Change is in the Wind

We live our lives based on the decisions we make—and the decisions we make by not choosing when we had the chance. Jordaina Sydney Robinson, our Friday blogger, has had one major decision to address recently. She was offered a big promotion at work—and she accepted the new challenges the promotion will entail.

One of the challenges of her promotion will be more hours working at that job, leaving less time for other things. Since she wanted to maintain her actual fiction-writing time, something else had to go. Jordaina decided one of the somethings would have to be her active participation in the Writers Who Kill blog.

As you know, she has anchored our Friday spot. All of us at the WWK blog wish Jordaina the best in her new job responsibilities, her creative life and life in general. We hope she will rejoin us on a Welcome Wednesday here and there to continue to share her thoughts.

Her decision has meant the rest of us had some to make as well, specifically, finding a replacement for Jordaina. We agreed early on we wanted to find someone to participate with the WWK blog on an equal partnership with we three remaining founders. We also wanted to add someone to our group with a bit different perspective to provide both our readers and ourselves additional learning opportunities.

We believe we have struck pay dirt.

Starting next Friday, Ramona Long will join WWK and blog on Fridays. Many of you may already know or know of Ramona. For everyone else, stop by next Friday when in her inaugural post she will introduce herself.

~ Jim

Q & A Part II

Last week Jim, Jordaina, Pauline and I answered questions about our reading likes and dislikes. This week, we focus on our writing. Please let us know how you would answer these questions.

What makes one set of characters ripe for a series? How has the author set up the characters for continuing the story?

PA: A character for a series usually has depth and potential for growth. However, Kinsey Millhone doesn’t seem to age or change much but she remains interesting because she’s clearly drawn and Grafton’s books are well-written.

EBD: The difference I see between a stand-alone book and a series is in conclusions. In a series, the character’s back story shows just enough to further the reader’s curiosity about the character. The main story may also have unanswered questions, which spurs the reader to continue reading the story. Of course, in a stand-alone book, all the major story lines are tied up neatly or nearly so. What I find annoying are obvious hooks to the next book, and this annoyance is a recent phenomenon that I think has come about because of marketing. For example, in Martha Grimes’ Richard Jury series, she always came to a resolution of the story and started the next book with a new case. Recently, the series has focused on one recurring villain who Jury can’t catch. Perhaps Grimes was the one who instigated this change, but after three books, Jury still hasn’t caught the guy and the reader is left frustrated. It is also hard for the reader to keep track of the story because since she writes two series, it may be more than a year between books. Ian Rankin’s last Inspector Rebus novel, publicized as his final Rebus novel, he leaves the reader with the villain lying in a hospital bed without a plot conclusion. This tactic is an obvious marketing ploy annoying to the reader, even if we are glad, it really isn’t the “last” Rebus novel.

JMJ: It’s really important not to kill your character off in book one if you plan to make it a series.
Joking aside, I think any interesting character can be the basis of a series as long as the book has not already answered all the interesting questions about the character.

JSR: I think that’s a tricky question to answer. I can only say you have to make the characters likeable enough to want to follow through a series of adventures.
That said, I found Laurell K Hamiltion’s Anita Blake thoroughly dislikable but kept reading until book six because I really enjoyed the rest of the characters.

Are you writing a series or a stand-alone book, and why?

JMJ: Yes. Every book I work on is a standalone, at least until it sells. However, BAD POLICY, my WIP that I will be searching for an agent later this summer or in early autumn and CABIN FEVER, which is in its second draft, have a common set of characters.
I am also sketching out a futuristic novel that will have one character overlap (he’ll be very, very old).

JSR: I view all four of my WIP’s as series, for no other reason than I really enjoy writing all of the characters but any of them could be read as a standalone.

PA: I plan on writing a series but at least the first two books can stand alone.

EBD: I’ve been told to write a stand-alone book first. Then, if it sells, the publisher may want to continue the series, but to write it as a series from the beginning is presumptuous. Of course, I’d love to have a series and that leaves me with a dilemma because I planned to leave one big resolution outstanding. If my concept is found intriguing, then I will let the publisher decide. I can resolve the dilemma if pressed.


What POV are you using and why have you chosen it?

