Fact and Fiction Cross Over by Lynda Waterhouse and Cassie Marramgrass

Several years ago whilst walking in the sand dunes a strand of marramgrass led me to a character called Cassandra Marramgrass. Stories about the secret world of the Sand Dancers unfolded. Cassie made me research the mysterious and beautiful world of sand dunes. Tonight she is demanding that I write a letter on their behalf. Fact and fiction are crossing over.
So here goes…………
Dear Mr Donald Trump,
My name is Cassandra Marramgrass and I am a sand sprite. We are mysterious creatures who live inside sand dunes and follow the rules set down in the Sands of Time. The first rule states that we must ‘Honour and care for the dunes as a mother would for her child.’ I know that you admire the Balmedie sand dunes in Aberdeenshire, Scotland because you said, ‘When I saw this piece of land I was overwhelmed by the imposing dunes.’ They are special. So I am asking you, on behalf of the sand sprites, not to build your golf resort, you holiday apartments, luxury hotel and two golf courses on 1400 acres of these beautiful dunes. They are rare and as well as being home to the sand sprites they are teeming with life. The skylarks, lapwings, redshanks and pink footed geese to name but a few of the birds come to rest and nest here. Indeed the area had been designated of special scientific interest but this decree has been overturned by Alex Salmond. This is a worrying precedent and means that other sand dunes and nature reserves may now also be under threat.
We have a saying,
‘Time passes, sands shift and
Secrets are revealed’
In time your scientists may discover what the sand sprites already know about just how important sand dunes are to the ecology of the planet. We will continue dancing to maintain the health and harmony of the dunes for as long as we can but we do need help.
Cassandra Marramgrass

Has anyone else been compelled to action by one of their characters?

BLACK, WHITE AND JUST RIGHT - Malaika Rose Stanley

Mixed-race people have existed ever since our ancestors first set out to explore and wage war - and today, the UK has one of the largest and fastest-growing mixed race populations in the western world. Partly this is because of the greater number of people who choose to define themselves as mixed-race on census forms and elsewhere and partly as the result of more mixed marriages and relationships and more blended, adoptive and step-families.

The BBC’s recent Mixed Britannia series told some of the stories behind the headlines and statistics and stirred up quite a few personal memories of my own. As a result, I decided to try and compile a list of children’s and YA books which feature mixed-race and mixed heritage main characters and I began by asking friends, colleagues, social network contacts and UK publishers to let me know what’s out there.

I didn’t particularly want to politicise the idea but, of course, it is political. For some people, racial mixing represents the hope and positivity of a multicultural society whilst for others, it undermines national and cultural identity.

Simply asking the question raises some tricky issues because the mixed-race (or bi-racial, multi-ethnic, mixed heritage or whatever you want to call it) experience is so varied and complex. Whether someone chooses to identify themselves – or the characters in their books – as mixed-race depends on who’s asking – and why. Is it The Office for National Statistics, a National Book Week event organiser or the British National Party?

Self-definition is crucial and in my experience, physical appearance, familial influence (or lack of it) and racism all affect how mixed-race people identify themselves and this can change at different points in their lives.

                      

            

For me, as the daughter of a Jamaican father and an English mother, I sometimes felt rejected because my skin was too fair and my hair was too straight and sometimes because my skin was too dark and my hair was too frizzy. ‘Mixed-race’ was definitely preferable to the labels of half-caste or coloured that I had dumped on me as a child growing up in care in the 1960s – and to the names I got called at school and in the street.

In the 1970s, complete with my Angela Davis style Afro and radical pan-African and feminist politics, I was shouting it loud: I was black and proud! I was black and beautiful too, although my skin colour was actually rather more beige.

My sons were born in the 1980s and that was when I realised that the lack of diversity in children’s and YA books had persisted from my childhood to theirs. Racial identity has never been the problematic issue for them that it once was for me, but we still had to search hard to find kids that looked like them in the pages of books and it was one of the reasons that I started writing myself. My sons are now both in ‘mixed’ relationships – one with a beautiful young Hindu woman and the other with a beautiful young woman of Irish and Jamaican descent. And if I’m ever lucky enough to have grandchildren, they’ll need books too.

Of course, most families encourage their children to be proud of their cultural heritage, but what happens when, for whatever reason, children do not have access to these family connections?  What happens when mixed-race and multi-ethnic children do not see themselves reflected in books – except possibly as the ‘best friend’ or ‘trusty sidekick’ or in gritty tales of so-called social realism and the tortured search for identity? Where is the magic, the romance, the comedy?

As the mixed-race population has increased, in the media at least, ‘brown is the new black’. Mixed-race people have been appropriated as the supposedly more acceptable and less challenging face of diversity. But that’s not the whole picture. Although mixed-race people are highly visible in some spheres of life – we can model haute couture, win F1 Championships and BAFTAs, and even become the President of the United States - in some fields like educational policy, we are often ignored. Is the same true in children’s and YA publishing?

I contacted the publicity departments of 18 UK publishers – and heard back from only three! Sadly, one of these had no books with mixed-race characters, but OUP sent Catherine Johnson's Face Value - a murder mystery set in the London fashion world - and Barrington Stoke sent James Lovegrove’s The 5 Lords of Pain – a series of fast-paced stories about saving the world. So let’s hear it for models and gangsters and for martial arts, magic and demons from hell! Of course, I have to mention Tamarind – publisher of several picture books and middle grade fiction titles with mixed race characters, including my own Spike and Ali Enson – a story of inter-planetary alien adoption.

