L.E. Truscott's Blog, page 21

Misspellings, Misuses and Typos: Getting It Right Helps Readers Get You (and Not Want to Get You)

As the heading suggests, English is a complex language. There are many, many instances of exactly the same or similar words meaning very, very different things – after all, writers want readers to get them (in the sense of understanding) but they very rarely want readers to get them (in the sense of being attacked). A blog I recently read on Hubspot about twenty-five common grammatical errors contained a comment from someone calling himself (or herself) BJ that “as long as you don’t do anything egregious you can bend and break the rules as much as you want. The only thing that matters is whether or not the reader understands, accepts and appreciates how you communicate with them.” BJ promptly earned himself (or herself) a grand verbal spanking from everybody else reading the article. In fact, I couldn’t find a single comment supporting that view. Perhaps because anyone who was inclined to read a post on that topic wasn’t likely to understand, accept and appreciate BJ’s views.

The fact is that more people get annoyed by writers bending and breaking the rules than support “creative” but incorrect approaches so it’s generally in your best interests to try to get it right. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s a misspelling, a misuse or a typo, the effect is the same – it’s wrong. In fact, you can run the Spelling & Grammar Check as many times as you want but the problem with Microsoft Word is that if a word is spelled correctly, regardless of whether it’s appropriate for the context, it won’t be highlighted as an error by the program. I once accidentally typed “whale dongs” as two of my characters discussed a potential soundtrack for meditation. Of course, I meant “whale songs” but it could have been highly embarrassing if I hadn’t picked it up. And it could be much worse, especially if you confuse your onus with your anus.

There are some obvious homonyms like “here” and “hear” and “none” and “nun” that I hope don’t need explanation but here are a few to be on the lookout for.

Cache and Cachet

A cache is a hidden storage, generally of weapons or valuables that you don’t want to be found, and cachet is a style or quality that people admire.

Confident and Confidant

To be confident is to be self-assured and to be a confidant is to be somebody who is trusted with personal or secret information.

Faint and Feint

Faint means dim, slight or dizzy and a feint is a deceptive action made to disguise another action.

Impatient and Inpatient

You might be thinking, “How could anyone possibly get these two mixed up?” but it’s usually a typo – “n” and “m” are right next to each other on the keyboard – and once the mistake is made, it’s a very slight difference, one that could easily be overlooked. Hopefully, now that I’ve pointed it out, it will be something you’ll look for (although most people don’t write about inpatients all that often so maybe it wasn’t worth the time it took to do it).

Lame and Lamé

A lame horse is one that struggles to walk and a lame excuse is insufficient but lamé is a fabric with metallic threads woven through it.

Lead and Led and Lead

To lead is to go first, to show the way and then you will have led (the past tense of lead) but lead (pronounced “led”) is also a bluish-grey metallic element. This one trips up a lot of people, especially because read (pronounced “reed”) and read (the past tense pronounced “red”) aren’t at all helpful in offering guidance.

Local and Locale

Local is an adjective that describes something in a small geographic area (as opposed to national or global) and in Australia is used to describe your nearest customary drinking place (“Let’s go to the local”), while locale is a noun, another word for a specific place (the locale of Queensland).

Mange and Manage

Mange is an awful itchy condition that you need to manage.

Pray and Prey

We pray in church or at close football games and eagles search for and capture prey, then generally eat it.

Scared and Scarred

One is to be frightened and the other is to be disfigured – you only need to take off the “d” to figure out which gives you a scare.

Sight and Site

Sight refers to vision and site refers to a location. “The sight of his frizzy hair was frightening but the site of his frizzy hair was on top of his head.”

Stronger and Stranger

I hope I don’t have to explain the difference between these two but it’s a common typo and good to be aware of the possibility.

Vane, Vein and Vain

A vane is that thing on the roof with the fake rooster that shows something to do with the wind, a vein is that thing in your body that transports blood around and vain is a description of somebody who thinks a lot of themselves, particularly in relation to their appearance.

Wonder and Wander

We often wonder (consider, think about, ponder) why people with dementia wander (walk in a meandering way without any real purpose) the streets.

Wont and Won’t and Want

A wont is a custom or a habit, won’t is a contraction of will not and to want something is to desire it.

Wrestle and Wrest

Wrestling means you are still struggling but if you wrest something away, then the wrestling is over and that something is yours. So if you are wrestling for control, you might still lose. But if you’ve wrested control, then you’re in charge.

*****

This isn’t a comprehensive list by any means, just a few I came up with as I was doing one of my favourite things, which is reading the dictionary (I mixed it up by reading three dictionaries at once: my new loathed dictionary, my old beloved dictionary and my rhyming dictionary). I’ve said it before and I’ll no doubt say it again but if you have any doubts, consult your own dictionary. And if you still have doubts, employ an editor.

The Five Types of Writing

These days it’s on everybody’s bucket list – to write a book. But regardless of whether that bucket list item is a novel, non-fiction or memoir, the world needs more than just book writers. Content is a vast industry in itself and despite the resistance to paying for it, it is continuing to grow.

But there are actually five different types of writing, all requiring vastly different skill sets. So if your heart is set on it, it’s worth considering where your talents and your best chance of getting read lie.

Corporate/Professional

If you want to be a writer and you want to make the big money, corporate and professional writing is where it will most likely happen (if you’re any good, of course). Corporates have the ability to pay and often the willingness if that writing helps them achieve their business goals, which tend to fall into the following categories:

*Establishing them in their field (marketing)

*Establishing them as experts in their field (thought leadership, sometimes also known as research and development)

*Contributing to the bottom line (business)

While corporates might know everything there is to know about running a business, including marketing and thought leadership, they generally don’t have great writing skills so conveying that knowledge is where they need help. Writing is one of those things that everyone thinks, erroneously, that they can do because they passed high school English. Disabusing them of that notion is difficult in a corporate setting because of the number and size of the egos that will be encountered.

