Writing Tips (#TuesdayTips)
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TuesdayTips76
Book Review
On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft
by Stephen King
First of all, I have to start this book review with a bit of confession – I don’t read Stephen King!
The reason is quite simple, I’m not a fan of the horror genre. I have nothing against it; I’m not squeamish. I’m certainly not a snob. It just doesn’t do anything for me.
Yet I have the utmost respect for Stephen King, and his peers, such as Dean Koontz; craftsmen who can hook readers into their novels and leave them begging for more. King is an acknowledged master of the genre – but more importantly, he is a master of writing. Full stop. We can all learn something from him.
And so I dove into this book keen to learn more about this fascinating man and his remarkable talent.The book is a hybrid – part memoir, part tutorial.
The first half of the book is autobiographical.
King grew up in small-town America in the fifties and sixties; the story of his early life and burgeoning love of writing – any writing – is a candid and insightful view of what made him the man he is today. That tale alone is worth reading. Unfortunately, despite what it says on the cover image at the top of this page, the edition I have is the original from 2000, rather than the newly updated 20th anniversary edition, so only provides a snapshot of the first twenty-odd years of his career.The second part – on writing – is why this is a #TuesdayTip, rather than a #RecommendedRead.
King is a leader in the field and this book is his own unique perspective on how to go about writing. It’s told as a narrative, with an almost folksy approach. Rather than a text book (although it is used in degree courses all over the world), it is as if King is sitting down chatting to you about what he’s learned over the years. King taught high school English, and so even the most technical discussions about grammar, pace and structure are explained clearly for the non-specialist. The only assumption he makes is that you want to be a better writer.
The chances are that you won’t agree with everything in this book. I certainly didn’t. Some of the rules that he has found work for him, won’t work for you. But that’s OK. In fact it’s a good thing. Every writer is different – do what works for you. But exposure to diverse ideas is essential when honing your craft. I know that there are things that I have subconsciously absorbed when reading this book that will help me in the future.
An interesting and controversial view, that King states forcefully, is that too much plotting makes for a bad book. Many of his peers would vehemently disagree, and have produced masterful examples that disprove this theory. Yet it gives hope to those of us for whom plotting is a chore. But don’t let that put you off if your outline runs to hundreds of pages. There is still much to be valued in here, and reading about different approaches can help you hone your own method.Perhaps one of the nicest things about this book is the way that King’s love for his wife Tabitha – Tabby – runs throughout it. They met at college, and she has been his cheerleader, sounding-board, and fiercest critic throughout his career. In 2021, they celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary and it’s heart-warming when reading a book set twenty years ago to know that they are still going strong today.
The book finishes in 1999, a significant year in King’s life, after a careless driver nearly killed him. The final chapters describe the horrifying accident and its aftermath in a frank and detailed manner that befits a man who has made a career of torturing imaginary characters. Because of the endpoint, we don’t get to hear his views on eBooks, the rise of Amazon, self-publishing or the ubiquity of social media.
For that reason, I will endeavour to read the twentieth anniversary edition at some point, and continue the story of Tabitha and Stephen.
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TuesdayTips75
Timing It To Perfection.
Using Timelines In Your Planning.
I’m not a plotter.
I’ve said this before. I start a book with only the most basic of ideas about where it will be going and some key scenes. I also write out of sequence, typing scenes as they come to me, before stitching everything together in a logical order at the end.
Because of this, I don’t start a book with a detailed timeline – how could I? I have no idea what’s going to happen, let alone when!
But the keyword here is start I don’t start a book with a timeline, but I invariably have several by the time I have finished.
Why are timelines essential for police procedurals?
My books are split into sections with a day and date for each section. This is my personal stylistic choice and it works very well for me. Other writers may not mention the date at all; you have to start reading that next chapter for clues that a new day has dawned. Again, it works absolutely fine. However, even though that author has not explicitly written the date or the time, they probably have a pretty good idea when that chapter takes place. They may even have a detailed timeline.
Timelines serve multiple purposes.
They help you keep track of what different characters are doing.
Is DC Blogs doing three things simultaneously, whilst DC Doe hasn’t been seen or heard from for two days – an absence apparently unnoticed by all of the other characters (but most certainly noticed by Amazon reviewers)?
They maintain the story’s internal continuity.
One of the most useful things about timelines, is that they help you see at a glance logical inconsistencies. For example, your SIO can’t receive detailed forensic results for a crucial piece of evidence before they’ve found it and submitted it to the lab…
They make timings realistic.
I’ve written before about the custody clock (TuesdayTips#63) and alluded repeatedly to the time taken for results to come back from the lab. If you want to write an accurate police procedural, you need to keep timings in mind. Custody clocks start ticking the moment someone is arrested and they are inviolable, so make certain that your story takes this limitation into account. You can fudge the time taken for forensic results to come back from the lab to a degree – authorisation to ‘fast-track’ them as a priority, or a backlog at the lab can help you time your revelations to make the story dramatic, but there are limits. These days, with quick access to a modern crime lab, a simple crime scene and the budget and clout to push them through the system you may get DNA results overnight – a timeline helps you avoid stretching the limits of credibility. On a more basic level, if you need a character to be in Edinburgh in one scene and Cornwall in the next, leave enough time for them to travel there!
They help control pace.
Even the most blood-pounding thriller needs to give the readers (and the characters) time to catch their breath. Similarly, those beautifully written pieces that give vital character information, or fill-in crucial backstory, may be essential to the book, but tiresome to readers if they pick up a so-called crime thriller and the first fifty pages are all about the character’s missing pet.
I’ve heard of thriller writers colour coding scenes in their timeline according to the action and pace. From there, they can easily tell at a glance if they need to adjust things to keep readers hooked.
They help you spot redundancy/missing scenes.
A good timeline will have a descriptive title for each section; it will be almost like a table of contents. This means that you can see quite quickly if there is anything missing, or anything you can get rid of because it’s repetitious.
