Writing violence is easy to do, but it’s just as easy to get it wrong. I’d argue that getting it right shows a greater degree of maturity and mastery. Violence shouldn’t be used as a filler or as a spice – like everything in your story, it should be there because it ought to be.

Related posts:

1. Writing Fantasy Fiction
2. Creative Writing Course: Writing from a point of view
3. Writing historical fiction 3 – using fact in fiction

Research is Like Underwear…

In 1541, if you came from London, you considered Yorkshire to be a barbarian land. Once you turned off the Great North Road, the journey to York was a ‘wretched track’. The woods contained boar and wildcat and the locals still shared thatched hovels with their cattle.

This is what we learn from the first few pages of CJ Sansom’s Sovereign. Interesting, but not gripping.

Now let me add that our hero, Matthew Shardlake, is exhausted. He’s just buried his father and discovered the family farm is in massive debt. He’s risking travelling at night because he’s afraid he will miss his deadline for a ‘strange mission’ he has been given by the Archbishop. Meanwhile, the man who’s supposed to protect him is complaining that they’re lost and in danger of being kidnapped.

Now would you want to read on? Sansom has woven the research into a background that reinforces the plight of his characters. Already, we’re in suspense. That’s one of the reasons the Shardlake books are bestsellers. That’s also why research is like underwear. It’s crucial to help form what appears on the surface, but…

…we don’t want to see it hanging out on display

Readers have to be given enough background knowledge to make sense of your story, and a certain amount of scene-setting is unavoidable. The tricky part is finding a way to do it without overwhelming readers who didn’t know before, or boring those who did.

Maps can be useful. Long explanations are rarely welcome. Having one character tell another what they should both already know isn’t credible. There are better ways.

Bernard Cornwell tackles this brilliantly at the start of Gallows Thief. Sir Henry Forrest, a respectable gentleman, is being given a tour of Newgate Prison by one of the turnkeys. As the turnkey takes pride in showing off the horrors of the place, we feel Sir Henry’s shock and disgust. We feel pity for the prisoners – and incidentally, we and Sir Henry learn a great deal of the history and layout of Newgate.

Finding your way into the world of the story

How do you get past the facts and into the imagination?

Surrounding yourself with photos is a great way to get ‘in the mood’. For years I didn’t have a room to write in, but a couple of cork boards covered in pictures came out from under the bed whenever there was a quiet moment.

Some people have a coin, a piece of old silk, or anything else tangible from the period they’re writing about.
Dressing up is fun. Wearing the sort of clothes your character might have worn may offer a whole new perspective, although you may want to warn your loved ones first.

Manda Scott ‘dreamed’ her bestselling ‘Boudica’ series. It’s not a shortcut, though – she also did plenty of solid research.

Finding your way into the scene

Sometimes it helps to think of a modern parallel to bring a situation alive. I found it hard to visualise my two bachelor medics sharing their lodgings until I realised that they weren’t living in a museum, they were living in the ancient equivalent of a student flat. (If you think this is unlikely, an acquaintance who helps to excavate a famous Roman fort assures me, “They were so messy! They just threw their rubbish everywhere!”)

So now you’re busily writing your novel. Here are a few of the questions and compromises you may come across:

Oh look! I’ve found out something interesting!

Sooner or later you may stumble across a fact so fascinating that it simply has to appear in your novel.
This is the time to take a deep breath and think carefully. If it really belongs there – great, in it goes. But does it? Does it move the story along, or are you having to fiddle with the plot to fit it in? Once you’ve spent time ramming it in, will you then have to waste more time editing it out again? Maybe it’s worth keeping for a more suitable occasion.

Then there’s the question of what everybody else believes is true about the past, even if it isn’t. I’m in a small minority of people who suspect that our ancestors weren’t much shorter than we are, and somewhere I have an article by a respectable bone specialist who thinks the same thing. However, one of the copy editor’s suggestions on the first book was that I shorten some of characters because they seemed inordinately huge.

He was right. A first novel probably wasn’t the place to show off that I’d read something interesting. Once you’re well established, however, that rule may change. Lindsey Davis has made something of a game of it – check out ‘historical errors’ and ‘deliberate insertions’ in the entertaining rants on her website.

Watch your language

No matter how you may love the middle ages, any urge to write your fourteenth-century dialogue in perfect Chaucerian English needs to be suppressed – at least if you ever hope to snare a mainstream publisher. You may know that a wang-tooth is a molar, but most readers won’t. Nor will they want to bother looking it up like I just have.

The challenge, if your characters would have spoken a fore-runner of English, is to make the dialogue sound authentic whilst making it comprehensible. It’s worth taking a look at your favourite authors and analysing how they do it.

Inappropriate similes may have to be kept under control, too. Ancient characters couldn’t ‘pocket’ money. Neither could they button their lips, or zip down to the Forum for the shopping.

Oh dear, that’s not very nice

Another balance to be struck is that between authenticity and modern sensitivities. An ancient Roman is not going to suggest abolishing the slave trade any more than a Victorian patriarch would tell his tired servants to put their feet up while he and the mistress do the laundry.

On the other hand, if your Roman hero regularly beats his slaves and your patriarch makes money out of sending small boys up chimneys, modern readers may not want to spend long in their company. Whatever you think of the less palatable views of our ancestors, it’s worth thinking about how you are going to present them.

Writers make things up

We’re writing fiction. We are allowed to invent.

Nobody knows the details of how a Roman Army hospital was run. (If you do, where were you when I needed you?) When it became obvious that some background was needed in my first book, I took what we already know about Roman army administration – i.e. there was lots of it, and they were very fond of lists – and invented something that suited the story.

Again, it’s a matter of personal judgement. Or perhaps something else is going on? Many writers have the bizarre experience of inventing something and then finding out afterwards that it’s true.

