She opened her medicine drawer and clawed through it until she found a half-empty pack of painkillers. Must get some more.

  She opened her medicine drawer, where the medicine boxes were in alphabetical order. Hmm, half empty. She needed to put that on her shopping list.

  Even though both the women above are performing the same action, you get the impression that they are very different sorts of people.

  If you want an example of the masterful use of show don’t tell in combination with specific detail, listen to The Ballad of Barry and Freda (better known as the ‘Let’s Do It’) song by Victoria Wood. The line ‘beat me on the bottom with a Women’s Weekly’, quite apart from the beautiful alliteration, tells you so much about the character of Freda - she uses the word ‘bottom’ and reads Women’s Weekly. You’d picture someone completely different if she’d said ‘smack me on the arse with a Horse and Hounds’.

  Woman in Manolos calls forth a different set of assumptions from a woman in cheap trainers. I tell myself this every day as I put on my cheap trainers.

  It’s always better to show what’s going on when you can, but if you find yourself tying yourself in knots trying to show something and it’s getting in the way of the story, then a bit of telling is fine. Reading a book that is all tell and no show can be really tiring. Whilst readers are clever and it’s a good idea to get them to do some work (they like it, they like it!), it’s best not to confuse them enough to pull them out of the story.

  7 Point of View

  Inextricably linked to character and ‘show-don’t-tell’ is point of view. In the context of writing fiction, it helps to remember that the phrase ‘point of view’ has two meanings. One is the position from which things are being observed; the other is an attitude or way of considering matters.

  The first of these is fairly obvious – whose eyes are you seeing the story through?

  In a first person narrative (where the main character is ‘I’), the reader is seeing the world through the eyes of a character, usually the protagonist. You can only see, hear, feel what they can. It’s like one of those video games where you can look down and see your character’s hands, but you have no idea what their face looks like. First person narratives are brilliant for getting deep into the feelings of the characters. It’s very immediate and immersive. There’s a reason most young adult novels are written in the first person.

  The difficulty with a first person narrative is showing the reader things that are not directly said or done or felt by the main character. If, for example, your main character just told their mother some bad news. How do they know how their mother felt? They can infer from the fact that she gritted her teeth and threw a cushion at the cat that she’s angry, but they can’t actually know, because they (and therefore the reader) can’t see inside their mother’s head.

  If you’re writing in the first person, take extra care when the character describes themselves. If a character says “I flexed my well-honed pectorals” – you need to ask yourself what sort of person thinks of themselves like that. If your character is a shy gardener, he wouldn’t think about his muscles – apart from if they hurt. If, on the other hand, the character is a gym-addict, then naming muscle groups and flexing them could come naturally.

  Writing in the second person (where the main character is ‘you’) is uncomfortable to read for longer works, but can work well in short stories. Like the first person, it’s immersive and visceral.

  The third person narrative style (where the main character is ‘he’ or ‘she’) is very popular. You pick a character and follow them around. You can take the reader deep into the feelings and motivations of your characters. Or you can keep it slightly shallower. Personally, I prefer the deep third, but it doesn’t suit everyone. A third person narrative gives you a bit more freedom with description than a first person narrative, but you still need to keep to things that your point of view character can actually see and feel. For example, if they’re on the telephone, they can’t see the person at the other end of the line nodding in agreement.

  The omniscient point of view, where the narrator knows everyone’s thoughts and feelings, is rarely used in modern fiction. The main difficulty with this is that reader does not stay with one character long enough to identify with them, which makes it harder to care about the characters. On the other hand, Virginia Woolf uses it masterfully in Mrs Dalloway. If you can write like Virginia Woolf, you don’t need to be reading this book.

  The other meaning of ‘point of view’ is to do with the way your character views the world. Your character’s beliefs and mood will colour how they see things. Two different characters will view the same object differently. For example, if you’re describing an old house – an imaginative child might see a spooky haunted mansion while their property developer father might see a fabulous investment. Even the same character could see the same things differently depending on their mood. A meal that a happy person would describe as delicious could taste like sawdust to the same person if they’d just had their heart broken. If you want a lovely illustration of this, watch Despicable Me 2, where Gru walks down the street twice – when he’s happy, he joins in with the street musicians and plays with the kids, when he’s sad, he glowers and stomps his way along.

  When describing settings or even action, think about how your character is feeling. Allowing your character’s mood to influence the description can help add depth and resonance to your writing.

  While it’s entirely possible to write the entire book from the point of view of only one character, there is no reason why you can’t have more than one viewpoint in a story. In fact, using different point of view characters is a great way to increase the conflict – your reader can know why character X is doing something, while character Y has no idea.

  Some writers like to keep entire chapters in one point of view, others will change narrators in successive scenes. There are no rules on how often to change point of view (or not), apart from making sure that you always take the reader with you when you make the transition. The reader should never have to go back and check whose head they’re in. Changing point of view suddenly mid-scene should be done with care, or the reader may feel that the writer is ‘head hopping’. Some readers (myself included) can’t stand head hopping , while others barely notice it.