I am grateful to everyone who took the time and trouble to let me know about their own and other people’s books: Sarwat Chadda, author of Devil’s Wish and Dark Goddess, featuring ‘bad-ass’ hero, Billi Sangreal; Catherine Johnson, screenwriter and author of ‘enough books to prop up several tables’ including the historical Nest of Vipers and the contemporary Brave New Girl; Eileen Browne, illustrator of Through My Window, now back in print but first published in 1986 when ‘it was the first ever picture book in the UK – and the USA! - about an interracial family, where ethnicity wasn’t part of the story’; Zetta Elliott, author of A Wish After Midnight and networker extraordinaire; and so many others, too numerous to mention.

I hope the final list, now hosted by Elizabeth on the Mixed Race Family website (click here), will be a useful resource for families, children’s centres, schools, etc. Many of the books are quite dated and many are US publications which may be less easily available and less reflective of the British experience, but I felt it was better to leave people to make their own choices and draw their own conclusions. I am happy to correct errors, add omissions and include new publications.

It’s a short list – and not in a good way - but in the end, isn’t quality always more important than quantity?

Visitors From the World Called Imagination - Ellen Renner

‘Where do ideas come from?’ It’s the one question you’re bound to get during a school or library visit. I’m always truthful and say I don’t know. Oh, the disappointment in the eyes of that future author in the third row who sits, pencil poised, hoping to be gifted with the secret of story. I offer comfort in the form of tips on how to generate ideas and catch them before they fly away, like Roald Dahl’s BFG scooping up dreams in his net and bottling them, and the child is satisfied.

And, for me, there is a sense of disaster averted. I truly hope that no clever, obsessively inquisitive neuroscientist ever cracks the mechanics of creativity. I don’t want to know where my ideas come from, I just want to spy them fluttering past my eyes at unexpected moments, like translucent, technicoloured butterflies. Actually, I have a superstitious fear that if the magic process is examined too closely, it will wither away under the white hot glare of intellect. Some things grow best in the dark.

The origin of characters is even more mysterious to me. There’s a wonderful, darkly funny story by Diana Wynne Jones called Carol Onier’s Hundredth Dream. It should be required reading for all writers, especially those whose characters have a habit of hi-jacking the story.

I remember typing the last words of the final scene of my second book, City of Thieves, and feeling an overwhelming sense of bereavement. I had spent a white-hot six weeks glued to my computer, writing sixteen hours a day to get the story out. Not because of editorial deadlines but because Tobias, the main character, refused to get out of my head until I told his story. And it is a good story. Compelling and heart breaking. And although I know I created that story and remember long sessions working out the plots and reveals, it still feels as though Tobias told it to me.

When I’d done the deed, and written the last word, I lifted my aching fingers from the keyboard, looked round my extremely untidy study and suffered real grief that these characters I had lived with so intensively for a month and a half did not actually exist somewhere … in some alternative world. I believe I actually cried.
I always tell that story with a slight worry the men in white coats will be sent to talk with me by kind well-wishers, but I’ve come to believe that, for me, it perfectly illustrates why I write. It’s all about the characters.

Oh, you do need plot. And pacing. And themes … and all the other lovely mixture of ingredients that are so much fun and make up the craft of writing well. But characters are the heart, the soul, and the ‘why’ – at least for me. But where do they come from?

Some writers (I know, because there are whole chapters in ‘how-to’ books and entire units in creative writing courses dedicated to the subject) draw their characters directly from life - observing people they know and those they don’t; taking notes, adding, subtracting, rubbing out and re-drawing, until they have the characters they need to populate their plot.

I don’t do it that way. I start with a concept, an idea, a theme. After that, the characters form a casting queue outside my mental door. Of course, they must also be drawn from life – from a lifetime of observing people, of reading books obsessively, of watching television and film. But I don’t have to build them mechanically. They seem to create themselves as I put the first chapters down, and tell me their stories as I write. It truly does seem a form of magic.

I’m in that delicious, tantalising stage of a new book. A book I’ve been waiting nearly six months to start. As the time approached when I knew I’d be clear of other writing commitments and able to begin this new project – a shiny new strong idea that I don’t want to mess up – I was torn between anticipation and fear. I was wracked with the classic anxiety: had I forgotten how to write my own stories? Would I be good enough to tackle this big idea? Would the words come; the plot? And – especially – the characters?

A few weeks in and anxiety is easing. I’ve become caught up in my own storytelling web. Or, to put it more accurately, I’ve fallen in love with my characters. They have arrived, wholly-formed and real, from some hidden part of my mind, and are living their lives on the pages as I write. I’m enjoying their company tremendously. They’re teaching me about their world, about pain and strength and courage. This time, I do have a deadline to meet; I know how long I have to be in their company, and am already dreading the day that I will type that last scene and raise my head to look around a strangely lonely study.