Almost the Last Word

Historical novelists frequently add an Author’s Note. This is a chance to point interested readers to places where they can find out more. It’s sometimes used to help separate fact from fiction, to explain the writer’s choices between competing theories of history, or to acknowledge where they’ve deliberately changed something. It’s also frequently the place where an anxious author says something along the lines of: Dear reader, I’ve done my best with the research, but please be gentle with me….

And mostly, thank goodness, they are.

Why we came here in the first place

We don’t read novels to learn facts, although we may pick up some in passing. We read novels for a chance to live in other people’s lives. I’ll finish with the mention of Rosemary Sutcliff, who was one of the great storytellers of her generation. When asked about the rare occasions when she had to decide between historical accuracy and a good story, she said she chose the story. Her Eagle of the Ninth series is still in print, and there are people who grew up to be historians or archaeologists today because they fell in love with the past through her books. That’s the best legacy any historical novelist can hope for.

Resources:

The Historical Novel Society – to find like-minded souls and read reviews of all the latest historical fiction.

Here’s the full interview with Rosemary Sutcliff.

Excellent advice from Bernard Cornwell on his website.

This post is copyright RS Downie, 2009. No reproduction of this material is permissible without the author’s permission.

Related posts:

1. Writing historical fiction 1 – creating your historical world
2. Writing historical fiction 2 – doing the research
3. Writing historical crime novels – interview with R.S. Downie

You can’t please all of the people…

Here’s a confession: the earliest edition of my first book contained a wrong Latin ending. I only found this out when it was firmly and very publicly corrected by a reviewer in a national newspaper. It was a small thing – just two letters – but as he said, it cast doubt on the rest of the research. He said nice things as well, and later chose the book as one of his top thrillers for Christmas, but at the time I barely noticed the positive points. I was mortified. I felt I’d let everyone down. I lay awake fantasising about recalling all the copies so I could set fire to them and then fling myself on the pyre.

So I’m hardly in a position to criticise the apocryphal author who put the words, ‘Hi honey, fix yourself a sandwich!’ into the mouth of Mary Queen of Scots. The point is, if you’re inaccurate enough to jolt a reader out of the story, then you’ve failed.

Nobody’s right all the time – and a surprising amount of knowledge is soon out of date – but a reader who has taken the trouble to pick up the book wants to enjoy it. I think we have a duty to try and get things as accurate as we can.

Is there a ‘right’ way to research a novel?

Firstly – a word of reassurance. ‘Research,’ in this context, just means ‘finding things out’. You do not need to be an academic: ordinary people can do it, albeit often more slowly than somebody who already knows where to go. Different writers work in different ways. Apparently some of them even hate doing research, but if you’re reading this, that’s unlikely to be your problem.

Some advise that you should write the story first and then do the research. Others suggest finding out the basics, then writing the first draft and going back to check the details later. This is something you’ll probably have to do anyway, since often what you need to know won’t be clear until you’re well into the story.

Personally I like to visit the location and read background material for several months whilst sketching out rough ideas. I then resolve to concentrate on writing, but am frequently sidetracked, because…

Research can be more fun than writing

I should know. I signed up for a brief archaeology evening course ten years ago and now spend a substantial part of every summer scrabbling around in mud with a trowel. It’s enormous fun and inspiring in that you do get a sense of the physical past, but it’s not the most efficient way to learn and does eat into the writing time.

Here are some better (and worse) ideas to try. Most of my experience is with the 2nd century, so if you have any more suggestions, please chip in.

Some Good Places to find things out:

• The location. Usually requires several visits, especially if it’s in a nice place.
• The library – the best books will have lists of further reading at the back, and libraries can get hold of almost anything for a small fee. Try the children’s reference section, too – children want to know sensible things, like what people ate.
• The internet (but see ‘not so good’ below). Check out your library website. Most public library tickets give access to swathes of online reference material for free, including…
• …old newspapers
• Archives – again, try the local reference library for sources.
• Museums, restored period homes etc.
• People who were there (if there are any left)
• Contemporary literature, paintings, recipes, music, dance – what were people enjoying at the time?
• Maps – old and new, because rivers change course, and coastlines shift …
• Specialist groups and local history societies
• Re-enactment – this can include both public events and private experiments with WOAD in the kitchen
• Ask an expert – more below.

And some not so good…

• Other novels
• Wikipedia – always cross-check! Links to sources are often useful, though.
• Memories of school - what you think you remember!
• The internet. Anyone can set up a website. Enthusiasm and confidence don’t always mean accuracy

Asking the experts

Some people – especially crime writers, it seems – are adept at finding specialists who can help them get their facts straight. Others of us research our unpublished novels without talking to anybody because we are too embarrassed. (Though I really thought I’d got that Latin ending confirmed…)

Armed with a publishing contract, I’ve since plucked up the courage to consult some experts and one or two others have got in touch. All have been both kind and helpful, but do bear in mind that some people receive a lot of requests. Guy de la Bedoyere makes some good points about this on his website – which, incidentally, is an excellent source of information on Roman Britain.

At the risk of stating the obvious, if you do find a helpful contact, do what homework you can beforehand. Having some background knowledge will help you to both focus your questions and understand the answers. If the person has written a book about their subject, it’s courteous to have read it beforehand – but don’t pretend you have if you haven’t. It shows. And finally – take notes, or write everything up straight afterwards.

The camera never forgets

A good camera is essential for those of us with the memory span of a gnat. It can also save a lot of time. Provided the staff don’t object, taking photos of those long information panels in museums means you can read them at your leisure on the computer.

Sooner or later, though, you have to put the research aside and write the story. In the last post in this series, we’ll be looking at how fact and fiction work together – and I’ll be explaining why research is like underwear.

This post is copyright RS Downie, 2009. No reproduction of this material is permissible without the author’s permission.