For example, in a serial killer book, things can become a little formulaic if you aren’t careful.
Person Killed –> Police Called –> SIO calls Forensics –> SIO attends autopsy –> Forensics find a clue –> etc etc etc.
A timeline can help you identify this and also highlight areas where there is redundancy. An autopsy would be an essential part of any investigation, but if there are five deaths, do you need to drag your reader to the morgue five times? Can later visits by the SIO be summarised or mentioned in passing?
They help you rearrange your book.
See all of the above! It’s also a Godsend for those of us who don’t plot, and write out of sequence. You can rearrange your timeline before you start cutting and pasting your chapters into a new draft of your document.
What sort of timelines might you use?
I have a number of different timelines for my books. The most common one is a day-by-day listing of the key events. This starts off pretty blank. For convenience, I tend to work out a starting date, so that I can pin events to this. To this timeline I add in some important dates, eg bank holidays, birthdays, clock changes, school holidays etc.
As I write the book, I find that I also build more detailed timelines for individual days. My current work in progress has several, ranging from the night of the murder and how it was planned, to the police’s investigation of a suspect’s alibi.
I also have a series timeline that places the books chronologically and notes key events. This helps me be consistent – for example I have a significant birthday that can’t be ignored during an upcoming book.
Tools for constructing a timeline using common Office programmes.
There are a plethora of programmes and writers aids available these days, many of which are highly recommended. I have yet to bite the bullet and install Scrivener (although I will be doing so in a few months). So instead I am going to make some suggestions based on my own experience using MS Office. Most of these functions are also available in comparable office suites, such as Google Docs.
The simplest way to do it is an Excel Spreadsheet: a column of dates, with a second column containing a description of events.
Excel has a lot of formatting options, so you can easily colour code your timeline. You can even add additional columns, such as which characters are in a scene.
A glaring limitation of Excel is that it won’t easily tell you the day of the week for a given date.
If you are confident coding in Excel, this link details how to have it calculate the day for you.
https://exceljet.net/excel-functions/excel-weekday-function
Of course, typing in all that data is a bit of a chore.
I have previously spoken about how useful a descriptive section heading is for navigating your Word document.
These descriptive headings will appear in the Navigation Pane if you have formatted them with one of the heading styles from the Style Gallery. If you go to the end of the document and insert a Table of Contents (found on the Reference Tab), these headers will be listed.
You can then copy and paste the TOC into Excel. Voila! All your section headings are in your spreadsheet, with each section heading on its own row.Excel is great, but it has its limitations. Most irritating is the fact that reorganising your timeline requires you to cut and paste and insert or delete empty rows, rather than dragging and dropping.
A different method that I heard about recently involves MS PowerPoint. You give each new scene its own slide. If you switch to Slide Sorter View, you can easily rearrange slides into whatever order you want. By using large enough fonts and colours etc, you can encode a lot of information into each slide. You can even write a summary of what happens, which will be a readable size if you double-click the slide to make it full screen.
A limitation is that you can’t easily export a table of contents from Word, so that each slide is a new row from the table of contents. However, if you are detailed planner, this might be the method for you.
What information would you include in a timeline?
Do you have any recommendations for simple methods for generating one?
Until next time,
Paul.
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TuesdayTips74
2b Or Not To Be.
Choosing The Correct Word.
On a recent visit to a museum, an information sign proclaimed that the castle that originally stood on that site had been “raised to the ground” in the 16th century. This seemed rather odd; unless it was originally subterranean and had been dragged to the surface. In which case, where was it now?
Of course the correct phrase should have been “razed to the ground“.
Before we start, let’s just make it clear that this blog post is not going to be poking fun at people for making incorrect word choices, or struggling with misheard common phrases. Indeed it would be very hypocritical.
Like many people, I struggle with homonyms. Homonyms (and homophones) are words with the same spelling but different meanings, or words that sound the same, but are spelt differently and have distinct meanings. The classic example is Their, There and They’re.
I am fortunate in that I actually know the differences between most common homonyms and can easily spot them when proof reading my writing or marking students’ work. However, when I am writing, I almost always pick the wrong word first time. Over the years, I’ve learned to immediately go back over sentences and check the usage and correct as necessary and final versions rarely have errors. I liken it to choosing words blindly from a high shelf. I get to the word and pick one of the choices from the shelf at random. When I finish the sentence, I have to go back and double-check I picked the correct one.
The second problem that many people have is related to phrases. This is often because they are so commonly misused in every day life that we just blindly say or write them without thinking. Or the phrase was slightly misheard – “raised to the ground” is a good example.
An especially tricky subset of this problem is knowing when to use the verb form or noun form of a word (and knowing what that even means! I am a product of the Tory government’s disastrous decision in the 80s to not explicitly teach grammar, so I really struggle with this).
Examples of this would be when to use “Licence” or “License“.
“Practice” or “practise“?
The problem with all these examples, is that a basic spell checker wouldn’t pick up these as errors. All these words are correctly spelled. The latest versions of MS Word now have intelligent grammar checkers, that will place a blue squiggly line under these words, and flag a possible “incorrect word choice”, but it’s far from perfect and doesn’t actually correct it for you.
So how can you minimise these errors in your writing?
Fortunately, there are a lot of resources out there that can help.
The simplest thing to do is simply ask Google.
After reading the sign at the museum and thinking it didn’t look right, I simply Googled.
‘raised to the ground’ OR ‘razed to the ground’
I received lots of hits and was able to confirm that my instinct was correct.
Similarly, ‘Licence’ OR ‘License’ will produce dozens of pages that seek to explain the difference, or even furnish you with helpful mnemonics to remember the correct usage.
A real gem of a website is
https://writingexplained.org/confusing-words
This lists in alphabetical order thousands of commonly confused words.
