Geri Schear's Blog

This is one of those old pieces of writing wisdom that I see abused from time to time. The idea is that you want your readers to root for your protagonist, and the best way to accomplish that is to be mean to your hero. There are a number of variations of this, but they all begin with, Stick your hero up a tree. Then throw rocks at him. And / Or set the tree on fire. Then help him to get down.

Theoretically, you reveal a lot about your character by getting him stuck in a predicament (the tree), making things worse (rocks or fire), and then watch him escape. How many times have we seen James Bond in exactly this sort of dilemma?

While the concept has some value, you can probably see how easily it could become hackneyed. Do this once in a book and people will think you are a genius; do it repeatedly and the reader will loses interest.

Let’s put your heroine into some sort of predicament — say she’s going to lose her home because she lost her job. That’s a bad tree to be in, all right. What rocks can we throw at her? Well, let’s say she has four children and her ex-husband has threatened to sue for custody because she cannot home them. Then one of the children falls seriously ill and needs to be hospitalised. Yep, that tree is on fire. Putting our heroine — we’ll call her Ann — into this situation is easy enough. Finding an escape, though, that’s another matter altogether.

So, what options can we offer Ann? Here are some options — there are many others, and I’m sure you can think of them on your own.

Perhaps she has wealthy parents. She’s been estranged from them for ten years, but they might help, if only for the children’s sake. (As far as blah endings go, this is the blah-est.)

She gets another job doing something she dislikes. Perhaps she turns her remarkable artistic talent to painting portraits of animals. Or she works a night shift which forces to leave her kids alone. Maybe she gets a job as a stripper or a hooker.

What if, while she’s waiting for her son to be seen at the hospital she meets a handsome doctor who offers to care for her son for free. He also gets her a job in the hospital, and then marries her. This is very Hallmark Romance, but I know some writers who would love it.

Alternatively, as above she meets a handsome doctor. He agrees to pay for the child’s care and to pay off the mortgage, but she has to murder his wealthy parents. Now, that’s a twist I can enjoy! At least it’s different.

Or maybe her great-aunt Hilda dies and leaves her a house and a fortune. No strings attached. Deus ex Machina, anyone?

With the exception of the final option, all require Ann to pay a price of some kind. Yes, even marrying Mr Handsome Doctor may come with some sacrifice. (To quote my favourite episode title from The Gilmore Girls: ‘Those are Strings, Pinocchio!’)

Most of the options are fairly trite, and they depend on Ann’s education and temperament. Thus far we have imagined her as a fairly moral, hard-working woman. But what if she weren’t? In that case some less noble options for her would be to blackmail her boss into giving her her job back, with a raise. Perhaps she will call her ex’s bluff and dump all the kids on him, leave him to sort the sick child, and then she goes to ‘find herself’ by getting lost in Montana. Hmm…

If you decide to stick your character up a tree, you need to decide what the nature of the ‘tree’ is: is it financial, marital, medical, legal. Once we know what the tree is, we can plan our escape. As you can see from my possible solutions, bad though some of them may be, there are plenty of possibilities. What you, the writer, have to do, is decide which one best suits your character.

The problem with most of the ‘solutions’ offered above is they have been done before. Some of them many, many times. If I had to pick one, I’d go with the doctor asking her to murder his parents. Only, in my scenario, she agrees, then secretly tells his family. With her help, Dr Death is arrested and the rich couple look after her and her children. Actually, no. She should tell the parents, but they don’t believe her. Eventually a police officer or an FBI agent help her out, save the parents, and persuade her ex to stop threatening her. She may have to move into a smaller house or apartment for a time, but at least she’s on the right path.

What I like about this resolution is it doesn’t solve every problem. Life doesn’t care, as a rule, that there are loose ends in our lives. No one ever dies with their to-do list completely checked off. I’m not saying you, as the writer, should forget some of your character’s problems, but acknowledge that he or she may have to make some compromises, or take the Scarlett O’Hara approach: tomorrow is another day. Just don’t let the reader think you have forgotten or dismissed some tricky problems.

Depending on the story you’re writing, dumping a number of big problems on your protagonist at the start, and then giving them the rest of the story to struggle through to a resolution is tried and tested. However, if you are writing suspense or mysteries, then a series of difficulties — another murder, another threat — can be repeated several times. Just give your hero a chance to use each of these situations to solve the puzzle and catch the villain; each new problem presents another clue. Don’t, however, just keep loading up one problem after another without letting the characters and the reader regroup. Ideally, your plot laid out on a graph should look more like a series of mountains and valleys rather than one long plateau.

Presenting your characters with problems can keep your story alive. Sticking them up a metaphorical tree and then watching how they manage to escape can tell you a lot about the character. Not all characters are noble and creative. Some are petulant, greedy, and dishonest. Many have the morals of a spoiled five-year-old where want equals take, no matter who it hurts.

While it’s fascinating to see a good character deal with serious problems, it can be equally — if not more — intriguing to see a bad character react in the same situations. Will they resort to blackmail, malice, whining, or even theft or murder to solve their issues? If so, will they get their comeuppance?

So, yes, by all means stick your hero up a tree. Just don’t turn the tree into a forest; that gets tiresome. But one tall redwood can make life interesting for any character — and his writer.

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I always think the word ‘blurb’ sounds like a fat little creature, bright blue, wearing a silly hat. I have no idea why. Of course, a blurb is that brief description of a story that you find on the back of a novel. To give you an idea, this is the blurb that appeared on the back of my first novel, A Biased Judgement:

Sherlock Holmes thrives on danger. Sudden knife attacks, being stalked, and facing a network of assassins present little more than a cheery break in the monotony. But the enigmatic Lady Beatrice presents danger of a different kind. Is she a murderer or a potential victim? Or something even more perilous? Uncovering her secrets could change Holmes’s life forever, and in ways even he cannot anticipate. The newly-discovered Holmes diaries shed light on a tale so potent, Watson was never permitted to reveal it.

It took me three weeks to write those few sentences, but I’m glad I took my time with it. It helped to sell my novel first to a publisher, and later to thousands of readers. In addition, having it taped on the wall above my laptop helped me to keep focused on the story.

We talked last week about how important it is to focus your story. The blurb is one of the best ways I know to achieve that. As you can see from my example, or that of any other novels you have at hand, the blurb serves to excite the potential reader and keep the writer on track with the narrative.

It doesn’t tell us every detail of the plot and all the characters, nor should it. It serves only to whet the appetite. If it’s done well, it should help the writer to focus on the essential elements of the story. With that in mind, let us examine what the blurb should include, and what it should leave out.