Related posts:

1. Writing historical fiction 1 – creating your historical world
2. Writing historical fiction 3 – using fact in fiction
3. Writing historical crime novels – interview with R.S. Downie

Twenty years ago I knew nothing at all about historical fiction except that some of the novels I’d enjoyed had been set in the past. I’ve learned a great deal since then, mostly from other writers and sometimes from my own mistakes. I still have much to learn and frequently don’t practise what I preach – but if you too are fascinated by the past and want to set your story there, I hope you’ll find some useful pointers in this series of articles. If you have anything to add or questions to ask, feel free to post your comments below.

Historical fiction – where is it?

Despite there being a Historical Fiction Society, there’s no Historical Fiction section in my local library. Instead, Society members’ novels are nestling in amongst Romance, Action and Adventure, General Fiction, Crime, Fantasy and Horror. If there were such a shelf as ‘Literature’ – which there isn’t – there would be plenty there, too.

Setting your novel in the past doesn’t determine what kind of book it will be, nor who might want to read it. All the usual wise advice about novel-writing – which you can find elsewhere, some of it in The Crafty Writer Bookshop – will still apply. As ever, much can be learned from reading widely, including reading outside your own genre. There are, though, some points that will be particularly relevant to ‘historicals’, whatever kind of tale you are telling.

Know where you’re taking your reader

Screenwriting guru Robert McKee (author of Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting) tells his students that it’s essential to know the world of your story. This applies whatever you’re writing, but especially in a novel where you want to take a reader to a place that’s deliberately distant from your own.

What does your world smell like? Feel like? Taste of? Who’s in charge? How do people earn their living?

You may need to do less homework for a light romance than for a novel about the battle of Waterloo, but you will have to do some. (I’m not insulting romance writers here, but assuming romance readers are less likely to care about the finer points of weapon design.) Most of what you know may never appear on the page, but it will underpin whatever you choose to reveal to your readers. This has two benefits – firstly, the more you know, the wider and more original your choices will be.

Secondly – it will help to ‘ground’ your story on a convincing base. For example, if your characters are travelling on horseback, there will have to be arrangements in place to care for the horses. We don’t need to see this happen. We don’t even need to be told that it’s happening. But you can’t send characters galloping from Dover to Hadrian’s Wall in an afternoon. Oh, wait a minute – you can if you’re Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves. But that was light entertainment, and unless you’ve got Kevin Costner and Alan Rickman up your sleeve, it’s best to stick to what’s possible.

The point is, the more confident you are about how things work in the world you’re creating for your readers, the more comfortably you and they will be able to move around in it.

If you don’t know, don’t fret

You can worry too much about all this. Someone – if anybody can remember who, please say so – once bemoaned the difficulty of getting his characters in and out of rooms if he didn’t know what the door handles were like. This is not a problem for me: I have pictures of Roman door handles. (Yes, it is sad.) But I’ve wasted inordinate amounts of time wondering whether to put sheets on ancient beds.

In retrospect, this was more about avoiding writing than doing it. If you wait until you know everything, you will never write the novel. If you’ve tried to find out and can’t, it’s best to move on. Often the answer – or an unexpected solution – will pop up when you’re not looking for it.

Leave space for the reader

To sum up, the writer needs to know enough, but not too much. Even in the ‘real’ world none of us takes the time to notice everything, and we’re telling stories here, not writing textbooks. Try sketching in some details and letting the reader’s imagination do the rest.

Here’s an example, chosen for practical reasons rather than literary ones (i.e. I own the copyright).

Ruso was still pondering the body in the mortuary as he walked out of the East Gate of the fort. He was barely aware of his progress until he was abruptly recalled to his surroundings by a shout of ‘Get up!’ from further along the street. A man with a large belly was glaring at a grimy figure lying across the pavement just past the fruit stall. A woman with a shopping-basket put down the pear she was examining and turned to see what was going on.

The man repeated the order to get up. The woman stared down at the figure and began to gabble in some British dialect. The only word Ruso could make out was, ‘water’.

‘Burn some feathers under her nose,’ suggested the stallholder, bending down to retrieve a couple of apples that had tumbled off the edge of his display.

Ruso veered into the street to avoid the commotion and narrowly missed a pile of animal droppings. He frowned. He must try to concentrate on what he was doing. He had come out for a walk because he was unable to sleep. Now he was walking, he was having trouble staying awake.
(Chapter 2, Ruso and the Disappearing Dancing Girls, published in the USA as ‘Medicus’)

In this scene I used small details that might trigger the reader’s memories of familiar street markets. I then tried to put in other material that would distance the scene from a modern experience. The woman begins to ‘gabble in some British dialect’ which the lead character, who isn’t a local, can’t understand. There are animal droppings in the street. Somebody recommends a cure that, to us, sounds quite bizarre. I also hoped that the way the sick woman is treated would imply a harsher society than our own, and raise tension as the reader wonders what’s going to happen to her and whether the lead character (who we know by now is a medic) is going to do anything about it. Some writers would use far more period detail. The choice is yours.

In the next post I’ll be thinking some more about research. In the meantime, next time you pick up a novel, you might like to ask yourself how the writer has created their world and why you believe in it – or why you don’t.

This post is copyright RS Downie, 2009. No reproduction of this material is permissible without the author’s permission.

Related posts:

1. Writing historical fiction 2 – doing the research
2. Writing historical fiction 3 – using fact in fiction
3. Writing historical crime novels – interview with R.S. Downie

Eleanor Patrick

Sue Brownless

TCW: Why did you decide to co-author a book?

Sue: We both wanted to write a children’s book around a mix of fantasy and reality. When we met at a course and found we could spark ideas off each other, it was a natural step to try and use that. In the midst of a ‘well why don’t we’ moment we decided to write a book for a competition Eleanor had just read about. It gave us a deadline. That book was ‘Farlkris’ and it was joint runner-up for the Kelpies Prize in 2005.

