Can I Write? Part 3

| Aug 3, 2015
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writing-clip-art-5Part 1 Part 2

Me again… well, how did your first attempt pan out?

This time, I want to give you some tips to make the reader stay with your story. Now, I told you that I started out writing just for my own edification. It was my way of releasing stress, of coping with my particular situation. It was, and still is, my way of dealing with the hand with which I was dealt. We all try something to help us deal with whom and what we are.

Some turn to chemicals — drugs or alcohol, or both!

I’m afraid that I subscribe to the old saying — Reality is for those poor unfortunates who can’t cope with drugs!

So, here are my tips:

1. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

I turned to writing because in my stories, while I write them, I become the main character. I see the world through their eyes and, for that time, I forget the realities. Strangely, when I read my own work, the same thing happens, and so I just love reading and re-reading my own stories. That’s the main reason I have written in excess of forty four books!

It is simply lovely when someone writes to me and says, “I read your book in one sitting. I was up all night, as I just couldn’t put it down. I became Josie (or whoever) for that time, and I so wanted to be her forever!”

If you try to please everyone, you’ll consistently fail. If you write to please yourself, then you will not only succeed, but also manage to please a few more as well. I have sold over 34,000 books, and I have been writing for myself each time.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

Being able to identify with a character draws the reader in. None of us are perfect, so give your character some flaws. I do, I’m happy to share my own faults with my characters. Not all of them, perhaps, as I wouldn’t want the poor character to be over-burdened.

I do that because they’re easy to write about with some experience. I know that I’m impatient, intolerant of idiots and bureaucrats, and I know that, deep down, I’m as lazy as the next person. The old adage, why do today what you can put off until tomorrow annoys the hell out of my nearest and dearest. Like, why bother to wash up one or two items all day, when you can do them all at once in the evening?

A character need to be more than just a paper cut-out. You’ve heard the comments about two-dimensional characters? Well, it means there is no depth to them. They look pretty and go through the motions, but the reader can’t connect with them. You have to do more than paint a picture of what they look like. You need to express in their conversation the elements of their character that fleshes them out. Sarcasm and humour do a lot for a character. As do all emotions. If your character never gets cross, hurt, downright indignant of flaming angry, then they will never feel real have them laugh, smile, cry, gasp and look pityingly at others.

In other words, let them be just like you or people that you know!

So, why stop at one character?

If you make your main character so nice as to be almost sick-making, give her a friend who is larger than life and very different. In The Torc, the main character was a troubled teen who found the artefact that, once on, changed him from male to female and bestowed her with awesome powers. I liked Keira, but she was rather too goody-goody, so I gave her an Irish friend called Shannon who swore a lot and constantly did what she wanted to in spite of clear instructions to the contrary.

3. Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.

A sentence that does neither is a complete waste of time. Do not tell the reader what is going on, show them. Let them hear the words as they are being spoken, let them smell the atmosphere, and let them allow their imaginations to take off. If you give them too much description, then you are hindering their own ability to fill in the gaps. You can never hope to paint every scene entirely, so don’t even try. Let them do it for you.

I remember reading (or trying to, as I gave it up as a bad job) a book by a very successful and well-known female writer of romantic fiction. In this book, the heroine took five pages at the beginning to make her way from some obscure railway station in Cornwall to some house about a ten minute walk away. I recall counting nineteen different flowering shrubs and plants, bees, seventeen trees of different varieties, and the description of eight of the buildings that she passed. I’m not saying she was wrong, but I was so bored by the time she got where she was going that I gave up the fight and read something else.

That’s the way I am, so if you like descriptions of everything, and that’s what gives you pleasure – then go for it. I’m sure as this particular author sells in hundreds of thousands, there are many who do like it. I’m not one of them, so I will never write stuff that I do not want to read.

Avoid detailed descriptions of characters. Allow the characters to develop as the story grows. Use every opportunity in dialogue and in the description of other character’s reactions to paint the picture.

For example, allow another character to react positively or negatively, thereby explaining why. So….

“Is this seat taken?” he asked the attractive girl reading the magazine in the corner booth.

She regarded his size with expression of distaste.

“Not at this moment, but my friend is coming back in a minute,” she said, intimidated by his bulk and unshaven appearance.

He ran his hand through his hair in frustration, removing the fringe from his eyes in an unconscious and practised gesture.

No real description, but you now know that she is attractive and he is big, needs some grooming and is probably smelly.

If the conversation continued, you could add humour and change the reaction as she gets to know him.

Better than…. Harry entered the diner as it started to rain. He was a tall man, dressed casually in jeans and an old anorak. He was broad across the shoulder and was carrying a good 180 lbs without being fat. He needed a haircut, and hadn’t shaved for three days.

Boring or what?

Humour is great, but too much is not advisable, unless the book is supposed to be funny throughout. To write a funny book is hard, as everyone’s idea of what is funny is different. By all means, give your character(s) a sense of humour, and use it sparingly to give body to the plot and the characters. I wrote IN THE SHADOWS as a serious thriller involving a conspiracy by extreme right wing Nazis to rise up and form the Fourth Reich. It was based on truth, in that the setting in 1932 New York for the Eugenics Conference actually happened, and the theories put forward by eminent men at that conference were heartfelt and sincere. The fact those theories went on to be the base for Hitler’s policies against the impure races over the following decade is a matter of historical record, but my point is – it was not meant to be a funny book. However, I had the main character, a slight young woman, hiding almost naked in an airing cupboard with a pre-war Webley revolver – it begged to be painted with a flash of humour in both the event and the dialogue that followed it.

“Was Naomi really in the airing cupboard with a gun?”

“I think so, yes.”

“Why, exactly?”

One just has to smile. Or, I did when writing it, anyway.

4. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make a variety of things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

Life is full of nasty things happening. In order to expand the nature of your character, put them into situations whereby they can prove that they are far more capable that one first thought. In RISE TO THE CHALLENGE, the main character, Jenny, is a young woman who is struggling with various inner problems. She was placed into a nasty situation very quickly that helped me explain the problems and made her rise to the challenge (clever, eh?)

A person’s full character can never be illustrated when everything goes well. They say that when the going gets tough, the tough get going. Allow your characters the opportunity to show exactly why they are the lead person in the book.

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Category: Transgender How To

Tanya Allan

About the Author ()

Tanya Allan is a prolific writer of various works, including novels, short stories and poetry. Some of her work, relating to transgender issues, may be familiar to those who feel that perhaps life would have been easier had they been born with a body and mind of the same gender. Her other - non-TG work has also been published, but under a different name. Tanya is now settled in the southern half of the United Kingdom (sometimes known as England). Born and educated in Scotland, and having experienced over a half century of life, in a myriad of guises, mostly involved keeping the realm safe and secure from enemies, both domestic and foreign, Tanya has a more sedate life now, concentrating on grandchildren, dogs, travel and writing.

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