The Must-Haves

The Protagonist

Who is your main character? That isn’t necessarily the narrator. It’s the one around whom the story circulates. If you were to take that character out of the story, the entire novel would collapse. They don’t have to be the most dynamic individual, or the most active. You could, for example, make the case that Frodo, in The Lord of the Rings, is one of the less dynamic individuals. Aragorn, Gandalf, and even Merry and Pippin see a greater amount of activity in the story, and yet, without Frodo the story wouldn’t exist.

Imagine Gone With The Wind without Scarlett O’Hara, or Rebecca without the second Mrs de Winter. Would a Miss Marple story work without Miss Marple? Only if another character were to take her place. The name doesn’t matter; the role does. The protagonist is essential to the story. Now, you may have several other characters that you deem essential, but you really need to — what was that word, again? Oh yes, focus.

Example

Let’s look at a story with several strong and essential characters and see how the blurb focuses on just two, the protagonist and the antagonist. The novel in question is The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk.

The story takes place on board a tired old warship called the USS Caine serving in the Pacific during WWII. While everyone on board the rust-bucket is involved in the story, the main characters are these:

Lt. Cmd Philip Queeg, Captain of the CaineLt. Stephen Maryk, the Executive OfficerEnsign Willie Keith, like Queeg, a newcomer to the Caine,Lt. Thomas Keifer, the know-it-all communications officer and an aspiring novelist

One of the many blurbs for this novel — it’s 75 years old and has been reprinted many, many times — reads as follows:

When Lieutenant Commander Philip Queeg is given the captaincy of the destroyer-minesweeper USS Caine, Ensign Willie Keith believes that the tough Naval Academy graduate will bring much needed discipline to the Caine‘s rough crew.

But Queeg soon reveals himself to be a cowardly, paranoid man. When his actions begin to endanger not just the crew but the war effort itself, Keith finds himself faced with a terrible choice: obey Queeg, and risk the lives of his shipmates and allies – or mutiny.

The Protagonist

As you can see from this example, Willie is the viewpoint character. He certainly isn’t the most important, quite the opposite, but he is an active participant in the development of the key events, that is, the mutiny and its aftermath. The mutiny comes down to his moral choice, and that makes him the antagonist. You could make a case for either of the other two officers serving under Queeg to be viewed as the most essential, but Willie’s lack of experience and naïvety make him the best choice for the author.

The Antagonist

Queeg is the antagonist. No one on board the Caine can agree about him. Some — led by the trouble-rousing Keifer — see him as incompetent, paranoid, and cowardly. Willie wants to make up his own mind. Maryk, the exec, wants to follow Navy rules, but all bets are off when Queeg seems to lose his nerve during a typhoon. So, while Keifer and Maryk are essential to the plot, it is Willie whose choice to support the Exec rather than the Captain, who carries the weight of the story.

Willie serves as a good example of a protagonist who is not the strongest, wisest, or most accomplished man in the novel. In fact, he is rather the opposite of these things. By the same token, Queeg makes a somewhat sympathetic antagonist. A man whose nerves are shot by his war experience in the midst of a group of judgemental and unsupportive crew. Because the story places these two characters in opposition, particularly during the critical typhoon, they are the ones worth mentioning in the blurb.

The Objective

Be clear about what your main character wants to obtain or achieve. In The Caine Mutiny, Willie just wants to do what’s right and get along with his crewmates. He has other objectives too — dealing with his overbearing mother, and developing his relationship with his girlfriend, but they are very secondary to the main objective. Possibly, if you were to ask Willie what he wants at the start of the novel, he probably wouldn’t be able to articulate anything other than the usual trite, ‘Be a good man and do my job.’ However, as he grows up in his position aboard he faces a real conflict when that typhoon hits.

Your hero or heroine may be equally unable to express what it is they hope to achieve. It may take a number of smaller issues that solidify their character so they are able to make a big choice when it comes.

That said, you as the author need to know right from the start how your character is going to develop. What difficulties will they face, and will they succeed?

Why it Matters

In terms of The Caine Mutiny, if Willie opts to support the captain, the ship may well be lost and everyone onboard drowned. However, if he supports Maryk, and if they all survive, they are facing a certain Court Martial. In the build up to the crisis, we see how Queeg has lost the trust of the men, and thanks to Keifer, his mental stability and courage are questioned.

Because Wouk was an excellent novelist, he has crafted a novel of strong characters, a life or death situation, and a deadly decision forced upon an untied seaman. Wouk makes it look easy.

When you are writing your blurb, make it clear to the reader exactly what your character wants and what the consequences will be if he / she is unsuccessful.

What are the Obstacles?

For Willie, the choices are as appealing as being offered the devil or the deep blue sea. In fact, if you view Queeg as an evil figure, that simile becomes even more on point. He has no experience to guide him, so he can’t be sure if Queeg is as wrong as the other officers say. If he trusts Queeg and his orders are misguided, the ship will go down. But if he believes Maryk it could still be the wrong decision; after all, Queeg is by far the more experienced officer. And even if Maryk is right, there’s that nasty business of a Court Martial to deal with. These are obstacles indeed.

Even if your characters don’t have quite such a terrible quandary to face, the cost of being wrong or of failing should be carry unpleasant consequences.

The Language

Even though the blurb is such a small piece of writing, it’s important that it is grammatically correct, spelled properly, and is compelling. Don’t therefore think that you can write on quick draft and assume that it will be good enough. This is, arguably, the first example of your writing an agent or publisher will read. It is worth spending whatever time it takes to get it right.

You may include the antagonist if they are significant enough — as is the case in The Caine Mutiny example above — but it’s not always essential. Sometimes, of course, what’s stopping the hero / heroine from achieving their aim isn’t another person, but a situation or a condition.

If you do have an antagonist character and if they are intriguing enough to capture the attention of the reader, by all means include them in your blurb.

Finally

Don’t rush writing your blurb. Expect it to take weeks rather than minutes. It will be worth the effort if it does the job you hope it will — helps to interest an agent or publisher in your novel, and keeps your writing on track.

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Last week we looked at seven different places where you can find your story. I said then that every tale will present you with options, and today I want to look at how you can select which story to tell, and whose point of view to use.

One of the options I gave you was finding a story in the news headlines. Law and Order did that for years and proudly proclaimed that their plots were ‘ripped from the headlines’. But, as I pointed out, every story comes with an individual perspective. Let’s assume the headline involves the murder of a young woman. Her former husband is charged with the crime, and the case becomes a media carnival. So, how do you approach this tale? You have a variety of options. Here are a few — you may think of many others, yourself.