JSR: All are written in first person. Aurora North started out in third person but I felt first person suited her, and my style for her, much better.

JMJ: BAD POLICY is written in first person POV. CABIN FEVER uses first person for the protagonist and third person for four other characters.

EBD: I’ve never written a book in first person, which is strange because a lot of beginning writers chose this POV, but I’ve found it very limiting. In my second book, A Travel Guide to Murder, one of the elements of the plot is timing. My characters are shown in different chapters acting simultaneous to one another, effecting the plot and each other. This timing can’t be shown in first person. In Sparkle Days, I want to show different POVs so that one character's actions impact another’s actions, not timing as much as character driven action. Again, the third person POV is my best choice because it is less limiting.

PA: I’ve just finished a novel in first person and I’m planning my next novel in multiple viewpoints. A different point of view makes for a different story for both the reader and the writer.

What type of mystery are you writing?

PA: I’m writing an amateur sleuth because I feel most comfortable writing this type of mystery and because I feel most able to develop this character.

JSR: A paranormal which has no actual paranormal happenings in it, a paranormal which has plenty of paranormal happenings, a YA urban fantasy and a not YA urban fantasy.

EBD: My first book, Janet: Drunk and Disorderly is a traditional mystery. My second novel, A Travel Guide to Murder, is a comedic romance mystery. Sparkle Days, my third, is a paranormal romance mystery. I love a traditional mystery, but sales are dwindling in the traditional market. Writing subgenre adds interest to the story and expands the universe of creativity because normal boundaries need not be kept and subplots are woven into the main plot just like the back story. There are more layers, keeping the reader interested.

JMJ: Very good ones, but of course, I would think that. A medium-boiled amateur sleuth probably best describes my works. The futuristic novel seems to want to be a thriller.

What turns you off a character after you've already followed them through two or more books?

JSR: If the character doesn’t grow or learn from their experiences or mistakes. To use Pauline’s example, Stephanie Plum is still the same awful bonds agent she was fifteen books ago. I know there’s humour in her ineptitude but when she’s making the same mistakes over and over again it becomes annoying.
I don’t need her to be Bruce Willis, but I do need something to show me she’s learned from the last few times her skips have climbed out the window on her for me to keep reading.

PA: With Stephanie Plum, it was the exploding cars and her sidekick, the ex-prostitute who always wears outrageous clothes and wants to eat junk food.

EBD: That situation usually doesn’t happen to me. I like the character in combination with the writing or I don’t. What sometimes does happen is that I won’t like a first book of the series and then try the second and love it, as if the first book was a trial run for the author. In this instance, usually the subsequent books get better and better. Occasionally, I’ll love the first books in a series, but in the sequel, the writer’s good ideas ran dry. The only time a character turns me off is usually in chick lit when the situations become too inane.

JMJ: I want to read a new story each time building off the characters I have enjoyed getting to know. If a series becomes the same/old same/old, I’m on to something new.

Labels: Paranormal, POV, Series, Writing

The Joys of Public Transport

I was trudging to the bus stop from work yesterday evening, dragging my weary feet as I went (is there anything longer than a day working in retail when there are no customers?). I was about to throw myself on the bus and yell ‘Home, James’ when I noticed the stony faced bus driver was reading. At this point I’d like to clarify the bus was stationary and waiting at the bus station. He was not driving and reading which, admittedly, would be a handy, if dangerous, use of multitasking.

My aching feet/back/shoulders/brain all quickly faded away as I hurried through the business of stating my destination and paying my fare so I could ask him what he was reading. A spark of interest lit his eyes as he lifted the cover to show me ‘Jack and Jill’ by James Patterson. Now, I’d always considered Mr Patterson a little too hardcore for my tastes (I’m hardly a rainbows and unicorns type of gal but I do like a bit of wit and romance mixed in with my murders) which is ridiculous really since I’ve never read any of his books and simply made the assumption on...well, on nothing really.

