BarryHutchison.com

Although my knowledge of anything that might prove useful in the real world is sorely limited (how to fix cars, how to administer first aid, how to cook anything that isn’t toast, etc, etc), one thing I do know a bit about is writing.  That’s why I’m allowed to do books an’ that.

As such, I’ve been asked to run a series of evening classes at my local college, where I’ll be teaching everything from creating rounded, memorable characters, to writing a killer query letter and synopsis.  It should be interesting, not least of all for me, as I try to put words to all those little writing tricks I now do instinctively.  Classes start in August, so if you happen to live near Fort William in the Highlands of Scotland, contact Lochaber College for more details.

You might also have noticed a new option has appeared in the menu up above this post somewhere.  I am now offering a manuscript critique service, where – for a fee – I will provide editorial feedback on novels-in-progress.

I should probably point something out here.  If you have leaky pipes and call a plumber, would you be happy if he told you everything was fine, and left you with water running down your walls?  Or if the house was burning down, would you be content for the fire brigade to turn up, compliment you on your curtains, then zoom off again with their lights blaring?

Probably not.  So, likewise, if you employ someone to give critical feedback on your manuscript, expect just that.  Don’t anticipate a glowing review which fails to find fault with a single word you’ve written.  Positive feedback is nice, but it’s not helpful.  I’ve lost count of the number of times people have taken offence at me pointing out even a minor issue with their work, despite the fact I always make a point of highlighting the positives first.

So, if you’re the type of person who is looking for reassurance of your own brilliance, please don’t bother getting in touch.  If, however, you’re someone who has a story to tell and would like a little help making it as good as it can possibly be, then I’d love to hear from you.

Go check out the Manuscript Critique page and get in touch.

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything constructive about the process of writing, so we’re probably overdue for a writing tip or two.  But tough luck, I’m not giving you one.  Instead, I want to talk about what I’m working on at the minute, and why I’ve barely managed to write 1000 words over the past two days.

Although it’s still a while until the first INVISIBLE FIENDS book comes out (eight months and counting, folks!), I’m currently working my way through book three, having more of less finished book 2 already.  Now, while each book is a self-contained story which anyone can pick up and read without first having read the books before it, there is a larger story arc which spans all six books.  The finale of this story arc is foreshadowed in a prologue at the beginning of each book, so by about page four of book one readers will have some idea of where the series is going to take them.

Usually I rattle out about 1500 words a day as an absolute minimum.  The reason I’ve been struggling over the last couple of days is because book three is an important ‘chapter’ in the larger story arc.  In fact, the point in the story I’m at now is a major turning point.  It ties up some plot strands from the first two books, sets in motion some events that won’t pay off until books four, five and six, and – more importantly – turns my protagonist’s whole world upside down.

On top of that, it introduces the villain of the story, kills off a major character, and brings a whole new level of darkness to the series.

That’s why I’ve been checking email, reading the news and making a cup of tea every five minutes – because I’m scared of getting such an important bit wrong.  If I screw this chapter up it could potentially ruin the rest of the series.  Seriously, it’s that significant.  I have literally been too terrified of messing up to write any significant number of words.

And then I remember some advice I gave in a previous post on writing tips: It doesn’t matter if the first draft is right, it only matters that it’s written.

I’m going to keep that in mind when I sit back at the computer tomorrow.  There’s a very good chance the chapter won’t be perfect when I finish it, but it doesn’t have to be.  Not yet.  That can come in the next draft, or the one after, or the one after that.  All that matters right now is getting the words – any vaguely appropriate words  – down on the page.  The rest I can sort out later.

In the last two blog posts we’ve looked at tips 1-8, so logically let us now conclude with tips 9-12.  Then I can get back to writing any old guff about wasps or whatever on here, instead of trying to seem all clever an’ that.

9.  Experience beats research
The internet is great.  In fact, I can honestly say that I would seriously struggle to readjust to a world without the internet.  I’d probably go quite, quite mad with grief, and never quite get over that gnawing sense of loss.

That said, there’s more to life than the internet, and while Google and the like are very useful tools for checking facts and figures, they don’t come close to being able to replace actual real life experience.

Take, for example, the third book of the INVISIBLE FIENDS series, which I’m currently working on.  There’s a mobile phone mast in it, and it plays a (vaguely) important role in the story.  I’ve read lots about mobile phone masts (technically known as ‘base units’) over the past few weeks and have studied lots of pictures.  I know what kind of heights they range from, what they actually do, and even have a vague idea of how they’re put together.

