This week we have turned our blog page over to one of our authors - and a golfing nut - Robert Cubitt to take a lighter look at his favourite game. As a bit of relief from the seemingly endless politics and talk of war, this week’s blog is for the golfers amongst you, but I hope that non-golfers will also enjoy it. My thanks to all my fellow golfers who have unwittingly contributed to this page with their comments and jokes, on and off the golf course. Not all of them were meant to be funny, but so many of them were. A husband and wife, both golfers, were discussing the future when the wife said “If I died, would you marry again?” “Well, my dear, a man gets lonely so I might. But I could never find another like you,.” “You wouldn’t let her wear my clothes, would you?” “Of course not, my love." “You wouldn’t let here wear my jewellery, would you?” “Of course not, my dear.” “And you wouldn’t let her use my golf clubs would you?” “They’d be no good to her; she’s left handed. They stood at the altar, waiting to be married. The bride-to-be looked down and saw a set of golf clubs beside her new husband's feet. "What on earth are you doing with those golf clubs?" she whispered. "Well," he said, "this won't take all afternoon will it?" I don't say my golf game is bad, but if I grew tomatoes, they'd come up sliced. I was playing so badly that I decided to throw my golf clubs in the lake – and missed. “How was your golf game?” “Oh. You know, hit and miss!” Golf, bloody golf! Golf is what you take up when sex becomes too demanding. Golf is the ultimate triumph of hope over expectation. Don't buy a putter until you've had a chance to throw it. Never try to keep more than 300 separate thoughts in your mind during your swing. When your shot has to carry over a water hazard, you can either hit one more club or two more balls. If you're afraid a full shot might reach the green while the foursome ahead of you is still putting out, you have two options: you can immediately shank a lay-up or you can wait until the green is clear and top a ball halfway there. No matter how bad you are playing, it is always possible to play worse The less skilled the player, the more likely he is to share his ideas about the golf swing. The inevitable result of any golf lesson is the instant elimination of the one critical unconscious motion that allowed you to compensate for all of your many other faults. A golf match is a test of your skill against your opponents' luck. Counting on your opponent to inform you when he breaks a rule is like expecting him to make fun of his own haircut. The shortest distance between any two points on a golf course is a straight line that passes directly through the centre of a very large tree. You can hit a two acre fairway 10% of the time and a two inch branch 90% of the time. If you really want to get better at golf, go back and take it up at a much earlier age. Since bad shots come in groups of three, a fourth bad shot is actually the beginning of the next group of three. The Pro's say you should take a divot the size, shape thickness of a dollar bill. Mine are the size, shape thickness of a rugby ball. When you look up, causing an awful shot, you will always look down again at exactly the moment when you ought to start watching the ball if you ever want to see it again. Every time a golfer makes a birdie, he must subsequently make two triple bogeys to restore the fundamental equilibrium of the universe. To calculate the speed of a player's downswing, multiply the speed of his back-swing by his handicap; ie. back-swing 20 mph, handicap 15, downswing = 300 mph. Hazards attract; fairways repel. If playing a "provisional ball" always results in a shot that is far better than the original, why don't golfers play their provisional ball first? The ball you can see in the rough from 50 yards away is not yours. If there is a ball on the fringe and a ball in the bunker, your ball is the one in the bunker. If both balls are in the bunker, yours is the one in the footprint It's easier to get up at 6:00 a.m. to play golf than at 10:00 a.m. to mow the lawn. A good drive on the 18th hole has stopped many a golfer from giving up the game. Golf is the perfect thing to do on Sunday because you always end up having to pray a lot. Golf balls are like eggs. They're white. They're sold by the dozen. And you need to buy fresh ones each week. If your opponent has trouble remembering whether he shot a six or a seven, he probably shot an eight (or worse). It takes longer to learn to be a good golfer than it does to become a brain surgeon. On the other hand, you don't get to ride around on a golf cart, drink beer, eat hot dogs and fart if you are performing brain surgery. When practicing your putting on your living room carpet always remember that the ball will break towards furniture but away from walls. You have just missed a fairway that’s fifty yards wide, so what makes you think you’re going to be able to hit your ball through a gap in the trees that’s less than a yard wide? 10 Things in Golf That Sound Dirty...... 1. Look at the size of his putter. 2. Oh shit, my shaft’s all bent. 3. You really whacked the hell out of that sucker. 4. After 18 holes I can barely walk. 5. My hands are so sweaty I can't get a good grip. 6. Lift your head and spread your legs. 7. You have a nice stroke, but your follow through leaves a lot to be desired. 8. Just turn your back and drop it. 9. Hold up, I've got to wash my balls. 10. Damn, I missed the hole again. Caddies are the unsung heroes of golf. They have the golfing knowledge of an encyclopaedia, the patience of a Saint and the wit of Oscar Wilde. Golfer: "I think I'm going to drown myself in the lake." Caddy: "Do you think you can keep your head down that long?" Golfer: "I'd move heaven and earth to break 100 on this course." Caddy: "Try heaven, you've already moved most of the earth." Golfer: "Do you think my game is improving?" Caddy: "Yes sir, you miss the ball much closer now." Golfer: "Do you think I can get there with a 5 iron?" Caddy: "Eventually." Golfer: "You've got to be the worst caddy in the world." Caddy: "I don't think so sir. That would be too much of a coincidence." Golfer: "Please stop checking your watch all the time. It's too much of a distraction." Caddy: "It's not a watch - it's a compass." Golfer: "How do you like my game?" Caddy: "Very good sir, but personally, I prefer golf." Golfer: "Do you think it's a sin to play on Sunday? Caddy: "The way you play, sir, it's a sin on any day." Golfer: "This is the worst course I've ever played on." Caddy: "This isn't the golf course. We left that an hour ago." Golfer: "That can't be my ball, it's too old." Caddy: "It's been a long time since we teed off, sir." Golfer: “I don’t think my game could get any worse.” Caddy: “Give it time, sir, give it time.” Golfer: “Can you give me any suggestions?” Caddy: “Have you considered taking up fishing?” Robert Cubitt has taken another irreverent look into the golfing world with his book “The A To Z Of (Amateur) Golf" and some of the illustrations from that book have been included in this blog. To find out more about the book, just click on the cover image. If you have enjoyed this blog and want to be sure not to miss the next edition, why not sign-up to our newsletter? We promise not to spam you and we'll even give you a free ebook for signing up. Just click the button below.