Eleanor: We had the idea jointly while drinking coffee and hearing workmen outside opening up the pavement, from where the sound of dragons lurking in the depths seemed to emanate. There didn’t seem to be a problem about writing a dragon story together – though of course, we hadn’t tried at that stage, so it could have seemed rather a naive decision in retrospect. Luckily, it wasn’t.

TCW: What are the advantages and disadvantages of co-authoring?

Sue: The main advantage is that there are always more ideas, someone else to ask, the story isn’t just in one person’s head, and it helps you through those writers’ block moments. One of us always came up with a line of thought that tweaked the plot and solved the problem. Having someone waiting for the next bit to arrive is good, too. No dodging deadlines or slipping out of tricky bits. The biggest disadvantage is the logistics of getting two people to write together. We don’t live near each other and it was all done electronically.

Eleanor:  The advantages are clearly two heads instead of one on the tricky business of inventing a good plot. Out of lots of options at each stage there are two people coming up with possible additional ways to deal with the event or a better alternative to brainstorm on. That has to be good, so long as you have respect for each other’s abilities, which we do. The disadvantages were mostly technical – sending sections back and forth for reading, agreement, correction and editing; making time in busy schedules to meet together for planning and decisions; agreeing the way forward for marketing and other post-publication dilemmas.

TCW: Which one of you came up with the Scordril concept?

Sue: Scordril was a character in the first Lothian Dragons outing, ‘Farlkris’. He was such a great character, with personality, he just had to have a central role in the next one.

Eleanor: It was a joint idea at the time of the other Lothian Dragons book, which we wrote first. The Kelpies Prize for a book set in Scotland had a deadline about five months after we were discussing the ‘dragons underground’ idea, so we set the book in East Lothian and proceeded from there to meet the deadline. Those Scottish visits fuelled the plot ideas for both ‘Farlkris’ and ‘Scordril’.

TCW: Did you do some preliminary work to see whether or not you could create a single voice?

Sue: We’d had a try at it with ‘Farlkris’ so it was easier and more intuitive with ‘Scordril’. We’d considered the need for a single voice that time and we even had a style sheet of things we had to remember, such as the mind speech and ‘tone’ of the dragons being different to overgrounders. But it gelled quickly and we didn’t need to keep that. The characters found their own voices and that helped us enormously.

Eleanor: No, but most of the teething problems were sorted for the first book, which is being published second, as it follows on chronologically from ‘Scordril’. For that, we wrote a style sheet to make sure we were in agreement about certain things – all stuff we do automatically now.

TCW: Is the ‘voice’ closer to Sue’s or Eleanor’s ’solo’ voice or is it a new creation?

Sue: It is a new creation. Naturally, there will be elements of each of us in there as we write, but by the time we reached the editing stages we realised we had forgotten who wrote some of the individual passages, and genuinely couldn’t tell, so the answer to that must be no.

Eleanor: To start with, you might have deduced who wrote what – though this was not divided between “dragon” and “human” as some thought it might be. We both wrote our fair share of both events. But after editing together, there was no difference in the writing anyway. I was always staggered by Sue’s good ideas (we only had the plot outline on cards) and she was always impressed with my bits. I guess our individuality might show in which ideas we thought of as we wrote, but that isn’t a style thing so much as content.

TCW: How do you actually work together?

Sue: We look at plot – talk it through, bounce the ideas around, and a structure forms. Once we have a plot summary for the whole novel we write it on cards (full set each) so we can rearrange the order if needed and write it separately, bit by bit. We take turns throughout and both write dragon and human bits. One of us would write and then email it on for review and mark-up on screen with coloured text, then suggestions would be made where we differed or had an idea. We’d meet up with our hardcopies in hand to discuss it over a coffee, somewhere, and reach an agreement. One of us recorded the outcome in the master copy and then it was safe for the other to set away writing the next bit. That took a lot of controlling.

TCW: Did you employ an independent editor? If not, how do you maintain editorial quality control?

Sue: No, we didn’t need to. Eleanor is an editor with years of experience, so I was happy to let her have main editorial control on the grammar and such. Also, our process meant that by the final editing of the draft anyway there’d been two pairs of eyes to pick up typos our spell checks would miss and inconsistencies in plot, say, as we went along.

TCW: Is Kelsey Drake going to write other books?

Sue: Well there is ‘Farlkris’, which Kelsey wrote! We’re hoping that will be book two. Now that we know the dragons really well we’d need to tweak that a little for publication. We’ve also ensured the underlying characters/plot are pointing to a third book, with a working title of ‘Yordis’.

Eleanor: Book 2 was written first and just needs revising and editing. After that, who knows?

TCW: Are either of you working on solo projects?

Sue: I’m working on a children’s novel. It is very near to completion of the first draft. I started it when I did my MA Creative Writing at Northumbria University and it is another blend of fantasy and reality. No dragons though!

Eleanor: I am plotting a book for children set in Seahouses – I like locations that readers can visit. That’s why we wanted Lothian Dragons set in places that exist, rather than writing a pseudo-medieval fantasy. This mix of reality and fantasy does make it harder for agents and publishers to see which slot it should occupy on the shelves of bookstores – though Borders does not seem to have a problem, now Scordril is published.

TCW: From a business perspective, who handles what?

Sue: We share the publicity. Eleanor handles school visits and arranging book signings. I tend to liaise with the publisher about ordering print runs and quantities, keeping an overview of the financial aspects, and book numbers. (FYI, Sue is a qualified accountant and internal auditor - Ed)

TCW: With author percentages already so low, is it financially viable to co-author a book and split royalties in half?

Eleanor: Some years ago, Hamish Hamilton published one of my children’s books called ‘Splat!’ which was illustrated by Paula Martyr. I’ve always been sad about the splitting of proceeds (royalties and PLR) but recognise that the book was not viable without the illustrations. With Scordril, the book would not exist without the impetus of both our ideas, so yes, income is halved, but better half of something than all of nothing. We are more concerned with breaking even and getting the book out there and enjoyed than becoming millionaires at the moment. That can come next.