I learned all this via a few searches in Google, and I thought I was as clued up as I needed to be.  Until, that is, I decided to make the two-mile hike up a hill to my closest mobile phone base unit.  Suddenly the facts and figures I had learned seemed less important, replaced as they were by just a general feel of the size and scale of the thing.

Yes, the research was useful – I could guess what some of the bits of equipment jutting out from the mast were – but it wasn’t really until I was right up close to the base unit that it solidified properly in my mind.

Research can often give you a detached, abstract view of whatever you’re reading up on.  If you have a chance to go and see what you’re researching first hand, jump at it.  It’ll only help make your descriptions more believable.

10.  Think about sequels
When you’re coming up with a story idea, it’s often useful to consider whether it could lead to a sequel or a series.  This is especially true when you’re writing children’s fiction, where series’ are rapidly becoming the norm.

I’m not suggesting you write a sequel – in fact, I’d advice you never to write a sequel unless a publisher has bought your first book and asked for more – but it’s worth mentioning in your query letters to publishers or agents if you think your manuscript could turn out to be the first of many books featuring the same characters.

Not only does it make the publisher/agent aware that follow-ups are possible, but it also shows you are thinking long-term about your career.  A one-hit wonder isn’t much good to a publisher.  They need to know you will consistently turn in work, and mentioning sequel potential is one way of doing this.

11.  The Query Letter
This leads on nicely from the last tip.  Query letters are something of an art, and one I’ve luckily never really had to master.  They are probably the most important weapon in your writer’s arsenal, though, and there are some pitfalls you should do your utmost to avoid:

• Don’t try to be funny. Even if you are genuinely amusing.  Even if your book is a side-splitting comedy, never, ever try to be funny in a query letter.  The letter is your professional calling card.  You (hopefully) wouldn’t turn up for a business meeting wearing a red nose and clown’s shoes, so don’t attempt the literary equivalent.
• Don’t big yourself or your manuscript up too much. Yes, you’re allowed to believe your book will be the most explosive blockbuster in the history of publishing, but don’t tell the publisher that.  All they’ll hear is those dreaded “amateur” alarm bells again, and if they do bother to read your manuscript they’ll already be very cynical about it.
• Don’t address a publisher or agent as “You Great Big Love Lummox”. It’s just not acceptable.
• Don’t say how much your friends enjoyed it. Your friends are your friends for a reason.  They like you.  That means they’re not impartial, so dropping the fact into the letter isn’t going to help your case any.
• Don’t threaten to kill yourself if they turn you down. Seriously.  I know of an agent it happened to.  It’s unlikely to help your professional career.

Basically, a query letter should be short and to the point.  It should introduce the concept of the book, briefly introduce yourself and any major writing achievements you have (previously published works, competitions won, etc) and then it should invite the publisher/agent to request the manuscript.  It should normally be accompanied by a detailed synopsis and the first three chapters, but that’s all down to the publisher’s guidelines, so refer to those before sending anything.

I know I mentioned referring to possible sequels in the tip above, but be sure not to dwell on this at the query letter stage.  You’re selling the first manuscript, not potential future ones.  Just slip in that further installments are possible, and leave it at that.

12.  Never give up
Even when you wake in the night soaked with sweat, full of self-doubt, don’t quit.  People will tell you you’re never going to make it.  Often they’ll believe they’re saying it for your own good, and they probably are, but don’t listen.  You’ll sometimes have days when you panic that you’re throwing your life away chasing a silly dream.  Pick up a pen and write about the feeling until it goes away.

This is the most important tip of all.  I can’t tell you you’re going to make it as a writer – no-one can tell you that – but I can tell you that if you give up you definitely will not.  The book you are writing now may not be published, but the next one will be better.  I don’t know if that one will be published, but if you don’t write it you’ll never know, either.

Keep trying.  Keep learning.  Keep writing.  You’ll get there.

In the last post, we looked at four tips that could help you on your way to writing professionally.  I should have mentioned at the beginning that when I saw “writing professionally” I mean becoming a published writer of fiction.  A lot of the tips will apply to other forms of writing – articles, non-fiction, screenplays, etc – but wannabe novelists are who the article is really aimed at.

Anyway, here are tips 5-8.