My once grumpy bus driver quickly transformed into an extremely friendly fellow as he gave me a brief overview of his current reading choice and then told me about another book called ‘The Amber Room’ which he’d recently finished and thoroughly enjoyed (all while a gentleman, whom we both ignored, waited patiently behind me to board the bus – we were talking books, it’s allowed.). He couldn’t remember the name of the author at the time but I googled it as soon as I got home so I wouldn’t forget and it’s by a gentleman called Steve Berry. I fought with my computer for twenty minutes as I manoeuvred my way around my local library’s website (I’ve only just started to use the library again since my bank has demanded my local book shops bar me and it seems the library’s gone all technological when I wasn’t looking) but eventually managed to reserve a copy of each book.

I also reserved a copy of John Grisham’s ‘The Associate’, another author I’d considered a little too hardcore for me until the day before I met my bus driver. I caught an interview with him (John Grisham not the bus driver) on the radio, talking about his new children’s/YA book and he sounded like a really nice, funny man. That, not a flurry of awesome reviews about his latest offering, was what led me to checking out books I had, until then, deemed far too serious or heavy going for recreational journey or lunch break reading, which lately is the only reading time I have.

I wouldn’t normally take a blind recommendation from a stranger (they don’t know me, how will they know what I enjoy reading?) but my bus driver’s total change in demeanour won me over.

I don’t know what it is about books that bridges age/gender/class divides. Maybe it’s because it doesn’t matter whether you’re a bus driver in his mid fifties or an unpublished writer in her .......let’s say twenties and be no more specific, they both have one thing in common. They’re readers, and something about that is equalising. They might have different opinions about the same book based on their different upbringings, but life’s about differences. It’s about listening to someone else’s opinion and seeing a story from their point of view, how their personal experiences changed a character the twenty something unpublished writer thought was strong and independent to the selfish, immature character the bus driver in his mid fifties read.

It’s one of the things that I love about books, any books. You take your personal experiences to the story with you, so when you discuss it with someone else (which I love to do and no doubt bore the pants off people), you’re really talking about so much more. The more you discuss literature with anyone, the more you learn, not just about the words on the page but about the world around you, about life.

I would’ve loved to have seen Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg discussing their views and interpreting the themes in ‘Wind in the Willows’ during the election debates. Now that would’ve been essential viewing. I wonder how the country would’ve voted then.

Jordaina

Unbelievably Believable Characters

I was chatting to my sister a few days ago (she’s gotten over her ‘F’ word fixation in case any of you were wondering) and she was telling me about going to see ‘Sex and the City 2’. She’d read somewhere that someone had worked out Carrie’s wardrobe would take a salary of in the range of $600,000 per annum to maintain. Why anyone would spend their time calculating this is beyond me but I think they might be related to one of the scientists trying to explain how Santa Clause manages to deliver presents all over the world in a single night.

A slightly odd use of your time but it does raise some interesting questions. For instance, would Carrie and the girls be such a big hit if they dressed according to what they could realistically afford?

I knew a few girls who used to watch the show for fashion tips and ideas as much as the plotlines. They’d take Carrie’s (or the team that styled her) fashion sense as gospel and used to pay ridiculous amounts for outfits or shoes they could barely walk in.

Me? I’m a flip flop type of gal. I’m short. I accept it. I’m not going to wobble precariously around on four inch toothpick heels to try to pretend I’m not.

In books (TV and movies too), we all have to put reality on hold a little and go with the flow. Has anyone else noticed how female characters in so many books wake up and have to do practically nothing to make themselves presentable (which isn’t quite as bad as in the movies when they wake up with a face full of perfect makeup and artfully dishevelled hair – I don’t even look that good after hours of primping!)? Or that the leading man is naturally buff, supposedly without the aid of a gym....actually, I don’t mind that so much.

As a writer, I understand that’s because no one wants to read ‘I showered, brushed my teeth, spent half an hour applying my makeup, blow dried my hair...etc’ because a) it gets in the way of the story and b) the fact I have to do it is enough, why force it on a character too?

Things like that I can accept. I didn’t even really mind when Janet Evanovich’s Ranger grew a few inches somewhere between her first and third book and suddenly became a viable romantic interest for Stephanie. I think it’s necessary to postpone reality a little when reading because really, isn’t that why we’re reading in the first place?


If you pick up a book in the currently popular vampire/shapeshifter Urban Fantasy genre then you’re willingly surrendering reality at the outset because we all know that vampires and shapeshifters don’t really exist (right?). But what about cosy whodunnit’s? When the maniacal samurai sword wielding psychopath, murdering people who have an excess of vowels in their name, is revealed to be the protagonist’s childhood sweetheart/Great Aunt Maude/local mousy librarian? Is that too far out of the realms of possibility for you?