  Point of view can be difficult to master, especially if you’re writing in the third person, but getting it right will make your book a much more satisfying read.

  8 Pacing

  Pacing is about timing and tension. Generally speaking, your pacing will be fine at sentence and scene level, but in case it isn’t, let’s start small.

  At sentence level, pacing is also about space on the page. People read from left to right. They associate distance between actions as the passage of time. For example:

  Click. Boom.

  vs

  Click. The sound echoed through the warehouse and Hero began to run. Boom.

  The second scenario has a bigger gap between the click and the boom. We know that because there was more space between the two words and there was time enough for the hero to take some action. Go back and read the section on timing for details on how to manipulate your words to vary timings.

  In a scene level, something similar applies. In a fast paced scene, things happen with very little to fill the space between them. Sentences are short. Action follows action. Description is kept to the minimum necessary to convey the picture.

  On the other hand, a slower scene will have more description, more room for introspection, more detail. The characters don’t do quite as much in the time they have. But slower paced scenes are often where the character change happens. They give the reader a breather between action scenes (non stop action is hard to sustain and exhausting to read) and allows the characters to reflect on what just happened and see how it changes them. It feeds the character arc.

  Every scene should end with something that propels the reader forward into the next scene. With your plot point achieved, you close your scene with either a reminder of what was learned (especially if it was an erroneous assumption) or a line that highlights something that you want the reader to notice. This gives the scene a feeling of purpose and having these in each scene creates a sense of momentum for the book.

  At an even larger level, the story must have a varied pace, but never become so slow that the reader starts to wonder where this is going. Every scene must have tension - a problem to be solved, a key step to move the story forward. If you have a scene that doesn’t move the story forward, no matter how funny it is, it has to go (sorry). Never throw away a good joke though, save it for another time when you can reshape it to fit a new scene.

  If all your scenes have tension and they are all relevant to the story, your pacing will take care of itself.

  In general the pace of the story increases as the book progresses. The action points get closer and closer until the climax... after which the pace slows down, letting the reader down from the emotional high and giving them a few minutes to enjoy the endorphin hit they’ve just had, before you close the story off.

  Since we’re talking romance here, it’s worth noting that a sex scene is an action scene. Stuff has to happen and it has to mean something to the character’s emotional arc.

  As with everything, write the story first and then go back and tighten anything that needs tightening. You will do a lot of this by instinct. If it works, don’t mess with it. If it doesn’t, then sit down and work out why.

  9 Writing resonant endings

  It took me the longest time to work out how to write an ending. I’m still not sure I’ve got the hang of it. I don’t mean the end of the story, where everything works out and the major threads are tied up just so. I mean the actual last couple of paragraphs. The thing that makes the reader go ‘aah’.

  The trick to the denouement is to give the reader space to feel the endorphin rush, but to end the book before the rush fizzles out. There’s research to suggest that people will remember the start and the end of things more than what happened in the middle. If you can get them to leave your book on a high, then they’ll associate your writing with good things and probably rush off and buy another of your books so that they can experience it all again (we live in hope).

  Resonance in physics is when one thing vibrating at a specific frequency makes something else to oscillate at an even bigger amplitude. It’s like a tiny note of tuning fork making a huge gong vibrate until it makes a louder tone. Or, how a musical note at exactly the right pitch can make a wine glass shake itself apart. Little notes that ripple out and connect to others can make something that is bigger than the sum of its parts.

  For a reader, resonance and depth comes from connecting bits of the story together. You can do this with logic. So a character behaves the way they do, because of something that happened in the past. Readers are clever and they make connections from subtly dropped clues. A throwaway comment about how his father ran away to sea would link nicely with the protagonists hatred of boats, for example. You want the reader to think ‘‘so THAT’s why he did that’. This is also what gives the feeling of depth to characters. Know your character motivations.

  When you’ve finished your first draft, have a read through and see if there are any links you can make between different sections. If the character is cooking a meal, see if you can use something they mentioned buying a few chapters before. Tying things together like this make the story feel organic. Everything has a reason for being there. As with everything, don’t over do it though. Real life is rarely that tidy.

  One easy way to create an ending that feels connected is to refer back to the beginning. Most romance films will end with an image that hints back to the the image they opened with, so that you can see the change that the characters went through.

  Another good way to create a resonant ending is to refer back to something that was said during a memorable scene earlier in the story - a key bit of flirting early on, maybe, or a running gag. Why a memorable scene? Because otherwise the reader will have forgotten it! (Duh!)

  In a rom com, it’s always nice to end with a call back joke, especially if you can get a little twist onto it. For example, if you’ve seen Dragnet - throughout the film, detective Friday’s love interest is referred to as ‘the virgin Connie Swail’. In the closing scene he refers to her merely as ‘Connie Swail’. His partner, and the audience, realise the significance of the words he left out and we’re all very happy for them.

