My experience on the Ultimate Novel Writing Programme: Month 5

Hello again! Welcome back to my series of insights into what it’s like to undertake the Ultimate Novel Writing Programme.  

No sooner had I cogitated on the aspects of character last month, when along came month five with its deeply intricate topic: emotions and senses. Never let it be said that the Ultimate Novel Writing Programme doesn’t deliver on detailed information, techniques and tips, and ‘Ah! I hadn’t thought about it like that…’ moments. My brain is full, straining at its zips, like an overstuffed holiday suitcase. And, just like a packed suitcase, I’m off on yet another happy writing adventure. 

From a certain angle, however, this topic feels like home. I’m writing in literary genre, so my stories are quiet in terms of dramatic plot action, but tend to go deep into character. I’m interested in all the questions about why people feel and behave the way they do. And I’m trying really hard to get better at seeing the emotional signs, the expected reactions, the unexpected reactions and the detail of what the situational experience involves. 

In martial arts, boxing and self-defence, students are taught to watch out for micro-movements: ‘tells’ or ‘tags’ like dropping a shoulder before a punch, shifting weight before a kick – even as tiny a ‘read’ as their eyes focussing on a point on your body. All of these can telegraph what the attack might be and help to quicken your response and choice of defensive move. The work authors have to do, to portray realistic, plausible emotion and sensations, isn’t too far off what a karate practitioner needs to do (less being thrown around, obviously!) My family are used to me constantly people-watching and being asked out-of-the-blue, random questions that begin with “How would you feel if…?” or “What’s your first thought if…?”  

All of us are so normal, average and ‘everyman’ on the surface. But we’re also, all of us, having a deeply existential experience on a massive spinning rock travelling at thousands and thousands of miles per hour, whilst hurtling towards an unknowable destination. Some of that internal truth – the marvel, the passion, the love, sadness, anger, resentment, the frustration, the happiness, the joy – it leaks outwards onto our surface, in tiny tells. It is this that a writer must become adept at seeing and noting. Then, ‘all’ we have to do is write it down with precision and brevity, as judicious as a scavenging crow, as shrewd and wily as a fox. Probably the best compliment I, as an author, could ever receive would be something like: “her writing is so observant, her storytelling beautifully astute.” I’m looking forward to seeing that in print one day in one of the big-name newspapers (big hairy audacious dreams are the best sort to have!) 

With this month’s topic, I’ve been thinking about the emotions and senses of the act of writing itself, of being a writer and trying to achieve big writing goals, and I realise how fractal this topic is. It is as if I am folding in on myself when I consider how to portray characters’ emotions and senses. The whole magical alchemy of it, the macro and the micro existing on the same pin-head. Or, as the legendary figure, Hermes Trismegistus put it: as above, so below, as within, so without. I find myself writing stories of emotion and sensation in order to describe the experience of learning the skills to write stories with emotion and sensation.  

I’m attempting something in my work-in-progress that is really technically challenging for me. I’m playing against certain conventions of narrative tension and introducing slippery point-of-view perspectives – issues that may trip me up if I’m not careful. Frankly, I’ve been questioning why I’m being so reckless. The answer comes to me in the form of a story. A memory. I am aged nineteen and I’m galloping across the stubble of a harvested corn field on my chestnut gelding. There’s a big oxer of a hedge ahead of us, a wide, dark ditch at its base, and that horse of mine was infamous for dropping a shoulder half a stride out from fences and throwing me. Regardless, I gallop him towards it, pressing my heels into his sides, standing up in the stirrups, encouraging him to go, go, go. I’m counting down the strides with the thunder of his hooves as my metronome, my fingers entangled in his mane, wiry as twine against my knuckles; an attempt to fool myself I’ll be able to hold on, be safe, if something goes wrong. And the moment comes. I’m out of strides. I’ve either asked him for the right take-off point and he’ll obey, lifting, leaping, flying up and across, into the summer blue… Or I’ve misjudged it and he’ll duck out on me, throwing me down there into that black ditch of brambles.  

Did I make it to the other side of that long-ago leap? Yes, I did. 

Will I succeed with this W-i-P and the portrayal of character I’m attempting? To be decided.  

One thing’s for sure, the structure and accountability that the Ultimate Novel Writing Programme demands of me – and the ongoing support of my tutor group and my tutor, Andrew Miller (longlisted for this year’s Booker Prize with his latest book, The Land in Winter – again, huge congratulations, Teach!) – is definitely giving me the courage to kick on.  

Rachel Davidson is a long-term Premium Member of Jericho Writers prior to joining our Writer Support Team, Rachel loves helping hopeful writers, such as herself, to solve their problems and take a step or two closer to achieving their writing dreams. Rachel has previously self-published a trilogy, the first of which achieved bestseller status in fourteen Amazon categories in the UK, US, Australia and Canada and is now seeking her traditional publishing debut with her latest manuscript. You can find out more about Rachel via her Instagram @RachelDavidsonAuthor.