Is it possible? Of course. Is it probable? Not really, but the killer can’t be who you expected all along or you’d whine there was no twist in the tale.

The problem is where to draw the line? For me, this depends on how the author sets up the world of the protagonist initially and how they react in the early dramatic scenes. If Polly the Protagonist trips over a dead plumber in a graveyard in the middle of the night and her response is “Huh. So that’s why he never came to fix my sink.” then anyone from the mousy librarian to the head of the PTA would make a viable murderer. If, on the other hand, Polly screams until she passes out, I’m just not going to buy it when it’s revealed that Uncle Mike, the local ice cream shop owner who loves kids, did it.

The reason for this is twofold. Firstly, if Polly screamed until she passed out, I would find it annoying (I’m heartless, I know) and secondly, her reaction is too close to a real life response in that situation. And in real life I would be seriously disturbed to think Uncle Mike would wield a sword for so inane a reason. Or if the killer turned out to be Polly’s childhood sweetheart, I wouldn’t be able to accept she’d never had an inkling of his swordsmanship tendencies.

Like I said, I’ll happily leave reality at the door and allow myself to be drawn into a well told tale, but for me, you can’t mix realistic human responses and unrealistic murderous situations. I just won’t buy it. Literally. And if I’m honest, I don’t want a realistic human response to murder and mayhem, if I did, I’d watch the news.

Series or Standalones?

I woke up to the shock news on Tuesday morning that Flash Forward isn’t getting renewed for a second series. You guys (and I mean that as in everyone else in the civilised world) probably knew that weeks, if not months, ago but I’m a little behind on my entertainment news....mostly on purpose (eighteen year olds writing biographies? Surely you have to live a little before you can write the tale of your life?).

I don’t really watch that much TV, but Flash Forward was one of the very few things I Sky plus-ed (I think the American equivalent is Tivo, I think....I’ve no clue what the rest of the world does...maybe they simply watch things when they’re aired like you’re supposed to?). I thought the premise was pretty interesting. The whole destiny/fate thing. I was (and still am) three episodes from the series finale when I learned the dreadful news and now, I’m not sure I want to bother watching the last three. I like the series but I know the whole blackout thing isn’t going to be resolved so it’ll leave me on a huge cliff hanger, to which the resolution will never come. And who needs that kind of drama in their life?

But that’s the downside of having a huge story arc, where every episode is a step closer to the final plot resolution, with a cliff hanger huge enough to keep you waiting all year for première of the second series.

I used to love the stand alone episodes of ‘The X-Files’, though admittedly, they creeped me out something shocking. After all this time, there’s still one episode that has me checking and double checking (then triple checking) the locks on my doors and windows at night. I don’t even remember what it was about, other than a man (I think it was a man, not a creature) who could stretch himself. I can hear you all shouting ‘So what? Thingymejig from the Fantastic Four can do that too!’ and it’s true he can (but he’s a superhero so is automatically struck off the ‘Creepy’ list) but it doesn’t change that one episode from having left a lasting dent in my psyche.

The whole hunt for Mulder’s sister left me a little cold. And that’s the problem with long running series. The stand alone episodes work brilliantly for the first series to introduce the world to your characters (especially if they’re mixed in with a not-so-all-consuming long story arc). You could possibly get away with it for the second series too, but not the third. The audience has invested their time (and hopefully) their emotions in the characters, so if they don’t see any emotional development, they’re going to change the channel.

It works the same for books too but the neat thing about literature, is that you also have the long running series made up of standalone stories, with each instalment narrated by a different character. A lot of long running paranormal series work this way, keeping the long story arc going in the background while the specific stand alone plot takes care of the foreground.

My personal preference is reading a series (even if it’s a series of individual stories) to a standalone novel. I love reading series because once I get to know a character, I usually become a little attached. The flip side to that is when the series ends, I’m devastated. I know the characters aren’t dead (or even real people who can die) but there’s still a sense of sad finality to reading the last few lines and closing the book. It’s kinda like the world dies away. Finishing Robin Hobb’s Farseer Trilogy (of trilogies) nearly ripped my heart out.