5.  Comfortable is not always good
If man was comfortable in the freezing cold, he probably wouldn’t have bothered discovering fire.  If he was comfortable carrying heavy weights over long distances, he wouldn’t have invented the wheel.

Likewise, I used to write nothing but comedy stories.  It was what I considered myself to be good at and, yes, I was comfortable with it.  It wasn’t until I pushed myself out of that comfort zone and tried something else – namely horror – that I achieved any kind of success.

Yes, the old adage is “write what you know”, and for a first novel that’s not necessarily a bad idea.  But try taking a different angle on it.  I took something fairly harmless – the concept of childhood imaginary friends – and turned it into something terrifying and horrific.  You can always find unique ways of looking at things you know about.  It just takes a bit of effort and a small leap of faith.

Don’t be afraid to push yourself out of your comfort zone – in fact, make a point of doing so – and your writing will be given a fresh energy.

6.  Think Big, Medium and Small
I’ve mentioned before how I need to set myself targets to achieve anything.  Many other authors I know work in the same way – they set themselves a realistic target each day, and they work until they reach it.  Whether they do it consciously or not, I bet most writers of novels or other lengthy pieces of work do something similar.

When I first started writing, I had the usual dreams and flights of fancy.  I pictured my name on the bestseller list.  I saw myself signing copies of my books, winning the Booker Prize, being Time Magazine Man of the Year…

OK, I may have got a little carried away with that last one.

But the point is, I thought about what it would be like to be a world renowned, bestselling author.  I probably thought about it too much, actually, without really doing a lot to try to make the dream a reality.

What I should have done was used these dreams as my Big Goal.  I could then have worked out my Medium Goal.  Obviously to become a besteselling author I would have to write a fantastic novel, and have it published.  So my Medium Goal would be to complete a full length manuscript.  It may not be the manuscript to be picked up by a publisher, but I would complete the Medium Goal over and over again until one book was published.

That would have led to my Small Goal, where I would break down the amount of work involved in writing a novel into smaller, more manageable chunks.  That’s where the daily targets come in.  Writing just 500 words a day of a 70,000 word novel would mean the first draft would be done in less than 5 months.  So by setting my Small Goal as “write 500 words today”, and then achieving that goal 140 times, I’d reach my Medium Goal.  Achieve my Medium Goal a few times, and my Big Goal would be much closer to being within reach.

Whether you call them Big, Medium and Small Goals, or Master, Long Term and Short Term goals, or whatever other name you come up with, visualising what you ultimately want to achieve, then breaking it down into stages makes the whole process much easier and less daunting.

Wow, that was a lengthy tip.  Let’s follow it up with a quick one.

7.  Always carry a pen
Because you never know when you might need to write something down.  Carrying paper of some kind wouldn’t be a bad idea, either.   Actually, this is a good tip regardless of whether you want to be a writer or not.

8.  Even gods have to learn to let go
As a writer, you get to create worlds, conjour people from thin air and essentially do whatever you like to all of them.  You can grant people the ability to fly, you can make animals talk, you can inflict pain and suffering, or you can create the perfect Utopia.  All this you can do with the stroke of a pen.  As a writer, you are the God of your own blank page.

And just like other gods, when you create these living beings, you grant them their free will.  This often means that despite all your best efforts, they will not do what you want them to do.

You’ve spent 10,000 words making Marjorie a full rounded, 3 dimensional character who positively sparkles on the page.  Your plot requires her to climb down a rickety old ladder into an abandoned mine shaft.  Only problem is, Marjorie doesn’t do rickety old ladders, and she certainly doesn’t do abandoned mine shafts.

You see, the problem with characters is that the good ones tend to evolve before your eyes.  You have a pretty good idea of what they’re like before you start writing, but by the time you’re any distance into your novel, they’ve taken on a life of their own.  This is great news – solid characters are the most important part of your story – but it can also mean forcing them to fit your plot contradicts the person they’ve become.

There is nothing that will put a publisher off more than a character in your story suddenly acting completely out of character.  Well, maybe a bit of sick on the front of your manuscript would be more off-putting, but not much.  Have characters behaving erratically for no reason, and you can kiss goodbye to your chances of the story being published.

If you’re lucky enough for your character to come to life on the page, then be prepared to adapt your story to fit them.  Let them loose and see where they take you – the adventure they lead you on may be more interesting than the one you came up with originally.

That’s it for now, the next (and final) four tips will be coming soon.

