In my second series of writing tips on “Advanced Noveling” I’m looking at tricks and techniques designed to help you as a writer get more in touch with what it is you’re writing. Other parts can be found below in the category ‘Writing Tips’

This is quite an easy exercise to visualise and explain, so I doubt this is going to be the longest article in the world. However, if done right you should zoom from having zero novel notes to more than you can shake a large stick at in a very short space of time indeed.

If you remember last time you made note of a key scene in a novel you were thinking of writing, the key point in the novel which all other scenes move up to or down from. The pinnacle of Mt. Your Novel. You may have done this once, you may have done it enough not to have to think of novel ideas for the restof your life. That’s your choice. Now what’s also your choice is that you need to take this scene (or pick your favourite) and we’re going to work with that scene.

If you reacquaint yourself with the ideas of “thesis” and “antithesis” from the last article if you recall I mentioned that this scene was supposed to be the moment of “synthesis” in your novel. So at some point, I’m guessing, you will want to tell your audience what “thesis” and “antithesis” are. And these moments would best be described by. You guessed it, two more scenes.

Essentially, what was a single scene must now form a triumvirate of dramatic high points two describing ends of the scale and the last describing the eventual conflict between those points.

I’m remaining vague on this because I have no idea what your scenes entail, who’s in them, where they take place etc. Therein lies the final stage of this exercise.

I want you to burrow. Picture your scenes in your head. Your brain will have provided, without you even thinking about it too much, locations for those scenes, props that may be involved, characters who are present. If you move the camera of your mental scene to the sides and out the room (or into the next field, or over to the next spaceship or whatever) you’ll find other characters, more props, a world waiting to be described. Now is the time to take notes. Make yourself a brief field guide to the world of your novel. A quick entry on each thing you encounter will do. You will need these field notes for the next exercise.

That’s where things may start to get tricky.

This set of tips is going to steer well clear of twee little devices telling you how many words it will prompt to gush forth once you’ve done all of my exercises. This one does come with an exercise though.

I’m presuming, even should you have not read my earlier “Writing Tips” series, that you have no problem banging down a bit of prose, somewhere in the region of sailing up to 30,000ish would be comfortable. If not then click “Writing Tips” in the side bar and I’ll see you here later (start at the bottom).

Today’s exercise is based around the principle that when you sit down to do any exercise in storytelling from writing a novel to bashing out a screenplay it all comes down to one moment. Basically you are writing your story because somewhere in your head you have this killer scene, it is moving, dramatic, exciting, poignant, pregnant with meaning. That’s the moment, that’s the whole point of the exercise.

This does rather make it sound like all the other scenes in your prospective novel are rubbish in comparison. This is not the case.

Swift digression through Philosophy Alley here. Plato talked about dialogues as a way to get ideas across. One party represented the point of the dialogue the “thesis”. The other opposed the thesis and became the “antithesis” through the dialogue a beast came into being that was a combination of these two, the “synthesis”.

Why do I mention this?

Drama is central to all stories and drama is based within conflict and conflict always boils down to a choice between two perspectives that are at odds. If you like a thesis and an antithesis. If your thesis is “good” and your antithesis is “evil” then your synthesis is likely to end up being “no… good!”. Yawn. But what if your thesis is that destiny is real and free will is just an illusion, well your antithesis is then that destiny is the illusion and we are masters of our own fate and the synthesis… well, that’s for you to decide.

Being a storyteller is about being a human being. Telling a ripping yarn about the good guy socking the villain in the face and rescuing the princess is all very well as comfort food but somewhere along the line people want to entertain some thoughts about that old chestnut “the human condition”.

When I say your story will always come down to a single scene I mean there will be a moment that talks about the thesis and antithesis and suddenly your proposed synthesis will become apparent to the reader. That’s what, for want of a better term, we shall call the “money shot”.

All the other scenes leading up to that scene and all the scenes leading away from it should seek to explore your thesis and antithesis. They should lend depth, light, shade, colour, flavour, texture to that one all important moment. The story serves that moment but your story should be a buffet not a bag of crisps.

So what’s the exercise?

In whatever medium you choose jot down an idea for a story. You may not hit “the scene” right away but have a good go at guessing what this scene might be. Write down some notes about what it might involve. Then separate out the conflict in that scene. What is the thesis? What’s the antithesis? Make some notes about that. Then, finally, jot down what your key scene says about the conflict, what kind of synthesis are you tending towards. You may not fully know, newsflash, storytelling is a process for the storyteller of dealing with the very issues that fascinate them in the first place.