School Visit Season Looms

It’s four years since my first author visit, but I remember the afternoon very well. I was terrified. I’d stood in front of conferences of adults, but the idea of children, that get bored easily, was on another scale. I practised my spiel on my own kids. The feedback was vanilla. I did it with the mirror as my audience, noticed how wrinkly I am when I smile. Didn't sleep the night before. To my credit, I was prepared. Overly. I started my one-hour session at half-past one, ran seamlessly through the three different sections - introduction and warm-up (ideally with laughter), making up characters together (using flipchart), putting them in a story (using props I'd brought.) Perfect, apart from the sweaty armpit mark on my dress and the fact I had no watch, and there was no clock in the room. I galloped through the afternoon like it was the Grand National. My mouth was so dry I had to tear my tongue off the roof. I daredn't stop, even to ask the time, in case I lost a child's attention. Eventually the bell rang. Oh joy! I'd run a two-hour marathon. It was over. I went home and someone else had to make tea.

So, am I any better now?

Yes.

I wear a watch.
If I forget I choose a child and ask them to tell me when it's whatever o'clock. The downside of this is that the child ends up staring at its watch and can't participate but hey.

 I don't pack so much in.
Simply putting on a wig does the warm-up job. I have large and curly, bright blue and Barbie wigs.

I occasionally stop talking.
As my confidence has grown I get the children to do more and me less. They write on the flipchart, they choose the props. If I get some proper little stars in the group I've even had an impromptu singing session, karate demos and a playfight (that got a little less playful.)

I get them off their chairs.
I know now to ask for the kids to be on the carpet, hall floor, anywhere but at their desks. That way they can't fiddle so easily and there's no barrier between us.

I take my props in a large dustbin and change them all the time.
Skulls are marvellous. What school event can't go swimmingly if you have a light-up skull?

I don't get them too excited.
In the early days I just wanted the children to look interested so I did pretty much anything that would keep them laughing. That's fine, until you actually want them to listen. I have found the brakes. I also now appoint a child to be on my side and use them as a policeman. Marvellous tactic. But I don't know what happens to them in the playground afterwards.

I spot the lively ones.
And give them jobs. There are any number of ad hoc positions available for children who like to talk.

I try not to catch the eye of any member of staff.
I can be a bit noisy, and I wear wigs, and dance and make faces, and shout sudden alarming things. The presence of the adults can make me feel self-conscious, so I pretend they're not there. When I find myself saying something that a teacher might not like I close down all peripheral vision and that works a treat.

If I lose my thread, I tell them.

I used to think I had to perform like an actress - know my words, never stutter or show any nerves. It was a revelatory moment when I started to just be myself (wigs, dancing, shouting). Now, if the workshop takes a dive I explain how it's mirroring the writing process. Up, down, sprinting, stopped dead, wrong, irretrievable. The children particularly like anything I say that exposes the truth of how often adults also have no idea what they're doing.

Talking of truth, it's 8.03am on my blog day. This week I've been writing, writing, writing, trying to finish the nth draft of my latest book to send it to my agent. And I forgot to prepare the blog. Sorry. So any of you who looked early - I was dreaming of moving house. And any of you reading now - this is an unedited flow of stuff from my head.

 So before I make porridge I'll share my favourite piece of feedback (from a child, of course.)

'I liked it when you was a goose.'

p.s. Please excuse the formatting. Beyond me . . .

Following My Characters: A Debut's Journey by Ellen Renner

2010 has been my debut year. My first book, Castle of Shadows came out in January and in August the sequel, City of Thieves, was published. Although I have a year of school visits and promotion ahead for these books, publication day marked the end of my personal journey from unpublished to published writer. August 5th , City’s official birthday, was also a day of letting go.

As Keren David remarked in her lovely post of a few days ago, publishing a book does rather feel like letting your child venture unprotected into a large and scary world. Keren and I have been shadowing each other this entire year, with our first and second books coming out within weeks of each other. I would love to get together with her soon and compare notes.

In what I’m sure is a familiar story, my work/life balance went crazy as I struggled to manage the conflicting demands of family, work, finding writing time, building an on-line presence and doing school visits. I also learnt that it’s possible to stand in the children’s department of Waterstones wearing a jolly ‘I’m a writer’ badge on my jacket and a fixed smile on my face and talk to complete strangers about my books. My family has probably suffered most (apart from those innocent shoppers in Waterstones!). I’m not a natural multi-tasker, and even my best friends would never use ‘Ellen Renner’ and ‘well-organised’ in the same sentence.

I’ve been pleased to find that some of the things I was most worried about aren’t problems at all: I love school and library visits. Talking with the children about my books is fun as well as a privilege; but what I find most rewarding is working with them on their own writing. I’ve also learnt that, not only can I write to deadlines, but that I enjoy doing so. Another tremendously positive thing has been meeting other children’s writers in person and online, and discovering how supportive and generous they are.

I’ve discovered quite a lot of things about myself as a writer, as I begin to explore my own strengths and weaknesses in a more focused way. One of those things is that I’m almost totally at the mercy of my characters. Character-driven takes on new meaning here. I never intended to write a series: Castle of Shadows was meant to be a stand alone. But then I fell in love with one of my characters, Tobias Petch. The more I found out about him, the more I knew I had to write his story.

Because characters nag you. They get in your head and won’t leave until you do them justice. As a writer, my characters drive the rest – plot, theme, the story itself. I don’t plot in detail before writing a first draft. I couldn’t (disorganised, remember?). Also, I’m intuitive. I trust my story-telling instinct to pretty much keep the narrative on track; and anyway, that’s what rewrites are for.

