Does size matter? #writetip

Veronica from Marbella has a problem with her novel being too long: I’ve been told by many people (and seen it on countless websites) that publishers won’t look at debut novels that are too long. I’ve been told mine, a story set in the days of the French Resistance, should be between 70,000 and 90,000 words. I’m only about two-thirds of the way into it and it’s already over 85,000 words. What should I do? Should I cut out one of the characters? Change the plot slightly? Take out one of the subplots? Please help, because I can’t bear the thought of spending all this time writing a book and then being told it’s too long to be published.

First of all, the thing to bear in mind about word count guidelines is that is all they are – guidelines. If a stunning novel landed on an agent or publisher’s desk that they simply couldn’t put down, there is no way it would be rejected as being too long, even if it was well over the standard word count!

Secondly, you have said yourself that you haven’t even finished the book yet, so there is no way of knowing what should be cut, if anything.

A first draft is just a way of getting your thoughts and ideas down on paper. When you go through your first rewrite you will automatically cut sentences, paragraphs, maybe even entire scenes, because they don’t fit. You may find that you have two or three minor players who could be morphed into one stronger character, which again would affect the word count.

On second, third, fourth and fifth drafts, you’ll tighten dialogue, cut out all the padding and unnecessary adjectives and adverbs.

By the time your novel is ready to be sent anywhere, it will be a much smoother, sleeker beast than the one you are currently wrestling with. Get the words down and leave the worries about length and publishing needs until you’ve polished your baby so that it gleams. If it does that, no one will care if it’s a few thousand words more than the guidelines say it should be.

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Help! I'm Blocked #writetip

One of my regular readers is suffering from something many writers have faced. He writes: I have a problem and I need some advice. I have a crippling writer's block that I can't get rid of. I have some ideas but when it comes to writing the story, nothing. What should I do? Would enrolling in a writing course help in any way?

Enrolling in a writing course might well be the answer to your problem, but I doubt it. If you have ideas already, but can’t bring yourself to write them, being on a course might add to your woes, rather than easing them.

There are as many reasons for writer’s block occurring as there are suggested ways of dealing with it. As I don’t know you on a personal level, I will have to put forward several things for you to try. I hope one or more of the following will do the trick for you.

Have a set time to write

Whether it’s first thing in the morning, an hour when you get home from work, half an hour during your lunch break, set aside the same time every day. It doesn’t matter what you write. The important thing here is to train your mind to accept that this part of the day is writing time.

Another trick under this heading is changing the time you’ve set aside to write. If you have already made the decision that mornings are your writing time, but it no longer works for you, change the time. Write in the evening instead.

Relax and stop looking for perfection

Don’t read what you’ve written so far. Just get on with the next bit. Turn off your internal editor. Many people stop writing because they cannot produce perfect prose in a first draft. Nobody can! Don’t allow the fear of imperfection to get between you and your writing. There will always be time to polish that imperfect prose. Get it written and edit it later – much later!

Don’t write

Sounds like a contradiction, I know, but maybe your brain needs time to formulate the ideas properly before you settle down to write. You might have so many ideas in your head that you aren’t able to decide which one you want to develop. Go for a walk. Take a train journey. Spend an evening with friends. Forget about writing for a while. You’ll come back to it refreshed and raring to go.

Read more

Reading helps the creative juices to flow. I find reading in a different genre to the one I write in is beneficial, but you might find you get better results if you read material similar to that you want to write.

Set deadlines with a writing buddy

Find a friend, online or in real life, who also wants to get back into writing on a regular basis. This works well if you lay out some ground rules first. Decide how many words per day, week or month you will each write. Then set deadlines for exchange of material. It’s a bit like running with a friend, or going to the gym. It’s easy to backslide when you’re on your own, but much harder to drop out if you’ve committed yourself to a word count and deadline with someone else.

Work on more than one book, story, article or poem at a time

This doesn’t work for everyone, but some writers find it easier to switch between works, depending on what moves them for that day.

Writing exercises

I’ll be honest, writing exercises for the sake of it isn’t something that would work for me, but I have been told that many writers swear by it as a way to overcome writer’s block.

However, there is one thing that I do, which could be considered a writing exercise. Try interviewing the characters you want to write about. Put together a series of questions and then write up the answers as if you were the character. I find characters come to life if I allow them to answer for themselves. Believe me, once that happens, your characters will live in your head, nagging nonstop until you write their story.

