 "Root Cause" 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.  Guess the cause! 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.  Brake failure? Or inattentive driver? 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.  It's not just icebergs that have hidden depths. 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.  Emotional engagement. 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?”  A simple Hobbit 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.
0 Comments
 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 go hand in hand. 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).  Minimise distractions 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.  Coffee based procrastination 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.  Authors have a bit of a love-hate relationship with reviews. We all want them, because we know that reviews help to sell our books. But we don’t want the bad reviews, because they have the opposite effect, or so we believe. But the one thing an author can’t predict, is how any reader will view their work. No matter how good your book is, there is almost certainly going to be someone who doesn’t like it. Regular readers of this blog will recall the one where we noted Oscar Wilde’s less-than-charitable views on Dickens’ book “The Old Curiosity Shop” and Dickens was considered to be a giant of the Victorian literary world.  That’s the problem with reviews, we have no control over them. But a bad review can serve a purpose for an author. If we can identify what the reader didn’t like about our book, we can make sure we don’t do the same thing next time. After all, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, so bad reviews provide learning opportunities. And if you are the sort of author that thinks they have nothing to learn from readers, you are probably doomed to get bad reviews forever. As a reader I do take a look at reviews, but I don’t actually read that many of them. You may think that is a bit odd, to look at them but not read them, but there is method in my madness. I mainly look at the split between the good reviews and the bad ones. If there are more good reviews than bad, then I’ll probably give the book a chance.  I do sometimes look at the bad reviews, to find out why the readers didn’t like the book. But I am very selective about the ones to which I pay attention. If a bad review is well written, in good English and provides valid reasons for why the reader didn’t like the book, then I’ll take it seriously. But if the bad review is just a short sentence which is mainly abuse, or if it’s written in a style that's the internet equivalent of a blunt crayon, then I don't take it seriously. I started using this method a few years ago, after reading hotel reviews on TripAdvisor. If someone has given a hotel a bad review, when everyone else seemed to be fine with it, then there has to be a valid reason (or so I thought).  I’ll give you an example. We were going to visit Crete and wanted a nice hotel, but at a budget price. I found one that seemed to fit the bill and started reading the reviews. Most people were very positive about the hotel, but there were a few one-star reviews, which worried me a little. So I looked at one of them. The author of the review complained bitterly about a road running between the hotel and the beach. Apparently, the hotel’s website hadn’t mentioned it and he thought that he should have been told about it, as the hotel was listed as “beachfront”.  Well, we booked that hotel anyway, because both the location and price were right. And the road? Well, we expected to find a six-lane superhighway with cars whizzing up and down all day and all night at 100 mph. What we found was a very narrow road used to service the beachfront hotels and the number of vehicles using it each hour could probably be counted using the fingers of one hand. And they were being driven with caution. It took three paces to cross it (I counted them) and there we were, on the beach. So how was the hotel otherwise? It was OK. Actually, it was more than OK. We had a very nice week, ate some good food (OK, it wasn’t Michelin star standard, but it was tasty and plentiful) and drank some nice wine and all within our budget. We were happy to post a 4-star review after we got home. And that’s why reviews have to be treated with caution, especially the bad ones. People get upset about the strangest things and they take it out on whoever is handy. In the case of TripAdvisor, it’s the poor hotel owners who bear the brunt and in the case of books it’s the author of the book they just read.  So, if you are an author and you get the odd bad review, please remember that you can’t please everyone. And if you are a reader, please remember that if the majority of other readers thought a book was worth four or five stars, then it is probably worth giving it a go. And if you are a reader who is going to post a bad review, please make sure that the standard of English you use is at least as good as that of the author you are about to criticise. It also helps considerably to say why you didn’t like the book. You will have your reasons, and the whole purpose of the review system is to share those reasons with others. Is there a “good way” of writing a book review? Author Luisa Plaja offers this advice.  Write a couple of sentences telling the reader what the book is about. Keep it short and simple; this shouldn’t become a synopsis of the book. For those readers familiar with the term “elevator pitch”, think about it like that. Tell the readers what you liked about the book. Even the worst books have some redeeming features, so make sure you write about those. After all, the author deserves praise for giving you the things you enjoy.  Tell the readers what you didn’t like about the book. This is the justification for awarding anything below 5 stars for the review. Even if you still award 5 stars, there may be something that you didn’t like, even if it was only a minor flaw. Be quite specific about what you did and didn’t like. Was it a character? Was it something in the plot? Was it the author’s use of language? Focus on why you didn’t like whatever it was, because that is what people always want to know. Whatever it was, the author may benefit from your insights and they can then correct the issue in their next book – which means you get to read better books. Obviously, the balance between the lengths of the paragraphs describing what you liked and what you didn’t like should reflect how you felt about the book as a whole. If you liked the book, then the “good” paragraph will be far longer than the “bad” paragraph.  Summarise your review with your overall impressions. If you are mainly positive, then your summary should also be positive and vice versa. But don’t just repeat the previous paragraphs. Although Luisa Pelja doesn’t mention it, we think it is helpful to mention the genre of the book up front. After all, readers don’t want to waste their time reading a review of a book they are unlikely to buy because it isn’t in their preferred genre. Here at Selfishgenie, we also make our recommendations clear: yes, definitely read this book if you like this sort of thing, or no, steer well clear. Is there anything a reader shouldn’t put in a review. Luisa Pelja doesn’t offer any advice on that, so we will.  Don’t be abusive.