Whatever you jot down now that’s enough material for a novel right there.

Next time we’ll be taking these results and moving on to quickly sketch out the kinds of things that will be in the story you just made up. Maybe you want to jot a few down and take your favourite forward. Until next time. Happy writing!

I was thinking about my use of the term “advanced noveling” and I think it actually tells me a bit more about my supposed or unsupposed status as someone in a position to give anyone advice about anything. Someone (Mark Twain?) once remarked that no one but a fool ever wrote for a reason other than he was being paid to do so. I think the same thing applies to polar exploration and mountain climbing, and while we’re at it painting, building models of Notre Dame out of matchsticks and, from what I’ve seen, playing Eve Online.

The point is hobbies are foolish. It’s like having a second career that pays you no money, is a lot of trouble and gains you nothing particularly tangible. I have written, to date, eight novels, four of these novels will never see the light of day. One of the ones that won’t I lost in a computer memory dump crash thingie and wrote again switching from first to third person and then still decided it wasn’t all that and eventually abandoned it entirely. So you could even make an argument I’d written nine novels.

I’ve written a lot of novels, anyway.

But that’s not enough to be handing out advice on certain things. How does one get an agent? Don’t know, never got one. How does one sell a book? Don’t know, only sold about 3 copies of any book I ever published. How do I get a shot at the best seller lists? Haven’t a clue, but I think it has something to do with mediocre to decent talent and egregious luck.

It does however qualify me to answer questions about how to get the damn thing done. If you are going to worry about fame and fortune when you’ve got the thing printed and housed in an old shoebox (or PDFed and in a backup folder) then I can help you hammer some of the kinks out of that thing. At least enough to keep moving. Advanced noveling is going to be about when you have content production skills but you’re having problems making stuff hang together. It’s about my statements on “Proud-Level 2″ I want to help you get there. Having just got there myself I think I am now in a position to help others take those steps.

All aboard then. Let’s get trucking.

Just thought I’d make that clear. After 2006s series that was all about inspiration I’m going to move it on to the business of actually thinking about a novel. I will try to put more exercises up but I’m thinking of this as a series on “Advanced Noveling” if you like. It’s for people who can hit a story with their best shot and maybe cruise up to 35,000 words or so and then may find themselves languishing.

The last series, which may be found in the “Writing Tips” category. Dealt with the business of getting something down and planning out a novel when you have nothing. I know a lot of other people find that they have plenty of something but then they find a good start gives way to the experience of waading through waist high treacle wearing boots of lead. All the plans in the world have trouble saving you from that.

I’m actually looking to make external a lot of what goes on in my head when I am stuck. It tends to go in three stages. One: Thinking “oh, I’ll just take a break here”, Two: realise three months later that I have become “stuck” in that project, Three: Whilst doing something unrelated realise why I was stuck and sit down to write again until stage One repeats.

Whether anything is happening subconsciously between these stages I am not sure (due to any process in question being, er, subconscious) but I know that the problems always go through those stages until they are resolved.

I have found that I can force it but I don’t very often. I guess I will do do more often when I have as much time as I need to write.

I am about to solve one of Ian’s problems. My ex-pat friend currently resident in the land of the kangaroo was always confounded by the fact that it took just as much time and effort to write a bad novel as it did to write a good one. In theory, the novelist would always think their work had some worth, after all who would spend all that time bashing out something even they thought was rubbish (unless someone was willing to pay them unfeasible amounts of money to write tripe, of course, this happens on occasion)? This is why Ian (mild to mid dyslexic in addition to being incredibly self-critical) had never really got along with writing.

I can see his point. The first time I finished a novel, a respectable 70 odd thousand word’s worth of the most stinking slimy prose ever to infest this planet, I was proud. At the time I was able to see that it possibly wasn’t the best novel ever written but it had some nice ideas. Actually, it did have some nice ideas. That’s what’s called raw talent. It was still a shapeless bag of spanners. Too many characters, too many set pieces, characters with no real motive, terrible dialogue, the list goes on. But there’s a large proportion of literate people who haven’t written 70,000 words of anything off the top of their head. Most people just don’t have the imagination, the determination, the grit to produce even the worst 70,000 word novel ever written. If you can sit through that process, grind your teeth and push forward until you can write “the end”, then that is something to be proud of. It’s a certification of dedication, ambition and endurance.