TCW: You’ve chosen to self-publish through Matador. This of course will give you a higher author percentage than with a mainstream publisher. Was that one of the motivating factors?

Sue: It was a conscious choice to self-publish with someone that Writers' and Artists' Yearbook were prepared to recommend; we liked the look of them and their process. The higher author percentage was a factor but that is offset by the cost and risk that we as authors have to bear, and may be eroded anyway by the route the book takes to the reader.

Eleanor: No. We simply didn’t like the constant “this is a great book”, “I love the characters”, “I’d love to take this on but the market is so difficult at present” kind of replies that we were getting from agents and authors. Time was passing inexorably without us getting the deal we wanted and felt the book deserved. And it’s much more acceptable to self-publish nowadays, though it’s harder work. In retrospect, there was the plus of commissioning our own cover – most publishers consult but overrule. In one bookshop, the events manager took one look and said, “At least you’ve got a brilliant cover.”

TCW: What marketing campaign do you have planned?

Eleanor: We have done all the usual things: leaflets, flyers, phoning, showing, contacting bookshops, libraries etc, telling people with whom we’ve had connections in the past, and arranging to give talks and author visits. To keep track of all this, we set up a shared Google document, which we can both add to and comment on as we go. We also have a website and blog.

TCW: What criteria will you use to judge the success or otherwise of the Scordril project?

Sue: We’re already getting good feedback from readers and that has to be one criteria. We’re also selling well and have had to have more books printed, twice! We aim to at least cover our costs.

Eleanor: Oooh, that’s a difficult one. From my point of view, that’s writing a book that people read and enjoy as we hoped they would. In which case, even to date, that’s what we’ve done. Finishing the writing of a good book is definitely a success not to be pushed aside. So is publishing it, if you don’t lose money you can’t afford to lose. But actually connecting to readers who say how much they loved it, well that’s the fire in the dragon’s mouth. For a short time, the readers have lived what we’ve lived, and seen what we’ve seen – and that’s something you can’t put a price on.

TCW: What would you tell Crafty readers who are considering either self-publishing or co-authoring a book?

Eleanor: If that’s what you need to do for any particular project, go for it and solve the problems as you find them.

Eleanor will be signing books on Saturday 20 December at Borders, Fort Kinnaird, Edinburgh; and Sue will be joining her on Saturday 17 January 2009 at Borders Silverlink in North Tyneside, 12-4pm. Drop by and say hello. Apart from a great read, you might just pick up some tips on how to market and promote your own book.

Related posts:

1. Legal thriller by name, but not by nature?
2. Independent publishers – an author’s perspective
3. Book Club: The Book Thief

Reports, particularly company annual reports, aren’t high on the list of most people’s bedtime reading. They can be hard to read (though according to a 2006 University of Michigan study this might be intentional), and often tend towards combining tedium and complexity.

There are a lot of different types of report a freelance might be called upon to write, for a wide range of different audiences:

• reports from meetings and conferences;
• reviews of products or topics, such as green energy or influenza;
• annual reports on a company or charity;
• budget and credit reports;
• reports on an ongoing or completed trip, project or research;
• policy reports and recommendations for future planning.

To write a good report, the writer first needs to answer two questions:

1. who is it for?
2. what is it for?

Language and layout

The language used in the report will depend upon who the audience is – it’s no good writing complex technical jargon for a lay audience, or using overly simple language for a report intended for scientists or medics. The audience will also decide the writing style, whether it’s going to be formal or informal.

Because reports can be complex and very ‘information-dense’, the report still needs to be clear and easy to read, using active rather than passive language, keeping sentences short with one idea per sentence, and splitting blocks of text up into short paragraphs. The layout can also help the readability, including informative subheadings, which break up the page and draw the reader’s attention, and bulleted lists, which can make complex lists a lot clearer. Other visual aids include call-out boxes (a box containing supporting information), pull quotes (a bold quote, often in a larger font, that emphasises a point), graphs, photos and other illustrations. These not only support the content but also break up the page visually.

If the report is going to be printed, work with the designer if possible, to balance between the needs of the design and the message in the text – one can overpower the other if this balance is not maintained.

Style and content

Think about the purpose of the report. This will determine the content. It’s a good idea to research similar reports to get a feel for the sections required. Reports need to tell a story, so make sure that the sections fall into a logical order – this will also help the reader.

Obviously, the report should be accurate and internally consistent, because people may use it as a basis for important decisions. It should also be concise – if it is over-long, readers may never get to the end, where the important conclusions might be, or miss useful content in the middle. Reports should generally be objective, unless commissioned specifically to give a particular point of view.

Annual reports, especially those for publicly-listed companies or charities, have very specific requirements for content, and it is important to have these requirements clear before beginning writing.

And finally …

Reports don’t have to be hard to read (though they may need to be a little dull, depending on the audience) provided the writer keeps things clear, concise and simple.

A bit of extra reading

• Tips for writing non-profit and company reports (be aware these are US sites and requirements elsewhere may be different)
• Links to sites on writing reports and press releases
• And lastly, how not to write a report…

Related posts:

1. Report writing – finding work
2. Beginner Blogging for Writers: part 2
3. Beginner Blogging for Writers: part 1

1. They used their senses.
2. They focused on a few choice details.
3. They used imagery.
4. They established power relations between the narrator / character / reader and their environment.

Using your senses

This is fundamental to any creative writing. Whether you’re crafting a non-fiction travelogue or describing a fictional world, sight, sound, smell, taste and touch are the primary tools to use when evoking the atmosphere of place. I cover this extensively in my creative writing course, but briefly: it is through senses that we connect with the real world. So by evoking one or more of the senses in a passage, your reader should connect with your written world. That way, reading moves beyond the intellect and into the body itself – it becomes a physical, ‘lived’ experience. This is called somatasthesia – soma (body) + asthesia (feeling).

