Writing fiction
Ten years ago I wrote a children's novel. I couldn't find an agent interested in even looking at it, so eventually it was buried away in a directory on my computer and ignored.
Then a couple of years ago I learnt about NaNoWriMo, with its challenge to write a 50000-word novel in a month.
I'm a great fan of Charles Williams, and have read and re-read most of his seven novels several times. I wish he had written more, but as he died in 1945, the only way to get more novels in the same genre is for other people to write them. So I challenged other Williams fans to join NaNoWriMo and write a novel in the same genre as Charles Williams. In the end I was the only taker, and I duly wrote my novel. In doing so, I recycled some of the characters from my children's novel, and imagined them 25 years older.
I asked other Charles Williams fans to read it and give me a critique, but again there were very few takers. I didn't bother to send this one to agents -- there is no point in trying to publish a book to sell if you can't give it away free to its core market, the fans of the genre.
A friend of mine did read it, however, and gave me an interesting critique. He said it was fine as an action story, but if I wanted it to be anything more than a "Sexton Blake" type potboiler (is anyone reading this old enough to remember Sexton Blake?), I should read Dorothy Sayers's The nine tailors and see how she handled the church bells that her plot hinges on, so that they become more than a mere MacGuffin.
I read her book, enjoyed it, and forgot about it, until this year's NaNoWriMo. Then I repeated the challenge to Willliams fans, but again there were no takers. But I decided to take my friend's advice, and reread The nine tailors, more carefully this time. I also read a bit more about church bell ringing in order to follow it, though I confess that I am still not clear about the precise distinction between a Kent Treble Bob and Grandsire Triples.
So I took up my two-year-old manuscript, but I'd forgotten enough of what I had written to be in danger of losing the thread of the whole thing. So I loaded into a novel-writing word processing program called yWriter.
yWriter lets you divide the text into scenes, and keep track of characters and items (like - in Charles Williams's case, the Holy Graal, Tarot cards, a teleporting stone etc). I found that quite useful when I hadn't looked at the text for two years.
So I then decided to put every attempt at writing fiction I had ever made into yWriter, since it makes it easier to pick up things and continue them if you have left them for some time, because of the way it lets you track characters, items and locations through scenes.
And so I also imported my 10-year-old children's novel into yWriter, but in order to do that I had to re-read bits of it to see where some scenes ended and others began, and get the names of the minor characters. And that was an interesting exercise, because I had forgotten some bits of it, so it was like reading something written by someone else, not knowing exactly what was going to happen next. And I thought it was pretty good; a lot better than I remembered, in fact. And the strange thing was that when I woke up the next morning it felt as though I had been dreaming about my own childhood, relived through fictional characters I had created. It was a weird feeling, as though their past was my past. Well, perhaps it was in a way. Though the characters were fictional, some of the events were not. I'd just changed them around to make them happen to other people in other places.
Anyway, the main point of this post is to recommend yWriter to anyone who writes, or wants to write, fiction, especially if you're likely to pick it up again and resume work on it some time after you began. It really does help you to keep track of things.
I first learned about yWriter here: 50 Awesome Open Source Resources for Writers and Writing Majors. You might like to look at that too, if you're interestied in writing, as you might find some other useful stuff there too.
Oh yes, and if anyone has 9-11 year old kids who like to read, and would be willing to do a critique of my story, I'll send it to them in PDF format if they want, with a PG warning. Some parts are a bit dark and scary; Harry Potter it's not. The witches are based on real life, as are the cops.
Then a couple of years ago I learnt about NaNoWriMo, with its challenge to write a 50000-word novel in a month.
I'm a great fan of Charles Williams, and have read and re-read most of his seven novels several times. I wish he had written more, but as he died in 1945, the only way to get more novels in the same genre is for other people to write them. So I challenged other Williams fans to join NaNoWriMo and write a novel in the same genre as Charles Williams. In the end I was the only taker, and I duly wrote my novel. In doing so, I recycled some of the characters from my children's novel, and imagined them 25 years older.
I asked other Charles Williams fans to read it and give me a critique, but again there were very few takers. I didn't bother to send this one to agents -- there is no point in trying to publish a book to sell if you can't give it away free to its core market, the fans of the genre.
A friend of mine did read it, however, and gave me an interesting critique. He said it was fine as an action story, but if I wanted it to be anything more than a "Sexton Blake" type potboiler (is anyone reading this old enough to remember Sexton Blake?), I should read Dorothy Sayers's The nine tailors and see how she handled the church bells that her plot hinges on, so that they become more than a mere MacGuffin.
I read her book, enjoyed it, and forgot about it, until this year's NaNoWriMo. Then I repeated the challenge to Willliams fans, but again there were no takers. But I decided to take my friend's advice, and reread The nine tailors, more carefully this time. I also read a bit more about church bell ringing in order to follow it, though I confess that I am still not clear about the precise distinction between a Kent Treble Bob and Grandsire Triples.
So I took up my two-year-old manuscript, but I'd forgotten enough of what I had written to be in danger of losing the thread of the whole thing. So I loaded into a novel-writing word processing program called yWriter.
yWriter lets you divide the text into scenes, and keep track of characters and items (like - in Charles Williams's case, the Holy Graal, Tarot cards, a teleporting stone etc). I found that quite useful when I hadn't looked at the text for two years.
So I then decided to put every attempt at writing fiction I had ever made into yWriter, since it makes it easier to pick up things and continue them if you have left them for some time, because of the way it lets you track characters, items and locations through scenes.
And so I also imported my 10-year-old children's novel into yWriter, but in order to do that I had to re-read bits of it to see where some scenes ended and others began, and get the names of the minor characters. And that was an interesting exercise, because I had forgotten some bits of it, so it was like reading something written by someone else, not knowing exactly what was going to happen next. And I thought it was pretty good; a lot better than I remembered, in fact. And the strange thing was that when I woke up the next morning it felt as though I had been dreaming about my own childhood, relived through fictional characters I had created. It was a weird feeling, as though their past was my past. Well, perhaps it was in a way. Though the characters were fictional, some of the events were not. I'd just changed them around to make them happen to other people in other places.
Anyway, the main point of this post is to recommend yWriter to anyone who writes, or wants to write, fiction, especially if you're likely to pick it up again and resume work on it some time after you began. It really does help you to keep track of things.
I first learned about yWriter here: 50 Awesome Open Source Resources for Writers and Writing Majors. You might like to look at that too, if you're interestied in writing, as you might find some other useful stuff there too.
Oh yes, and if anyone has 9-11 year old kids who like to read, and would be willing to do a critique of my story, I'll send it to them in PDF format if they want, with a PG warning. Some parts are a bit dark and scary; Harry Potter it's not. The witches are based on real life, as are the cops.