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A short journey to the sewer We’re always on the side of the book. We’re always on the side of the writer. With books, we want them to be as good as they can be – written well, edited well, pressing clients to be as wonderful as they can – and if you have the guts and determination to pick up a pen and write a book, we’re on your side. And that’s why we are firmly, emphatically, viscerally opposed to vanity publishing in all its forms. This is a story, yes, about Austin Macauley, but it is also a story about a whole raft of other vanity presses too. Snakes, worms and weasels, every one. Why such strong language? Because vanity publishers take vast sums of money from authors to publish their books. This is in contrast to how to best practice in both traditional publishing (where publishers pay you), and modern ebook-led self-publishing where it costs nothing to upload your book to retailers like Amazon, and where per book royalties are excellent. So if you want to know more about what to avoid – and about Austin Macauley Publishers specifically – then read on. A more complete guide to (proper, legitimate, profitable) publishing can be found here. What Is Vanity Publishing? Vanity publishing is where authors pay for their book to be ‘published’ and where ownership of the book passes to the publisher as part of the contract. Vanity publishers never call themselves by that name. They’ll say they offer ‘partnership publishing’ or ‘hybrid publishing’ or say they offer a ‘contributory contract’ or anything else of that sort. But if any publisher: Asks you for money Ends up owning the rights to your book you should regard them as a vanity publisher. That’s if you’re polite, and inclined to be generous. Quite frankly, we prefer to think of them as thieves and fraudsters. To be clear: they are not breaking the law. But whether some narrow legal test of fraud is or is not met misses the ethical heart of the issue. The fact is that these publishers are offering writers a contract which they basically know will not meet the legitimate dreams and aspirations of those writers. What Vanity Publishing Looks Like We’ve spoken to one writer who was offered a ‘contributory contract’ from one vanity publisher (not Austin Macauley), requesting from her a staggering £7,000 to publish her poems. This lady was dying of cancer, and she wanted to earn a little something for the son she’d leave behind. Thankfully, she called us first, and asked for our advice. What we told her was this: There is not meaningfully any market for poetry, and certainly not of the (sincere, but quite home-spun) verses she’d written. She would never see that £7,000 again Sales would be modest in the extreme. Aside from any sales she made to friends and family, her sales would quite likely be zero, nothing, nix, nada. She almost certainly would get a nicely produced book to hold in her hands She would not find that book being sold in bookshops Yes, the book would be available on Amazon, but so are 5,000,000 other titles. Uploading a book to Amazon is easy. Selling it once it’s there – that’s hard. She would not, meaningfully, get any marketing support from the publisher once the book had actually been produced. In effect, she’d be paying £7,000 to have her book printed & the rights owned by somebody else. You could easily spend no more than £1,000 for a book of that length, print as many copies as you wanted, work with lovely, truthful, well-intentioned people, and still retain all the rights to the book. Naturally, she did not use that publisher to ‘publish’ her work. Instead, she went to a reputable local printer and, for a modest sum, got the thing printed up for local distribution. She told me that she wanted everyone who came to her funeral to get a copy. And look, there’s something good here and something awful. The good thing is that a dying woman made a book that she wanted to create. That spoke her thoughts to those she cared about. There is nothing at all of vanity in that impulse. In that sense, the term ‘vanity publishing’ is a total misnomer. I’ve seen a lot of people snared by vanity publishers, and in not one single case was vanity the issue. On the contrary, it’s naivete, hope, and nothing else. So that’s the good thing. A dying woman wrote and distributed some verses. And here’s the bad thing: someone wanted to steal £7,000 from her. Sick, dying, and not at all wealthy. Did I say bad? I meant awful. The thing about vanity publishers is they don’t really publish at all. They get books designed & printed. You can do that too, just google “typesetting”, “cover design” and “book printers” and you’ll have everything you need. Or use an ethical outfit like Matador, or Lulu, or CreateSpace, or IngramSpark, or Completely Novel, and you’ll get a fair service at a fair price. (What each of those outfits offers is different, so you can’t just compare prices – it’s more complex than that.) So if you just want to pay something to produce 10 books (or 100, or 1,000), you need to work with a company like one of those guys. Or source your own design / copyediting / cover design, etc. It’s not hard, and it can be very rewarding. What Are The Alternatives To Vanity Publishing? A word about traditional publishing and modern self-publishing [This section talks about the alternatives very swiftly. If you need more help, go to our main publishing advice page that gives you a load more detail in a very helpful format.] Traditional Publishing Or you can publish in the traditional way with a regular publisher. The advantages of that route: you get paid, upfront plus (potentially) royalties as well you get a real publisher working hard to market your book you will be sold in bookstores and have the pride of having done a hard thing well. There’s also one obvious disadvantage: It’s very hard to get accepted by a traditional publisher – the rate of success is probably 1 in 1000 submissions (or even worse) If your work IS of that quality, you probably need a literary agent. Details on how to do that can be found here. We answer further common questions about literary agents here. We also offer free lists of agents in the US and the UK. Self-publishing If you don’t want to go that route – too hard? too slow? you don’t want to lose control of your book? – then modern self-publishing is also an excellent answer. Modern self-publishing involves selling your book via Amazon and/or the other e-tailers such as Apple. You will make a majority of your sales – perhaps over 90% of them – via ebooks, but it’s perfectly possible to create and sell print-books as well. They’ll be of good quality and will be available to readers all over the world. The advantages of self-publishing include: Royalties are superb: Amazon pays 70% royalties on ebook sales, whereas traditional publishers will pay just 17.5% (or less, if you inlcude the amount you’ll owe your agent.) It’s easy It’s fast You reach readers right across the globe The disadvantages include: you have to handle the various bits and pieces yourself: cover design, ebook formatting. Most people will just outsource those tasks, but you still need to find the right people for the job. Because of those tasks, you are likely to pay something to get our book published – but $1500 / £1000 would be a perfectly reasonable  budget for most. You have to market your book. Amazon is a platform; it’s not going to market on your behalf unless you have some prove sales potential already. There is still a difference in kudos between self-publishing and the traditional sort. That doesn’t really make sense to us. (Who do you admire more: someone who sold $100,000 worth of self-published books on Amazon? Or someone who got a £1000 book deal from some remote bit of Penguin Random House?) But still: it matters to some people. If you want to find out more about how to self-publish your work, you can find out with our (characteristically comprehensive) guide here. Info on book descriptions here. Info on categories and keywords here. Advice on getting your book covers here. It’s also true that writing really well is a skill that can be learned – and then learned some more. If you’ve struggled with literary agents in the past, it may well be that your actual book isn’t as strong as it could be. For that reason, we’ve got useful advice on how to write a book right here. Learning About Writing And Publishing Also – this does’t quite fit on this page in a way – but: it’s possible you don’t yet know enough about the whole writing/publishing industry to yet make a decision on how to proceed. And if you think, yes, maybe that applies to me, what then? Well, there’s a LOT you can do. If you feeling like flashing the cash (a very little bit), I’d urge you to become a member of Jericho Writers. You’ll get access to the world’s best resources on writing, publishing and self-publishing. Info here. You should also, certainly, join our Jericho Townhouse writing community, that just gives you an exceptional way to meet other writers, and exchange questions help and community. View our forums, our blogs, our groups. Austin Macauley – A Close-up Look At One Vanity Publisher Hold your nose, folks. We’re heading down . . . This post grew (as you may have guessed) out of an encounter with Austin Macauley, a vanity publisher. Or rather: multiple encounters, all of them negative. We heard about authors feeling cheated. We heard about authors being threatened with legal action if they spoke out about their experience. We heard about authors going to court against the firm. We heard about a prominent blogger – a person of integrity and intelligence – being threatened with legal action for speaking out about these things. So we thought we’d look into Austin Macauley reviews . . . and we did not love what we saw. If you\'re asking yourself \'is Austin Macauley publishers reputable?