S.C. Skillman's Blog, page 69

How To Pick a Topic to Write Creatively About

Creativity as a process has only one true source, across all fields of creative endeavour, whether that be in the arts or the sciences – and that is, the unconscious. Ayd Instone in "Creativity and the Beatles" has this to say: "It wasn't until 1995 that Paul McCartney realised…that his 1965 song, Yesterday, apparently on the surface, about the loss of a lover was actually about the very real loss of his own mother a few years earlier from cancer… a pain that he wasn't consciously aware of when he wrote it… Perhaps creativity is a ghost after all, a spectre of energy, emotion and hidden memory that at certain times, perhaps when we least expect it, will come to haunt us".

It is well known that the idea for the tune of "Yesterday" first came to Paul McCartney in a dream. Dreams have a large part to play in how our unconscious minds communicate with us.

Whether we write, or whether we create in any other field, for the initial inspiration we are reliant on the unconscious. This can make us insecure and vulnerable; for control comes from the conscious mind, and the unconscious lies beyond. Of course, there's a time when structure and reason are vital; but my point here is that when you pick your topic to write creatively about, behind all your conscious selections there will be something else at work that you can have no control over at all.

And many great novels which catch the imagination of large readerships have been based on ideas that arose from the author's unconscious. Take for instance the story of "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde". These characters came to Robert Louis Stevenson in a dream. And the novelist John Fowles has said that the first idea for "The French Lieutenant's Woman" came to him simply through an image of a woman standing alone at the end of the Cobb at Lyme Regis, gazing out to sea. He didn't know where the image had come from. But there it was – and a novel arose from it. And creativity is not confined to the arts. Scientists too are creative. Thomas Edison said many of his most brilliant ideas and insights came to him in his "creative alpha state" between wakefulness and sleep.

Therefore I believe the answer to the challenge of "How to pick a topic to write creatively about" lies in your unconscious mind. This is the key to the creative process.

Learning From Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway said, "The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof shit-detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it." By this Hemingway signalled the vital importance of honesty and truth in creative writing – and these two are not easily found, least of all by the writer himself in the very act of writing.

I have known these words of Hemingway's for two or three decades now; and on several occasions in my writing life they have come to the fore of my consciousness. Not only have I personally experienced their relevance in all the failings and small triumphs of my writing life; but I see that Hemingway touches upon something so vital, it never loses its relevance and practical importance throughout a writer's life, to the moment of death.

When I write a first draft of a novel, even if writing to a rough plan, I find that I write most fluently in the same way I used to "waffle" in my English essays at school. That is the only way to get a first draft completed, I find, in a relatively short period of time (i.e. a couple of months). The greatest challenge lies in the writer's ability to keep writing despite the fact that they strongly suspect Hemingway's detector, referred to above, would probably break down through wear and tear if it ranged over this particular manuscript.

The time for Hemingway's detector to spring into action is when you come to read over your manuscript. I have found that there is nothing so exposing as creative writing. If you are a snob, or a racist, or a prude, or greedy, or morally shabby or lazy, be sure your writing will find you out. I have struggled with the things I have learned about myself which stand exposed in my own manuscript. This may well be why so many would-be writers give up. But if you are a true writer, you will take hold of Hemingway's detector and scan it over your manuscript. I have found all sorts of moralising, self-righteousness, pontificating elements in my tone and plot and ideas, whilst using Hemingway's detector; and have transformed my own attitude to the behaviour of my characters.

What I have learned from the use of Hemingway's detector is that in creative writing, none of us have the right to stand in judgement over the behaviour of our own characters. If we do, be sure it will register on Hemingway's detector.

Therefore, the key points of the lesson are painful and strict self-examination; followed by the guts to go forward with what you have learned, and to act on it. We all know Hemingway did that, in his writing. But I believe this applies to every writer, at whatever stage. If this were not true, his words wouldn't keep surfacing through the years, and reminding me of the challenge I have set myself.

How to Create Layers Within Each of your Characters

Every person consists of several layers, starting with the thin veneer you see on the surface, then tooling down deeper and deeper to the core which remains hidden to many. But a novelist's task is to penetrate these layers. This must be one of the most enjoyable challenges in fiction writing: building up a character in layers, through what they say of themselves, what others say of them, through their actions and words, through thoughts, hopes and dreams, through references to former events and relationships. And the task which is most difficult and testing yet carries the most excitement is knowing what to reveal, how much and when. The fiction writer uses real life as a springboard, and then plunges into the water, passing through the shallows, into the depths of character creation.