Consider how Markus Zusak uses the senses of sight and touch to describe the first impressions of a house in this passage from The Book Thief:

The house was pale, almost sick-looking, with an iron gate and a brown, spit-stained door. From his pocket, he pulled out the key. It did not sparkle but lay dull and limp in his hand. For a moment he squeezed it, half expecting it to come leaking towards his wrist. It didn’t. The metal was hard and flat, with a healthy set of teeth, and he squeezed it till it pierced him. Slowly then, the struggler leaned forward, his cheek against the wood, and he removed the key from his fist.

Focusing on details

You cannot and should not describe every last detail of an environment. It will be too much for the reader to absorb and will simply obfuscate your writing. Rather choose a few telling details that are representative of the world you are describing.  When the picture you are sketching is a huge one, it helps to focus the reader on something small. Consider the opening passage from Terry Pratchett’s Wintersmith. Note how simply the mention of a primrose evokes the whole spectrum of spring. Note too that the vastness of the winterscape is thus amplified in contrast to the flowers and the ‘little cluster of thorn trees’.

When the storm came, it hit the hills like a hammer. No sky should hold as much snow as this, and because no sky could, it fell; fell in a wall of white. There was a small hill of snow where there had been, a few hours ago, a little cluster of thorn trees on an ancient mound. This time last year there had been a few early primroses; now there was just snow.

Imagery

Sometimes an environment or the essense of a place can best be described through imagery. A place is more than its physical presence: it is a landscape of meaning, feeling and emotion. Consider this passage from William Horwood’s Duncton Wood:

August is an untidy month in Duncton Wood, when the leaves of the trees have lost both the virgin greenness in which they gloried up until June and their rich rustling maturity, which was one of the pleasures of July. Now they are past their best. Here and there, passing August rain brings one or two leaves down, green but limp, on to the wood’s brown floor to die among the great blowzy fern and insinuating ivy into which they have fallen.

Power relationships with place

The moment a character – fictional or real – comes into contact with a place a power relationship is established. Is that character in control of the environment or does the environment threaten to overpower the character? Sometimes this relationship is neutral, in which case the place is merely a background to the action that takes place within it. However, the best writing allows the environment to contribute to the action or the emotional sub-text of a passage by setting it either ‘above’ or ‘below’ the character in terms of power. For example, a man standing in the face of an avalanche is not in control of his environment. But take that man, give him a flag and perch him on top of a mountain, and he is a conqueror.

Lewis Carrol’s Alice in Wonderland shows a character struggling to establish control over her environment.  Of course, this is a metaphor for a girl trying to establish control over her own life. Similarly, the vastness of the desert in Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient threatens to overcome Almasy and he only temporarily rises above it when he is in his aeroplane. The bedouin who rescue him from his plane crash are in a neutral or symbiotic relationship with their environment.

In this passage from Alexander McCall Smith’s The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency, what power relationship exists between the character and the environment? How has Smith communicated this?

Then we went down to the shafts and were shown what to do. They put us in cages, beneath great wheels, and these cages shot down as fast as hawks falling upon their prey. They had trains down there – small trains – and they put us on these and took us to the end of long, dark tunnels, which were filled with green rock and dust. My job was to load rock after it had been blasted, and I did this for seven hours a day. I grew strong, but all the time there was dust, dust, dust.

Can you think of any books that memorably evoke a sense of place? If so, please share them with us in the comment box below.

Related posts:

1. Writing historical fiction 1 – creating your historical world
2. Creative Writing Course: bringing your text to life
3. Creative writing – dialogue

For some excellent tips on creating the perfect intro visit Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen’s article on Writing Great Leads in which she encourages you to shock, challenge or provoke your readers into reading on. Laurie, along with yours truly,  is one of the regular contributors to the Write On blog carnival.

Related posts:

1. 11 Types of Articles to Write for Magazines
2. Freelance writing markets
3. Do you write ‘publishable’ English?

Image courtesy of ginieland

The difference between Science Fiction and Fantasy

Although these genre have much in common, the essential difference is that Science Fiction broadly deals with the ‘theoretically possible’ (although often improbable!) whereas Fantasy deals with the impossible (although that doesn’t mean everything in the story is impossible). Science Fiction takes the existing world to another dimension; Fantasy creates entirely new worlds and infuses them with a degree of familiarity. See for example Terry Pratchett’s ‘Discworld’ fantasy novels. The most recent, Wintersmith, won the British Bookseller’s Children’s Book of the Year (2007).

The difference between Fantasy and Magic Realism

Although some critics place them both in the same basket, strictly speaking, Magic Realism is a genre in which fantasy elements such as magic or the supernatural enter a realistic, natural world without the reader questioning their presence. Clay by David Almond is a good example of Magic Realism.

