How to write: empathise

 So how do you find a great story? It’s like finding a needle in a haystack and sometimes it’s right under your nose and you don’t see it.

Everyone has their own way of finding a story. This is what sometimes works for me: you invent some vibrant and believable characters. 

Who might this character be by the sea in Wales? You decide!

You ask your main character what he or she wants more than anything else in the world, and then you ask your other main character what it is that he or she wants more than anything else in the world. And there you have your conflict, which is an essential ingredient in every single story ever listened to around a fire (in the days of cave men or women) or published in a book.

One character might want desperately to kill her mother-in-law because she knows her life will be so much better without her in it. The other character might be the detective who’s never solved a single case and who wants more than anything to prove to the world that he’s worth his salt.

But the murderer doesn’t want to get caught. She wants to live her blissful life, free of the mother-in-law. The detective is determined to catch the killer, or his girlfriend will leave him, he’ll lose his job and he’ll end up living under a bridge.

Characters really do come alive if they have strong motives. They might be understated ones, like not wanting to be lonely, or powerful ones, like wanting to take over a kingdom.

I bet all of you pictured the murderer and the detective in your mind while I talked about them just then. Even though I just sketched them, your imagination would have turned them into human beings. I’m suggesting this because I want to point out that motive is vital in creating a character. The way a character looks is a lot less important because the reader can fill that bit in.

All of us, because we’re human, love listening to or reading stories about other humans, or characters. It’s part of our DNA. Evolutionary biologists believe humans are the successful species we are because we’re able to empathise with each other. We care for each other when someone’s sick, we praise each other when someone’s done a good job, we laugh with our friends over a joke.

If we didn’t have the ability to empathise, we wouldn’t have been able to form cooperative societies with hospitals and traffic lights and universities and a robot exploring Mars. Stories told around that pre-historic campfire were born out of our need to empathise and bond with each other.  

If you can create at least two characters that you really care about, your readers will care about them too. If you really want one of them to overcome the setbacks and obstacles that you throw at them, then so will your readers. And if you want another of them to get his or her come-uppance, then so will your readers.

Write the story you want to read. Write for you. Make characters you want to spend time with – or characters you want to destroy in as grisly a way as possible.

I believe that very strong characters with conflicting motives drive the plot. The Booker Prize-winning novelist A.S Byatt said that she creates a novel by starting with two couples, as D.H. Lawrence did.

You can immediately see the potential for conflict, crisis and confrontation here. Two couples on a camping trip. One couple was allocated the task of bringing the fresh water and they forget. Or: two couples on a camping trip. One member of each couple are friends. The other two don’t know each other. There is undeniable attraction or hatred between them. The possibilities are endless.

But if you’re a bit stuck with your strong characters and don’t know what else to do with them apart from having them go head-to-head with their opposing motivations, read a newspaper, go to a movie, eavesdrop on a conversation and ask yourself: what if?

What if, in the newspaper article, the foreign aid worker who was freed after being held in Tripoli for three days was actually a spy? What if she was pregnant by her secret lover, a Libyan terrorist? What if, in the movie, there was a hotel in India and that, instead of elderly Brits as in the film, it was occupied by young Aussies? What if, in the overheard conversation, the guy lost his job and instead of sinking into a depression signed up for the space program?

Have fun inventing some hot-blooded characters of your own!

 

How to write: be yourself

We all have a way of speaking that is unique. Even if they can’t see you at a crowded party, if they can hear you, your friends will know you’re there. It’s the same with writing. The more practice you get, the more your special writing style, or voice, will develop.

Each of us is unique. This is me at a dinner to celebrate my PhD. The little dog was made out of paper by my daughter Lucy!

 Everyone has a different way of catching it. The way that works for me is that I imagine I’m writing for one special friend, a woman friend, who cares about the same things as me. I write to make her smile and cry and go “wow!” at the end. She’s an imaginary friend and she doesn’t have a name, but when I write I imagine I’m whispering the story in her ear.

 If you BINMAD, your writing voice will develop and it’ll be a voice as unique as the one your friends can hear.   