0 Comments
Once again we are featuring blogs by guest bloggers on a wide range of subjects related to reading and writing. All the opinions expressed are those of the blogger and are not endorsed by Selfishgenie Publishing. Enjoy! One of the questions most writers get asked is “where do you get your ideas from?”. While it’s a predictable enough question, It’s also one that’s easily answered. Ideas are all around us, we just have to look and listen and then let our imaginations take over. One of my earlier books was “The Girl I Left Behind Me”. The title came first. It’s the last line of the chorus to a traditional song and was used in the soundtrack of three John Ford westerns about the US Cavalry, titled Fort Apache, She Wore A Yellow Ribbon and Rio Grande. For some reason the tune popped into my head one day and I couldn’t shift it. But then it occurred to me that it would make a great title for a book. I quickly Googled it to make sure no one else had had the same idea (they appeared not to have) and then put it into my list of book ideas and let it ferment for a few weeks. It’s the fermentation that is important here. I had a title but no idea what to do with it, so I let my unconscious mind work on it. I also looked up the origins of the song and found that it was traditional, probably 17th or 18th century British or Irish and had been popular with both sides during the American Civil War. Its rhythm makes it very suitable as a marching song which is why it has come down to us via a military route. Letting that information ferment alongside the title eventually gave me the idea of writing a story set in modern times about two young men who are born just a few streets apart but who go off to war to fight on opposite sides and who leave their "girls" behind them. The story is as much about the two women as it is about the men. I won’t give any more away, just in case you want to read it, but I’m sure you can see that once I had the basics mapped out, writing the story became something that was achievable. Not only that, but one of the characters I created for the book went on to feature in a sequel. I have an ever-lengthening list of ideas for books that may, or may not, eventually see the light of day and they have come to me by a number of routes. They say that everyone has a book inside of them. American author Jodi Picoult added the rider “the problem is winkling it out” while British writer Christopher Hitchens is credited with adding “and that’s where it should stay”. But it is true. Everyone has a story that can be told, even if they aren’t able to tell it themselves. The problem Hitchens alludes to is making the story interesting enough to make people want to read it, which is the author’s job. For the author the only task in relation to coming up with new book ideas is to keep their eyes and ears open and the story ideas will come. At the moment I’m helping a fellow aspiring author by providing feedback on a book she is writing. I can’t give away the subject as that would be a breach of confidence, but the idea for it is straight off the front pages of the daily newspapers. She was so touched by what she was reading that the idea of not writing a story about it was probably more bizarre than the idea of writing it. Does that mean that anyone can write a book? Technically yes. If you can write your name you can write a book. However, there is no doubt that some people have an aptitude for it and some don’t. Thanks to the capability to self-publish books that’s available through the digital revolution there are many books that I’ve read in recent years that really shouldn’t have been written, at least not by the people that wrote them. They are living proof of Christopher Hitchens’ corollary. But that doesn’t mean that someone with more aptitude couldn’t write a very good book using the same plot and characters. Do all my ideas become books? Most certainly not. The length of a novel may vary, but generally falls between 80,000 and 120,000 words. I have taken some ideas and barely made it to 10,000 words before I’ve run out of steam. That tells me that, for me, the story just hasn’t got any legs and there’s no point in wasting any more time with it. Of course I don’t delete it. I may have some sudden inspiration that will take it off in a completely new direction, but for the time being it goes into the file marked “not quite as good an idea as I thought”. As for suggesting your own book ideas to authors, please don’t. It’s not that they aren’t good ideas, it’s that there are legal implications. Most big-name authors will tell you that at some point they have received letters or emails claiming that the idea for a book was stolen because they (the letter writer) once said or wrote down some of the words that are used in the book. The writer of the letter or email then goes on to try to claim money for suggesting the idea or, even worse, for plagiarism. Terry Pratchett’s agent told me that he received an email threatening legal action from someone who had once suggested, in another email, that Terry Pratchett set one of his books in Australia. The threatening email arrived shortly after the publication of The Last Continent in 2008, where Pratchett sets the story in the country of Fourecks on his imaginary Discworld. Fourecks bore a passing resemblance to the country we call Australia. That was enough for the loony who wrote the email. And that’s why authors would prefer it if you didn’t suggest ideas for books. It’s nothing personal. By the way, if that has given you an idea for making some easy money - forget it! Lawyers are expensive, they are happy to take your case because, win or lose, they will still get paid and proving plagiarism is a very difficult thing to do. If you don't believe me, just ask Sami Okri. So I took my idea that I had pitched to Terry Pratchett’s agent and wrote the book myself. It’s called The Inconvenience Store and is available (here comes the plug) on Amazon. How did I come up with the idea? Easy. I had just been to a convenience store to buy something that they didn’t have on their shelves. When I asked the manager why they didn’t sell it (it was a common enough item) he told me that people often asked for that item, but they didn’t stock it because there was no demand for it. The manager was a totally irony free zone. My response to the manager about his store being more inconvenient than convenient gave me the title for my book and the rest, as they say, is history. So, where is your next book idea coming from? It could be closer than you think. Would you like to be a guest blogger for Selfishgenie Publishing? Just email us and tell us your idea for your blog. The email address can be found on our "Contact" page. If you enjoyed this blog, or found it interesting, be sure not to miss future posts by signing up for our newsletter. We'll even send you a free ebook if you do. Just click the button below.
For the next few weeks we are featuring blogs by guest bloggers on a wide range of subjects related to reading and writing. All the opinions expressed are those of the blogger and are not endorsed by Selfishgenie Publishing. Enjoy! The circus is in town and a wizened little man goes into the big top during rehearsals and approaches the ringmaster. “I’ve got an act and I want to join the circus.” “Ok” says the ring master. “Show me what you’ve got.” So the man goes into the ring and climbs the tent pole all the way to the top. When he gets there he lets go and stretches out his arms and starts to flap them. He then proceeds to fly round the inside of the big top, doing loop the loops and barrel rolls, swooping and soaring, all the time flapping his arms for all he’s worth. After five minutes he settles gently onto the ground in front of the ringmaster once more. “What do you think?” The little man asks. “Is that it? You do bird impressions?” Boom boom. My apologies to the long running TV series M*A*S*H for stealing that joke. But did you laugh at it? If nothing else, it does show you how up to date my TV viewing is these days. The reason I ask is that comedy in the written word is very hard to do. What one person finds amusing will pass over another person’s head and may be misinterpreted completely. Stand-up comedians spend hours practicing in front of test audiences above pubs and in tiny comedy clubs making sure their material works before they unleash it on their target audience, whether it is in a larger comedy club, at The Edinburgh Fringe or in the 02 arena. A writer doesn’t have that luxury. If he gets it wrong then it could cost him his audience forever. It’s a one-shot deal. The writer may have an editor that may question the suitability of a joke, its comic value, its relevance to the plot and so on. What appeared hilarious when being written in the solitude of the author’s kitchen may fall as flat as a pancake when it reaches the editor’s desk. So what does the writer do? Do they trust to their instinct and go for the laughs, or do they play safe and keep the story serious? Is there room for both? Another problem is that it’s tough to sustain comedy over a long period. A stage comedian works at a rate of two or three laughs a minute. Story telling comedians may string a joke out for three or four minutes before getting to the punchline. So how many jokes does the writer need to put into a story to give it that humorous feel? Is it one per page? One every thousand words? One per chapter? Let’s say it’s the latter. My books generally run out at about 25 chapters. Some have more and some less. At the rate of one significant joke per chapter the sums are easy enough. 25 jokes for a stand-up comedian, therefore, is about ten minutes worth of material. Perhaps half the duration of a comedy club slot. That’s a lot of jokes and every one of them has to hit the mark. Of course, not all the humour in a book has to be in the form of joke. Some of it can be situational. The writer gets a lot of leeway in this area, painting pictures of absurd characters or giving them funny things to do or say. The writer can make his characters do silly things. He can make them stupid to the point of imbecility. He can make them accident prone. He can make them pompous or self-important. But he still has to maintain the humour for over 80,000 words (that’s about the acceptable minimum length for a novel these days). That’s a lot of jokes to have to write. Name one well known writer who is noted mainly for the humour in his novels. Difficult, isn’t it? There are plenty who write short pieces for newspapers and magazines. The now defunct Punch magazine was known for them. But ask them to extend that to a full-blown novel and you would start to see the panic in their eyes. There have been some, of course. Terry Pratchett managed to achieve this in many of his works, but not all of them by any means. The late Keith Waterhouse wrote Billy Liar and I’ve already mentioned M*A*S*H, which made three outings as books for Richard Hooker (real name H. Richard Hornberger). Twelve others in the franchise were ghost written by William E Butterworth and were less critically acclaimed because of it. But when we talk about humorous writing we are often talking about satirical works or parodies, rather than books that are intended solely to be funny. I’ve read a few books recently which, according to their “blurbs” on Amazon, were laugh a minute works. I have to say that they generally failed to make me laugh. The jokes often descended into slapstick and that is a visual media, or it became very juvenile in nature, which is not the sort of comedy that will appeal to an adult reader. More often the jokes were non-existent. So, as someone who likes to introduce a lighter note into my books, that makes me a little bit nervous. What if my readers don’t get the jokes? I’ve hedged my bets a bit by not claiming that my books are funny. That way at least I’ll be managing expectations. But that is a double-edged sword. A lot of the time we laugh at jokes because we know they’re jokes and we’re waiting for the punch line. If they were told in a more serious tone of voice with no comedic preamble, would we automatically laugh? Maybe, but maybe not. Like most people I have preferences when it comes to comedy. I laugh at some comedians more readily than I will laugh at others. We all know that humour is a very personal thing, as evidenced by the joke I started with. Some people will have laughed and others won’t. That makes life difficult for an author, because they need to appeal to their entire readership, not just to the few people who will understand their humour. So, humour in a novel is fraught with difficulty, for both the writer and the reader. All I can say is that if you find yourself laughing at my books then the jokes were intended. If you don’t laugh then the book is a serious work of fiction and therefore not the place for me to start telling jokes. Either way I hope you enjoy them. Would you like to be a guest blogger for Selfishgenie? Just email us with your idea for a blog. The address is on our "Contact" page. Did you enjoy this blog, or find it interesting? To be sure of not missing an edition, just sign up to our newsletter. We'll even send you a free eBook for doing it. Just click the button below.