That said, if the series main protagonist shows no emotional development after being kidnapped, shot, stabbed, blown up and kidnapped again ( because what self respecting hero/heroine has only been kidnapped once in their literary life?), by the fifth book, I’m thinking, s/he has to get smarter or tougher or I’m going to change the channel, so to speak.

There’s nothing worse than reading a character who never grows or learns from past experiences. For me, at least. I know reading is about escaping your own reality for a while but we’re smart people, we want to read about smart people who are affected by whatever it is that the author has put them through.

So, in closing.......what TV series can anyone recommend? Answers on a postcard....

Jordaina

Fairytale Endings

After talking a little about both my paranormal and non-paranormal mysteries last week, I was unsure about what to write about today. I was tempted to do a miniseries on local hauntings, like Elaine’s Outer Banks Series, in the vein of ‘Most Haunted’ (which I still haven’t managed to catch an episode of yet), but thought better of it. The “ghost” where I work freaks me out as it is (and I’m certain the bumps and bangs are from the buildings either side of us) so I decided against purposely walking into possibly haunted places. Don’t get me wrong, I love writing this blog, I do, I just love my sanity more.

After placing my amateur ghost hunting career to the side, I asked my sister for some ideas. Big mistake. Her reply? Fish. Don’t ask, just don’t ask. Then she suggested frogs. Finally, she settled on fairytales. I think she just likes words that begin with ‘F’, but then she’d had a bad day at work so her ‘F’ word fixation made sense, if you catch my drift.

Credit to her eventually though, because I think fairytales are actually an interesting topic and, when I scanned back through my blog from last week, I realised I hadn’t actually mentioned why I write paranormal mysteries. Weirdly, the two topics tie in together.

I write paranormal (and really just write in general) to escape into a world that makes sense. That sounds a bit like an oxymoron, doesn’t it? A fairytale world that makes sense. But if you stop a minute and think about it, you see I’m right.

Fairytales (the Walt Disney kind not the Grimm Brothers) are where Good always triumphs over Evil, where bad guys always get their arses whooped, where bullies always get their comeuppance, where the hero always gets the girl and where the story always has a happy ending.

People don’t commit random, unfathomable acts of violence or bitch about a co-worker because she has an unusual taste in shoes. The world is simple. There are good people who live long and happy lives and there are bad people who live miserable lives because that’s how the fairytale universe balances.

Of course, growing up in a world of Walt Disney cartoons and women fighting (and mostly winning ) for the right to be accepted as equals, doesn’t always go hand in hand. For example, if a man holds a door open for you, what do you do?

I’m pretty sure, in the fairytale world, you’d smile, politely thank him and be married in a few short months (of course that’s where the fairytale would end because once a girl’s snagged her man the rest is all a dream come true. Yeah, right.).

In real life, however, I’m pretty sure you’d just accuse him of being a chauvinist and give him an informative dressing down about Women’s Lib. That is, if he wasn’t holding the door so he could peek down your blouse as you walked past. I’m fairly certain that would earn him a kick in the shin.

My point is that life is simple in fairytales. You recognise the bad guys by their maniacal laughs and their ugliness (bad people are ugly, it’s a fairytale fact). The hero is easily recognisable from his six foot, broad shouldered physique and gleaming smile. I would elaborate about how to recognise heroines here but, seriously, how many cartoon heroines have you seen? Walt’s people need to pull their fingers out.

Yeah, there are books out there that don’t follow the fairytale rules but it’s rare I read one. Life’s depressing enough, just listen to the news. Why spend your free time wallowing in someone else’s misery, a fictional character’s no less, whose story you can’t change?

The worlds I write might not follow all the same rules as Walt’s (I prefer heroines to heroes myself), but one thing’s the same, I always, always write a happy ending. I’m all about the positive. I’m not saying I won’t put my protagonist through the wringer to get her there but hey, that’s life, real or fictional, and it makes the happy ending that much sweeter.

Jordaina

The paranormal versus the very normal

I want to preface this blog by telling you I’m not crazy so please don’t sic the men in white coats on me.