Public Health Warning:
It’s important to remember that US English and UK English can often be different. A great example is
Tyre vs Tire
(https://writingexplained.org/tyre-vs-tire-difference)
As the website helpfully highlights further down the article, tyre is the traditional UK spelling for the rubber surround on a wheel.
Both UK and US writers use tire for fatigue – e.g. I am beginning to tire.
Americans use tire for both meanings.
If it’s unclear from the website if it is US or UK English, try typing one of the variants into Google – perhaps in a very simple sentence fragment – and seeing if it returns hits from trusted UK websites such as the BBC or The Guardian or even gov.uk. As always, try and find a couple of examples to be certain.What words do you find especially tricky?
Have you any suggestions for how to choose the correct word or phrase?
As always, feel free to comment here or on social media.
Until next time,
Paul
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TuesdayTips73
Styling It Out
Using Style Guides.
Here’s a little activity for you. Pick several different books off your bookshelf, written by different authors and published by different publishers. Read the first chapter, paying particular notice to the spelling and grammar. What do you notice?
The chances are, that if you look carefully enough, you will notice some inconsistencies.
The differences are small. For example, look at the use of possessive apostrophes for names ending in the letter S.
Do the they follow the traditional UK English rule of a single apostrophe, for example.
Warren Jones‘ car.
Or do they use the traditional American English convention of apostrophe S? e.g
Warren Jones‘s car.Do they use an S or a Z in words like fantasise or fantasize?
Do verbs end in t or ed?
He leant against the table
He leaned against the table?The chances are that you were taught some rules of grammar and punctuation at school that you have seen ‘broken’ by writers in your favourite books.
The most obvious ones can be chalked up to differences between UK English and American English. For example colour or color, but even in two books published in UK English, there maybe differences between books from different publishers.
This isn’t down to sloppy editing, rather the publishers have their own style guides. Essentially, these are manuals used by publishing houses to ensure consistency across their titles.
The English language is governed by a lot of small rules, but not all of these rules were written down. The language is a living, breathing construct, and has evolved organically over many decades, and with thousands of new words being coined every year, common usage isn’t always common!
When I was at school in the eighties, I was taught to enclose speech with double quotation marks (“) and if the person speaking quotes somebody else, to enclose the quotation with single (‘) quotation marks.
“She told me to ‘go away‘,“ said Warren.I still follow that rule when writing. However, my copy editors change this to
‘She told me to “go away“,‘ said Warren.This is because it is the HarperCollins preferred style.
Similarly, HC prefer ‘he leaned against the table’. However, other publishers prefer ‘he leant against the table’.
A few years ago, my original publisher was bought by HarperCollins. My first four books used the traditional UK rule for apostrophes after names ending in S. But when I received the copy edits for my first book written under HC, I was taken aback to realise that all the Instances of Jones‘ had been changed to Jones‘s. I queried this and they agreed to keep the original form so that my books are consistent.
These changes may seem small and inconsequential, and the job of the copy editor is to ‘correct’ these errors, but I am a bit of a pedant, and I like to hand in a manuscript that will require as few changes as possible – it’s easier for everyone. So I asked for a copy of the style guide. It has been really useful.
The document runs to several dozen pages and covers everything from preferred spellings (e.g. S or Z), when to use hyphens (–), en dashes (–) or em dashes (—) and ellipses (…), when to spell out numbers or write them as figures and how to write dates and times or units of measurement. There are also guidelines for when to italicise foreign words, titles of publications and place names, as well as how to abbreviate, for example, Professor can be written as Prof. or Prof (no full stop).If you are writing for a publisher, then I recommend asking your editor for a copy of their style guide.
If you are self-publishing, or haven’t yet got a publisher in mind, I suggest searching the internet for a style guide and then sticking with it. It looks more professional. Ultimately, there is no right or wrong style, so pick one that you like, that suits the style of document (technical writing is different to fiction), and be consistent. Also, decide if you want to use UK or American English (or Australian or Canadian etc).
This Wikipedia page has a list of common style guides.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_style_guidesEnglish is an evolving language.
The style guide I use is a few years old. Therefore, it doesn’t cover everything, particularly more modern words and phrases.
So sometimes it is necessary to do a bit of research.
The Guardian and Observer newspaper have a useful online guide for quick reference.
https://www.theguardian.com/guardian-observer-style-guide-a
Sometimes, finding a publication using the word or phrase you want to use in context can answer a quick query. Wikipedia can be useful, but bear in mind that many of the content editors are American. The BBC is also a good source, but take care – I’m sad to say that like many journalistic sources, they have cut back on their editors to save money, and early drafts of a story sometimes contain typos and other errors. As a basic rule, Google what you are looking for and then check several different sources.Trademarks and Capitalisation.
My internet search history would baffle anyone who doesn’t know that I am a writer. In amongst the searches for technical details about decomposition of dead bodies, there are visits to McVitie’s’ home page (to look up the correct capitalisation of Jaffa Cakes) and the Wikipedia page for Pritt Stick to do the same. I always double-check names of businesses and trademarks – you’d be surprised just how many that you think you know are actually spelled or punctuated differently. Classic examples are the supermarkets. Tesco (not Tescos, despite most people I know adding the S when they say the word out loud) and Sainsbury‘s (note the apostrophe). Morrisons, doesn’t have an apostrophe.Next week, I will continue this theme by looking at how to select the correct homonym, how to choose the correct wording for commonly misused phrases and list some resources for choosing when to use different spellings eg licence and license or practice and practise.
Do you have a preferred style guide?
Feel free to comment below.
Until next time, take care,
Paul
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TuesdayTips72
Chopping The Count
Excising Invisible Words
A few weeks ago, I typed ‘The End’ on next summer’s DCI Warren Jones. As any published author will tell you, that’s only the first step in a long journey between your Word document and the bookshelf.
I knew as I wrote it, that this would be a big first draft. The nature of the story was such that it had many individual components. Because I write out of sequence, I find it easier to write each component individually, and then stitch them all together at the end.
