EDITH WINTERBOTTOM'S ESSENTIAL TIPS FOR WINTER by Penny Dolan

 Today - the First of December - ABBA is pleased to offer a Guest Post from the pen of Miss Winterbottom, renowned for the long-running 'Advice for Aspiring Authors' Column (Jolly Journalistic Jaunts Magazine, 1932) 

Do read on . . .

Dear Fellow Scribes,

Alas! Winter, in my opinion, is the hardest season for Writers. One sits at one’s desk, oft-times without flames in one’s meagre hearth, attending to One’s Work (in Progress, Resting or at a Standstill) and finds One's Creative Spark chilled beyond Endurance.

Fear not! Today, I am suggesting Various Accoutrements that will make the sedentary life both bearable and productive, even as one’s Aspiring Thoughts cloud the inky page (or laptop screen. Ed.)

 The Winterbottom LIst of Author's Essentials: 

You will need:

1. A knitted snood: a most useful, soft, cylindrical garment for wearing round the neck, but without the encumbrance of lengthy scarfage.

2.  A warm woolly hat, if needed. Without, for obvious aesthetic reasons, any bobble, slogan or in any team colours.

3 A pair of fingerless mitts. Adaptable for use with pencil, pen, paintbrush or keyboard. Also of assistance when opening Biscuits Tins or Confectionary Containers.

4. One Essential Over-Garment to wear over one’s regular clothing. For example, a large flannel dressing gown; a Mariner’s oversized Guernsey; one’s Grandfather’s raglan Overcoat, or any other superior garment you have the bodily strength to wear. Nb. Garments with pockets only!

5. If at your Country Desk, wear thick Socks and Sturdy Tweed Slippers. However, for superior comfort at your Town Desk, fur-lined Ankle Bootees will look more stylish.

6. Several large cushions or pillows, strategically wedged in place to ward off draughts but, hopefully, not drafts.(Excuse my wee moment of wit!)

7. If available, a lazy, well-fed, friendly cat for close comfort on the lap or nearby. If no feline is available, use a wrapped hot water bottle, although this is a far lesser option in terms of literary companionship.

8. Warming cups of tea, coffee, or hot chocolate. Spirituous liquors occasionally, when necessary for inspiration. (Suitable flasks & vessels can be found in Superior Expedition Catalogues, especially useful on the maid's half-day off.)

9. If one wishes, an Amusing Sausage Dog door draught excluder, ha ha. Or large, real Dog, if handcrafted version unavailable.

10. And now, a Final Suggestion, if you are Comfortably Equipped but still unable to get on with your Vital Project:

GO FOR A LONG, HEALTH-FILLING,

OUTDOOR WALK!

 

No, Not you, Dear Writer!  

 The Long Healthy Walk is for All the Others 

 so that now you can get on with Your Work, Peacefully, Cheerfully and Happily!

Farewell. I will end my December Advice with a newly-popular term, recently overheard on the Clapham Omnibus: 

 ENJOY! 

Wishing Happy Festivities to One and All during this Season of Merriment.

 (As told to Penny Dolan)

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Writing for growing toes and growing minds (Anne Rooney)

 Next month I'm teaching a course on writing children's non-fiction (cnf), which is what I write about half of the time. There aren't many courses on this in the UK, though more in the US where cnf has always had a higher profile — largely because schools pay more attention to non-fiction there than they do in the UK. The profile of cnf has risen in the UK over the last ten years or so with lots of really beautifully produced books. One result is that more people are attracted to writing it. On the whole, creative writing courses haven't kept up and still focus on writing fiction, sometimes with a minor component on non-fiction thrown in. Yet children's non-fiction takes a large market share: the books sell, and children like them.

Putting the course together has been fine. But it's been a struggle  finding the extra resources — the books, articles, blog posts, videos and so on to point participants towards for extra advice and info. I've been looking through my stash of books on writing and most assume the reader wants to write fiction, and particularly novels. There are some more academic books on the structure, pedagogy, politics and so on of children's non-fiction but those aren't really appropriate for this introductory course. Most books about writing for children focus on plot, character, world-building, and so on. You could use these in narrative non-fiction, but the course doesn't cover that — precisely because all those things are important to that but not to other types of cnf, so it's a cop-out.