  Having a call back joke as an ending makes the reader feel more connected with the characters because they are in on the joke and it gives a nice sense of closure.

  Another option is for one of the characters to say something that is very typical of them. It doesn’t have to be funny (although it helps if it is!), it just has to make the reader feel that it’s exactly what they would have expected the character to say ... because they now know the character so well.

  10 Editing

  How to Edit - Part I - Behold the thing you have created

  So, you've finished writing your novel! Well done! You should now have in front of you, a file of around 75,000 consecutive words! Some of them make sense! Some of them may even be good words like 'sussuration' and 'castigate', two words of which I am particularly fond but find little excuse to drop into conversation. And I am sure you think that these 75,000(ish) words are ready to go out in public, where they will undoubtedly draw the praise of many, the attention of a few, and possibly the finances of a publisher.

  But hold your horses there. It is, and I hate to tell you this, extremely unlikely that your book is ready to be seen unescorted and out alone yet. It, like a three year old, may appear to be perfectly functional in all ways, but is still incapable of crossing a road or whipping up a cheese souffle. In fact, you may discover that it isn't even a proper book, but we can sort that out in the edits.

  Firstly - put it away. Honestly. Somewhere you can't see it or smell it. A locked box in the bottom of a filing cabinet in a disused lavatory (you can put a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard' if it makes you feel more comfortable). At least six weeks should do it.

  If you understand this reference, you are My Kind of People

  But as long as you can bear it. Whilst it is marinating in there, write something new. Or go on a long holiday - anything that distracts you.

  When a decent length of time has passed, withdraw the book and sit down with a big red pen (or highlights open on your computer) a bar of chocolate and the curtains drawn. Do not tell people what you are doing. They will Ask Questions, which is very off-putting. Now read through your book again, and make notes as you go (hint, if you want to know how bad things really are, do a word search through your manuscript for little modifiers like 'just' . Once you've passed the 200 mark you can scream if you want). Remember what I said about your characters having to grow and change? And every word moving the action on or developing the characters? Be honest now, can you really say that they do? Do you have four page descriptions of locations (or, even worse, clothes)?

  And then, sit back, and think 'why should the reader care about this?'

  Now, eat the chocolate. You can despair a bit, if you like, it's natural. You are also allowed to think you've written the worst book ever in the history of books, and that's including that four page illustrated 'Store of The Heghog' you wrote when you were seven.

  ('A captivating tale of nature' - your mum)

  But, admit it. There's a few sentences in there, a few descriptions, where you think 'that wasn't too bad'. Maybe the characters are wooden and don't behave like real people but there's this bit where they ... and that's not too terrible. Maybe the storyline still strikes you as unique. There's... just... something ...

  Now, quick. Make notes. Capture those 'somethings' that stood out for you. Circle them if you have to. Scribble all over your page (it's easier if you've printed it out for this bit, we've all ruined lots of laptops doing this). You will end up with things like 'why did she say this here? Why not earlier?' and 'where's the caravan gone?' and, if your handwriting is like mine 'habble flib con not won argon'. Which you can decipher later.

  What you will end up with is lots of coloured circles, Post It notes stuck on, chocolate stains, scribble, tear-stains, turned down corners, mysterious other stains and a notebook where you have, hopefully, written ideas. Oh, and lots of chocolate wrappers.

  But the main things is - you've got something to work with.

  How to Edit - Part II - chop, chop, arrgh

  You are now at the 'chop chop arrrgh' stage

  All right, calm down. Deep breaths. Now. You've written your novel and you've followed our instructions and you are now staring at pages and pages of scribbled on manuscript, convinced that this is the worst idea you've had since you bought that outboard motor and strapped it to the swimming aids in the local pool.

  To be honest, that was not your finest hour

  So now what do you do?

  Sit down, have a large cup of tea and a packet of HobNobs (other biscuits are available), and a think. Do you have one of those Kindles that reads to you? Doesn't matter if not, you can do this with your own voice. If you have got a fancy Kindle, save your manuscript to it and get it to read it aloud to you. If you haven't, then you're going to have to do the DIY version, and read it aloud to yourself. As you go, make notes, and bear in mind that every single word has to earn its place. Remember what I said about huge long descriptions? And lots of words about things that are never going to appear in the book again? I don't want to have to come round and slap your hands ...

  Notes. Lots of notes.

  This is what organised writers do. Apparently.

  This is the time to move scenes and people around if they don't work where they are. Or kill them, killing them is good - not necessarily really killing them, unless it's that kind of book, but if they don't seem to work, or they appear on the page, say something vital and then go off never to be heard of again - try to think of a different way that information can be got over. Merge two people into one (don't try this in real life, they don't like it). Make your characters real. Just take out the boring bits of real life, nobody wants to read about cups of tea, walking the dog, cleaning the toilet ... if your characters must do these things then at least have them talking about things relevant to the plot while they are doing them.

 

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