1) When your observations of life have brought you to the stage at which you are ready to start creating a character, first you must write a character bible. You will refer to this throughout your novel, and it will contain a large amount of information you will never explicitly use within the story. But it's vital you know all these things about your character. Here you'll make notes on your character's values, ambition, goal, conflict and so on. But you will also need to record such details as date of birth, colour of hair and eyes, weight, height, work history, family background etc. Here too you can record the character's philosophy of life, best childhood memory, and a synopsis of the novel as if it were taken from this character's point of view.

2) Once you have your character bible for each character, and have planned your scenes (or if you prefer simply have a rough idea of the direction the story may take) then you can start the first draft of the novel. The magic begins when the characters start taking over and determining how the plot will change and twist, in a way that can totally surprise the author.

3) When you have your first draft, you will then go back and look over this canvas that you have filled with paint, and start focussing on the details. Then you will find the anomalies, the logical impossibilities, the inaccuracies. None of that mattered in the first draft because you were simply covering the canvas. But it is at this point that you will go much more deeply into the layering of your characters, and will acknowledge things about them that may mean you have to alter what you wrote in your character bible.

4) It is when you reach the point of offering your novel for professional appraisal and feedback, that you first experience the miracle. This is when people talk to you about your characters, taking them seriously as if they were real living beings with a separate existence and integrity of their own. It makes all the isolation and stubbornness and obsession of being a novelist worthwhile. The next step is of course a contract of publication, and then beyond that your readers, the audience you always wanted to connect with.

Great fictional characters do indeed have a life of their own, because then they inhabit people's minds and imaginations, and are carried through the years, like Elizabeth Bennett, or Miss Haversham, or Oliver Twist, or Jane Eyre, or, perhaps, Hercule Poirot, or James Bond, or Harry Potter….

These are the heights, but it is no business of the novelist to even think of them while creating and layering the character. How your characters and story will be received is irrelevant at that point. Only the act of creation itself matters.

The Writing Process for Creating a Novel in Less Than a Month

The task is: write a novel of at least 50,000 words in a month; and by the word "novel" we must mean, of course, "the first draft of a novel." For I have not yet ever created a novel in a month; but in nine days time I will have done that very thing; and therefore I consider myself qualified to write this post.

Here are three tips to have that completed first draft of a novel in a month:

1) Do your preparation work before the month begins. Ideas will have been hatching in your mind for the last couple of years, perhaps; and now you have a ground plan. You have created a one-sentence storyline, and expanded it to a blurb and a synopsis and perhaps you have drawn up a list of scenes for your novel. Not everybody needs to have done this before they begin writing the novel. Some like to plunge into the writing with two or three characters and a conflict in mind, and let the story emerge. But I had already been thinking about my characters for a year or so before beginning my novel. And I know from experience what it's like to allow your characters to take over. Characters will do that anyway, even if you have a plan. But I now believe having a plan is a very good way to start, even if the plan is radically changed by the time you've finished your first draft.

2) Begin writing, and don't go back to edit. Control your desire to look over previous chapters and assess or improve them. This needs great discipline. Just keep writing even if you suspect what you are writing is rubbish, because you are going to go back over your manuscript anyway after the month is up and use it as the basis for your second draft.

3) Don't fall into the trap of slacking or subsiding or falling away because your novel feels as if it's sinking in the middle. Introduce something crazy or bizarre that occurs to you; just follow that instinct, introduce it into your plot, set your characters the task of dealing with it and keep on writing.

Those who find their minds go blank at the prospect of producing a full-length work of the imagination should remember this one thing: creating a first draft of fiction requires only motivation and courage. It requires you to forget everything negative you ever believed of yourself, and to believe in whatever ideas come to you, believe in them enough to incorporate them in your first draft. When you read your manuscript through in a month's time, you may be amazed at what you came up with apparently "out of nowhere".

Children's Books – Young Adults age 13-18

When a fiction writer sets out to interest an agent in their newly-completed manuscript, they must state in very specific terms who is the intended audience. In many cases this might be straightforward; but what if your novel has a teenage hero? Does that automatically mean the audience must be age 13-18?

The answer is no, because some novels starring a teenage hero have captivated a general adult audience. I believe that this is because the portrayal of the hero has a universal timeless element to it, and isn't tied down to the perceptions of any one generation.

