Honeysuckle friable acolyte steeple

We just spent a couple of weeks with Kurt Vonnegut and an irascible Elmore Leonard. I was going to keep the series going with lists of rules from other writers, but I couldn’t quite find a list that had enough grit to feel substantial.

So instead of a one-author list, here are some suggested rules or bits of advice from a Hotch-Potch of Writing Genius.

Before that:

DON’T FORGET!

The deadline for applications to the Ultimate Novel Writing Programme / Novel Writing Course is 7 September. If you have even a part-interest in doing one of these courses, then get your application in now and book a call so you can chat to one of our team about your writing and whether it’s the right next step for you. We won’t pressure you to buy anything. That call is just an opportunity to de-mystify the course and figure out if it will work for you. Getting your application in before the deadline means you won’t miss out, if it is your best option.

Raymond Chandler: “When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.”

I admire RC hugely: I think he’s one of the great American writers who (as I like to point out) was also a great English one – he was educated at the same public school as PG Wodehouse.

Now, on the one hand, Chandler wasn’t being serious. He was talking about the pulp fiction industry in America, where he cut his teeth, and which did not greatly concern itself with seriousness of purpose.

That said, action matters. Decisive plot twists matter. They propel a story. That’s obviously true of genre, but it’s true of decent literary fiction, too (though a plot twist here may be less obviously material than a man with a gun.) And if a story is stalling, then throwing in a major plot development? Good advice, always.

Michael Moorcock: “My first rule was given to me by T.H. White, author of The Sword in the Stone and other Arthurian fantasies, and was: Read. Read everything you can lay hands on. I always advise people who want to write a fantasy or science fiction or romance to stop reading everything in those genres and start reading everything else, from Bunyan to Byatt.”

I think this is really good advice. I do think that authors need to know the terrain of their genre pretty well, but I think that limiting yourself to that genre is a mistake. The more widely you read – across genres, across time and across nations – the more your head will fill with possibility.

That also says that it’s more important to read lots of authors than it is to read lots of books. If you read one Patricia Cornwell novel, you’ll probably learn almost as much from it as if you read 20. Read twenty different authors instead, and make sure that one is French, and one Japanese, and one Egyptian, and one has been dead for 200 years, and so on.

P.D. James: “Increase your word power. Words are the raw material of our craft. The greater your vocabulary, the more effective your writing. We who write in English are fortunate to have the richest and most versatile language in the world. Respect it.”

That sounds like a good wholemeal-loaf type rule. Not exciting, but you know it’s good for you. But – I don’t really agree with it. I think you know enough words. But do you use them?

When did you last use any of the following words in your writing?

Honeysuckle | friable | acolyte | steeple | vertiginous | ammonite | curio | trepidation

You know all of those words. But it’s easy when talking about lovely summer scented flowers to say just “lovely summer scented flowers”, or perhaps to get as far as thinking about roses and lavender. It’s easy when thinking about something with a flat spiral structure to use the term “a flat spiral”. But wouldn’t those thoughts be better extended by using the terms honeysuckle and ammonite? Not every time, of course, but sometimes?

So: you don’t need to add to your word hoard. Just use the damn hoard.

Zadie Smith: “Don’t romanticise your ‘vocation’. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no ‘writer’s lifestyle’. All that matters is what you leave on the page.”

Damn right. Don’t be precious.

You don’t need to write with a fountain pen in a notebook covered in black silk. You don’t need to wear a kimono. It doesn’t matter if your upstairs neighbour plays horrible music. I don’t care if you don’t have the table you wanted in your local coffee shop.

Write.

Put down sentences, as mediocre as you like, then shape them up so they work. Then move on to the next one. Make sure your book holds the reader’s interest. Then go again.

Billy Wilder (screenwriter): “A tip from Lubitsch: Let the audience add up two plus two. They’ll love you forever.” And another rule: “In doing voice-overs, be careful not to describe what the audience already sees. Add to what they’re seeing.”

Yes! Let the audience do the work. If you do summarise something, do so after the reader has already figured it out, so you’re consolidating an understanding, not creating it.

And obviously, we don’t have voice-overs exactly in novels, but we do sort of, when an interior monologue comments on the action just described. So be additive always.

The real point here is that nothing engages the reader as much as the detective work of figuring out implication from sub-text. Why would so and so say that to thingamajig? Why use that word? Why actually did that coffee cup get broken? It’s those tiny questions that keep a reader glued to your book. Character and plot and setting and dialogue are all just tools to create a really strong adhesion.

Feedback Friday / Your rules

Go on then: your rules of writing. Maximum of ten. And fewer than three? Bah, you aren’t trying. What works for you? What have you learned? You’re welcome to include rules that apply to editing, agents, publishing and all that. When you’re ready, log in to our shiny new Townhouse and post yours here.

Til soon.

Harry