I think there are two basic kinds of writers: the intellectually-driven and the emotionally-driven. It’s all about getting the balance right because you need both. I don’t think it matters which comes first as you write; they are different ways of undertaking the same journey. Some writers plot intensively before digging into a first draft, using their intellect to sort the framework, then colouring in that framework and building characters.

I work the other way round, although the intellectual side of plotting, pacing, point-of-view, and theme is just as important to me. But I need the characters first: that emotional intuitive connection. It almost certainly means I have to do more rewrites than someone who plots it all out first; but on the positive side, my characters might lead me on a journey of discovery to places I hadn’t envisioned going. Sort of like the journey I’ve had this first, amazing, debut year.

The question I’d like to end this rather rambling post with is: how do you other writers work? Does character come first for you, or plot? And do you think it matters?

Do YOU Hate 'Strong' Female Characters? - Lucy Coats

Last week's New Statesman article by Sophia McDougall, entitled 'I Hate Strong Female Characters' went viral on Twitter and created a storm in the comments box.  Of course, McDougall was courting controversy with that particular post title, since she is a self-avowed feminist, who sticks up for women on the internet.  But does she have a point?

Many female characters in YA (especially paranormal YA) nowadays are labelled 'feisty', or 'kick-ass' in their book blurb. They are meant to embody all the modern virtues of strong, independent, girl-women who go out and take what they want in life without being constrained by the default 'but I'm a girl so I can't do that' box of the not-so-distant writing past.

As a feminist myself, I say 'Hooray' to all that.  I've much enjoyed meeting Sarwat Chadda's determined monster-stomping Billi SanGreal and (more recently) Sarah J Mass's defiant knife-wielding assassin, Celaena Sardothien, and would much rather promote them as female role models than the wimpish, vapid Bella Swann from Twilight. (Not that I'm advising teenage girls to go out and stab people, but you take my meaning.)  I do wonder, though, in more general terms does all this overt feisty, kick-ass stuff come at the expense of a certain nuance of emotion? Does making the girls we write about 'strong' before anything else come at the expense of depth and breadth of character?  In the frantic quest to make sure our girl heroes do anything that boy heroes can (of which they are, of course, entirely capable) are we losing sight of the fact that it shouldn't matter and we shouldn't even be thinking about it because it ought to be a given?

As McDougall herself says, "No one ever asks if a male character is “strong”. Nor if he’s “feisty,” or “kick-ass” come to that." Well, we don't do we? We're more likely to ask what his character is like. Let's take Standish Treadwell, from Sally Gardner's Maggot Moon. An unlikely hero at best. Is he kick-ass?  Is he feisty? Does it matter? No, of course it doesn't. He is simply himself, a scared, heroic, solitary, nervy, matter-of-fact, dyslexic boy who breaks your heart.

We need to get over and move on past the 'Wow! This princess does kung-fu!" moment in children's and YA books.  Strongly-written female characters are great and entirely necessary, but it should not be what she can do that defines a princess - it should be who she is as a person. Am I alone in thinking this? Do tell!

Lucy is teaching Guardian Masterclasses on How To Write for Children on 7 Sept and 19 Oct 2013

Lucy's new picture book, Bear's Best Friend, is published by Bloomsbury "A charming story about the magic of friendship which may bring a tear to your eye" Parents in Touch "The language is a joy…thoughtful and enjoyable" Armadillo Magazine. "Coats's ebullient, sympathetic story is perfectly matched by Sarah Dyer's warm and witty illustrations." The Times   

Her latest series for 7-9s, Greek Beasts and Heroes is out now from Orion Children's Books. 

Lucy's Website

Lucy's Scribble City Central Blog (A UK Top 10 Children's Literature Blog)

Join Lucy's Facebook Fanpage

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Lucy is represented by Sophie Hicks at Ed Victor Ltd

The Naming of Characters

So - you have a character in your book, and they have to have a name. First names are difficult enough. I have two baby's names books in my study, both very well thumbed, one in English, one in German. Sometimes a name attaches itself to a character at once, like Jenny's name in Saving Rafael - and Rafael's - or sometimes I change it several times before I find the one that's right.

In Saving Rafael, I called the horrible Nazi family next door some name I've forgotten, then decided that wasn't right, so I flicked through various German books I possess and found the name Mingers. I fell about laughing and decided this was the one. Young and older readers have appreciated the joke, so I am vindicated. The Gestapo man who interrogates Jenny is called Brenner, which means 'burner,' because I felt this gave a sense of someone who causes pain. Germans would get that more than English-speaking readers, but Mingers is a pun that will be lost in the German version (Nicht Ohne Dich, Boje Verlag, out now). Jenny's family name is Friedemann which means 'peace man' - I felt an appropriate name for a German Quaker and his family.

Sometimes place names are good for a character - like the inadequate missionary in The Mountain of Immoderate Desires. On a visit to the White Horse of Uffington, I saw the name of a village, Fawler, and thought, yes, that's right for the man, since he collapses under pressure. Sometimes I just take names off the spines of books in my study..but in my novel of the English witchhunt, Malefice, I took all the names of characters from the 17th century Parish Records in Waltham St Lawrence, the village on which I based my fictional Whitchurch St Leonard.

