Make Your Writing Real

One of the reasons that people become immersed in a story is because the writer has made the character, their actions, and everything else real. Writers achieve reality in their stories when they make good, and continuous use of all the sense. If your character is holding something, a book for instance, how does that object feel in their hands? As a writer you need to know the answer to this question to make it more easily imagined by your reader.

Touch, Taste and Smell

You should make good use of each of these senses when you are writing. The reader wants to taste what your character is eating, feel the caress of their hands on a loved one, and smell the smoke that threatens fire. You, the writer, may know what your character is feeling, and what their food tastes like, but your readers won't unless you take the time to add these extra details in your writing.

If it's a rainy day, don't just say it is raining, let your character reveal how wet they got by taking off a jacket and shaking it, towel drying their hair, the feel of their nose running and the drips on the carpet. Let your readers experience that soaking and you will have them hooked.

Keeping a Novel Notebook as Part of the Writing Process

While I have always written some bits of a novel in a notebook before adding it to the story, it's only recently that I have begun keeping novel notebooks for each of my WIPs. Giving each story its own notebook makes it a lot easier to keep track of where I am with a particular book, than it might if they were all lumped together One of the great things about this is that it allows me not just to chart the progress of a story, but to question why a character has acted in a certain way, how it influrncesand whether I should change that action. A novel notebook is also a great way of exploring a character's personality and motivations, so that I, and, hopefully, the reader will have a greater understanding of what someone is doing, and why.

A Fresh Look

Using a notebook in this way means that I gain a greater understanding, not just of the story, but of my own way of working. If these notebooks continue to be as useful by the end of the book, as they seem to be at the beginning and in the middle, then I might think about publishing them as novel writing handbooks. The notebook means that I take a fresh look at both character and setting, and how even the most mundane aspects of a setting can influence a character's actions, motivations, and feelings.

Setting and Character

It took me a while to understand how much of an influence a setting has on a particular story. For example, in the Victorian novel notebook, I've been researching the music hall and how much that changed people's lives, for both better and worse. While the music halls were cheap entertainment for both the masses and the moneyed classes who felt like slumming it, they also had a nasty underside. The music hall girls often supplemented their income with a bit of prostitution, which was their choice. Some of the younger girls, however, were sometimes picked up and forced to live in a brothel, which meant the end of the career they'd been hoping for.

Setting can influence character in both bad and good ways, even Chandler talked about the mean streets of LA, and how it was home to mean people, and a man who was neither mean, nor influenced by that meanness, other than to alleviate it. Sometimes a setting is as much a part of a character's personality and growth, as the people they meet, and the actions they undertake, and all these things can be explored in the novel notebook. Do you keep a novel notebook, and if so, how do you think it helps the process.

Keeping a Novel Notebook as Part of the Writing Process

While I have always written some bits of a novel in a notebook before adding it to the story, it's only recently that I have begun keeping novel notebooks for each of my WIPs. Giving each story its own notebook makes it a lot easier to keep track of where I am with a particular book, than it might if they were all lumped together One of the great things about this is that it allows me not just to chart the progress of a story, but to question why a character has acted in a certain way, how it influrncesand whether I should change that action. A novel notebook is also a great way of exploring a character's personality and motivations, so that I, and, hopefully, the reader will have a greater understanding of what someone is doing, and why.

A Fresh Look

Using a notebook in this way means that I gain a greater understanding, not just of the story, but of my own way of working. If these notebooks continue to be as useful by the end of the book, as they seem to be at the beginning and in the middle, then I might think about publishing them as novel writing handbooks. The notebook means that I take a fresh look at both character and setting, and how even the most mundane aspects of a setting can influence a character's actions, motivations, and feelings.

Setting and Character

It took me a while to understand how much of an influence a setting has on a particular story. For example, in the Victorian novel notebook, I've been researching the music hall and how much that changed people's lives, for both better and worse. While the music halls were cheap entertainment for both the masses and the moneyed classes who felt like slumming it, they also had a nasty underside. The music hall girls often supplemented their income with a bit of prostitution, which was their choice. Some of the younger girls, however, were sometimes picked up and forced to live in a brothel, which meant the end of the career they'd been hoping for.

Setting can influence character in both bad and good ways, even Chandler talked about the mean streets of LA, and how it was home to mean people, and a man who was neither mean, nor influenced by that meanness, other than to alleviate it. Sometimes a setting is as much a part of a character's personality and growth, as the people they meet, and the actions they undertake, and all these things can be explored in the novel notebook. Do you keep a novel notebook, and if so, how do you think it helps the process.

Process of the Second Lambeth Croak Novel

When I began this blog, as I was finishing the first book, it never occurred to me that it would be almost three years before the second one was completely finished, I'm just waiting on my cover designed and then I can upload to Amazon. Writing long fiction has been a huge learning curve for me, I have heard some writers say that the second book was often the hardest, and that's certainly been the case here. Paradoxically, I'm already a third of the way through the 3rd book in the series, not sure yet whether there will be a fourth, as I also have a Victorian novel in the works.

More Than One Project

In recent months I have discovered that having more than one book at a time on the go works well for me. When I get fed up with a character, or I get stuck on a plot point or beat I swap to the other project and let my brain mull over the problem from the first one while I am working. Whether this would work for everyone I don't know, all writers are different. Some, like me, work better with more than one project on the go, while others would never think of starting work on something else while they were still struggling with the first one.

Working Methods   

Every writer discovers their own way of working, but sometimes others want to know how writers, and particularly novelists work. I have to say that my methods are probably not the best, otherwise why else would it have taken me three years to complete the second one? I think that the first book is like climbing a mountain that you've never climbed before; you keep going until you reach the top, because if you stop, you're unlikely to get started again. What I found with the second book was that I got off to a flying start and then I dried up.

I tried resolving potential plot problems, writing in short or long spurts, and revisiting my original premise, I think that somewhere along the line I lost focus and weeks would pass without a word being written. Eventually, after much coddling from husband and friends, I managed to knuckle down and completed the draft early this year. Since that draft, the book has been edited three times based on comments from my beta readers, and it is now, apart from its cover, ready to go.

What I've Learned

I have learned a lot from the process, not least that my brain works better when I have more than one project to work on, besides my bit of freelance work. I've written poetry for years, but have found that quite difficult in the last year, so I'm hoping to get tips from my writing group to get back on track with this. When I'm fed up with writing altogether, I either knit or paint watercolours - not sure what either of these things has to do with the process. I think that these are also creative undertakings, but require less thought than writing and less pressure - even though that pressure might be self-imposed. I've found that editors may also exert pressure, mine is certainly glad that the work on the second novel Lambeth Croak "Death Gangland Style, is finished apart from the cover. Do you get stuck with your writing?