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TuesdayTips202
Keeping it Synchronous
Hello and welcome back!
This week’s #TuesdayTip is looking at Synchronicity within a story.
A basic definition of the word is as follows:
“The simultaneous occurrence of events which appear significantly related but have no discernible causal connection.”
Why is synchronicity a popular device? Why do writers decide that in one book, or a particular TV episode, there will be a theme of parents being ill?
Leaving aside the great Terry Pratchett’s assertion that million to one chances happen nine times out of ten, coincidences do happen. But there are other good reasons:
- Synchronicity allows writers to explore a particular issue in depth, by having more than one instance to compare.
- The details of one event might give characters insight into another similar, but unrelated event. The classic example being the detective having a eureka moment, when they realise that they ‘have seen this before’.
- It can be used as a way to bring two characters together. Eg two characters who have been stood-up, meeting at a bar.
Another example is when the lives of different characters seem to be following similar, yet unrelated trajectories.
For example, Character A‘s father is suffering from severe dementia, and they are likely to die soon.
Character B receives news that their father has been diagnosed with a terminal illness, and they too are expected to die soon.
The two events are unlikely to be related and so can’t have any causal connection.
This gives us an opportunity to explore the individual characters’ psyches. How do different characters deal with ostensibly the same situation?
Take Character A. He has always been very close to his parents, supporting them throughout his father’s dementia journey. He cherishes the last few memories he will make with his dad. He decides to take a leave of absence to spend the last few weeks with his dad and to support his mother.
Character B found about her father’s illness via text message from her sister, who she rarely speaks to. Her father was a cruel man, and Character B couldn’t leave home fast enough. Her response to the text message is “good”. She goes to work as normal and refuses her sister’s entreaties to see her father one last time and clear the air.
These two characters are dealing with the largely the same problem in different ways. But what if they are friends? Character B hasn’t told anyone about her father, but Character A notices that something is wrong. Character B watches Character A as he deals with his father’s impending death and is struck by how, amidst the sadness, there is laughter and perhaps even relief, despite his deep love for his dad and his impending loss. On the other hand, she should be glad that the man she’s hated since childhood will soon be dead, yet she feels angry and frustrated at the world and struggles to concentrate at work. By contrasting the two characters, we see the difference between them. It also allows Character B to see her own issues through the prism of somebody else, and the reader learns more about her and her demons.
Another, related issue could be a Red Herring (#Tip153).
An example might be the neighbour of a murder victim hearing a scream at precisely 11:42 am. Detectives are confident that this was the victim being killed. CCTV from around the corner shows a young man, in coveralls apparently stained red, running hell-for-leather down the street a couple of minutes later.
After extensive investigations throughout the book, the young man is identified and arrested. The reason he was running? To catch the bus. The red stains? Paint.
The use of synchronicity is more than just the writers running out of ideas. It’s a powerful narrative device that can help an author explore issues in more depth.
What do you think about synchronicity? What other uses can you think of? As always, feel free to comment here or on social media.
Until next time,
Paul
PS: If you are a writer with a tip to share, or fancy writing a fictional interview between you and one of your characters, please feel free to email me.
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POETS Day
This is a short story, written for Coventry Writers’ Group. The theme was “5:30pm”. This was my interpretation. Enjoy!
The office block was normally populated until at least six. But this is London, and today is POETS day – that’s Piss Off Early Tomorrow’s Saturday for the uninitiated. The woman in the coffee shop ticked off names as employees left the building.
Finally, everyone was gone. Except for one person. Pulling her cap down low, and, avoiding the CCTV above the café exit, she crossed the street.
Entering the building was easy. The T-shirt with the cleaning company’s logo was as good as any swipe card. The security guard barely looked up from his phone as he pressed the door release. Minimum wage – you get what you pay for. Same goes for service staff – a depressingly small bribe was all it had taken to convince the regular cleaner to stay home.
His office was on the fourth floor. He’d found her on Tinder. It seemed that screwing a cleaner on his desk was a fantasy his wife was reluctant to fulfil.
