Verbs

There are three things that make a sentence - Subject, Verb, Object.

An adjective can describe the Subject or the Object but an adverb can only describe a Verb.

This means, in any given sentence, there can be two adjectives and one adverb. But no-one ever writes: The sleek cat quietly sat on the fluffy mat.

Even if they did, the adjectives have more character than the adverb. 'Sleek' tells you a lot about the cat - you picture a thin, angular Siamese-type cat, definitely not a Persian. As well as the word having character, it shows you something about the cat's character.

Thin, angular Siamese-type cats would probably wear diamond collars, wouldn't they? Especially when they sit on fluffy mats. Fluffy can be luxurious or cheap and overdone but it tells you something, sets you [the reader] up for something.

So what does 'quietly sat' tell the reader?

Nothing.

What does: lounged, lolled, languished, or perched tell them?

Lots more!

I was at a two-day workshop recently led by Prof. Sam Ham from the States. It was about Thematic Communication - how to centre your writing or message around a theme and so change peoples behaviour or make them think.

He said that he had spent an entire night going through one of those big, thick dictionaries and wrote down every verb he could find in it. He said it was one of the most valuable resources he had. And that the majority of verbs start with the letter 'S'.

I challenge everyone to go through their dictionaries. Go - seek your verbs!

Workshops: no writer is an island

I have just spent two days in workshops with the incredible, warm, wonderful, sharing and incredible [yes, I did say it twice and I meant to] Kathryn Heyman.

Kathryn is an Austalian author who flits between England and Australia and she was in Brisbane over the weekend. Knowing the calibre of the woman I spent the money, flew down and revelled in learning at the feet of a master!

OK, maybe the hyperbole is a bit much but it was all worth it.

It's important that writers have contact with other writers. You need to be mercenary about any opportunity to be involved with writers - that can be workshops, your State's writer's centre, a couple of people you met at a workshop who you think might be able to help you to critique your work [and you theirs] or just to have coffee and talk writing with and have them 'get' you.

This is almost as imperative as a writer having to read. No writer can function, grow or better their craft in a vacuum. You have to get it on the paper on your own but you need to have a community to support you when the loneliness and self-doubt is overwhelming.

Get out there and meet some other writers!!

How can I say this nicely...

I've said this before, but please, please, please edit out your adverbs!

Adverbs are useless things that add no value to writing. They slow and frustrate the reader and are lifeless.

I read a ms for assessment recently [forgive me for that one] and one page of text [272 words] had 12 adverbs - one for every 22.5 words!

Most of these words were used in cliches or to describe how a character said something ie swiftly tetchily lightly casually blankly quickly cheekily firmly uselessly ominously helplessly frantically etc.

Please, as a reader I beg you, please be responsible with your editing and cut and cull as many as you can - one adverb per 2,000 words is a good ratio!!

Jennifer

Time as setting

Beyond the physical there is a fourth dimension - time.

Time is a setting.

If you have the reader understand from the beginning of the story that it will take place over one day or three days you have laid out the 'landscape' for them.

If your story takes place over months or years you have to show the passage of time. Time influences things as much as where a character is in a physical space. You have to show a character moving through time like they move through a room.

Have the character doing things, small things, between the major incidents of the story. Things like making a cup of tea and sitting and watching while the sun sets, the room darkens and the undrunk tea goes cold.

Longer periods can be a sentence like: It rained off and on for the next three days or A week later Dad came home.

You can't jump from scene to scene without setting a timeframe if time has passed. That just confuses a reader and they will put your book down and never pick it up again.

Jennifer

PS: Yes, Margaret - this one's for you!!

How well do you know your World?

A sense of place is important whether you're writing fantasy or not. No-one just lives in their head and so the reader has to see/hear/feel/taste/smell what the character does.

Writing without describing place is like giving a reader a play script with no stage directions - a lot of words in a void.

I've said before not to spoonfeed the reader, but you have to give enough so the reader is with you - and then don't change the rules!

Don't, in the first paragraph, describe a sleepy seaside village with images of narrow winding roads and kids playing cricket in the streets and then have your characters driving breakneck down an old industrial road.

Don't make it worse by having your characters escape from the police by hiding in a bat-infested cave on said industrial road and describing vegetation, dust etc but never, ever mentioning a building, factory, workshop or chainlink fence.

Readers live in the real world predominantly through vision and a sense of space. You have to activate their inner eye and have them orientate themselves in the space you create.

Draw a map. Draw the interior of the house/shop/school and then place that house in a street, that street in a town etc. Know for sure where everything is and how to get there. Check back on it if you have to.

This applies to everyday fiction as well as fantasy. Make sure your reader can picture it - not with beautiful, meandering language but concretely with solid images.

Jennifer

PS: The sky was indigo silk is both beautiful and concrete [and brief].

Don't forget your head...

Points of view [POV] are many and varied. The most popular are First Person and limited Third Person.

First Person is the narrator telling the story as the character 'I' - 'I did this and then I noticed that. '

Limited Third Person is similar to First Person. The narrator is constantly looking over the main character's shoulder and telling the story they see from there only.

Neither POV can tell about things that the protagonist doesn't see.

Then there's Multiple Third person. This is used to tell the story by looking over the shoulders of several different characters . Usually each character is given a different chapter or the change in viewpoint is signalled to the reader by a physical break in the text on the page.

The modern reader is familiar with any of the above, but use them wisely.

Don't Head-Hop.

Head-hopping is telling the reader what one character is thinking and feeling and then in the next sentence telling us what the other character in the scene is thinking and feeling.

This can be confusing for the reader and is not an obvious flaw to a beginner writer who wants to tell everything about everyone and thinks it builds richness to the writing. Less is more - always!

Solution? Imagine your book is a reality TV Show where a camera is strapped to a motorbike helmet that your character cannot take off. Decide who is going to wear that helmet, then write what you see.


Jennifer

Roadblocks

"Just Keep Writing" sounds easy enough, doesn't it? But we all hit roadblocks eventually.

What to do?

Most stories are linear and chronological. That doesn't mean they were created the same way.

If a scene isn't working or a character isn't talking to you that doesn't mean you should ignore the others whispering in your ear or keeping you up late at night.

The writing can happen however it happens. I often write scenes as they appeal to me. This helps to invigorate me to go back to the others that have stalled.

What not to do?

Don't try to convince yourself that you have to write the book the way it will be read.

The start of the story you read is rarely where an author started writing. Often the first several thousand words of a draft are never read by anyone but the author. Sometimes those first several thousand are woven into the story later where they fit better.

It's OK to:

• jump all over the shop when you're first getting it down,
• blend/weave all the bits together in the editing process,
• move stuff around even if you've written it in a logical, linear and chronological order - it might add suspense and tension and make a better book.

It's all in the editing. The most work ever done on a book is the sorting out after it's written - so don't sweat the small stuff - and that first writing, the first draft, is actually the small stuff!

Jennifer