Business people tend to use business-speak (which drives everybody crazy, especially since it’s often indecipherable gibberish) and quite a lot of the time they won’t know or be willing to acknowledge that they need help. So it takes a very particular type of person to be able to work in this environment and steer the writing in the direction of quality and sense. But if you can hack it and you’re willing to write about things that you wouldn’t give two hoots about if you weren’t being paid, then there is a lot of demand.

Academic

Generally, you need to be an academic with funding in order to undertake research and then indulge in academic writing to reveal the results so you can’t just decide one day that you want to give it a go and expect to be doing it quickly. But if you have an area of special interest and you want to contribute to the expansion of knowledge on the subject, then academia might be the best direction for you to head in. Universities provide the structure, support, independence and money necessary to enable this kind of discovery. Corporates sometimes provide the support and money but they generally have agendas so independence can be more questionable.

According to Google Scholar, my little sister is the co-author of 74 academic papers in addition to the 100,000-word PhD thesis she submitted in 2016. That’s a lot of writing. And it’s a lot of writing about important things. There isn’t much money in academic writing in itself but you’ll get to do a lot of it and as long as you are able to support your discoveries with well-designed and executed research, it can set you up as a sought-after expert, which in turn leads to more research, more results and more writing. It’s a self-fulfilling writing career.

Journalistic

Once upon a time, journalism was an honourable profession. In more recent times, it has become a game of speed and celebrity involvement instead of accuracy and historical importance. It has also become a profession completely lacking in job security. But for some people who want to write for a living, it’s something they’ve dreamed of since they learned how to write and despite everything, they can’t imagine heading in any other career direction.

Journalism requires an inquisitive nature, an aptitude for forming and retaining a lot of contacts, the ability to remain impartial about issues that divide people and countries, and then there’s also that all-important ability to write. It requires a lot more than that but if you want to know it all, there are university courses for that.

Journalists writes news (a strict reporting of what is happening) and feature articles (still strict reporting with an emotional undercurrent but as a means of steering the news) and undertake longer investigations (to reveal the news that isn’t obvious and that politicians and churches and large conglomerates would prefer remained unknown) if whoever they work for supports that kind of in-depth journalism but they don’t write opinion pieces. If you want to write opinion pieces, then you become a commentator and insert yourself into the story. It sometimes looks like journalism but it isn’t.

You might end up writing filler pieces like “A week’s worth of healthy dinner recipes”, “Where do you go when you die?” or “Australia’s most awesome office” and you might end up becoming the story yourself (because life happens to journalists, too) but if you keep writing, you never know where it will get you in the long wrong. Maybe it will be in a position to return journalism to its ethical, honourable place. Or perhaps you’ll just have to settle for a satisfying writing career.

Technical

Anyone who has ever received flat-pack furniture from China will know that there is a genuine art to technical writing, especially if the flat-pack is ever to become anything more than flat. It requires logic, it requires accuracy, it requires the ability to write a process from beginning to end without missing a step lest the completed flat-pack furniture from China end up looking less like furniture and more like abstract art.

Procedural writing also falls under the technical category. As well as being able to outline procedures clearly, it entails coming up with them in the first place. And in addition to showing how to accomplish a particular task, they generally also do so in a way that is auditable for quality purposes. Just like the furniture ending up like abstract art, poorly written procedures can end up being a guide to poorly executed assignments. But unlike the furniture that ends up looking like abstract art, there can be serious implications for badly-written procedures. Any company worth its salt will have written procedures and these can range from things as simple and as frequently ignored as ergonomics to things that result in huge fines when they’re ignored such as working at heights and emergency evacuations. Because when a poorly written emergency evacuation procedure goes wrong, the conversation turns from crimes against language to the potential deaths of workers.

It’s not always sexy – heck, it’s almost never sexy – but technical writing is important. And when it’s done well, it can be extremely satisfying and worthy of a decent enough salary.

Creative

And finally we come to creative writing. If you’ve given some thought and/or some effort to trying out all the other kinds of writing and they just won’t do, then here’s where you can go crazy by writing whatever you want, whenever you want, for as long as you want. Just don’t have any expectations that anyone will ever read you or pay you. It’s nice when they do but it’s very rare.

Creative writing takes on a huge number of forms from the very personal (diaries, journals and memoirs) to short forms like poetry and short stories (although sometimes it seems to take just as long to get them right) and long forms like creative non-fiction and fiction. And then from fiction, we get into genres – horror, romance, mystery, crime, thrillers, drama, supernatural, fantasy, young adult, steampunk and I know there are plenty I’m leaving out. In fact, there are so many creative writing avenues that you can get lost in them.

The thing about creative writing, even more so than writing in general, is that it requires genuine talent. That talent can develop over time – usually over a long time – but if you don’t have it, then torturing people with your writing efforts might get you noticed but in a way you’d prefer not to be. (There’s another post for you if you fall into this category – “What to Do When You’re a Bad Writer with a Good Story”.)

But, just as importantly, you’ll never know if you have any talent if you don’t give it a go. So if it’s what you want to do, then don’t let anyone talk you out of it. After all, if you find out you don’t have any talent, you don’t ever have to show anybody your abysmal writing efforts. And if you find out that you do, well, anything’s possible.

The Importance of Writing

Anyone who knows me personally knows that my political leanings are left of centre. Not extremely left but left enough for my father to express his disapproval when I tweeted congratulations to a famous Australian gay couple who had flown to New Zealand to get married after that country’s marriage equality laws were passed. (Before I continue, please be assured that this post is about writing and not politics).

