S.C. Skillman's Blog, page 70

Research for Novel Writing – Using the Internet

How big a part should the internet play in a novelist's research? My mind is immediately drawn to a quote from Dan Brown's novel "The Lost Symbol". How often, muses Robert Langdon to himself, has he advised his students that "Google is not a synonym for research". I couldn't help laughing at the sly irony of that. For I defy anyone to read this novel without wondering how long the author spent on Google researching his subject matter; and how soon you will get onto Google yourself after reading it, to corroborate his facts – or to fall into the very trap Robert Langdon warns against!

I confess the internet has been a wonderful resource for me as a fiction writer in double-checking my remembered facts. But of course we should never assume whatever we read on the web is necessarily true. It is important to at least triple-check. But when it comes to writing fiction, I believe most authors will have chosen their subject or theme out of passion – and therefore he or she will have spent a considerable portion of their life researching the subject through multifarious means – personal experience, observing and interacting with people, reading all sorts of printed material about it, visiting places, maybe even living out some of the things they depict their characters doing… Therefore the internet is a valuable tool, but cannot serve as the sole source of material when researching a novel.

I may take as an example the Cotswolds location for my first published psychological thriller. I was inspired by three places. Firstly Totleigh Barton at Sheepwash, near Beauworthy in Devon where I once attended a five day Arvon Foundation poetry course: it boasted a monk's room, as does the farmhouse in my novel. Also the diverse group of students on the course inspired me for the group dynamics of my story. Secondly my imagination was fired by the Lygon Arms Hotel in Broadway in the Cotswolds, a wonderful setting for a psychological thriller. My favourite piece of research involved afternoon tea there. The manager took us for a tour of the most historical rooms in the hotel including the Cromwell Room. The owners of the inn were neutral during the English Civil War and thus hosted guests on both sides of the conflict. I used some of the details of the interiors here in my descriptions of the sixteenth century farmhouse. And thirdly, for my setting, although I ultimately chose the Cotswolds as my favoured location, I was also inspired by a farmhouse near the Forest of Orleans in France owned by the eccentric uncle of my then boyfriend. We visited his uncle there several years ago. This uncle (now deceased) was a colourful character who had fought on the republican side in the Spanish Civil War, spent a few years in jail after the war ended, and later fled to Paris after dealing in contraband. When I met him, he displayed a love of practical jokes, leaving plastic rats and spiders for me to find in odd corners. He also owned a parrot, which I came upon by surprise in his sitting room, exactly as I describe my main character coming upon the gold and blue macaw in my novel.

I hope all this will serve to illustrate how every aspect of your life can be regarded as research for your novel. Life itself is one long process of research. Bad experiences and good, failures and humiliations… nothing is wasted, or lost. Surely this is the ultimate recycling! – it is certainly one of the things I most love about fiction writing.

 

S.C. Skillman is the author of exciting new psychological thriller novel "Mystical Circles". The word "mystical" in the title is used ironically to mean "mysterious behaviour, events that keep you guessing, and people playing at cross purposes". Reviewers have enjoyed Skillman's "exploration of a community of complex characters who inhabit an eerie and atmospheric retreat" and have described it as "intense psychological drama in a beautiful setting". If you are interested in people and their foibles you will enjoy this book. You can buy the novel on Amazon and through the Kindle Bookstore or visit the author's website to find out more. Click the secure payment gateway to buy a signed copy at www.scskillman.co.uk.

What's Creative Writing? Tips for New Writers

Creative writing starts with passion. Therefore, if you want to be a creative writer, the first thing to do is identify your passion. Then write out of your passion. But how? – is what you have to say best suited to poetry, short story, non-fiction article or novel? Your next step is to ask yourself what you love to read. Whatever it is – that's what you could start to write.

Let's say you want to start writing a novel. Think of a phrase that's the perfect title for a book. That could be your starting point. And so now you are on a new threshold.

We can learn a lot from our ancestors. For instance, if you visit the Museum of London's prehistoric galleries, you'll find that Bronze Age people would build their roundhouses with the entrance facing the midwinter solstice. They would then consult their ancestors before making an offering to the new threshold. Now, perhaps modern builders have a comparable ritual – I don't know. But if they don't – perhaps they should. And so should those embarking on a long-term building project like a novel. I love the idea of "making an offering to a new threshold." And what I have to say here is like an offering to the new threshold.