\', we have the answer. No. In this updated post, we take another look at Austin Macauley – but please remember that ALL vanity publishers operate in much the same way. What we say about this firm could, mutatis mutandis, be said about all its snakelike brethren. Indeed, we DO say it about all those firms. Oh, and to be crystal clear: we do not believe that Austin Macauley is engaged in illegal activity. In our opinion, what they do is totally unethical and close to cheating, but some bad things are within the law; vanity publishing very much included. (Alas.) Okie-doke. So- If you Google “Austin Macauley”, as I just did, you may find this: Screengrab taken 17.5.2020 And – huh? A publisher who advertises? Go and Google Penguin Random House. Or HarperCollins. Or Simon & Schuster. Those guys don’t advertise. Why not? Because their business model works like this: Find great books. Publish them well. Make money. No part of that relies on advertising to authors and luring them in. (So how do they get those great books? They pay for them. And authors and literary agents bring them all their best stuff.) But the Austin Macauley model works like this: Find authors willing to part with cash. Part them from their cash. Deliver some kind of book. That’s it. The book doesn’t have to be good. It doesn’t have to actually sell. AM doesn’t even actually have to try to do all the things that real publishers do to make sales. Of course not! They’ve already made money. From you! Bu I get ahead of myself. Here’s what they say on their website home page (text copied 24 April 2018) We pride ourselves on our hybrid publishing model, a progressively more popular means by which both new and previously published authors can establish themselves in the increasingly competitive world of books. This is horseshit. Here’s that same bit of text with my explanations in brackets: We pride ourselves on our hybrid publishing model [we take money from authors which no reputable publisher does. Deep in our snakelike hearts, we know that this is a horrible way to make a living, but we may as well make a virtue of it and pretend it’s normal.]a progressively more popular means [Rubbish. Traditional publishing is great. Self-publishing is great and has zoomed up in the world. Vanity publishing is used only by those who don’t know any better. It’s “popular” largely with those people who don’t know better and who are taken in by flashily effective advertising.] by which both new and previously published authors can establish themselves in the increasingly competitive world of books [Double-rubbish. You want to know if Austin Macauley establishes writers in the the world of books? OK. So do this. Go to the biggest bookstore near you. See if you can find any Austin Macauley books. Browse the shelves. Ask a checkout clerk. Seek specific titles by name. You will find almost none, and most likely none at all. And if I’m wrong, I’ll give you a dollar and a kiss for every one you find.] Indeed, let’s take the partnership / hyrbid / vanity agreements that Austin Macauley and its peers offers. We’d want to ask: What is the median cost to the author of these partnership agreements? Partnership implies some joint sharing of risks and rewards, so do these firms contribute a sum broadly equivalent to that contributed by your authors? What are the median sales of partnership titles? Note that ordinary averages (means) can be distorted by one or two high-selling titles, so a median figure would be helpful. This is a crucial question, and you should not part with a single penny before getting an answer. What, loosely, is the median financial outcome for partnership authors? Do they recover their contributions via royalties? Do they generally make a profit, and how much? And if they make a loss, what is the average magnitude of that loss? I hope it’s obvious why these questions are important. Austin Macauley Publishers operates within the law insofar as it prints books, makes those books available on Amazon, available for order by bookshops (not the same as saying that these books are likely to be stocked in bookshops). It makes modest efforts to secure publicity for its books and authors. All that does not amount to a good deal. It amounts to a right royal stinker of a deal. Avoid Austin Macauley. Avoid its peers. And may they, one day, all bite the dust!

The romance genre is one of the best selling book genres in the world, and that includes erotica novels full of unforgettable sex scenes. So how do you get over the awkwardness of writing sizzling action, and learn to write sex scenes that your readers can\'t get enough of? In this article I\'m going to be talking about erotic fiction; from how to start your first draft and engage your reader\'s imagination, to ensuring you are writing high quality erotica that will have your target audience wanting more! So, like any good romance, let us start at the very beginning.... What\'s The Difference Between Romance Novels And Erotica? The simplest way to look at the two is this: Romance novels have the sex scenes revolve around the plot. Erotic fiction has the plot revolve around the sex scenes! So before you start writing erotica, ask yourself whether your story is about the characters and an exciting plot (that just so happens to have the odd steamy scene) - or whether the hot action is what your readers want, and you simply have to thread each sex scene together with a plausible storyline. Which leads us on to structuring your story - because, like any genre, your romance needs to have a plot! Structure Your Story Now I’m not going to go into a ton of detail about how to write a great book - because every successful author of erotica will have a different story to tell. All I will say is that you do need to respect your basic story structure. Writing erotica novels is no different to writing any other kind of fiction! The teasing quality of a suspense-driven story (Will the heroine succeed or not? Does he or doesn\'t he like her?) should match up perfectly with the will-they/won’t-they quality of the romantic/erotic dance. Without that suspense, that build up, you have no momentum driving the story forward. That said, when it comes to writing erotic fiction, your story can be relatively simple – and relatively short. A 50,000 word story wouldn’t work so well as a crime-thriller, but it’s plenty long enough for erotica. Hit The Beats And I\'m not talking BDSM here! \'Hitting the beats,\' in the most basic of storytelling ways, simply means making sure your book has a story arc. this may sound formulaic, but if you have too much of any of these segments, some or missing, or they are in the wrong order then your readers will notice as the pacing will feel \'off\' and it won\'t keep readers hooked. Make sure your romance or erotic story includes all of this: Set The Scene (Act 1) Where does the book take place? Is it on a tropical island? Or in a 19th century mansion? Two very different stories. Introduce The Characters From the onset we need to know who the characters are - is the MC a love-starved vampire or a controlling millionaire (or both)? Readers need to see what the main character\'s life was like before the... Inciting Incident What happens in the book that\'s a point of no return? This is the part when the book gets going. The Middle (Entering Act 2) Some writers struggle with this part as it\'s generally the least exciting part of the book. It\'s where the character grows and learns things, it\'s their journey or discovery. What will happen between your two characters? Add lots of twists and surprises. False Peak/False Defeat The book isn\'t over yet. There\'s either worse things to come or hope on the horizon. Keep the readers on their toes. Things Can\'t Get Any Worse Your hero/heroine thinks that all is lost, then they work out the solution The Hero Overcomes (Enter Act 3) Show the MC overcoming their internal or external struggles and finally getting what they set out to get at the beginning of the story Happily Ever After Because you are writing erotica/romance, it\'s important that you have your two main love interests get together at the end. And if they don\'t, well, at least hint that they might in future books. Always end on a high note! Let\'s take a look at what makes amazing writing and what the best erotica writers consider when building their worlds. Think Character Even if your story is simple, your characters shouldn’t be. The power of sexual tension (and release) is multiplied tenfold on the page if there is some conflict and resolution between the characters. That doesn’t have to mean the two main characters are always shouting at each other (though that could work). It means you must have some kind of push-pull dynamic that will have to be resolved somehow … and often via them taking all their clothes off. It