The challenges in writing children's non-fiction are rather different from those in writing fiction. Yes, you still need to hold the reader's interest. But the ways of doing that are often different from how you would do it in a story. The main aim of much non-fiction is not to impart information (which is what people assume it is) but to excite interest and wonder. It's to make the reader want to find out more, do something — or to enrich what they already known with understanding, with putting it into a bigger picture. It seeks to create 'aaaah' moments and 'wow' moments, to show children that knowing things is exciting, empowering, opens doors and will give them satisfaction and pleasure. How you do this is through selecting the right material, structuring  the material, pacing, choice of language and style, integration with images and — counterintuitively — what you leave out. What you leave out in terms of which content you skip (as there is far more to say than you have space to say), but even more importantly in where you leave space for the reader to jump ahead, make connections, use their intuition and imagination. Space to empower the reader. Space for them to grow. Think of the book as like a shoe. You don't want it fitting snugly to their toes or it will only be comfortable for a very short time. You need wiggle room, growing room, space to mould it to their particular shape. I don't know of a writing book that explains this and how to do it. Perhaps I'll have to write one.  But for now, if you know any resources that will help my students with children's non-fiction, please post them in the comments! I've got some, but more will help them.

Anne Rooney

Out now: The Story of Planet Earth, Arcturus, 2022

Do I have to start hugging people again? - Kelly McCaughrain

Well, I got my vaccine on Friday night, which was brilliant! I'll be able to lick people by Monday! (Not really.) Unforts I also spent most of yesterday feeling a bit rubbish so I haven't done a blog post. 

So as a total (but also quite useful) cop out, instead I will point you in the direction of a brilliant website, Writing.ie where you can spend hours reading very interesting stuff. 

They've got interviews with writers, guides on publication/contracts/agents/self-publishing etc, articles on writing craft, news, lists of writing competitions, blogs, and loads more. If you're looking for advice on anything, it's probably there.

Check it out on your next tea break and I hope you all get your vaccines soon too! I'm going back to bed with a hot water bottle. 

 

 

 

 

Kelly McCaughrain is the author of the Children's Books Ireland Book of the Year,

Flying Tips for Flightless Birds. 

She is the Children's Writing Fellow for Northern Ireland #CWFNI

She also blogs at The Blank Page

@KMcCaughrain

Endings Part II:structure & turning points - by Rowena House

Last month I shared some notes I’d made for a writer friend who'd asked me about story endings. Here’s the link to that blog about the “what” of endings: what’s going to happen, and what that implies for the rest of the story.

https://awfullybigblogadventure.blogspot.com/2019/08/endings-part-i-where-to-start-by-rowena.html

This post is about another side of endings, the “how” part. It covers some of the tips I’ve picked up over the years from editing and writing courses, and also from a range of advice guides and writing blogs. I hope it might be useful for anyone struggling with their ending or wondering how to plot one.

Of all the structural guides I’ve studied, the most helpful terminology I’ve come across is in The Story Grid by Shawn Coyne. In it, he provides a helpful label for each of the three acts of classic “Aristotelian” storytelling.
  

Coyne calls Act 1 the Set Up, Act 2 the Progressive Build and Act 3 the Pay Off. 

These labels signpost the content for each act; they also flag up the all-important turning points which spin the story into the next act and, finally, The End.

For example, the main turning point of the Set Up is an Inciting Incident: the event or call to adventure which gets the central plot going.

The Progressive Build ends at a Worst Point for the protagonist, the turning point which precipitates the story into the final act. A midpoint epiphany is another great practical turning point for Act 2. I’ve blogged about epiphanies here. https://rowenahouse.com/2018/02/02/eureka-nailing-epiphanies-big-five-part-2/
 

The Pay Off brings to a head both the plot and main character arc. As the pace and tension accelerate, there are (typically) two major turning points in Act 3: a Crisis and a Climax. The story is then wrapped up with a final beat, usually called the Resolution. Each of these three scenes gives shape, direction and energy to a climatic ending.

For writers who follow this schema, the Crisis is the deepest dilemma the protagonist faces; the toughest choice s/he must make throughout the story. 

One tip I’ particularly like is to make this Crisis decision as horribly, gut-wrenchingly dramatic as possible by forcing the protagonist to choose between two highly prized, but mutually exclusive alternatives (AKA “irreconcilable goods”). Imagine a parent on a dangerous cliff path: their son is being dragged towards a 100-foot drop in one direction, their daughter is being kidnapped by a madman in the other. Which way do they turn? Deciding between two such irreconcilable goods is much more difficult and character-defining than a choice between the lesser of two evils, or between right and wrong. 

If the story is focused on character, then this Crisis decision can be the defining moment of the whole thing: the “obligatory scene” as some creative writing teachers and editors term it. It is the point in the story where the protagonist decides to transform from the person they were to the person they need to become in order to fulfil their role in the story, or (by failing to change) to become a tragic figure.

