One hundred and fifty ‘rules’ for writing fiction: 106-110.

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Further stimuli on writing from the experts, garnered from interviews, festival appearances and articles.

106.  You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write. (Saul Bellow).

107.  Do be kind to yourself. Fill pages as quickly as possible; double space, or write on every second line. Regard every new page as a small triumph – until you get to page 50. Then calm down, and start worrying about the quality. Do feel anxiety – it’s the job.  (Roddy Doyle).

108.  Write without pay until somebody offers pay; it nobody offers within three years, sawing wood is what you were intended for. (Mark Twain). 

109.  Art, though, is never the voice of a country; it is an even more precious thing, the voice of the individual, doing its best to speak, not comfort of any sort, but truth. And the art that speaks it most unmistakably, most directly, most variously, most fully, is fiction, in particular, the novel. (Eudora Welty). 

110. Do back exercises. Pain is distracting. (Margaret Atwood).

One hundred and fifty ‘rules’ for writing fiction: 97-101.

Further quotations and pieces of advice from established writers, taken from interviews, festivals, and articles…. Writing one hundred rules has almost taken a year, and  I’ve enjoyed compiling this so much, rather than finish the series here at one hundred, I’ve cheated and increased it to one hundred and fifty… Hope you continue to enjoy some of the gems I’ve gathered over the years…

97.   A true story can be falsified in the telling. Language is lazy, it wants to revert to what’s obvious, to what’s been said before, to short cuts…There’s no secret, of course, to writing a good story. But to strive against the clichés of perception and expression, to work to get down something true in words – this is the only place to start. (Tessa Hadley).

98.  Aim for a story that is both surprising and satisfying. The only thing worse than reading a novel and feeling like you know exactly what’s going to happen is reading a novel and feeling unfulfilled at the end — like what happened wasn’t what was supposed to happen. Your readers invest themselves in your story. They deserve an emotional and intellectual payoff.

99.   I know you’ve heard it a thousand times before. But it’s true – hard work pays off. If you want to be good, you have to practice, practice, practice. If you don’t love something, then don’t do it. (Ray Bradbury).

100.   Take a pencil to write with on aeroplanes. Pens leak. But if the pencil breaks, you can’t sharpen it on the plane, because you can’t take knives with you. Therefore: take two pencils. If both pencils break, you can do a rough sharpening job with a nail file of the metal or glass type. (Margaret Atwood).

101.  I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite. (G.K. Chesterton). 

One hundred ‘rules’ for writing fiction: 47-51

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Further words on ‘how to’ or ‘how not to’  or ‘how I do’ from interviews with fiction writers.

47, You can never read your own book with the innocent anticipation that comes with that first delicious page of a new book, because you wrote the thing. You’ve been backstage. You’ve seen how the rabbits were smuggled into the hat. Therefore ask a reading friend or two to look at it before you give it to anyone in the publishing business. This friend should not be someone with whom you have a ­romantic relationship, unless you want to break up. (Margaret Atwood).

48. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water. (Kurt Vonnegut).

49. I’m trying to get better at the plotting, because I don’t think it’s my natural strength. I would say I have sort of a natural gift for character, and following one person’s point of view at a time, and dialogue, but I’m not naturally good at strong plot. So something like Room I’ve done a lot more planning on. And it’s not cold-blooded planning; it’s more like planning a military campaign or something. It’s quite exciting, because what you’re trying to do is to keep up the reader’s energy at every point. You’re looking for those spots where things would sag or get lost or come off the rails. You’re trying to keep up the momentum. Playwriting is very good training for that, because people are quite indulgent in a novel of any softening in your pace—they can just choose to read faster, or to take a break from it and come back. But in a theatre, your audience is trapped there. So if you’ve got any bits that feel dull, the audience will literally shift and cough. Even if they don’t walk out, you can tell that they’re restless, so you have to really shape your play well, or they’ll be shifting in their seats. (Emma Donahue).

50. Do it every day. Make a habit of putting your observations into words and gradually this will become instinct. This is the most important rule of all and, naturally, I don’t follow it. (Geoff Dyer).

51. Editing is as important as the writing. I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil. (Truman Capote).

One hundred ‘rules’ for writing fiction: 32-36

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Further nuggets of advice gleaned from the great and the good from interviews, articles, and reflections on how to write outstanding fiction:

32. The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe. (Gustave Flaubert)

33.  Don’t panic. Midway through writing a novel, I have regularly experienced moments of bowel-curdling terror, as I contemplate the drivel on the screen before me and see beyond it, in quick succession, the derisive reviews, the friends’ embarrassment, the failing career, the dwindling income, the repossessed house, the divorce . . . Working doggedly on through crises like these, however, has always got me there in the end. Leaving the desk for a while can help. Talking the problem through can help me recall what I was trying to achieve before I got stuck. Going for a long walk almost always gets me thinking about my manuscript in a slightly new way. And if all else fails, there’s prayer. St Francis de Sales, the patron saint of writers, has often helped me out in a crisis. If you want to spread your net more widely, you could try appealing to Calliope, the muse of epic poetry, too. (Sarah Waters)

34.   Don’t sit down in the middle of the woods. If you’re lost in the plot or blocked, retrace your steps to where you went wrong. Then take the other road. And/or change the person. Change the tense. Change the opening page. (Margaret Atwood)

