Writing takes time. There’s no way around it – for many authers, their books are one, five, even ten years or more in the making! But often, it can be frustrating and demoralizing to feel as if it might take you that long to even finish a first draft. Today, we are going to highlight […]
How to fast-draft your next novel
I am a book geek but I can honestly say I was very excited to attend the launch of the new novel by the bestselling author, Barbara Erskine who returned to Hay Festival in the year that marks the 30th anniversary of her sensational debut bestseller, Lady of Hay.
Not only did Barbara return but she launched her brand new book, that is also set in Hay, Sleeper’s Castle. The book isn’t scheduled for release until June 30, 2016, but those that attended the festival were lucky enough to buy an early copy and for Barbara to personally sign each copy. Being an addicted fan and also in the throes of writing my own novel I couldn’t help but also ask her to sign a blank page of my own personal writing notebook that I carry everywhere in my handbag. Kindly Barbara happily obliged and I’m hoping that little bit of inspiration will keep me going at times when I need it.
With 30 years novel-writing experience under her belt, Barbara’s talk was actually really inspiring as a novice writer so I thought I’d share a few of her thoughts on here with you (written from my notes):
When writing about historical characters, what do you owe them?
Difficult question. So many historical records contradict themselves on when something happens, how something happened, sometimes even, if something happened. I always try to look for sources written by academics, professors, etc. I also try to remember it’s a story I am writing, it has to be an enjoyable story for the reader, not just filled with historical information.
Do you have an example of Historic Differences?
Speech. I try not to use an historic voice in my writing. At the same time, I try not to put in any modern slang, habits or references. I want the reader to identify with the characters easily, even those in another time period.
Do you start with a character?
With Lady of Hay, it was the character that first caught my attention. I kept seeing Matilda everywhere and knew I had to research her and find out more. This is often the case, sometimes other characters that I have read about and never intended to use worm their way in and tell their own stories. Sometimes a character is just too good to miss.
Where do your ideas from the past come from?
The past is all around us and there are so many places that have these strong links to the past (Hay being one of them). So many little towns have their own castle or fortified houses and their own history. Sometimes the history of these places is unknown even to the local community.
One of the golden rules of fiction is “Never Write Dreams”, yet dreams often feature in one form or another in your novels.
Firstly, I had no idea that was a golden rule. I don’t always write dreams there are so many ways a link to the past can happen, dreams, written accounts, re-incarnation, sleep-walking, etc. Mystical places like the borders often feel that the veil to the past is so thin you could almost reach out and touch it. I guess, if it feels right – write it.
What is your ratio of research-to-writing?
Well, it took me 10 years of research and writing for Lady of Hay but that was because it was just a hobby, something I loved doing and found interesting. With time, this habit has changed. I would say now I spend about a third of the time doing research then just start writing. I write my first draft quite quickly and leave little markers saying fill in detail so that I can go back and add the historical details as I need to.
How do you plot your stories?
I start with a mind map, I then do my research and I then create a linear plot to slot everything together. This gives me a good plan and a clear synopsis of my novels.
Does sitting down to write get easier?
No, you just have to do it, you have to sit down to write. The more you do it the more addictive it becomes. Just keep reading and writing, reading and writing. I think of it as a movie where you get to be the script-writer, director, producer, cast manager, costume designer and more. Only writing a novel lets you do all that and gives you that level of control. You’ve just got to write it.
Who do you enjoy reading?
I try not to read historical fiction novels or time-slip novels they are sometimes called now. I have read Daphne Du Maurier’s House By The Strand and enjoyed it immensely but my favourite genre to read is crime.
Any inaccuracies above are from my notes (or memory), my admiration of Barbara’s writing talent is indescribable and I wanted to capture a little bit of her talk here, I later realised I captured Barbara’s answers but not always the questions asked, so I have tried to remember what I could.
Barbara doesn’t have a particularly large online presence so learning from her wouldn’t be an easy thing, seeing her speak so passionately about writing, and noting these little hints and tips has increased my appreciation of her work even more. I hope you enjoyed my notes and got a little glimpse into the talk.
Much Love
KL ❤
On this day… 18th November 1939 – Margaret Atwood born
Margaret Eleanor Atwood, CC OOnt FRSC (born November 18, 1939) is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist. She is also a founder of the Writers’ Trust of Canada, a non-profit literary organization that seeks to encourage Canada’s writing community.
On Writing
In this interview with Noah Charney, Atwood describes her writing routine;
“I’d be lucky to have a morning routine! But let’s pretend… I’d get up in the morning, have breakfast, have coffee, then go upstairs to the room where I write. I’d sit down and probably start transcribing from what I’d [hand] written the day before. 
I’m not often in a set writing space. I don’t think there’s anything too unusual about it, except that it’s full of books and has two desks. On one desk there’s a computer that is not connected to the internet. On the other desk is a computer that is connected to the internet. You can see the point of that!”