Fantasy as ‘crossover’

Long before Harry Potter, adults were secretly enjoying ‘children’s’ literature in the form of fantasy. The Lord of the Rings was originally categorised as a children’s book, as were Orwell’s Animal Farm and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, even though all three deal with very adult themes. It is really only from the late 1970s and early 80s that fantasy was given its own shelf in the adult section of the library. So is there still a dedicated children’s fantasy genre? I think so. Although it has much in common with adult fantasy (similar plot lines, conventions etc) there are things (common to all children’s writing) that set it apart, such as: child protagonists, age appropriate language, sanitised plot lines (no or limited sex and violence). In addition, The Encyclopedia of Fantasy suggests that what sets children’s fantasy apart is the theme of transformation. This is a fantastical metaphor for the age-old theme of ‘coming of age’ that is found in most children’s writing for the 10+ group. As Lisa Tuttle explains in her Writing Fantasy and Science Fiction:

It is the ability to experience either a transfer of self from place to place or through time, or a change in being (from poverty to riches or from beast to beauty). The latter process is particularly important as it allows the child to come to terms with its own change from child to adult.
(Tuttle, p119)

Common fantasy sub-genre in children’s writing

The Encyclopedia of Fantasy suggests six common sub-genre:

• Worlds in miniature (eg Mary Norton’s The Borrowers)
• Secret gardens and hidden worlds where children can temporarily escape from real life (eg The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis).
• Time fantasies where children travel to another era or encounter ghosts from the past. (eg Madeleine L’Engle’s Time Quartet)
• Otherworlds (secondary worlds such as Tolkien’s Middle Earth or Ursula Le Guin’s Earth Sea)
• Wish fulfilment (Mary Poppins, PL Travers)
• Animal Stories (eg Dick King-Smith’s The Sheep Pig aka Babe!)

General fantasy conventions:

The following are the main conventions you’ll need to be aware of when writing fantasy:

• The fantasy world
• Myths, legends and fairytales
• Magic
• Archetypes
• Landscape with meaning
• Maps
• Journeys
• Suspension of disbelief and internal logic

The fantasy world

Ever since The Lord of the Rings, the stock setting for most fantasy books is a pre-industrial one, with much in common with Earth’s Middle Ages. However, ‘futuristic’ fantasies are becoming more common as the stock setting has been done to death.

Myths, legends and fairytales

Elements of Celtic, Arthurian and Central and Northern European mythology are easily identifiable.

Modern fantasy has its roots in fairy tales, myths and legends – an imaginary past more than a real one. It is therefore less concerned with novelty and innovation than with old stories retold. Even the most inventive and original fantasy tends to look back to earlier epic tradition and what might be considered eternal truths.
(Tuttle, p22)

Magic

This is an almost essential element, as without it, ‘logical’ explanations would have to be found for fantastical events – that would make it Sci Fi, not Fantasy. Critics of Fantasy say that often the ‘magic’ reflects forms of occultic religion, unsuitable for children.

Archetypes

Fantasy is rich ground for Jungian psychologists: the wise old woman, the divine child, the young hero or heroine sent on a quest, helpful animals, a walled castle, the wasteland, the dying king, shape-shifting tricksters, dragons and unicorns. These archetypes have a pre-existing meaning for the reader, and are, to a degree, expected to appear in some form or another.

When they’re handled well, these familiar characters have the ring of truth about them, and seem both familiar and yet original; but if the author is lazy or unskilled they’ll come across as cartoons or clichés.
(Tuttle, p21)

Landscape with meaning

In fantasy, the landscape or ‘world’ that is created has equal importance with character and plot. However, resist the temptation to go overboard on description, and only include as much as is needed to further characterisation and plot.

Maps

Since Tolkien, these have become almost de rigeur in helping your reader to picture the world you have created.

Journeys

Much of fantasy fiction writing has a journey of discovery or ‘quest’ at its heart. We accompany the POV character on his / her journey, and this helps us to navigate through the new world.

Suspension of disbelief and internal logic

When writing fantasy you will expect your reader to suspend their disbelief as they enter your world and take it as you describe it. However, this doesn’t mean that anything goes. Every fantasy world has rules or laws that cannot and should not be broken. Characters need to act within the restraints of these laws. For example, dragons derive energy from the sun and can’t stay on the ground for long (‘Glint’, Ann Coburn, p26). As the creator of this world, you make up its rules, but you too must be subject to them.

A writing exercise:
Create your own fantasy world and write a story set in it. Ask yourself:

1. What is the name of your world?
2. What does it look like?
3. Who lives there?
4. Describe a typical child in your world.
5. Is the world at peace or at war?
6. If at war, who is the enemy?
7. If at peace, what threatens that peace?
8. Who rules your world?
9. What are the ’10 Commandments’ of your world?
10. What happens if someone breaks them?

Now write your story.

Related posts:

1. Science Fiction, fantasy and Faith
2. Writing Romantic Suspense – When Love Gets Mysterious
3. Writing historical fiction 3 – using fact in fiction

• author
• genre
• plot and structure
• writing style
• characterisation
• marketing

I’ll make some initial observations and pose suggested questions for discussion. Some of our regular book club participants are published authors themselves, so it’s a great opportunity to share their knowledge and insight. You don’t have to do anything to join other than pitch up and leave your comments and observations below. If you haven’t got a copy of the book yet you can buy it through The Crafty Writer Bookshop (in the book club category) and we will get a small commission that keeps the Book Club and all the information on this website free.

Author

The Interpretation of Murder is Jed Rubenfeld’s debut novel. His ‘day job’ is as a law professor at Yale University. He has had two non-fiction books published, both on constitutional law. But he chose a criminal rather than civil investigation as the subject of his novel, indicating a natural sense of the dramatic. This isn’t surprising, as in his varied academic life he studied Shakespeare at the Juliard School of Drama. He also has an interest in psychology, and wrote an undergraduate thesis on Freud. It is these three strands that come together in The Interpretation of Murder as a Hamlet-obsessed Freudian psychoanalyst joins forces with a police detective to solve a series of murders in 1909 New York. He is also, it seems, deeply interested in architecture, as this both physically and metaphorically provides the structure of the novel.

For Discussion:
It’s always said that a writer’s first novel is a reflection of self. This certainly appears to be the case in this book. It will be interesting to see what his next offering will entail. What are the pros and cons of writing from self? Is there a difference between this and writing your self into a book? What do you think about the age-old mantra ‘write what you know’?

Genre

Although this is essentially a psychological thriller, it is also a historical and police procedural, with the pivotal question of ‘who dunnit?’ keeping us reading to the end. Rubenfeld draws on all the classic mystery genre conventions: a mystery to be solved; a hero or heroine; a side-kick or partner; a rival; a villain; conflict; obstacles and setbacks; clues; red herrings; motives; twists; resolution.