For that reason, I wasn’t overly concerned when the word count surpassed 160,000. For comparison, my full-length novels are probably in the upper half of the genre’s typical length, and their word count is between 120 and 130,000.
Getting rid of 25,000 words wasn’t that hard. Writing each component separately meant there was a lot of easy to identify overlap, for example, scenes common to each part. I only need to describe them in detail once. Subsequent retellings can be pared down to a paragraph, or even just a mention that it took place. As previously described [TuesdayTips 27, 28, 29 & 30], some darlings needed to be killed. Other scenes that weren’t strictly necessary for the plot, but gave good character development, were cut and saved for a later book.
But I still needed to trim at least 5,000 words. My beta-readers were really helpful here. They identified some repetitive phrases, found some more scenes that could be lost without impacting the story, and highlighted some overly verbose sentences.
I was now down to 133k.
Time to roll up my sleeves, save a new copy of the document, and start editing every sentence. But before I did that, I could easily remove some excess baggage.
Excising invisible words.
All writers have their own unique style. But within that, there are inevitably some bad habits. I will state with great confidence that even the world’s greatest authors, famed for their beautiful prose, have at least some bad and sloppy writing habits that had to be fished out in the edits.
One of those habits is the over-use of certain words and phrases. We’re all different, but we all do it. In these days of Find and Replace, it’s not hard to find the eight uses of “misconception” scattered through the document and swap a few of them for other synonyms. But how do you know which words you over-use? Often these words are invisible to you; verbal ticks if you like. A good editor will probably notice some of them and tell you before your readers see the finished product, but why not get rid of them now? You may even trim the word count a little more!
There are a number of online tools that can help with this. All you do is copy your manuscript into a text box and the program will churn through and count every instance of a word. Some of the more sophisticated ones are capable of identifying phrases. I like https://countwordsfree.com/. For ease of use, I copied the output table into a spreadsheet, so I could play with it a little more.
The first couple of dozen words listed contain few surprises. In my books, “Warren” appears rather a lot (1154 times). But so do others, such as “have” (897), “with” (888), “they” (808), “from” (506) etc. There’s not a lot you can do here.
But after that, there are other words that are less common and more likely to be a quirk of your own writing style.
For me, they would include “nonetheless” or “interjected”.
I can find these easily and replace or delete them.
Then there are the really invisible words, and you’d be amazed how many are unnecessary. The word that shocked me most was “that”.
It appeared a whopping 2,430 times in my document!
Of course, it’s a very useful word. But it can also be a superfluous word.“What happened when you told her that she was under arrest?”
“What happened when you told her she was under arrest?”Would you notice the difference when reading, especially since it is in dialogue? You can’t do a blanket edit and delete them all, but you’d be amazed how many you can excise.
I removed over 800 – that’s one in three!
Even better, I found that revisiting those sentences to remove that, without screwing it up, identified other opportunities to tighten the prose. It took a couple of hours, but by the time I finished, the wordcount was reduced by about a 1,000.
A similar trick with “just” removed another 60.There are other invisible words that can also disappear. For example the word “a”. Now I’m not going to suggest that you identify every instance of “a” in your manuscript – there’s a reason these tools have a filter for smaller words! But as you tighten a sentence, ask if it’s necessary.
Here’s one I tweaked recently.“There were a lot of gaps that needed filling”
“There were lots of gaps that needed filling.”Swap the “a” as a standalone word, for an “s” on the end of lot, and you’ve lost another word!
What about “and”?
Can you replace it with commas? Can you join two sentences with a semicolon?
Although a chore, reducing word count is sometimes necessary to keep your publisher happy. It also has the added bonus that it can make the narrative more punchy, which is especially useful for fast-paced, thrilling scenes.
Caveat.
It’s easy to get carried away (not too carried away, that’s a tautology, so you don’t need the word “too” 🤣). I go by the rule that my narrator can be as concise and efficient as needed, but that for dialogue, you need to consider how people would speak in real life.Do you have any tricks or tips that you use to reduce your word count?
Feel free to comment below, or on social media.
All the best, Paul.
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TuesdayTips71
Nice To Meet You Again!
Writing Returning Characters.
One of the fun things about writing a series is revisiting characters that you’ve written about before.
It’s also one of the reasons that readers will return to an author (and why publishers love a series!). I have a number of favourite authors whose latest novels will always find their way into my shopping cart. In part, it’s because they’ve proven to me in the past that they can tell a good story, but I am also keen to check in and see how my ‘friends’ are doing in their latest outing.
It’s natural for a writer of a named series to assume that the person the series are named after is the one that readers will connect with the most and to expend the most creative effort in crafting this character. But that isn’t always the case. I’ve written before about M.W. Craven’s Washington Poe series – Poe is a terrific character, but there are a large number of readers for whom the most enjoyable parts of the books are those featuring his sidekick Tilly Bradshaw.
So for that reason, it’s worth putting some thought into secondary characters beyond the main protagonist(s).These recurring characters can be broadly divided into two groups.
Those that appear in each book and those that appear infrequently, when I need them.
Characters in every book.
For my DCI Warren Jones series, I have a regular cast of characters that appear in pretty much every book. Warren and his team at Middlesbury CID and his immediate family are series staples. Therefore, it’s worth putting some time into these characters. Don’t simply make them a foil for your lead, give them personalities and a life of their own.
It is normal for a lead character to evolve and change over time. The events in one book may have lasting repercussions for example. But don’t forget to consider others. I’ve written before (Tuesday Tip 39) about how keeping notes on regular characters is important. They will age, they will go through life changes and given that they are probably working alongside the lead during the crises that they face, they too will be impacted by traumatic events.
Infrequent characters.