also means that your characters have to develop through the course of your story. The sex they have on first meeting won’t feel the same as the sex they have at the end of your book. But sex is just sex, right? Wrong. Writing Sex To Reflect Plot Most people, when thinking about adding sex scenes in their erotic novel, focus on the body parts. What goes where, who does what, what they are wearing etc. But it\'s so much more than that. Sex doesn\'t belong in any book without a purpose. Much like in any other genre, a sex scene is no different to an action scene. Every fight isn\'t the same, every car chase is different. The sex your protagonists have at the beginning of the book should not be the same as the sex scenes at the end of the book. They have been on a journey, they know one another better, their relationship has helped heal old wounds or accomplish what they set out to do. How they interact with one another has to move the plot forward and show character growth in such a way that you\'ve moved beyond the sexiness to something a lot deeper. But you need to do this subtly. How? Show...don\'t tell! Show Don’t Tell When writing erotic stories, showing and not telling is vital. People read erotica to be part of the sex, to feel the same emotions the characters are feeling. That means you can’t merely report that character X had great sex with character Y. You have to let the scene unfold, action-by-action, on the page. Keep plenty of dialogue there too, make it part of the plot. Remember that interesting character interplay = interesting sex. Put yourself in their shoes (or lingerie) and imagine what they are experiencing. Engage all five senses. What are they thinking? What are they feeling? What can they smell, hear, taste, see? Make sure that what the setting and props reflect the story. If the scene is set in a 19th century mansion then is he ripping off her silk ballgown? Do the candles in the chandeliers flicker? Is she feeling off her gloves finger by fingers? Alternatively, if they\'re on a dessert island, do they have sand in their mouth and hair? Can they hear tropical birds and the crash of waves? Is the warm breeze caressing their naked backs? How To Write A Great Sex Scene We\'ve established the importance of character, story structure, and showing not telling when writing your erotica novel as a whole - but how do you write your individual sex scenes? Here is my simple guide in ten easy steps (this advice refers specifically to erotica, the genre my Unbreakable trilogy, starting with The Silver Chain, is written for. Although it can be applied to sex scene writing in general): Create A Picture Of The Characters, Imagine The Flow If you can, put yourself in the scene. If you find that too difficult, then superimpose famous heart-throbs, or a secret crush, on to your characters. Imagine these characters making love in front of you on a screen, and describe what you see and feel. Put yourself in the picture. If it\'s not exciting you...then it won\'t excite your readers! Make Your Readers Care Because if they don\'t, they\'ll soon get bored. Your protagonists may come from different worlds, or there may be a difference in age or in the balance of power between them, but they are drawn to each other like a couple of magnets. And once we know how this dynamic works, we will know how and why they like one another, and your readers will be attracted to them, too. Remember that in erotica, upon first meeting, these characters have one aim - to have sex with each other. And the aim of most readers is to watch that attraction unfold, grow and reach an unforgettable climax (in every sense of the word). Voyeuristic, yes, but true! Choose Your Location So next, place them in a sexy environment for this first time. Depending on their age, situation, energy, athleticism and/or pure machismo, the back of a clapped out Ford Cortina or the bins behind the Plaza cinema might be just the place for a quick, rough first time, and that will certainly do it for some readers. Any good erotic writer is more than capable, like the old Martini adverts, of creating a sex scene any time, any place, anywhere! But others usually pick up an erotic novel to get away from the dirty old mean streets of real life. They\'re after escapism! So whisk your characters off to a place you’d like to be. A moonlit beach, or a sumptuous penthouse hotel room, or a soft rug in front of a roaring fire. Imagine you are a film director setting the perfect scene. Make sure there\'s low lighting and great music or some other subtle sound track. Garish lighting and deadly silence are not always the sexist ambience, at least for the first time. But as the story progresses you can really have fun with your characters - having them so hot for each other that after the first seduction they’ll do it anywhere. A lift, a restaurant, a riding stable, an art gallery. And to keep us on our toes, you can also later on play with the dynamic, too. Have the meek heroine take the lead, for once. See how the hero responds to that. Don’t Forget The Build-Up/Foreplay Build up sensuously to the physical act with suggestive conversation which will either be blatant and in your face, or playful, teasing, even holding back. Depending on whether you have just 50,000 words to play with and it\'s straight forward erotica, or whether you are writing a 90,000 word steamy romance, you can decide how long it takes them to get together. They can have wild passionate sex in chapter one, then get to know one another...or they can spend four chapters stealing glances at one another. Either way, stick to your story beats in terms of pacing and keep the readers just as tense and excited as the two lovers! Also, remember characters don’t stand woodenly about like actors in a bad am-dram before they get down to it. Have them eating, drinking, dancing, singing, involve us in that experience, then show us their clothes, how well they fit, are they too formal or tight, how good does it feel as they come off? Unbuttoning cut-off jeans can be just as sexy as unzipping a ball gown. Make it tense, passionate, breathless, but … Take It Slow In real life the first time you have sex with someone new is often urgently desired but ends up fast and disastrous, but this is fantasy! So although there can be some hesitation, shyness and teasing, ultimately everyone, reader included, needs to be on tenterhooks to get their hands on each other and get down to it. Teasing the characters means teasing the reader, which is what they picked up the book for in the first place! Structure Your Scene Structure your scene like the sex act. That is, foreplay, action, climax, wind down. Too obvious? You might think so, until you start writing the scene. Think of the foreplay as the aforementioned setting. The removal of clothes, the first sensation of skin on skin starts the action rolling in the obvious direction. If it helps, think of a movie scene. I know actors always say how pedestrian and workmanlike it is simulating sex in front of a crew of burly cameramen, a bank of arc lights and a demanding director, but imagine yourself as an extremely involved, generous, hands-on director with your characters. Make sure the bed is soft, the studio is warm, and soon they’ll take off on their own towards the strong, satisfying, long-awaited penetration! As for the climax, well, no beating about the bush, is there? This is when the glorious pinnacle of where we all want to be is reached, and tread carefully here with the language (see below). Challenge yourself to find different ways of describing that rush of ecstasy. Avoid waterfalls, avalanches, orchestras! What actions or words stimulate the eventual moment? Focus on emotion just as much as action here. Keep A Tad Of Realism Alive Slightly unrealistically erotic couples tend to come together every time but if you want to be more realistic, let one come before the other and show who is the generous one, who is thoughtful, who is selfish. Or are they both equally considerate, and if not, will they become so as the novel progresses? Finally, the wind down is often the hardest. After the shivering and shuddering, do they fall asleep, or analyse, or do it all over again? I often have a knock at the door, or a phone call after the act, so that in the early days the couple are never at leisure totally to relax or take each other for granted until the next drama occurs. Find The Right Balance Of Cinematic And Plausible Make it dramatic, but human. Not impossibly athletic, but not mundane either. The characters will already be attractive and/or beautiful, or arresting in some way to turn the reader on. The men have got to be strong and well hung and very experienced (unless the opposite of that caters for a specific audience). The women are generally curvaceous, soft and wonderfully proportioned, and if not experienced, then primed and ready to learn. Again - if you write for a different audience then change your characters to fit the readers\' ida of perfection. If this is a romantic setting, lots of kissing and stroking, exploration. If this is more down the BDSM route, then the participants will get their kicks from spanking, binding, and pain. But there is always room for sensuousness and tenderness - and most importantly, whatever they do in the bedroom must be a natural part of the plot AND help the