For the next few weeks we are featuring blogs by guest bloggers on a wide range of subjects related to reading and writing. All the opinions expressed are those of the blogger and are not endorsed by Selfishgenie Publishing. Enjoy! It was one of those conversations that only happen in pubs when drink has been taken. They usually don’t make sense the next day and are quickly forgotten. Well, usually they’re quickly forgotten. The subject was fantasy fiction. You know the sort of thing: wizards, orcs, elves, dragons, enchanted swords etc. My friend said he didn’t read that sort of book because he wasn’t able to suspend his disbelief. I was duty bound to argue against him because… well, because we were in a pub and that’s what blokes do when they’ve had a pint or two. But then, afterwards, I thought about it a little bit more. Why would it not be possible to suspend disbelief and read fantasy fiction? We suspend our disbelief every day of the week over some matter or other, particularly when it comes to the sorts of thing politicians say. So what’s so hard about suspending one’s disbelief over a story that is to be found on the fiction shelves? No one is saying its true (well a few deranged people maybe, but I’m not going to count them). All we fantasy fans are saying is that it’s an escape from the real world and into another. The stories are as valid as they are in any other genre. Indeed, they can be found in genres other than fantasy. They usually take the form of a battle of good against evil, during which quests are undertaken or duties carried out. Honour is high on the agenda, as is bravery, selfless devotion and many other altruistic character traits. Perhaps this is what’s wrong. Perhaps these things are so lacking in our modern world that some people can’t believe that they might exist in any world. There is an old tradition of fantasy fiction, of course, though it isn’t always recognised as such. First, we go all the way back to the Ancient Greeks and Homer’s epic stories in the Iliad and the Odyssey. These may be based on some factual events, but they also contain a lot of fantasy. Then we have Arthurian legend. Now, on the surface we have a story about men battling against evil, which forms the core of many a good novel. But we also have a wizard (Merlin), a witch (Morgana), a magical sword in a stone (Excalibur), a mysterious lady in a lake (Viviane or Nimue) and so on. In its basic form it’s no more fantastic than Tolkien. After that we get to the legend of Robin Hood. There is no evidence that he ever existed and what few historical bits of evidence that suggest someone resembling him did exist, don’t portray a picture of the hero of the medieval peasants that robbed from the rich to give to the poor, but a petty criminal who robbed from anyone and kept the loot for himself. OK, more of a legend than a fantasy, but one we buy into. There may be no dragons or orcs, but they’ve been replaced by the Sheriff of Nottingham and his men. We mustn’t forget the Daddy of them all William Shakespeare. In his plays we have a ghost in Hamlet, another one in Macbeth along with three witches, in The Tempest we have a fairy and some sort of troll (Caliban) and of course A Midsummer Night’s Dream which is littered with fairies and in which Bottom is given a pair of donkey’s ears, as though that were normal. Charles Dickens isn’t averse to using ghosts if it suits his purpose, as he shows in A Christmas Carol, while Bram Stoker gave us Dracula and Mary Shelley provided us with Dr Frankenstein’s hand-built monster. None of these books or plays were aimed specifically at children, which is where my friend thinks the target audience for most fantasy fiction lies. Ghosts, vampires and monsters may be seen as belonging to the horror genre, but they appear in fantasy as well. Now, I’m probably going to upset a few diehard fans here, but I’m going to suggest that the great British Hero James Bond is no more believable as a character than Bilbo Baggins. What is my justification? I hear you ask (I have good hearing). Let’s look at the evidence. Cars that turn into submarines, wristwatches that contain lengths of garrotte wire, cars with ejector seats and so on and so forth. But that’s all boy’s own gadgetry and no more of a fantasy than a sword that glows blue when there are orcs around. At the time when Ian Fleming wrote the stories, the technology for those gadgets didn’t exist, but that didn’t stop him fantasising about them. But the real fantasy is Bond himself. A suave, debonair killer who’s also a babe magnet and can get into a fight with half a dozen Kung Fu masters and walk away leaving them in a crumpled heap. He’s been shot so many times he must resemble a colander. He’s fallen from trains, planes and ski slopes. While Ian Fleming and the writers who continued the franchise never claimed magical powers for Bond, does this not require just as much suspension of disbelief as it does to read about Gandalf? Bond may not have “One Ring to rule them all (etc)”, but that was because Q never quite got round to finishing it (But just wait for the next movie – you read it here first). There is, of course, another literary genre that is just as fantastical and requires just as much suspension of disbelief. I mean Sci-Fi. People who will gladly suspend disbelief to accept the premise of strange creatures inhabiting worlds far from our own are sometimes reluctant to do the same for stories containing wizards and dragons. Why? Science does suggest that life may exist on other planets. Indeed, it’s been said that it would be a strange universe if life didn’t exist on other planets. However, science has no idea what form it may take and what its capabilities might be. This is the space that the sci-fi writer inhabits, if you’ll pardon the pun. The space where anything is possible providing the author doesn’t actually ignore the laws of physics. But sci-fi writers do that all the time as well. Time travel, warp speed, sub space, hyperspace, dilithium crystals. Do these sound familiar? Which ones are made up and which does science accept as being possible? No I don’t know either. Dilithium does exist, you can Google it, but can you use it to power a space ship? So, where’s the difference between fantasy and sci-fi? Why is one believable to my friend but the other not? So where do you stand on this issue? Do you read fantasy novels? If not, can you tell me why you don’t? Just comment below. Would you like to be a guest blogger for Selfishgenie? Just email us at our general enquires address, which can be found on our Contact page and tell us what your blog would be about. If you enjoyed this blog, or found it interesting, then be sure not to miss future editions by signing up to our newsletter. We'll even send you a free eBook when you do. Just click the button.