Pausing briefly to put on some rubber gloves, she knocked on the door marked Vice President – R&D. He turned in his chair, his eyes full of lust.
The wall clock hit 5:27. Any second now …
The fire alarm almost deafened her.
“Shit,” he said. “We can’t ignore it. I’ll go first. You give it a minute.” He smiled reassuringly. “Don’t worry, I’m sure it’s a false alarm.”
She nodded as he left, hastily buttoning his shirt. So easy …
He hadn’t even locked his computer, which saved her time. Within ninety seconds, everything she needed was on a memory stick.
He’d followed his proscribed evacuation route; down the stairs and out the front. She took the rear fire exit. In the stinking alleyway, she removed the T-shirt, cap and wig and slipped them in her bag and placed the envelope of cash where the security guard would find it.
Opening her phone, she deleted the carefully-crafted Tinder profile.
The last thing she saw before removing the phone’s battery and SIM card was the clock on the screen flick over to 5:30pm.
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TuesdayTips201
Scene from The Italian Job. (c) Paramount Pictures 1969
Keeping Them (Cliff)hanging.
Welcome to this week’s #TuesdayTip.
I recently watched a debate on a Facebook readers’ group about cliffhangers and whether readers liked them, thought they were necessary or just a cynical way to ensure readers bought the next book in a series. There were a variety of opinions expressed, although I am pleased to say that the discourse was largely respectful.
Before we go any further, I think it would be helpful to get some definitions.
What do we mean by a cliffhanger?
For those unfamiliar with the term, it is a narrative device whereby a chapter, instalment, episode or book is left unresolved. In order to find out what happens next, the reader (or viewer) needs to continue reading or watching the story. Often the protagonists are left in danger, or a seemingly impossible situation. Perhaps a major revelation is made.
The technique has been around for a long time. The epic Arabic tale One Thousand and One Nights, dating back to the middle ages, sees Scheherazade telling a new tale each night to King Shahryar. By ending each story on a cliff hanger, she successfully postpones her execution, as the king is desperate to hear how each story is resolved the following night.
More recently, luminaries such as Charles Dickens would end each instalment of their serialised novels with a cliffhanger to entice readers to buy the next episode. In modern times, continuing dramas, especially soap operas, rely on this hook to ensure viewers or listeners tune into the next episode, or return after the commercial break.
The phrase is likely to have originated in the 1870s when a serialised version of Thomas Hardy’s A Pair of Blue Eyes, literally left the protagonist hanging off a cliff.
What different types of cliffhanger do we find in modern story-telling?
The most common example is at the end of the chapter. One of the best accolades a writer can receive is that their book was ‘unputdownable‘. That readers stayed up later than planned, because they wanted to read just one more chapter, or binge watch another episode. The trick here is to leave a hook that needs to be resolved. In thrillers, this may involve the protagonist being placed in danger. In crime and mystery a new revelation or perhaps a twist that means everything to date was incorrect. In other genres it could be a surprise or a shock.
Of course, immediate resolution in the next chapter is only one solution here. Something that a lot of writers do is harness the power of delayed gratification. Many stories have several different threads or character arcs running alongside each other. A common device (trick?) is to finish a scene on a cliffhanger, then switch to a different thread, leaving that cliffhanger to fester in the reader’s mind. This can be really effective, as instead of reading one more chapter, the reader might read several more until they find the answer they are waiting for.
Skilled writers walk the fine line between teasing readers and encouraging them to continue, and frustrating them, so that they give up or give the book a poor review. A really skilled writer lingers in the thoughts and dreams of their readers after they are forced to put the book down, go to sleep, then work the next day.
There are plenty of other places for cliffhangers.
Mini-cliffhangers at the end of key scenes, before a section break, rather than a chapter. In broadcast media, this entices you to return after the commercials (or hopefully sit through them).
