Mistakes Writers Make #writetip

“I feel certain this is going to be a great resource for non-fiction writers.”

It was those kind words – written by Lorraine Mace, the host of this guest post – which were the first ones to be left on my blog, Mistakes Writers Make, when I launched it seven years ago with the first Mistake, Believing You Can DIY.

Having at that stage been a tutor for the Writers Bureau for two or three years, I’d been critically appraising the work of beginner non-fiction writers for some time. While showing and telling new writers what to do certainly has its place, I came to fully appreciate that this prescriptive method may not be sufficient or even productive for some learners. It was good constructive criticism that really seemed to move many forward, I noticed: pointing out the errors, and offering guidance on how to correct them, while giving praise for what was being done well, of course.

Not all aspiring writers can or want to enrol on a course, though, and I began to wonder whether a resource dedicated to showing wannabe writers what they might be doing that they shouldn’t be doing would be popular – and might serve those writers more effectively than merely giving them instructions, as many writing guides do (and indeed do well).

The idea for a blog focusing on error sprung from this, and it is still going – although as a writing resource I’m not sure it has ever quite got anywhere near that greatness Lorraine so supportively predicted in its early days! It’s not all about the bloopers, though: the ‘Mistakes’ are supplemented by publishing and other opportunities, product recommendations and book reviews, as well as occasional rants about such hazards as copyright-grabbing writing competitions, which writers have to negotiate.

Some years ago I began to think a more structured guidebook taking the reader sequentially from A to Z might work for those looking for an introductory manual in writing non-fiction. The Mistakes on the blog are not logically ordered – they not only go from A to X to D to P, but since I introduced guest posts they now also take in a few Cyrillic and Greek letters as scenic detours – and whatever Mistake happens to take my whim at any given time becomes the next one in numerical line. Not necessarily ‘friendly’ to a total beginner needing to learn from scratch!

And so the ebooks were born. The first, 50 Mistakes Beginner Writers Make, was published in 2015; the second, predictably titled 50 More Mistakes Beginner Writers Make, just last month.

They start with the basics – generating ideas, approaching editors, researching and crafting an article – before tackling slightly more advanced subjects – dealing with editors, editing techniques, understanding contracts, interviewing skills and much more. I can’t deny that occasionally the books tell the reader what to do – but when they do they do so through the prism of error, to which I think some people (not all) respond better.

Although some of the more important posts on the blog have been included, albeit in updated or adapted forms, most are fresh and new. Several more books are planned. Curiously, the more mistakes you write about, the more you find to write about, and I have come to be really quite fond of errors. The cock-up is not something to be hidden, ignored or denied, but something to be almost celebrated, albeit possibly not repeated. As I say in one of the books, no doubt I make many errors myself in my job, but they don’t seem to be stopping me from doing what I do or want to do, which is to make a living from words.

Perhaps, then, the trick is to correct the ones that are stopping you from doing whatever it is you want to do?

I hope the blog and the books might help you identify those blighters and banish them. If they do, you probably have Lorraine to thank. Had it not been for that first encouraging comment, the Mistakes Writers Make blog might have met an end as grim as that of some of the characters in her Frances di Plino novels ...

Alex Gazzola’s 50 Mistakes books are both available on Amazon.

His blog can be found at www.mistakeswritersmake.com

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Ailsa Abraham muses on aging disgracefully @ailsaabraham

I have a wonderful guest post today from Ailsa Abraham, whose novels are currently on special offer, so don't miss out.

Hello, Lorraine, and thanks for inviting me over. I thought I'd just have a muse about ageing today.

 

The warning there is real enough. I don't suppose any of us can resist giving our characters some traits that belong to people we know, or ourselves. I freely admit that the female lead in the Alchemy series, Riga, is modelled on a very much younger version of me. We can all think of male novelists who are obviously living out their fantasies through their work with heroes who can fly planes or helicopters, sail anything that floats, climb, ride horses and achieve everything perfectly. They may also be experts in various fields which would have taken two lifetime's study to gather.

This got me thinking. Suppose I were to write realistically? I would love to break into the crime genre because most of my life I have been involved with the police. No, I'm not a hardened criminal or drug baroness. My parents were both in the Metropolitan Police and met in training school where my father was mother's class captain. He eventually went on to Scotland Yard while she resigned her “wooden-top” job as a married woman. As he died when I was four, we were constantly visited by the local coppers making sure we were lacking nothing and often taking me for a ride in their police cars.

Even over here in France I managed to become an official interpreter for the gendarmes and customs. I must have “police family” in invisible ink on my forehead!

So if I were to re-cast myself as a detective would it work? Well...no! As I am a very honest person, going through the requirements of a successful character in that genre, I don't fit the bill.

Detectives are usually leaders of a team and popular with their colleagues. My Bipolar Condition would mean that I would be a big hit on some days and a pain in the proverbial when throwing hissy fits all the time on others.

Mental agility? No. Many bangs on the head have left me with enough brain damage to ensure that if I DO have a flash of inspiration, I must remember to write it down before I forget it. Chief Superintendent Abraham would need a full time PA to follow her around taking notes.

Powers of deduction? That would depend on how much distraction there was around. The same brain damage renders me incapable of thinking with more than one source of noise near me, for example, while trying to write this piece I have the TV on beside me and my Old Feller trying to talk. Cannot concentrate on any of them.

Instant availability? No, I can't just dash off to another country or district at the drop of a hat. It's the dog and cat, you see? They have never been away from us in their lives and it would kill me to put them in kennels. Jumping on planes to the States is out of the question.