As my series has progressed, I also have a few regulars that crop up periodically. For example, I have a civilian Digital Forensics specialist who pops up whenever they need a laptop or a phone unlocking. Pete Robertson typically only has a few lines, and in some books is sometimes only referenced, but over the series we learn nuggets about him. For example, he is extremely tall and thin – almost as though he has been stretched – yet he somehow squeezes into a tiny office without ever knocking equipment flying. We find out in passing that he is gay. It’s not really part of a story, but it makes him a little more rounded; maybe it will be important one day, maybe it won’t.
In one of the novellas, At First Glance, I needed an officer of similar rank to Warren working on the drugs squad. Lo and behold, I suddenly found I needed him again a couple of books later. He’ll be crucial in my two next books, so I now know his family background.
In next summer’s book (number eight), I bring back a character that hasn’t been seen since book two, about seven years previously. It wasn’t a conscious plan, I just realised as I was writing a scene that the as-yet-unnamed officer delivering a briefing played a similar role to a junior officer that worked with the team in the earlier book. I went back to the original manuscript and found their name. Given the number of years that had passed, I decided she was due a promotion and was now a specialist with additional expertise. As a bonus, I didn’t have to think up another new name!
The pitfalls of regular characters.
Something that writers need to think about when bringing somebody back is how much space to devote to reminding readers who they are, or introducing them to new readers. It can be a bit of a balancing act.
Similarly, will their appearance potentially spoil earlier books in the series? A few posts back (Tuesday Tip 52) I wrote about how there is always the risk that big plot developments in earlier books can lose their impact if their resolution is referenced in later books. Many readers new to a series read them out of sequence, so if PC Blogs is very clearly alive in book seven, they obviously survived being stabbed in book five. Consequently, you may wish to reconsider if you want to bring back an infrequently used character if it robs that earlier story of its tension.
Bringing back a villain or previous suspect might be even more dangerous. If character X is a key murder suspect throughout book four, then having them out and about in next year’s book indicates that they were probably a red herring in book 4!Do you have any favourite recurring series characters?
As always, feel free to comment here or on social media.
Until we meet again,
best wishes, Paul.
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TuesdayTips70
Getting It Right.
Writing Science Comfortably.
“I’m playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order.”
The comedian Eric Morecombe’s famous retort to the conductor Andre Previn, when his attempts at playing a concert piano fail dismally during the 1971 Morecombe and Wise Christmas special, have passed into TV legend.
Unfortunately, I often find myself wincing when reading the attempts of a writer without a scientific background to convey complex scientific ideas to their readers. I paraphrase Morecombe’s famous catch-phrase thus:
“I’m using all the right scientific vocabulary, but not necessarily in the right order.”
Now, first of all, I want to make it clear that this is not going to be a cheap shot at writers who get it wrong. I’m a science teacher – I spend my professional life helping others understand science, so it would be deeply hypocritical of me to laugh at another’s expense. Besides which, I’m sure there are plenty of police officers and other specialists who read my books and shake their heads.
From what I have observed, there are two ways in which the science in books can fall down.
Knowledge and Understanding. Leaving aside the complexities of modern forensics, a story that requires scientific concepts for the plot to work can suffer if the writer is unsure of the basics. This is equally true whether the story is grounded in reality, or whether it is an ‘extrapolation’ of existing science. A tale about future applications of genetics might be largely fantasy, but it will still fall apart if the author muddles up how DNA works with how proteins are formed. The pseudoscience rattled off in Star Trek always worked best when the writer had a basic grounding in physics, even if the warp drive or the transporter don’t really exist.
Comfortably writing the science. Whether it is in dialogue or prose, all too often a writer will “Use all the right scientific vocabulary, but not necessarily in the right order.” The result feels and sounds clunky. It’s a bit like writing a scene set in a foreign land using Google Translate and an out-of-date guidebook. The moment anyone with any knowledge at all of the place reads it, it will come across as fake.
The key to avoiding this trap is research and expert help. Both of these sound scary, and difficult, but they don’t have to be.
First of all, knowledge and understanding:
You don’t have to become an expert on a subject to make your characters sound realistic. The first thing to do is make sure you understand the basics.
For example, lets assume you are writing about DNA. It could be because your plot centres on a DNA match in a police procedural, or because your lead character is a genetically enhanced super-soldier two hundred years in the future. Understanding the basic principles of what DNA is (and isn’t) to the level expected of a secondary school pupil will usually give you a sufficient grounding before you delve a bit deeper for your book.
I am going to recommend one of the best resources on the web – BBC Bitesize. We use it all the time in school and I regularly recommend pupils peruse it.
Simply Google “BBC Bitesize” and the broad topic that you are writing about (eg genetics) and the top hits are likely to be what you are looking for.
For a bit more in-depth knowledge, there are lots of webpages that cater for writers wanting to know something about a topic – again, try using Google and appending “for writers” or “the basics” or “for beginners” to the search.
If you want a handy go-to guide, then there are lots of books. A series that I particularly like is the “XXXXXX: A Very Short Introduction“, where XXXXXX is the topic. These are pocket-sized books written by experts in the field and very digestible. I have several, including the Forensic Science edition by Jim Fraser.
YouTube is also a useful source of educational videos. Try putting “KS4” or “GCSE” or “Grade School” (the term used in the United States) into the search terms to limit the results to those pitched at school pupils. Again, I use these when teaching.
The next hurdle is making the science sound comfortable.
This is where you should try and enlist an ‘expert’. You can certainly try emailing a leader in the field – they will often reply; they typically love their subject and want it to be portrayed correctly. If they do reply, you could see if they would be willing to proof read some of your text to see if it sounds right to their ears. BUT DON’T SEND THEM THE WHOLE MANUSCRIPT. They aren’t going to thank you if a 100,000 word tome lands in their inbox. Instead, be choosy. Send them short extracts – perhaps a conversation, or a couple of paragraphs of explanation. Be sure to tell them what to expect – if they don’t realise that your book is set fifty years from now, or is speculative, they are just going to tell you it’s fantasy and dismiss it out of hand.