At my school we had a French exchange programme. In Year 10 you could opt to spend a week with a French family to improve your French. When I was in Year 9 (13-14 years old), my teachers, in their infinite wisdom, decided to trial spending a weekend in France the year before the exchange. Something about accustoming us to the culture in an attempt to make the exchange less stressful. Of course, my year was the year that had that ‘privilege’.

I’m fairly certain it was around six months before we were supposed to leave for the trip that I had The Green Clipboard dream. In it, I was wandering up a hill with some of my friends, marking off what the shops on either side of the street sold. Halfway up the hill I became ill and sat down to rest in a little public garden, hidden from the street.

The reason the dream stuck in my head was because my blank map was clipped on to this tatty, murky green clipboard. I’d just bought a snazzy black one with a flip cover and decorated it with silver sparkly star stickers (I was 13 so cut me some slack, okay?) and I couldn’t work out why I hadn’t been using that one in my dream.

Several months later, my friends and I were lining up to board the bus for the weekend trip to France. As we climbed aboard, one of the teachers handed me a worse for wear, murky green one. I didn’t think much of it at the time because, hey, we were going to France.

What happened to my beautiful, starry black one? I’d used it to hand some homework in to my Home Economics teacher a few weeks earlier and she still hadn’t given it back (she kept it on purpose, I’m telling you, it was the stars that caught her fancy!).

On the last evening of our trip, all the students and teachers were supposed to have a meal together but my teachers chose a restaurant where there wasn’t enough space. We were split into groups and my friends and I were in the second sitting. The teachers, who were all in the first sitting by the way, gave us a small task to occupy us while we waited (can you guess where this is going?).

We were handed blank maps and told to walk up to the road the restaurant was on and mark off what each business was. To this day I haven’t worked out the purpose of this task but like the good girl I was, I walked up the hill marking off the businesses.

It wasn’t until I was halfway up the hill that I remembered my dream and a tsunami of dizziness and déjà vu hit me. Feeling seriously woozy, I needed to sit down. And what should be right in front of us but a public garden.

Years after the incident I’m still not absolutely sure if I had the dream before or after the real incident happened. I’m fairly sure it was before, but if that’s true that would mean I had a premonition, which I’m not even sure I believe in. Never mind, why of all the things in the world would I have a premonition about walking up a hill? Kinda sucks as glimpsing the future goes, doesn’t it?

The Green Clipboard Dream was a one off. I’m not psychic. I’m not claiming to have ESP in any way, shape or form. I mean, I know when my sister’s going to call because I’m either desperate for the loo or about to eat my lunch/tea, but I think that’s more of a Sod’s Law thing than anything supernatural.

The reason I’m telling you this (at the risk of sounding thoroughly unstable) is to hopefully give you a better idea why I can write a decidedly unparanormal paranormal with a sceptic as a protagonist, but also a very paranormal paranormal with a ghost as the protagonist (I also write an urban fantasy series about vampires, werewolves and the like but I think we’re best leaving that out of this for now).

I’m not quite a believer but I’m not quite a sceptic either. When I see a dark smudge out of the corner of my vision I always think two things. The first is that I need to get my eyes checked and the second is a quote from Hamlet

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy...”

Act 1 scene 5

Jordaina

Why we do write?

Elaine talked about themes in writing, Jim commented on the unique qualities of each writer’s voice and Pauline focused on turning points that help her stay on track. I’m going to try (and I do mean try), to pull these things together and end the week on a positive note ready to face a weekend filled with writing. Unless you’re working your day job like me.

Before we begin, let’s be clear, I’m in no way an expert in this field. All I can tell you is what I’ve learned from my own journey so far.

I’ve written romance stories and they’ve sucked. I’ve written noir detective stories and they’ve sucked. I’ve written plain chick lit stories and they’ve sucked. I’ve written children’s stories and they’ve sucked. I’ve written horror stories and………are you seeing a pattern here yet? I don’t need to keep listing my failures, do I? It’s bad for the ego.

Several years later, I can look back on those ‘failures’ and see them for the learning experiences they were. Now I understand it was worth trying to write a gritty thriller or an overly romantic love story to discover where my talents, my strengths and weaknesses, lay.

The reason most, okay, fine, all of the stories I’d written sucked was because of the three things my cohorts have already talked about and one thing they haven’t.