For serialised stories, the cliffhanger can be a hook that makes you seek out the next edition of the magazine. This is pretty much the business model for modern superhero comics. A typical comic will have several different stories, all at different stages, sometimes even spread across different titles, so that readers will find themselves not only buying comics week-in-week-out for months or years, but even buying different titles. Even when you finish the first story, you’ll have probably read the other stories in the comic and will therefore continue until you finish those stories, probably starting new ones ad infinitum. Sometimes you might have to hop from an edition of The Amazing Wonder Bloke to an edition of Wonder Bloke and Friends to Wonder Bloke and Wonder Lass to get the full story, encountering new, ongoing stories as you do so. Personally, I dislike that form of storytelling. It is blatantly trying to get you to part with more money – but there’s no denying it works, and to be fair, readers know how it works.
One of the objections some participants in the original forum had was leaving a cliffhanger at the end of a novel, so you have to buy the next in the series. I can see their point. It’s one thing to publish a serialised story where everyone understands that you are subscribing for the long haul, but another to sell readers a £10 paperback, where the readers typically expect the primary story to be wrapped up. Obviously, on-going series might have story threads that continue, but again it is a fine line enticing a reader to consider the next book in the series and leaving them feeling unfulfilled, unsatisfied and perhaps even a bit manipulated.
In summary, cliffhangers are one of the most powerful tools that any writer has, regardless of genre. But you have to treat your readers with respect. By all means entice them to continue with the book, or even a series, and I would argue that when it comes to making a reader read just one more chapter, anything goes. But when a book is finished, the main story should be concluded.
One last thing: If you are going to end a book or an episode on a major cliffhanger, please at least have the courtesy to finish that story in a future instalment. American network TV has a really nasty habit of pulling TV series halfway through a run, or unexpectedly not renewing for a new season. Think Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles or more recently Legends of Tomorrow.
What do you think about cliffhangers? Clever narrative devices that enhance our enjoyment, or shameless attempts to extort money? As always, feel free to answer here or on social media.
Until next time,
Paul
PS: If you are a writer with a tip to share, or fancy writing a fictional interview between you and one of your characters, please feel free to email me.
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Why Generative AI using pirated datasets of copyright works is a threat to us all.
Over the last few days, you may have seen posts from authors outraged that their copyrighted works have been used to help train Generative Artificial Intelligence models, without their permission or offers of fair compensation.
The recent controversy concerns a massive archive of 7.5 million pirated novels and 18 million research articles, called LibGen. It is alleged in an article in The Atlantic that Meta (owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp), decided that rather than pay licences for this material, they would simply download and incorporate this illegally pirated, copyright material into their Large Language Models. They basically circumvented the established methods for obtaining such permission to save money and time. Allegedly, the green light for this came from the very top, ie Mark Zuckerberg.
All 13 of my DCI Warren Jones novels are included in the dataset.
The aim is to allow AI chat bots to generate new material in the style of previously established authors, using existing characters, with no permission (or compensation) offered to the owner of such material. Furthermore, the models will learn from the writing skills of authors, honed over many years, to generate new works to rival those of hardworking, skilled writers. Potentially, users of the model will simply be able to ask the bot to ‘write me a story about subject X featuring these characters, in the style of author Y‘. They may keep it for their own pleasure, or package it and distribute it as an eBook, either for free or a small fee.
This is a threat to the whole ecosystem of writers.
Why, I hear you ask, should a mid-list author such as me (and 99% of other writers) be concerned that folks are generating new Jack Reacher novels for their own pleasure? Millions of readers will still rush out to buy the latest Reacher novel. The bank balances of superstar authors will probably only take a small hit.
But consider this. I am a typical, avid reader. Over the course of a year, I have a number of go-to authors, such as Lee Child, Michael Connelly, Karin Slaughter etc. I will always buy their latest book. But between those tent-pole releases, I read many other books. Books by other, mid-list writers such as myself. I try new novels that don’t bother the bestseller charts, written by authors whose writing income is usually only a part of their livelihood, because median author earnings (ie most of us) are less than minimum wage.
Now let’s assume somebody uses AI to generate 5 new Reacher novels, releasing them for pennies or even free. Sure, they aren’t a patch on the real thing, written by Lee or Andrew Child. But they contain all the elements of a Reacher novel, they are fun and they provide a Reacher fix until the next one is released by the Childs.