So when Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election and I couldn’t take watching the coverage anymore (which took less than two days), I picked my jaw up off the floor and did what all left-leaning writing fans would do: I put Disk 1 of Season 1 of The West Wing in my DVD player and began binge watching it again (for about the one hundredth time). As well as being able to pretend I was living in an alternative reality, I could yet again immerse myself in and appreciate what is essentially a master class in writing.

As I write this, I’m up to Season 3 in which Democratic President Bartlet has announced his intention to run for a second term and the Republicans are on the verge of nominating Governor Robert Ritchie to run against him. When Governor Ritchie attacks affirmative action, President Bartlet has the opportunity to respond but chooses not to, prompting this exchange with Communications Director Toby Ziegler.

Toby Ziegler: I was a telemarketer for about a week. I can’t remember what we were selling but you worked off a script. “Hi. Good evening. My name is…” And Toby Ziegler was okay for New York but once I got into other time zones I needed a name that wasn’t gonna bother anybody.

President Josiah Bartlet: Toby, if you have something to say, please say it.

Toby Ziegler: Ritchie’s good for all time zones.

President Josiah Bartlet: My family signed the Declaration of Independence. You think I’ve got an ethnicity problem?

Toby Ziegler: The line isn’t between light skin and dark skin.

President Josiah Bartlet: Yeah?

Toby Ziegler: It’s between educated and masculine. Or eastern academic elite and plain spoken.

President Josiah Bartlet: It’s always been like that.

Toby Ziegler: Yeah but a funny thing happened when the White House got demystified. The impression was left that anybody could do it.

President Josiah Bartlet: You’re not telling me anything I don’t know.

Toby Ziegler: It’s one thing that Ritchie came out for the Pennsylvania referendum today but the manner in which he articulated it… His presence. The clear sign he wasn’t personally engaged with the facts…

President Josiah Bartlet: Toby—

Toby Ziegler: His staff was cringing, I promise you. And we let it go.

President Josiah Bartlet: It wasn’t the moment to go—

Toby Ziegler: You were asked the question.

President Josiah Bartlet: Do you have anything else?

Toby Ziegler: Sir, I don’t think I need to tell you that the level of respect with which the staff speaks of you doesn’t change depending on whether or not you’re in the room.

From “The Two Bartlets”, Episode 13, Season 3 of The West Wing

This episode aired in January 2002 meaning it was written in 2001. And even though it all happened 15 years ago, it struck me how relevant it was to what has just happened. How President-Elect Donald Trump could easily be substituted for the fictional Governor Robert Ritchie. How Aaron Sorkin and his writing team had anticipated the situation the US and the world now finds itself in. A battle between feminine and masculine, between smart and ignorant, between the elite and the common man (although anyone who thinks Donald Trump is part of the 99% instead of the 1% should really think again).

And I had a realisation, one that I really should have had long before now, about the importance of writing. Why, I hear you asking, has it taken me so long? Why would someone who has spent the last twenty-five years writing doubt the importance of the very thing they do day in, day out?

It says more about me than I would like – because I don’t doubt the importance of writing, just the importance of my writing. I’m not a philosopher or an influencer or one of the great minds of the twenty-first century. I write action adventure, young adult and crime fiction as well as non-fiction about writing and editing and the occasional article about employment. I suspect I will outlive by a long period of time the importance of anything I end up writing during my lifetime.

When I finished my master’s degree in writing with a high distinction average, I had the option of continuing my studies by undertaking a PhD. At least one of my classmates did. I chose not to because I didn’t think writing was something that PhDs should be awarded for. Chemistry, biology, medicine, physics, psychology, yes but writing, no.

In 2016, my little sister finished and submitted her PhD on psychological insulin resistance in Type 2 diabetes sufferers to become the first person in our family ever to be eligible to use the title “Dr”. That could have been me. Any thesis I could have written wouldn’t have been nearly as impressive and useful as hers is but I could have done it if I’d had the confidence, if I’d had the belief in the importance of what I was doing. But I didn’t.

Writing doesn’t have to be important but it can be. I know that now. What I do could be important.  What I write could be important. What you write could be important and I suspect you’re more likely to write something important than I ever am. (What can I say? Old habits die hard.) Why is it important? Because writing is the way we explode the bomb to explore the consequences without anyone having to die and without having to destroy anything and without having to pay for it (both in economic and historic terms).

Regardless of what it is we do, whether it’s writing or something else, it could be important. We have to be able to recognise that within ourselves, within whatever it is we are doing. Perhaps most importantly of all because if we weren’t doing these things, if I wasn’t writing, it would feel like something was missing.

I’ll give the last word to Kalinda Vazquez and Jane Espenson, who wrote the following dialogue about character of the Author who writes the fairytales Once Upon a Time is based on and became trapped in his own book. They say it much more succinctly and beautifully than I have:

August Booth: There have been many authors throughout time. It’s a job, not a person, and the one trapped in here was just the last tasked with the great responsibility. To record, to witness the greatest stories of all time and record them for posterity. The job has gone back eons: from the man who watched shadows dance across cave walls and developed an entire philosophy, to playwrights who tell tales of poetry, to a man named Walt. Many have had this sacred job. Great women and men who took on the responsibility with the gravity that it deserved.

From “Best Laid Plans”, Episode 17, Season 4 of Once Upon a Time

Book Review: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving

Another legendary story, another example of how a great idea can transcend time, place and the rules of writing. First published in 1820 as part of a larger collection, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is a short story that has gone on to overshadow everything else Washington Irving has ever written.