First, where do your ideas come from? From life itself, all around you, wherever you are. Ideas fly past, and you catch them. Listen to conversations in every situation. Observe people. Eavesdrop whilst sitting on the top deck of a bus. Have notebooks with you at all times – and keep notes. And if you have a notebook system, you have to build in time to review your notebooks and retrieve your ideas.

Then you have to apply the first secret of writing:

1. Avoid Not Writing - take your craft seriously; believe that what you're doing is of sufficient value that you are going to carve out time for it. Book time for it if necessary – put it in your diary. Get in there and do it. Don't be afraid of the blank screen or blank page.

2. Pay attention to structure - break down the book in your head into an Outline. You could do it on a piece of software like Scrivener, or you could do it through a wall of Post It Notes, or you could plot it on a storyboard; or you could write your novel as a short story first. But realise that you are unique and may have your own special way of working that is right for you. With a novel, sometimes writers find they can't plot too far ahead (though be aware you may have to go back and impose structure later). If that is the case for you -

3. Go on the journey and see what happens. If a character develops a life of his or her own it's a good sign. Some say the characters create the plot. Keep asking why, what, where, how, when.

4.Set yourself a goal of a thousand words per working day, if you respond well to deadlines and schedules. If not write anyway.

5. Don't talk your novel out of existence. Write that first draft. I believe it's not a good idea to discuss the details of your novel with anyone until you've written it. Then you can seek feedback, and redraft, and revise and revise and revise.

Finally, when your book is finished to the very best of your ability and beyond, send it off to literary agents. And be prepared for rejection. Remember – you write because you are compelled to, because you cannot "not write". Take note of these wise words from popular author Adrian Plass: "If things fall apart, pick up the pieces and carry on. Don't despair. There are strange things going on behind the scenes."

 

S.C. Skillman is the author of exciting new psychological thriller novel "Mystical Circles". The word "mystical" in the title is used ironically to mean "mysterious behaviour, events that keep you guessing, and people playing at cross purposes". Reviewers have enjoyed Skillman's "exploration of a community of complex characters who inhabit an eerie and atmospheric retreat" and have found it "a very entertaining read with plenty of action and sparky dialogue." If you are interested in people and their foibles you will enjoy this book. You can buy the novel on Amazon and through the Kindle Bookstore or visit the author's website to find out more. Click the secure payment gateway to buy a signed copy at http://www.scskillman.co.u

Five Tips on How to Make Your Fictional Characters Engaging

So you've begun your novel and perhaps you've already had lots of ideas for your characters. They will probably be a composite of different people you've met in the past, or even different aspects of yourself. But how do you make them engaging? And not just the hero, but several characters? – and dare I say it, even the main antagonist or villain? Because no-one is completely good or completely bad; and for a villain to be truly convincing there must be some elements of the character which the reader can either recognise, relate to, or even empathise with – yes, even Gollum and Voldemort!

The same things that make you like people in real life are the things which make fictional characters engaging. We don't like people who are self-appointed; people who are hard and impregnable; people who are (or appear to be) boring and predictable, and people who refuse to ever freely share anything about themselves with anybody else.

To make things simpler, when I refer to "the hero" I also mean "heroine" and will use "he" although I mean both he and she.

So here's how to make your fictional characters engaging (from my own experience):

1) Your character must not be self-appointed – this means that if you want your reader to like the hero, that hero must not appoint himself to the task he ends up doing, or the quest which he ends up fulfilling. Before the hero sets out on the quest, he must have been tested, and changed; he must have died (to his default expectations of himself) and been reborn; and he only takes on the quest because he is tested again and again, and succeeds. He does not set out on the quest because he thinks he's good and big and clever enough to do it.

2) Your character needs to show vulnerability - this is vital. We cannot like people who are hard and impregnable. Even Gollum touches our hearts. He was once a warm, sensitive human being – he was destroyed by lust for the Ring – Frodo chooses to believe Gollum can be redeemed. (And actually, he can – but he ultimately chooses not to be).

3) You must explore your character inside and outside. The reader must be intrigued by the gap between what the character says of himself, and what other characters say of him – very few of us have 100% self-knowledge, and if we did, we probably wouldn't be likeable. The same principle applied to the gap between what the character says or thinks of himself, and what he actually does.

4) You must know your character's backstory - what happened before he came to enter this story? Why? How? Where? When? What is his motivation?