To give the reader the maximum insight into this pivotal moment, the Crisis decision needs to be fully developed and emotionally powerful, and can take quite a few pages. 

The Climax is the action initiated by the protagonist as a result of their crisis decision. Classically, it’s the scene where they confront their biggest force of antagonism: the top villain if there is one, or their worst nightmare if that’s what’s been holding them back. 

The Climax is the final turning pointing for the plot; in it, the actions of the protagonist reflect a deliberate choice to change or transform in order to achieve their story goal. The outcome of this climactic conflict is profoundly meaningful for the protagonist; it is also irreversible. 

For more plot-orientated stories, the Climax is widely considered to be the “obligatory” scene and can be the longest one in the book. Climaxes don’t have to be explosive or action-packed. In The Goose Road it’s a slow-burn, escalating scene stretching over three chapters. In the film, Ordinary People, Robert McKee in Story notes that the Climax is the wife packing a suitcase and walking out on her family: a brief, simple action but with enormous meaning within that story world.

The Resolution is a final chapter or scene which cements this character transformation in the reader’s mind. The action shows how the change-through-conflict of the story, which led to the Climax, has altered the protagonist’s underlying behaviour and attitudes for good (and/or how that change impacts on their community). 

Plot-wise, the Resolution might wrap up a subplot or dramatize a reconciliation. The way the protagonist achieves this scene’s goal manifests their new persona.

Over the years, I’ve read quite a few variants on this theme of crisis-climax-resolution. In Into the Woods, John Yorke talks about “mastery” being the final beat within his five-act structure. In stories with deliberately “open” endings, the Climax and Resolution might be implied, rather than shown.

For Christopher Vogler, the “return with the elixir” is the last, and potentially extended stage of the hero’s quest, as detailed in The Writer’s Journey. 

With this style of ending, the protagonist brings back to their troubled home community some sort of boon (a life lesson learnt or an actual physical elixir). In the archetypal quest ending, this boon helps the protagonist to win one final battle.

While some writers follow Vogler’s road map in its entirety (or Yorke’s Five Acts or Coyne’s Story Grid etc.), I prefer to cherry-pick, keeping an eye out for recommended structural beats as I plot or going back over a first draft to identify missing elements.

After a draft of The Goose Road was rejected by Andersen Press, for example, fellow Bath Spa MAer Chris Vick (whose new book Girl. Boy. Sea looks fantastic, by the way) pointed out that Angelique’s journey contained many elements of a quest. In light of his insight, I re-read The Writer’s Journey and found a host of structural beats I could add, which in turn helped me to deepen Angelique’s character arc during a full development edit for Walker.

There are, hopefully, an almost infinite number of ways to end a story. Structurally, however, the advice I’ve read and heard supports one underlying tenet: at the end, change must be demonstrated by a “character-in-action” (to borrow a phrase from Emma Darwin’s brilliant This Itch of Writing blog.) 

The protagonist must do something to show the reader they’ve become a different person due to the events of the story. In the end, they’ve got to walk the walk.

PS In case anyone’s free on the evening of Oct 2, Tracey Matthais, Matt Killeen, Liz McWhirter and I are talking about our protagonists’ “Interesting Times” at Waterstones, Uxbridge. See our social media feeds for details. I’m @HouseRowena on Twitter

  

The 12 stages of the Hero's Journey – Are they real? – David Thorpe

This month I thought I would publish the slides from a presentation I gave this week at my writing course.

I wanted to delve deeply into the idea of plot and structure and then test the popular technique writers are taught that quest, discovery or journey type stories all have 12 stages. I did this by analysing two recent films and book that are very different indeed: The Girl On A Train and Doctor Strange. If you haven't seen these: spoiler alert! Don't read the penultimate two slides!

[David Thorpe is the writer of Marvel's Captain Britain, the sci-fi YA novels Hybrids, Doc Chaos: The Chernobyl Effect and the cli-fi fantasy Stormteller.]

My (12-stage, of course!) writing course can also be taken online. Contact me if interested.

4 pieces of popular advice that I ended up ignoring – Jess Vallance

Last time, I wrote about that old writing adage – ‘never give up’ – and how I gradually realised it was OK to ignore it sometimes. And when I started thinking about it, I realised there were actually quite a few other bits of advice that fall into the same category – tips that popped up everywhere, but when I got down to putting them into practice, I started to think maybe they weren’t all they were cracked up to be. 

