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The World Before Page 1

May 3, 2018

A trap authors often fall into is treating their characters and their situations as if they are born on page 1 (or whatever page they’re introduced). Prior to that, they have no history whatsoever. They’ve never experienced anything. They’ve never encountered anything.

The problem is these characters and situations lack depth and verisimilitude. They are contrivances existing for the sake of propelling the story where it needs to go. But motivationally they’re weak, and under examination they unravel. A reader who’s not discerning might be happy, but most readers need a little more substance.

Consider this scenario: as a child, our protagonist grew up in a beautiful house overlooking the beach, the setting sun often a gorgeous backdrop. When the protagonist was 14, the family moved. Now middle-aged, the protagonist comes back to this house as a visitor. If you want to take this example further, write a scene about how they would feel.

Done that?

Try this exercise again, but let’s include some history: when the protagonist was 14, their 8-year-old sibling one morning left the house, crossed the road, and drowned in the ocean. Heartbroken, the family moved, but they were never – and could never be – the same. The parents plodded along in a cold and empty marriage, then finally separated. The protagonist often blamed themselves for not watching their sibling, and the parents weren’t supportive. Now, middle-aged, the protagonist comes back to the house as a visitor.

How has that history shaped the present? How has it contextualised the protagonist’s response? How do your two pieces differ?

It’s important to consider why your characters are the people you need them to be to tell your story. Some writers wouldn’t give that much work. Their characters would emerge from the same inspiration that provided the spark for the story, but characters deserve more than that. It doesn’t have to be some lengthy dossier, but writers should have a general idea about their characters outside of who they are in the moment. Thrashing out some details is helpful, e.g. the names of their parents, what their parents did for a living, what they did for work, if it was a happy marriage, if there’s siblings, where they lived, etc. This gives us a better picture of our characters and, again, it will help shape the choices they make throughout the story.

The same applies to situations. Inspiration might’ve provided the following premise: our protagonist has been an embittered but functioning alcoholic for the last year; they work as an air traffic controller, have gambling debts, their dog runs away, and in the third chapter they’re hit by a car, which breaks their leg and puts them in hospital. All this might come to us as absolute: it just is. And the story might be about our protagonist’s journey to some form of balance.

But serious thought should be given to the logic of the character and the situation. What drove them to alcoholism? Why do they gamble? Do they have other addictions? What sort of dog do they own? Why did they buy it? Etc. (Using the above scenario, the drinking might be a result of a guilt due to their sibling’s death – already, a causal relationship between the past and the present is being established.)

And situationally …?

Imagine in chapter one we have a scene where the protagonist’s superior smells alcohol on their breath. This creates tension, right? But we’ve established that our protagonist has been a functioning alcoholic for the last year – surely something like that would’ve already happened? We can’t treat the character and the situation as if they were born on page one, and these sorts of things would’ve never happened previously when all the evidence overwhelmingly suggests it should’ve. If it hasn’t, then we need either justify why that hasn’t happened, e.g. the protagonist has always been careful, but now their drinking has worsened and they’re struggling to continue disguising their problem, or they’ve gotten a stricter and more observant boss.

Think about books you’ve read, or TV shows or movies you’ve watched, where this has happened – a character encounters a situation or a situation exists which, upon examination, seems to have been born on page 1. If you look, you’ll surprise yourself with what you do find.

Give thought to the foundations your story, its occupants, and their circumstances are built on.

You might start writing on page 1, but your story has actually begun well before that.

A Powerful Responsibility

April 5, 2018

Reviews are an everyday part of the creative landscape. And they come in all types: good, bad, indifferent, gushing, scathing, excited, cynical, etc. But in the end they generally fit into one of two categories: for and against – they’re for the work or against it. Unfortunately, sometimes those polarities can become tumults in their own rights.

You could drown in the adulation some books receive. Same applies to movies, music, art – well, any form of creativity.

A danger is that this adulation can become unjustifiably self-perpetuating. People get caught up in the torrent, and issue the same sentiment. The praise grows stronger. Some people won’t even think. They’ll conform for fear of drowning. Or they’ll agree to be part of some literary elitism.

The opposite also applies. There’ll be things people hate. It’ll be a storm that ravages a trail of destruction. Others will want to join in and revel in the passion. It also becomes a bit of a joke, and you want to be in on it. And it’s fashionable to dislike something.

In both cases, what we have is a hive consciousness that continues to add to its collective. The problem is it means nothing. Offering praise for the sake of offering praise only endorses something that may not deserve endorsement. Or criticizing it for the sake of criticism may devastate something that genuinely deserves appreciation.