Did You Know?
Atwood’s first novel, The Edible Woman, sat in a drawer on submission for two years.
According to an interview she gave Newsday in the 1970s, it was only when she won a Governor General’s award for her poetry that the publisher pulled it out and published it. “I was so naïve that I thought two years might be how long it normally took a publisher to consider a manuscript,” she told Newsday.
On this day… 11 November 1922, Kurt Vonnegut born.
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007) was an American author. In a career spanning over 50 years, Vonnegut published fourteen novels, three short story collections, five plays, and five works of non-fiction. He is most famous for his darkly satirical, best-selling novel Slaughterhouse-Five (1969).
On Writing
Kurt Vonnegut’s tips on writing:
Did You Know?..
Vonnegut Waged War Against the Semicolon
Vonnegut’s vehement ruling on semicolons was “They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.” For more see this nytimes article.
On this day… 25th October 1975 – Zadie Smith born.
Zadie Smith FRSL (born on 25 October 1975) is an English novelist, essayist, and short story writer. Smith was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2002. As of 2012, she has published four novels, all of which have received substantial critical praise. In 2003, she was included on Granta’s list of 20 best young authors, and was also included in the 2013 list. She joined New York University’s Creative Writing Program as a tenured professor on 1 September 2010. Smith has won the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in 2006 and her novel White Teeth was included in Time magazine’s TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005 list.
Tips On Writing
The Guardian reached out to some of today’s most celebrated authors and asked them to each offer his or her rules. This was Zadie Smith’s list:
Did You Know?..
When she gets stuck with writing she doodles a cartoon duck holding a notepad.
Zadie Says “Writing on a computer can be terribly distracting, so sometimes I like to use a pencil and paper to jot down ideas. I always end up drawing a cartoon duck. Inevitably, the duck is holding a notepad, and I can read the ideas that he wrote down.”
On this day… 16th October 1959 – The Haunting of Hill House published.
The Haunting of Hill House is a 1959 novel by author Shirley Jackson. Finalist for the National Book Award and considered one of the best literary ghost stories published during the 20th century, it has been made into two feature films and a play. Jackson’s novel relies on terror rather than horror to elicit emotion by the reader, utilizing complex relationships between the mysterious events in the house and the characters’ psyches.
Tips On Writing
If you’re writing your own haunted house stories and murder mysteries, and are in need of a little inspiration, here are a few of my favourite of Jackson’s thoughts about the process of putting words down on paper:
“All you have to do … is keep writing. As long as you write it away regularly, nothing can really hurt you.”
“I tell myself stories all day long, and I have managed to weave a fairy tale of infinite complexity around the inanimate objects in my house…”
“A writer who is serious and economical can store away small fragments of ideas and events and conversations, and even facial expressions and mannerisms, and use them all someday.”
Did You Know?..
Talking about the opening paragraph of The Haunting of Hill House, Stephen King once wrote that:
“there are few if any descriptive passages in the English language that are any finer than this; it is the sort of quiet epiphany every writer hopes for: words that somehow transcend the sum of the parts.”
On this day… 15th October 1881 – P.G. Wodehouse born.
Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, (15 October 1881 – 14 February 1975) was an English author and one of the most widely read humorists of the 20th century. Born in Guildford, the son of a British magistrate based in Hong Kong, Wodehouse spent happy teenage years at Dulwich College, to which he remained devoted all his life. After leaving school he was employed by a bank but disliked the work and turned to writing in his spare time. His early novels were mostly school stories, but he later switched to comic fiction, creating several regular characters who became familiar to the public over the years. They include the feather-brained Bertie Wooster and his sagacious valet, Jeeves; the immaculate and loquacious Psmith; Lord Emsworth and the Blandings Castle set; the Oldest Member, with stories about golf; and Mr Mulliner, with tall tales on subjects ranging from bibulous bishops to megalomaniac movie moguls.
Tips On Writing
Keep professional notebooks. The entries in Wodehouse’s notebooks and commonplace books are numbered for future reference. It’s obvious reading them that he is always on the lookout for material, always combing his environment for ideas. If he makes some small observation that might not be useful for two weeks, ten months or five years, he doesn’t rely on memory to preserve it for him. The notebooks are full of instructions to himself. They were going to be re-read. “Try this…” 
crops up time and time again.
Wodehouses stories and novels were always ruthlessly plotted before a word of text was typed. It’s this intense respect for the conventions of storyline that make his many novels each similar enough to attract repeat readership, but each unique enough to reward it. That requires hard background work and deep knowledge of writing as craft.
Wodehouse did between three and ten drafts of everything, and where necessary would start all over again on a piece.
For more great tips on Wodehouse visit:- mtmg.wordpress.com/writing-tips-from-pg-wodehouse-and-a-contrast/
Did You Know?..
Wodehouse played cricket amongst some of the finest celebrities of the day.