reader understand the characters better. Don’t Get Coy With Your Language Keep it simple, punchy, evocative, but not obscene or anatomical. Don’t, like John Updike, veer away from simple words and use hideous ones like ‘yam’ to describe a penis. Don’t use euphemism or flowery words, either. ‘Cock’, ‘cunt’ and ‘fuck’ are acceptable with some publishers, but not others, and certainly not in the new mainstream type of erotica. There\'s a difference between well written erotica and graphic pornography! You also have to use your powers of evocation very carefully to avoid sounding awkward or coy. So ‘manhood’ and ‘sex’ can be used, but sparingly. Read erotic romance books and other works of your chosen genre, or find a publisher’s house style, to find what works and what publishers/readers prefer. Use The Rhythm Method Next try to get into a rhythm similar to the rhythm of sex. Slow, slow, quick, slow. Yes, that’s it. Like a dance. Why else to you think dancing was considered so daring in the old days? It was the nearest people could get to each other in public. And have you ever seen sex better choreographed than in the Argentine tango? Frequently Asked Questions Do you still have questions about writing erotica? Here are some FAQs... How Do I Start Writing Erotica? Start with your characters and setting, think about how they influence your plot, and what kind of relationship they may have. You may want to practice with fan fiction first or self publish before approaching a publisher. How Do You Write An Intimate Scene? Begin with all four senses and picture yourself in the scene. What are you feeling? Try to avoid brash or corny words, keep it simple, and focus more on the characters, the setting and the emotions than the step by step actions. No one reads erotica because they want a How To sex manual. How Do You Write A Steamy Romance? Steamy romance novels are different to erotica as the sex is part of the plot and moves the story forward. With romance novels the characters and plot are the most important part...then the sex. Whereas with erotica it\'s all about the sex and the plot matters less. With steamy romance novels try and focus on the characters, what they want and how being with the one they love will achieve their goals. Don\'t add sex scenes for the sake of it, ensure there\'s a build up, lots of teasing, the pull and push suspenses, and then a big climax (as it were). The Ultimate Guide To Writing Sex And there you have it, everything you need to write a sizzling sex scene for your erotic fiction. Just remember to connect with all your senses, write about whatever specific kink interests you, and have fun. The last part is the most important - because if you\'re not enjoying yourself your readers won\'t either!

Speech gives life to stories. It breaks up long pages of action and description, it gives us an insight into a character, and it moves the action along. But how do you write effective dialogue that will add depth to your story and not take the reader away from the action? In this article I will be guiding you through seven simple steps for keeping your fictional chat fresh, relevant and tight. As well as discussing dialogue tags and showing you dialogue examples. Time to talk... 7 Easy Steps For Compelling Dialogue Getting speech right is an art but, fortunately, there are a few easy rules to follow. Those rules will make writing dialogue easy – turning it from something static, heavy and un-lifelike into something that shines off the page. Better still, dialogue should be fun to write, so don’t worry if we talk about ‘rules’. We’re not here to kill the fun. We’re here to increase it. So let’s look at some of these rules along with dialogue examples. “Ready?” she asked. “You bet. Let’s dive right in.” How To Write Dialogue In 7 Simple Steps: Keep it tight and avoid unnecessary words Hitting beats and driving momentum Keep it oblique, where characters never quite answer each other directly Reveal character dynamics and emotion Keep your dialogue tags simple Get the punctuation right Be careful with accents Dialogue Rule 1: Keep It Tight One of the biggest rules when writing with dialogue is: no spare parts. No unnecessary words. Nothing to excess. That’s true in all writing, of course, but it has a particular acuteness (I don’t know why) when it comes to dialogue. Dialogue Helps The Character And The Reader Everything your character says has to have a meaning. It should either help paint a more vivid picture of the person talking (or the one they are talking to or about), or inform the other character (or the reader) of something important, or it should move the plot forward. If it does none of those things then cut it out! Here\'s an example of excess chat: \"Good morning, Henry!\" \"Good morning, Diana.\" \"How are you?\" she asked. \"I\'m well. How are you?\" \"I\'m fine, thank you.\" She looked up at the blue sky. \"Lovely weather we\'re having.\" Are you asleep yet? You should be. It\'s boring, right? Sometimes you don\'t need two pages of dialogue. Sometimes a simple exchange can be part of the narrative. If you want your readers to know an interaction like this has taken place, then simply say - Henry passed Diana in the street and they exchanged pleasantries. If you want the reader to know that Henry finds Diana insufferably then you can easily sum that up by writing - Henry passed Diana in the street and they exchanged pleasantries. As always she looked up at the sky before commenting on the weather, as if every day that week hadn\'t been gloriously sunny. It took ten minutes to get away, by which time his cheeks were aching from all the forced smiling. No Soliloquies Allowed (Unless You\'re Shakespeare) This rule also applies to big chunks of dialogue. Perhaps your character has a lot to say, but if you present it as one long speech it will feel to the modern reader like they\'ve been transported back to Victorian England. So don’t do it! Keep it spare. Allow gaps in the communication (intersperse with action and leave plenty unsaid) and let the readers fill in the blanks. It’s like you’re not even giving the readers 100% of what they want. You’re giving them 80% and letting them figure out the rest. Take this example of dialogue, for instance, from Ian Rankin’s fourteenth Rebus crime novel, A Question of Blood. The detective, John Rebus, is phoned up at night by his colleague: … “Your friend, the one you were visiting that night you bumped into me …” She was on her mobile, sounded like she was outdoors. “Andy?” he said. ‘Andy Callis?” “Can you describe him?” Rebus froze. “What’s happened?” “Look, it might not be him …” “Where are you?” “Describe him for me … that way you’re not headed all the way out here for nothing.” That’s great isn’t it? Immediate. Vivid. Edgy. Communicative. But look at what isn’t said. Here’s the same passage again, but with my comments in square brackets alongside the text: … “Your friend, the one you were visiting that night you bumped into me …” She was on her mobile, sounded like she was outdoors. [Your friend: she doesn’t even give a name or give anything but the barest little hint of who she’s speaking about. And ‘on her mobile, sounded like she was outdoors’. That’s two sentences rammed together with a comma. It’s so clipped you’ve even lost the period and the second ‘she’.] “Andy?” he said. ‘Andy Callis?” [Notice that this is exactly the way we speak. He could just have said “Andy Callis”, but in fact we often take two bites at getting the full name, like this. That broken, repetitive quality mimics exactly the way we speak . . . or at least the way we think we speak!] “Can you describe him?” [Uh-oh. The way she jumps straight from getting the name to this request indicates that something bad has happened. A lesser writer would have this character say, ‘Look, something bad has happened and I’m worried. So can you describe him?’ This clipped, ultra-brief way of writing the dialogue achieves the same effect, but (a) shows the speaker’s urgency and anxiety – she’s just rushing straight to the thing on her mind, (b) uses the gap to indicate the same thing as would have been (less well) achieved by a wordier, more direct approach, and (c) by forcing the reader to fill in that gap, you’re actually making the reader engage with intensity. This is the reader as co-writer – and that means super-engaged.] Rebus froze. “What’s happened?” [Again: you can’t convey the same thing with fewer words. Again, the shimmering anxiety about what has still not been said has extra force precisely because of the clipped style.] “Look, it might not be him …” [A brilliantly oblique way of indicating, \'But I’m frigging terrified that it is.\' Oblique is good. Clipped is good.] “Where are you?” [A non-sequitur, but totally consistent with the way people think and talk.] “Describe him for me … that way you’re not headed all the way out here for nothing.” [Just as he hasn’t responded to what she just said, now it’s her turn to ignore him. Again, it’s the absences that make this bit of dialogue live. Just imagine how flaccid this same bit would be if she had said, “Let’s not get into where I am right now. Look, it’s important that you describe him for me . . .”] In short: Gaps are good. They make the reader work, and a ton of emotion and inference swirls in the gaps. Want to achieve the same effect? Copy Rankin. Keep it tight. And read this. Dialogue Rule 2: Watch Those Beats More often than not, great story moments hinge on character exchanges with dialogue at their heart.  