A common expression in the publishing world now is "crossover" – I dislike this term, finding it deceptive and misleading. I prefer "universal appeal". Neither of these phrases, though, will appear in your query letter, in which you have to identify a very specific audience whom you intend to target. This of course doesn't necessarily have any bearing on who may ultimately be captivated by your novel, but unfortunately it's a requirement when submitting your novel to an agent.

There are many examples of successful adult novels with a teenage protagonist. And many teenage readers, too, are reading mainstream literature intended for an adult audience. Keen readers might even start reading these novels as early as age 12 or 13. And when they do read YA novels, they like to read of a protagonist at least two or three years older than themselves to get an idea of what might be coming up in their own lives. Also adult novels are a good place to learn about the adult problems, dilemmas and challenges they themselves will start to deal with in the next ten years.

I suggest an author embarking on her first novel with a teenage protagonist might consider these 3 things:

1) Recognise that many before you have based their young protagonist on their own memories of how it felt to be that age; the thoughts and feelings, the dreams and hopes, the agonies and disappointments. If the author is in her 20′s she doesn't have far to look back. But no teenage protagonist can be really convincing unless the author has built into the portrayal something of her own memories from the same age. It is a fallacy to believe you can base your portrayal solely on the teenagers you see and interact with in your own daily life. This must be at best superficial observation. What really matters in a character is what is felt and experienced. At this age – 13-18 – emotions are intensely felt; humiliations are mortifying, injustices and wrongs are seen in sharp relief; kindness and empathy is never forgotten; cheating, betrayal and lies will leave their mark for life.

2) Consider that young adult readers will recognise and respond to other factors present in a story as well as whether the teenage hero is 100% believable in terms of 21st century youth culture. If those other factors are strong enough to weigh against any small inaccuracies the story will still capture the imagination and succeed. It's unnecessary to use current teenage slang. Regular words should be used in speech – avoid long, pedestrian, cerebral words inapppropriate to normal speech unless the character is intended to be that way.

3) In addition read a lot of successful literature with a teenage protagonist: "I Capture the Castle" by Dodie Smith; "The Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger or "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time" by Mark Haddon are all good examples. A successful novel with a teenage protagonist does not necessarily have to be categorised as Young Adult. So I suggest you forget about its category while you are writing it, and write as if it was mainstream adult fiction whose hero happens to be between the ages of 13 and 18. Enjoy and love your teenage hero!

SC Skillman

How to Create a Novel that Your Readers Won't Want to Put Down

There are five essential things you as an author must do if you want to create a novel that your reader won't want to put down: 1) create empathy with the main character and their quest; 2) captivate the reader with your tone of voice 3) engage the reader's emotions 4) keep questions open and 5) build up suspense.

First, though, you must remember that only a proportion of all fiction readers actually want a novel they can't put down. Some readers like a novel that has a gentle pace that can indeed be put down, to fit in with their lifestyle, and can then be taken up some time later and the story picked up again without the reader having to go back and remind themselves who certain characters are and how they relate to each other. This in itself is a skill to be admired. But here we are talking about the kind of novel which has its audience hooked from page one, in such a way that engagement with the story is absolute.

1) Empathy with the main character and his or her quest – a reader's attention will be lost unless strong feelings are aroused about the chief protagonist and the central question of the novel. Of course this varies through different genres; and the reader of hard-boiled crime fiction probably won't talk in terms of "feelings" at  all, but nevertheless there will be a powerful urge to continue reading, to care about what happens and to want to know the answers to the questions the author poses.

2) Captivate the reader with your tone of voice -  a captivating tone of voice comes from the narration and from the main viewpoint character – there are many errors to be made here; if a reader feels patronised, fed too much information, or antagonised by the voice of the novel, nothing can more swiftly guarantee that they will give up on the story.

3) Engage the reader's emotions – the reason why a reader cannot put a novel down is also a great deal to do with the emotional stakes – do we fear for the main character; do we hope for them; how strongly do we care about the outcome?

4) Keep questions open - posing questions and structuring the supply of answers - within classic story structure there must be one central over-arching question which is kept open throughout the course of the novel; and when that question is answered, the story is over. But  beneath that question many others must be set, belonging to the sub-plots; and when answers are provided to these subsidiary questions, they must lead to others,and so on.

5) Build up Suspense – this involves the careful selection of information, and critical decisions about what can be revealed to the reader, when; and what has to be withheld until later. A writer must exercise skill, fine judgement and instinct in this. Another essential aspect of suspense has to do with viewpoint – what does each character know? It is vital that an author keeps strong control of this – and it is an area where  mistakes can easily be made.