Graham Greene used very common names for his characters, for fear of being sued - Brown, Grey, Smith, etc… and I have sometimes invented German names and do a websearch on them to see if they come up. If they do, I have to invent again. You can sue for libel on behalf of the dead in Germany.. People who know about English poetry will comprehend why the vile concentration camp guard in Saving Rafael is called Grendel. It's not a German name.

For other, less sensitive characters' names, I have harvested them from the plates of apartment blocks in Germany, which is what I'm doing on the picture here.





On the other hand, reality does perpetrate jokes that one would hesitate to put into fiction. Opposite the orthodontist I used to go to in Mansfield Road in Nottingham was a greengrocer's called Flower, and a florist called Onion. I think they were just one house away from each other. And would an author, apart from a comic one, name the three hairdressers in a town Sharp, Blunt, and Brittle? That was in Kendal, in the 50s and 60s. My husband had two risk assessment colleagues called Dr Hope and Dr Luck. One could go on forever, and the correspondance column of the Guardian recently did..

How do other people decide on characters' names?

Rituals and e-visiting old friends - Celia Rees

The other day, a student asked me if I had any particular rituals associated with my writing. I was about to answer, 'No, not really,' in a lame kind of way, when I realised that I do, I just never thought of them that way, that's all. I collect things. Some objects are almost talismans, others are just fun - like the models that make up the interesting Pirates! tableau. I have witches in all sizes from big, to very small with flashing eyes, that belong to Witch Child; models of pirates, ships, flags, eye patches, pencil case, t shirts (Pirates! - what else?); a tricolour rosette I bought in Paris (Sovay) and various jesters for The Fool's Girl. I don't stop when the book is finished - the Lego pirate ship was free with last week's News of The World and I always give money to street performers because of Feste.

Perhaps the reason I go on collecting is because books are never really finished. The characters stay with you long after the book has been published. You've lived with them for a long time, they are part of you, like memories and people from your real life. I realised this when I re-visited Pirates! recently. This was a stand alone book, published in 2003, no sequel planned, so none written, but that didn't stop me wondering, speculating about what happened next, so when I was invited by a blogger, who was having a pirate month in May, to write a piece for her website, I thought, why not?



She wanted it to be called a The Brawl in Triton's Tavern. I've had stranger requests. I decided to write an episode from Pirates! 2, the phantom sequel. As soon as I began to write, the characters and their voices were back again. It was like visiting old friends. The result can be seen http://vvb32reads.blogspot.com/2011/05/tritons-tavern-brawl.html

It was fun. I might go back there again for a longer visit. Who knows? In these days of e books and kindle, we can write what we like, what we want to write, not what is asked of us by publishers.

In Which I Name Ryan Giggs - Charlie Butler

Occasionally people ask me which aspect of my writing I’m most proud of. Is it the flawless characterization? The wonderfully-observed descriptive passages? The dialogue that tangoes off the page? The plots, as artfully constructed as the Daedalian labyrinth? Or some alchemic combination of all the above?

Oddly enough, the stroke I remember with the greatest pride is one that passes most readers by. It occurs in my first published book, The Darkling. The Darkling was published in 1997 (in the same month as Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, as I like to remind people with a gloomy starward shaking of the fist), but was written some years earlier, and it was in 1992 that I had to face up to the tricky problem of what to call Jamie’s pet gecko.

Jamie was the younger brother of my heroine and narrator, Petra McCoy. His own part in the story is relatively minor, and that of his pet lizard smaller still, but it needed a name, and I knew that (given Jamie’s character) its name was likely to celebrate a Manchester United leftwinger. But which one? At the time, two young players were making headlines for United in that position, both alike in crossing and scoring power, both given to gecko-ish bursts of furious pace. One was Lee Sharpe, who had made the No. 11 shirt his own during the 1990-91 season, notably by scoring a hat-trick against Arsenal in the League Cup. At 21, Sharpe was a talented player who clearly had a long and illustrious career ahead of him. The other contender was even younger, but his coltish legs were bringing him up fast on the rails. This was the teenaged Ryan Giggs.

The choice mattered, because I wanted (as far as possible) to future-proof my book. Future-proofing is a perennial challenge for children’s writers, who generally try as hard as any Nivea ad to fight the signs of aging. Technology (Dial-up internet? Puhleeze!); clothes (Ray-Ban Aviators? Really?); bands and film stars (Kurt Cobain? River Phoenix? You’ve got to be kidding me!); and slang (Could I be any more 1990s?) – all are familiar adversaries. There are several ways around them, more or less effective. For many years children in books could be fitted out in blue jeans in the justified confidence that denim would always be in fashion – or at least not jarringly out. You could invent your own slang or song lyrics. Or you could take the route I did, and bet on longevity.

I almost called that gecko Sharpe instead of Giggs, I really did. Had I done so, perhaps Lee Sharpe’s career would have prospered. In the event, following this proof of my lack of faith it went into a fairly precipitous decline, hastened by illness and injury. Sharpe soon moved from Manchester United to Leeds, then on to Bradford, Grimsby and Exeter City before ending his playing career in 2003 at Grindavik in Iceland. Ryan Giggs, by contrast, has just won his twelfth Premier League title with United, and in 2011 is still a regular on the first team. At the end of January, he was voted the club's greatest ever player.

