Martin Slevin's Blog: Martin Slevin's Blog

I have just launched my own site, promoting my work and books in general, I have included a link back to here.

I would be grateful if you could take a look and then let me know your thoughts.

Many thanks

Martin

https://martinslevin.com/

Announcing the safe arrival of my new offspring, dad and son doing very well! lol

Now available as paperback and e-book on Amazon.The Coin Toss Professor

I am often asked the question, “Which writers have inspired you?” As an avid reader, there have been so many writers I have come to admire, but three wise men stand out from the crowd. These writers not only enchant us with their penmanship, but they have changed the way stories are told by the modern writer; they have aided in the development of our craft itself.

The first of these is Charles Dickens, our Nineteenth Century hero who was responsible for two things in creative writing; the rounded character, and the structured plot. Before Dickens all heroes were more saintly than solid, they had no character flaws whatsoever, and the villains in literature were as evil as Old Nick himself. Dickens recognized that real people were not like that, and he invested his heroes with flaws, and his villains with some redeeming quality. Ebenezer Scrooge loved unselfishly once, A Christmas Carol, and Pip, Great Expectations, became a snob. In A Tale of Two Cities, the plot structure is flawless. Hardly a single character in the entire book fails to move the story forwards, nothing is wasted. Every character is vital to the plot in some way. The acid test of this in any story is to ask the question: If this character was removed from the plot would the story remain the same? If the answer to that is “Yes”, the character is superfluous. Dickens taught us much.

Moving to the Twentieth Century we arrive at Harold Robbins. Here we find a development in writing that caused a resurgence in the paperback. Between Dickens and Robbins, the narrative in fiction was what I call Pure English. Sentence structure put together with the care and precision of a watchmaker. Robbins realized this distanced the reader from the writer subconsciously, as no-one in real life tells a story that way. Robbins told his tale in the same way you would hear it in the pub. He wrote his narratives as though the reader was sitting next to him, and he was just telling them a story. He wrote as we speak, and the readers loved it. His characters spoke as people speak, and when The Carpetbaggers was published in 1961 it became an international best seller virtually overnight, and changed the face of popular fiction forever.

With one foot on the shoulder of Dickens, and his other foot on the shoulder of Robbins, Stephen King has become a giant. With rounded characters weaving solid plots, speaking as we speak, and moving through a narrative we could hear in the pub, Stephen King has become the most popular fiction writer of today. His books sell in their millions, and nearly all have made the transition to film. Here the mix of Dickens and Robbins completes a heady cocktail of penmanship that makes us want to consume more and more until we are sated and satisfied. For any aspiring writer these three wise men will teach them all they could ever wish to know.

The healing process is a dance between Therapy and Time. Therapy takes the lead, guiding the steps one after another as Time sets the tempo; together to the music of creation they waltz a repair to our damaged flesh.

from Muriel's Monster.

There is an excitement found in writing that in my experience, cannot be found in any other creative process. To take an idea, a formless notion, and then to knead it over time as a baker may knead a piece of dough. Working it into a seamless narrative, a definable shape, while all the time remaining conscious of the intended final look, texture and feel of the product.

If only we could produce a book as quickly as we can bake a loaf of bread from scratch.

My new book Muriel's Monster now has a publishing date of 31st of October. I first had the idea for this story over two years ago when the euphoria I had felt over the publication and success of my first book, The Little Girl in the Radiator had started to fade. People had read that book and congratulated me on it, and yet I felt it was a project that was then over and done with, and I was looking for a fresh challenge.

The research, organizing of material and "kneading" the plot, took well over a year, until I finally had the skeleton of a story I was happy to tell.

The actual writing took another year, and finally I had a manuscript I could show someone without having to add "It's not quite finished yet."

Muriel's Monster was accepted on a traditional contract by the first publisher I sent it to, (how lucky was that!), and now after the laborious processes of proof reading, editing and re-proofing it is ready to be born.

I wonder if the wonderful readers on here who make an author's work worthwhile, actually know, as they scan through the child of our imaginings, how much effort has gone into the page they so casually turn? I suspect not.

But then after all, who thinks about the baker, when they munch their toast in the morning?

I have begun to.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...

Have you ever experienced that terrible moment when the free flowing creative juice turns suddenly from marsala to molasses, and the next paragraph gets stuck inside your head, refusing to see the light of day?
Where do you go from here? If you're at this point sadly, it's already too late, as you have begun your long journey without a map, and are now lost in the wilderness.
Writer's Block should never happen, and will never happen, if you begin your project properly.
When you first catch the idea for a book, get yourself a notebook, or if you're writing directly onto the digital screen, write out the entire story in one paragraph. Something like this...

"John comes home to find his wife murdered..the police think he did it, he escapes from them and goes on the run, he has to prove his innocence and unmask the real killer, but how?"

This then becomes the launchpad for the chapters. Begin a new file/page for each chapter and enter one paragraph detailing what happens in each chapter.
C1. John comes home to find his wife murdered.
C2. The police arrive at the house and arrest John.
C3. John escapes custody.
C4. John contacts his old friends. etc.

Notice how brief and devoid of detail everything is at this point, details and creativity will all come later, they are not required right now. Continue until you have the whole story in note form from beginning to end, you know what happens in every chapter and how it all resolves.
Now, and only now are you ready to begin writing. So where does Writer's Block come in? If you use this method it doesn't. You have a map for your journey, it will show you the route from where you are now to where you wish to end up, and all you have to do is follow the road.
No matter where you are in the story, you will always know what comes next, and therefore Writer's Block becomes a thing that only happens to less prepared authors.