First of all, the author didn’t set out to write a bad book so they shouldn’t be abused for trying their best. Secondly, your opinion of the book is just that: an opinion. It isn’t a fact. Abuse isn’t constructive – it’s destructive. There is no beauty in destruction. Finally, abuse tells the world more about the abuser than the abused. The book reviews we publish on our website mainly conform to the format described by Luisa Peljac, but we do go further. That is because our reviews are also blogs. They are intended to go further than just looking at the book; they also provide information about the author, what sort of people may enjoy the book and maybe a few homespun stories about how the reviewer stumbled across the book in the first place. But for reviews that are posted on Amazon, Goodreads etc we stick to the basic format described above. And finally, if you have enjoyed this blog, found it entertaining or informative (or maybe all of those), be sure not to miss the next edition by signing up for our newsletter. We promise not to spam you. Just click the button.  If you are with someone who gets bitten by a snake, what do you do to help them? If you are thinking “I cut the wound and suck out the poison” then you are wrong and the person who was bitten will probably die. Such is the power of Hollywood movies that millions of movie goers have grown up thinking that, in an emergency, that’s the way you treat a snake bite. In a similar vein (pun intended), you may think that the way to get rid of leeches is to burn them off with a cigarette end. I’ll give the correct methods for dealing with both those things at the end of the blog if you want to stick around, but the point I’m making is about research and why it is so important for authors to do it properly, rather than relying on what they think they know – because they may be wrong.  Many readers follow a particular genre of books because they have an interest in the subject the author is writing about. People interested in the “Old West” will read westerns, people who are interested in history will read historical fiction, usually focusing on a particular period. And, let’s face it, with so much crime drama on TV, everyone thinks they know about the law these days. But because those readers have an interest in those things, they tend to be quite knowledgeable - which makes life difficult for the author. If your reader knows as much, or more, about the subject than the author knows, then the author quickly loses credibility if they get stuff wrong. And if the author loses credibility, they lose the reader. They may also get an adverse review for their book, which will affect future sales. Which is why research is so important.  We have received submissions from authors where the research has been poor or non-existent and when we have provided feedback on that, they have responded by pretty much saying “research is for losers”. OK, they may not have used those precise words, but that was the tone of the message. Or they have pointed us in the direction of the TV show or movie from which they got their information. Which brings us back to snake bites and leaches. TV shows and movies are produced for the purposes of entertainment. Some have high production values and take care to get their facts right. Some just want to get a story onto the screen and aren’t bothered about the facts. Sadly, it’s the latter that seem to work their way into the brain.  If you are an author that wants to be regarded as credible, then taking care about facts is important. You are taking the reader on a journey in which you will make your characters do some incredible things. Some of those things may not be possible in real terms, but you want you readers to believe they are. Which means that they should trust you and the way you get them to trust you is by getting the real stuff right; the stuff the readers know about already. And if you have to stretch the truth in order to make a story work then it is good manners, at least, to tell the reader that you have stretched the truth and in what ways you did it. For example, if you have mentioned an historical battle and placed it in the same year as you have set your story, when in fact it was a year or two earlier or later, then tell your readers that and tell them why you did it. They will respect you for your honesty and, more importantly, they won’t embarrass themselves in the pub when they argue about it with their pals.  So, what is research? One dictionary gives the definition as “the systematic investigation into and study of materials and sources in order to establish facts and reach new conclusions.” Note the use of the word “systematic” in the definition. You have to know what you are looking for and that directs you to the places where you will find it. Asking the right questions is always a good start.  Research methodology For authors this means asking questions about the people, places, events, dates, times, artefacts, fashions, technology, science, theories, outcomes and a whole lot more, depending on the genre in which the author writes. What isn’t research? We’ve already mentioned TV and movies (though factual programmes can be helpful) but it also isn’t using the internet. That is a useful tool, but it is littered with inaccuracies and if you aren’t an expert yourself, you may end up repeating someone else’s errors.  Comedian Dave Gorman I’ll give you an example. The Wikipedia page for British comedian Dave Gorman stated that he had achieved a certain feat on a bicycle (he is a keen cyclist). It even showed an image of him in full lycra (spandex for our American readers), standing next to his bike. He hadn’t achieved that feat, something to which he freely admitted. The citation that backed up the statement was for a small circulation local newspaper that had got its facts wrong. Gorman told Wikipedia that and they removed the offending reference. A week later it was back in again, with the same citation, because the person who had edited the article claimed that the newspaper article was correct and Gorman was wrong. Yes, the person who knew what he had and hadn’t done was deemed to be the one in error. And that’s the internet for you.  So, what research do you do? No matter what the subject, someone will have written a book about it. In all probability there will be more than one book. So that’s where you start. Reading more than one book on a subject gives the author several things:
Yes, reading books is time consuming. But better to take a bit of time and get a better book, than take short cuts then get bad reviews because you’ve got your facts wrong.  Interview witnesses If events are more recent and there are living witnesses, then research is interviewing them. Witnesses add real texture to a story and turn dusty old facts into reality. Even better, they can add an emotional depth to events. This approach also works with getting information from experts. Talk to doctors, police officers, lawyers, scientists, soldiers etc to find out what really happens behind the scenes. This is especially important when it comes to procedural issues. These experts can also explain things in simpler terms than some of the books on the subject. All those people can also tell stories of their own experiences, which can be woven into the author’s plot. Of course, interviewing people takes time, but with modern technology it can often be done without leaving the house. At least make the effort.  Visit locations Finally, visit the real locations and study the places where events happened, or where you want them to happen in your plot. It is quite clear that Dan Brown had never actually visited Rome before he wrote “Angels and Demons” and that is very apparent to people like me who have been there and then threw the book across the room in disgust at him getting so much wrong. Yes, location visits are expensive, but they are also tax deductible. *  The last resort Only if you are completely unable to do any of the above should you rely on the internet and even then you should read as many sources as possible to make sure that you aren’t being misled.