So, I’m very glad I named the gecko after Giggs, and think it reflects well on me both as a writer and as a pundit. On the other hand, I can’t help feeling more of a kinship with Lee Sharpe. Perhaps I should have named Jamie’s lizard Rowling, after all?

Weekend writer – Michelle Lovric

How many writers have weekends? Or an off-switch, for that matter?

I have spent many weekends without writing a word of fiction. But if that happens, then I try to make sure that I am living it. (See my other blogs).

I’m in the lucky position of having deadlines, but in general who ever dares to stop writing?

You can’t just leave your characters alone for the weekend, any more than you can leave your dog in the car on a hot day. It’s just not responsible. It’s not kind. And frankly, it’s not really possible.

You’ll take your characters shopping with you, noticing that a certain green scarf is just the colour of the eyes of your latest character. In the stationers, you suddenly realize it’s time you decide exactly what kind of pencil-case pedantic Renzo would take to school, or the exact pink of the lining of the coffin in which Rosibund sleeps, in The Mourning Emporium.

The most banal day is full of snafflable incidents. Whatever good or bad befalls the writer is easily recycled into her characters’ lives.

This being the case, the writer’s most vital organ is the one of discrimination. With so much possible input, the skill of the author lies in weeding out the unwonderful.

A clever journalist friend of mine once offered advice on my chronic affliction of over-writing (always closely followed by painful, drastic cutting). She said, ‘Think of each piece of writing as a sculpture. The sculptor chooses his piece of stone to suit the figure he will create. He doesn’t buy a ten-metre-tall piece of stone for a one-metre-high sculpture. He wisely chooses a piece 1.2 metres tall. This means less work and less waste. Try to think of each story the same way.’

And so I would, if it wasn’t for the weekends. Those weekends spent stealthily gathering odds and ends of seemingly vital material. Those Saturday afternoons watching black-and-white movies in which the heroine turns her head just so, and you know you need that gesture for your next book. The Sunday morning egg yolk that spills out of its fretwork of white – just like one consumed by your hero at dawn on the day of the exam that will change his life. Or the gondolier who admits that, if tourists ask who lived in a certain palazzo, he always tells them that Casanova lived on the first floor, and Marco Polo on the second floor and Lord Byron on the third floor. This charming and fluent liar also urgently needs a guest-appearance in your book. As does the ‘preen gland’ of the flamingo, just written up by scientists. And …

So Monday morning finds the writer facing a ten-metre monolith of material, when all she wanted was a nice shiny little pebble she could roll neatly into her text.

Does anyone know where the off-switch is, for next Friday night?



Michelle Lovric’s website
See the video trailer for The Undrowned Child and The Mourning Emporium, on YouTube

Magic Moments by Lynda Waterhouse

The story I am working on is called ‘Magic Moments and the Dull Bits in Between.’ I have no publishing contract as yet but this story has been lurking in my imagination for some time itching to make a break for it. In these difficult and uncertain times I have got nothing to lose. Instead of giving in to despair about the state of the publishing world I am recklessly writing from my heart and giving my publisher-pleasing- grateful-to- be- published- persona a rest in order to allow my rebel voice free rein. And what a feisty dame she is turning out to be. Yesterday she rewarded me with a Magic Moment. I was writing a scene where one of my characters is opening up an old suitcase from 1976. I thought I knew what was inside it but as the character opened the case something else happened. The case clicked open on cue and my character reacted as I'd planned but then I noticed something else. There was the faint smell of a perfume. My character breathed in and so did I and KAPOW a name was summoned up from the back catalogue of my life and that name was…..Aqua Manda.

Image from Amersham Museum website

I hadn’t consciously being trying to write about anything olfactory. I had been too taken up with the objects inside the case; the Phoom dress, the copy of Jonathon Livingston Seagull and the journal. But there was now the distinctive orange smell of Aqua Manda to deal with. A fragrance I had not thought of in decades but which had returned to my memory at exactly the right moment that it was needed. After the smell came the memory of the bright art nouveau style packaging and the small blue bottle. One Christmas I had received a bottle of Aqua Manda talc and felt that I was truly grown up. My character had glimpsed the past and it smelled of oranges and spices. The hopes and dreams of a sixteen year old girl, the smell of Aqua Manda, the sound of the Real Thing singing ‘You to Me are Everything’ and the long hot summer of 1976. Here’s wishing you all a magic moment in your writing today. Would love to hear all about it...

The Real Me - Andrew Strong

Peter Carey, when asked how he writes, says he just writes and rewrites, discovering new threads as he goes along; when something new appears, it can change everything else in the book, so he begins again, writes and rewrites, and then, perhaps, discovers a new thread. And so on.

He doesn't so much write stories, as carve them out. And it’s words he likes, words and sentences, not the storytelling of 'and then and then and then...'. He works on a microscopic level. He lets the story take care of itself. I approve of that.

I've read a few of his books, I liked 'Oscar and Lucinda', and loved 'The True History of the Kelly Gang'. They had an organic, uncontrived feel, and were forever growing. His characters feel the same.

A few years ago I picked up James Wood's book 'The Broken Estate' in a tiny second hand book shop. I didn't know anything about Wood at the time. It looked a serious book, with essays on Virginia Woolf, Austen and Martin Amis. A serious, cheap book. I couldn't resist it.