If that all sounds a bit daunting, then do you know any science teachers? We are used to reading complex text and making it accessible to learners, as well as spotting common errors and misconceptions.
Finally, there is social media. There are plenty of forums on Facebook with experts happy to answer questions. But again, don’t expect them to proof-read your book. Send them the premise or selected passages.
Finally, don’t despair if you get something wrong. Most readers aren’t experts, and if the book is well-written then they almost certainly won’t spot it. Two books that I have read in the past twelve months involved DNA/Genetics. One dealt with the subject extremely well, the other had a couple of dodgy sentences where the author had used the wrong words. My enjoyment of the latter wasn’t ruined, and I still happily recommend it to others.
Do you find writing science daunting? Are there any good guides that you use?
As always, feel free to comment here or on social media.
Until next time,
Paul.
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TuesdayTips69
#69 I’m Sorry, I’ll Record That Again.
Making Books Suitable For Audio Narration.
To celebrate the release of DCI Warren Jones, Out of Sight, as paperback and audiobook, I decided it would be a great time to sit down with Malk Williams, my long-time audio narrator, and have a chat about what it takes to turn a novel into an audiobook.
The full conversation was kindly hosted live on the Facebook page of UK Crime Book Club and is archived on their YouTube page. You can watch the whole thing here, and hear some of Malk’s favourite accents, as well as some of his stories about being a narrator.
But as this is a #TuesdayTip, I have distilled some key bits of advice from this conversation, plus other tips that I’ve picked up in previous chats with Malk.Why Have Your Books Narrated?
Over the past few years, audiobooks have increased massively in popularity. Once seen as a niche market, increasing numbers of people have been turning to them when commuting, or as a way to while away the hours when doing other things, such as housework. Audible is owned by Amazon and books are often synced with the Kindle version of the novel, allowing readers to switch seamlessly between reading and listening. Depending on the price-point that the royalties for eBooks and audiobooks have been set to, audiobooks often come with a greater revenue cut. Although, it should be noted that the higher price of audiobooks is in part necessary to recoup the additional costs needed to produce the recording.
How Is It Done?
As with everything these days, authors can in theory create the audiobook themselves. But it should be noted that to create a professional-sounding recording, you will need a decent microphone setup, somewhere that can act as a soundproof booth, and appropriate editing software. Furthermore, you really need to consider paying for an editor, and that reading for twelve to sixteen hours takes its toll (a decent-sized novel might take a couple of weeks of full days)! Furthermore, not everyone’s voice is suited to reading aloud. Audio narrators are skilled professionals.
The process itself is somewhat more complex than it may seem – it isn’t just a case of sitting in a sound-proofed room, pressing record and reading. The specialist software is needed to help you edit out mistakes, balance sound levels so that each chapter is a consistent volume, and artefacts such as throat clearing or fluffed words are removed. The finished recording typically consists of a number of individual sound files – one for each chapter – which then need to be correctly packaged.
For most writers, paying a professional is the most sensible route to go down. In the same way that self-published books where the author has designed the cover themselves, edited it themselves and typeset and formatted the eBook/paperback, tend to stand out and look amateurish, self-recorded audiobooks are similarly difficult to produce. It’s up to you to decide if the investment is worth it, but if you are serious about producing a polished, professional product that will turn a profit, you need to think about hiring professionals. See the section below for more information about how you can get your books narrated.
The process.
There are several steps of which reading the text aloud is only one.
A typical work flow might look like this:
Pre-reading. The narrator reads through the manuscript. They make notes about which voices they will need to do, identify words that they need to verify the pronunciation for, and think about accents. Malk sometimes contacts me here.
Read each chapter and record it as a separate MP3 file. If they are working with a producer, they may send each chapter to them as it is completed.
First pass editing. Experienced narrators will probably do this themselves. They make sure there are no obvious errors and it all sounds even and clear. Often the narrator will pick up an error as they are reading. They can mark the error by clapping and continue reading (this creates a spike in the waveform, that can be easily located later) or they can “punch and roll”, where they press a button and the software rolls back a few seconds, so they pick up the narration before the error and just record over the mistake and continue.
Proofreading. Just like writers, narrators can miss small errors. The proofreader will return corrections, which the narrator re-records. An editor will then insert these corrections into the audio file, as well as cut out background noises or coughs and other artefacts and unnecessary pauses.
Mastering. Here the volume etc is balanced across the files so chapter one isn’t louder than chapter two etc.Dos And Don’ts.
(or how to be kind to your narrator!)
When I started writing my DCI Warren Jones series, audio narration wasn’t something I had ever considered. I was four books into the series before it was even mentioned. With the benefit of hindsight, there are things I would have done differently.- The biggest error I made, was failing to mention until several books in that one of my characters has a distinctive regional accent. I knew from book one that DS David Hutchinson was a Geordie from Newcastle. But I somehow neglected to write this down until a third of the way through book 5! Obviously, it was too late to correct this. I managed to get around this by mentioning in subsequent books that he’d spent most of his adult life in the Hertfordshire, and so his accent has been buried, only to resurface after a few pints or if he has been watching Newcastle United playing football. Malk and I still laugh about this now 🤣. If you can, give some clues early in the text as to how you’d like the character to sound. That way, they’ll sound the way you want them to off the bat.
- Don’t give the killer dialogue in the prologue! It seems obvious, but your narrator will have to speak that dialogue in the killer’s voice, giving away their identity on page one! I dodged this bullet after a chance conversation with Malk – I subsequently rewrote the prologue of the book I was about to submit, so the killer’s identity was concealed.
- Another classic error from that first book was including a load of data in a table! The team had the phone records for a number of unknown mobile phones, which they were using to construct links between different people. This is a commonly used data analysis technique and reproducing the table for readers seemed like a sensible thing to do. It worked beautifully for the eBook and the paperback – but presented a challenge for Malk when he narrated! Fortunately, he has a background as a technical writer and so was able to succinctly describe the table for listeners, but it could have gone horribly wrong. Narrators are often asked to record textbooks etc so they can describe graphs, images or tables, but if you need visual data in your book, consider writing a few lines of description for your narrator to read out – they’ll appreciate it!