Even very short dialogue can help drive a plot, showing more about your characters and what’s happening than longer descriptions can. (How come? It’s the thing we just talked about: how very spare dialogue makes the reader work hard to figure out what’s going on, and there’s an intensity of energy released as a result.) But right now, I want to focus on the way dialogue needs to create its own emotional beats. So that the action of the scene and the dialogue being spoken becomes the one same thing. Here’s how screenwriting guru Robert McKee puts it: Dialogue is not [real-life] conversation. … Dialogue [in writing] … must have direction. Each exchange of dialogue must turn the beats of the scene … yet it must sound like talk. This excerpt from Thomas Harris’ The Silence of the Lambs is a beautiful example of exactly that. It’s  short as heck, but just see what happens. As before, I’ll give you the dialogue itself, then the same thing again with my notes on it: “The significance of the chrysalis is change. Worm into butterfly, or moth. Billy thinks he wants to change. … You’re very close, Clarice, to the way you’re going to catch him, do you realize that?” “No, Dr Lecter.” “Good. Then you won’t mind telling me what happened to you after your father’s death.” Starling looked at the scarred top of the school desk. “I don’t imagine the answer’s in your papers, Clarice.” Here Hannibal holds power, despite being behind bars. He establishes control, and Clarice can’t push back, even as he pushes her. We see her hesitancy, Hannibal’s power. (And in such few words! Can you even imagine trying to do as much as this without the power of dialogue to aid you? I seriously doubt if you could.) But again, here’s what’s happening in detail “The significance of the chrysalis is change. Worm into butterfly, or moth. Billy thinks he wants to change. … You’re very close, Clarice, to the way you’re going to catch him, do you realize that?” [Beat 1: What a great line of dialogue! Invoking the chrysalis and moth here is magical language. it’s like Hannibal is the magician, the Prospero figure. Look too at the switch of tack in the middle of this snippet. First he’s talking about Billy wanting to change – then about Clarice’s ability to find him. Even that change of tack emphasises his power: he’s the one calling the shots here; she’s always running to keep up.] “No, Dr Lecter.” [Beat 2: Clarice sounds controlled, formal. That’s not so interesting yet . . . but it helps define her starting point in this conversation, so we can see the gap between this and where she ends up.] “Good. Then you won’t mind telling me what happened to you after your father’s death.” [Beat 3: Another whole jump in the dialogue. We weren’t expecting this, and we’re already feeling the electricity in the question. How will Clarice react? Will she stay formal and controlled?] Starling looked at the scarred top of the school desk. [Beat 4: Nope! She’s still controlled, just about, but we can see this question has daunted her. She can’t even answer it! Can’t even look at the person she’s talking to. Notice as well that we’re outside quotation marks here – she’s not talking, she’s just looking at something. Writing great dialogue is about those sections of silence too – the bits that happen beyond the quotation marks.] “I don’t imagine the answer’s in your papers, Clarice.” [Beat 5: And Lecter immediately calls attention to her reaction, thereby emphasising that he’s observed her and knows what it means.] Overall, you can see that not one single element of this dialogue leaves the emotional balance unaltered. Every line of dialogue alters the emotional landscape in some way. That’s why it feels so intense & engaging. Want to achieve the same effect? Just check your own dialogue, line by line. Do you feel that emotional movement there all the time? If not, just delete anything unnecessary until you feel the intensity and emotional movement increase. Dialogue Rule 3: Keep It Oblique One more point, which sits kind of parallel to the bits we’ve talked about already. It’s this. If you want to create some terrible dialogue, you’d probably come up with something like this (very similar to my previous bad dialogue example): “Hey Judy.” “Hey, Brett.” “You OK?” “Yeah, not bad. What do you say? Maybe play some tennis later?” “Tennis? I’m not sure about that. I think it’s going to rain.” Tell me honestly: were you not just about ready to scream there? If that dialogue had continued like that for much longer, you probably would have done. And the reason is simple. It was direct, not oblique. So direct dialogue is where person X says something or asks a question, and person Y answers in the most logical, direct way. We hate that! As readers, we hate it. Oblique dialogue is where people never quite answer each other in a straight way. Where a question doesn’t get a straightforward response. Where random connections are made. Where we never quite know where things are going. As readers, we love that. It’s dialogue to die for. And if you want to see oblique dialogue in action, here’s a snippet from Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Network. (Because dialogue in screenwriting should follow the same rules as a novel. Some may argue that it should be even more snipped!) So here goes. This is the young Mark Zuckerberg talking with a lawyer: Lawyer: “Let me re-phrase this. You sent my clients sixteen emails. In the first fifteen, you didn’t raise any concerns.” MZ: ‘Was that a question?’ L: “In the sixteenth email you raised concerns about the site’s functionality. Were you leading them on for 6 weeks?” MZ: ‘No.’ L: “Then why didn’t you raise any of these concerns before?” MZ: ‘It’s raining.’ L: “I’m sorry?” MZ: ‘It just started raining.’ L: “Mr. Zuckerberg do I have your full attention?” MZ: ‘No.’ L: “Do you think I deserve it?” MZ: ‘What?’ L: “Do you think I deserve your full attention?” I won’t discuss that in any detail, because the technique really leaps out at you. It’s particularly visible here, because the lawyer wants and expects to have a direct conversation. (I ask a question about X, you give me a reply that deals with X. I ask a question about Y, and …) Zuckerberg here is playing a totally different game, and it keeps throwing the lawyer off track – and entertaining the viewer/reader too. Want to achieve the same effect? Just keep your dialogue not quite joined up. People should drop in random things, go off at tangents, talk in non-sequiturs, respond to an emotional implication not the thing that’s directly on the page – or anything. Just keep it broken. Keep it exciting! This not only moves the story forward but also says a lot about the character speaking. Dialogue Rule 4: Reveal Character Dynamics And Emotion Most writers use dialogue to impart information - it\'s a great way of explaining things. But it\'s also a perfect (and subtler) tool to describe a character, highlighting their mannerisms and personality. It can also help the reader connect with the character...or hate them. Let’s take a look here at Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower as another dialogue example. Here we have two characters, when protagonist Charlie, a high school freshman, learns his long-time crush, Sam, may like him back, after all. Here’s how that dialogue goes: “Okay, Charlie … I’ll make this easy. When that whole thing with Craig was over, what did you think?” … “Well, I thought a lot of things. But mostly, I thought your being sad was much more important to me than Craig not being your boyfriend anymore. And if it meant that I would never get to think of you that way, as long as you were happy, it was okay.” … … “I can’t feel that. It’s sweet and everything, but it’s like you’re not even there sometimes. It’s great that you can listen and be a shoulder to someone, but what about when someone doesn’t need a shoulder? What if they need the arms or something like that? You can’t just sit there and put everybody’s lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love. You just can’t. You have to do things.” “Like what?” … “I don’t know. Like take their hands when the slow song comes up for a change. Or be the one who asks someone for a date.” The words sound human. Sam and Charlie are tentative, exploratory – and whilst words do the job of ‘turning’ a scene, both receiving new information, driving action on – we also see their dynamic. And so we connect to them. We see Charlie’s reactive nature, checking with Sam what she wants him to do. Sam throws out ideas, but it’s clear she wants him to be doing this thinking, not her, subverting Charlie’s idea of passive selflessness as love. The dialogue shows us the characters, as clearly as anything else in the whole book. Shows us their differences, their tentativeness, their longing. Want to achieve the same effect? Understand your characters as fully as you can. The more you can do this, the more naturally you’ll write dialogue that’s right for them. You can get tips on knowing your characters here. Dialogue Rule 5: Keep Your Dialogue Tags Simple A dialogue tag is the part that helps us know who is saying what - the he said/she said part of dialogue that helps the reader follow