Here are some examples of unique writing voices:

A man once sent me a series of blank pages. This was the man who brought me narcissus, the man who took me to Boston, the man I left at Niagara by the waterfall in winter.The spray from the falls drifts some distance in the winter, becoming lighter, colder, harder as it comes to rest. It weighs down trees on the Canadian side of the border until whole branches become the rafters of rooms made of living tree and ice. Poe’s Cat, Brenda Walker. 

The grey gelding he had named John was waiting at the gate, his backside turned to the wind. The old man retrieved a rope lead looped over the fence and snapped the catch onto the halter ring under the gelding’s chin. Whispered who the good boy John who the boy? Bad morning mate. Walk back now. Made a kissing sound with his mouth.Traitor, Stephen Daisley.

He shrugged and left me. He never talked about the future and only occasionally, when drunk, would he talk about his marvellous past. A past filled with sequinned women and double-tailed horses and a father who made his living fired from a cannon. He came from somewhere in eastern Europe and his skin was the colour of old olives. The Passion, Jeanette Winterson.

I made out her shape. Wearing a white wrapper, its voluminous sleeves rolled up above her elbows, she was sitting at the little desk in the corner, writing and smoking. Her back to the room, as though saying: I don’t really inhabit this place. Her black hair, piled up on her head, a coral spike thrust through the toppling knot to secure it…“Remembering George Sand’, Michele Roberts.

Each of these writers has his or her own distinct voice. If you read them often, you can tell who’s written a passage without having to read the author’s name. Each author relaxes into their story. There’s a sense that they know what they want to tell you, and they’re eager to do so, without having to try too hard.

Each of these writers creates characters so real they could be in the room with you. With characters that your readers really care about and a story that’s exciting, told in your unique way, you’re on the way to getting published.

 

 

How to write: strong characters

Your characters need to slam up against each other and send the sparks scattering.

A re-creation of civil war at Chepstow Castle, Wales. Characters in conflict!

A good way to create memorable, dramatic characters who keep your readers turning the pages is to be sure to know, as a writer, what each character wants more than anything else. It might be a big want, such as being the first person on Mars, or a ‘little’ one, like not wanting to be lonely (though that is a serious desire and I’m not belittling it here at all). Characters can come into conflict via their competing wants. If you know what your characters desire, you’ll know how they drive, how they dress, how they speak, whether they wear scent or aftershave, what their relationships are like and so on.

For example, think of a character who wants more than anything else to find a cure for a kind of cancer. He’ll do anything it takes to find the cure, even risking his life to do so. It doesn’t take much imagination to bring this kind of character into being, and to give him a backstory (why does he need to cure cancer? His wife/mother/twin brother might have died of it? He might have it? His child might inherit a propensity for it? He wants to be famous? He wants to beat a rival to the cure?). Once you’ve worked all this out, it doesn’t take much more of a leap to know lots more about him.

The character, let’s call him Dr Dave, has a wife. More than anything else, she wants to spend more time with him but he’s always at work. You can see the potential for conflict here.

I love creating characters with strong desires. Check some out via Kindle’s great deals.  

How to write: embrace your story

My father was a country GP. When his patients asked him how they could lose weight he’d say: “Simple – keep your mouth shut.”

We all know that losing weight is much more complicated than that, but my Dad’s message was right: you can’t get fat if you don’t open your mouth.

I’m not advocating dieting at all. It’s dangerous. But I use the example of my father’s oversimplification to lead into the topic of this post. 

How do you get published? Simple – tell a great story.  Is true that if your story is utterly compelling, it’s likely to get published. It may take a while to get it to the attention of a publisher, but if it’s really good enough, it could be the next Harry Potter or Shades of Grey and you could be fronting up at the desk of a luxury car dealer to buy yourself the latest Ferrari.

But we all know it’s not that easy. Very few of us, if any of us, are lucky enough to come up with a story so brilliant that if causes a bidding war between rival publishing houses.

But we’re all capable of coming up with a story that will prick a publisher’s interest and have a publishing house editor hungrily turning the pages and advising that you be sent a contract to sign.