Nowadays, we have so many avenues to express ourselves – the various forms of social media, including places that specialize in review (such as Goodreads and IMD, and even something like YouTube). These avenues are not only empowering for some, but subversive, encouraging them to articulate inflated opinions they would never voice personally. It’s easy to bellow behind the anonymity of the keyboard.

This is not to say there’s no justification behind positive or negative reviews. Of course there is. Art of any kind can be evaluated on so many levels, and then that’s filtered through personal subjectivity. What works for one reviewer mightn’t work for another for any number of reasons. But what’s required – what’s a must – is honesty.

This means:

don’t go in with preconceptions
don’t be swayed by other opinions
don’t be contrary for the sake of being contrary
don’t follow trends for the sake of being part of an in-crowd
don’t review something if you don’t like that genre or form or, if you have to review it, don’t let those tastes prejudice your review
don’t be afraid to be uniquely YOU, regardless of what everybody else is saying.

And, at the core of all this, remember that somebody has put lots of work and effort into whatever you’re reviewing. That doesn’t indemnify it from criticism, but it should from whimsy.

Having a voice is a powerful responsibility. Make sure you use it well.

The Fallacy of Inspiration

March 22, 2018

In his excellent memoir, On Writing, Stephen King compares writing a story to discovering an artefact – you discover the story idea, but it’s encased in mud and dirt, and it’s through writing and revision that you chip away all the muck to reveal as much of the story as possible.

It’s a worthwhile analogy to keep in mind, because too many writers rely on inspiration to be their drive the whole time. They write when inspiration hits, or when the mood takes them. Any other time is not worth the bother, they think. If it’s hard to write, then it can’t be good, right?

Wrong.

Poets may be able to rely on inspiration – a poem will usually be short enough that inspiration and mood can carry the writer from the inception of the poem to its completion. The same applies to short stories. That’s not to say poets or short story authors don’t work arduously on their writing, or revise extensively, but just that these forms are short enough that these attitudes of inspiration and mood can survive the journey in its entirety.

An adult novel will be, on average, about 80,000 words long. It would be simply impossible for inspiration to motivate an author the whole journey. That would be tantamount to running a whole marathon at a sprint. Similarly, an author is not going to be in the mood the whole time through the course of writing a novel.

If you’re always waiting for inspiration to hit, or the mood to take you, you’ll never finish anything.

Inspiration is usually just an idea, or a question. What if an orphaned boy who lived under the stairs discovered he was a wizard? Or, What if a dysfunctional teenager was kicked out of his fancy school? Or, What if a character was unstuck in time? Continuing with King’s analogy, this is the discovery of the artefact.

Questions now may follow. Let’s use the first example. The questions might be:

Who is the boy?
If he’s orphaned, who does he live with?
How did his parents die?
How does the boy develop his wizardry?

These questions will either provide answers …

The boy is chosen to fight a great evil.
He lives with his cruel aunt, uncle, and cousin.

… or more questions …

What if his parents were killed by the very evil the boy has to fight?
What is there was a school of magic that the boy and others like him are sent to?

The idea is now starting to develop. Keep in mind, inspiration provided the spark. We’re now doing the rest of the work – some of it will come so easily it’ll surprise us, while the rest may take trial, error, and refining. But we’re underway.

Now everybody has to find their own methodology as to when they feel they have enough information to sit down and begin writing. But when they do, there’s one thing that’s just about guaranteed: you will be full of enthusiasm.

You’re excited. The ideas at this stage are brimming. You can’t wait to get stuck into it. So you write and write. But that enthusiasm doesn’t last. At some point, you’ll tire. You won’t be sure where the story goes next. It’ll feel flat. It won’t seem worth it. You’ll be too tired. You’ll have too much on. You won’t have enough time to make writing worthwhile. And on this list goes.

If you sit around waiting for the next inspiration, you may end up waiting so long that you forget important details that you have written, so then you have to spend time re-familiarising yourself with everything. Or you might end up waiting indefinitely.

This is not the time to start on a new project, however much it does beckon. Lots of authors do, and commend themselves on their versatility, but their other projects just become abandoned. A new project will always be more exciting because it is new and fresh and untainted. But it’s likely that if you did begin it, you’ll eventually face the same issues.

You need to stick with what you’re writing. You need to learn to write through tiredness and distraction and all that. You need to learn to push through flat spots and not knowing where to go. You need to develop that writing muscle so that it carries you through any of the times you don’t feel like writing for whatever reason.