But whilst I’m getting my AI Reacher fix, what am I NOT reading? Which 5 mid-list authors will I never discover? Whose sales figures will be impacted because there are only so many books a person can read in a year? Which authors will have to slow their output, or even quit altogether, because their writing income is unsustainable and they have to spend more time doing other jobs?
That is something we should all worry about.
I am less concerned that Amazon will be flooded with AI knock-offs of my DCI Warren Jones characters, than I am that fans of police procedurals who have finished their favourite author’s output won’t give mine a go, because they can generate a brand-new DCI Banks, or Roy Grace or John Rebis novel for free, or download a new adventure of their favourite character for pennies.
Other authors are NOT my competition, they never have been. We promote each other’s work because we are fans of each other. Book bloggers and keen readers flood social media with recommendations of similar authors. If I go onto any Facebook readers group and say that I’ve read all of a particular author’s books and fancy reading something similar, the comments will be flooded with helpful suggestions. Sometimes I am flattered to be included in the same post as other writers I admire. I have gained many new readers this way. How many potential new readers will instead stick with what they know, rather than taking a punt on someone new?
And that is why AI generative novels are a threat to us all.
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TuesdayTips200
Block Buster
Ideas To Thwart Writer’s Block
Puzzling Prompts
Hello, everyone, it’s great to be back, after several months rebuilding a new website and being snowed under with work!
Today’s Tuesday Tip is a quick Block Buster – a short exercise to either bust your writer’s block, or just a fun writing challenge to practise your skills.
Today’s exercise is a way of both generating a writing prompt and helping you justify the guilt from procrastination.
I’ve said before, that a short writing exercise is often a great way to get your brain in gear and those creative juices flowing, but a blank piece of paper can be a scary prospect.
Instead you need some sort of prompt.
One of my favourite types of prompt is a word or word(s) that need to be incorporated into a short piece of writing.
But how to generate them?
I, like many people, have a daily routine that involves online word puzzles. I justify the time taken as a means of keeping my brain working and enriching my vocabulary (although it should be noted that these games steadfastly use US spellings).
One of my favourites is the word game Wordle – the aim is to deduce a five-letter word by seeing which letters in the answer are present in words that you guess.
Why not use the answer as your writing prompt?
Fancy a bit more challenge?
Quordle follows the same rules as Wordle, but you have to simultaneously guess four words.
Why not set yourself the challenge of incorporating all four words into your short story?
Feeling really confident?
Octordle, as the name suggests involves the guessing of eight words.
Both Quordle and Octordle tend not to be thematic, so the collection of words can be really eclectic.
Worried that you might not know the meaning of a word? The games have links to an online dictionary that provides definitions.
Good luck!
Remember the rules:
- Set yourself a time limit.
- Write without stopping, editing or overthinking.
- Write whatever comes to mind and don’t worry if it doesn’t make sense.
- It doesn’t matter if it has nothing to do with the scene that you are stuck on.
If you are a writer with a tip to share, or fancy writing a fictional interview between you and one of your characters, please feel free to email me.
Have fun,
Paul
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Author Roadshow Coventry Library
“Date For Your Diary”.
I’ll be taking part in the Author Roadshow at Coventry Central Library on Saturday 8th March from between 11am and 1 pm.
Come along and say “Hi”.
Meet other book-lovers, chat to authors and buy signed copies!Local Authors Include:
- Malcolm Rose
- Angie Moon
- Adam Wood
- Ruth Cherrington
- Chris Arnot
- Helen Chinn
- Alex Stone
- Ann Evans
- Zen Cho
Can’t wait to see you all!
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When Two Tribes Go To War
This was my first short story written for our monthly homework. The theme was Christmas.
A war reporter, that’s how the observer sees himself, gazing upon the seething hordes beneath him. A scenario played out a million times in a million different ways for a million years. Details change, sides change and weapons change. But the goals remain the same; to show one’s superiority, to claim the biggest prize and to cement one’s legacy.
The soldiers can be classified into different groups, each with its own identity and method of combat.
