aneotw - ADVICE

The following posts can be found on this page. Scroll down to read. I hope the advice is of use. If it isn't, enjoy them anyway.

How To Do Proper Research

Write What You Know

Love the Word?

Originality Be Damned

How To Create a Character

How To Tell Your Family You're Not Mad

Let Me Give You Some Advice

HOW TO DO PROPER RESEARCH

Writing non-fiction, whether article, essay or book, can be a nightmare. This is principally because they contain facts; and believe me, there is no such thing as an absolute fact, no matter what Gradgrind said.
   With every ‘fact’ there is an army of differing opinions. And if a particular opinion is held strongly, all other treatments of the fact will be rubbished. It is a situation you cannot win, so make sure you have broad shoulders. And it gets worse.
   This will often become clear when your work is published. If you’ve made a major blunder, someone will tell you. If you haven’t, some smart arse will find something obscure to quibble with. Ignore him or he’ll drive you mad.
   Sometimes, though, he will prove what a fool you are. This is usually due to a ‘fact’ you have used because you know absolutely that it is right. Indeed, so sure are you that you didn’t even bother to look it up. This is a big mistake. We’re all delusional at times.
   When deciding what a ‘fact’ is, the best place to begin is with the two most opposite views. From there, go to sources taking you ever closer to the centre. You still won’t please everyone, but at least you can convince yourself you’ve covered the subject.
   This said, sometimes you can research too deeply. Spending hours on dozens of books and websites for an article is ridiculous. Similarly, it is too few for a book. If you know the subject well, you can form a balance. If you don’t, welcome to hell.
   In the final analysis, if you want to write non-fiction you have to have discipline above the mere story writer, for the critics are even more severe if they think themselves an expert on the subject. Believe me, that’s a fact – or maybe not.

WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW

Write what you know. That’s what we’re told. If we don’t know about it, how can we write about it? Actually, quite easily. Life is full of experience, and we have a mind to relate those experiences into many areas of our lives.
   Vital to this mental process is common sense. This is a faculty of mind we can all rely upon. It’s like a little piece of intelligence up there in the brain, constantly telling us how to relate to this or deal with that. It is one of the writer’s best friends.
   No matter what the subject, we are bound to have experience of it. And from that glimmer of understanding, thoughts can so easily come, ready to be noted and finally written down. But of course, there will be breaks in your knowledge of this subject you don’t know about.
   That’s where research comes in. Contrary to belief, in many areas of writing, research is not the central tool of the craft. Experience is. Research is the thing you do to fill in the blanks and allow the final piece to be co-ordinated and whole.
   Write what you know. What a load of rubbish. It is the one piece of advice that stops many writers reaching their full potential. Yes, the finished piece may be rubbish, but it’s up to publishers and readers to decide that. Not you.
   Write what you know. Never has such a terrible piece of advice been given. Writing what you DON’T know may be the secret to unlocking the area of writing you’re best at. So ignore the advice. It is only used to keep you out of other writer’s genres.

LOVE THE WORD?

Aspiring writers are often kept at bay by the insistence on the perfection of the word. Of course good, inspired English is required, but the literati have got it wrong when they say the word is all important.
   Maybe there were too many unemployed writers; maybe they put pressure on universities, etc, to bring out the dreaded academic writing course. But the reality is, somewhere along the way, the word became more important than the story.
   The perfect prose style was the result. From stream of consciousness to gobbledegook, the only writers worth acclaim were those who buried the story beneath literary balderdash and piffle.
   I repeat, good English is important, but not at the expense of the story. The beauty of the word should be restricted to poetry, allowing the novelist to do what they do best – write a story, with a beginning, middle and an end.
   Of course, the literati will now be calling me a philistine, but hear this, ye purveyors of good words. The purpose of writing is, above else, to communicate. Using perfect prose to impress a snobbish elite is not communication, but indulgence.