Allahakbarries was an amateur cricket team founded by author J. M. Barrie, and was active from 1890 to 1913. The team was named in the mistaken belief that Allah akbar meant Heaven help us in Arabic (rather than God is great). Notable figures to have featured for the side included Rudyard Kipling, H. G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, P. G. Wodehouse, G. K. Chesterton, Jerome K. Jerome, A. A. Milne, E. W. Hornung, Henry Justice Ford, A. E. W. Mason, Walter Raleigh, E. V. Lucas, Maurice Hewlett, Owen Seaman, Bernard Partridge, Augustine Birrell, Paul Du Chaillu, Henry Herbert La Thangue, George Cecil Ives, and George Llewelyn Davies, as well as the son of Alfred Tennyson.
On this day… 13th September, 1916 – Roald Dahl born.
Roald Dahl (13 September 1916 – 23 November 1990) was a British novelist, short story writer, poet, screenwriter, and fighter pilot. Dahl’s short stories are known for their unexpected endings and his children’s books for their unsentimental, often very dark humour. His works for children include James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, The Witches, Fantastic Mr Fox, The BFG, George’s Marvellous Medicine, and The Twits. Adult works include Tales of the Unexpected and My Uncle Oswald.
About Writing
Roald Dahl wrote all of his stories in a shed at the end of his garden. 
Every day from 10.00-12.00 and 16.00-18.00, Roald Dahl would write stories whilst sitting in a shed at the end of his garden. All of his stories were written using an HB pencil on yellow legal notepads.
Seven tips from Roald Dahl
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More features a short extract called Lucky Break, in which Roald Dahl explains how he came to be a writer. It also includes seven tips from Roald on the qualities he thought necessary to anyone wanting to make a living out of writing fiction. They were:
Did You Know?..
“Roald Dahl created more than 250 words”
Chiddler, frobscottle, swishwiffingly scrumdiddlyumptious — okay so they’re not exactly in the OED, nor are they commonly used, but to create a register of 283 words is still quite impressive. The collection of words is called Gobblefunk and it’s mainly used in The BFG, although it does also make an appearance in Dahl’s other works, such as ‘Oompa Loompa’ in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
1. Have fun with the research, but do your homework. This should go without saying, but I’ll say it anyway. Borrow some good reference books. Become comfortable with the time period. Try to understand both the larger scope of the period, while examining aspects of daily life. This will help create an authentic backdrop for your novel.
2. Let the characters engage with the historical details. This goes along with that “show don’t tell” truism writers are told all the time. Rather than just dumping a bunch of facts on the poor reader, let your characters interact with these details with all these senses. Let them smell the offal dumped onto the cobblestone streets. Let them squint in the fading light of the tallow candles. Let them feel the tingling sensation as the physician places a leech on their bare skin.
3. Allow your characters to question and explore their place in society. This will help reveal the larger political, social, cultural context of the time. What were the expectations for women? For sailors? For criminals? How did people from different parts of society interact with one another?
4. Use the internet wisely, to inspire and inform. The internet can be a researcher’s best friend, especially for arm-chair time travelers. Need to know how long it would take to walk from the Louvre to the Eiffel tower? Use the walking feature on mapquest. Need to see the inside of the Hagia Sophia? Check the dozens of tourist videos on YouTube. Sometimes I’m amazed by what the internet can’t answer. Certainly, the internet is a treasure trove of interactive maps, images, videos, and historical documents, which can be both informative and inspiring.
5. The internet can be bad, bad, bad for historical research. Unfortunately, the internet is also full of flawed information, lies, plagiarized material and half truths. (I’m looking at you, Wikipedia! Which I do use, but cautiously). Check all “facts” against at least two sources when possible. If a story or definition is repeated nearly verbatim in more than one source, there’s a good chance someone simply copied the information without verifying the accuracy. This is how a lot of bad information gets passed along and taken as “true.”
6. Don’t fret the details; let the story be told. Strive for accuracy, but when necessary, make your best informed guess and move on. And if you have to fudge something, well, that’s what the ‘historical note’ at the end of your novel is for!
7. Love the process, because readers will still find errors. And they’ll let you know about them. It doesn’t matter if those errors happened in editing process (as several of mine did. I collapsed some scenes together, and voila! A perfect recipe for timeline and geography mistakes). You can triple-check facts, hire copy editors and proofreaders, scrutinize every word for inconsistencies and mistakes, and I guarantee something will still slip by. At that point, you just have to laugh, thank your reader and move on.
But what do you think? How do you balance historical authenticity and historical accuracy as you tell your story?
I Came Across this useful article today on writers digest, by author Susanna Calkins (author of A Murder at Rosamund’s Gate). I did click the share button but apparently it doesn’t translate to wordpress very well so I have extracted the tips to here. But please visit the full article using the link below.
How to Write Historical Fiction: 7 Tips on Accuracy and Authenticity.
New2Writing 