In last week’s blog I featured questions that should never be asked of an author. I received some comments that I was being a trifle sarcastic, harsh even, as people were simply being curious. So, to restore some balance, here are some questions, with my answers, that I don’t mind being asked. I must stress that these are my opinions and other authors may answer these questions differently. When it comes to writing, there are few hard and fast rules, there is only what works for the writer. 1. What is the major challenge for you as an author? Coming up with a fresh approach to a story. Since Homer wrote the Odyssey just about every story there is to tell has been told many times over, so for the modern author there is little they can do except find a new way to tell an old story. There are really only 7 plots for stories, and even then there are similarities and cross overs, so each author has to take one of those seven plots and find a new angle. Perhaps the best modern example is the Harry Potter books by J K Rowling. Stories about wizards are nothing new (Merlin, Gandalf), neither are stories of boarding schools (Billy Bunter, Mallory Towers), but a story about a boarding school for wizards, that was something new. 2. How do you work out your plots? The truth is that I don’t really know. I have an idea for a story and then I start to write. What happens is often as much of a surprise for me as it is, I hope, for the reader. Of course, I have a general idea of where the book is going to end up, but not much of an idea of how it will get there. My Magi sci-fi series is essentially a quest. But quests that go straight from A to B aren’t very interesting. Imagine if Frodo Baggins and Sam Gamgee had gone straight from the Shire to Mount Doom, it would have been a pretty dull story and you would never have heard of J R R Tolkein. So they have many adventures along the way and meet many other characters. The same applies in my Magi series. Each of the nine books is a story in its own right before An Kohli, my protagonist, can complete her quest. If she didn’t it wouldn’t be a series of books, it would be just one very short book. Sometimes I will create a situation and not know why. I don’t worry about it at the time, because I can always edit it out if I don’t need it or it doesn’t work, but I often surprise myself there as well. In “The Warriors: The Girl I Left Behind Me” I introduced a character called Sergeant Major Smith, whose negligence leads to the death of a soldier on a rifle range. I didn’t know why I had done it, but it worked as far as it went. Later in the book, however, I wanted to set up another tragedy and found that I had unwittingly created the character who would enable the tragedy to come about. So, my plots often surprise me as much as they surprise everyone else. 3. How do you create your characters? It’s a bit like building a house. I start with the foundations and work my way up to the roof, before decorating and laying the carpets. The first thing I decide is what sort of a character they are. I don’t like wholly good or wholly bad characters, so I tend to think of them in shades of grey. In The Magi I created a character called Den Gau. He is a bit of a coward, but when the chips are down he surprises himself and everyone else by stepping up to the mark. These are the sorts of characters I find interesting and I hope readers do as well. Next I usually write down a physical description: gender, height, build, hair colour, physical appearance, style of dress etc. That gives me a framework on which to hang everything else. In writing sci-fi this can be fun, because I can let my imagination run wild. Then I need to understand what motivates the character. One of the things I dislike about much modern fiction is that the antagonist, the baddy, is usually such a one dimensional figure in terms of their motivation. We are supposed to believe that they are bad just because we are told that they are bad. I don’t believe that people are born bad, so I have to understand what made them that way. To portray all bankers as being greedy, for example, is as shallow as a puddle in the summertime, so I need to know what made my greedy banker so greedy. After that I will start to layer on some character traits, kindness or cruelty, bravery or cowardice, pride or humility. As with motivation, it isn’t one size fits all. These are polar opposites on discrete axes and most people sit somewhere in between, so it is up to me where along these axes each character sits. For my character of An Kohli I have given her a very strong code of ethics, but if she stuck rigidly to them I wouldn’t be able to make some of the plot work, so I have to let her bend her own rules from time to time. But how far can I let her do that before she fails to be believable as an ethical character? Not everything I have described will make it onto the page, but I have to understand it all if I’m to create believable characters and this is especially true if they are recurring characters in a series of books, because readers who follow the series will expect the characters to remain consistent in their behaviour. We would never accept it of James Bond, for example, if he suddenly started to take bribes to walk away. 4. Are there any fiction genres you won’t attempt to write? The sorts of books I enjoy writing are the same as I enjoy reading. I’m very much action adventure oriented, so that is what I write. I may locate my stories in outer space, but they are still essentially action adventures. I won’t, therefore, try to write romantic fiction. There is nothing wrong with it as a genre, but I don’t read it and I don’t think I would be good at writing it. The same applies to erotica. Most erotica is actually pretty boring and I’m not sure why it sells so well. For me it sits in the same zone as voyeurism, but without the risk of being arrested for being a peeping tom. I wouldn’t write a western for the simple reason that there is a lot of specialist knowledge required to write it well. Most western fans know their subject inside out and they will spot a faker at a hundred paces. I am a lover of historical fiction but the demands of research for that are considerable. I discovered this when I set out to write a biography of my father’s war service. However, once I had done the research for that, I found I had enough material for a whole series of books set during World War II. 5. How do you go about editing your books? Any mother will tell you that there is no such thing as an ugly baby and writers feel much the same about their books. To go back and try to judge a book for oneself after taking between 3 to 6 months to write it is very difficult, but it must be done. Any author who is struggling to find a publisher is probably struggling because they haven’t been critical enough in their editing. I start with the simple things: typos, spelling, punctuation and grammar. I won’t get everything right even then. You can spot a self-published book from a hundred miles because it will be littered with simple errors that the author failed to spot. The next step is to take each scene of the book and try to assess whether it really works. This is the difficult part, because self-criticism is so hard. Some authors go the other way and slash and burn their manuscripts, practically destroying the book and having to go back and pretty much re-write the whole story. To avoid this, I do an initial critical edit of each chapter after I complete it, so I’m not wasting lots of time. There are two critical elements I try to eradicate. The first is “show vs tell”. Think of this as the difference between watching a football match live and listening to a match summary from Chris Kamara. In “show” the author paints a picture of what is happening within the story, so that the reader can visualise it. But with “tell” the author is merely presenting a report of what happened. It is the most common criticism levelled against first time authors and again, self-published authors suffer the most from the affliction. "it is essential to get an independent person to read the book " My final edit is always of dialogue. I try to write conversations the way people actually speak, because that is going to be the most authentic, so it is important to play those conversations back in my head, to make sure I have achieved that goal. I sometimes find that I have gone off on long lectures, which isn’t something that is allowed to happen in real life because the listener usually interrupts or falls asleep. There is an exception to that. My Carter’s Commando novels often feature military briefings and these provide a way of providing a lot of background material behind the historical context of the story I am telling. However, real life briefings rarely contain so much detail. They focus more on what is going to happen, rather than what has gone before. After that the manuscript goes off to my publisher for more editing. That is much more revealing as it is a fresh pair of eyes that is interpreting what has been written. So, if someone can’t take criticism, it’s best for them not to become a writer. If you want to self-publish then it is essential to get an independent person (or better still – people) to read the book and provide honest feedback before publication. Friends and family aren’t a good choice, because they want to be kind, which is no help at all. 6. What do you think about bad reviews? If you can’t take criticism, then it’s best not to read reviews because they aren’t all going to be good. And our friends the internet trolls aren’t above leaving terrible reviews for books they have never read. Not everyone will enjoy a book and if someone doesn’t enjoy it then their opinion is as valid as those that did enjoy it. Some bad reviews can be very helpful. If several people are saying the same thing it is worth paying attention and trying to fix the problem. The worst reviews are those that don’t tell the author anything. Saying “I hated this book” isn’t helpful, but saying “I hated this book because….” can be. If you are a reader and you enjoy a book, please do submit a review. Sharing your pleasure helps the author. It doesn’t have to be fancy; a simple “I enjoyed this book” is as good as a 500 word essay. If you enjoy the food at a particular restaurant you tell your friends, don’t you? So why not tell your friends about books you have enjoyed? 