First the Alphas. Big, loud, and brash, they strut the battlefield oozing confidence. Darwin would classify them as the ‘fittest’ of the population. But evolution is far more nuanced. Biggest doesn’t always equal best, and many are too showy for their own good.
Enter the Dancer. Nimble and fleet-footed, he makes up for his lack of mass with guile. Battlefield manoeuvrability is his forte. Sweeping beneath the very nose of an Alpha, he steals the target with unmatchable grace and poise.
Next the Talker. Specialising in battle-field communications, he wins hearts and minds. A few well-chosen words and the physical superiority of the Alphas is dismissed as oafishness; the grace of the Dancer re-interpreted as embarrassing flashiness.
Finally, the Wingman. He’s the sturdy sergeant. Fighting along-side, supporting and defending his leader, he may get lucky, receiving crumbs from his master’s table, But more often he serves until victory is assured, before slinking away to drown his sorrows alone.
Yes, the observer decided as he watched the drama unfold. It’s all here, playing out as it always does, his thesis proven yet again.
But a good reporter seeks both sides of the story. With that in mind he selects the next record and settles back to see if the girls behave differently on the dance floor.
‘Last Christmas, I gave you my heart…’
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TuesdayTips199
Block Buster
Ideas To Thwart Writer’s Block
It’s been a while, but today’s #TuesdayTip is another Block Buster – a short exercise to either bust your writer’s block, or just a fun writing challenge to practise your skills.
If you’re anything like me, simply being handed a blank piece of paper and told “write a story” is a non-starter. I need some sort of prompt.
Since stories are, in essence, what happens when a character is placed in an situation, then if you have a character and a situation then you are most of the way there.
One easy way to do this is to generate a random number and use it to pick from a list. You can use dice or an online random number generator
(https://g.co/kgs/6NMQ8zx – this is a really simple, no bells, random number generator).
You can easily generate your own lists of characters and scenarios, but if you want a quick start, try the following.
Characters – pick a random number from 1 to 6.
1 – Old Man
2 – Small Child
3 – Alien visiting Earth
4- A Teacher
5 – A Busy Parent
6 – A Young Professional
Scenarios – pick a random number from 1 to 6.
1 – Trying to get the lid off a jar of pickles
2 – Trying on different hats
3 – Doing the grocery shop
4 – Trying to cross the road
5 – Negotiating with a toddler
6 – Choosing from the menu in a restaurant
Now you have your character and scenario, those are your prompts. Be creative!
You can substitute the characters and scenarios for ones that you think will work better, or if you decide to use a number generator, you can even write a longer list to choose from.
You will notice that the scenarios are rather banal – that’s deliberate. I find that forcing yourself to write an entertaining piece about a common, everyday occurrence requires one to be more creative than if you already have an exciting, thrilling setup. Obviously, you may decide that you would rather have something a bit more interesting, so go for it!
Remember the rules:- Set yourself a time limit.
- Write without stopping, editing or overthinking.
- Write whatever comes to mind and don’t worry if it doesn’t make sense.
- It doesn’t matter if it has nothing to do with the scene that you are stuck on.
If you are a writer with a tip to share, or fancy writing a fictional interview between you and one of your characters, please feel free to email me.
Have fun,
Paul
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TuesdayTips198
TV review:
Cold Case Detectives.
Welcome to this week’s #TuesdayTip. This time it is a TV Review of ITVX’s Cold Case Detectives.
Recent decades have seen a proliferation in new investigative tools, especially those related to DNA analysis. Prior to the discovery of what is commonly known as DNA fingerprinting in 1984, many serious crimes were unsolved due to a lack of forensic evidence. That is now changing. In the UK, unsolved crimes such as murder, and other serious offences, are never closed. Instead the original evidence and samples are preserved and placed in storage, in the hope that one day new leads might surface that identify new suspects or even strengthen the case against existing suspects.
This has led to the formation of specialist ‘Cold Case Units’ that periodically review outstanding cases to see if there is anything that can be done to resurrect the investigation. With the advent of new technologies, even as memories fade and witnesses die, there remains a glimmer of hope that justice can finally be done. Even cases from the late 80s and 90s can be reopened as techniques that were in their infancy back then have evolved and matured to become usable on samples that were too small or degraded to analyse fully at the time.