There are many websites that actually hold first-hand accounts of events and extracts from other reliable sources. Wikipedia may be good for a quick overview of a subject, but don’t rely on it for some of the detail (see above re Dave Gorman). And never rely on TV shows or movies. So, now that I’ve exhausted the subject of research, how do you deal with snake bites and leaches? Snake bite. Remove jewellery or watches from the affected limb, in case the injured area swells up and cuts off the blood supply. Keep the wound below the heart to slow the circulation. Seek medical help immediately. It helps to be able to identify the type of snake, but don’t take any further risks in doing so. By the way, the reason cutting the wound and sucking doesn't work is (a) because the poison spreads too quickly and (b) any poison that is sucked out will only be a fraction of what was injected. Removing leaches. The best thing to do is to let them drink their fill. Once they finish feeding, they will just drop off (it takes about half an hour). If you don’t want to wait, then identify the head and apply pressure on either side by sliding the thumbs gently towards the head. The head should pop out and the leach can be lifted off. Burning the leach with a cigarette will work, but it runs the risk of burning the skin, which can then become infected, which will cause way more harm than the leach. Yes, we did research those answers before posting them. * This doesn’t mean that authors can take a holiday and then deduct it for tax purposes. There must (a) be a published book resulting from the trip and (b) only the proportion of the trip that was actually spent doing research can be deducted, not the time spent lying on a sun bed. Incidentally, the cost of books and travel to undertake interviews is also tax deductible. If you have enjoyed this blog or found it information, and want to make sure you don't miss future editions, why not sign up for our newsletter? Just click the button. Readers are reminded that all book reviews are the opinion of our guest reviewers and not necessarily those of Selfishgenie Publishing.   Like many of my generation, I learned a lot of my World War II history not in the classroom or from non-fiction books, but in the cinema. I now realise that was a great mistake, because those films were made for entertainment and are therefore over-simplified. They are also often embellished, which is worse because the true stories are usually dramatic enough not to require embellishment. Take “The Battle Of The Bulge” for example. While the film is based around factual events and does feature some of them in its plot, such as Nazis dressing in US Army uniforms as a deception, it then descends into an over-simplified race to gain access to Allied fuel stocks to keep the German tanks on the road. Even the scenery isn’t authentic as the tank battles are filmed on flat ground in a less than chilly Spain, so the snow that is present in the early part of the film is missing in many later scenes (something I didn’t pick up on in my youth). While that is one feature of the battle – the Germans were very short of fuel – it isn’t the main reason why the battle was lost. And it certainly wasn’t the reason the battle was fought in the first place.  The film's poster, featuring Robert Ryan (right) as Lt Gen Grey and Henry Fonda as Lt Col Dan Kiley. The film also forgets some of the main features of the battle, which were the intense cold, the appalling condition of the roads and the incredibly challenging terrain over which the battle was fought: thick pine forest, steep hills and criss-crossed by rivers with vulnerable bridges. All of that contributed to the loss of the battle. The modern road network disguises the fact that many of the roads in 1944 were little more than muddy tracks, which tank tracks churned into a freezing swamp. But the main reason for the Germans losing the battle, in my humble opinion, was the incredible heroism shown by the American soldiers involved and the flexibility of the Allied commanders in directing forces to the places where they could best fight the enemy. While the film displays this in cameo with the resistance of the 101st Airborne Division at Bastogne, it is only a tiny fraction of the story. 20 men were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honour for the battle, compared to the 16 that were awarded for D-Day. Only 473 were awarded for the entire Second World War.  Soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division outside Bastogne. One of the things the film doesn’t show, for example, was that the 101st Airborne had to be transported over 100 miles to Bastogne standing up in the back of trucks with no protection from the freezing weather. They then had to start fighting as soon as they arrived. They weren’t the only troops to undergo such an ordeal, I use them only for the purposes of illustration. Many soldiers had been on leave in Luxembourg city or Paris and ended up fighting while still wearing their dress uniforms. Several of the Allied commanders were also on leave or absent from their posts for other reasons. So thin were the Allied defences in places that the cooks, clerks and mechanics found themselves fighting in the front line.  The author, Peter Caddick-Adams Phd Which brings me to the book, “Snow And Steel” by Peter Caddick-Adams. My current series of novels is set during World War II and part of one of my plots makes reference to the Battle of the Bulge, which took place from mid-December 1944 to mid-January 1945. The plot doesn’t involve the battle directly, but as it is mentioned I thought I had better make sure I understood the context so that I could better write the plot for my own book. I follow the author, Peter Caddick-Adams, on Twitter because we share a common interest in military history and World War II in particular. I had seen the occasional “plug” for this book, which was his latest work, so I thought “Why not? I need to know more about the battle, he’s written a book about the battle, so let’s give it a go.” Firstly, a little bit about the author. He holds an Honours degree in wars studies, attended the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, served as a soldier in the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan and now lectures in Military and Security Studies at the British Defence Academy, as well as writing books about Second World War battles. So, we can safely say he knows what he’s talking about, which is a good start.  The battleground 1944 The most important part of understanding any battle is understanding the reason it is being fought. Why fight there? What did the attackers hope to achieve? Without understanding what the battle was about, you can’t know if it was a success or a failure. Yes, one side won and the other side lost, but did the winners achieve their goals? What were the consequences of losing? Was the sacrifice worth what it achieved? That is why the film of the Battle of the Bulge is so disappointing in historic terms, because it wasn’t about grabbing fuel for tanks, it was about turning the war around and pushing the Allies back to the sea, just as the Germans had in 1940. And that is where this book starts. Why was the battle being fought?  The Germans were using the same basic plan as had been used in 1914, which was the Schlieffen-Moltke plan, named after its Prussian creators when they devised it at the end of the 19th century. The plan involved a major offensive through the Ardennes Forest in Belgium and Luxembourg to strike into France where its defences were weakest. In 1914 it almost worked and in 1940 the same basic plan was used again and this time, using a combination of modern weaponry and speed, it did work. In December 1944 the aim was to strike through Luxembourg and Belgium to Antwerp, re-capture the strategically important port while, at the same time, splitting the British from their American allies so that the two forces could be defeated independently. Had the plan worked it might not have ended the war in Europe, giving the Germans a victory, but it would certainly have delayed the end of the war by many more months, possibly even years. And, of course, with the Allies defeated or delayed in the west it would allow Hitler to concentrate his forces once again to defeat Russia in the east.  