The genre

Just because the woman came to your attention due to her manner of death, it doesn’t necessarily follow that her murder must be your focus. There are more choices than crime / mystery. Perhaps you want to make it a romance, and tell the story about the dead woman’s relationship with her ex. How they met, their romance, their breakup, and her ultimate death. Or if you want to make it a contemporary fiction piece, perhaps you could make her sister the focus. Perhaps she always hated her former brother-in-law and will do anything to see him convicted. Or perhaps she had a brief fling with him and she’s afraid of it coming out. Any story can be adapted to any genre, with some imagination and committment. After all, The Lion King is based on Hamlet, so feel free to experiment.

Time period

Regardless of what genre you select, you still have options regarding the time period. You could set it in the stone age, two years before the murder happened, or many years later. If you opt to make it a science fiction tale, then you need to be up on the scientific details that will propel your story. Likewise, if you set it in the remote past, you need to know what life was like then.

The core of the plot

You may have heard about the so-called elevator pitch. This is when you imagine you get into a lift with a famous literary agent or publisher and have the length of that ride to interest him in your story. You could also imagine it as a tag line if your story was a movie. Here are some greats:

*You don’t get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies. (The Social Network)

*He’s having the worst day of his life… over, and over… (Groundhog Day)

*You’ll never go in the water again. (Jaws)

Obviously, you will need more detail, but by practicing to make your pitch as brief yet as comprehensive as you can, you’ll focus your attention on where the story really lies. When I wrote my first novel, I spent a long time working on the pitch, and then I referred to it every time I sat down to write. It served to remind me who my main character was, their goal, and what was at stake.

Spend a lot of time figuring out what your main story is and don’t lose your focus.

Main characters

Depending on all the points we’ve discussed already, you may already know who your primary character ought to be. But maybe you have a few characters who all vying for top billing. You can certainly have a few main characters, but try to keep your primary focus on one or two.

Point(s) of view

Who is telling the story? If you opt to go with the omniscient third person, then you can be as all-knowing as that implies. But if you opt to tell the story from the POV of one of the characters, you need to ask yourself some questions:

Do they have access to all the details of the story? Are they involved in the story, or are they just an interested spectator?Are they a reliable narrator? If not, why not?Would more than one narrator work?

The answers to these questions will depend on how you plan to structure your story. If it’s a mystery, then you might consider using the detective or his sidekick to tell the tale. That approach has a long and impressive history. But you could also use a witness viewpoint, the viewpoint of a relative of the victim, the accused, or the victim herself. Each of these will bring in their own biases, vulnerabilities, and hopes. You could go back and forth between the detective and the victim — the latter in the form of a diary, or a video, perhaps.

Remember, the narrator can only tell us what he or she has seen. Of course, they could lie, or they may have been lied to by someone else.

The more of these points you consider and can answer before you start typing CHAPTER ONE, the smoother your writing process will be. In many ways, this is the most exciting part of the writing process. This is when you sift through the options and select the ones that excite you the most. That begs the question: should you pick the narrative that seems to make the most sense, or the one that excites you most?

I’d go with excitement. Even if it’s a harder story to write, you’re more likely to stick with it if you are completely engaged with the tale. If the story is too easy, it may become boring, and you’re more likely to give up. As always, of course, it’s up to you.

This may be contraversial, but once you have decided on the story you want to write, if it is based on an ongoing murder case, stop following the case. You need to focus on the story you want to tell. If the real life events run contrary to your own ideas, you may find yourself confused about how to proceed.

Alternatively, you can wait until after the courtcase before you decide on your story. A caveat here: Just because the case is officially over, it doesn’t mean that new information won’t emerge later on. Innocent people have been convicted before, and who knows how many guilty people have walked free. But you have to pick a closing point somewhere, and that would seem the best place. Of course, if your story is burning a hole in your brain from the moment the news broke, then you may be better off getting on with it. Just be careful about letting real life intrude on your fiction.

Finally, while I have assumed your inspiration can from a news item, it can just as easily have been inspired by something you overheard, a family legend, a regional tale, or anything else. No matter, all these same questions apply.

You can write a loose first draft before you know the answers to all these questions, that will help you to pin down what works and where the potential problems lie. Don’t sweat it. Try to have fun.

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This is probably the most commonly asked question of writers: where do you get your ideas. The truth is, ideas are everywhere. You just need to pay attention and think like a writer in order to see them.

I’m going to show you seven springboards to fiction ideas. In each of these categories you will find stories just waiting to be told. It’s important to note that while extant works of fiction, be they books, plays, or films, can inspire other work, the author must take pains to avoid plaigarism. It’s fine to take a well-known books as a source of ideas, but it’s another thing entirely to copy another author’s work. With that in mind, let’s examine some of those places where ideas may be found.

1. Overheard Snippets

I love these. I’m talking about those little fragments of conversation you hear as you sit on the train or waiting in line in a shop. Here are a few:

‘The fortune teller said I’d be dead by forty. Thirty if I date a man called Greg.’‘I finally found out what was dead under the stairs…’‘There were three of them, but only the bald one was crazy…’‘There’s a red flag flying tonight, George…’‘Man entering a toilet stall: “Showtime!”‘

It’s the lack of information that makes these little fragments so alluring. It stimulates the imagination to come up with all sorts of ideas, some silly, some profound, and almost all worthy of being turned into fiction.

One I heard some years ago was an older woman telling someone about an event that had happened the previous night in her apartment building. ‘We’d all heard her screaming every time that thug came to see her. He went flying past me, and then I saw all the blood…’ The woman got off the bus then, and I was tempted to follow her, just to hear the end of the story. However, with these overheard bits, the less you know, the more room there is for your imagination to fill.

2. News Items

Let’s imagine a news item and see what sort of story we can make of it. The story I’m presenting here is hypothetical:

A beautiful young woman has been discovered murdered. After an investigation, her ex-husband it arrested and charged with the crime. However, the man is famous. Perhaps he’s a sports personality or maybe he’s the start of a beloved TV programme. By the time the case comes to trial, there has been an endless stream of media suggesting this man is innocent — despite the tsunami of evidence proving the opposite. Now, let’s say the man is found not guilty and released. Thus far, this is the news story that you are following. Now, let’s see how we can turn this into a story.

Firstly, every news story comes with characters. There are the victims, the witnesses, the rescue or aid workers, the investigators, and the media. Any of these can present these news events in a completely different way. Who do you think might be the most intriguing?

As an example, let’s think about the victim’s mother. She’s not very tall, not wealthy, and so nondescript that no one ever notices her. But she’s clever and she is not about to let this go. So she plots her own form of justice. She’ll start with the ex-husband, and make his sudden death look like either suicide or accident. Then she’ll go after the defense team. She takes her time, but she gets them all. Next it’s the jury. Can you see this working as a novel? I can.