A truly unputdownable novel can make life rather difficult for a reader – you must have that open novel in your hand on the bus or train, whilst you are cooking, late at night in bed, even walking along the street… but making this happen can be great fun for a writer, and experiencing it is one of the greatest joys of being a keen reader of fiction. All readers can find ways of coping with it within their lifestyle – I certainly can! 

S.C.Skillman

 

How To Cope With Defeat After Having Been Defeated

'Defeat' – what an ugly, depressing word. Life's most negative experience, you may say – the one thing we all dread, the reality that lies behind the fear which prevents many from even trying to achieve their dreams, a dirty word in this society where we worship success and achievement. I believe, though, that how we handle defeat has everything to do with the quality of our success.

Consider the words of the one writer who perfectly expresses the experience of depression: the author of "Ecclesiastes". "It is better to go to a house of mourning than to a house of feasting… sorrow is better than laughter, because a sad face is good for the heart," he says.

What a misery! we may say. And yet the truth is that many who achieve great fortune have personal experience of the worst feelings that accompany defeat. Take as an example J.K. Rowling for whom success was rather bewildering; for a long time she carried within her the memory of being the person whose opinion was of no interest whatsoever. Now the world cares enormously about her opinion; but she will probably never forget what it felt like to consider "what a mess I have made of my life."

From the point of view of a creative writer, defeat is a regular experience. You needn't go far on the internet to find amusing lists of rejection letters sent by publishers to the authors of very famous books. The experience of all these – as it turns out, temporary – defeats – gives an author a sense of perspective. Perhaps this is the sense of perspective that the Roman Emperors never had – those who were deified, anyway; nor the most notorious of the dictators we see around us running various regimes in the world today. To be at the very top, believing you are infallible, or a god, or universally loved, and to annihilate all who oppose you must be the most inhuman of all states to be in.

Therefore, when we struggle to hold onto our dreams, when we strive to succeed, when we offer ourselves again and again, and are turned down, or rejected, or knocked back…. instead of hardening ourselves against that experience, and going into denial, we must take it into ourselves, and accept it as part of our life-journey, and allow the emotions that it arouses to run their course. This is the dynamic way to handle defeat, to acknowledge that we can ride it like surf, and pass over, or sometimes through the waves, to the deep, calm ocean beyond.

[image error] [image error] [image error] [image error]

How to Know Which Point of View to Use in a Story

For the purpose of this post I'm assuming you have chosen Third Person Point of View, and your dilemma is – which character should take the main Point of View?

It has been said that there's no original plot or story around. But what makes any story unique is the angle the author takes. And the angle is determined by the point of view. Choosing the best point of view is absolutely critical to the success of a story. If it's taken from the point of view of a character the reader doesn't care about much, or a character who is peripheral to the central drama, then the story will fail.

In selecting the best point of view one determining factor stands out above all others – that is, high emotional stakes. When you look at your story you need to ask "Whose story is this?" The answer lies in the person who has the highest emotional stakes in what is going on.

Making decisions on this is often more challenging than you may imagine. After all, a fictional story can often arise from the unconscious – which, as I'm sure Carl Jung, that master of the subject would agree, can be very undisciplined and chaotic. Once the story has been created, then some kind of rational structure must be forged for it. These are the five questions the author has to ask herself:

1) What is the central question of the story, to which the reader wants to know the answer?

2) What information must be held back, in order to create suspense?

3) What will the outcome of the story be? – in other words, the answer to that central question?

4) Who has the most to gain or the most to lose, hanging on the answer to that central question?

5) With whom will the reader most want to identify?

Sometimes of course a new story can spring up directly from the main POV character and their dilemma. In other cases, however, a story can arise from the unconscious mind, and then the author needs to do some excavation work, in order to extract from that story idea the individual who is in most peril, emotionally or physically, from the working out of the plot.

It can be an entertaining exercise to imagine a famous story as it would be from the point of view of a different character. For instance, consider the Harry Potter stories taken from the point of view of Hermione or Ron – interesting, but not as powerful as the story from Harry's POV. Then consider the story from Snape's POV – disastrous! There would be no suspense whatsoever. Admittedly that is rather an extreme example.

And then, finally, we turn to examples which look on the surface like exceptions to my rule of high emotional stakes. Take the case of the new tenant at Wuthering Heights, who opens Emily Bronte's classic story. And then events are recounted by Nellie Dean, the nursemaid. So in what way can Nellie be described as the character who has the highest emotional stakes in the story? Perhaps "Wuthering Heights" is a special case. By virtue of Nellie's long service with this family, her devotion and sheer emotional stability, she becomes a pivotal point for the melodramatic tale of tumultous emotions, violence and tragedy. Perhaps then, "mental and emotional stability" might be another qualification for a POV character, especially in a tale such as this – in other words, the one character with whom your reader will want to identify – if only on grounds of sanity.