7. What advice would you give someone who wants to become an author? Don’t do it for the money. You are likely to end up poor. Hundreds of thousands of footballers play in the amateur leagues, but only a couple of hundred footballers get paid thousands of pounds a week to play in the Premier League. The same applies to authors. About 99% of authors, even those published by the big publishing houses, earn less than the national average wage. Each year a couple of new names hit the big time, but they are a tiny fraction of the total number of people who write books. So if you love writing by all means become a writer, but do it for the love of it. Anything else is a bonus. Secondly, don’t assume that because people say nice things about your books it means you are a good writer. Friends and family don’t want to hurt your feelings, so they say nice things. The only real way to find out if you are talented is to get your books read by strangers. They will tell you the truth, and sometimes the truth hurts. There are a lot of sharks in the publishing world trying to make money off the backs of authors, so: (1) Don’t pay publishers to publish you; they are supposed to pay you from your sales. (2) Don’t pay people to publicise your book. If your publisher isn’t doing that for you, what is he (or she) doing to earn their share of the income? Especially don’t pay those people who just Tweet your book title. They don’t produce sales. (3) There are some things worth paying for: (a) a professional critique of your work and (b) a good cover design, but look for references before committing yourself. Finally, just because your books don’t sell it doesn’t mean that your books aren’t good. Publishing is a very crowded marketplace, well over a million new books are published every year. It takes a lot to get noticed and some people never will be, no matter how good their books are. So, once again, do it for the love of it. If you have enjoyed this blog, ot found it informative, be sure not to miss any future posts by signing up for our newsletter. you can even get a FREE ebook just for doing it. Click the button below to find out how. A cautionary tale for anyone who uses Amazon to publish their titles in paperback, whether independently or through a publisher. If you have only ever used KDP then there shouldn’t be any problem, but for anyone who uses, or has used, a third-party printing service, this could be a bear trap waiting for you. If you are a small publisher, then this is definitely something of which you should be aware. Now, as we know, Amazon are a huge global internet supplier, not just of books but for pretty much anything. If they were a High Street (or Main Street if you prefer) outlet they would be present not just in very High Street in Europe and North American, they would be present in villages in the middle of Borneo that no outsider has ever seen. That’s how big they are. So, you would think that they would have simple processes in place for the resolution of issues. You would be wrong to think that. Several of the authors we represent used to publish through another small publisher. I’ll call them Fabulous Publishing for the sake of anonymity. A couple of years ago the owner of Fabulous Publishing decided he didn’t want to be a publisher anymore and closed his company down. As part of the close-down, Fabulous Publishing unpublished all the titles they had listed on Amazon (and on other etail sites). Fabulous Publishing also returned the publishing rights for the titles to the authors, so they could go elsewhere to be published, if they wished. Some of those authors went to a publisher we’ll call Selfishgenie Publishing, because we don’t require anonymity. Yes, we signed them and published their books, both as ebooks and as paperbacks. But Fabulous Publishing used a third-party printer to print their paperbacks. We’ll call them Wonderful Printing. They are a big company; they know what they are doing. When Fabulous Publishing closed down, Wonderful Printing contacted Amazon and told them that the relevant titles were no longer available as paperbacks through them and asked Amazon to “de-list” them. You would think that would be the end of the matter – but if it was, you wouldn’t be reading this blog because I would have no story to tell. "And that is where we hit our first speed bump." You will be familiar with Amazon Marketplace. This is where small traders sell goods using Amazon’s platform as their sales channel, for which Amazon receives a slice of the action. There’s nothing wrong with that, it makes good sense to “sweat the assets” as it’s known in business. But one of the things those small traders sometimes sell is second-hand books. And that is where we hit our first speed bump. Because a trader was selling one copy of a title by one of our authors, we couldn’t sell any of the paperback of the same title that we had published. Until that second-hand copy was sold, the listing showed the paperback as being the one published by Fabulous Publishing. But you couldn’t actually buy a brand new copy of Fabulous Publishing's product because it was no longer being printed by Wonderful Printing. We submitted a complaint and were told by Amazon that the trader selling his second-hand copy was entitled to do so and until that copy had been sold, all the publishing details for the paperback version of the title had to remain as "Fabulous Publishing" and our brand-new paperbacks couldn’t be displayed. That was it – we couldn’t sell any of this title as a paperback until Joe Shmo from Nowheresville had sold his second-hand copy. The only way out of this was for our author to buy the second-hand copy so that the listing could be changed. So, problem solved. "So, we went back to Amazon and asked them to fix it." No it wasn’t. The listing for the paperback was still showing as the one for Fabulous Publishing which, as already established, isn’t available. While our edition was available but couldn’t be purchased because of this ridiculous "through the looking glass" situation. So, we went back to Amazon and asked them to fix it. Their reply was that they couldn’t take instructions to fix it from us. It had to come from Fabulous Publishing who, of course, no longer exist. Fortunately, the former owner of Fabulous Publishing is a personal friend and was happy to help. He contacted Amazon with details of not just that title, but all the other titles that he had published as paperbacks and asked for them to be de-listed. (But imagine if there was no way of contacting Fabulous Publishing anymore? We definitely dodged a bullet there). The reply he got surprised him. Because the sales channel for the paperbacks had been set up by Wonderful Printing, on behalf of Fabulous Publishing, they couldn’t take instructions from Fabulous Publishing either. Only Wonderful Printing could make the request. "This time we really were in a dead end." So, (the former) Fabulous Publishing contacted Wonderful Printing, who contacted Amazon. Amazon told them how to delist the titles. But when Wonderful Printing tried to follow the instructions, Wonderful Printing were told they weren’t authorised to do so. This time we really were in a dead end. So, we here at Selfishgenie Publishing still can’t publish those paperback titles formerly published by Fabulous Printing. "So Amazon are lying to their customers." And Amazon’s response? Basically they are saying that Wonderful Printing are the problem, even though I have seen the emails that show clearly that Wonderful Printing have done everything asked of them. If you go onto Amazon to try to buy a copy of the paperback book, it shows that there is one in stock. This is normal for “Print on Demand” (POD) books. But if you click to buy it and put it in your basket, you are then told it is “temporarily out of stock”. No it isn’t temporarily out of stock. The product sold by that publisher is permanently out of stock. So Amazon are lying to their customers. Meanwhile, Selfishgenie publishing, who would gladly sell you a copy of the book, is unable to do so. This is the Alice in Wonderland world of Amazon for you. "But we need your help." The biggest irony of all, and the one that Amazon fails to see, is that while we are down this rabbit hole where neither we nor our authors can make any money by selling the paperbacks - neither can Amazon! Yes, we are using Jeff Bezos's resources and he is getting nothing out of it. Is it case closed? Not quite, we hope. But we need your help. If you think that Amazon are behaving like a bunch of clowns, then please help by sending this blog viral, so that the whole world can understand what an intransigent bunch of idiots actually manage Amazon. My thanks to the real people behind both Fabulous Publishing and Wonderful Printing for their help in trying to resolve this issue. You know who you are and I owe you a drink. And if anyone with half a brain at Amazon is reading this and can get us out of this mess, you’ll find our email address on our “Contacts” page. I’ll be happy to provide you with copies of all the correspondence. But do not despair. You can still get most of our other books in paperback versions if you want them. To find out how, click on the "Books" tab at the top of the page. PS. To be absolutely fair to Amazon, about 10 days after publishing this blog, the issues described above were resolved and the paperbacks we publish are now being correctly displayed on the relevant sales pages.