Another character you might focus on, given the same news item, is the husband. Perhaps he’s smug because he got away with murder. Or perhaps he really is innocent. How does he get on with his life after the trial? Does he suspect who the real killer is? If so, what will he do about it?

Or there’s a policeman who has been accused of planting evidence. What’s his story? Or the juror who was convinced the accused was guilty, but caved to the pressure of the other jurors.

Then there’s the victim herself. Perhaps your story starts before the murder and examines the elements that led to the crime.

As you can see, there are many ways to go, and that’s true of almost every story you see or hear. Decide whose story is the most compelling and put yourself in his or her shoes. Maybe pick several of these characters and build a plot around them. What would happen if several of them met up again a few years later?

News items cover a variety of situations. There are feel-good tales, climatic events, international incidents. What gets your blood pumping and your creative spirit soaring? Look for that. Use that.

3. Books and Films

Jean Rhys’ The Wide Sargasso Sea was inspired by Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca inspired two sequels, Mrs de Winter by Susan Hill, and Rebecca’s Tale by Sally Beauman. What stories leave you wanting more? Remember, you are not (I hope!) copying your favourite plot or characters, you’re using them as a springboard to something uniquely your own.

It’s not just books, either. Many films can prove just as stimulating.

Watch films that have elembents in common and see if they can suggest something to you. Two obvious — to me — examples are ‘Rear Window’ and ‘Murder, She Said’. The first is the famous Alfred Hitchcock film. The second is the 1961 adaptation of Agatha Christie’s 4:50 from Paddington. Both films are about a character who believe they have witnessed, or at least suspected, someone of murder. For a variety of reasons, neither are believed. This scenario has been duplicated many times, so you may feel that there’s nothing new to be said. But is that true?

Suppose you are the perfectly innocent person who your neighbour is convinced you’ve murdered someone. How are you going to deal with that?

The Hitchcock film offers glimpses into the lives of the various people who live in Jeff’s (Jimmy Stewart) apartment complex. What are their stories? What if the story was told from the point of view of the Grace Kelly character, Lisa? or Thelma Ritter’s visiting nurse, Stella? or Tom, the detective? What if it was from the perspective of the killer?

What if you set your story was set some years later and it’s Stella who believes that she has uncovered a murder. She can’t get the police to listen, so she appeals to Stewart for help. Or perhaps Lisa has been offered a job in Paris, but Tom doesn’t want her to go. Or perhaps one of the other people in Tom’s apartment complex sparks an idea — Miss Lonelyhearts, for instance?

The Christie adaptation — a very loose adaptation — leans towards comedy. It shows Miss Marple (Margaret Rutherford) travelling on the train and seeing a woman being strangled through the window of another train. She figures out where the body would have been dumped and goes to investigate. (In the book, Miss Marple asks a young woman, Lucy, to investigate in her place.) As with most Agatha Christie stories, this is a fascinating plot and, as with ‘Rear Window’, could be reworked using different points of view, or tweaking the crime in some way.

These ideas should convince you that you don’t have to duplicate the plot of a film or another book in order to come up with something interesting. In fact, it’s probably better if you can turn your source of inspiration into something new and different. You don’t have to use the same characters or a similar story line.

As an exercise, make a list of ten films that you really like, in different categories, if possible, and try to think of stories that could be inspired by them. Pick a minor character and plan their story. Think what might have happened after the film ended, or before it started. Turn a romance into a science fiction story: ‘Sleepless in Saturn’? Or turn a fantasy into a tale of a corrupt businessman: ‘CEO of the Rings’? Hey, I didn’t say all these ideas were winners.

4. Music and Poetry

Few things stimulate the emotions the way music does. No matter what you enjoy listening to, just let your mind wander and see what images rise with the notes.

If your music comes with lyrics, they may suggest story lines. I like songs that offer a mystery, ‘Hazard’ by Richard Marks, or ‘Ode to Billie Joe’ by Bobbie Gentry always make me wonder what else has happened that the song doesn’t tell us. Songs like ‘Strange Fruit’ written by Abel Meeropol under the alias Lewis Allan and recorded by Billie Holiday is about the lynching of two black men in 1930 never fails to fill me with grief and anger in equal parts, and I think about the stories a song like that could inspire.

If you enjoy poetry, then you will find that the same thing applies here. There are plenty of story poems around that can light a fire under your creativity.

5. Pictures

Josephine Tey’s most admired novel, The Daughter of Time, is based on a portrait of King Richard III. Tracy Chevalier was inspired by Vermeer’s painting ‘The Girl with the Pearl Earring’ to write the novel of the same name. Stephen Sondheim’s ‘Sunday in the Park with George’ came from George Seurat’s ‘A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte’.

Other writers are inspired by photographs, works of art, and images of all sorts. Do you have a favourite picture, or a favourite artist? What stories are hiding in Van Gogh’s Night Café? Or in Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks? Have you seen Andrew Wyeth’s Christina’s World?

There are whole worlds in these images. The sense of mystery can trigger your imagination to examine the lives in these pictures. Who are the people gathered in the café in Nighthawks? What time is it? Where will these people go when the café closes?

What images speak to you? It doesn’t have to be famous. Maybe it’s just an old photograph, or even a advertisement. Ask yourself questions: who are these people? What happened to them? Where is this?

6. Dreams

Author John Fowles said that he kept dreaming about a woman standing by the shore staring out to sea. He began to wonder who she was and what she was waiting for. His ruminations led to him write The French Lieutenant’s Woman. Stephen King reportedly dreamt the plot of Misery on a flight to London.

Dreams can trigger all sorts of ideas. An image conjured up by your subconscious can turn into an important element in a piece of fiction. Sometimes it’s the mood that you want to capture, whether it’s idyllic or terrifying.

Keep a dream diary and refer back to it now and then. There may be a bestseller hiding there.

7. Family Legends

We all have them. One story my dad told me was that during WWII, he was on his way home from school — he lived in a rural part of England — when he was stopped by a German who had just parachuted down. To my dad’s surprise, the German handed him his gun and said, ‘I would like to be prisoner of war, please.’ My dad was considered a hero when he marched the man into town. Dad was 12 years old. Now, who couldn’t make a story out of that?

My mother’s father fought in WWII. He was shot in Italy, and suffered meningitis in Egypt. His experiences during his service were horrifying — I was never told all of them, but the bits I was told were enough. What was it like to be a foot soldier during some of these battles? Another part of the story is that my grandfather’s mother was, allegedly, a witch. Certainly she had the ‘sight’, and she would visit my poor grandmother to share the horrible visions she had had. She evidently predicted my grandfather’s being shot, and suffering a life-threatening illness. Imagine how my poor gran coped with this. Or my mother, just a little girl listening to these dire predictions. There are abundant stories here if you just look for them. What are the stories in your family?