Make sure your writing space works for you

Is your desk covered in scraps of paper? Do you feel hemmed in and uncomfortable? If your work area doesn’t make you feel creative, it will stifle the urge to write. Spend a bit of time making your writing area somewhere you want to be.

Remember that writing is fun!

This is the biggie, for me. Most of us write for pleasure. It’s fun. We create worlds and people to populate those worlds. Then we make life difficult for them so that they have to overcome obstacles in order to succeed in whatever we have decided they should do. We have the power to make them fall in love, fall out of love, go to war, lose a battle, find a friend, betray a colleague, become a saint, sup with the devil, rise like a star, fall into despair. How can we not enjoy ourselves?

Let go of your inhibitions – write and have some fun.

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Writing for Children - Tip 24 #writetip

Children use sarcasm to each other all the time. They hear it in films and on television, and then transfer their favourite characters’ expressions into their own way of speaking.

They’ll sigh and roll their eyes and tell their friends the most outrageous things, knowing the sarcasm will be picked up on and understood.

Because of this, you would be forgiven for thinking that they would easily realise when someone in a novel is using sarcasm, but this is not the case.

Tip 24 – How to Use Sarcasm

Children read exactly what is on the page and take the meaning literally, unless there are sufficient signals to the contrary.

Irony and sarcasm have to be clearly signposted so that your young readers are aware that the words are being used in a sarcastic way.

When you want your characters to be sarcastic it is necessary to show the personality of the speaker from the outset.

It isn’t going to work very well if someone who has been meek and mild all the way through the book suddenly becomes the queen of the one-liners halfway into the story.

On the other hand, it is perfectly acceptable to have a character who has been too timid to speak up throughout the novel, finally find the courage at the very end of the book to make one glorious put down directed at his or her impotent enemy.

If you decide to include sarcasm in your novel you must remember to signpost it well and use it sparingly.

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Writing for Children - Tip 23 #writetip

As mentioned in the previous tip, generally children have an extremely low boredom threshold. They want action in their books and not history, geography, or any other type of lesson – not even on subjects that are otherwise exciting.

Tip 23 – Mama Don’t Teach

Let’s say your story is about time travel and your young heroes find themselves back in the middle-ages. Clearly they’ll be wearing the wrong clothes and will have all sorts of adventures.

Don’t be tempted to write long passages on what everyone wore back then – your readers won’t care, they’ll just want to know what happens next in the story. Your audience only needs to be told about medieval clothing as it affects your story.

Let’s take the same tale a little further and have our time travellers landing in France, or some other European destination. As with the clothing, your readers only need to know about the country’s language and geography where it impacts on the characters in your story.

If your time travellers land in a mystical world where everyone can use magic except them, the same rules apply. Show the reader what the magic can do, but don’t bore them to tears with a lesson on how it works.

The exception is when understanding the workings of magic is essential to the story, but do try to keep the lesson short and introduce it through action and dialogue.

Then we come to the time travelling machine itself. Describe what it looks like by all means, but don’t go overboard with long narrative passages about shiny chrome panels and levers.

If it is going to break down and leave your travellers stranded, or a second one has to be built for some reason, give some details about the mechanics, but only what is essential to make the story work.

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Writing for Children - Tip 22 #writetip

As adults we have a moral duty to show children the right way to conduct their lives, to instil a sense of decency that will stay with those in our care until, hopefully, they pass those values on to the next generation.

As a writer of children’s literature, you might be tempted to use your work as a tool to influence young minds in positive ways. There is nothing wrong with this, but do try to avoid leaving your readers feeling as if they are being lectured.

Tip 22 – Papa Don’t Preach

Ethical lessons should be subtle. If the moral of the story is shown through actions, as opposed to the narrator telling the reader what to think, children are far more likely to absorb the message. Talking down to them will switch your readers off, and could even destroy their pleasure in reading.

Try using humour to get your point across. A child will remember a joke months after he first heard it, but will forget to wash his hands before meals, even though he is told the same thing every day.

If you want to write a story tackling depressing subjects such as drug addiction, family abuse or bullying, it is important to write it so that your readers are left with a feeling of hope. Having the hero find a way of dealing with the problems in his life will achieve far more than if your readers are left thoroughly depressed at the end.

Perhaps the best way of dealing with the issue of moral lessons is not to set out to write one, but to allow your story to progress naturally. If there is a moral in your tale, it will find a way to get itself heard and understood.

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