During a recent school visit, I was asked what you need to do to become a writer. Because we were about to run out of time, the only advice I was able to give was “practice”.

But of course there’s more to becoming a professional writer than just writing a lot. I may not have had time to go into detail during the school visit, but I can afford to expand a bit more now that the threat of the bell ringing isn’t hanging over my head.

So here, just for you, are twelve tips that will help improve your chances of writing professionally. Well, I say “twelve” but I actually mean “four”, as I’m breaking the article into three easily digestible chunks.

1. Write Lots
Yes, yes, I mentioned this one already, but it’s probably the most important tip of all. If you do something over and over again, you will get better at it. That’s just a fact, that is. Whether it be cooking, karate, singing or dwarf-hurling, the more you do it, the better you’ll get.

Writing is exactly the same. Write every day. It doesn’t matter what you write, just write it. It could be a short story or a poem, a diary or a recipe for jam flavoured hotdogs. The subject doesn’t matter. Getting into the writing habit is what’s important.

If you find all this writing a chore, or make excuses not to do it, then a job as an author is not for you. Trust me.

2. Develop a new way of reading
I don’t mean start reading backwards or anything, I just mean start changing the way you look at stories. Don’t just read a book, analyse it. Notice how the author uses words. Pay attention to the rhythm of the sentences. Observe how the characters are put together. Get under the bonnet and find out what makes the book work (or not).

Don’t take this to mean you should become detached and stop enjoying books – far from it. Allow yourself to become immersed in the story and experience every emotion of it fully, but try not to just be carried along by it. See if you can figure out exactly how the author made you happy or sad, or why one story was heart-poundingly exciting, while another bored you to tears. Once you know how other authors do it, you’ll be well on the way to figuring out how you can do the same things in your writing.

3. Learn when not to listen
In secondary school I told my English teachers that I wanted to be an author when I left school. Aside from one, they all told me not to be so silly. I should get a proper job, they said, and put aside any dreams of writing books.

I could have done what they suggested. I could have said “Yeah, fair point,” and went on to become … I don’t know. Something else. An embittered English teacher, maybe. But I didn’t. I heard what they said, I considered it, and then I ignored it.

And that’s what a writer needs to do on a near-daily basis. People will constantly try to give you advice. Friends, family, editors, agents, even total strangers – they will all chip in their opinions regularly. Some of them are paid to do it, others aren’t.

There will be many times when that advice helps transform an averagely good story into something spectacular. I am not for one second suggesting you ignore ALL advice you are given.  Do that and you’ll never become a working professional.  Lots of advice is very worthwhile

But those setting out to become writers often have a tendency to take on board every bit of criticism, and to try to please everybody. Believe me, you’ll never please everybody, so don’t waste your time trying.

People have opinions. Those opinions are not necessarily correct, or “better” than yours. Always be willing to listen to feedback, but if you don’t agree with it or can’t see its merit, don’t be afraid to ignore it.

4.  Become you own best critic
Notice I said “best” there, and not “worst”.  Someone who is their own worst critic is constantly negative about their own work.  How often have you had a writer friend ask you to read something they’ve written, only for them to hand it over with a sheepish “It’s not very good”?  How often have you done it yourself?  I know I used to.

If you honestly and genuinely think something you’ve written is rubbish, then rework it until you have confidence in it.  If you don’t believe in your work, then nor will anyone else.

If you’re just trying to set expectations low, in the hope of receiving positive feedback, you’re doing yourself an injustice.  How many books do you see on the shelves with “This is a load of old tosh” as the marketing tagline?  None.  Publishers wouldn’t dream of underselling or deliberately playing down a book’s quality, so why should you?

Someone who is their own best critic is able to look at their work with complete detachment, as if reading the manuscript of a complete stranger.  They can spot every flaw, every missed opportunity, and every pacing problem, and – more importantly – they can come up with ways to fix them.

Step 1.  Make sure it’s a novel aimed at 5-9 year olds, and as such is only 13,000 words long.

Step 2.  Write at an average pace of 4,333 words per day.

Step 3.  There is no step 3.  That’s it.

Simple, eh?  Seriously, it is.  I’ve just done it.  Twice.

Thanks to my lightning fast fingers I have managed to write two books for Egmont in a grand total of six days.  There was a break in between while I rewrote INVISIBLE FIENDS book 2, but when I total up my time spent working solely on the Egmont books, it’s six days.