5) You must defeat the reader's expectations – and your own - in real life, we can never truly fathom each other. This is the joy of writing fiction, in which the author can play God. You can let the reader into the inmost hearts of your characters, if you choose. And yet, you must always defeat the reader's expectations. Defeat your own too. That's when your characters become as real as they can be, in fiction. That is where inspiration, intuion and originality lies. And that comes from the unconscious mind – as anyone who has studied the writings of Carl Jung will know.

S.C.Skillman is the author of exciting new psychological thriller novel "Mystical Circles". You can buy the book on Amazon and through the Kindle Bookstore, or visit the author's website to find out more, and click the secure payment gateway to buy a signed copy at http://www.scskillman.co.uk.

Accessing Your Inner Wisdom – How to Recognise the Truth

The phrase "inner wisdom" may seem at first sight to belong to the esoteric school of thought. But it is not confined there. It may be translated into the world of Christian thought simply by rephrasing it as "recognising the voice of God". "Wisdom," we are told by King Solomon in Proverbs begins with "the fear of God". And also the followers of Plato, who influenced Solomon's thinking, said the greatest wisdom is "to recognise one's own ignorance of the divine".

Much more recently wisdom has been defined as a combination of knowledge, experience, discretion and intuitive understanding along with a capacity to apply these qualities well towards finding solutions to problems. It seems mind and spirit working together in harmony produce insights often expressed through intuition. Carl Jung investigates this in his book "Psychology and Religion."

Alexander Dumas summed up wisdom as "wait and hope". And certainly anything which causes us to pause and reflect must be good, since the greatest mistakes are often made in haste. Although of course we must balance this with the need to listen to that first prompting of our intuition and be ready to act on it.

Sometimes we find our opportunity to pause and reflect by being in "sacred space." Certain physical places have a sacred meaning and a corresponding psychological reality for us. I find this intriguing, and have explored many such spaces. It can be helpful to go on retreat to one of the many retreat houses in England – or to enter a cathedral or monastery – or of course to go for a long walk in a wild and beautiful location, preferably with water in it. It has been said that the best exercise for mental and psychological wellbeing is "green and blue exercise" involving both green open space and a river, pool, lake or the sea.

For instance let us look at some renowned locations in England where people have felt they are are in touch with something bigger than themselves – a sense of the numinous. One of these is the Chalice Well Gardens in Glastonbury where all faiths are welcome.

In these gardens there are several examples of sacred spaces: pool, stream, tree, fountain, well, sculpture, flowers, spring, stone. All of these work symbolically or metaphorically to express a place where we may be or a situation we may encounter in our lives, that we could probably all recognise from our own experience.

Somewhere I used to go regularly when I lived in London several years ago was Kensington Gardens. I would walk through the Italian Garden and along by the Serpentine, always pausing for a long time by the Peter Pan statue to watch the ducks. This was a frequent aid to reflection and contemplation. Even now when I revisit Kensington Gardens I feel a sense of joy and tranquility – as long as it's not the tourist high season, of course!

Another good place for reflection and contemplation is Cheddar Gorge. There you may encounter several "sacred spaces" – cliff,caves, underground river,spring,threshold,steps – yes, even sculpture, but in this case created by the action of water on stone over millions of years.

You may have your own "green and blue" place you go to for reflection, which helps you see life in perspective. If so, you're already on the right path to seeing your way through whatever problems life holds – and towards possibly glimpsing the truth.

S.C. Skillman is the author of exciting new psychological thriller novel "Mystical Circles". The word "mystical" in the title is used ironically to mean "mysterious behaviour, events that keep you guessing, and people playing at cross purposes". If you are interested in people and their foibles you will enjoy this book. You can buy the novel on Amazon and through the Kindle Bookstore or 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.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6519612

Finding Spiritual Alignment – How to Achieve Spiritual Balance

 

What you are intensely interested in, desire and hope for profoundly affects every area of your life – if you openly express it. And it is certainly true, as I can testify from my own experience, that when you start focussing on something, it starts popping up everywhere. So if you are a person with a spiritual outlook, how can you be authentic about your spiritual experiences and insights, instead of hiding them for fear of what the critical post-modern mind will make of them? This, I believe, is what spiritual balance is all about.