35.  Think with your senses as well as your brain. (Andrew Motion)

36.  A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal. (Oscar Wilde)

One hundred ‘rules’ for writing fiction: 16-21

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Further thoughts and quotations on writing I’ve collected over the years:

16. Have more than two irons in the fire at any time. I try to be reading research material for a project that’s forming whilst revising or working on a developed project – that way if I want a day off from something, I’m still being productive. It’s good to feel I’m playing truant – whilst also knowing I’m moving forward. (KOR)

17. Avoid prologues: they can be ­annoying, especially a prologue ­following an introduction that comes after a foreword. But these are ordinarily found in non-fiction. A prologue in a novel is backstory, and you can drop it in anywhere you want. There is a prologue in John Steinbeck’s Sweet Thursday, but it’s OK because a character in the book makes the point of what my rules are all about. He says: “I like a lot of talk in a book and I don’t like to have nobody tell me what the guy that’s talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks.”  (Elmore Leonard)

18.  Find your best time of the day for writing and write. Don’t let anything else interfere. Afterwards it won’t matter to you that the kitchen is a mess.    (Esther Freud)

19. Take something to write on. Paper is good. In a pinch, pieces of wood or your arm will do.  (Margaret Atwood)

20. All through my career I’ve written 1,000 words a day – even if I’ve a hangover. You’ve got to discipline yourself if you’re professional. There’s no other way.   (J.G.Ballard)

21. Have regrets. They are fuel. On the page they flare into desire.  (Geoff Dyer)

One hundred ‘rules’ for writing fiction: 1-9.

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Having tea with a writer friend the other day, he challenged me as to why I haven’t yet written about fiction. Although my specialism is in playwriting and dramaturgy, I have published short prose in a variety of anthologies and am in the final (dying? thrashing? please-god-will-it-never-be-over-and-how-will-I-bear-it-when-it-is?) throes of completing my first novel.

He knows I’m a magpie for quotations and snippets of advice. I have books filled with notes from authors I’ve interviewed for Irish newspapers and Welsh journals, or scribbled down at literary festivals, or sucked up from articles and features, or worked out myself.

‘So why not share them?’ he suggested. So I will.

The title of this section has ‘rules’ in inverted commas, simply as I’m not a great follower of rules and am more likely to do the opposite once given them as commands. I prefer to be descriptive and disobedient, although I think the trick is to learn what others may think these commandments are – and then break them. I also found my original title One hundred quotations or snippets or pieces of advice for writing fiction isn’t as pithy a title and besides, it was too long for the ‘subject’ title.

So one hundred ‘rules’ it is and perhaps the first should be

1.   Learn what successful writers think the ‘rules’ are, then break them. (KOR)

2.   Do back exercises. Pain is distracting. (Margaret Atwood)

3.   Do not place a photo of your favourite author on your desk, especially if the author is one of the famous ones who committed suicide. (Roddy Doyle).

4.    True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,                               As those move easiest who have learned to dance.  (Alexander Pope. An Essay on Criticism 1711).

5.    Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way. (E.L.Doctorow).

6.  Do it every day. Make a habit of putting your observations into words and gradually this will become instinct. This is the most important rule of all and, naturally, I don’t follow it. (Geoff Dyer).

7.   When you are in difficulties with a book, try the element of surprise: attack it at an hour when it isn’t expecting it. (HG Wells).

8.   The way to write a book is to actually write a book. A pen is useful, typing is also good. Keep putting words on the page.  (Anne Enright).

9. Read Becoming a Writer, by Dorothea Brande. Then do what it says, including the tasks you think are impossible. You will particularly hate the advice to write first thing in the morning, but if you can manage it, it might well be the best thing you ever do for yourself. This book is about becoming a writer from the inside out. Many later advice manuals derive from it. You don’t really need any others, though if you want to boost your confidence, “how to” books seldom do any harm. You can kick-start a whole book with some little writing exercise. (Hilary Mantel).

I hope these are amusing, illuminating, or helpful.

If you have any quotations or ‘rules’ to share, please do.

Enjoy writing, and good luck!

Drama is life with the dull bits left out: Things I wish I’d known when starting out (3)

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Theatre is artifice. It is not ‘just like real life’ – even in the most precise productions using realism and naturalism it is artificial, crafted, completely manufactured. It requires thought and structure and dramatic theory put into practice.  Some years ago I got a group of young writers who were resisting this basic tenet to record and then transcribe one of their evenings when they felt their dialogue was most sparkling and rapier-swift, when they felt their concerns were most engaging and communicable to an appreciative audience, who would be eager to hear more. We began then to read this transcript in a class, until they pleaded to stop. They had learnt the hard way what Alfred Hitchcock espoused: Drama is life with the dull bits left out.

Editing and cutting is essential. Finding what to keep is the question…

Try to understand and identify the difference between what is dramatic material and what is anecdote.

Fluency and ease in writing comes from practice, not chance.

If you are serious about playwriting, reading scripts is as essential as seeing live work.

‘Writing is play in the same way that playing the piano is ‘play’, or putting on a theatrical ‘play’ is play. Just because something’s fun doesn’t mean it isn’t serious.’ Margaret Atwood.