- A final faux pas from that book was the inclusion of a written note by a person with dyslexia. The text on the page was spelled phonetically, with the incorrect use of some homonyms (words that sound the same, but are spelt differently with different meanings – eg there and their or bear and bare) and it was obvious to the reader that the writer was dyslexic. Fortunately, my forensic linguist character discussed the note in detail, so listeners didn’t miss anything. If I do anything similar in future books, I will have to put some thought into how my narrator can make it obvious to the listener, without me patronising readers.
- Read your manuscript aloud to yourself. It’s amazing how we often read what we think we wrote, not what we actually typed! Reading aloud will pick up many of these mistakes, and so is good for editing generally. But it also highlights tricky sentences with complex punctuation – whilst a five-line sentence may be grammatically correct, will your narrator actually be able to read it aloud in one breath!
- Finally, emojis. These are available in character sets for printed material now. Malk assures me that he can deal with them, by reading a sentence and describing the relevant emoji eg “I’d hate for something to happen to you 😉” would be spoken as “I’d hate for something to happen to you, winking emoji”.
How Can You Get Your Books Narrated?
If you decide that you would like your books narrated, then there are a few steps you can take.- First, make sure you possess the legal rights to audio narration. If you have been published by a publishing house, check your contract. You may have granted the rights to audio narration etc to the publishing house, in which case you would need their permission to record the book. When signing a new contract, look at the terms – get it checked by a lawyer or join the Society of Authors and get them to vet the contract. If the publishing house is a large one, and they have already produced audiobooks of other authors’ work, then you might be better off speaking to them about whether they would be willing to have them recorded (that way, they’ll pay for everything!). If you are independently published, then you probably own all your rights, so there’s no need for permission.
- Once you have the rights secured, you will need to choose a narrator. ACX is the talent exchange owned by Audible, but others exist. They have a database of performers that you can search to find a match that suits your book. They detail their skills and availability, list previous books that they have worked on and have samples that you can listen to.
- If you are looking for specialists in the British crime genre, there is a newly formed collective of experienced, award-winning narrators. Malk Williams, my long-time narrator, is a founding member, but between them they have contacts for most of the narrators working in the UK. Check out www.raconteurs.co.uk.
- Payment methods vary. You can pay them a one-off upfront fee, or you can enter into a royalty-share agreement, whereby they get a cut of the royalties earned. As you can appreciate, this is a gamble for them – if the book doesn’t sell, they won’t get paid, so don’t be disappointed if they want some sort of fixed-payment upfront to cover the time they will be investing. A novel may take two to four weeks to record and is a full-time job, meaning they can’t do other paid work. If you register your book for PLR (the payment system for UK library loans), they will typically get a share of that also.
How Can You Get Into Audio Narration?
If you fancy getting into audio narration, be warned that it isn’t for everyone. I know a couple of voice actors who steer clear of audiobooks. They’ve done them, but didn’t especially enjoy the experience.
Malk cites the voiceover coach Sean Allen Pratt (paraphrased):
If you think audiobook narration might be for you, then go and sit in a cupboard. Choose a book to read. Start at the beginning. If you make a mistake, go back to the beginning of the sentence and start again. If you come across a word you are unsure of, stop and look up the pronunciation online – don’t guess. Continue reading for several hours. Do that for several days in a row, until you’ve finished. If you haven’t gone mad by the end of it, then maybe the job is for you.
To get work, you should record some samples and post them on ACX or similar.
When you have recorded a few books, then you may be able to apply to join a production company, whose casting directors might put you on their books and start contacting you, rather than the other way around.
As with anything in life, professionalism is key. Don’t over commit to unrealistic deadlines. Make sure you are clear about any limitations (eg if you can’t do Scottish accents, say so upfront, don’t embarrass yourself and the writer). Keep a portfolio of work you are proud of.
It’s also worth noting that at the moment, because of Covid, the market is saturated with out-of-work stage and screen actors.
Home-based narrators with their own studios, like Malk, were fortunate during Covid to be able to continue working, however, you don’t need to commit to that sort of outlay. You can hire studio space as well as editors and producers.
Your Voice Is Your Tool.
Like all professionals, you need to take care of your work equipment – namely your voice.- When I started my teacher training, we were taught how to look after our voices. For example, if you need to speak at high volume, practise this (there are tutorials on YouTube) – otherwise you can strain your vocal cords.
- Keep your voice well-lubricated. For example take regular sips from a bottle of TEPID water (cold can constrict the vocal cords) – use a bottle with a screw lid, not a glass, to avoid any expensive accidents!
- Take regular breaks when you try not to speak for a while – your vocal cords are muscles and will need periodic rests.
- Try not to start recording “from cold” eg as soon as you wake up. Speak a bit to loosen your vocal cords before recording, otherwise the pitch might change as the muscles warm up.
- Some suggest that coffee might dry your mouth, but it’s not an issue that Malk has ever found a problem.
- If your voice is feeling scratchy, try a spoon full of manuca honey to soothe your throat.
So there you are. I have been delighted with my audiobooks, I love them! There is something special about hearing a skilled professional like Malk bringing my characters to life. Even if you aren’t considering having your books recorded, I hope you’ve learned something and please do check out the video, Malk is an entertaining speaker.
Until next time,
Best wishes,
Paul.
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#OutOfOffice
Out Of Office
I shall be taking a short break to enjoy the sun, catch up on my reading, and attempt to meet my deadline! 🩳🍦🍹#TuesdayTips will return soon.In the meantime, why not browse the archive?
See you soon!
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TuesdayTips68
A Prox On You!
Using Characters As A Substitute For The Reader.