Those who approach life with a spiritual outlook may often find the question of balance a challenging one. The problem of unreliable feelings versus spiritual authenticity is relevant not only to followers of esoteric spiritual systems but also to Christians. Some approach faith purely through the head and are only interested in rational processes, the intellectual pathways of theology, and applying their minds to what the Bible teaches; to others it is very important to feel the presence of the Holy Spirit, to respond emotionally to the central truth of the Christian faith, which is not a philosophy but a relationship with Jesus Christ, a personal encounter with God.

How can we bring spiritual experience into alignment with the realities of daily life? Carl Jung in his book "Psychology and Religion" addresses this very question. He takes into account "the symbols produced by the unconscious mind". They are, he says, "the only things able to convince the critical mind of modern people." A spiritual experience, he notes, in order to be considered helpful, must "help to make your life healthier, more beautiful, more complete and more satisfactory to yourself and those you love." Then, he concludes, you may safely say "This was the grace of God."

Bernie Siegel in his book "Love, Medicine and Miracles" speaks of the vital importance of hope, which is a strongly spiritual quality. He says "a refusal to hope is nothing more than a decision to die." He also speaks of those who "choose their direction, make the leap of faith and fly". This all about courage and self-belief, in how you choose to spend your time, and what you devote your life to. And before you can take action on this, you must start from a point of spiritual balance. I believe the key is to act on our spiritual insights, expressing them openly: only then can we ensure they do impact every area of our lives – and most essentially, our relationships.

As a fiction writer, I find the search for authenticity and balance is a continuous journey, and it is summed up in the word 'truth'. I seek truth by observing people, listening to them, watching them, empathising with them and writing about them. When through fiction I show my characters behaving in such a way that a reader says, "Yes. This rings true. I recognise this… this is me… this is the way we are," then I feel a sense of joy: and I know, at least in this moment, mind and spirit have aligned with each other and brought about spiritual balance.

S.C. Skillman is the author of exciting new psychological thriller novel "Mystical Circles" that will keep you in suspense. The word "mystical" in the title is used ironically to mean "mysterious behaviour, events that keep you guessing, and people playing at cross purposes". Reviewers have enjoyed Skillman's "exploration of a community of complex characters who inhabit an eerie and atmospheric retreat" and have found it "a very entertaining read with plenty of action and sparky dialogue." If you are interested in people and their foibles you will enjoy this book. You can buy the novel on Amazon and through the Kindle Bookstore or 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

Reprogramming Your Mind – Overcoming Limiting Beliefs

Personal empowerment is something that can happen when we reprogram our minds and open out our thinking. In many areas we may find we habitually stick to a limited, narrow  view of our situation and so prevent ourselves from moving forward. In this post I want to look at our attitude to  those things over which we feel we personally have no control – things like bad luck, missed opportunities, not being able to see into the future. How can we change our attitudes to all of these thing in such a way as to transform our lives and even – dare I say it – to achieve our dreams?

Franz Alexander, M.D., tells us that "the fact that the mind rules the body is, in spite of its neglect by  biology and medicine, the most fundamental fact which we know about the process of life." This is a big claim. How can it be so? Many feel that changes taking place in their bodies are beyond their conscious control. If not, why shouldn't we be able to achieve the body beautiful simply by willing it? And why should we not be able to attain perfect health  with a simple command by the mind? I wish, for example, that I could move around the soaring skyscrapers and streets of a great city like Spiderman. Also, when I am in a majestic mountain range, I long to be able to fly and swoop among those mountains instead of toiling along steep jungle-overhung tracks. But is it likely? No. So what is Franz Alexander on about then?

In order to illustrate my point in this article I'd like to take the example of Jean de Florette, a character in a famous French novel. An idealistic, high-minded city dweller, Jean inherits a farm in Provence and takes his wife and child there intent on the rural idyll. His dream is to create a thriving lifestyle, breeding rabbits and growing produce. But he needs water. And it seems there is no water nearby and he has to rely on a relentless back-breaking trek to a well,  which over the course of time eats into his energy and his time and creates a terrible knock-on effect eroding his livelihood and leaving him vulnerable to drought, crop failure, financial losses, and eventual ruin and tragic accidental death. And all the time there is an abundant spring very near his farmhouse. And it has been secretly blocked up by his callous and scheming neighbours whose one desire is to get their hands on his land and gain all the benefit of the spring with their own carnation-growing enterprise which will make them rich. And they don't care if they destroy lives on their way to their goal.