To be clear here, I’m not saying that the advice I’m going to cover is never helpful. I’m sure there are lots of people who’ll read this who’d swear by some – or all – of these tips. My point is, when you’re new (like I am), if you read the same advice more than a few times, you start to think maybe you’re doing something wrong if you doubt them. It can be reassuring to find out that they didn’t work for everyone and you’re not going mad. 

So, these are the tips I’m talking about – and how I’d modify them to make them more useful.  

1. The advice said: Write for an hour a day/Set aside your writing time/Write at the same time each day.

I wonder where this preoccupation with time comes from. I think maybe it’s the world of full-time employment where being seen to be at your desk from 9 till 5.30 is the main indication of productivity. But when you’re paid and judged on the words on the page, I think the time it took to get them there isn’t really relevant.

I can see how setting aside an hour (or whatever) a day is a good way to help you build a routine, but the problem is, lots of things can happen (or not happen) in an hour. You might storm it and write two thousand spellbinding words, but you might spend 45 minutes refreshing Twitter and 15 minutes scouring lists of Japanese baby names for the perfect name for a character who appears in one paragraph on page 86. 

Don’t get me wrong, I’m well into goals and getting on with things, but I think this kind of advice would be more helpful if it was focused more around output than hours.

So, I’d say: Set a weekly word count goal.

2. The advice said: Cut, cut, cut. Cut everything. Your second draft should be at least twenty percent shorter than your first.

 

No one wants to waffle on too much and bore people, so this used to worry me. When I’d finished writing something, I’d duly go through and cut anything that could be considered redundant – adjectives, dialogue, observations. The only thing was, it turned out that I have the opposite problem: I am an ‘under-writer'. I don’t explain things enough. I can be terse. 

I’m not saying everything I write is beautiful and people only ever ask for more – of course there were some bits that were crap and had to be ditched – but when I started working with people who know (agents and editors), most of the comments I got were about elaborating on ideas, developing dialogue and clearing up ambiguity - all just as important as cutting out the waffle.

 My book (Birdy) was 3000 words longer post-edit than it had been when I submitted it. 

So, I’d say: Cut the bad stuff, but also make sure the good stuff is on the page, not just in your head.

3. The advice said: Write the book you want to write.

I’ve swayed between both extremes with this one. I tried to write book that I had almost no interest in based on what I thought would be easiest to sell. It didn’t work. 

I also tried following the advice to the letter and started work on a book that I thought would be fun to write. In my case, I started something in the form of instant messages and emails. In truth, it was basically me venting my pet peeves about other people’s online habits. I amused myself writing about ten pages – it was quite cathartic – but I quickly realised this wasn’t a book for readers. 

I suppose it’s about balance. You have to enjoy it enough to have the passion to get to the end, but ultimately, it needs to be something other people want to read or you might as well be keeping a diary. 

So, I’d say: Write the book you'd want to read.

 

4. The advice said: Have lots of beta readers.

Like all the others items in this post, this advice totally makes sense in theory. It’s impossible to properly critique something you’ve written yourself, so getting other people to take a look is the obvious thing to do. But I think it is possible to take this tip to heart and get it wrong.

When I was about two thirds of my way down my road to getting published, I decided that I could no longer be trusted to know good from bad and that I would put myself in the hands of some readers – all carefully chosen, either for their industry expertise or just because I thought they’d know a good story when they saw it (or didn’t see it as the case may be).

They were all great. They all sent me careful, insightful comments and suggestions. My problem was, I tried to take them all into account. Lots of them were different – completely opposing in some cases – but I decided to try to work it all in, even when I wasn’t one hundred percent sold on the idea. Of course, this meant I wasn’t one hundred percent sold on the end result. And neither was anyone else. 

I think two handy rules of thumb are:

1.  If lots of people you trust say the same thing, they’re probably right.
2. If people pick up on something you already sort of suspected yourself, they’re probably right.

But not every person who reads a book and makes a comment will be right or sensible or helpful. And anyway, for all we know they might just be saying anything at all just to make us shut up and stop bothering them with our amateurish nonsense. 

(As a side note, the most successful of my writing efforts – the one that’s going to be published – didn’t have any readers at all. The only people who’ve read it as far as I know are my agent and my publisher. It’s exactly as I wanted it to be. So if it’s a huge flop I’ll have no one to blame but myself. And them.)

So, I’d say: Follow advice you believe in but don’t let too many cooks spoil the story.

Website: www.jessvallance.com
Twitter: @jessvallance1

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