S.C.Skillman

 

[image error]

Research and Fiction – How to Research When Something Doesn't Exist

My first thought upon answering this question is, that it does exist – in the writer's imagination. And therefore, it is to the writer's own experience, own memories, own observations and wisdom that we look, to conduct our research. But my second thought is this: when, as a creative writer, you are writing about something that doesn't exist, what is the most desired outcome? It is this: that your reader must – while he is reading your book – believe in it. During the process of engaging with your story, your reader must feel, react, respond, exactly as if this thing does exist. So how do we achieve that?

We make use of a device with a well-established name: "the willing suspension of disbelief". It's what happens when we are absorbed in a Doctor Who story, or a tale of Arthur and Merlin. It happens to all those who read and love "The Lord of the Rings" or the Narnia stories… and of course all successful novels in the fantasy and science fiction genre. As we read, we believe. That's not because we actually think Middle Earth is real, or it is indeed possible to walk through a wardrobe of fur coats into a snow-laden forest. It's because – in view of the powerful story-telling – we willingly suspend our disbelief.

The magic the author uses to achieve this may be found, essentially, in psychological reality. And that may be expressed through truthful characterisation, and classic story structure. Both of these are so important precisely because they correspond to psychological realities in the lives of all of us; and so we recognise them. These are the archetypes that Carl Jung referred to. They may also be identified as "the tropes" of any particular genre; in other words, the expectations that readers have of this genre, whether or not they are consciously aware of them: the hero, ally, trickster, mentor, wise fool, common man,maze,death-trap,moral trap,hazardous journey,riddle, inmost cave,trophy of conquest.

Such is our faith in classic story structure, that we will believe the story-teller on the basis of it. When we as readers see it is there, we can let our guard down, we can enter into whatever the story-teller has for us, and we can say, "I believe the promises this author makes. I want to know the answers to the question she poses; and I believe she will provide satisfying answers which will reward all the time I spend reading this story."

SC Skillman

[image error] [image error] [image error] [image error] [image error]

Why Skeletons in the Closet Cannot Keep You From Success

Closets, and what you keep in them, are close to the hearts of psychotherapists, human resources professionals, university and school teachers, the Criminal Records Bureau, anti-terrorist agencies, the police, the Secret Service, religious professionals, and novelists everywhere – or they should be. I would go so far as to say that what we keep locked up in our closets makes us most interesting and most complex as human beings. It can also destroy lives – ours, and the lives of those around us. But does it keep us from success? And when should that door be prised open and those bones come clattering out?

For most of us those skeletons consist of mistakes we have made, wrong decisions, failures, lies and deceptions, personal tragedies, anything we don't want to face as we get on with our lives.

I would argue that those kinds of skeletons in our closets need to be treated very delicately and sensitively. There is a cliche phrase most of us are familiar with: "what you don't know won't hurt you." But this is only partially true. In some cases I believe those skeletons should be kept firmly in place. The consequences of bringing them to light could be devastating, in several people's lives, and could have disastrous repercussions in the future. In other cases it's appropriate for them to be hauled out of storage and put on public display – before they dissolve into dust. It is the novelist's task, of course, to know about what's in the closet, and to choose what's going to happen to it. In reality, those professionals I have mentioned above base their careers upon the answer to the question at the end of my first paragraph.

The question of skeletons and success is dependent upon whether "success" requires total honesty. Looking at the world around us, I would say no it doesn't. In fact often enough it's a major disadvantage. Nevertheless, how long can such success last?

It can certainly go a long way. But the question remains. Consider this truth voiced by a character in Susan Howatch's novel "The Heartbreaker": "Then I thought how mysterous people were and how little anyone knew about what really went on in other people's lives."

This is a fact we all have to live with. And the question of whether our skeletons can keep us from success must be seen in that light.

 

S.C. Skillman is the author of "Mystical Circles – a psychological thriller". Here you will find mysterious behaviour, events that keep you guessing, and people playing at cross purposes: "intense psychological drama in a beautiful setting". The novel is in stock with Amazon and can be downloaded on your Kindle. You can also visit the author's website to find out more. Click the secure payment gateway to buy a signed copy at http://www.scskillman.co.uk.

[image error]