Ichabod Crane is a teacher from Connecticut (where all teachers at the time are from apparently), educating the children of the Dutch farmers in New York and accepting their hospitality – he doesn’t have a place of his own and bunks in with anyone willing to offer him a place to sleep so he moves around quite a bit. To remedy his lack of fortune, he has his eye on the attractive daughter of a local wealthy man but the Headless Horseman – the legend referred to in the title – has his eye on Ichabod (well, maybe not his eye since he doesn’t have any but you know what I mean).

The story is told from the perspective of someone named Diedrich Knickerbocker with a note at the beginning of the story and a postscript describing how it was found in his papers after his death. This is an interesting device because I kept wondering who Diedrich Knickerbocker was and why he was so interested in this story, so much that it detracted from my interest in the story of Ichabod. But that is part of the story’s brilliance. It feels like so much is left explicitly unexplored so that readers wonder about the importance of what they aren’t being told.

It’s also one of those stories that high school English teachers can analyse until they go crazy. Is it a commentary on fear? Is it a commentary on the outsider, the other? Is it a commentary on greed? Ichabod Crane’s desire for Katrina Van Tassel seemed just as much a desire for the material things her father’s wealth could provide him and when she eventually turns him down, it seems like his just deserts (although it’s a stretch to say he deserved his other fate as a victim of the Headless Horseman).

For the rest of us, we can just focus on the creepiness of the premise as we are left to wonder what really happened, whether the Headless Horseman truly existed or whether the legend was simply exploited for its benefits.

The story is a perfect example of telling rather than showing in breach of the “show, don’t tell” rule but it’s also an example of how it can sometimes work. Still, it could have worked a little better. There’s only one line of dialogue in the entire book and dialogue is how long tracts of prose get broken up for the reader’s relief. And yet for a story to have resonated for this long, there’s got to be something to it.

As with many older stories, I feel it could do with a little bit of editing but it’s a nice blend of plot and well-executed writing. The characters aren’t that well developed but it contributes nicely to the sense of mystery, sort of a Blair Witch of its time.

Some people say that all the stories have been told now and the new ones are just variations on the originals. Well, this is one of the originals. Enjoy.

3 stars

*First published on Goodreads 20 December 2016

Trine: Part Two, Chapter Three

On Tuesday, I wrote about how you can get to know your characters better by, among other things, imagining them in session with a therapist. I’ve done this myself before and the imaginings ended up being the basis for the third chapter of part two of my unfinished novel, Trine.

So here it is. A little background – the narrator is Jock Copeland, the police chief of a three officer town who has organised for a therapist to visit twice a year and assess his staff, including himself, to make sure they aren’t succumbing to post-traumatic stress, suicide or the variety of other issues being a police officer can lead to. You can read the first chapter of part two here if you want to read Jock’s introduction first.

*****

When Dr Chamberlain arrives, I am already sitting at my desk typing up the report of my dealings with Martina the night before. I look up as she opens the office door without knocking and notice the way her mouth tightens momentarily before she gains control of her expression once more.

“Good morning,” I say, pretending not to notice.

“Good morning,” she responds, taking off her jacket and positioning herself in the armchair opposite the couch, her pen and notepad poised and ready for our session. When I don’t rush to join her, she looks over at me in a way that some would misinterpret as patience but that I know from long experience is meant to drive me nuts until I can’t stand her inspection any longer and postpone whatever it is that I’m doing.

“I’ll be with you in a moment,” I tell her, even though the report is pretty much done. It’s for her own good, I tell myself. She’s too used to telling everybody else what to do.

“Take your time,” she says amiably. But I know that if I take too long, she will simply spend the time analysing my body language. Which bothers me even more than when she analyses my words.

I save the file and take my cup of coffee – the store bought instant stuff we keep in the kitchenette here – and head to the couch. I sit down on it facing her. Dr Chamberlain has offered me the option of lying down at the start of every session we’ve had but accepting that offer would feel like giving her the advantage from the start. I always decline. But I’m still expecting her to offer this time as well. She’s a woman of habit.

“Are you comfortable?” she asks instead. She’s also a master of mixing it up when she knows it will put me off balance.

“Yes, thank you.” I drink the last of my coffee, then put the mug on the table next to the couch. The psychiatrist looks at the cup disapprovingly. She may think she knows how to push my buttons but I’m just as knowledgeable on pushing hers. She likes order. She likes cleanliness. She likes solving puzzles. She doesn’t like not being in charge. She doesn’t like mugs on coffee tables without a coaster underneath them. And she doesn’t like patients who refuse to cooperate.

“So what would you like to talk about today?” Dr Chamberlain looks at me evenly. She’s also a professional and very good at what she does. The one upmanship part of our session is done.

“How are Sarah and Matt?” They’ve both had their sessions now.

“How do they seem to you?” Like all psychiatrists, she loves answering a question with another question.

“Fine.”

“I concur.”

“Good.”

“So let’s talk about you.” She continues looking at me, somehow having perfected the ability to maintain eye contact without becoming uncomfortable like regular people become.

The eye contact certainly makes me uncomfortable and I can’t come up with anything.

“Would you like to revisit anything we’ve talked about previously?” she asks, reaching into her bag and pulling out a folder. She keeps meticulous notes, although I’m sure it’s only because it’s protocol. She seems to be able to recall every word I say during these sessions from memory even though we only do it twice a year.

I think back on the topics we’ve already covered. My choice of career, why I left Hope Springs, why I came back, my parents, my siblings, the expectations of the locals, the expectations of my staff, finding the balance between leading them and empowering them, the concerns I initially had that they might not fit in or that they might suffer the same fate as the former police chief, an outsider who was basically run out of town. I wasn’t here when it happened but my parents filled me in after I’d been offered the job to replace him. I didn’t probe too deeply but I suspect they were leading the cause to free up the position so I could come home. It’s not something I’m proud of. But it didn’t stop me from taking the job. That’s not something I’m proud of either.