How do you get your characters to explain what they know to your readers without making a team of highly trained specialists sound like a bunch of simpletons?
More specifically, how do you impart backstory and key information to your readers, without pages of dry text?
How can you explain a character’s thought processes, without reams of inner monologue?
How can you show not tell?
This is where a character that acts as a proxy for the reader can be useful. Their job is to tease information out of others in a natural, dialogue-driven fashion.Great examples of this exist on TV. In the series Arrow, based on the DC comic book, there is a character called Felicity, invented specifically for the TV series. In addition to being an essential character in her own right, she serves two very important roles.
1) She is a confidante of Oliver McQueen, the main protagonist. Because of this, he explains his decisions to her – and by extension the viewer.
2) She is in charge of the series’ technical wizardry, meaning that she has to explain (and justify) what she is doing in simple terms, again informing the viewer.In this example, the role of the proxy is a two-way street. By listening in to their conversation, the viewers find out why Oliver decided (imprudently) to enter a warehouse alone and blow stuff up, and just what Felicity is doing as she rattles away at her keyboard, perched in front of her screens of baffling data. Without Felicity, the viewer would be left guessing, or in need of voice over detailing the characters’ inner monologues.
The role of the proxy has a long history in literature. Dr Watson serves this role for Sherlock Holmes. In addition to being his chronicler, Watson famously needs Sherlock to explain his deductions to him, and thus the reader. Captain Hastings performs the same job in Agatha Christie’s Poirot series.
But it doesn’t need to be a subservient role.
M.W. Craven’s Washington Poe series features the wonderful Tilly. Although Poe is technically in charge, this is a much more equitable partnership. Poe is a self-confessed technical dunce, requiring Tilly to explain the complexities of modern electronic policing to him. In return, Tilly is wonderfully socially inept and naïve, often not picking up on social cues or spotting subtle clues, forcing Poe to explain what he has just observed and its meaning to the readers. All done hilariously, I might add.
But what are the pitfalls?
There can be a fine line between the proxy character and the ‘data dump’ character. Or the ‘character invented for the slow of thinking’.
The proxy character MUST have a legitimate reason to exist, or they risk becoming a parody. There have been many poorly conceived characters in TV especially who would appear to have been inserted as an afterthought when the script is too complicated. They literally stand in the background doing pretty much nothing, until something needs explaining to the reader, when they step forward and ask a dumb question that requires a lengthy explanation. They are a walking footnote.
In the aforementioned Arrow, Felicity was initially conceived as a guest role. Yet she became an integral part of the series’ entire run. In addition to a complex relationship with Oliver, she brings a lot of humour and is sometimes the moral centre of the show.
The role is not a fixed position.
One way to avoid labelling a single character as ‘the data dump’ person, is to spread the load. In the Washington Poe series, Tilly and Poe serve different roles. They are both essentiall to the series. Many of Craven’s legions of fans would find it hard to envisage Poe without Tilly.
In a book, it is possible to switch the role of proxy between individuals as necessary. Below I list some useful characters that can act as proxy. I also describe some ways to make an existing character serve the role as proxy. Although I have focused on crime writing, you can hopefully see how this is relevant to any genre.
Examples or role.
Junior officer.
This is one of the most common examples. The hierarchical nature of the police means that a more senior officer will often impart instructions. They might then need to explain in more detail what they are looking for. Alternately, they might need to show a less experienced colleague a new skill or explain the significance of what has just occurred.
Pitfalls: This is easy to over-use. Beware of making them seem ignorant to the point of incompetence, or the senior officer patronising. And accept that sometimes, you just have to give the reader the information in prose not dialogue – neither officer is going to say, “they have a record on the PNC, the Police National Computer” – all police officers will know what the PNC is – you will need to tell the reader this directly.
Senior officer.
Keeping their boss in the loop or justifying their behaviour is a way of bringing your character’s thought processes and reasoning into the open.
Specialist.
They are the most obvious way to explain complex ideas – they can be an outside expert (eg a solicitor from the Crown Prosecution Service describing what they need to authorise charging someone, or a forensic expert interpreting blood spatter), or they could be part of your existing team. I have a couple: DS Mags Richardson liaises with the Video Analysis Unit and DS Rachel Pymm is in charge of the HOLMES case management database. Both have to explain to other officers (and thus the reader) what they are doing.
Non-police character.
The police have an obligation to keep victims and suspects informed of what is happening to them. You can use that to your advantages – have somebody sit down with a victim and explain what is going to happen next, or outline what they think might have happened to their loved one. For suspects, read them their rights. Have their solicitor translate what it means for their client. Be clear in the interview.
Tricks you can use.
Make your protagonist slightly dumb.
Washington Poe is a technological ignoramus – he needs Tilly to help him.
Make them relay their actions over a radio channel.
If your protagonist is deciding whether or not to enter a building, they can talk through the pros and cons over the radio; they will need to describe what they are seeing, rather than just rushing in, or staying outside for reasons that are unclear to the reader..
Have somebody miss something previously and so need it explaining in context.
Rest days, toilet breaks, an old case, there are plenty of reasons a character might be ignorant of something others in the book would be expected to know, but which needs explaining to the reader.
Have a character express their ideas poorly, requiring them to repeat themselves again more clearly.
An incomplete, rushed explanation from an excited character, which colleagues ask them to ‘repeat that again in English’ is an opportunity to expand on their resoning.
Final thought
Proxies are not the sole answer; you still need to supplement them with prose. Sometimes, there is no realistic way to use a proxy, if all the characters in a scene would be expected to know what is going on. A close-knit team working together for hours or days will speak in shorthand or assume that when they announce that an ARV full of AFOs is three minutes out, their colleagues understand that they mean an armed response vehicle with authorised firearms officers is three minutes from arriving on the scene.Do you use proxy characters in your stories? What are your favourite examples in TV or books?
As always, feel free to comment here or on social media.
Take care,
Paul.