In Ireland, a common greeting between friends is Cad é an scéal? Pronounced cod ay on shkale, it means, ‘What’s the story?’ We know that stories are everywhere, and everyone has any number of them. Shake the idea tree and catch whatever falls out.

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Any decent writing instructor can guide you in matters concerning characterisation and plot, creating tension, managing pace, and the other nuts and bolts of writing a story. What remains elusive, however, is voice and its impact on your work in progress.

The voice of the writer is how you express yourself in any given piece of fiction. Unlike style, which is consistent, the voice can change from one work to another. Think of it this way: the voice is the way the story is told. Imagine, for a moment, that there are two actors who want to tell a children’s story; not read. Tell. Let’s say the story is ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’. The first would-be narrator is Conor McGregor. His version would probably be a bit sweary with lots of commentry on property rights and who knows what else.

Alternatively, your narrator might be someone like renowned cook, Mary Berry, a woman as close to Mary Poppins as one might find in the real world. She’s 91 years old with a cloud of white hair. She is always smiling and gentle, Her story telling would have a very different tone from Mr McGregor, don’t you think?

Now think of your work in progress. Who is telling the story? If it’s a character (or characters) who appears in the tale, then you need to make sure their voice(s) is distinctive. Here are two examples of what I mean.

The first is Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh. You will see that the voice is unmistakably one of a disgruntled youth. The tone reflects hopelessness, anger, and the culture of the period. For instance:

“Choose a life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television. Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers… Choose DSY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit crushing game shows, stucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away in the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourself, choose your future. Choose life… But why would I want to do a thing like that?”

Now compare that with JD Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye:

“I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff—I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all.”

Both of these books reflect a male youth trying to find their way in a confusing world. While their geography and time-periods are different, there is still something lost in both of these quotes.

In these examples, the author created a voice to match their protagonist. It’s similar to the way an actor will make choices to support the character he’s playing. For instance, the wardrobe, the props, his body language and accent. Think of the way Gene Wilder entered as Willy Wonka. He is wearing a bright outfit complete with top hat, carrying a cane, and walks with a limp. Then he does a somersalt and we discover that the cane and the walk were just ornamentation to mislead the crowd waiting to see him.

When I started to write my first novel, A Biased Judgement, I wanted to explore the character of Sherlock Holmes from the inside out. I didn’t want to have to emulate the ‘Doctor Watson’ style of writing, and so I wrote the novel and the subsequent books in the form of Holmes’ private journals. Here, I believed, he could be himself, admit to his failings and his weaknesses. Of course, I still had to write in the form of a Victorian gentleman and be sure the idioms and the style matched both character and period. I ended with the voice of a well-bred man living in Victorian London who is analytical and precise, but also has a dry and sometimes waspish sense of humour.

The ‘voice’ of your story will depend on who your narrator is. If it’s a first-person tale, then you need to capture the voice of that character well enough for it to be able to sustain an entire novel — though you are, of course, at liberty to change narrative characters when it suits the story. Just make sure the voices of those other narrative characters are just as compelling as your main one.

Where style comes in is when the story is in the third person. You can, of course, tell the story with an adopted voice as if you were an unacknowledged character in the story. If you go that option, you can make your narrator just as quirky as you wish. The only difference here is that the character doesn’t make an appearance in the tale.

You can also use this approach if you are relating the tale in an ‘as told to’ style. In other words, this is a tale somebody told you and you are writing down just as you heard it. Or, perhaps, you have done some research and are confirming these events are true, in which case a dispassionate attitude works best for this sort of tale, as if you were a journalist reporting on a news item.

Most authors will just opt to tell the story in whatever manner feels right to them. They develop a style that’s as distinctive as their dress sense. Unless you consciously focus on it, you will find that the story simply unfolds pretty matter of factly. Style, in case you were unsure, is built up of all the elements of the specific writer. It develops from the words they tend to use — gigantic instead of big, or groovy instead of cool. It comes from the use of idioms, especially if the author tends to use expressions that are common wherever he or she lives. Also, the length of sentences and paragraphs; punctuation; and preferences re how the plot should unfold. Some authors also tend to use the same sort of characters in every story.

Here is my best advice regarding style: Ignore it. At least, don’t worry about it too much. Your focus should be on the story, and not so much your style. Think of it like this: the story is the gift; the style is the wrapping. Yes, the wrapping should fit, and it shouldn’t pretend that the gift is from Tiffany’s when it’s from Target, but no one would suggest it matters more than what’s inside.

Your style will evolve with every choice you make. Unless there’s something wrong with it, such as it’s too wordy, or you tend to opt for obscure words rather than simple English, you can let it develop on its own. Obviously, if you get feedback that tells you that there is an issue with your style, you need to identify the specifics and work on them. Just always remember, the story must come first.

To put it in other terms, if I may misquote John Lennon: Style is what happens when you’re busy focusing on other elements.

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I have no idea how many hundreds of thousands of words have been written regarding the opening of any story, but I’m sure it’s considerable. Rightly so, of course. A strong opening is arguably the most important aspect of any work of ficion. A good opening entices you into the story. It raises questions, introduces compelling characters, and suggests intrgue.

All good, and yet no matter how brilliant your opening is, you will still get bad reviews if your ending is disappointing. Think of it from the readers’ perspective: you have spent perhaps 600 pages with these characters, and then the author doesn’t even have the grace to tell you what happens to them next.

How rude.

It’s been a good 40 years, I’d guess, since I read John Fowles’ novel, The Magus, and I’m still smarting over the non-ending ending. I suppose there is comfort of sorts in knowing that even brilliant writers can get it badly wrong. How bad is the ending? So bad, that The Guardian critic, Benjamin Wood, says that, ‘It has one of the most frustrating endings I’ve encountered… I threw it at the wall.’

I got thinking about endings recently because I have been listening to a writer read his short stories on YouTube. He’s okay, if a little hit and miss. He has a tendency to resort to cliches, and his idea of characterisation is to give a thorough discription of the character’s appearance. Worst of all, though, is that his endings are consistently weak to bad. Sometimes very bad indeed.

If that’s the case, I hear you ask, why do you continue to listen?

Because it gives me the opportunity to test my own creativity. I listen to the stories and make corrections along the way. Then, at the end, I plan how I would have brought the stories to a conclusion. I highly recommend this as an exercise, even with good books that have fine endings.

So, what distinguishes a good ending from a bad one. Not, good means satisfying, not necessarily happy. Here is an overview of the good and bad endings.