So I wrote them fast, but did I write them well?  That’s the big question, and one I can’t answer until I hear back from my editor at Egmont.  I think they’re pretty good, but then I’m not the one editing them.  We will see, but in the meantime let us rejoice in my newly discovered ability to write two books in under a week.

And now I’m going to sleep for several days.  When I awake, I shall talk about a range of varied and interesting things.  But for now, I set off on a journey to the Land of Nod.

Toodle-pip.

In preparation for a two-day visit to a local school to run storywriting workshops, I’ve been preparing myself for some of the questions I expect I might be asked.  Chief among these is the age-old “Where do you get your ideas from?”.

It’s a question all authors have probably been asked at one time or another, but as I tried to come up with a witty yet informative response for the question a horrible panic gripped me.  Where do I get my ideas from?!

Are they whispered by the voices that echo in my head?
Are they dropped by the Idea Fairy who lives under my bed?
Are they found alongside Jesus’ face in a special loaf of bread?
Are they in a deep, dark, scary mine with diamonds, gold and lead?
Are they painted on my bedroom walls in shades of green and red?
No.  All of that would be utterly mental.  Don’t be so ridiculous.

Ideas come from everywhere (although not necessarily including those avenues listed above).  Look around you and you’ll find the world is littered with ideas.  In fact, let’s try cooking some up now with a good old-fashioned brainstorming session.

From where I’m sitting I can see the big subwoofer speaker for my computer.  It has the words “Peak Bay” written on it.  Let’s start with that.

Peak Bay -> Peek Bay -> Someone secretly peeking at people on the beach.  The dirty git.

So how about…

PEAK BAY
While using binoculars to watch a girl he fancies relaxing on the beach at Peak Bay, a boy witnesses a murder.

A bit too REAR WINDOW maybe.  Let’s look around the room a bit more and see what inspiration strikes us.

I have a Spider-Man piggy bank in front of me, but Spider-Man is out of bounds, unfortunately.  But spiders aren’t.  Marvel Comics may have Spidey under tight control, but the world of arachnids is still open to all.  So what about this?

PEAK BAY
While using binoculars to watch a girl he fancies relaxing on the beach at Peak Bay, a boy witnesses A GIANT SPIDER EMERGING FROM BEHIND A SAND DUNE!  He is too far away to warn the girl and can only watch on as she is wrapped in a web and dragged off down a hole in the sand.

Now we’re getting somewhere.  We’ve gone from two words on front of a speaker to the first few pages of a potentially exciting novel.  It could have romance, horror, adventure and a daring last-minute rescue.  Or maybe the boy is too scared, and because of what he was up to he can’t admit to anyone what he saw.  The girl is eaten, and a dozen giant spiders emerge from the sand and run rampage across the town.  Can the boy overcome his fear and find a way to stop the arachnid invasion before everyone dies, or will he just watch it from afar, and never tell anyone the hideous horrors he witnessed at Peak Bay?

The direction you take once you have an idea is the tricky bit – you have a near-infinite range of possibilities, and picking the best one is never going to be easy.  Generating ideas to develop, though?  That’s not hard.

If you’re struggling, try free association.  Find an object and then write down the first thing it makes you think of.  Keep writing without stopping until you have reached the bottom of the page.  There is no way of doing this “wrong”, so no matter how ludicrous what you’re writing may seem, go with it.  Don’t censor yourself.  Let your subconscious spew out onto the page.

For example, let me pick an object.  We’ll go with my belt.  A short burst of free association might go like this:

Belt, like a karate belt as worn in martial arts movies like the Karate Kid.  Poor Mr Miyagi, the guy who played him died in 2005.  I only know that because I saw it at the end of an episode of Spongebob.  There was  big picture of him with a crazy smile on his face, like a clown.  I don’t like clowns.  I once met a clown walking down a dark road after I’d been to a nightclub.  It was 3am and he was carrying a balloon.  Where do you get a balloon at 3am?  3am is the name of a song by some band or other I have on my iTunes playlist.  Matchbox 20, I think.  Matchbox used to make toy cars, I’m not sure if they still do…

And so on until you reach the bottom of the page.  You don’t have to punctuate at all, but I  break out into cold sweats if I miss out a full stop, so I had no choice in the matter.  Just do it the way it works best for you.