The one convention that Rubenfeld majors on is the red herring – but not, in my opinion, always successfully, particularly with regards to Carl Jung (maybe it’s because I was obsessed with Jung at university that I take Rubenfeld’s insinuations as a personal affront – now analyse that ). However, the ultimate red herring turned out to be the murder itself, which, I thought was fiendishly clever.

In terms of the historical, this is history of forensic science, psychology, architecture and the social strata of the city of New York. It makes for fascinating reading. However, I found the dissertation on New York society rather irritating at times, and caught myself skipping over some of those sections. That’s the danger of a historical mystery / thriller: the setting can weigh down the plot. But the twists and turns of Rubenfeld’s intricate story kept me reading to the end. I also found the Hamlet discourse rather boring (despite being a Shakespeare fan) as it seemed incongruous to the rest of the plot. By the end though, I saw the author’s intentions in creating a thematic through line between the murder and Freudian psychology, but I still think we could have done without it.

For Discussion:
I’m sure many of you disagree with me about there being too many cross-threads in the book; please feel free to argue the other side.

Plot and structure

I’ve already said that The Interpretation of Murder is very cleverly plotted, and, while I found some of the tangential elements distracting, Rubenfeld did not fail to wrap up every loose thread at the end. Bravo! It’s one of those stories that you want to read again to see how many clues you picked up on. That said, I did think that dropping the Coroner Hugel storyline so early in the book odd and did not think the reveal at the end justified it. I thought that Rubenfeld managed his release of information on a need-to-know basis very well, and maintained the tension and pace masterfully. By the middle of the book he had ‘trained’ me to pay attention during the esoteric architectural, social, literary or psychological discourses, because I realised that everything had meaning or at least would have, by the end.

The two main plot lines are that of the Freud / Jung rivalry and Freud’s attempt to break in to America, and then the investigation of the murder apparently perpetrated by a politically well-connected fiend. The two main plotlines are held together by the bridging plot of Stratham and Nora’s relationship. These inter-connected stories held my attention to the end, but, while I was satisfied with the resolution of the murder plot and the romance, the Freud / Jung story was resolved rather lamely – the cop simply putting a bit of pressure on the baddy and Jung finally having the courage to visit a high-class brothel. Admittedly, the Freud / Jung plotline was constrained by the pre-existing facts, although, like all good authors, Rubenfeld felt free to deviate from the historical party line when it suited him – to which he freely admitted in the afterward.

For discussion:
In a historical novel, how may the reported facts of history impinge upon an author’s plotting choices? How may this be overcome?

Writing style

A distinctive style element of the book (which of course affected structure) was the alternation between first person narration with Stratham Younger and third person in the other sections. The strength of this is that the author can have the benefit of the intimacy of the first person, allowing us to be privy to the narrating character’s thoughts (which, because of the Hamlet sub-plot, became necessary) and the freedom to allow us to see developments that the main character could not see. However, the two sections blended together in my opinion as the ‘voice’ of Stratham was far too close to that of the third person narrator. This switch between third and first person only works well when the first person has a distinct voice – a classic example is The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner.

For discussion:
In terms of Rubenfeld’s actual writing style – ie his choice of words, syntax, imagery, etc – I would suggest that unlike Markus Zusak (the author of our last Book Club novel) there is nothing particularly distinctive. Within this genre, however, that may not be a bad thing. Why is this? Do you agree or disagree?

Characterisation

All of Rubenfeld’s characters, whether historical or fictional, are well-rounded and believable. This is because he provides all of them, even the minor ones, with motivation. All of the characters want something and are prepared to act to get it (which is ironic in a plot that revolves around solving the mystery of why Hamlet couldn’t ‘act’). This provides them and the plot with forward momentum. The historical characters of Freud and Jung are of course fictionalised – this is Rubenfeld’s view of who these men were. The problem is, it clashes with mine. My view of Jung and Freud has been shaped by Jung’s own writings in which the Austrian ‘father’ of psychoanalysis is portrayed as petty and hysterical. Because of this, I struggled to recognise Rubenfeld’s warm, wise patriarch as being the ‘real’ Freud and the deluded pervert as Jung. That is a risk you take with using well-known historical characters. Of course my version of these two men is just as much a ‘fiction’ as Rubenfeld’s as it is my interpretation of the facts that has formed it – you see, I did get the point of the title too:).

For discussion:
Have you read any novels where you did not agree with the characterisation of historical characters? Do you share my view, despite me disagreeing with his interpretation of Freud and Jung, that all of Rubenfeld’s characters were well-rounded, motivated and believable (as fictional constructs, not historical personages)?

Marketing

Although written by an American and set in America, this book has been phenomenally successful in the UK. It was the winner of the Galaxy British Book Awards Best Read of 2007 and the Richard and Judy Book Club. The Richard and Judy win has catapulted this novel to the top of UK charts where it still remains in the Top 10 in mid 2008. It does not appear to have done as well in America. Not being American, I can’t really say why this is the case.

For discussion:
Is the Interpretation of Murder’s success in the UK simply a matter of it getting noticed by the ‘right people’ (ie Richard and Judy), or is it something else? If you’re American, could you speculate as to why the book has not done as well in the States?

Now it’s your turn. Please join in the discussion by leaving your comments below, and don’t forget to vote in our poll:
Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

The next Book Club book will be Shakespeare: the World as a Stage by Bill Bryson. It’s a short read so we’ll aim to discuss it at the end of August. And now that you’ve stopped laughing at my apparent about-turn, I can assure you I have very good reasons for choosing this book above and beyond penance for sniping at the Bard this month!

Related posts:

1. One Week to Book Club …
2. Book Club: The Book Thief
3. Book Club Reminder