the conversation. Keep it Simple A lot of writers try to add colour to their writing by showering it with a lot of vigorous dialogue tags. Like this: “Not so,” she spat. “I say that it is,” he roared. “I know a common blackbird when I see it,” she defended. “Oh. You’re a professional ornithologist now?” he attacked, sarcastically. That’s pretty feeble dialogue, no matter what. But the biggest part of the problem is simply that the dialogue tags (spat, roared, and so on) are so highly coloured, they take away interest from the dialogue itself – and it’s the words spoken by the characters that ought to capture the reader’s interest. Almost always, therefore, you should confine yourself to the blandest of words: He said She answered He replied And so on. Truth is, in a two-handed dialogue where it’s obvious who’s speaking, you don’t even need the word said. Get Creative As an alternative, you can have action and body language demonstrate who is saying what and their emotions behind it. The scene description can say just as much as the dialogue. Here\'s another example of the same exchange: Joan clenched her jaw. “Not so!” “I say that it is.” His voice kept rising with every word he shouted, but Joan was not going to be deterred. “I know a common blackbird when I see it.” “Oh. You’re a professional ornithologist now?” Not one dialogue tag nor adverb was used there, but we still know who said what and how it was delivered. And, if you\'re really smart and develop how your characters speak (pacing, words, syntax and speech pattern), a reader can know who is talking simply by how they\'re talking. The simple rule: use dialogue tags as invisibly as you can. I’ve written about a million words of my Fiona Griffiths series, and I doubt if I’ve used words other than say / reply and other very simple tags more than a dozen or so times in the entire series. Keep it simple! Dialogue Rule 6: Get The Punctuation Right Dialogue punctuation is so simple and important, and looks so bad if you get it wrong. Here are eight simple rules to know before your character starts to speak: Each new line of dialogue (i.e: each new speaker) needs a new paragraph – even if the dialogue is very short. Action sentences within dialogue get their own paragraphs too. The first paragraph of a chapter or section starts on the far left, and the next paragraph (whether it starts with dialogue or not) is indented. The only exception to this rule is if the sentence interrupts an otherwise continuous piece of dialogue. for example: “Yes,” she said. She brushed away a fly that had landed on her cheek. “I do think hippos are the best animals.” When you are ending a line of dialogue with he said / she said, the sentence beforehand ends with a comma not a full stop (or period), as in this for example: “Yes,” she said. If the line of dialogue ends with a question mark or exclamation mark, you still don’t have a capital letter for he said / she said.  For example: “You like hippos?” he said. If the he said / she said lives in the middle of one continuous sentence of dialogue, you need to deploy those commas like a comma-deploying ninja. Like this for example: “If you like hippos,” he said, “then you deserve to be sat on by one.” And use quotation marks, dummy. You know to do that, without me telling you, right? (Yes, yes, some serious writers of literary fiction have written entire novels without one speech mark - but they are the exception to the rule.) Use the exclamation point sparingly. Otherwise! Your! Book! Is! Going! To! Sound! Very! Hysterical! Dialogue Rule 7: Accents And Verbal Mannerisms Realistic dialogue is important, but writing dialogue is not the same as speaking. Remember that the reader\'s experience has to be smooth and enjoyable, so even if your character has an accent, speech impediment, or talks excessively...writing it exactly as it\'s spoken doesn\'t always work. Accents If you want to show that your character is from a certain part of the UK, it often helps to add a smattering of colloquial words or In The Last Thing To Burn by Will Dean, the antagonist, Len, has an accent (Yorkshire or Lancashire, it\'s obvious but never stated). The protagonist is trapped inside this man\'s home, she has no idea where she is, but by describing the endless fields and hearing his subtle accent the reader knows exactly where in the UK she\'s trapped. Len says things like: \'Going to go feed pigs\' and \'There\'s a good lass.\' You can highlight location, a character\'s age, and their social standing simply by giving a nod to their accent. On the flip-side, if they have a foreign accent, it can sometimes be too jarring to write dialogue exactly as it sounds. \'Amma gonna eata the pizza\' is an awful way to write an Italian accent - it\'s verging on racist. Try to avoid that. Instead, simply mention they have an Italian accent and let the reader fill in the blanks. Accents Written Well But, of course, there\'s always an exception! Irvine Welsh writes English in his native Scottish dialect and it\'s exemplary - but nothing something we would recommend for a novice writer. Here\'s an excerpt from Trainspotting: Third time lucky.  It wis like Sick Boy telt us: you’ve got tae know what it’s like tae try tae come off it before ye can actually dae it.  You can only learn through failure, and what ye learn is the importance ay preparation.  He could be right.  Anywey, this time ah’ve prepared.  Perhaps, if you have a Scottish character in your novel you may want them to speak in a strong accent. But getting it wrong can ruin an entire novel, so unless you are very skilled and very confident, stick to the odd colloquialism or word and leave it there. Verbal Mannerisms Whether you realise it or not, we all have speech patterns. Some of us speak slowly, others pause, people also trail off mid-sentence. Some people also use verbal mannerisms, such as adding a word to a sentence that is unnecessary but becomes a personal tic (such as \'man\', \'like\' or \'innit\'). Or repeat favourite words. These can be influenced by age, background, class, and the period in which the book is set. Here\'s an example of two people talking. I won\'t mention their ages or backgrounds, but see if you can guess. \"Chill, Bro.\" \"Chill? I\'m far from chilled, you scoundrel. That\'s my flower bed you\'ve just dug up.\" \"I found something, though. It was sticking out the ground.\" \"Outrageous behaviour. So... You... One simply can\'t go around digging up people\'s gardens!\" \"Yeah. And what?\" They both stared down at the swollen white lumps pressing out of the soil like plump snowdrops.\"What is it, though?\" Harold swallowed. \"Fingers.\" A Few Last Dialogue Rules If want some great examples of how to write in dialogue, read plays or screenplays for inspiration. Read Tennessee Williams or Henrik Ibsen. Anything by Elmore Leonard is great. Ditto Raymond Chandler or Donna Tartt. Some last tips: Keep speeches short. If a speech runs for more than three sentences or so, it (usually) risks being too long. Break it up with some action or someone else talking. Ensure characters speak in their own voice. And make sure your characters don’t sound the same as each other. Remember mannerisms, speech patterns, and how age and background influences speech. Add intrigue. Add slang and banter. Lace character chats with foreshadowing. You needn’t be writing a thriller to do this. Get in late and out early. Don’t bother with small talk. Decide the point of each interaction, begin with it as late as possible, ending as soon as your point is made. Interruption is good. So are characters pursuing their own thought processes and not quite engaging with the other. Frequently Asked Questions What Are The 5 Typesetting Rules Of Writing Dialogue? Part of the editing process is to ensure you format dialogue correctly. Formatting dialogue correctly means remembering 5 simple steps: Only spoken words go within quotation marks. Use a separate sentence for every new thing someone says or does. Punctuation marks stay inside quotation marks and don\'t forget about closing quotation marks at the end of the sentence. You can use single quotation marks or double quotation marks - but you must be consistent! Beware of capital letters. Always at the start of a sentence and after the quotations mark. How Can You Use Everyday Life To Perfect Your Dialogue? Listening to people speak will really help you perfect good dialogue. Sit in a cafe and people watch. Watch their body language and how they express themselves. Their verbal mannerisms, tics, how they choose their words, the syntax, speech patterns and turns of phrase. Make notes (without being spotted) and look out for contrasting word choices and personas. What Is A Bad Example Of Dialogue? There are plenty to choose from above - but the worst things you can do include: Using too many words Writing an accent how it\'s heard (unless you are Irvine Welsh, which most people are not) Writing dialogue that\'s irrelevant or misleading Using too many dialogue tags (or none at all) Bad punctuation - remember dialogue formatting Avoid long speeches How Do You Start Dialogue? There are many ways to start dialogue. You can ease into it, by introducing the character to the scene. Or you can jump in median res, slap bang into the centre of the action. Much like life, sometimes we hear a person\'s voice before we see them - they pop up out of nowhere - and sometimes we call them or walk into a room where they are, and we have rehearsed what we plan to say. See what works best for your scene, your characters, and the genre you are writing in (dialogue in a crime thriller will sound very different to dialogue in a young adult novel, for instance). That\'s All I Have To Say About That We really hope you have found this article interesting and that you have now found the confidence to tackle the dialogue in your novel. What your characters say and how they say it can make the difference between a good book and one that everyone is talking about. So get eavesdropping, get practising, and read as many books and plays as you can to create better dialogue. Practice makes perfect and don\'t forget to enjoy yourself!