Good

Feela inevitable, but can still surprise the readerTies up all the loose endsIs clear and appropriate to the characters

Bad

Feels tagged-on, like the author ran out of ideasLeaves some parts of the plot unexplainedForgets some charactersLeaves the ending vague for no good reasonIntroduces a last-minute character or event to reverse everything we’ve read so farIt was all a dream. DON’T YOU DARE!

There are several types of perfectly good endings that don’t have to be happy, or even unambiguous. Gone with the Wind, as I point out later, isn’t happy, but it does feel right. The ending of Catch-22 or To Kill a Mockingbird leave plenty of questions unanswered, but the reader has enough information to be able to draw a reasonable conclusion about what happened next. Let’s now look at the various types of endings.

Types of Endings

Loose Ends resolved

Regardless of whether the story ends happily, sadly, or something else, the first most important point is that all the elements of the plot and the subplots are resolved. That’s not to say that you, as the author, have to tell us every detail of every character, but you should be able to at least hint at what will happen with everyone else.

Recently, I watched a World War II film, based on the real life of a particular Sergeant Major. Throughout, the British officer causes problems for the Germans he meets, he makes friends among other prisoners of war, and, ultimately, is able to escape. While the story is based on the events of his life during this period, I was disappointed that the film-makers never acknowledged what happened to the various people the man had met along the way. I realise that that wasn’t the primary focus, but I felt dissatisfied by not knowing.

In a book with a lot of characters, it can be intimidating to detail what happens after the novel to all of them, but a big-picture summary can work. In the film, which is narrated by the main character, he could have said, ‘I was glad to discover later that all the men in XX Camp made it home. Even was happy to return home to his farm and his nine children. Which must have been a relief after being responsible for 250 prisoners of war…’

Unless a specific character has some prominence in the story, it’s all right to put them into a group with others, as I did in the example above. It’s also acceptable to delegate one character to a more nebulous fate. “I often wondered what happened to Kursk. One of the lads that I ran into in Piccadilly said that he’d made his way to Canada and was in the lumber trade. Jameson, the chap from Dublin, said he’d heard that Kursk had gone home to Berlin where he was court martialed for letting so many men escape…”

Much depends, of course, on your narrative choice. If your story is in the first person, you can only relate as much as that character is likely to know. A third-person narrative allows you the scope to give more definite information about the various characters.

Happy Ever After

The most common and by far the most appreciated by readers is the type where all the characters live, we suppose, fairly unremarkable lives thereafter. Fairy tales are a good example of this category. Cinderella marries the Prince and they live happily ever after. The wicked stepmother and her odious daughters are made servants in the laundry, and everything is as it ought to be, at least so we suppose.

In Shakespeare’s comedies all the insanity of the play are resolved and the status quo is reestablished. From a modern perspective, of course, that status quo may be odious — the woman is relegated to a subserviant position to her husband (The Taming of the Shrew), and the Jew is forced to become a Christian (The Merchant of Venice), but a return to the ‘norm’ is what the audiences of the day found positive.

Overall, the ‘happily ever after’ ending is one in which all the Is are dotted and the Ts are crossed. In general, the honourable are rewarded, and the villain gets his or her comeuppance.

The Unhappy Ending

Here, while all those loose ends are resolved, the outcome may be bleak for even the good characters. Someone (maybe many someones) might be dead, the villain has triumphed or at least escaped, and the future looks bleak. This tends to be the case of many classical Russian writers. Everyone from Dostoyevski to Solzhenitsyn have gone this route.

Often, in this type of story, the reader knows from the outset that a specific character’s ending is not going to be happy. If your hero is, for instance, terminally ill, the best we can hope for him is that he dies peacefully. Or if he has a goal, like Tom Hanks in Philadelphia, we hope he achieves what he wants before the end. Is that an unhappy ending, or just realistic? What about Anna Karenina? Or Jude the Obscure?

Don’t fight too hard against the sad ending if it feels right for the story. Many readers love a good cry.

The Win-Some, Lose-Some Ending

In life, it’s rare that you and everyone in your circle enjoy the same degree of happiness at the same time. As Orson Welles once said, ‘A happy ending depends on where you end the story.’ Going back to Cinderella again, her story has a happy ending, but not so much for her stepmother and stepsisters.

In many stories, good triumphs, but at a cost. In A Tale of Two Cities, for instance, Lucie Manette gets to live happily ever after (presumably) with her husband, Charles Darnay, but only because Sydney Carton sacrificed himself to ensure their safety.

As long as all the questions have been answered, the plot and subplots resolved, and the various problems resolved, most readers will feel satisfied with the ending. While many dislike the ending of Gone with the Wind and are upset that Scarlett and Rhett don’t end up together, others recognise the rightness of the conclusion. The moral is that even if you get everything you ever thought you wanted, you may find it’s not as wonderful as you had expected. Worse, you may find that the price is too high. Besides, the point of the ending is to reveal the indominatable spirit of the heroine. Rhett might not want her right now, but she’ll get him back. ‘After all,’ she says, ‘tomorrow is another day.’

What is a good ending for you? What is the worst ending you’ve ever read? How would you change it?Point of View and Endings

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Humans have always been drawn to groups. Back when we were cavemen, it was probably the safest way of surviving. Even later, we tended to befriend those with a similar background as ourselves: people who went to the same schools, or at least a similar type; worked in a similar line; carried the same political philosophies. In recent times, though, it seems to have become worse. When I see pictures of so-called ‘influencers’, they all seem to look the same. The huge lips, the perfectly sculpted faces and layers of foundation, the doe eyes. Worse than that, but many of them seem to share identical opinions. They seem to quote each other endlessly, and I never see them ask if what they are posting is truthful.

Does the truth matter any more? Call me an old fuddy-duddy, if you will, but I think it does. Truth, like good taste and manners never go out of style. Truth is essential in human relationships, and to the growth of a healthy society. Furthermore, it is non-negotiable for writers.

Why?

Most of the liars that I’ve seen on social media — the ones that I know are liars — are bad liars. They repeat the same rubbish as everyone else in their clan. The neither know nor care if the mantras they are spouting are factual because they are the warrior cries of their tribe. Regardless of their cause, they are in a virtual war with their opponents and winning is all that matters. What does winning look like for them? I haven’t a clue. None of it makes sense to me. This is a Stepford World, full of Stepford ideas, and only a fool would challenge that system.

Writers are, of course, fools. At least, many of the tribes would say so. Writers know better, though. We know we may be the last of the truth-sayers left. Certainly, we cannot leave something as important as truth to politicians. Sadly, even many so-called relgious leaders seem to have lost their way.

For a writer to succeed, he or she must produce work that is authentially his or her own. What’s the point of sounding like everyone else? Or spouting the same tired ideas — especially if those ideas are lies?