“Do you believe in fate?” I ask, thinking maybe the notion that I never really had a choice would help shake loose some of that guilt.

“No.” Dr Chamberlain’s answer is emphatic.

“Why not?”

“Because if our lives are pre-determined, then nothing we do to try to better ourselves, our world, makes even a scrap of difference. If I thought that was the case, then I’d be in entirely the wrong profession.” She makes a short note on the first line of a fresh page in her notebook. “What made you ask that?”

“I suppose because it would be easier not to have to be accountable, especially when I think of all the silly things I’ve done.”

“Are any of these silly things recent occurrences?”

“Less and less.” I wish I could say I never do silly things anymore but I’m only human.

“That’s good. That shows you’re learning from your previous experiences.”

“Maybe it just shows I’m boring. That I don’t take risks anymore.”

“Did taking risks in the past make you feel happy?”

“It made me feel… something.”

“Are there times when you feel nothing?”

“There are times when I feel like I’m waiting. For what, I don’t know.”

“Wouldn’t it be more concerning if you didn’t feel that way? If this – right here, right now – was all there was and nothing ever surprised you ever again, wouldn’t it be worse?”

“I don’t know. I’m talking nonsense.” These sessions are the one place I can get it out of my system without damaging my reputation as a no-nonsense, respected figure of authority in the Hope Springs community.

“Not at all,” Dr Chamberlain contradicts me, which I understand. What I call nonsense, she is able to interpret to see into the deepest, most secret parts of me, more than I would prefer she did.

“Well, maybe it’s not nonsense but they definitely seem like questions without conclusive answers. My least favourite kind. It’s an occupational hazard,” I add when I can see she is gearing up to ask why I don’t like uncertainties.

“But did it become a dislike as a result of doing the job or were you drawn to the job because you had the dislike to begin with?”

I don’t remember ever giving it the level of thought Dr Chamberlain has. My uncle was the police chief, he was respected and he seemed to enjoy it. And he let me tag along for work experience while I was in high school, which transitioned into a part-time after-school job.

The types of job available in Hope Springs during work experience week were fairly limited back then – a variety of roles with an agricultural bent, a few within the council chambers, a number of retail positions in the local stores and one trailing my uncle around as he went about the business of keeping the community safe. Those with grander ambitions went slightly further afield to Glenville half an hour away.

Come to think of it, the types of job available in Hope Springs during work experience week are still fairly limited now. I take on one student each year but part-time jobs for untrained, underage civilians have been abolished. It’s just as well. Some of the things I was exposed to during my time working with my uncle may not have been the best formative experiences for a teenager. Like the time we retrieved the body of Eric Weatherby from the lake.

Eric was only five years older than me at the time of his death. He’d graduated from high school a few years earlier and headed off to the city to begin his studies at university. He would visit every three months or so and in between we’d receive updates on his progress from his parents. But on one of his visits, instead of just staying the weekend, he stayed the week. And that week turned into a month, then the month turned into a year.

There were rumours; Hope Springs is a small town and there are always rumours. Some suggested he’d failed his second year subjects and been asked to leave the university. Others suggested a girl had broken his heart. There was also the occasional cruel insinuation that he’d gotten himself involved in something illegal – drugs, prostitution, gambling, maybe even a murder – but none of it was true. Instead, he’d found himself in the grip of something so common now but rarely spoken of back then. An all-consuming darkness from which he could not escape.

His parents reported him missing on a Friday morning and tourists reported seeing a body weighed down on the bottom of the lake the next day. Police divers from the city were at another call-out and wouldn’t be able to make it to Hope Springs until Monday. We never actually agreed out loud to do it but my uncle and I went to the lake, hired one of the tourist row boats, stripped down to our underwear and took turns diving to the bottom of the lake to remove stones from the pockets of Eric Weatherby’s heavy wool overcoat, then the overcoat itself. Slowly, his body floated to the surface. We dragged him aboard and rowed back to shore.

His parents handed over a note they’d found in his bedroom – “I can’t think of a reason not to do this” – and the coroner declared it a suicide, commenting that it was a shame no one had recognised his depression earlier and gotten him the counselling he needed.

If I had to try to pinpoint when my dislike of unanswered and unanswerable questions began, Eric Weatherby’s death would be a reasonable guess.

“You’ve been quiet for a while now.” Dr Chamberlain interrupts my introspection.

“Sorry. Just thinking,” I say in a small voice I barely recognise as my own. I haven’t thought about Eric for a long time.

“About anything you’d like to share?”

Sometimes I wish Janet wasn’t quite so good at her job. “A guy I knew when I was a teenager.”

“What made you think of him?” Her pen is moving hurriedly over her notepad even as she probes me further.

“He’s one of those questions without a conclusive answer. He died when I was sixteen.”

“Were you close?”

“No. He was a few years older.” And much smarter than me, as well as a little bit of a loner. Although Hope Springs isn’t a large town, it was just large enough back then to have a few key groups of teenagers with which to align yourself. I played football and most of my close friends, including the current mayor, were also jocks. Another group was comprised of the creative types – actors, writers, artists, photographers – and a third group consisted mainly of the academically inclined. Eric fell into this last group almost by default but he seemed to exist on the fringes of it.

Perhaps if Hope Springs had been a larger city, his lack of engagement with the broader community would have been more obvious. But in our small town, where everybody knows everybody else, he could be amongst us without actually being involved.

It’s easy to see in retrospect. I beat myself up for a long time for not seeing it before when the knowledge could have been useful.

“How did he die?”