Chasing baddies across roofs or jumping from boat to boat in a harbour? Come off it! Nearing my old age pension and recovering from various accidents and illnesses, I can hardly move some days. I don't think using Texas Ranger, my Walker would look too good in a pursuit scene.
 

I'd suggest that I might be an armchair old lady detective but Miss Marple has already been done... Miss Marple on a motorbike with a penchant for dressing up as a pirate? What do you think?

Bio and links

Ailsa Abraham writes under two names and is the author of six novels. Alchemy is the prequel to Shaman's Drum, published by Crooked Cat in January 2014. Both are best-sellers in their genres on Amazon. She also writes gay male romance under her brother's name, Cameron Lawton.

She has lived in France for over twenty years and enjoys knitting and crochet and until recently was the oldest Hell's Angel in town . Her interests include campaigning for animal rights, experimenting with different genres of writing and trips back to the UK to visit friends and family. She runs an orphanage for homeless teddy bears and contributes a lot of work to Knit for Africa. She is also addicted to dressing up, saying that she is old enough to know better but too wise to care.

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Getting More Readers #writetip

I read a really interesting post today entitled: How Book Selling Really Works. The post begins ...

 

If you’re a new author, traditionally or independently published, one of the problems that you face is that you may not understand how book selling really works.

If you want to be a writer who sells books, consider these facts:

#1 Writers who are dedicated to selling their books, sell more books. This is not a game for the faint hearted. Stephen King sold books from his car to bookshops when he was getting started. The modern day equivalent of that is being on social media and producing interesting, shareable blog posts at least once a week, about your book, your themes, your characters, your locations, anything connected with the book, which will inspire a desire in people to read it.

Click here to read the full post containing some excellent advice for writers.

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Backstory Blues

Patrick from Edinburgh has been attending a writers’ group where more experienced writers talk about story and backstory. He isn’t sure of the difference between the two and sent in this heartfelt plea: Please can you explain to me what backstory is. Isn’t that the whole point of telling a story – to let readers know what’s happened to the character?

Let’s start by defining story: a story is a series of events, taking place in a particular setting, which cause a character, or characters, to undergo change or growth.

Now to define backstory: backstory is everything the author needs to know about the characters and setting in order to create a credible and riveting story.

Notice I said everything the author needs to know. The reason for the emphasis is because the reader doesn’t need to know all these things. All the reader needs to know, or rather wants to know, is how the characters react and what part the setting has to play in events.

My day job is critiquing the work of other writers and I deal with a large number of beginners, who almost invariably begin with a backstory info dump of astronomical proportions.

Whenever I point this out to the author, I get a reply explaining exactly why it is essential that the reader knows immediately that Freddy, who is nearly fifty, on the fat side, with sandy hair, hazel eyes, dark eyebrows and a lop-sided grin has only been out of prison for two weeks after being sent down for twenty years for aggravated assault while robbing a post office, not just one post office but a string of them and a bank, too, although he wasn’t actually convicted of the bank job because the cashier turned out to be an unreliable witness (in the end he only served fifteen of the twenty term because he got time off for good behaviour, although he wasn’t really good but the screws were on his payroll so didn’t report that he’d been running a gambling and drug ring on the inside, although one did try to grass him up, but he soon put a stop to that by getting the screws who were on the take to beat him up) and in the first week after getting out he tracked down his old girlfriend because she’d stopped visiting him and he had to beat her and her new boyfriend to a pulp because he couldn’t let them get away with making a fool of him.

If the reader doesn’t know all that, the aggrieved author will ask, how will they understand why he did what he did in week two? Quick answer? They’ll never need to understand, because they won’t read far enough into the book to care!

Taking the example above, how much does the reader really need to know? Very little. All of it is backstory and slows the storytelling.

Some advice given me to when I started out as a writer was to open as close to the action as possible. This is impossible to do if you start out by telling the reader who the players are and why they are there.

Let’s take Freddy and, instead of lumping all that information into the intro, put him right into a pivotal scene instead. If the book opened with Freddy confronting his ex-girlfriend and then beating up the boyfriend, the author would have the perfect opportunity to let the reader know that Freddy is just out of jail. Freddy could berate his ex-girlfriend because she didn’t wait for him. She, in turn, could impart all sorts of information about Freddy and his past as she begs him to spare her new lover.

If we really needed to, we could also learn that Freddy is a bit overweight because he isn’t as fit as he used to be before he went inside. How would the author tell us this? He wouldn’t – he’d show it by Freddy being surprised at how slow he is in attack and being horrified to find he’s wheezing at the end of the fight.

An info dump in the opening paragraphs is the kiss of death to any novel. Opening paragraphs have to hook readers and compel them to read on. They need to make the reader wonder why the characters are acting as they are. As I said earlier, the author needs to know everything, but readers only need to know just enough to intrigue and keep them turning the pages.

Readers can find out a few chapters further on what Freddy got up to while he was inside – provided it’s essential for them to know. But this doesn’t mean it’s okay to use info dumps later in the book. The moment a passage of backstory appears on the page, the author’s voice takes over and the reader is jolted out of the story.

Characters should be just like the people you meet. You have to get to know them by their actions and dialogue. If they speak for themselves, readers will believe in them and follow wherever they go. If the author speaks for them, that connection is broken.

One of the reasons writers are hammered with the mantra of “show, don’t tell” is because it is almost impossible to make an info dump of backstory if you are showing your characters in action, but all too easy to do so if you go into a long spell of narrative.

So, to summarise: think of backstory as an iceberg. It is everything that has happened to the character up to the point he or she appears in the story. The author needs to know all of this so that the players act in character. The reader only needs to know the iceberg tip – just enough to keep them intrigued and desperate to turn those pages.

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