Telling you to be authentic is far easier than it is to follow that advice. First of all, you have to know what that means for you. To quote Polonius (from Hamlet), “This above all: to thine own self be true.” But you have to know who you are before you can be true to yourself.

As you try to figure out who you are and what matters to you the most, keep in mind that most people are inconsistent. They may support abortion rights, but oppose the death penalty. They believe in climate change, but think other things are more of a priority. The thing is, humans are quirky. We do not fit readily into any box. We can hold several contradictory beliefs all at the same time, and that’s fine. Embrace the weirdness. It’s who you are.

Learn to question things that seem absolute certainties to many people. Do your own research, your own reading. Don’t worry if you don’t come to any conclusions. You have your whole life to think, and learn, and decide.

Consider writing a list of things that matter to you. It doesn’t matter if others would consider some of them frivilous. You’re entitled to have a favourite football team, or to prefer ice skating or opera, if that’s what speaks to you. It’s okay to be unsure of how you feel about politics, religion, or anything else. Many of our greatest writers have struggled with uncertainties, just like you.

Once you have listed the things that most interest you, write your reasons for each one. And, no, the reasons don’t have to be sensible, they can be silly and vague. For instance, you would love to go to France and visit the Louvre, but because you’re more interested in the architecture of the building, than any of the art works inside. Or you love baking, but don’t care for regular cooking. It doesn’t matter, as long as it’s honest.

You can also imagine that you’re at one of those conferences where you have to introduce yourself, and tell people one thing that is unique to you, or at least very rare. For instance, you never learned to drive; you can say the alphabet backwards; you’re decended from Abraham Lincoln. These things are not your whole personality, but they do set you apart from other people, and that’s the point. Why would you want to be indistinguishable from thousands of others who think, act, and dress exactly the same as one another? Wouldn’t you prefer to be uniquely you?

Know theyself, said Socrates. Listen to the man. He knew what he was talking about.

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The first time I read the phrase ‘world building’ I thought it was something to do with Star Trek. While not many light years away from that series, world-building actually refers to creating the environment in which your story takes place. Every aspect of the world your characters inhabit, whether your story is modern contemporary, western, or science fiction, this applies to all. You cannot assume that you can tell the reader, “This story happened in San Francisco, 1969,” and hope they are familiar with hippies, flower power, and the culture of the period. Though I hate to admit it, 1969 is before many readers were born. You not only have to draw a picture, but breathe life into it so that your reader will feel he is there. Think of M Night Shyamalan’s The Village, as far as the people living there are concerned, the village is the whole world.

You need to be thorough about the aspects of life that impact your characters. That doesn’t mean that you have to describe every wall, every sound, every smell down to the cellular level. Select one or two precise details and let them reveal the world to the reader.

By the same token, you also do not need to waste time telling us about elements that do not impact the characters. For instance, if your story is set in 1969 and your characters are hippies, you probably don’t need to tell us about events in Scandinavia during the same period, unless some aspect of that region is essential to your story.

You are creating a world, not a universe.

So, what does your world need?

Colour. Unless you have a reason for the story to be in black and white. Or if your point of view character is blind.

Sound. Again, unless your narrative character is deaf. If so, you may want to read Carson McCuller’s The Heart is a Lovely Hunter in which the main character, John Singer, is deaf.

Smell. This is one of the strongest senses we possess. Walk into a hospital ward and try to identify the elements in the olfactory soup that will assail you. Food, disinfectant, blood, infection, maybe flowers.

Taste. You don’t want to overdo this unless your protagonist is a contestant on Masterchef. But have someone craving the taste of an apple, perhaps while they are in prison or in some frozen tundra.

Time. Is your story set in the present age? Are we on planet Earth? Even if the answer to both questions is ‘yes’, you still need to bring it to life. If the answers are ‘no’, then you need to capture your period, be it past or future, in a dynamic way. Bring it to life. Also, if we are on another planet, consider how that impacts the passage of time for your characters.

Rules. A story set in the current place and time might seem obvious, but even today, depending on where you live, different rules apply to different people. Race, finances, age, sex, all face challenges unique to them.

If you are setting your story in a world of your creation, you need to give thought to the societal rules that govern. Are they fair? Are they discriminatory? What are the penalties for non-compliance?

Important Decisions

Once you have decided on the time period, make sure you are faithful to it. You will lose your readers’ trust if you have your Victorian characters use mobile (cell) phones or have Christopher Columbus use modern navigation aids. There are few quicker ways to lose readers than to treat them as fools, even if you do so unintentionally. To give you an idea of what I mean, check out some blooper reels of films. In one of his historical movies — I can’t remember if it was Ben Hur or The Ten Commandments — Charlton Heston is wearing a wrist watch. Oops! My mother once met Rock Hudson, and he told her that his recently released historical movie revealed an anachronistic airplane flying overhead. People love to watch these sort of mistakes and to make fun of them. I don’t think that’s what you want for your carefully crafted story.

I know that you’re not writing some historical text, but if you want your readers to believe in your story and characters, then the setting has to be credible. Yes, suspension of disbelief is something we want our readers to do, but don’t push your luck.

Signpost Differences

Regardless of when or where your story is set, don’t take too long to reveal it to your reader. This is especially true if there are significant differences between your fictional world and the one in which we live. You don’t want to wait until chapter three to tell the reader all their suppositions about where and when were wrong. Take a note from that magnificent opening line of George Orwell’s 1984:

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

*There is one exception to this which I have noted below.

While this might not seem too strange to us today, given that many places use the 24-hour clock, it would have been startling to readers in the 1940s, when the novel was released. You can almost hear the voice of Star Trek’s Mr Spock saying, “It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it.”

The world you build is as important to your story as your characters. What might work in a busy city, might not transfer well to a remote island, or to a small village.

Very often, the world simply presents itself as soon as you start thinking about your story. Some of the most iconic novels have a setting that is so well described, that it’s impossible to imagine the story taking place anywhere else. Imagine Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House without, er, Hill House.

Think of The Graduate anywhere but California, or James Joyce’s Ulysses anywhere but Dublin. Indeed, in some stories, the setting is at least on an equal footing as the characters. That’s true of short stories, too. You don’t need a long an architectural style description to make the setting come to life. One or two sentences with perfectly obvserved details will do the job.

If you have started writing a short story or a novel, and you don’t feel that it’s coming to life. Give thought to the world where it takes place. Would the story work better in a different period? Perhaps in a different environment? This is your world. Make it what you will.