In a short story, where a whole world or emotional journey can be summoned up and dramatised in the space of a few pages, every line and word has to count – and that’s especially true of the way you begin. Here, for inspiration, are a range of starting strategies from some great exponents of the form… 1. The Telling Detail “One Dollar And Eighty-seven Cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one’s cheek burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.” From ‘The Gift of the Magi’, by O Henry Sometimes known as the American Maupassant, O Henry’s stories are tightly plotted narratives of ordinary lives with lots of humour that usually end with a classic sting in the tale that, while surprising, flows with unerring logic from the story’s premise. In this classic tale, we know the whole set-up within a few lines. It is Christmas and Della has no money to buy a present for her beloved husband James. In their whole house they possess only two things that they really value: his gold watch and her golden hair. In a formula that has been much copied since, we watch Della sell her golden locks to raise money to buy a fancy fob for James’s watch, while unbeknownst to her he has pawned his watch to buy her a set of ivory combs that she has long coveted for her (now departed) hair! It is a tale that sounds tragic, but is actually heartening, because in the end the couple are confirmed in their real gift: the love they bear each other. (Plus, of course, Della’s hair will grow back!) But it all stems from a single telling detail: that opening cinematic detail of a tiny sum of money, piled up in pennies and scrimped from tense negotiations with tradespeople, that is all Della thinks she has to show James how much she loves him. 2. The Paradox “In the beginning, Sanford Carter was ashamed of becoming an Army cook. This was not from snobbery, at least not from snobbery of the most direct sort. During the two and a half years Carter had been in the Army he had come to hate cooks more and more. They existed for him as a symbol of all that was corrupt, overbearing, stupid, and privileged in Army life…” From ‘The Language of Men,’ by Normal Mailer Published in 1953, ‘The Language of Men’ tells the story of an over-sensitive, frustrated serviceman who, after years of being passed up for promotion and never finding his niche in the army, ends up as a cook – the thing he hates most about the army. Immediately we are curious: What will happen to a man who becomes the thing he most despises? Carter feels that he never manages to understand other men, to feel either equal to them or able to lead them. ‘Whenever responsibility had been handed to him, he had discharged it miserably, tensely, over conscientiously. He had always asked too many questions, he had worried the task too severely, he had conveyed his nervousness to the men he was supposed to lead.’ Even after starting to enjoy his work as a cook, the story builds to an incident where the men come to him and ask for a tin of oil for a fish fry-up they are organising – a party to which he is not invited. Carter stands his ground, and earns some grudging respect, but then undercuts it all again after the event with his ‘unmanliness’ – the true source of his self-disgust. The whole drama of a man failing to fit in with and gain respect among other men is foreshadowed in the paradox that’s set in motion in the story’s opening lines. 3. The Historical Backdrop “Paris was blockaded, starved, in its death agony. Sparrows were becoming scarcer and scarcer on the rooftops and the sewers were being depopulated. One ate whatever one could get. As he was strolling sadly along the outer boulevard one bright January morning, his hands in his trousers pockets and his stomach empty, M. Morissot, watchmaker by trade but local militiaman for the time being, stopped short before a fellow militiaman whom he recognized as a friend. It was M Sauvage, a riverside acquaintance.” From ‘Two Friends,’ by Guy de Maupassant A protege of Flaubert and the author of the novel Bel-Ami, Maupassant wrote over 300 short stories, many of them – like this one – set during the Franco-Prussian war, and showing how innocent lives are swept up and crushed by futile, brutal conflict. This story starts with a brief paragraph of context and another telling detail: the absence of sparrows. At this point in the conflict, the Prussian army has established a blockade around Paris and is seeking to starve out its citizens. The two friends of the title were passionate fishermen in peacetime, and after a chance encounter they convince each other to go off and fish once again. As well as the hunger they feel, they are motivated by a hankering for a return to the innocent pleasures of their pre-war lives. They slip out past the French lines, to an area where they think they will be safe, but after a brief interval of bliss the Prussians detect them, with tragic consequences… The opening line describes the war situation in vivid, journalistic terms, after which we are plunged into the tale of these two innocents. In a few telling phrases, it provides context and general background for the very particular tragedy which is about to ensue. 4. The Anecdotal Approach “Margot met Robert on a Wednesday night toward the end of her fall semester. She was working behind the concession stand at the artsy movie theatre downtown when he came in and bought a large popcorn and a box of Red Vines. “That’s an… unusual choice,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever actually sold a box of Red Vines before.” From ‘Cat Person,’ by Kristen Roupenian ‘Cat Person,’ reportedly the first short story ever to go viral, tells a simple tale of a doomed romantic encounter. Margot, a student, meets an older guy, Robert, and they begin a flirtation that turns into a date that turns into a rather unsatisfactory (for her) sexual encounter. Robert starts off as rather funny and charming, but over time we see that he is needy, insensitive, possessive, and utterly unaware of what Margot is thinking or feeling. Margot regrets the whole thing but doesn’t know how to tell him; Robert, when he is let down, turns all-too-predictably toxic. In short order he goes from mooning after her to demanding who she’s slept with to calling her a ‘whore.’ This sequence of events struck a chord with many, many people because it is clearly so familiar. The story emphasises the banality of the whole progression by narrating events in a straightforwardly chronological, anecdotal style, right from the opening paragraph. This approach serves to underline the depressing banality of Robert’s misogyny while implicitly asking the question: Why should women have to accept this as normal? 5. In Media Res “And after all the weather was ideal. They could not have had a more perfect day for a party if they had ordered it. Windless, warm, the sky without a cloud. Only the blue was veiled with a haze of light gold, as it is sometimes in early summer. The gardener had been up since dawn, mowing the lawns and sweeping them, until the grass and the dark flat rosettes where the daisy plants had been seemed to shine. As for the roses, you could not help feeling they understood that roses are the only flowers that -parties; the only flowers that everybody is certain of knowing. Hundreds, yes, literally hundreds, had come out in a single night; the green bushes bowed down as though they had been visited by archangels.” From ‘The Garden Party,’ by Katherine Mansfield Literally ‘in the middle of things’, an in media res beginning is where the story drops us into the middle of the action of the narrative, so that we are instantly caught up in events. In this case, we are plunged into the excited bustle of a well-to-do family preparing a sumptuous garden party, and the story does a fantastic job of building up the anticipation and painting a picture of the affluence of the hosts. There is a marquee to put up, a band on its way, an enormous delivery of fancy flowers, fifteen kinds of sandwich, and a retinue of servants to ensure everything is ready. Beginning with ‘and’ adds to this effect, giving us to understand that garden-party fever has been going on already for days, and seeming to hark back to earlier worries about what the weather would be like on the day. But against all this blithely affluent gaiety comes the story’s turning point: news that a poor workingman living in a cottage nearby has died in a sudden accident. Laura, a daughter of the house, wonders if it appropriate to continue with the party, especially