When you learn to do this, you’ll find your imagination is always running, that you’re always contemplating where to go next, and that you’re eager to get back to writing.

Once you develop this as an ability, you’ll find that outside of the providing the original concept, you won’t need inspiration to fuel you through the journey of writing a book, and you will generally feel passionate about it the whole time.

The Story of YOU!

March 8, 2018

Something that’s often required of the writer is a bio. This might be needed to enter a competition, for an ‘About the Author’ page in a published book, or an ‘About Me’ section on a website.

Yet, despite the writer knowing everything about their own life, and their writing journey and accomplishments, they struggle with composing all that information into something succinct and purposeful.

Purposeful?
Yes – think of the bio as the story about you and your writing. This is what people want to know about. You might’ve been married five times, have nineteen kids, and once been abducted by aliens, but none of that is essential for a bio. Only provide details that are relevant, or which offer context.

Context
What information provides context? Often, this will depend on what you’re writing.

If you’re writing a murder mystery set in Tootgarook, it’s probably not going to be important to tell people that you’ve been married five times. But if you’re writing a self-help book about surviving divorce, that detail now becomes relevant – it’s a qualification to substantiate that you know your subject matter. That’s context.

Equally, if you’re writing a murder mystery set in a hospital, and you worked as a nurse in a hospital for ten years, you might include that information in your bio because, again, it provides context. It shows the reader that you know your setting, and the protocols within that setting, so the story should enjoy a level of verisimilitude.

Third Person
Something else to keep in mind is that a bio should be written in third person – that means you’re writing about yourself as if you were somebody else.

You wouldn’t write:

I have always been interested in murder mysteries, and after working as a nurse for ten years, I started toying with the idea of a serial killer masquerading as one of the staff.

That’s first person. Instead:

Jane Smith has always been interested in murder mysteries. After working as a nurse for ten years in a public hospital, she started to toy with the idea of a serial killer masquerading as one of the staff.

You can also be playful, if you like.

Playful?
This will depend on your market. If you’re writing about grief counselling, you wouldn’t joke about owning five cats. But other markets might be open to some quirkiness.

E.g.

Your market will determine just how playful you can be, but it’s up to you to decide whether it’ll work or not.

Length
This will depend on the market. They will usually stipulate how long a bio should be. But this could be anywhere from 50 words to 200 words to one page.

Obviously, the length will determine what should go into the bio and what shouldn’t.

The 50-Word Bio
This should be nothing but the facts. Also, there’ll be generalising involved. You wouldn’t list every journal you’ve been published in. You might list a few of the bigger ones, but usually it’ll just be an overview.

E.g.

Death Comes Screaming

That’s just thirty-four words (thirty-five, technically, because the compound hyphenation of ‘Melbourne-based’ is only counted as one word), but we’ve communicated lots of information.

If you wanted, you could go back now and provide some specifics – just a few, mind you.

E.g.

Death Comes Screaming

Overland

Meanjin

Going Down Swinging

Now we’re up to 43 words. It’s a lot of information in so few words, and should show you the power that you have at your disposal by being concise.

The 200-Word Bio
Now there’s room for details. But think chronologically.

Don’t write:

Death Comes Screaming

Jane was born in 1979 in Glasgow, Scotland. Her family relocated to Melbourne, Australia, in 1985.

Here, the bio has jumped chronologically. Keep everything in order. Dot point it as an outline before you start writing if you need to.

And, like any other story, it should follow the three-act structure. It should have a beginning, middle, and end.

E.g.

While studying at LaTrobe University, she saw a competition for creative essays from people who’d relocated to Australia. Her piece, ‘Land Ahoy’, was longlisted, and a love for writing was born.

During her early years as nurse, she toyed with short stories, and had several published in journals such as Overland, Meanjin, and Going Down Swinging. While working at Melbourne Hospital for ten years, she started to develop the idea of a murder mystery.

The result is Death Comes Screaming (Veracity Press 2017), in which a young nurse, Alice Cronwin, grows suspicious about a spate of sudden deaths in palliative care, and suspects that a doctor might be responsible.

Jane is currently working on her next novel, ‘The Green’, about a serial killer who hunts his victims in the outback.

Etc. That’s 199 words which gives us a more detailed portrait of Jane, and also shows why certain interests in her life developed, i.e. a stay in hospital shows why she grew interested in nursing. (As an aside, published book titles are italicised. Titles of books which haven’t been published should be inserted in ‘quotation marks’.)