German Panther V tanks advance through a Belgian village. The author then takes us into the minds of the commanders on the two sides. What they thought of the plan, what their mental state was in general after 5 years of war and what the political background was like. That was particularly important on the German side because by that time Hitler was directing the war almost single handed, ignoring or not seeking the advice of his military commanders. It was also important on the Allied side, where the Allied commander, General Eisenhower, was able to operate free of political interference. We then take a look at the military preparedness of both sides in the weeks and days preceding the battle. In order to assemble enough troops for the attack, the Germans had to strip both the Luftwaffe and the Kriegsmarine of men and draft into the army teenage boys, middle-aged men and some former soldiers who had already been discharged because of wounds sustained in earlier battles. It might be thought that these make-shift troops would prove to be a weak link in the plan, but they were surprisingly effective in the early days of the battle.  American troops take cover during a German attack As well as the Volksgrenadiers (people’s grenadiers, the name given by Heinrich Himmler, who was responsible for their recruitment) there were the more seasoned troops of the German army and the SS and they provided all of the tank units that were used, as well as most of the artillery. The author provides a lot of detail about these men, having interviewed several of them. He provides similar amounts of detail for the Allied troops. On the other side, the Allies weren't prepared for a winter war. After the euphoria of D-Day and the liberation of France, the war was supposed to be over by Christmas. The Allies weren't equipped for one of the worst winters on record. Many of the casualties suffered weren't the result of combat, they were the result of the weather: hypothermia, frost bite and trench foot. Many American soldiers just froze to death. Once the battle starts the author takes us through what happened on the various axes of the German advance, telling us about the men who fought and the terrain over which the battle was conducted. He has visited a lot of it and provides some interesting details of what he has found while walking over the ground. His military eye is able to pick out details that a civilian would probably not notice. Readers who have a mind to do so, could pick up some interesting souvenirs should they ever visit the area.  An American Sherman tank at Bastogne. Admittedly this is a bit of a niche subject and won’t be of much interest to some readers. It was also an American battle for the most part, so may not be of much interest to British readers, though there was some British involvement; General Montgomery was given command of the American forces at the northern end of the battlefield, and British troops did fight in some engagements. But the book is aimed at people with an interest in military history and World War II in particular. For those readers I thoroughly recommend “Snow and Steel” by Peter Caddick-Adams. To find out more about the book, click on the cover image at the top of this review. If you have found this blog interesting or informative, why not sign up for our newsletter to get more book recommendations. Just click the button below. Would you like to be a guest reviewer for the Selfishgenie Publishing blog? Contact us with details of the book you'd like to review. Just three rules:
 Mutual support To see the way that authors support each other on social media (for the most part) it would be easy to think that things have always been that cordial in the writing fraternity. Sadly, they have not. In the past it was quite common for authors to insult each other. Even in quite recent history there has been the odd barbed comment. Now, I must make it clear that I am not advocating a return to such uncivilised behaviour. But a good insult, delivered with wit, can be a source of humour.  An Ancient Greek being insulting While there is evidence that goes all the way back to Ancient Greece, when playwrights used to insult each other’s works, they tend to become more witty as we get closer to modern times. Shakespeare is now a revered literary figure throughout the world, but it wasn’t always so. In his own time he came in for a fair share of insults. Fellow playwright Ben Johnson once said of the Bard of Avon “I remember, the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare that in his writing (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, would he had blotted a thousand.” OK, it’s not quite up there with “Your Momma” but it’s quite a damning criticism.  Irish poet and playwright Oscar Wilde, thinking up new insults. Oscar Wilde is well known for his caustic wit. After spending time “at Her Majesty’s pleasure” as a guest at Reading high security hotel (prison) he commented “If this is the way Queen Victoria treats her prisoners, she doesn’t deserve to have any”. However, that is beside the point. On writing and writers Wilde had a lot to say. This one probably holds good today. “In olden days, books were written by men of letters and read by the public. Nowadays books are written by the public and read by no one.” If you are an author and are having trouble getting readers, Oscar Wilder foresaw your pain.  Over the years there have been some great rivalries in literature and the rivals didn’t always play nicely. William Faulkner was accused by Ernest Hemingway of being under the influence of alcohol while he wrote. He said “I can tell right in the middle of a page when he’s had his first one.” Given Hemingway’s own reputation as an imbiber, that may be seen as a pot-and-kettle sort of remark. In retaliation Faulkner quipped. “He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.” Personally, I’d find that a recommendation. When I’m reading, I don’t want to have to keep looking up words to find out what the author is talking about. But maybe that’s just me. But in return for that slight, Hemingway came back with “Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?” Hemingway seems to have attracted a lot of criticism from fellow writers. In 1972 Victor Nabokov said, “As to Hemingway, I read him for the first time in the early ‘forties, something about bells, balls and bulls, and loathed it.” I was always taught not to speak ill of the dead and Hemingway died in 1961, so he didn’t even get the right of reply.  Lord Byron, who should be careful of whom he insults if he's going to dress like that! Two great rivals of late 18th and early 19th century poetry were Lord Byron and John Keats. I think it was true to say that Byron wasn’t exactly an admirer of Keats, if this quote is anything to go by: “Here are Johnny Keats’ piss-a-bed poetry, and three novels by God knows whom… No more Keats, I entreat: flay him alive; if some of you don’t I must skin him myself: there is no bearing the drivelling idiotism of the Mankin.” Ouch.  A victim of misogyny? Jane Austen Male authors aren’t always gentlemen. In an era when it was considered a great social gaff to insult a woman, Ralph Waldo Emerson said of Jane Austen’s writing “Miss Austen’s novels . . . seem to me vulgar in tone, sterile in artistic invention, imprisoned in the wretched conventions of English society, without genius, wit, or knowledge of the world. Never was life so pinched and narrow. The one problem in the mind of the writer . . . is marriageableness.” But he wasn’t the only one to be critical of Austen. Mark Twain, never a shrinking violet, said of her work “I haven’t any right to criticize books, and I don’t do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”  J K Rowling And things haven’t changed much since. Harold Bloom proved himself to be quite ungentlemanly when he said of J K Rowling “How to read ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone’? Why, very quickly, to begin with, and perhaps also to make an end. Why read it? Presumably, if you cannot be persuaded to read anything better, Rowling will have to do.” Bearing in mind that Rowling aimed her books at younger readers, that was a trifle harsh coming from an adult. Bloom was about 70 then, so a little old for Harry Potter I would have thought. Sometimes these things can form chains. Gore Vidal said of Truman Capote “He’s a full-fledged housewife from Kansas with all the prejudices.” While Capote said of Jack Kerouac “That’s not writing, that’s typing.”  But for my final literary insult I return to the daddy of them all, Oscar Wilde, Having read The Old Curiosity Shop, by Charles Dickens, Wilde offered this opinion: “One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing.” I wish you better criticism than that, and for my closing quotes I’ll return firstly to Ernest Hemingway, “Critics are men who watch a battle from on high and then come down and shoot the survivors”.  Constructive criticism And secondly to Brendan Behan: “Critics are like eunuchs in a harem: they know how it’s done, they’ve seen it done every day, but they’re unable to do it themselves”