I do mean all. Each of us is unique. There has never before been someone like you or me in the history of the world and there never will be again.  Each of us has stories to draw on from our own lives. Stories about our family, our friends, our pets, our work, our school and university experiences, our circumstances. I’m not suggesting that each of you writes about your own life, though.

What I do believe is that your one-in-billions world view is a marketable commodity. Only you look at the world in the way you do. Only you have had your experiences. Only you speaks – and writes – in your voice.

In my life, I’ve read thousands of novels and short stories and met hundreds of creative writing students. Each novelist, story writer and student is completely different from the last and this difference is what sets you apart as a writer.

Proud to be different!

How to write: get obsessed

I wrote in my last post about finding something you love to write about and going with it, but now I’m going to suggest that you get obsessed.

When I started researching Celtic Wales, I unearthed the most fascinating stuff in cobwebby old books that hadn’t been opened for decades. I devoured all the information in them and had to discipline myself not to spew it all back in a big mess when it came to writing I, Rhiannon Books One and Two.

A wall in Snowdonia, Wales

Learning about the ancient Celtic festivals of Samhain and Beltane helped me structure the novels and fired my imagination so that I felt as if I was there, sitting by the fire, with the tribespeople. According to Wikipedia, Samhain  is a Gaelic festival marking the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter or the "darker half" of the year. It is celebrated from sunset on 31 October to sunset on 1 November, which is nearly halfway between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice. Along with Imbolc, Beltane and Lughnasadh it makes up the four Gaelic seasonal festivals. It was observed in Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man. Kindred festivals were held at the same time of year in other Celtic lands; for example the Brythonic Calan Gaeaf (in Wales), Kalan Gwav (in Cornwall) and Kalan Goañv (in Brittany). 

Magnificent Snowdonia

Here is an excerpt from the beginning of Book Two:
She brought the snow early, coming unseen on her milk-white mare, wrapped in a cloak of silver fox over a gown that sparkled with thousands of tiny mirrors. Gwyn, who should have been concentrating on answering the Samhain chants uttered by Edern the Erudite, couldn’t take his eyes off her when she appeared among them. He imagined some poor, eye-sore needlewoman bending over the fine linen, her mirrors making a pattern of dewy spiderwebs, her tired fingers rejoicing in their pain, glad to suffer for such a beauty as this creature was.
     She was Rebekka, he was sure of it, although her hair seemed to absorb the light from the greedy fire and shone red like the skins of the apples the Geveni were roasting in the flames of fern, gorse, straw and thornbush. Her skin was the colour of her white woollen tunic and her eyes the same vivid emerald as the evergreens that decorated all the roundhouses and the Great Hall.     
     As her delicate palfrey picked its way on fine legs across the new snow to where the tribespeople sat, close to the warmth, the flames spluttered and died. The Geveni, who hadn’t yet noticed her for they were engrossed in listening to the Druids’ commemorations of the dead, fell silent, terrified the spirits who’d returned from Summerland for this one night, the end of the old year, were displeased with something they might have done or failed to do. They all looked about, expecting to see ghosts or fairy folk. Them Who Be were as real to them as the living and never more so than on this hallowed night. That very evening as they made their way to the meeting-place, the children had seen some ellyllon on the river, paddling their egg-shell boats. Even little Nina had been sure of spying the bwbach near Mair’s hearth. This miniature, tubby, domestic creature, Mair told her, was nothing to fear. “He will protect our new roundhouse,” she promised.
     At first, the people couldn’t see what caused their big fire to die. No twlwyth tegs were trooping past in a colourful parade, their one hundred year-old children leaping, skipping and dancing ahead. And it was too late for the pillywiggins, who, mounted on bees and brandishing tiny brushes and mops, tidied the spring flowers. The warriors superstitiously rubbed the Roman skulls that dangled from their hips, Spinner held his harp more tightly against his heart. Eurolwyn, Daughter of Gwydolwyn the Dwarf wished she hadn’t been so short with the Apprentices that morning during the rehearsal of the Samhain rites and promised herself she’d try to be nicer to them in future. Dafydd clutched Mair, expecting to see their hero son, Griff Stiff Beard, brandishing his fabled dragon-bladed sword where the flames had leapt.
     Gwyn’s sharp eyes spied her first, sitting astride her bare-backed horse on the edge of the forest. He gasped and Rhiannon, sitting close, turned to where he was looking and screamed her slave’s name, believing she was dead and returned to haunt them. Augustus, at his wife’s side, holding the sleeping Nina in his arms, uttered “Rebekka” with what sounded to Rhiannon like longing.