How could the high-minded, gentle dreamer Jean de Florette have succeeded in the face of that ? by gaining the confidence of the local people and thus hearing the gossip that there was a spring on his property and that it may even have been blocked by those very schemers. Then he would have found his way to the truth, overcome adversity and achieved his dream.

Very often  people such as Jean fail through tragic flaws. Jean was gullible, naive and stubborn. And all these three characteristics come down to one thing:  a limited view of his situation. We all do this, when we take things at face value, when we fail to follow our intuition, when we disregard the need to gain the confidence of other people, when we rigidly follow just one narrow way of attaining our dream. It could be that there is an abundant spring very near by – but we have shut our minds off to the possibility that it even exists.

It never occurred to Jean that there might actually be water on his property much nearer than he thought – if that had occurred to him his first major business expense would have been to invest in a professional dowser; and it also never occurred to him that his apparently friendly neighbour Ugulin who constantly visited him might not be all that he seemed (something his little daughter Manon saw instinctively).

There are many other examples in literature of a high minded, idealistic man brought to tragedy by the combination of a fatal flaw in their character blended with unfavourable circumstances. But one common element to them all is the failure to consider a different way of viewing things; thus, they stuck with their limited belief. I believe that all these tragic heroes may have succeeded by opening out their minds and freeing up their beliefs: even Oedipus Rex or Romeo! Of course Aeschylus or Shakespeare would not have had their stories if this had been the case.

But it is well worth us considering: how may we see things from a different angle? Perhaps we could brainstorm, follow word association, trust our instincts for once, turn something upside down, imagine that something we believed impossible is, for the sake of argument, possible; perhaps we could swap round cause and effect for fun. Who knows? In this apparently irrational process, you may find the key to overcoming a limiting belief – and thus reprogram your mind.

 

S.C. Skillman is the author of an exciting new psychological thriller novel "Mystical Circles" that will keep you in suspense. The word "mystical" in the title is used ironically to mean "mysterious behaviour, events that keep you guessing, and people playing at cross purposes". Reviewers have enjoyed Skillman's "exploration of a community of complex characters who inhabit an eerie and atmospheric retreat" and have found it "a very entertaining read with plenty of action and sparky dialogue." If you are interested in people and their foibles you will enjoy this book. You can buy the novel on Amazon and through the Kindle Bookstore or visit the author's website to find out more. Click the secure payment gateway to buy a signed copy at www.scskillman.co.uk

Keeping Faith – Accepting Life As It Is

Faith can be a difficult thing to hold onto, particularly when you consider the evidence of human nature: in other words, life as it is. For example, take a walk round Westminster Abbey, as I did the other day – here, in this major spiritual hub and London tourist attraction you'll pass the shrine of St Edward the Confessor, and find clustered around him many monuments and tombs. The official tourist guide says these speak both of human dignity and achievement. But do they? Among them we find both the goodies and the baddies. Some are noble but others got there by ruthlessly exploiting everyone and everything in their lust for power.

Of course, after contemplating Richard II, who was so awful he was murdered by his successor, but still eventually ended up in the grand tomb he'd built for himself in the abbey, we can then move on to Poets Corner which shows us a much better aspect of human nature, celebrating creativity and genius to uplift and inspire us.

Westminster Abbey is like a giant book of English history. And as a number of popular historians tell us to good effect, English history often bristles with the horrible, the brutal, and the shameful. And it's only human nature, isn't it, to be more enthralled by a nasty piece of work like Henry VIII than by anybody else who might have quietly and faithfully lived a life of virtue. It's also strangely satisfying to focus on the faults of others – which is also part of human nature.

It has been said that unless we read and understand history we are doomed to repeat it. But how in fact may we ensure we do not repeat history, if human nature does not change? For instance, anyone who has ever read the Gospel stories of Jesus in their own language will realise that the life Jesus lived and everything about him and about his teachings directly contradicts most of what Church power structures have been doing for centuries. So how do we hold onto our faith in the face of life and human nature as it is? The answer, I suggest, lies with the word "hope". Martin Luther wrote: "how much more are we helped on by hope in the way to eternal life."

Andy Frost, director of Share Jesus International, says: "hope is sparked when something of eternity bursts into our fragile lives. For a moment we lift our eyes from the problems of the world and glimpse things as they could be, as they will be." That glimpse may come through music or poetry or through an act of forgiveness or kindness, or an experience of unconditional love, or the trusting innocence in a young child's eyes. Percy C. Aynsworth spoke in "The Threshold Grace" of the pulse of eternity: "If you hear not the rhythm of that pulse behind your striving, you have lived and died in vain." Since most of our lives are full of striving, I find those words restore a sense of perspective, and I hope you find that too.