Just remember that last one the next time you get a less than fulsome review. And if you are going to be critical of another author's work, at least try to make it witty. Who knows - you might even be quoted in a blog like this. If you have found this blog interesting or informative and you would like to make sure you don't miss future editions, why not sign up for our newsletter? Just click the button below. We promise not to spam you and you can unsubscribe at any time.  You’ve written this great book, but you can’t seem to capture the interest of an agent or publisher. You’ve sent it to every agent and every publisher in the listings, but all you get back is rejections and sometimes not even that. How long does this go on for before you ask yourself “Is it me?” On the other hand, you may feel that your work isn’t good enough for publication, so you may not have submitted it to an agent or publisher because you think it will be rejected. Why might you feel that way? Let me introduce you to the Dunning-Kruger effect.  Stupid people don't know they are stupid! This is a hypothesis in social psychology postulating that people of lower capability don’t know their capabilities are low, while people of higher capability don’t always realise how capable they are. This has sometimes been unfairly paraphrased as “stupid people don’t know they are stupid” and, of course, the opposite of that is that clever people sometimes don’t realise how clever they are. I have to say up front that there are critics of the hypothesis. Firstly, in some cultures there is great emphasis placed on modesty, so a clever person would never claim to be cleverer than someone else, because that would be immodest. Similarly, in some cultures it is considered rude to criticize others, so honest feedback on poor performance isn’t always provided. The other flaw is that the studies that were carried out to test the hypothesis used psychology students as the subjects and they aren’t representative of society as a whole. But leaving aside those criticisms, there is consistently strong evidence that the Dunning -Kruger effect is real . But what do we know about it?  David Dunning and Justin Kruger are the two American psychologists that came up with the hypothesis (published in 1999) after noting that some of their poorer performing students didn’t seem to realise how poor their performances were. They also didn’t improve after being given feedback on their performance. So Dunning and Kruger went looking for an underlying cause for this misperception of capability. To test the hypothesis, subjects were asked to complete some self-assessment tests on a range of subjects. After being given their results, the students were asked to rank themselves against their peers. Those that performed the worst tended to rate themselves higher than some of their peers, while those that had performed the best tended to rate themselves lower than some of their peers.  Subjects were interviewed after completing the exercise and asked why they had rated themselves as they had. The more capable students, who found the tests easiest, tended to think that their peers would also find the tests easy, so they had ranked themselves lower. Conversely, the poorer performing students, who had found the tests difficult, assumed their peers would also find the tests difficult and ranked themselves higher. This betrayed an internal bias. Poor performing students overrated their own performance, while better performing students overrated the performances of their peers. Even after providing feedback, these internal biases appeared to persist.  At this point I should inject a word of caution. The poorest performing students didn’t rank themselves in the highest performing bracket. So, a D grade student didn’t think they were performing as well as an A grade student. But they did assume they were performing as well or better than a C grade student. So, what has this to do with finding an agent or a publisher? Well, if we extend the Dunning-Kruger hypothesis into the world of publishing, an author who isn’t a great writer may, thanks to this internal bias, think that their work is better than it is. This will make it hard for them to understand why they are getting rejection after rejection.  On the other hand, a good writer may feel that their work isn’t as good as that of other good writers and that may discourage them from submitting their work to an agent or publisher in the first place, because they assume it will be rejected. If that is the case, is there a solution for the writer? There may be. The first thing to do is to understand that a cognitive bias actually exists and recognise the effect it might be having on our own perception of ourselves. We need to actually ask if we are as good (or as poor) as we think we are. And the only way to answer that question is to seek out unbiased feedback.  Many of you will already have worked out that I’m talking about beta readers. Friends and family aren’t good beta readers, because they don’t want to hurt the author’s feelings. They would tell William McGonagall* that his poetry is great if he was a friend or relative. This means that if an author wants honest feedback on their work, the beta reader must be a stranger, so that they can provide feedback that is free of any bias caused by emotional involvement. But there is a trap here that many authors – and beta readers – aren’t aware of. While a beta reader may start off being an unbiased stranger, that relationship changes over time. Authors want the best feedback, so they will nurture a valued beta reader and use them again and again. But the beta reader is bound to have an emotional response to that nurturing and that may affect the nature of their feedback. In other words, they may develop an emotional bond with the author which could classify them as a friend, thereby losing the independent viewpoint that made them so valuable in the first place. You might think of it as the Catch-22 of beta reading. If you are starting to think of a beta reader as a friend, then they have lost their value, but not treating them as a friend risks losing them. Ideally an author will find new beta readers for each new work. But that means a lot of work identifying and cultivating them, only to have to do it all over again for the next book and the next.  Florence Foster Jenkins But being aware that the trap exist in the first place is a good first step. Be aware that the beta reader may want you to like them almost as much as you want them to like your work. As soon as you have exchanged email addresses, an emotional bond is starting to form, so it is necessary for both authors and beta readers to try to maintain an “arm’s length” relationship.
However, having independent feedback is no use if you don't respond to it. Your beta readers have given you feedback - use it to improve your work. If you ignore it because it isn't what you want to hear, you have fallen into another trap and the Dunning-Kruger effect even predicts that trap because it identified that subjects often didn't respond to feedback on their performance. Who knows, you may improve your work enough to find an agent or a publisher. * William McGonagall (1825-1902) was a Scottish poet whose poems were so bad that he became famous. People paid to see him read his poems for the comedy value (his work was quite serious in its subject matter). McGonagall, however, was deluded enough to interpret that as evidence of his genius. See also Florence Foster Jenkins. 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. We promise not to spam you and you can unsubscribe at any time.  Write the book you want to read. It’s a bit of advice most authors have been given at some point in their writing career. But what does it actually mean? On the surface it suggests that if you would like to read the book you wrote, then others would too, but that is a very subjective thing. I like historical fiction, but not everyone does. OK, we could narrow that definition down to something a little bit more specific then: Write the historical fiction book that you would want to read. Actually, that wouldn’t work for me. Because, while I enjoy reading historical fiction, I’m not so keen on writing it.  The main reason is all the research that is necessary for writing historical fiction. Readers of that genre usually know quite a bit about the period they follow and it only needs a small mistake for them to take the author to task. I know, because I’m one of the first to send emails to authors pointing out the errors they make. Research, however, is very time consuming and I’d much rather be getting on with doing the writing. I do research when I have to; most authors do. But I don’t want the research to take longer than writing the book and that is often the case with historical fiction. But the upshot is that while I really enjoy reading historical fiction, I don’t think ‘ll be writing too much of it. Well, that was a short blog wasn’t it?  