It would have been much better all round if they had been resolved before our patience snapped and we resorted to blogging about the problem, but we got there in the end. Picking a title for a book isn’t always easy. Sometimes the title picks itself, based on the plot or the leading character. But sometimes it isn’t quite so obvious. “Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit” by Janet Winterson, for example, isn’t a title that you might associate with a book about “religious excess and human obsession”, to quote from the book’s blurb. But it’s a best seller, so its readers obviously weren’t the type to be put off by an opaque title. However, is there more to it than just a having snappy title? What if you are publishing a collection of work that has been previously published. This happened to one of our authors, Robert Cubitt. He had published a series of nine sci-fi novels under nine different titles, but the series collection was called, simply, “The Magi”. If anyone has read the book then that title makes sense, because the series is all about the search for the Magi, who are the rulers of the galaxy and they’ve gone missing. So far, so good. Each book in the series has its own title, but the first book gives the series its collective name. But what do you call the collection when you put all 9 books out under a single cover? Robert chose to call it “The Magi Omnibus”. It made sense to him, because an omnibus, as well as being a mode of transport, is a collection of stories either with a common theme or by the same author. So, tick the box on both counts. For the same reason the title also made sense to us. "sales started to tick upwards at once" But it turns out that not everyone seems to know that the word omnibus means a collection of work. The word has become old-fashioned, out of date. It also doesn’t resonate with non-UK readers. Robert’s generation grew up on the omnibus edition of “The Archers” broadcast on the radio every Sunday morning, which is all 5 daily episodes, each of 15 minutes duration, broadcast as a single 75 minute edition. There are also omnibus editions of some TV soap operas, such as Eastenders and Coronation Street. So, you would think that the term omnibus would be well known. It appears we were wrong about that. While we weren’t looking, the omnibus has been replaced by the “box set”. And that was reflected in our sales for the collection. We were getting plenty of clicks on links to the book’s sales pages, but no buyers. We can only assume that potential purchasers were confused by the title, thinking it referred to the aforementioned mode of transport. So, we retitled it as “The Magi Box Set” to see what would happen. And sales started to tick upwards at once. It seems that the readers of sci-fi are happy to buy a box set, but they aren’t interested in buying an omnibus. OK, lesson learnt. A title change can make all the difference in the world for some books. So, if your book isn’t selling, you might want to ask yourself what the title is saying to your potential readers. Ours was obviously saying “Radio 4” when we wanted it to say SYFY Channel or Netflix. This isn’t a phenomenon that is unique to the publishing industry. Plenty of films have been retitled because the original title didn’t go down well with test audiences, either at home or abroad. I’ll give you an example. The film “The Madness George III” was retitled “The Madness of King George” for the American market, because the producers thought that with so many films being released in series (eg Rocky, Rocky II, Rocky III etc), audiences might not go to see the film because they might think they’d missed The Madness of George I and II. Mad Max is a well-known film name these days, but very few people in the USA had seen the first film in the series, so when the second film was released in the USA it had a name change to “The Road Warrior” without any reference to Mad Max – and it worked You may be familiar with “Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark” and if you are, you didn’t see it when it was originally released – or your memory is playing tricks on you. When it was released in 1981, it was just “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and was retitled later by George Lucas in order to fit in with the titling of the sequels, which did use the style “Indian Jones and ….” The Will Smith superhero movie “Hancock” (2008) didn’t start out with that name. It had the very generic title of “Tonight He Comes”. Would you have gone to see it with that title? It might have worked in the 1930s, but not in the modern market. So, if your book isn’t setting the reading world on fire, you might consider a change of title. But do include a note inside giving the original title, so people will know if they have already read it. No point in upsetting people by letting them buy the same book twice. Amazon gets a bit touchy about that too. Would you like a full-length eBook for free?* Of course you would. All you have to do is sign up for our newsletter to qualify. Just click the button. *Excludes "The Magi Box Set". Why do so many authors suffer from “Imposter Syndrome”? It seems that every other Tweet or Facebook post that I see from authors doubts their ability to write, yet they are unlikely to choose writing as a career (or at least an ambition for a career) unless they actually are able to write in a coherent manner. I’m not talking about false modesty, or “humblebragging” as it is sometimes known, which I also see a lot of. That is a whole different thing. A typical humblebrag would look something like “I can’t believe it! I’ve just been asked for a full MS from an agent!” (the exclamation marks are typical of humblebragging punctuation). The use of “I can’t believe it” doesn’t make the brag about being asked for a full MS any less of a brag. I’ve got nothing against the bragging part of it. If an author has been asked for a full MS by an agent, or has just signed a publishing deal, or has just sold the first copy of their book, then that is something worth bragging about. No, it’s actually the “humble” part I don’t like. The author isn’t fooling anyone with it. Own it, boys and girls; just own it. But imposter syndrome is something very different. Imposter syndrome is a feeling that successful people get that they aren’t worthy of the accolades that they are receiving. They feel that they don’t deserve it and that it has all been a big mistake and one day they’re going to get found out. The term was first used by psychologists Pauline Clance and Susanne Imes in their 1978 research paper on the subject. They noticed that a lot of their female students seemed to feel that they didn’t deserve their places in college, even though they were more than capable. Their research was mainly conducted on women, who seemed to suffer a lot from imposter syndrome, possibly because women have historically had their abilities questioned (especially by men), so they have come to question it themselves. Later research found similar behaviour in people of colour for pretty much the same reason. More recent research has shown that anyone can suffer from imposter syndrome, but it is more common amongst women and people of colour. "But why do so many authors appear to suffer from it? " At its worst, imposter syndrome can lead to mental health issues because of the anxiety it causes sufferers. At its best it creates self-doubt, which is demotivating and it can lead to self-sabotaging behaviour, such as perfectionism. It doesn’t matter how many times people tell sufferers that they are good at what they do, imposter syndrome will always undermine any sense of achievement. But why do so many authors appear to suffer from it? There are a couple of reasons why we do suffer. One of the greatest is family and friends who don’t seem to think we have what it takes to write a book. They can believe in us as carpenters, plumbers, bank managers, marketing executives or whatever because we are, or were, employed as those. But you have to be special to be an author, right? Actually, no, you don’t have to be special, as any author can tell you. All you have to have is an idea, a basic sense of plot and character construction (both of which can be learned) and some basic written English skills. But that lack of faith in us can undermine our own view of ourselves, especially if said friends and family haven’t actually read our books, so they continue to doubt us without having any evidence of our true capabilities. It goes back to the research carried out by Clance and Imes, where people (generally males) didn’t have faith in the capabilities of women, so women tended to absorb that lack of faith and reflect it back upon themselves. Just try being blond as well and see how much worse that feeling might be. But I think that the other main reason is that we are too ready to compare ourselves to the great figures of literature and we don’t feel we measure up well. And I think this stems from the way literature is taught in schools. This creates false comparisons. In all professions there are leading lights; the great movers and shakers who change their industry or redefine their art in some way. Let’s keep away from writing for the moment and use music as an example. Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin and similar figures are held up as the benchmarks against which all other musicianship must be judged, or so we would be led to believe if our high school music teachers had their way. I’m not going to question the abilities of those composers, they were undoubtedly great, but that doesn’t mean that every other composer or musician isn’t also competent. Our orchestras are full of competent musicians, of which a few will be recognised as great soloists. Some might even earn the title of “Maestro” or “Maestra”. But that doesn’t mean the rest are bad. We can extend the argument into the realm of pop music. Lennon and McCartney wrote great songs and the Beatles were a great band. But that doesn’t mean that no one since has written a great pop song, nor that any band since wasn’t as good as The Beatles. By and large it is the paying public who decides which bands are great and which aren’t – not high school music teachers. The same applies to literature. It is the book buying public that decides who is a “great” author, not English Literature tutors. The teachers can examine a book and tell you why it is well written and why it was hailed as a “classic”, but that is not the same thing as the author being popular. If it were, then Dickens and Twain would always be in the best sellers lists and no one would ever have heard of Dan Brown. If you only compare yourself to Charles Dickens, Mark Twain or Virginia Woolf, you may feel like an imposter. The same applies to modern writers. We’re not all going to win the Booker Prize or the Nobel Prize for Literature. But just because you aren’t spoken of in the same way as the winners doesn’t mean that you are unworthy of any success you may achieve. Stop beating yourself up, as the saying goes. If readers are buying your books and you are getting good reviews, it means you are a good writer. Enjoy that feeling. Just because your books don’t make it into the Sunday Times (or New York Times) best sellers list, it doesn’t make you an imposter. You have to sell around 100,000 copies to make even the lowest entry into those lists and very few authors manage that in a year (about a hundred, in fact). So, if you only sold 90,000 copies, it doesn’t make you an imposter. And even if you only sold 1 copy, it doesn’t make you an imposter. All that means is that you haven’t yet been discovered and you need to do more marketing to get your books in front of the reading public’s noses. But above all you must remember that you chose to be a writer. No one puts a gun to an author’s head and makes them write. What made you choose to write was the desire to tell stories. And so long as you continue to tell stories, you will never be an imposter. If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, be sure not miss future posts by signing up to our newsletter. Just click on the button below and you will also qualify for a FREE eBook.. There is something in the field of quality management called “root cause analysis”. You may now be asking what this has to do with writing books. I’ll get to that in a minute or two, but first of all I’ll have to explain what root cause analysis is and how it works. Basically, it is an assumption that when something goes wrong in a process, the visible signs are very rarely the root cause of what went wrong. To make sure that the same problem never occurs again, you have to find the root, or real, cause of the problem. It is the difference between treating the symptoms (a headache, say) and treating the cause (a brain tumour). Aspirin may temporarily relieve the pain of the symptom, but it won’t cure the brain tumour. Let me give you a worked example. Car A is driving along the road and approaches a stop sign. Being driven by a good driver, the car is brought to a controlled stop in the right place. Car B, following on behind, then crashes into the back of Car A. The assumption, at this point, might be that the driver of Car B wasn’t paying adequate attention and therefore didn’t see Car A coming to a stop and ran into the back of him. Only by asking questions would it be possible to establish if that assumption was correct. In quality management a tool that is used is called “The 6 Whys”. Basically it means that by asking six “why” questions in succession it is possible to find out what the real cause of the accident was. So, question 1 might be “Why did the driver of Car B fail to stop? There are several possible answers, only one of which will be true. For the sake of this illustration, I’ll say that the actual answer is “Because the car’s brakes failed.” The second why question would therefore be “Why did the brakes fail?” Again, there are several possible answers, only one of which will be true. If you ask a further 4 “why” questions in this vein you might get to an answer that is “Because there is a flaw in the manufacturing process for a minor component that hadn’t been previously identified”. Obviously more evidence than just one accident would be needed before that conclusion could be drawn, but gathering that evidence, such as data on other accidents, would be part of finding the true answer. So, the root cause of the accident is that flaw in the manufacturing process and unless that flaw is corrected, other accidents involving brake failures are bound to occur. That is a long way from “Driver B wasn’t paying attention to his driving”. It is just that sort of process that leads to product recalls on cars, sometimes several years after production started, to rectify defects that have been subsequently identified. If you work in a place where the same problems keep on occurring, time after time, then you might want to carry out this exercise for yourself, or in conjunction with your colleagues. By identifying the root cause of those problems – and getting them fixed - you could earn yourself some kudos (and all that goes with it). Even if Driver B wasn’t paying attention, to get to the root cause of the accident we would have to ask another 5 questions. It might turn out that he is suffering from undiagnosed ADHD, for example, rather than just being distracted by his phone ringing. But that leads us onto the real subject of this blog: What does this mean for you as an author? It means that you can build multi-layered characters by showing your readers that what they see on the surface isn’t necessarily what is going on underneath. In characterisation, we call this “having hidden depths”. Let’s take a typical character trope, the cop who drinks too much and prefers to work alone. It’s easy to establish that he drinks too much because his partner got killed in a shoot-out and that he wants to work alone because he’s reluctant to get emotionally attached to other cops in case the same thing happens again. Those are just the answers to the first 2 or 3 “whys”. But if you were to ask yourself a 4th why you might find out that the cop has suffered major losses in his life before. A 5th why might be that he feels responsible for the earlier loss and the 6th why is because he was blamed for the loss even though he was too young to even know what loss was about. Anyone who has ever gone through counselling (therapy as our American cousins call it) may recognise the depth of questioning necessary to reveal those sorts of emotional scars. But as an author, you can build that character from the ground up to give them hidden depths and secret anxieties. More importantly, you develop them from being a trope into being a ‘real’ person. You don’t have to reveal all that to the reader, at least, not all in one go. It may be something that you keep to yourself or reveal over a series of stories. But when it comes to deciding how your character(s) will react in any situation you put them into, you can draw on that depth of understanding of their emotional baggage to make them more interesting, to make them react consistently and to make them believable. In many novels it is very difficult to understand what motivates a character if the author hasn’t actually explained it. Because of that it is difficult to believe in the character and a lack of belief creates a lack of emotional engagement from the reader. And if the reader doesn’t engage with the character on an emotional level, they don’t care what happens to them and they stop reading the book. That might not matter if you only write one book. After all, the reader has already bought it. But if you want to write a second book, it is important. If your first book didn’t engage the reader, they won’t buy your second book. And if they post a bad review of your first book, it will impact sales to other people for all your books, even if they are in a different genre. So having interesting characters is a big deal. This is the difference between plot led and character led fiction, which is an on-going debate in writing circles. Here at Selfishgenie we’re very much in the ‘character led’ camp because a good plot can’t make up for badly drawn characters. Good characters, however, can save a poor plot – as many a Hollywood movie has demonstrated. Why would my character do that? The place to start in this “root cause” journey is with the initiating event, as it’s known. The things that gets the story moving and gets the character involved in the action. Ask yourself “Why would my character do that? What is their motivation? Is that motivation enough to keep them going when the going gets tough?” These are questions I asked myself a lot when reading Lord of the Rings. As in “Would a simple Hobbit really keep going in the face of all that opposition? Wouldn’t they just throw the flipping ring into the neatest river and hope for the best?” I’ve read the book several times and the character of Frodo always makes me ask those questions and I’ve never really reached a satisfactory answer. Strength of character and determination to succeed don’t even begin to satisfy as motives. In some types of plot, the triggering event goes with the territory, because it’s the character’s job: police stories, spy thrillers etc. In those cases we have to take a step back and ask questions about why the character got into their job in the first place, as well as why they stay in it when things are going so badly. When we give feedback to authors who submit their manuscripts to us, we often refer to characters being “two dimensional”. It is the deeper motivation of characters that give them their third dimension and make them more human, more realistic. This is especially important if the characters are to go beyond the everyday experiences which we all go through and into worlds where they place themselves in mortal danger. We know we couldn’t do those things – but we have to