I like Wood when he goes on about 'rounded characters'. I'll skip what he says and just ask you to think of someone you know well. What is it about them that you know? When you think of them are they any more or less real than a character in a good novel? I think we caricature even the people we know intimately: I'm certain we remember faces by a very few details - a big chin, a small nose, a slightly raised eyebrow. Couldn't our 'deeper knowledge' of people be the same, and more superficial than we might suppose?

And what about ourselves? What do I know about the 'real me'? I wonder sometimes when I hear people saying things like 'I want to discover my true self'; because I don't think there is a true self. I'm not even sure there's a self, at least nothing static, unchanging, like a portrait. So, when it comes to creating characters, instead of piling on detail after detail, a few brushstrokes should do it.

Which reminds me why I have trouble reading Henry James. He does tend to describe faces in so much detail his characters seem grotesque. When someone has an 'elongated top lip' or 'an aquiline nose like a ridge waving down' I begin to see something resembling a tortoise. And then before I can do anything about it the tortoise is chewing a piece of soggy old lettuce - even though James doesn't mention the lettuce - and I can't read any more. If Peter Carey was writing such a book, I’m sure he’d have started again, and written the adventures of that tortoise. As he hasn’t, I will.

I’ll create a tortoise character with a few brushstrokes, and when this character is up and running (well, you know what I mean) - let him open a door, or eat his lettuce, or take forever to go from one room to another; and watch him - he does it his own way. And in the middle of this, he'll look up and he'll say something; he might tell you he's looking for his spectacles, or his purpose in life, or that he’s growing a moustache, and I'll have the beginning of a whole new thread, a new story, a new series.

The Best-Laid Plans, or Down, Characters, Down!

I’ve always been a planner; the idea of starting a novel and ‘seeing where the story took me’ was anathema to me. After all, I was the writer; I was in charge.

Despite this, my last novel, Still Falling, out in February 2015, was a mettlesome beast, running to nine drafts before I and my editor were happy. But I’d begun it without a contract, shelved it for nine months to write a commission (Too Many Ponies), and besides, the subject matter took me into darker psychological places than I’d ever gone before – so maybe it was natural that it shouldn’t bend to my will as easily as previous books.

the best-laid plans

The work-in-progress, Street Song, would be completely different. Because my agent wanted a full outline for this year’s London Book Fair, I’d thought through the story and knewexactly where it would go. It was a simpler story than Still Falling and for once I hadn’t had to struggle with the main female character – I’ve always found boys easier to write – as she’s very like me as an eighteen-year-old.

I’d promised the couple of interested publishers that the novel would be ready by the end of the year. Challenging, but not impossible. I set a tight schedule – 80,000 words in three months, July to September. I knew I’d over-write – I always do in a first draft; but I told myself I wouldn’t over-write much this time, because of my great outline. By 30^th September the first draft would be done; I could fit in something else in October, and get back to it with plenty of time to redraft.

What could possibly go wrong?

On the first page the male protagonist, Cal, announced he was a recovering addict. Unexpected, but it went well with the story, so that was OK. In fact, it made some of his later choices much easier to justify. I don’t tend to get fanciful about the creative process, but it really was as if I hadn’t made that fact up; it was part of the character’s history that he hadn’t been able to tell me until I actually let him speak.

As for Toni, my female MC – what a cow. If I really was as smug as that as an eighteen-year-old, it’s a wonder I had any friends. Her epiphany is meant to be the moment she realises that she doesn’t want to go to Oxford; it was her mum’s dream rather than hers. When I found Cal telling her that it was her dream, she was just scared of failure, I was annoyed at his cheek. I was the writer; he was simply a not-very-perceptive boy (and a made-up one): who was he to tell Toni what she was thinking when even I hadn’t known that?

But he was right.

Listen, guys -- I'm kind of in charge here...

my low-tech approach to word count

As July moved into August, and September loomed, the word count grew. At first it was all about hitting those magical targets. Then, on a week’s retreat to finish the draft, just before the climax, another unexpected thing happened. A minor character, meant to be just a random girl in a bar, turned out to be something more. She needed to be rescued by Cal. He won’t be up to the task, I thought: and anyway, I hadn’t planned this. Maybe I should just delete her? After all, I was now at 85,000 and no end in sight. But you know what? She was right too. I’d underestimated Cal, and in fact the ending (when I get there) will be improved by his actions.

It’s all just a bit… inconvenient. My characters are behaving like – well, like people.

And now my meticulously-planned 80,000 word draft is a huge messy long thing well over 100,000 (I’ve stopped checking). I’m two weeks late in starting my next project for which the deadline is – well, it’s too scary to type here but SOON.

have stopped checking the scary word count

But you know what? Every surprise, though tiresome, has made for a better story in the end. Like an unexpected but essentially welcome visitor. She might throw your routines out, and need a bit of looking after, but it’s so much fun to have her in the house.

And if the book has outstayed its welcome in my carefully-worked-out life, well, maybe that’s taught me something important about the creative process too.

Though I do need to finish it TODAY.

A is for THE ARCHERS - and for ATTACHMENT. By Penny Dolan.

Confession time.