“He drowned himself.” It doesn’t seem to convey the right amount of anguish I felt back then, so I clarify with the one word that does. “Suicide.”

“Of course,” she says, my reference to a question without a conclusive answer now making sense.

“Have you ever considered suicide yourself?” I suppose the question isn’t completely irrelevant considering the topic of our discussion but I try hard not to resent it.

“Never.” It’s my turn to be emphatic now.

“It’s not an unreasonable question,” Dr Chamberlain says in response to my absoluteness. “There are a lot of members of your profession who have to deal with terrible things on an almost daily basis and don’t get the counselling that would help them cope. Suicide amongst police officers occurs at a higher rate than it does in the general public.”

“Suicide amongst men occurs at a higher rate than it does in the general public. That doesn’t make me in particular any more likely to kill myself.”

“True,” she concedes but she doesn’t say anything else. She’s consumed with filling the page of her notepad with lines and lines of blue handwriting. Then she flips the page and continues at the top of the next one. Clearly we’ve landed on a topic to her liking. I don’t feel the same way. I wish I hadn’t brought it up.

Her silence continues, forcing me to fill it. “I’d rather not talk about suicide anymore.”

“It can be a difficult topic.”

Tell me about it, I think to myself, but hold back on actually saying the words. She wouldn’t take it as a throwaway phrase. Instead, she would tell me about it and I really don’t want to hear detached, intellectual comments about something that is never unemotional when you’re involved personally or professionally.

Eventually, I manage to distract her by talking about strategies for dealing with the aftermath of suicide and other unnatural deaths in a professional capacity and we fill the remaining hour. When we finish, she takes over my desk and spends another half hour completing her notes on our session.

She emerges to find Matt, Sarah and I behind the front desk all waiting to farewell her. I know she is here at my invitation and I know the importance of what she does but I don’t think I’m the only one who considers the goodbye the most satisfying moment of her visits.

How to Get to Know Your Characters Better

“You make it look like work. I need to see the movement, not the effort behind it.”

Jonathan in Center Stage

Okay, Jonathan was talking about ballet but I have a theory that almost all of these types of statements can be applied to writing. And just like ballet, a lot of work goes on behind the scenes in writing that isn’t – or shouldn’t be – visible in the final published book.

I have no academic research to back this up but I suspect for a book that ends up around the 100,000 word mark, a writer would actually write closer to 200,000 words and discard the other 100,000 words as part of the editing process. Not all of those discarded words would be prose, of course. A lot of it would be research.

The problem with research is that no amount of it will help a writer to get to know their characters better. Because characters, like people, are more than just a collection of facts. They are human. They are unpredictable. And how they will react in any given situation is difficult to know. In fact, the only way a writer will know is to put them in that situation and see what happens.

The situations that might teach writers something about their characters may not necessarily make the final cut of their books. But writing them anyway can be a great way to get to know their characters better. So here are a few options for doing just that.

Write a Diary Entry from Your Character’s Perspective

If there’s anywhere a character can be themselves without the fear of embarrassment or scorn, it’s in their own private diary. Just because it’s a diary, though, doesn’t mean it’s going to be all flowery language and feelings. Someone with an eating disorder might use their diary to note in detail everything they eat and analyse how it relates to what else is going on in their life. A serial killer might use a code to relive each murder committed, perhaps pretending victims were first dates so as not to incriminate himself should anyone else read it.

Of course, there are plenty of characters who wouldn’t be caught dead keeping a diary so forcing them to write one might not make a lot of sense. They might call it something else instead. A journal. A notebook. A retired cop might keep scraps of information as he investigates a cold case, the one that he could never get out of his mind and always wanted to go back to when he finally had the time. Some of his personal feelings about the case might find their way into the margins.

Or imagine a character in their thirties, forties or fifties finding a diary they wrote in their teenage years and reading their own words all that time later and comparing who they are now to who they were then.

And once you’ve written these diary entries, you review what you’ve learned and infuse your characters’ actions with motivations that align with how they think about things when they know no one is watching them.

Write a Session with a Therapist from Your Character’s Perspective

Writing a session with a therapist is a lot like writing a diary entry except that a therapist is likely to ask and require an answer to questions that the character really doesn’t want to get into in. So in addition to learning more about how a character feels, you also learn about how that character reacts under pressure. Do they fold and give in? Do they push back? Do they cry? Do they yell? Do they storm out?

If you’re really lucky and if you’re any good as a de facto therapist, your character might even have a breakthrough, realising something about themselves that they never would have without that therapy. Of course, they can’t have that realisation in the story without someone helping them. It doesn’t have to be a therapist. It might just be the circumstances and the right check out chick in the right place at the right time.

Interview Your Character

If a journalist or a police officer started asking your character questions, would they be inclined to answer them truthfully, would they hold something back or would they lie outright? Would their inclination change if what they were being asked about wouldn’t get them or anyone they care about in any trouble? Do they trust journalists and the police or are they cynical and suspicious of anyone in those professions?

If you interview your character, you’ll find out.

Start a Character Blog

Who doesn’t have a blog these days? So why wouldn’t your character have one? You don’t have to actually publish it. It’s more about considering what your character might enjoy so much that he or she wants to blog about it and maybe even writing a post or two. I blog about writing and editing. My sister blogs about sewing. My police chief in a small town character might want to blog about community safety. But given how busy he is being the police chief in a small town, he might limit himself to a Facebook page instead. Or maybe he’s a closet Royal Doulton fan and his blog is how he relaxes in the evening.