believe that the character(s) can. Motivation is what makes us believe and motivation comes from deep within – whether we are real people or characters in books. I’m not saying that this sort of analysis is the only way to build good characters – there are many others, I’m sure. But if you are struggling with creating believable characters, this simple tool, "the 6 whys", may help you to add new dimensions to them. If you have enjoyed this blog or found it informative, why not make sure you don't miss future editions by signing up for our newsletter. Just click the button below and you will also qualify for a FREE eBook. In 1742, poet Edward Young said “Procrastination is the thief of time”. Mind you, he didn’t actually get around to saying it out loud until 1743. No, that’s just my little joke. He said it in the poem “Night Thoughts on Life, Death and Immortality”. I’m not sure if authors are the worst when it comes to procrastination, but if the Selfishgenie Twitter feed is anything to go by, it certainly seems to be that way. In fact, research suggests that 95% of people procrastinate to some degree. It’s just more of a problem for some people than it is for others. Procrastination is not the same as laziness. Many procrastinators are actually highly productive; it’s just that what they produce isn’t necessarily what is important. For example, my own favoured form of procrastination is writing blogs. Especially when I should be editing. Either that or writing wonderfully crafted letters to the media about something of great importance in the world. Some of them have even been published - but compared to what I should be doing, they aren't important. At the extreme end of the scale ADHD, OCD, anxiety and depression are all associated with procrastination. So, you could actually be harming your mental health by not doing what you know you should be doing. Procrastination definitely causes feelings of tension and stress, which are both triggers for anxiety and depression. Social media is one of the places where you will find a lot of people procrastinating. It is the ideal place for them to go. They may genuinely mean it when they say “I’ll just take a quick look, just to see what’s trending.” Then, 3 hours later, they’re still there and haven’t done a single bit of work, whatever their work may be. There are many reasons why people procrastinate. Some believe that they work better if they are up against a deadline. Back in the old days, when I used to manage a team, I could always tell when someone produced their work right at the last minute. For a start, it was usually substandard because it hadn’t been given enough time for research, colleague input, proof reading, editing or re-writes. Or maybe I was just able to recognise the hunted look in my team member’s eyes when they saw me approaching, knowing that at any moment I might ask to see the work I’d asked them to produce a week before and was due on my desk in under an hour and they hadn’t even started it. Other people procrastinate because they think that whatever needs to be done will be challenging in some way and they want to put the task off in the hope that it will go away (it rarely does). That’s not good for an author. If you have an idea for a story, but you are putting off writing it, then you have to ask yourself if you are really cut out to be an author. If you aren’t contracted to produce a book by a certain date, then the only person who is going to suffer from any delay is you. You are bound to feel frustrated if you haven’t even made a start on it. And if you are working to a contractually binding deadline, then re-read my observation above about work being substandard if it’s left to the last minute. I know plenty of authors who procrastinate not because they don’t want to write the story, but because they are worried that when they have finished and they try to find an agent or a publisher, no one will be interested. Or if they self-publish, no one will want to read their book. This fear puts them off finishing their work, because they don’t want to have to face that judgement. So, instead, they will re-write the same chapter (or paragraph or even sentence) time after time, telling themselves they’re trying to find perfection. But all they are really doing is putting off finishing their book. Procrastination and perfectionism are well known to go hand in hand. The question is, does the desire for perfection lead to procrastination, or does the desire to procrastinate lead to perfectionism? What we don’t admit is that there is no such thing as ‘perfect’, but there is plenty of ‘good enough’. This is essentially fear of the unknown. The author doesn’t know how good their work is and is afraid it might not be good enough. A pessimist is more likely to procrastinate than an optimist under those circumstances. Journalist James Surowiecki said that many procrastinators are ‘self handicappers’. Rather than risk failure, they create conditions that make success impossible. I think most procrastinating authors can relate to that. Other people procrastinate because they are worried that when they have finished whatever they are doing, they won’t have anything to move onto, which will leave their lives feeling empty. Essentially there are three types of procrastinator: those that do nothing (or hang around on social media, which amounts to the same thing), those who do something less important than what they should be doing, or those who do something that they consider to be more important. Surprisingly, getting unimportant things done and getting more important things done are both regarded as being ‘good’ forms of procrastination. By getting the unimportant stuff out of the way, we actually create time to do the more important task, without having to step away from it later to return to the mundane tasks. For example, you want to spend three hours writing, but instead you find yourself doing the laundry, preparing dinner and walking the dog. But that’s great because when you start writing, you won’t have to stop and do those things later and you can focus for three hours non-stop. Doing more important stuff, rather than sitting down and doing the thing you want to, eg writing, also works. So when you do sit down for a couple of hours to write you (a) haven’t anything more important to do that is nagging at you and (b) you can feel virtuous for getting the important stuff out of the way first. "But there are some things you can do to defeat procrastination." But is there an actual ‘cure’ for procrastination? The first thing to do is identify why you are procrastinating. I have suggested a few reasons already, but there are probably more. Only you can know why you are either delaying starting things or delaying finishing them (both are forms of procrastination). Once you have answered the “why” question, you can then start to address the issues, such as lack of confidence in your own ability. But there are some things you can do to defeat procrastination. Commit to the task. Focus on doing, not delaying. It may be helpful to set yourself a deadline for completing something. Perhaps saying “I will write 1,000 words by 4 pm.” Promise yourself a reward for completing what you set out to do. It doesn’t have to be something big, just a 10 minute break for a cup of coffee, or maybe a slice of cake with the coffee you were going to have anyway. Or perhaps 10 minutes catching-up on social media (but make sure it is just 10 minutes). Re-phrase your wording. Don’t say “I need to” or “I have to”, say “I want to” or “I choose to” instead. It is far more likely that we will do the things we want to do than the things we feel we have to do. Minimise distractions. I know, more easily said than done, especially if you have family buzzing around in the background or demanding work colleagues. But there are things you can do. Log-off all social media, so it isn’t pinging away in the background, tempting you into paying it attention. Close down your emails, unplug/switch off the phone, close the door. And if you can’t escape from the family, then work at a time when the family aren’t going to be so much of a problem. For example, if you have a young child, work when the child is napping. Work when older children are at school or organise play dates for them, so they aren’t calling on your time. And tell your partner to make their own damn coffee. If a colleague is demanding attention, agree a set time to meet, when it’s convenient for you (if procrastination is the thief of time, demanding work colleagues are master criminals). If the task is a really big one, break it down into much smaller chunks. Don’t set out to write a book. Set out to write a paragraph – or even a sentence. When you have completed that, write the next paragraph and so on. John F Kennedy may have set a goal of putting a man on the Moon, but NASA actually achieved that goal by solving one small problem at a time. As mentioned above, get the routine chores out of the way first – and quickly. You can then concentrate on what you want to do without feeling any guilt. Don’t turn small things into big ones. A cup of coffee really is just a cup of coffee. It doesn’t have to be made with hand ground beans which you have to slow roast first. Yes, we know those people. We may even be those people. If you want a slice of cake you don’t have to bake it, you can just buy it. You know you are procrastinating when you actually start looking for those sorts of time-wasting activities. But it all starts with knowing that you are procrastinating in the first place. If you don’t realise you are doing it, you can never hope to stop doing it. If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, be sure not to miss future editions by subscribing to our newsletter. Just click on the button below - and you can also get a FREE eBook for subscribing. But don't procrastinate - do it now. |
AuthorThis blog is compiled and curated by the Selfishgenie publishing team. Archives
May 2024
|