That quickly wears off. About six or seven novels later merely “writing a lot of words” has become something it is well within your field of accomplishment to achieve. The fear of not finishing dulls. Even if you don’t finish this one you once finished a novel. Writing a novel becomes something you “have done” and after a little more time and effort becomes something you “can do”. It sounds weird but once you are a novelist you can feel no more proud of finishing another novel than you can of visiting the bathroom first thing in the morning. You finished another book, big deal.

That’s where Level 2 kicks in, and within Level 2 the answer to the “Pride of the crap author” dilemma. As I apply the final few tweaks to Starfall I am proud of it. Not proud of finishing 130,000 words, even though that’s 30,000 more than my previous best in terms of word count. Like I said, numbers are just numbers. No, I am proud of Starfall because it is a novel I believe people should want to read. I actually would recommend anyone who likes fiction books in the horror/fantasy genres to pick it up and read it as a priority matter. I am proud of its accessibility because it is also complex. I am proud of its ideas because they apply much research in an involving way. I am proud of its epic sweep because it’s also quite grounded.

I am proud of this novel in a way that I have never been proud of any of the ones before it. If I was to get everyone in the world to read one book by me this would be the one. I am hoping that my next book will be equal in stature, if not greater. This is not pride at the achievement in terms of work produced. This is pride in the fact of this story’s very existence. Not saying I couldn’t do better. Not saying it is perfect (whatever that means). Not saying I have nowhere left to go. No. Not saying any of that. All I am saying is that I believe in this book. I believe that it is something people would be better off for having read. I believe people are poorer for not having read it.

That’s the kind of pride that isn’t just about a word count.

I would just like to take a moment to say hello to the sudden influx of people who’ve just visited my little corner of the internet for the first time from Nanowrimo. I have never had tracking software installed for November before and to see my traffic leap from 6 to 8 people per day to 30 people in a single day is quite bizarre.

I’ve mostly been whingeing about the paucity of available activity pre-Nano as I’ve slacked off all other projects and Starfall is a few seemings and lookings from done. I have very little creative going on at present. This is weird.

So I offered up some free advice earlier, don’t know if it helped. I guess it probably didn’t because it was what I might describe as an “Advanced Novelling Technique” that I didn’t even know I’d fully formed in my head.

Well, last time round about Nano time I wrote my first “Writing Tips” series which basically outlined ways to get the old brainbox ticking over and ready for a spot of creative writing. I still stand by these techniques for generating a hella vast pile of research scribblings to be turned into a novel. Now, maybe, it is time to pick up where that left off. There’s a bunch of stuff I’ve become aware of as a novelist from writing and editing Starfall and I think around the Nano time of the year is the season to share.

So watch out, further Writing Tips are coming in the lead up to, and possibly occasionally during, November.

I’m not so sure where to start.

Putting the last lick of paint on Starfall. I cannot convey to you at this stage how enormously proud I am of this novel. I have worked on novels longer than two years but have never spent so much time perfecting a product to within an inch of its life. I am currently trawling for instances of the words “looking”, “seeming” and “really” those being my overused danger words. I’d hate for the reader’s experience to be blown by overused words and some jumbled syntax. Yoda I do not want to write like.

On which subject the Doodler, Mrs and new friend John have been helping me out as I slog my way through the read-aloud version of the tome, for which I am eternally grateful. Doodler was making some remark about how books just aren’t illustrated, like it was something you don’t do. I had a think about this and came to the conclusion that the only real reason it’s not done is because it would cost too much. The Doodler continues to work on 6 Icons which is evolving. I never realised that preparing for an enterprise such as 6 Icons involved a Rocky Balboa-esque period of training after which you can flick your wrist and turn out an image of one of your characters. So we have some time to go before we can put out some episodes but once the ball starts rolling we will find ourselves in a much more regular position.

So in the meanwhile Doodler has expressed an interest in getting his work out there via my books and covers. This would be cool and we shall see how that starts to happen soon. I enjoyed very much seeing some of my ideas realised by my Antipodean cohort Ian and to have a professional illustrator on board is really a great leap forward.

Finally I have been gazing into the murky realms of speed reading. It’s no secret that I have a review regularity score somewhere in the 1 every 6 months region and all the laptop’s turned out to have done is spur me on to finish Starfall thus far. This with NaNoWriMo coming up in about four weeks leads me to surmise that any help in getting those reviews done would be vastly appreciated. I think once I’ve eventually cleared my commitments I am going to be shutting the review door until I have time. So possibly for the next four decades. Seriously.