as all the noise and music and bustle will carry to the grieving widow (who also has six children, we later discover). But just as happens to the reader with the introduction, she is swept along by the occasion, and only really reconsiders the incident at the end of a successful party, when her mother suggest she take a basket of sandwiches from the party down to the widow. Laura’s reaction to this difficult task is initially ambiguous, but ultimately it seems as if again she finds a way to paint the tragedy in complacently optimistic colours, choosing to find a serenity and beauty on the dead man’s face and so blind herself to the grim reality of the tragedy and the agony of the grieving wife. 6. The Refrain “The thing about being the murdered extra is you set the plot in motion. You were a girl good at walking past cameras, background girl, corner-of-the-frame girl. Never-held-a-script girl, went-where-the-director-said girl. You’ll be found in an alley, it’s always an alley for girls like you, didn’t-quite-make-it girls, living-four-to-a-one-bedroom-apartment girls. You’ll be found in an alley, you’ll be mistaken for a broken mannequin at first, you’ll be given a nickname. Blue Violet, White Rose, something reminiscent of Elizabeth Short, that first girl like you, that most famous one. The kind of dead girl who never really dies.” From ‘Being the Murdered Extra,’ by Cathy Ulrich Cathy Ulrich’s extraordinary ‘Murdered Ladies’ flash fictions present a series of stories – there are 40 of them in her collection, Ghosts of You – which always begin with the same line: The thing about being the murdered extra/girlfriend/moll/classmate/witch/dancer [etc] is you set the plot in motion. It’s a thought-provoking line, which grows in power with every repetition. On the face of it seems strange to see these women as setting the plot in motion, when they are all victims of male violence. But we start to see that what they set in motion is actually the story that the people who survive them will appropriate from their lost lives, and blithely relate in their absence. Each woman may set her plot in motion, but in each case she is not alive to explain how everyone gets her wrong, or projects their own version of events to absolve themselves too easily. We see that this theft of each woman’s own story is another violence that is done to them, something the stories seek in some small way to redeem. As Ulrich says: ‘Every story is looking for the lost girl from the title […] I am looking for the lost in these stories. I don’t know if I will ever find them.’ 7. Setting The Rules “The north and the west and the south are good hunting ground, but it is forbidden to go east. It is forbidden to go to any of the Dead Places except to search for metal and then he who touches the metal must be a priest or the son of a priest. Afterwards, both the man and the metal must be purified. These are the rules and the laws; they are well made. It is forbidden to cross the great river and look upon the place that was the Place of the Gods—this is most strictly forbidden. We do not even say its name though we know its name. It is there that spirits live, and demons—it is there that there are the ashes of the Great Burning. These things are forbidden—they have been forbidden since the beginning of time.” From ‘By the Waters of Babylon,’ by Stephen Vincent Benét In any story that seeks to build a world that is not ours, there is some work to be done in establishing the reality of that world – its customs, its landscape, its people, its rules. World-building stories can sometimes fall down when they indulge in too much of an expository info dump, as the accumulation of background detail can quickly dent narrative momentum. What’s so clever about the start of this story is that the rules are themselves the engine of the plot. We pan cinematically across the edges of the story’s territory, and understand the legends and forbidden areas of this world. But the quest of the narrator – who is indeed the son of a priest – will take him east, into the forbidden Place of the Gods (about which, of course, we are already very curious). At the outset of the story we do not the time in which the story is set, what kind of being he is, or where he lives. But all these things will be revealed as the narrator’s journey through a post-apocalyptic, post-technological world takes him to places that gradually start to seem very familiar… 8. Beginning With The Inciting Incident “The day my son Laurie started kindergarten he renounced corduroy overalls with bibs and began wearing blue jeans with a belt; I watched him go off the first morning with the older girl next door, seeing clearly that an era of my life was ended, my sweet-voiced nursery-school tot replaced by a longtrousered, swaggering character who forgot to stop at the corner and wave good-bye to me.” From ‘Charles,’ by Shirley Jackson Screenwriting guru Robert Mckee describes the inciting incident as a moment that ‘radically upsets the balance of forces in your protagonist’s life’. It’s the moment when our main character is plunged out of their normal routine and a challenge or quest appears which will shape their journey, and with it the rest of the story. It’s common to locate this point near the start of the story after some introductory ‘normality,’ so that we can understand how the main character’s life is to be disrupted.But here the inciting incident is placed by mystery and horror writer Shirley Jackson – best known for The Haunting of Hill House – at the very start of the story. Everything that happens flows from Laurie starting kindergarten. Laurie gets cheekier and less innocent with each passing day, as he brings home increasingly hair-raising tales of an even naughtier boy called Charles. The whole story deals with the comic escalation of Charles’ behaviour, as reader and narrator alike become ever more curious to meet the errant child and speculate on what his parents are like. I won’t spoil the ending, except to say that there is perhaps a clue in the mother’s lament in the opening paragraph about the end of an era of innocence… 9. The Thought Experiment “MY LOVER IS experiencing reverse evolution. I tell no one. I don’t know how it happened, only that one day he was my lover and the next he was some kind of ape. It’s been a month, and now he’s a sea turtle.” From ‘The Rememberer,’ by Aimee Bender Aimee Bender’s story begins by asking the reader to imagine something extraordinarily counterfactual: that her lover is regressing through millennia, going through the evolutionary process so fast – a million years a day, in reverse – that we can actually track his progress by the day. One day he is a baboon, another a salamander; eventually he is no longer even visible to the naked eye. As with so many of Bendee’s stories the result is mournful, strange, poetic and profound. She takes a surreal thought like this and turns into a powerful meditation on memory, the difference between evolution and maturity, speciesism and loss. And it all begins with that challenging idea which confronts us in the very first sentence. 10. THE CONUNDRUM “1-0. Who would expect the Embassy of Cambodia? Nobody. Nobody could have expected it, or be expecting it. It’s a surprise, to us all. The Embassy of Cambodia! Next door to the embassy is a health center. On the other side, a row of private residences, most of them belonging to wealthy Arabs (or so we, the people of Willesden, contend). They have Corinthian pillars on either side of their front doors, and—it’s widely believed—swimming pools out back. The embassy, by contrast, is not very grand. It is only a four- or five-bedroom North London suburban villa, built at some point in the thirties, surrounded by a red brick wall, about eight feet high. And back and forth, cresting this wall horizontally, flies a shuttlecock. They are playing badminton in the Embassy of Cambodia. Pock, smash. Pock, smash.” From ‘The Embassy of Cambodia,’ by Zadie Smith This subtle and absorbing story from Zadie Smith opens with a mystery: an embassy, set in a leafy north London suburb rather than a grand central district of the city, and a wall, behind which a mysterious game of badminton is being played. The rest of the story picks at this mystery and uses the imagined score in the ongoing game-playing as a backdrop to the unfolding tale of Fatou, a domestic servant to the affluent Derawals, who has escaped servitude and dodged abuse in Africa only to face privations and hardships in London. Each mini-chapter of the story is headed with a score from the badminton match – from 1-0 up to 21-0. This mechanism provides a rhythmic framework to the tale. We may never learn who actually holds the rackets, but we see that the back-and-forth motion behind the wall of an embassy – an institution with the power to grant deny or people access to whole a country – is a fitting counterpoint to the enforced travels of impoverished migrants, and to the desperate movements of Fatou’s hopes and fears in a world where she has little agency or resources, and only one friend. Now you’ve seen how these authors have done it, it’s time to get stuck into actually putting pen to paper – or fingertips to keyboard – and start writing your short story. For more from Dan, check out his top 10 steps for writing short stories (with even more examples!).