Janet Gogerty's Blog: Sandscript - Posts Tagged "novel"
Sandscript on Sentences
What is the hardest sentence to write? The last sentence of a novel, especially if it is the last sentence of a trilogy.
The end of the year seemed like a good time to finish my latest novel and the last few weeks have been full of surprises for me and my characters.
Sixty chapters and 189,000 words, all printed out on paper, that is how I like to edit. As a Kindle reader myself I am coming more and more to think that shorter chapters are best in e-book format. With a paper book you can flick through to see if it's worth starting another chapter before you go to sleep, get off the bus or finish your lunch break. On your Kindle a chapter that ends with a cliff hanger or a question makes a good point to switch off and look forward to switching on.
The three books cover just over three years, three Christmases are celebrated, three very different characters narrate.
I have written the last sentence, but may change it or remove it. I don't have to decide for sure until it's time to press the 'Publish' button on Amazon KSP.
Look out for previews of 'Lives of Anna Alsop', the final novel in the Brief Encounters Trilogy' in future blogs and follow progress at my Facebook Author Page and see a preview of the cover.
https://www.facebook.com/Beachwriter?...
The end of the year seemed like a good time to finish my latest novel and the last few weeks have been full of surprises for me and my characters.
Sixty chapters and 189,000 words, all printed out on paper, that is how I like to edit. As a Kindle reader myself I am coming more and more to think that shorter chapters are best in e-book format. With a paper book you can flick through to see if it's worth starting another chapter before you go to sleep, get off the bus or finish your lunch break. On your Kindle a chapter that ends with a cliff hanger or a question makes a good point to switch off and look forward to switching on.
The three books cover just over three years, three Christmases are celebrated, three very different characters narrate.
I have written the last sentence, but may change it or remove it. I don't have to decide for sure until it's time to press the 'Publish' button on Amazon KSP.
Look out for previews of 'Lives of Anna Alsop', the final novel in the Brief Encounters Trilogy' in future blogs and follow progress at my Facebook Author Page and see a preview of the cover.
https://www.facebook.com/Beachwriter?...
Sandscript Makes a Will
Where would writers be without Aunts who leave cottages in their wills? I don’t mean writers who are left thatched country cottages by their aunties and are delighted to have somewhere peaceful to write. That would be very nice, but I don’t know how often it happens to real writers.
When a story was read out at our writers’ group about the main character inheriting an aunt’s cottage, I remarked how often authors use this scenario. In one of my favourite novels, the L Shaped Room by Lynne Reid Banks, the heroine, Jane, does not stay in the L shaped room because she inherits a lovely country cottage from an aunt. In the sequel, ‘The Backward Shadow’ she is living in the cottage with her baby – what would have happened to them without the aunt?
In my anthology ‘Hallows and Heretics’ the short story ‘Jerusalem Journal’ is about a young wife who inherits a cottage from an aunt she has never met and there are dark surprises in store. Inheriting from parents will not do for fiction; it is bound to be the house one grew up in with no secrets. Fictional aunts and great aunts inevitably live somewhere unknown to the hero or heroine and have been estranged from the rest of the family for decades.
In my novel ‘Brief Encounters of the Third Kind’, Holly Tree Farm is left to one of the main characters by his great aunt and I was just as surprised as he was when this country home became an essential part of the plot in the whole trilogy.
When a story was read out at our writers’ group about the main character inheriting an aunt’s cottage, I remarked how often authors use this scenario. In one of my favourite novels, the L Shaped Room by Lynne Reid Banks, the heroine, Jane, does not stay in the L shaped room because she inherits a lovely country cottage from an aunt. In the sequel, ‘The Backward Shadow’ she is living in the cottage with her baby – what would have happened to them without the aunt?
In my anthology ‘Hallows and Heretics’ the short story ‘Jerusalem Journal’ is about a young wife who inherits a cottage from an aunt she has never met and there are dark surprises in store. Inheriting from parents will not do for fiction; it is bound to be the house one grew up in with no secrets. Fictional aunts and great aunts inevitably live somewhere unknown to the hero or heroine and have been estranged from the rest of the family for decades.
In my novel ‘Brief Encounters of the Third Kind’, Holly Tree Farm is left to one of the main characters by his great aunt and I was just as surprised as he was when this country home became an essential part of the plot in the whole trilogy.
Sandscript
I like to write first drafts with pen and paper; at home, in busy cafes, in the garden, at our beach hut... even sitting in a sea front car park waiting for the rain to stop I get my note book out. We
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