Actually, I haven’t made my point yet. Because the book that I want to read is one that engages me and makes me want to read more of the same, regardless of genre. And I find that I get sent far too few of those. What that tells me is that some authors aren’t really writing for the benefit of their readers, they’re writing for their own benefit. Which means, as a publisher, I’m going to have a hard job selling their book. I’m not saying the books are actually bad, as such. Good and bad are subjective terms, after all. But what I am saying is that if I’m not engaged, I’m not enjoying the book and if I’m not enjoying it, I’m not going to finish it. And if I don’t finish it, then I’m not going to read anything else by the same author. Which is not good if the author wants to make a living from their work. And that's not good for me as a publisher, because I can't make a profit from publishing an author whose books don't sell. So, why am I not engaged with these books?  sketchy character It comes down to the characters. They are usually too sketchy for me to take any interest in them. They have no depth, no substance. I can’t believe in them as real people. And if I can’t believe in them, I don’t care too much whether they live or die, or whether they live happily ever after or whatever is supposed to happen to them. So I close the book (or switch off my Kindle) and I look for something more interesting to read which does allow me to engage with the characters. This is mainly the problem with plot led novels.  plot led novels The author has spent so much time creating what they think is an exciting or intriguing plot, and not enough time developing characters that I can care about. Because, even if the character is suspended over a fiery pit with the rope about to burn through and send him (or her) plummeting to their death, I don’t care enough about them to find out if they live or die. Let me give you an example. I care about my friends. Why? They aren’t relations so we don’t share DNA which needs to be passed to future generations, they don’t have any connection to me that makes any difference to my life. So why do I care whether my friends live or die?  Because I have engaged with them at an emotional level. I know their family history. I know how they got the scar on their elbow when they were 7 years old. I know how they nearly died in a car crash when they were 11. I know how they feel about their family, their spouse and their pets. I know that if I’m in trouble they will come and help me if they can and even if they can’t help, they’ll offer their emotional support. I know when they are feeling happy and I know when they are feeling sad, even though they may be trying to appear happy. I know what jokes I can tell that will make them laugh and they know the same about me. I know how to make them happy and how I could make them sad if I’m not careful; and they know the same about me.  And that’s how I want to know my characters: with that degree of detail. And far too many authors don’t let me feel that. They’ll provide a back story, because they know that is important, but the back story itself is too shallow: where the character was born, what sort of schooling they had; what they work at and maybe what sort of leisure activities they enjoy. But that isn’t ‘knowing’ them. To know someone you have to be able to see inside their head. Perhaps authors feel that if they reveal too much about a character then they will reveal too much about themselves. After all, many readers believe that characters in books resemble the author in some way. If that is the way the author feels, then they are in the wrong job, because writing is about baring your soul to the world. Because it is emotions that people actually engage with. We feed off the emotions of others the way a vampire feeds off the blood of their victims. We do that in real life (but not as vampires I hope) and we want to do it when we read books. But if the characters don’t have any emotional depth, then we can’t feed off them.  So, my point is that if you want to write the sort of book that you want to read, you have to be able to write about emotions, because that is what people actually engage with. The reader has to be able to feel a character’s happiness, their fear, their hopes, their dreams and their aspirations.
So, my advice to any author would be to Google a list of human emotions and make sure your characters feel a selection of them. That way the reader will feel them and they’ll engage with the characters; they’ll care about them. And once they care about the characters, there is no way the reader will be able to put the book down before they have finished and, when they have finished, they’ll be begging the author for more. So, to re-phrase my opening statement: write the emotionally engaging character led book that you want to read. Not so snappy, I know – but more meaningful. 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. We promise not to spam you and you can unsubscribe at any time.  A recurring theme amongst new writers is “How do you start a story?”. For some people this is no problem. An idea pops into their head, they sit down at the place they do their writing and off they go. 80 to 100 thousand words later they have the first draft of their book completed. But for others it doesn’t work that way. For others, getting started is the difficult bit. Sometimes they have an idea in their head, but sometimes they don’t. They just want to write, but how do they get going?  Which is what this week’s blog is about. How to start your writing when you haven’t had that spark of inspiration to set you on your way. Even I need somewhere to start, so I’m going to start with “prompt phrases”. This is simply taking a few words that already exist and then continuing on from where they leave off. I’ll give you an example. “The door opened and …” continue writing from there. Where the writer goes from there is entirely up to them. It may end up as a short paragraph that leads nowhere, or it may end up on the shortlist for the Booker prize. Who knows? But great work always has a starting point and that could be it.  So, here are a few more prompts for you to think about.
It may be that by the time you stop writing, you will actually be able to remove those prompt words and you will still be left with something that stands up on its own. The great thing is that you can use the same prompts over and over again, just continuing with a slightly different set of words to create something entirely new. You can even create your own prompts or take the opening words from favourite books and use those to inspire your own work.  “Call me Ishmael” may have started Moby Dick, but it didn’t have to. There could have been a million different stories that emanated from those three words. And, providing you remove “Call me Ismael” from the starting sentence, no one will ever know you used it. If you search “writing prompts” on the internet you will come up with hundreds of articles with thousands more suggestions, some of which may be better than mine. The point about those prompts isn’t that they will lead the writer directly to a story. But they may give the writer a character, a location, a time, an incident or something else that then takes the writer to a story. It’s a bit like wanting to get to a certain street, but you don’t know where that street is. So you stop someone and ask for directions, or you go into a shop to do the same. That then gets you to the street where you want to be. The prompt phrase is the person you ask for directions. (For younger readers, people used to do that before we all had phones with maps on).  Then there is the “I remember” technique. Write the words “I remember” then follow it with three sentences. For example: I remember I went to the pub last week. Harry was there. We talked about football for a long time.” At the end of that you can remove “I remember” and you’ll be left with “I went to the pub last week. Harry was there” etc. Where you then take that is where the story will lead you. It may not lead anywhere, and you may abandon it. But there are many exciting and unexpected possibilities that can emerge from a trip to the pub.  One writer I know gets his inspiration from his favourite songs. He uses them to tap into his memories and emotions and they then give him a starting point for a story. Pick out a favourite song and listen to it. But while you are listening, ask yourself some questions and jot the answers down.