ORIGINALITY BE DAMNED

It disgusts me to have to say this, but if you want to write original material, you’re wasting good stamps sending it to a major publisher. Apart from the fact that it’s impossible to get your manuscript through the machine, originality is out of style.
   Once upon a time publishers were at the cutting edge of innovation and originality, always on the look out for something new. A rich culture was the result, running parallel with a healthy publishing industry based on ideas.
   Most of those publishers have now been swallowed up by the big money men, and a once proud industry has been reduced to accountancy. New ideas may be failures and that is bad for the bank balance.
   Gone are the days when a publisher would nurture a writer through two, maybe three, market failures, safe in the knowledge that, if the third or fourth was a success, the other would follow through. Now, formula novels are the only likely way of getting into print.
   This situation will change eventually. One day, small presses will break through their anonymity and hit the reading public with a new style of publishing and writing. But until then, the second oldest profession is the only way to the top.

HOW TO CREATE A CHARACTER

Stories need characters, but if you simply match the character to the story, then it will fail. To create a successful character you need to be much more subtle, and take advantage of a rich storytelling culture that has been around for millennia.
   We are told that stereotypical characters are cliché, and this is quite true. But an advance on the stereotype can provide a character that can literally get under the skin of the reader, and if successful you’re a winner straight away.
   It is all to do with the archetype. The psychologist Carl Jung realized that archetypal characters exist in dream and myth. Principal archetypes are the sage, the mother, the hero, the child, the seductress and the trickster.
   You will find them throughout myth. The sage ranges from Jupiter to our image of God. Now guess who he is in Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter. Why are those characters so good? Because they take their form from myth.
   Throughout life we constantly soak up images of these mythological archetypes, and we do so because, in reality, they are expressions of stages of our lives. The mythological character is our psyche writ large.
   The writer who can successfully transfer this image to a story is helped by a lifetime’s enculturation. Consider the hero of myth, the loner, coming from nowhere, vanquishing the monster and transforming people’s lives. Hercules? Or James Bond.

HOW TO TELL YOUR FAMILY YOU'RE NOT MAD

This is a difficult one. You’ve lived life for some time and you’ve decided you know enough to write down your thoughts and become a writer. And what does your family say: ‘What? You must be mad.’ And guess what. You are.
   Writing, you see, is a form of therapy; a way to extinguish your demons; to decimate fictional lives in order to make you feel good. Writing is egoistic, the writer the creator of his own worlds to be transformed or destroyed.
   The writer will soon become a bit of a loner, skulking into that private piece of the house where others go at their peril. In the little hideaway, mind creations flow, and words refuse to express and you curse, and it sounds like you’re talking to yourself.
   Communicating with the family will become tiresome. They think you’re just sat in the chair doing nothing, so they want to talk. But … you’re thinking! You’re plotting the next tale. You’ve descended to lonerdom, but you have a real world to live in.
   How do you tell your family you’re not mad? How do you convince them that you are the same person you were before you began to write? How do you explain in words what you so easily put on paper? You can’t. Because you are.

LET ME GIVE YOU SOME ADVICE

   Oh dear, don’t you just love them. You tell them you’re a writer and they’re only too eager to offer advice. You can decide they don’t know what they’re talking about, but sometimes they are writers themselves. You’ve got to listen, haven’t you?
   No – not necessarily. Writing is different for everyone. Some do it one way, some another. There are many styles, many habits, many reasons for writing in the first place. Just because someone is a writer, it does not make them an expert for you.
   Yes, it goes without saying that some writers can offer invaluable advice. Take me, for instance. Or maybe not. But some are simply bores, and you can get very confused indeed if you don’t know how to balance what makes sense and what does not.
   The dreaded situation, though, is the writer who decides you have merit and takes it upon himself to nurture you. This is the worst offender, for this type of writer is usually a dysfunctional loner who doesn’t know much about it. Except me, of course.

ADVICE

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