S.C. Skillman is the author of an exciting new psychological thriller novel "Mystical Circles" that will keep you in suspense. The word "mystical" in the title is used ironically to mean "mysterious behaviour, events that keep you guessing, and people playing at cross purposes". Reviewers have enjoyed Skillman's "exploration of a community of complex characters who inhabit an eerie and atmospheric retreat" and have found it "a very entertaining read with plenty of action and sparky dialogue." If you are interested in people and their foibles you will enjoy this book. You can buy the novel on Amazon and through the Kindle Bookstore or 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.

How To Find the Genuineness in Other People

Do you have a message to communicate to others, or a wonderful service you want to motivate people to buy, or something good you've created that you want to offer to the world? If so, how do you find the people who will respond positively? Do you go out and knock at doors blindly, not knowing who is behind them? Or do you take your message to those who are already favourably disposed towards you – those who are genuine? If so – how do you find them?

This is probably the biggest question the advertising industry asks itself, and why, of course, market researchers are constantly in business, seeking people to answer their surveys, so they can identify those who may have an interest in their product. This also provides much to reflect upon when we consider the desperation that leads companies to employ telesales staff specially to cold-call people chosen randomly from lists of telephone numbers.

In the Bible we may find Jesus's opinion of cold-calling. St Luke tells us in chapters 9 & 10 of his Gospel that Jesus sends his disciples off to all the surrounding villages "to drive out demons and to cure diseases." But he tells his team to take nothing with them, and to go only to people who welcome them. In other words, they are not to go to those who are hostile or indifferent – only to those who are noble and pure, otherwise known as "people of peace." If the members of Jesus's team find they are not welcome, they are to "shake the dust off" their feet, and leave. "People of peace", he says, will welcome them, give hospitality, and listen to them.

Clearly those cold-callers with their lists of telephone numbers have given up on trying to identify "people of peace" who will receive their message positively!

Most creative writers know the pain of sending their manuscript out to publishers and agents, and being either ignored, or coldly rejected. It seems as if you simply cannot prevail against the huge wall of indifference, you cannot make inroads into hearts and minds. So how do those with something good to offer find people of peace? It seems that we are to go out with no pre-conceptions, be willing to be vulnerable, be willing to ask. Certainly this would appear to be a huge challenge in today's world. Who can we trust? And yet it seems a law of life that somewhere, we have to trust. Without it, how can we even get started?

I believe, therefore, that the essential quality necessary to finding the genuineness in other people is the willingness to trust – despite all the evidence of the world, ultimately you have to step out in trust. It is not possible to go far in an atmosphere of suspicion – witness the difficulties encountered by those who invade countries with the avowed intention of saving a population from an unjust dictator, and fail to consider how they are going to gain the trust of the people, in order to create a just society after the dictator has fallen.

So perhaps the answer to the question "How may we find the genuineness in other people?" is first to look at ourselves, and our own agenda. What do we bring with us? Are we open-hearted? Do we come with no pre-conceptions, no cynical reserve? This is not the first time I have cited the example of Rabbi Lionel Blue – vulnerable, self-revealing and real in all that he writes and says and is – no wonder he is loved and admired by so many. Simplicity, honesty and openness gravitates to its own – and so finds genuineness in others.

 

 

 

S.C. Skillman is the author of exciting new psychological thriller novel "Mystical Circles". The word "mystical" in the title is used ironically to mean "mysterious behaviour, events that keep you guessing, and people playing at cross purposes". Reviewers have enjoyed Skillman's "exploration of a community of complex characters who inhabit an eerie and atmospheric retreat" and have found it "a very entertaining read with plenty of action and sparky dialogue." If you are interested in people and their foibles you will enjoy this book. You can buy the novel on Amazon and through the Kindle Bookstore or 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.

Elements That Make Up a Good Fiction Story

I believe in the power of story. And of course, in various cultures story tellers have held power; in Celtic communities, for instance, the Bard was second only to the Chief; consider the fact that the layout of a Bronze Age home gravitated around the centre where an elaborate chair was placed for the story teller; and witness the strength of the oral tradition, out of which Homer came with his tales of the Trojan war, and of the journeys of Odysseus.