I listen to the BBC radio series “The Archers”. (Yes, I heard that groan!) It is the only soap I follow, mainly because it fits in well with doing the evening meal. 

I amalso revising and fixing a long manuscript right now , which means that - while listening to the Archers - I look out for lessons for my own writing.

There is a lot to dismiss or dislike in the Archers, which makes the listening easy when you need to concentrate on cooking. I am not at all fond of those notoriously awful romantic scenes (complete with ghastly squelchy radio sound effects) or some of the characters (back when the series did offer a range of characters) or the fact that I share a birthday with Linda Snell. 

Nevertheless, for those fifteen minutes, veg-peeler in hand, I take weird pleasure from playing at script writing. I stand there, predicting lines before they are spoken, watching out for the foreshadowing moments (or the now thumping great clues)and pondering on potential plot options and development.

Sometimes (or once upon a time, as it now seems) the long- running threads could be poignant, especially if the subject echoed something you were dealing with in your own life too (and I don’t mean sheep)  just because the thread developed over real time too.

But something odd has been happening to the Archers.  I have heard rumours of a new Big Editor imported from East Enders, who is trying to “take the show back to its roots”. Maybe (or “mebbe” as Ruth would say) the differences between a “heard” script and a “watched” script aren’t totally appreciated, especially as far as characters go, and there are no visuals to back a radio story up.

All the big books on plotting, like Robert McKee’s Story, say that it is the balance between the character roles that holds a story together and, although these underlying mythic roles may overlap, each character should be fundamentally consistent. 

Not so in this rural soapland. One central “grumpy character” role – Tony - has been taken over by a new and reputable actor who sounds even grumpier and nastier. He does it very well. (Has he been asked to go for the maximum moan?) 

However – and suddenly - this “weak” character is coming over as far stronger character dramatically, which is unbalancing all sorts of other relationships in the storyline. Unsatisfying. Confusing.

Recently, a long-awaited joyous wedding ended in wailing when Tom the groom backed out. Hidden behind his seemingly stone heart was the realisation that he could not carry on trying to replace his older dead brother. However, the vital scene that would give full dramatic coherence to this strand just never took place.  We got quick glimpses. One liners and that was about all.

It did not feel like a big tragedy. It felt odd and strange, or a too-hurried exit for the actor or character in question. Who? Why? What? (And is it still impossible to contact people in Canada if you put your mind to it?)  I wasn’t involved or moved. I was just wondering what the behind-the-scenes real-life reasons or reasoning were and I was cross, because the scripts hadn’t had the courage to explore that. They also assumed that all listeners really knew the “dead John” story but it was long ago  The story concept was big in the scriptwriters heads, but did the readers/listeners accept and understand? I don't think so.

The range of characters has disappeared. People are referred to but don't speak. The women seem to have become sillier and pettier. The male characters have turned into dim hunks, untrustworthy fools or moany oldies. Even the best in the Archers are suspicious or seem condemned to the long silence of the budget-cuts.

Then last week came another drastic character change. Loyal, hardworking conference-organiser Roy and snobby Lady of the Manor Lizzie had the worst-scripted “I’m at a music festival” fling imaginable. We all know that Roy is the kind of honest fool who will blab. Oh no. Too, too wearying a plot and too miserable the consequences.  (Tempted to write “If I wanted to watch East Enders . . .”)

 

Right now, I’m barely listening to the show  when it airs. I am imagining the script meetings where all the “possibilities” are loudly brainstormed, scenes where all the writers are so entranced by all the twists and options that they forget that their story-world has to feel credible.  Have the once-many characters been written out because of budget cuts or did the actors walk?  I am sure that I glimpsed an item on BBC Writers Room inviting new writers to submit their thoughts. Are we now listening to someone's mish-mash of all the ideas sent in?  It's a mystery.

As I said earlier, I doing my own manuscript-wrangling right now and taking sideways note from what I hear and don’t hear on the Archers. Right now, the writing lessons I’m learning are:

Who are your rocks? Some characters are there to act as rocks. They need to be fairly stable all the way through the story, because if there are too many “out-of character” character changes, the reader does not know who to attach themselves, emotionally.

Watch the “volume” of your characters. When you revise, beware of characters that, emotionally & dramatically, dominate or fade when that’s not what you or your story need.

Watch your plot. The logic of the plot underpins the pact with the reader/listener. So don’t annoy with over-long diversions, such as the Jennifer’s kitchen aga-saga or unbelievable occupations such as Helen’s “successful” organic shop that closes on a whim.

What was it that you didn’t write? Don’t assume, just because you as writer know a character’s problems and what happens etc. etc. that readers/listeners do. A lot of small hints don’t offer the full blown emotional impact of a good big scene that makes everything clear. Make sure that you write all the scenes that matter.

Lastly, A is for Attachment. If your reader is no longer attached to a character – the person acts out of character with not enough explanation, alters at a basic level, or does unexplained things that lose sympathy, - they will get angry. And angry readers will close the pages, because you have broken the story contract.

Are you taking all this on board, Penny?

Yes, I am.

Good! And get back to revising that work-in-progress. Now!

Penny Dolan

ps. I’m also rather annoyed by the thought that this “Archer” tag could register on some media scanning device, and therefore add another tick to the “attention & controversy equals success for the new Archers”. ‘Cos it ain’t so. Grrr!