You might want to listen to the song several times to get more answers or to trigger fresh memories or additional questions. Once you have that, you can start to assemble the words into sentences. Some words you may use several times and some you may not use at all. They’re your words: do with them what you please. But when you’ve written those sentences, don’t stop. Keep writing, perhaps taking one sentence and writing a second, related sentence, much as you did with the “I remember” technique discussed above.  You can do that with other media as well. A painting, a sculpture, a book, a poem, a TV show, a film, or a play. All of them have etched themselves into your memory for a reason and those reasons can be your source of inspiration. Photographs, like music, are another good source of inspiration. We all have favourite photos, but you might want to dig out your albums and start looking at the ones you took years ago. Or, for our younger readers, access your cloud storage to find your old photos. Use the same techniques as suggested for listening to music.  Then there’s TV, radio or your news feed on the internet. The basic idea is the same for all three. Turn on your TV or radio or select your news feed on the internet (you might also use social media channels). Make a note of the first thing you see, hear or read. Don’t go searching for ones that may be more interesting. That becomes artificial and removes the spontaneity that is crucial for creativity. It doesn’t matter what it is. It could be a news story, it could be an advert, it could be someone discussing buying a house or selling an antique. Just write it down. Then, using the techniques discussed earlier, elaborate on what you have written. Try to reach around 500 words before you stop. Then imagine a character who is involved in whatever you have written and start to describe them. Some of things you might want to include are:
Combining the first 500 words with the character description should allow you to build even more. For example, the first character may have friends, an enemy, a lover, a helper and so on. How do these characters know each other? How did they meet? How is each one connected to the original 500 words?  Sheldon Cooper (actor Jim Parsons) The final suggestion I have for getting started with your writing is the “what if” question. Viewers of “The Big Bang Theory” may remember the episode in which the character of Sheldon Cooper imagines what The Hulk would be like if he was made for different materials, eg what if The Hulk was made of sponge? This is the same sort of thing. So, what if the old lady I saw on the bus yesterday is actually a serial poisoner?” So, you start writing “I saw an old lady on the bus today. She looked so sweet and innocent, but she had a deadly secret.  To change it into a third person narrative the sentence is started with “The old lady was sitting on a bus. She looked so sweet and innocent ….” So, here are some more “what if” ideas for you to play around with.
If you have particular interests or concerns (poverty, social justice, climate change, animal welfare, health, wealth etc), they could be turned into some excellent “what ifs”. There are pretty much an infinite number of “what ifs” that it’s possible to come up with. Spend some time generating a few (without answering the questions) then pick out just one to focus on and start writing. You never know where it might lead you.  Turning what you have written into a story is just a matter of technique. Short story writer E M Forster describes a story as “‘a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence’ and a plot as "also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality." To put that into context “The puppy whined piteously.” is a story. “The puppy whined piteously because it was hungry” is a plot. Turning that simple line about the puppy into a longer plot is matter of asking some questions and then answering them, but again focusing on causality.
Try to think of as many questions as you can. You may not answer them all, but the more you have the greater the possible plot permutations can have. None of the ideas discussed here are a universal panacea. Whatever you start out with may not lead anywhere. But it doesn’t have to lead anywhere every time. All it needs to do is get you writing.  Imagination is critical Hold onto whatever you have created (I still have a box file from the days when I still used pen and paper) and go back and revisit these jottings from time to time. Perhaps they’ll provide fresh inspiration. But, importantly, just because one prompt didn’t lead anywhere, it doesn’t mean that the next one won’t. Ultimately writing is about imagination and these prompts are designed to stimulate your imagination. The rest is down to perseverance. And if you have neither an imagination nor perseverance, you aren’t a writer. You may be thinking “That’s all fine, but this is all about the here and now. I write fantasy/sci-fi/horror/westerns etc and those prompts don’t help me. Wrong. There is nothing that those prompts produce that can’t be transposed into any genre. Those genres are just a set of tropes that tell the reader what sort of book they are reading. The rest of it can exist in any time period or location – real or imagined. To think otherwise is to reveal a lack of imagination.  To use the example of the puppy, discussed above, it could live in Middle Earth, on the planet Gargelfarch or in a Native American tipi in 1879.
It doesn’t even have to be the young produced by a dog. It could be a baby that has turned into a werewolf puppy and it’s howling because it can’t get out of its cradle to find a leg on which to chew. (Editor’s note: That idea is now copyright, Selfishgenie Publishing 2021). All writing should be fun and fun comes from playing. Anyone who has ever studied the processes involved in creativity and innovation will know that “play” is a big part of it. What this blog is about, really, is playing with words. It serves two purposes. The first is you learn by doing it. The second is that the ideas generated through this sort of play can be turned into something useable. It won’t happen every time, but it will happen. If you have enjoyed this blog or found it informative you may like to sign-up to our newsletter. Just click the button below.  One of the most asked questions of authors (after the most stupid question in the world - “Have I read anything by you?”) is “Where do you get your ideas from?” Some authors, especially those who write about the field in which they work, such as crime or medical, have an easy answer to that. They’ve either seen it or done it and are just winding it into their plot for the entertainment of their readers. But some authors base their fiction on their own real-life experiences outside of their profession. After all, most of us have fallen in love, been on a journey or had a traumatic experience, so all we are doing is turning it into fiction and perhaps adding a bit more pizzaz to it. For many, however, it is a slightly harder question to answer.  Brainstorm or mind map ideas “It just popped into my head.” Sounds a bit lame, but that is really what happens for them. Other authors take a more structured approach and maybe do a bit of brain storming, writing words onto post-it notes and sticking them on the wall to see what jumps out at them. Or using writing prompts to get them going, which (spoiler alert) I’ll be covering in another blog next week. Others may watch TV or a film, or perhaps read a book and then think “That was pretty good, but it would have been so much better if the author had …” and then they write the same book their way. That isn’t plagiarism, by the way. At worst it is inspired imitation. There are several books I’d re-write differently if I had the time and if I do it well you probably wouldn’t recognise the original.  Visualise your idea. Some authors like to visualise things before they write them. For example, you might draw a picture of a house. You might then think about who lives in a house like that. Then you might think what could happen to those people that would upset their lives. Before you know it, you have both characters and a plot. I read about one quite well-known author (I’m sorry but I can’t remember his name) who drew each location he included in his plot so that he could get a “feel” for it. It also helped him to know where everything was in relation to other parts of the story. Others take their inspiration from life and use things they’ve heard or seen at work, in the street, at parties or wherever and then bulk them out until they become fully fledged stories. As an author I have used that latter approach. The fact is, no matter what method you use to start the story, the important thing is that it holds together as a plot and the characters are believable.  