There are actually a number of real character blogs including:

*Corporate or official character blogs – from companies that have characters representing them for marketing purposes and famous fictional characters beloved by viewers or readers (depending on where the character came from in the first place) continuing their stories beyond where they began

*Fan fiction or unofficial character blogs – some characters are so beloved that fans can’t wait for an official blog or sequel so they create them on their own. EL James, the multimillion selling author of the Fifty Shades series, developed Ana and Christian out of Bella and Edward erotic fan fiction, so you never know where these things can end up.

*Fantasy or completely new character blogs – these don’t rely on any previous fame but create brand new characters, just for the fun of it. Or maybe to try out a new character before committing to an entire book or film or TV series about them.

Some of these options might seem like a whole lot of extra work, especially if they won’t ever be seen by readers. But there’s nothing that says background work can’t be published. Readers love little extras that give insight into the writing process and additional information about the characters they’ve fallen in love with. But above all, if it means a deeper insight into their motivations and results in a better plot, then surely that extra work has be worth it.

Why “Little Did He Know” Gives Away Too Much Too Soon

Professor Jules Hilbert: Perhaps you should keep a journal. Write down what she said or something. That’s all I can suggest.

Harold Crick: I can barely remember it all. I just remember “Little did he know that this simple, seemingly innocuous act would lead to his imminent death”.

Professor Jules Hilbert: What?

Harold Crick: Little did he know…

Professor Jules Hilbert: Did you say, “Little did he know…”?

Harold Crick: Yes.

Professor Jules Hilbert: I’ve written papers on “Little did he know…”. I used to teach a class based on “Little did he know…”.’ I mean, I once gave an entire seminar on “Little did he know…”. Son of a bitch, Harold. “Little did he know…” means there’s something he doesn’t know. That means there’s something you don’t know. Did you know that?

Stranger Than Fiction

*****

I recently edited a book that consistently ended each chapter with a “Little did he know” giveaway.

“Little did he know that a cancer diagnosis would soon change everything.”

“Little did he know that the worst was still to come.”

“Little did he know that his sister was also his mother.”

Okay, those are fictional examples of what the writer was doing but you get the picture. He thought he was building up suspense. But instead what he was actually doing was giving away all the plot points before they happened. So by the time the reader got to the plot point as it occurred later in the narrative, the element of surprise and all the other associated emotions that should have been felt in that moment were dulled by the fact they already knew it was coming.

Of course, the problem is the same whether it’s “Little did he know”, “Little did she know”, “Little did we know”, “Little did they know” or “Little did I know” (although “Little did I know” comes with a whole other set of issues in that as a first person narrator, you can’t know more than you know unless you’re writing in the past tense in the sense of “I didn’t know it at the time but…”).

The example above from Stranger Than Fiction is used in and of itself as a plot point because Harold Crick begins hearing a voice narrating his life, which he finds annoying and unusual but hardly fatal, until he hears the voice say, “Little did he know that this simple, seemingly innocuous act would lead to his imminent death.” From then on, Harold desperately tries to find out why he’s hearing the voice and what he can do to prevent the imminent death his narrator has inadvertently warned him of. A psychiatrist tells him he has schizophrenia but the literature specialist, Professor Jules Hilbert, tells him he needs to figure out what kind of story he’s in to determine if he can stop his untimely demise.

Obviously it’s a high concept story playing off the fact that “Little did he know” gives away too much information. But when “Little did he know” is used without an irreverent nod to that fact, when it’s used in a no concept or low concept story, it usually just gives away too much too soon.

Sometimes it’s hard for us as writers to forget the fact that we know everything in the little universes we create and, for all intents and purposes, we are the gods of those worlds. But in order to create suspense in our writing, that’s exactly what we need to do. To try to combat this, in my debut novel Enemies Closer, I wrote each chapter from the perspective of different characters so that they couldn’t reveal things that only other characters knew. And when the characters who did know things got their chance to narrate a chapter, I didn’t automatically assume that they would be thinking about the things that the other characters didn’t know. I’d put them into some stressful situations so they were primarily thinking about how to get out of them. Eventually, things were revealed naturally as they tried to figure out the mystery I’d dropped them in the middle of. I like to think I did it successfully but that’s really up to others to decide.

The key is a drip-feed approach – to gradually reveal smaller components of larger facts that by themselves seem innocuous or irrelevant but when considered as a whole lead to jaw-dropping, oh-my-god moments that readers love. Throwing in a little bit of misdirection might not hurt either. But giving too much away too soon will definitely hurt. Because there are some readers who aren’t inclined to persist when they don’t enjoy what they’re reading and if they already know what’s going to happen, then they really don’t need to. But if they feel like they need to know and don’t yet, regardless of whether they’re enjoying it or not, then they will likely keep reading – all the way to the end if you’re lucky enough.

Book Review: Back When We Were Grownups by Anne Tyler

I’ve racked my brain for a perfect one-word description for this book and the best I can come up with is this: pointless. It’s one of those books that is easy to read because it’s really well written. So clearly Anne Tyler knows how to write but given the complete absence of plot, I don’t think she knows what to write.

Back When We Were Grownups is narrated by Rebecca, a middle-aged woman trapped in her own life. Married at twenty after abandoning her high school/college sweetheart fora much older man who mesmerises her during a two-week courtship, she becomes an instant stepmother to three daughters, gives birth at twenty-one to a biological daughter and then is widowed at twenty-six when her husband dies in a car accident.

It’s thirty years since all that happened. Now she’s a step-grandmother and grandmother many times over and she runs the family business hosting parties in the grand old family home while looking after her ninety-nine-year-old uncle-in-law. She is taken for granted a lot, has been for a long time and after dreaming of herself on a train with the son she never had, she starts to wonder how her life would have been different had she married her high school/college sweetheart instead. So she looks him up. And since this isn’t a Harlequin Mills & Boon, we can tell – I think even Rebecca can tell – that it isn’t going to have a “they lived happily ever after” ending.