*Some writers like to play games with the time period. What seems like some dystopian period, turns out to be the next decade. Or an alternate universe. A great example is The Planet of the Apes film. All through it, the protagonist believes he has landed on some distant planet. Only at the end, when he happens upon a destroyed Statue of Liberty does he realise that he is on earth of the distant future.

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There are times when I want to discuss something about how I learned to write that I want to use a preface along the lines of, “When I was growing up on Walton’s Mountain…” My childhood was, alas, far less homespun and idyllic. The only thing I had in common with John-Boy was an urge to write. Between you, me, and those lovely people on the internet, I often used John-Boy’s lessons as a writer to find my own way in the writing world.

One lesson that was fairly common back then — not necessarily on TV, but in books and magazines about writing — was to start out writing short stories. The world has turned many times since those days, and I’m sure a lot of what was then-considered wisdom, is now viewed as old hat. I get that. But in case you have heard that advice, or if you think you’d rather start with shorter pieces, then here are some pluses and minuses you should keep in mind. Before I go on, please keep in mind that most of what I’m saying is pertenent mostly to the traditional publishing markets. You can, obviously, go the self-publishing route, but that means you have to be even more scrupulous about dotting every i and crossing every t. And, of course, you have to do your own marketing.

THE PLUSES

There are any number of positives in writing a short story. Here are a few; no doubt you can think of many others:

A short story can be much easier to manage, at least compared with a novel. You can write it in a matter of days, instead of months.

You can learn a lot by writing short stories. You can determine what your strengths and weaknesses are. It’s much better to learn from less time-consuming pieces than from something that can take up a year or more. While there are obvious differences between writing a short piece and a novel, some things never change. A sentence remains the same, so does a paragraph. A good opening and a good beginning are as important in the short story– perhaps more so — than they are in a novel.

It is possible to finish a short story in a few hours, if need be. Then you can set that story aside, work on something else, and return to that first story some weeks later, after it has had a chance to ‘cool’ down.

You can experiment in short stories. Perhaps you’d like writing science fiction, or a mystery; you can do either or both in a short format. Try different things. First person point of view, or omniscient; past or present tense; sombre tone or humorous. It could take years to learn all these things in novel-writing.

The short story makes it much easier to spot things like repititions or confusing wording.

There are hundreds of markets for short stories, so your chances of getting published are that much greater.

If you are a genre writer, by having your stories published in magazines devoted to your speciality, you can develop a strong reputation among ‘your kind’ of readers, and so have a ready audience for your novels when you begin to write them.

Now, let’s look at the minuses.

THE MINUSES

While there are similarities, a short story is not a novel. You will find that some things that work well in a short piecc just fail in something several hundred pages long. The plot, for one thing, has to be much less complex, much more nuanced in a short story, than you will find in a novel.

Once you have spent some time writing shorter pieces, when you eventually start to work on a novel, you are likely, by habit, to keep your descriptions and narrative brief. After all, you’re used to dealing in works of about 1,000-5,000 words. But while you do want to keep your writing succinct in a novel, you have to allow enough room for the story to breathe. Adjusting to that longer word count can take time. I still tend to make my first draft fairly brief, and I expand it in subsequent rewrites.

I’m a terrible perfectionist when it comes to short stories. Novels, too, but in the shorter form, every word carries special weight. I have some stories that I have worked on for years. Not consistently, no. I go back to them once a year or so and make more changes. This seems more like a psychological condition than actual writing, but I could do worse things. You know?

Sometimes you produce a short story that is begging to be a novel. That’s not uncommon. Right now you are in your experimental stage, so you can play with those rules all you want. That said, if time is an issue, you may prefer to just focus on those projects that you feel have a decent chance of success, however you define it.

After several tries, you might discover that the short story is not your thing. That’s far more common than you might think. I have known any number of novelists who couldn’t write a short story to save their lives. I was a bit that way myself for a long time. It took years of reading, producing drafts, and gaining a lovely collection of rejection slips. Gradually though, the penny dropped, and I suddenly produced a story I was pleased with. More than that, it was accepted for publication. Yay! No, I’m not saying it was easy, but persistence does pay off eventually. That said, many of my fellow writers decided it wasn’t worth it to them, and they would rather be novelists anyway. You do you.

The reverse is also true. There are any number of exceptional short story writers who couldn’t produce a novel if it was the only thing to prevent the world from coming to an end. In short, there’s a lot to be said for knowing what you are, and being that.

Back in those days when I wasn’t growing up on Walton’s Mountain, I thought you had to be one type of a writer and that was that. Eventually, I managed to write and see published several novels, short stories, some poetry, and even a couple of (admittedly unproduced) plays. My point is that there are many writers who mastered all sorts of genres and writing types. How do you know you can’t do something unless you give it a decent try? Do it now. Enjoy the practice and have fun.

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Let’s say you have an idea for a story. It follows you around and you know you could make it into a fantastic novel, if only…

As a professional writer, I have lost count of the number of people I have met who say this. “If only I had the time… If only I could gather my thoughts… If only…”

The thing is, as with any other living thing, an idea has to have fertile soil in which to grow. Yes, I know, that sounds awfully metaphysical and, essentially, a load of rubbish, but it’s true. One of the worst things a would-be writer can do is to tell everyone he meets about his brilliant idea. He pours all his enthusiasm and creativity into the conversation, so he has nothing left when it comes to writing. If one were cynical, one might say he gets far more out of talking about the idea than he ever would in the writing. After all, who wants to admit they got stuck on page 10?

Let’s imagine you have an idea for a story, but you haven’t started writing it yet. Which of these scenarios best reflects your experience?

You have an idea for a story, but you’re not sure it will work.Your idea focuses on just one part of the story, the climax, for instance, so you don’t know where to begin.You are overwhelmed with ideas for stories, but can’t decide which is best.

In their way, each of these situations reflect a sense of fear and doubt. Fear of the blank page. Yes, it is a real thing. All writers have faced it at some time, and I don’t think it ever really goes away.

So, what can you do to get that fertile ground you need to grow your idea into a story. Here are some ideas:

*Keep a journal. Write in it daily. Since it is for you alone you can document your private thoughts, play with story ideas, and, as you do so, you will see your writing progress.

*Write 500 words a day about some personal or current event. This will get you into the habit of sitting at your desk and producing text.

*Write about an event from two perspectives. Use for and against when you are addressing a current event. Write from the point of view of two (or more) characters when they are in a dispute.

*Use writing prompts to stimulate your imagination.

By getting used to the act of writing every day, your fear will diminish and you will, over time, feel ready to start developing your idea into a story. Things will come to life in unexpected ways: characters show up, complications develop, and before you know it, you have the basis for a plot.

This is what they call fertile ground.

Next week, we will look at the short story and the many ways it diiffers from the novel.

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