One of our authors came across some tape recordings his father had made for The National Army Museum, which recounted his experiences in the Army. It was for a project the museum was running at the time to capture the memories of old soldiers before they died and the stories were lost forever. He listened to his father’s voice and his first thought was to turn those stories into a book about his father, a mini-biography if you like. To do that he had to do a considerable amount of research about the commandos, their tactics and their battles so he could provide readers with the necessary background information to support and elaborate on his father’s words. But at the end of the process, when the book had been published (“A Commando’s Story” if you want to read it), the author realised he had all the material necessary to support an entire series of fictional stories set around the commandos of World War II. And so, the Carter’s Commandos series was born. One real-life story, told as an act of love and respect, turned into three years of work and six books (and still counting). "we all take inspiration from the work of others" There’s no doubt that we all take inspiration from the work of others. When it comes to sci-fi and fantasy, for example, there is little in real life that can provide the basis for a plot. Actually, that isn’t correct. Pretty much any story can be transferred into a mythical land or outer space or a dystopian future. It just requires the imagination to do it and that’s what most authors are good at: having a vivid imagination. It is said that there are only seven basic plots. All the author does to vary that is to change the context in which the story is set and add the characters. This idea was put forward by author and journalist Christopher Booker in his 2004 book, The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories. He was also a co-founder of the satirical magazine Private Eye. So, what are those plots?  Overcoming a monster. The first is overcoming a monster. That is the basis for a lot of horror, of course, but also a lot of fantasy and sci-fi. Also, within the sci-fi genre, overcoming a monster might include combatting a plague of some sort. Fans of Michael Chrichton will be familiar with the concept. However, it is often used by action-adventure novelists. James Bond has to overcome many monsters in his various adventures. It’s just that the monsters have names like Goldfinger, Blofeld, SMERSH or SPECTRE. The monster to be overcome can be any enemy, though they usually transcend just being “bad” to being completely evil. Peter Benchley's "Jaws" is also a story about overcoming a monster. Rags to riches. This was a popular theme during the Victorian era, with authors such as Dickens (it’s the basic plot for Oliver Twist) and also the fairy stories Cinderella and Aladdin), but it is still seen today, but more often in film. Brewster’s Millions, The Million Pound (or Dollar) Bank Note are typical, but there are many others. An important plot point in the rags to riches story is that the protagonist comes close to losing, or actually loses, their newfound wealth at some point and has to overcome adversity to gain it back.  The quest The quest. This is popular with fantasy novelists, but in sci-fi it is seen in the theme of space exploration and even historical fiction (Treasure Island is a quest). The Star Trek series is a typical quest, but sometimes also has to overcome a monster. Sometimes the quest takes a more abstract form. Jane Austen wrote a quest novel. After all, isn’t Elizabeth Bennet, in looking for a husband in Pride and Prejudice, embarking on a quest? Criminal investigations tend to use a lot of questing in order to identify the criminal(s), as does sci-fi that is seeking an antidote for a plague or a cure for a disease. Voyage and return. Well, if that isn’t The Hobbit, what is? It’s also Gulliver’s Travels and a whole lot more. The important thing about this plot and, also, the quest is that the protagonist learns something important along the way, usually about themselves. Bilbo Baggins, for example, finds out he is much braver and more resourceful than he thought.  Comedy. Pretty much any of the above plots can also be turned into a comedy, so I don’t fully buy it as a “plot” in its own right. However, if you set out to write a comedy it is important to be able to convey the humour. Far too many books we’ve read that are billed as comedies just aren’t funny. More than one commentator has said that Shakespeare’s comedies are less than funny. But maybe 16th and 17th century audiences understood the jokes better. Tragedy. The same applies to tragedy as it does for comedy, really. Any of the above plots can be turned into a tragedy by killing off either the protagonist, the protagonist’s love interest (if there is one) or their family. Hubris forms a great plot point in tragedy as it brings people down to earth with a bump. Pride cometh before a fall; how the mighty are fallen (and all that)! A book by Christopher Moore, called “Fool” turns the tragedy of King Lear into a comedy quite successfully, thus spinning the plot on its head  Like a phoenix from the flames Rebirth. An interesting one this, because it isn’t a physical rebirth, it is usually a metaphorical one, though Frankenstein could be seen as a story of rebirth in a more literal sense. Like the quest and the voyage and return, it is about the character learning something and changing along the way, preferably for the better. However, a critical part of the rebirth plot is that the protagonist is either taken to the brink of death by their experience, or to the depths of despair. Only from those depths can rebirth take place. Much of religious fiction is about rebirth, as are stories that include battles with alcohol or drug addiction and battles with mental health. It is another important plot point that the protagonist, once reborn, is stronger in some way and not necessarily in physical terms. Of course, any two, or even three of those plots can be combined to create a single plot and this happens a lot in literature. So, seven basic plots, but millions of books that use those same seven. You wouldn’t think it possible, would you? "some people don’t agree with that concept " Of course, some people don’t agree with that concept and it has been much debated in the corridors of literary academia. There have been some authorities that have claimed both lower and higher figures. But all agree that the number of basic plots is finite and, more importantly, it’s quite a low number. There is also another rule in this plotting guide that not many people know they are using, but they use it anyway. It’s the rule of three.  So, it’s the third in a series of events that proves to be the decisive one. The third battle that wins the war, the third attempt at romance that leads to happy ever after, etc. This is most literally seen in fairy stories such as Goldilocks, where it is the third of the things that she tries in the three bears’ house that’s the one that’s just right. But the same principle applies in many different plots. For example, it takes three attempts (two failed or only partially successful) for the protagonist to achieve their ultimate goal. Or three events are cumulative in order to provide a final outcome. This is common in detective literature, where the significance of different clues add together to identify the criminal. The criminal isn’t just a left handed man, he is a left handed man who limps and also wears a monocle. Are you someone who uses the rule of three without realising that you were actually obeying a rule? Of course, you don’t have to obey that rule, but it is surprising how many authors do adhere to these conventions.  I don’t think many authors pay conscious attention to which of the seven plots they are using when they write their books. It doesn’t actually need a conscious decision.
The plot may even start off using one of the plots structures and change direction later. For example, a quest might turn into a voyage and return or a rebirth. A plot may start off being a comedy but become tragic along the way and it may even return to being a comedy by the end. What is important, however, is that whatever plot(s) you use, they tell the story the way you wanted to tell it, whether it was inspired by something heard at a bus stop or by the life story of a relative, or even as a consequence of personal experience. Enjoy your writing, but don’t over-think it. If you have enjoyed this blog or found it informative, why not make sure you don't miss future editions, by signing up to our newsletter. For example, we'll send you a reminder about the one we're publishing next week relating to the use of writing prompts to generate story ideas. Just click the button below. |
AuthorThis blog is compiled and curated by the Selfishgenie publishing team. Archives
November 2024
|
RSS Feed
Copyright Selfishgenie Publishing 2023
Web Hosting by iPage