When you read back over the stuff you’ve written, try pairing off some of the idea nuggets and see what it produces.  I could have stories about Karate Clowns, a nightclub under the sea, an elderly Oriental man who lives inside a matchbox and drives a toy car, and so on.  Try it if you ever find yourself struggling for new ideas – you might be surprised at what emerges.

So, in answer to the question “Where do you get my ideas from?” I would have to reply with “EVERYWHERE!”.

Prior to writing INVISIBLE FIENDS I didn’t really have all that much experience of horror. I’d seen a few horror films in my time, but I’d never really read any scary books, so I came to the genre with fresh eyes, and have hopefully managed to bring some of that to the series.

Since IF was picked up I’ve been dipping in and out of a few horror books for both adults and children. Sometimes I enjoy them. Other times I don’t. But I think I’m learning a little bit from each one.

For those of you considering writing horror, here are three little nuggets of wisdom I’ve picked up over the past few months.

1) Normal is scary.
Too often in many of the books I’ve looked at does the author hurl us almost immediately into the supernatural. Virtually from page one we’re assaulted by vampires or demons or some other ugodly abomination designed to scare the bejesus out of us.

Hurling a reader headlong into the bizarre does your book a big injustice, though. We need some time to understand the characters and their everyday lives. We need to see them at work, or at school, or interacting with their family – anything, as long as it’s what they would normally do were they not characters in a horror book.

None of us can identify with fighting a horde of vampires, but we can identify with doing the shopping, or eating dinner, or watching TV. By hinting at some darkness underlying your characters’ everyday lives, it gives the reader cause to think about their own life, and what dangers might lurk within it.

As the veil of this ‘normal’ reality is slowly pulled aside, the reader becomes increasingly uneasy. And from there it’s but a small step to ‘terrified’.

2. People, not corpses
This one may have been Star Trek’s fault. In the original series of the show, Kirk, Spock and the other lead characters were usually accompanied into danger by at least one unnamed crewman in a red jumper. The second you saw that brightly coloured sweater you knew the crewman was as good as dead. They may as well have painted a target on their chests and held up a sign saying ’shoot here’.

In countless books and movies since then, writers have developed a bad habit of creating characters whose sole purpose is to die horribly. They don’t wear red jumpers any more, but you can still identify them just as easily. They are usually two-dimensional and have almost no bearing whatsoever on the plot of the story. They appear in the story, they bumble about a bit, and then they die. It’s a device used to highlight how terrible the villain of the story is.

And it’s rubbish. Who cares if some cardboard cut-out is swallowed by a monster? Who gives a damn if someone of absolutely no significance to the story has his head torn off by a particularly unpleasant gerbil? No-one. If we don’t care about a character, we don’t mind if they live or die, and no matter how gory or absurd the death, it won’t leave any emotional impact on us.

Even if you know a character is doomed from the start, treat them with the same respect you would any other character in your story. Breathe life into them, make us care about them, and I guarantee their death will not be in vain.

3. Too much excitement is dull
This applies to any type of story, but I’ve noticed horror writers (me included sometimes) are quite bad at trying to cram too much terror into their books.

In an early draft of INVISIBLE FIENDS: MR MUMBLES pretty much my entire story was just a series of increasingly horrifying events happening one after another. I thought just piling on the jeopardy would be a sure-fire way of keeping the reader hooked.

I was wrong. The events of your story should be like a series of waves. Each wave rises (building to the dramatic event), peaks (the dramatic event itself) then fades (a little breathing space for your characters – and readers).

If you just have the first two parts of the wave without the third, we never get to see your characters’ reactions to the story events. Remember tip one? We can’t identify with vampires or monsters, but we can identify with human reactions and emotions. Give your character a little time to recover from each major story event, and let the reader see how the event has affected each character. It’ll help us identify with them more, which will make us care about them more, which in turn will make us keep turning the pages to find out what happens to them.

4. Free, bonus tip!
This really just expands on the last part of what I just said above. Try to keep in mind when you’re writing – regardless of the genre – that people don’t really care about events in a story, they care about the people those events affect. It’s not what happens that makes a story interesting, it’s who it happens to and how they respond to it. That’s why it’s so important to make your characters as lifelike as possible. The more real they seem, the easier it will be for us to identify with them. The more we identify with them, the more it feels like we ourselves are in there living the events of the story with them.

And what’s going to illicit more of an emotional response – a monster lurking under a bed you’ve never seen before, or a monster lurking under your bed, waiting to devour you as you sleep? I know which one would get my attention more.