There isn’t a single drop of passion in any part of Rebecca’s life and that likely has a lot to do with the fact that she made one rash choice and everything that has happened to her since has happened because of it without any further choices required. She runs the family business because no one else will. She looks after an elderly relative because no one else does. She keeps the family together because it would fall apart without her. She’s bubbly and positive and it’s all a façade. And it should have been someone else’s life. (Her husband’s first wife abandoned the family to remarry multiple times and live a glamourous life in London.)

I suppose Rebecca’s musings are something we all go through. How would our lives have been different had we taken a different path? But thankfully we don’t torture a vast reading audience with those musings. This book felt like a writing exercise, a character study. However, none of the characters were likeable or memorable, they all had strange names that should have made it easy to keep track of them but they still got all muddled up (especially the four daughters nicknamed Biddy, Patch, NoNo and Min Foo). And the banality of their lives, while realistic, didn’t warrant an entire novel. After all, if we want banality, we’ve got our own lives for that.

Rebecca (and maybe the author herself as well) is from a generation for which the choice was this man or that man. Not once does she stop to think that perhaps her choice should have been neither man. The potential for this novel to have had some genuine feeling and meaning had that alternative been explored seems a lot greater.

Anne Tyler’s writing genre is described as literary realism and there is always the possibility when writing “realistically” of falling into the trap of writing about boring topics, everyday topics and failing to imbue them with importance. Because reality is almost never boring. Parts of it are – blowing your nose, peeing, dusting the house, the commute to work, those times when you want to watch television but there’s nothing on that captures your attention. The thing about writing, all writing, is that we should leave these moments out so that readers aren’t struck by the impulse to poke the own eyes out. But a lot of literary realists leave them in to the detriment of their stories, their writing and their readers.

As always, I come back to the big three components in writing: characters, plot and the writing itself. This book only gets one thing right – the writing – but it isn’t good enough to make up for the lack of interesting characters and good plot. And despite Anne Tyler being Nick Hornby’s “favourite writer” and being described by Lynne Truss as “a brilliant writer of emotionally sophisticated novels”, I’m not convinced. I’m not anywhere close to being convinced of those things based on this effort. And perhaps it’s a shame that I doubt I’ll ever be inclined to read another Anne Tyler book.

2 stars

*First published on Goodreads 26 February 2017

Introduction from Project January: A Sequel About Writing

Almost as soon as I finished writing Project December: A Book About Writing, I knew I was going to follow it up with a sequel. I told myself a year was a reasonable interval between books and that since the first one had only taken six months to write, I had a little bit of time up my sleeve. I took some time off, wrote 30,000 words of a novel I’ve been trying to finish for the last four years (still not finished) and then started to gear up to yet again write about writing.

Of course, as with all the best laid plans, life was about to get in the way. I landed a six-week writing job, then another, did a semester of intensive tutoring for a university student and last but not least received – and accepted – an offer to extensively rewrite and edit an autobiography. Suddenly, it was November and I barely had half of Project January: A Sequel About Writing written. I hadn’t even had a chance to do my traditional Project October month of intensive writing.

When I sat down and thought about it, I decided there was no way I would be able to meet the publication date I had set for myself. So instead of aiming for an early 2017 release for Project January, I would move it back a year to early 2018. After all, nobody ever produced a great book by rushing to meet an arbitrary deadline. But, in the meantime, I would continue writing chapters here and there.

I wrote one chapter. One turned into two. Two chapters turned into ten. Ten turned into twenty-five. And so it continued. Before I knew it, in less than two months, the first draft was finished and it only took one month more for the text to be finalised. How, I asked myself, did that happen? How, when I was so sure it would never happen in that time frame?

It all came down to this: I psyched myself into writing a book.

Normally, we psych ourselves out of doing things but by simply removing the deadline that had been putting so much pressure on me and making me doubt myself, I removed the psychological barrier that was holding me back. And although I wasn’t aware of it at the time, there was still a little voice in the back of my mind urging me on. My conscious said it couldn’t be done so my subconscious was determined to prove me wrong. (It’s complex being me but that’s another story.)

One of the chapters in Project January (“How to write a book without even trying”) was inspired by the writing of Project December and some of the elements in that chapter were used again to complete this book. The equivalent chapter in the next one (assuming there is a next one – maybe in early 2018 – but why would I put a deadline on it when I now know that not having deadlines makes me write so much faster, despite that still yet-to-be-finished novel?) would have to be called, “How to psych yourself into writing a book.” Although I’m not sure exactly what all the steps are. I guess I’ve got a year (or more) to figure it out.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the second instalment.

Happy reading and happy writing!

*****

Project January: A Sequel About Writing is available as a paperback from CreateSpace and Amazon US and as an ebook from Amazon US, Amazon Australia and Smashwords (and will shortly be available on Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple and all good online book platforms).

 

Announcing the Release of my New Book, Project January: A Sequel About Writing

I’m very pleased to announce the release of my new book, Project January: A Sequel About Writing.

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A follow-up to Project December: A  Book About Writing, this is more of my musings and advice for writers and those wanting to write to getting started…again, developing characters and plot, the writing itself, editing and what to do when the book is finished.

Project January is available as a paperback from CreateSpace and Amazon US and as an ebook from Amazon US, Amazon Australia and Smashwords (and will shortly be available as an ebook from Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple and all good online book platforms).

I’ve also revised and re-released Project December and it is also available as a paperback from CreateSpace and Amazon US and as an ebook from Amazon US, Amazon Australia and Smashwords (and will shortly be available as an ebook from Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple and all good online book platforms).

Happy reading and happy writing!