Elaine mentioned an editor talking about the need to pick a theme to include in the story and how it didn’t work for her. During steepest part of my learning curve I tried something similar. It didn’t work for me either but before you place it on your list of ‘Writing Don’ts’ you need to try it for yourself. It might work brilliantly for you or it might not. You might be the next Lewis Carroll or you might be tearing your hair out, stuck at chapter three because the story isn’t playing out the way you want. Either way, you won’t know until you try.

Jim talked about how each writer had an individual and distinct voice. This is so very true and probably something you’ve unconsciously recognised but unfortunately, unless you’re one of the very lucky few, it’ll take you a while to find your way out of the karaoke zone. To use his musical metaphor, you won’t discover whether you’re more of a Britney or a Hayley Westenra until you’ve belted out a couple of tunes and found a range you feel comfortable in. Again, it’s a case of you won’t know until you try.

Pauline discussed how she focuses on turning points in her work to keep her driving the story forward and cutting out extraneous scenes. You might be able to write your story with as little as a vague idea of which direction you’re heading in or you might find it easier to plot every step of your character’s journey. I’ve written both ways and found that each way has its own highs and pitfalls. There isn’t a right or wrong way to write, it’s simply a case of whichever fits you better which means, say it with me people, you won’t know until you try.

The only thing no one’s yet mentioned is ‘passion’. You have to write from the heart. Readers can tell if you’ve written something to fit a market or because you think it’s what they want. Most people, myself included, read to escape. We want to be drawn into the world of the protagonist and follow as they unearth a mystery or dodge bullets or fall in love.

If you want to write about a three legged, seven armed gnome who sneezes gold coins and comment how they’re given the short straw in the garden ornament hierarchy, then do that. I can’t guarantee any agents or publishing houses will be interested but you never know. If you write it from the heart then you have a better chance of success because your passion for the story will shine through your writing. And if it moves you, chances are it’ll move at least one other person (hopefully an agent). There are over six billion people in the world after all.

With a little practice, you’ll find the best symbolism or themes pop up in your work without you having to actively remember to put them in because those are the things that are important to you, and your voice as an author will convey your passion for them in a natural way. You’ve heard the saying you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find your prince (or princess, no sexism here gentlemen), well you have to write a lot of stories to find your style, your voice, your themes. Your passions, however, should be with you from the very start. That’s the part of you that demands you to put pen to paper in the beginning. It’s what keeps you sitting at your desk until 3am so you can finish the chapter you’re working on and it’s what will keep your readers hooked.

I’m not saying that if you let your passions drive your writing, you won’t make mistakes. You will, but writing is a journey, potholes and forks in the road are par for the course. Whether you’re following your map or drifting with wind, and whether you’re belting out your own version ‘Baby one more time’ or warbling ‘Prayer’, as long as your heart is in the driver’s seat your car will stay on the road.

Jordaina

Introductions

I was fourteen when I attempted to write my first novel. Half finished, riddled with spelling mistakes and printed in pink, I gave it to my English teacher and asked her for her comments. A month later she handed it back to me and told me it was 'good', without having read it.

How did I know she hadn't read it? The story was about an assassin for hire who disposed of her 'kills' in her bathtub by dissolving their remains in sulphuric acid. I'm pretty sure if she had read it, one heck of a letter would have been sent home.

With the lack of constructive criticism from my English teacher, I placed my novel writing on hold. I dallied mainly with typical teenage, angst-ridden poetry until several years later, and on a romantic whim, I turned a boy I knew into a superhero. Generously, I included some of his friends and chronicled their adventures as a birthday present to him.

My relationship with the superhero version of the boy lasted the completion of a dozen short stories. My relationship with the real life boy didn't.

What writing those stories did do (other than remind me how much boys suck), was to help me rediscover how much I loved to write. I know it doesn't sound like something you'd be likely to forget, but who can think rationally when they're a teenager?

Now, a decade and a half after my first novel attempt, I've come full circle. Once again I have my novel in my hands, though this time it's not printed with pink ink, it's spell checked within an inch of its life and the content is less likely to get any letters sent home. All I have to do is a few minor revisions before I start querying. And I've never been more terrified in my life.

Jordaina