Given that the secular gods of this society are celebrity and fame and wealth, it is hardly surprising that the story tellers have found themselves drawn in. And thus you have the cult of the celebrity bestselling novelist. Yes, sometimes our culture rewards a storyteller – but it is very uneven in the way it spreads its blessing. And beyond every famous successful writer there stand many others who are faithfully doing exactly the same thing – crafting stories.

So what are the elements of a good fiction story? Here are the five elements I believe are absolutely essential:

1) Characters that catch the reader's imagination - as in reality, so in fiction stories, individuals have a private and a public life. And it's the private life that yields the stories by which they live. Especially for a fiction writer, you cannot afford to present someone solely by how they behave in community, as they appear to other people. To me, the joy of fiction is that you are inside the characters, you feel how they feel, you experience life through their eyes, through their minds and hearts. We all have bright and dark areas in our characters. Our lives are a process of facing down our demons – archetypal story structure often includes dual characters like Spiderman & Peter Parker, or Superman & Clark Kent. Both these superheroes battle with the duality of dark and light in their characters. On one side is the bold, brilliant, public face; on the other side we find the quiet, the obscure, the vulnerable.

2) Archetypal theme – no matter how humble you think your story is, the fact remains, that in order to give the reader a strong experience, ultimately there has to be an archetypal theme behind it. This can be friendship, loyalty, love, betrayal, loss, redemption, grief, despair, fear – but all of these are archetypal, meaning they are profoundly part of human experience. The story can be light, humorous, hard-boiled, playful, serious, panoramic or any one of a number of different styles; but there will be an archetypal theme behind it. And then all is down to the author, as to which angle to take. Any originality a story has lies in the angle which the author takes.

3) Emotional charge – every successful story, even if it is pared-down in style, and doesn't ever describe the characters' feelings, as in Neil Gaiman's Coraline, or John Fowles' The Collector, carries its own emotional charge. This can come from the author's selection of events, and once again the angle the author chooses to take; the information the author decides to use, and the information the author keeps out of sight. If the story elicits a strong response from the reader, that story inevitably has "emotional charge".

4) Unexpected Turning Point – whether a story is a suspense, or a thriller, or a mystery, or any other genre, a powerful turning point is key. Of course this plays its part within classic story-stucture. This is why Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca is so universally loved. The turning point shocks. This has a lot to do with what is hidden from us, and what is revealed, during the progress of the story. The skilful withholding of information, the subtle drip-feeding of clues… all this plays its part in determining the effect that turning point will have on us.

5) X Factor – and then there is the final, unknown factor. This cannot be discounted. It evades the teachers of creative writing courses, the writers of "how-to" books; but it is there, undeniable. It has to do with the spirit behind the novel, and the spirit of the age in which the author writes, and the age in which the story is received. In Jane Austen's apparently simple romance novel about love, sex and money, Pride and Prejudice, we can analyse – and many have – but where exactly do we locate the X-factor? Yet it is there, mysterious, elusive, mercurial. Stories with X-factor have characters who haunt us, dilemmas we can relate to in every generation. Thomas Hardy's novel The Mayor of Casterbridge touches a deep nerve in human experience. You cannot chase X-factor. You have to work with your unconscious, be true to yourself, and let go.

I have loved many books in my life, but the ones that stand out for me have all the above five elements. Some have the power to shock and electrify the reader: authors such as Joseph Conrad, Graham Greene and Shusaku Endo. Others have characters that haunt you through the years: Jane Eyre and Mr Rochester, Cathy and Heathcliffe, Lizzy Bennett and Darcy, Pip and Estella; perhaps Bathsheba from Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd or Raskolnikov in Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, or Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray; or the master-criminal Count Fosco in Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White, or maybe Dorothea in George Eliot's Middlemarch or Nicholas Darrow in Susan Howatch's Mystical Paths.

And I also favour authors who are witty, perceptive and brilliantly funny – like P.G. Wodehouse, Tom Sharpe, David Lodge, Jerome K. Jerome, Dodie Smith, Stella Gibbons and Jilly Cooper. I respond to authors whose work shows warmth and compassion, such as Katie Fforde and Joanna Trollope, or those who sail to the furthest reaches of the human psyche, such as Iris Murdoch or Susan Howatch. And among my most-loved books are those which tell of a small person harnessing the power of loyalty, friendship and love to overcome great odds – JK. Rowling's Harry Potter stories, Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, or C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I have marveled, too, at the imaginative fireworks in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy.