How to write: be intrigued

If you’re intrigued with your subject, you’ll not only keep writing to the very end, you’ll have a reader who’s loving every word.

 But how do you find something that will keep you interested for 50,000-plus words: interested enough to sit at your computer day after day for months if not years?

You might have a hobby that you love: bushwalking, cooking, working out, stamp collecting, crossword puzzles, bee keeping. It could be anything. Any of those hobbies make a great starting point for a novel. You could give your hobby to your main character and see what happens. I

 

n my novel Stella’s Sea, it wasn’t until I turned Stella into a beekeeper and she came alive for me and started to take control of the plot. I’m not a beekeeper, but as a journalist, I had to write about bees and the desperate research that’s being undertaken to ensure they survive. I found out all I could about bees and the people who care for them. I spoke to scientists, queen bee breeders and a honey-supplier. I went to university labs, bee yards and a bush clearing where an old beekeeper calmed the bees with smoke before pulling out the frames to inspect his hard-working bees and their queen. The more I found out about bees, the more I was desperate to learn. It was a joy for me to write about Stella’s bees and her need to get them back in her life.

 

 

 You might have an ancestral tug to a country far away. Acknowledge it. Don’t put it out of your mind. It wasn’t until my Dad died and I took his ashes home to Wales (we live in Western Australia) that I returned to ‘the land of my fathers’ for the first time as an adult. And I was blown away by it. I didn’t want to leave. Hearing Welsh spoken, even English in that lilting way Dad had, made my heart sing. And the choirs that sound like rainstorms, the ruined castles that loom into sight unexpectedly when you’re walking along the coast or in the hills, the wild foxgloves and honeysuckle and roses, the rushing streams and leek puddings – it’s magic. I had to come back to my children, my animals, but I found a way of living there at the same time: by inhabiting a story about the place.

 

Chepstow Castle, Wales

 

I hadn’t been all that interested in Wales until my father’s death but after going there, I was starving for knowledge. When the children were at school I’d sneak hours in libraries, poring through ancient books that told of Celtic fairy stories and customs, of Romans mining that blood-red Welsh gold, of Vikings stealing up Welsh rivers in their flat-bottom longships to plunder and pillage, and spill their seed. Many of my novels are set in Wales in different historical eras and I hope to write more.

Plas Mawr, Conwy, Wales, an Elizabethan townhouse recreated

What are you interested in? Indulge that curiosity and let your wonderment fire your stories.      

Kitchen, Plas Mawr, Wales

How to write: time travel

Lots of us probably wish we could live in another era, but return safely to our own whenever things got 'hairy', or (if you went a long way back in time) whenever you got a headache and needed some quick pain relief.

One way to time travel is to write. Lots of my novels are set in historical periods I'm interested in: Roman Britain, Viking Wales,. Federation Australia.

If you do lots of research, once you have your characters and a rough idea of the plot, you really do get the feeling that you're 'living' somewhere else as you write.

A trick when writing historical novels is not to use everything that you've found out about the period in which your story is set. The reader doesn't want to feel like she's getting a history lesson. Drip little bits of information in only when it's relevant. It's fun to find out about the fashion fabrics and styles, the kinds of crockery and cutlery used to eat tripe (or whatever) but don't go overboard with these details. When writing A Hard Man to Love  (free now on Kindle) I researched 1910 Australia and also what was going on in the wider world and only added information that was of interest to the main characters, Pansy and Rex. One issue that Pansy thinks about is women getting the vote.

I can't go often, but I do love travelling to Wales. The stones have stories to tell!