ITVX’s Cold Case Detectives follows a team at South Wales Police who aim to do just that. A mixture of specialist serving officers and retired former detectives (some of whom have a personal connection to the original investigation) revisit cases that are decades old. This three-part series follows two cases in particular. The 60-year-old murder of a 6-year-old girl, Carol Ann Stephens, and a 40-year-old rape case. The documentary follows the team as they pore over the existing evidence and even identify new witnesses. The programme demonstrates how even with the passage of decades, these crimes still affect those involved. It is gratifying to see the passion of these detectives to bring the perpetrators to justice, or if that isn’t possible, to at least supply some answers to grieving relatives and traumatised victims. And there is a grim satisfaction to be had in seeing the face of somebody who has slept easy in recent years finally getting the knock on the door that they had assumed they had escaped.
I highly recommend this series for those interested in the application of state-of-the-art forensic techniques and modern detection methods on crimes committed long before those technologies were conceived.
The programmes are available to watch on ITVX. (https://www.itv.com/watch/cold-case-detectives/7a0172/7a0172a0001).
Do you have any recommendations for documentaries that are worth watching? As always, feel free to comment here or on social media.
Until next time,
Paul
If you are a writer with a tip to share, or fancy writing a fictional interview between you and one of your characters, please feel free to email me.
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TuesdayTips197
Say That Again.
Say That Again.
“Say that again. Say that again.”
No, I’m not offering you out for a fight behind the pub because of a perceived slight. Rather, today’s #TuesdayTip is a musing about the power of repetition.
As beginning writers, we are advised to avoid repetition. We should try not to use the same word or phrase more than once in close proximity. When editing, I’ve even spotted the use of short sentence such as way of describing a character, or a turn of phrase, more than once in different parts of a manuscript and changed at least one of those instances. At school, we are encouraged to use synonyms for adjectives or verbs, rather than using the same one repeatedly, so that our prose is more engaging and interesting to read.
My beta readers are especially good at spotting repetition, and I am grateful for their eagle-eyed attention.
But it occurs to me that repetition, when used correctly, can also be a very powerful stylistic tool. It can often add cadence and rhythm. Good orators use repetition as a way of emphasising a point.
It seems that to use a word or phrase twice looks weak, but three times or more is a conscious choice.
Take the following examples:She looked him in the eye. She could tell he wasn’t telling the truth.
“Why don’t you be honest?” she asked.
The silence stretched, as she waited for him to tell the truth.Here we see the word truth, or even a variation on the phrase ‘telling the truth’ used twice, very close together. I really found this hard to write, because I have been conditioned to view that type of repetition as sloppy and careless. My instinct is to change that last sentence to something like ‘she waited for him to come clean’.
Now look at this short paragraph.
“You are scared of admitting the truth. Because you are afraid that to admit the truth will be a sign of weakness. But you’re wrong, telling the truth is a sign of strength. The truth shows that you are moving on. The truth will set you free.”The word truth is used FIVE times. Yet, instead of feeling flat and repetitious, it adds emphasis and rhythm to the speech. As you read it, you subconsciously imagine the speaker’s voice rising in volume.
Other than the rather trite phrase ‘twice is careless, three times is a choice‘, there are no hard and fast rules. It’s difficult to codify when it feels wrong and when it feels right. All I can suggest is that where possible, try to use synonyms if a word or phrase crops up twice within a few paragraphs, or perhaps in the same circumstances (describing characters the same way more than once in different parts of a book), without tying yourself in knots and using unrealistically complicated vocabulary. However, if you decide to use a word or phrase three times or more as a stylistic choice, read the paragraph out loud (or get your computer to read it to you). The human ear is very good at picking up when something sounds ‘wrong’.
What are your thoughts on the repetition as a tool? As always, feel free to share your thoughts here or on social media.
Until next time,
Paul
If you are a writer with a tip to share, or fancy writing a fictional interview between you and one of your characters, please feel free to email me.