We also get a logical structure to Jane’s life:

Act One: Jane’s birth in Scotland, and relocation to Australia.
Act Two: Jane’s life – school camp, a stay in hospital, study, a growing interest in writing, and the development of an idea for a novel.
Act Three: The completion of Jane’s first novel, and that she’s working on a new novel.

The Page-Long Bio
And, of course, with a page-long bio, you can grow much more detailed and go into lots more personal detail. Just remember to keep it chronological. And be succinct. Don’t waffle for the sake of filling space.

Also, do not exceed any word limits that might be stipulated. Observing the requirements a publisher, journal, or competition may set illustrates your professionalism. Don’t ever believe you may be so brilliant, they’ll forgive you exceeding any word limit.

With a page-long bio, you can fudge how much space your text occupies by changing the font type. Fonts vary in size. 12-point Palatino is larger than 12-point Times New Roman, which is larger than 12-point Garamond. One page of Times New Roman may amount to one and one/quarter pages of Palatino, while only being three/quarters of a page in Garamond.

It’s About the Details
Don’t fret if your writing life has been sparse. You mightn’t have lots of writing credits, but you have lots of life credits. Everybody does. It’s just a matter of sifting through your life to find what will work.

Also, think about how personal and professional details can provide relevant information and context. Look at the details that fill out your story.

Writing a bio for yourself doesn’t have to be stressful.

Remember, it’s the story of YOU.

Happy Reading!

February 22, 2018

Last night was Busybird’s first Open Mic Night for 2018!

Many writers scoff at the thought of public readings. We’ve had clients ring who want to publish a book, and then do nothing whatsoever to promote that book after its publication. Well, here’s the truth: the book isn’t going to promote itself. It’s not going to perform interviews. It’s not going to do the talk circuit. It’s not going to read itself publicly. And if these things aren’t happening, it’s unlikely the book will ever be discovered. Why whould it? Who’s going to know it’s out there?

As far as readings go, the reason they work as both a form of brand-building and book promotion is because it introduces the writer and their writing to the greater public. Readings also engender interest in the writing itself. I’ve often seen people in an audience be so captivated by a reading, they enquire about the book the excerpt’s come from.

Of course, reading in public can be daunting. People imagine worst-case scenarios – from embarrassing themselves to failing to having a panic attack and running off stage.

But reading doesn’t have to be that intimidating. In fact, it’s a simple art as long as you keep it in context.

Here’s some tips to consider:

Reading in public is no different to reading to yourself. It really isn’t. Think about it – what’s different? You’re reading aloud, whether it’s to yourself or to a group of people. The practice is the same. It’s the environment that’s changed, and because that’s the case, you put pressure on yourself. Just remind yourself: it’s still the same practice. When you recognise the context, it helps you relax.

Rehearse aloud. Common sense – right? Read aloud. Look for places you might stumble, or for words where you might trip – stuff you can read fluently inside your head can become an issue aloud. Iron out these kinks before they become issues.

Pick something that’s self-contained, and would stand alone Don’t pick an excerpt that contains references to lots of characters who and/or events that are foreign to the listeners. They’re just going to scratch their heads, wondering who these people are and what’s happening. While they’re doing this, they’re not going to connect with what you’re reading. If you have to stop and explain material, you’re going to break the flow of your reading.

If possible, find something with a bit of a hook at the end, so it entices the audience to get the book. You want people to be thinking, I wonder what happens next. That curiosity could encourage them to go out and buy your book.

Don’t read spoilers. Why bother picking up a story if you’re giving away vital plot elements? What allure will the rest of the story hold?

One hundred words will generally equal one minute – don’t read more than ten minutes. Reading a book yourself and having it read aloud to you – especially in a public environment – are two different practices. You’d be happy to spend hours reading a book on the comfort of your couch. You get restless listening to somebody read, no matter how brilliant.

Print out the section you want to read in a BIGGER font. This makes it easier to read. Books can (comparably) have a smaller font, and short of splitting the spine books can be hard to keep open.

If you get nervous, hold something heavy (like a clipboard) behind the printout. This will weigh down your hands from shaking.

Just remember, you don’t walk into the situation and inherit pressure. You put that on yourself. But what’s the worst that can happen? If you mess up, you’re likelier to find the audience sympathetic. Nobody is going to record this for posterity. It’s not going to go on your permanent record. Anybody who is mocking or derisive is a moron, and not worth worrying about anyway. Reading can be – and really should be – an enjoyable experience.

Happy reading!