Way back on April 1st, I posted my first Writing Lesson.  In it, I encouraged you to do a bungee jump.  Okay, so it wasn’t the most conventional of writing lessons, but it had a point.  If you haven’t read it and you’re an aspiring writer, I encourage you to go check it out.  We’ll all wait here until you get back.

If you have already read it, then you’ve probably been eagerly awaiting lesson 2 for some months.  Well, here, at last, it is.  Sit back, read, and contemplate the wisdom of …

Barry’s Writing Lesson #2:  Use Public Transport

There are many reasons for the aspiring writer to use public transport.  It’s cheaper than running a car, for one.  It’s environmentally friendly, for another.

More important than your finances or the future of Planet Earth, though, is the fact that using public transport can dramatically improve your writing.

“But how?” I hear you say (because I have a Wordpress plugin which lets me hear through your computer’s microphone).  Well settle down, I’m about to explain all.

Virtually all of life’s rich tapestry can be found on public transport.  I have overheard conversations on buses which have inspired entire novels.  The second screenplay I ever wrote – MAKING A KILLING – featured two characters who were based on a couple of lads I was unfortunate enough to sit behind on a train from Inverness to Aberdeen.

Even if the bus or train you’re on is completely silent, take a look at the people on board – don’t stare, though, they’ll think you’re a nutter.  Ask yourself questions about them.  Why is the guy in the suit holding onto a tatty old rucksack?  How did the woman across the aisle end up with her arm in a sling?  Why is the little boy at the next table crying?

Make up your own answers based on what you see.  Flesh the more interesting ideas out.  Team two or more passengers together and figure out what kind of scenario could bring them together in the world outside the bus or train.

The more you embellish the details, the more your characters will stray away from the probable reality of the people on board.  That’s fine.  You’re not trying to accurately figure out who these people are, you’re just using them as a springboard to creating characters.

So that’s it.  Writing Lesson #2.  It was short, but hopefully it’ll help some of you come up with new characters, and from those will spring new stories to dazzle and enthrall us all.

First of all, a disclaimer: I don’t claim to be an expert on the creative writing process. Yes, I’ve had screenplays optioned, books published, magazine articles printed, and all that jazz, but I still consider myself very much a beginner, with a whole lot to learn.

That said, I’ve been wracking my brains since starting this blog, trying to come up with useful writing advice to share. Now, many other writing bloggers – not least of all me old mucker, Tommy - already give advice, and by and large they’re a lot better at it than me.

Rather than just repeat any of the great advice which is already out there, I’m going to give you some writing tips I doubt you’ll find anywhere else. Every one of these mini-lessons will cover something which I think has helped contribute to my past and current writing successes. If you get something useful from any of them, then that’s great. If you think I’m an idiot and my tips are worthless, then that’s okay too. I won’t mind, really.

Anyway, let’s get on with it.

Barry’s Writing Lesson #1: Do a Bungee Jump
Wait, don’t stop reading yet! This is a serious tip, and possibly the single most important piece of advice I’ll give you (which gives you some idea of the standard of the lessons still to come).

Good stories involve conflict, right? I’m telling you nothing new, you’ve heard that a hundred times. The series I’m writing for HarperCollins – INVISIBLE FIENDS – is of the horror genre. In horror stories, people get scared. Really scared. Scared almost to death, in fact.

How do you describe that fear? Do you say “Oooh, they were dead scared”? Or do you talk about the feeling of nausea which grips your protagonist’s stomach? The crashing roar of their own heart, beating in their ears? The headspinning, blood-chilling, sensations of terror which almost overwhelm them as they struggle to face their worst fears?

I know which I’d find more interesting to read.

And how do you get a real, honest insight into that terror? How do you experience it so vividly that you can accurately recreate it on the page? You bungee jump. Or you sing karaoke. Or you let a spider crawl up your arm. You pick something which frightens you, and you do it. Just don’t forget to make a mental note of everything you feel while you are, or you’ll have terrified yourself for nothing!

This doesn’t just apply to horror, either. Jeopardy of some kind or another plays a major part in most stories, so whether your protagonist is scared of leaping out of a plane, asking a girl out on a date, or opening their school exam results, go live out your own fear and you’ll do a much better job of writing about theirs.

Check back soon for Barry’s Writing Lesson #2: Use Public Transport