Finally, as a postscript to this, I remember a line from Virginia Woolf's essay How Should One Read a Book? "I have sometimes dreamt, at least, that when the Day of Judgement dawns…The Almighty will turn to Peter and will say, not without a certain envy when he sees us coming with our books under our arms, 'Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them here. They have loved reading.'"

S.C. Skillman is the author of exciting new psychological thriller novel "Mystical Circles". The word "mystical" in the title is used ironically to mean "mysterious behaviour, events that keep you guessing, and people playing at cross purposes". Reviewers have enjoyed Skillman's "exploration of a community of complex characters who inhabit an eerie and atmospheric retreat" and have found it "a very entertaining read with plenty of action and sparky dialogue." If you are interested in people and their foibles you will enjoy this book. You can buy the novel on Amazon and through the Kindle Bookstore or 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.

 

Ways to Express the Person on the Inside, on the Outside

Why is it that we sometimes fail to express the person on the inside, on the outside? We can often be held back by self-limiting negative beliefs. Examples are: "I haven't got any imagination"; "I'm no good at maths"; "I can't draw" or "I can't sing." Have you ever wondered, though, how apparently ordinary people achieve extraordinary things? Or how those who formerly considered themselves lacking in talent may find themselves performing in front of an audience and giving joy to others? In this post I will show how you can overcome self-limiting negative beliefs in one area of creative self-expression – and why I believe this can impact every other area of your life.

It is a popularly-held idea that in order to excel in any field, we need not only talent but education and training. But consider a number of activities which have the word "folk" in front of them. For instance, take folk art, folk songs, or folk religion. The one thing they all have in common is that they all emerge from the minds and imaginations of ordinary people with no specialist knowledge, skill or training whatsoever. Folk art is created by those who never went to art school; folk songs are composed, performed and taught by those who never studied at music college;and folk religion evolved through the innate wisdom of those who never studied theology.

I propose to take the example of singing, because I believe it can be applied generally. Consider those who claim they "can't sing". Non-singers have a negative view of the sounds that come out of their mouths; and so they often remain silent. And yet, have you considered how our forbears ever learned to sing songs, before words were written down, and before sophisticated musical instruments and before musical notation? By simply singing lines of music after a natural singing teacher.

In a harmony workshop I have attended, the participants (none of whom had auditions, and some at least who have never been in a choir before) all stand in a circle around the singing teacher. And beyond this teacher, they see each other's faces, and look at and hear each other singing, and moving in rhythm to the music. This creates more cohesion, harmony, togetherness. The voices blend better, stay in sync with each other. The singing teacher is in the middle, he's always on the move, his body moves rhythmically all the time, he almost dances from one part of the choir to another. He himself has songs in his head. All the music is there. He has perfect pitch.

The singers learn and feel and tune into the notes, the words and the rhythm from looking at and listening to each other: the perfect feedback experience. I have heard groups of 'ordinary' people sound lovely, blend beautifully, creating something out of the ordinary. Base metal is transmuted into gold. It is as if some musical spirit is drawn out of them, to dance freely and live and breathe among them. They all look up, they know the words off by heart, they sing out, it's instinctive, it's taken into the heart of their being and that shows in the quality of the singing.

As in the field of singing, so in every other field of creative endeavour, not least creative writing. I for instance never went to a college of journalism, although over the years I have from time to time wondered whether I should have done, and whether my writing would be more competent and professional if I had. In fact I believe the most essential qualification to become a good writer is being someone who loves reading books.

So how can we express the person on the inside, on the outside? By recognising the falseness of those self-limiting beliefs; by trusting and listening to and learning from each other more; by being true to ourselves and responding on a far more instinctive level. So – look up, know the words off by heart, sing out,and believe that base metal can be transmuted into gold.

S.C. Skillman is the author of exciting new psychological thriller novel "Mystical Circles". The word "mystical" in the title is used ironically to mean "mysterious behaviour, events that keep you guessing, and people playing at cross purposes". Reviewers have enjoyed Skillman's "exploration of a community of complex characters who inhabit an eerie and atmospheric retreat" and have found it "a very entertaining read with plenty of action and sparky dialogue." If you are interested in people and their foibles you will enjoy this book. You can buy the novel on Amazon and through the Kindle Bookstore or 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.