John Dickinson

About a month ago (see “Stepping Back”) I finished the first draft of one novel and, to clear my mind a bit before revisiting it, I began another. Something completely different. Something funny, in fact.

I’ve always been a bit shy of writing humour. I think my first three books had about one joke between them. I’ve tried a bit more with Keys of Cleary (see “Comedy”). And what I’ve found is that if I set out to be funny- planning the scenes in advance, so he drops his trousers and she pours a bucket of custard over his head and they fall down the stairs – what I get is stuff that ought to be funny but isn’t. The really funny bits just come. From somewhere. Don’t ask me where. I don’t know until they hit me. I may think of a key line the day before I type it. Or it may just happen as I type. It’s like juggling blindfold.

But it is coming. Strangely. There’s something every couple of pages. It might be a play on words. It might be a character acting very much in character (slightly bizarre characters are a very rich source of comedy. And an easy one. You just keep them doing what they do.) It might be a dollop of good coarse lavatory humour, just delivered in a way that the reader doesn’t quite see coming, but when it comes – splat – it’s perfect.

And it’s fun. It’s fun to write stuff that makes you smile. It’s so much fun that I want to go on doing it. I want to write this novel to the finish. And never mind the poor, noble fantasy that I’ve put aside, now shouting at me from the document folder saying ‘hey – haven’t you stepped back for long enough already? What about me?’ There’s a trade-off between creativity and discipline. Right at the moment I just want to ditch the discipline and run off and have a wild fling with creativity.

One thing that nags at me as I write though is – am I trying too hard? Is all this comedy getting in the way of the story? What if, instead of making the reader laugh, I’m going to bamboozle them with so much madcap stuff that in the end they sigh and put the book down? How do I tell?

There’s only one way. Sooner or later I’m going to have to step back.

The End.

I’ve written those words again. I’ve unwound the thread of my story all the way to its finish. Now I have to look it over to see what more needs doing, and what needs doing differently.

It’s a difficult mental adjustment. I’ve been living with this thing for weeks, working away at the level of paragraphs and sentences. Now I have to try to put myself into the mind of a reader who is coming to it for the first time. It’s like the moment when a painter makes the last tiny stroke on his canvas with his finest brush, and then steps back to look.

In fact, if he’s sensible, he doesn’t just step back. He walks out of the room, makes a cup of coffee, digs the potato patch or something and only then does he walk back in and look at it. That’s because he wants to see it as a whole, without focusing immediately on that bit there that he’s always known isn’t quite right.

The writer has the additional problem that it’s impossible to read the whole book in one glance. He has to work his way through it from the beginning. And it’s very, very easy to start getting distracted and to think that this sentence here would be so much better if only we took out the comma, or something. But we have to ignore that sort of thing at this stage. We’re trying – however futile it might be – to get an overview.

One tip that might be useful is to print the whole book out and to read it like that. Words are much harder to fiddle with once they’re on paper. And while I try not to use the print button more than I have to (because I do want there to be a planet for my children to enjoy) there are times when you just have to let the trees go hang.

Another tip is to let time elapse. This is one case where tomorrow really will be better than today, and next week will be better still. And while I’m about it, and if I really want to clear my mind of this stuff I’ve been doing, perhaps I should begin writing something else. Maybe that’s the answer – a chapter or two of something completely different.

So what will it be? Ah, yesss….

Lily from Vancouver wants to write a book. She asked me how to do it. And here’s more or less what I said.

To start with you need an idea of what the book’s going to be about. This is the spark that gets you going. (I’ve talked about this before “The Golf Club and the Sponge”, so I won’t repeat myself. In any case, Lily’s already got her idea. Let’s go on.

The next thing you need, I’d say, is an outline of the basic story. There’s got to be a sequence of events that finishes with a satisfactory ending. This isn’t difficult, but you’ve got to have it. For example, ‘boy meets girl and after a lot of trouble they fall in love,’ is one. ‘Child that everyone laughs at finds special powers and saves the world’ is another. There’s actually a very small number of basic storylines and we use them again and again.

Next, you need to think about how you are going to keep your reader wanting to read on until they get to your ending. This is difficult, and I guess many of the successful writers just do it instinctively. You need an idea of what your reader is like - probably they’re someone quite like you - and what’s going to grab them. You might want a lot of suspense, or funny scenes. You might want a lot of fascinating characters. There will almost certainly need to be a central character whom the reader likes, finds interesting, and wants to come through. (Excellent books with unsympathetic central characters do get written, but it takes a special sort of writer to do them well and a special sort of reader to soldier through them and still enjoy the experience).

Now we need to start writing. This is also hard. The first few pages can often seem unsatisfactory. Don’t worry too much about it. You can come back and re-write them later. Just get going.

And above all, you need to keep writing. This is also hard. Try to write something every day, even if it’s only a few sentences. If you can’t write something every day, have a time or times in the week when you do write. Don’t let yourself put it off. Once you stop, you can stay stopped for weeks or months. It’s very hard to start again. Don’t let yourself lose confidence. Confidence is key to the writer. Have faith.

A good blurb is like an elephant.

1) It’s rare.
2) You know it when you see it.
3) You need to be God to get it right.

How do you create, in a few short words, something that will make the reader pick this one novel from a thousand others? My editors and I have been batting the blurb for WE back and forth for weeks now. I’ve lost count of the number of versions we’ve gone through. Even our cover artist has had a go. It was quite a good one, I thought, but it did not find favour. Since then the wise man has retreated to a distance and let us get on with it.

We know what messages we are trying to get in. We have converged on a way of doing it. We agree that the first line should be a quote from the book. We have even agreed on a punchline. We just can’t get the rest of it right. Words that resonate to me seem to do nothing for others. They in turn write stuff that seems good to them, and when I see it I tear my hair and cry ‘How can this be?’ A few nights ago I had a revelation. I woke from a dream with my heart pounding, leapt to my computer and fired off the magic words at four-thirty in the morning. ‘There,’ I thought. ‘That’s how creation happens!’

My words fell into a well of silence. Round we went again. ‘Do you like this one?’ ‘ Well, not really . . .’ The most recent offering from my editor was prefaced ‘Hopefully final!’ I read it and reached for my sideburns.

But this time I am conceding something. This time I am working on someone else’s draft, rather than expecting someone else to work on mine.

This time, we may get somewhere.

So I’ve excised the heroine and one supporting character. I have replaced them both with a new heroine who combines both roles and personalities. I’ve put in all the other edits and copy-edits (on which more another time maybe). The book is due to go to Production at the end of the month. The editors will need it for a week at least before then. Next week is filling with engagements and the summer holidays loom. I’ve got about one more working day left.

I’ve had one last look and, as I thought, there’s still some stitching to be done.

Editing at this stage of the game is a bit like being a doctor who has to operate on the victims at the scene of his own drink-driving accident. In that:

1) You are not in the best state to be doing this;
2) There is no one else who can do it;
3) Everything you’re looking at is your own fault anyway.

I say ‘not in the best state.’ Even in your first draft it’s hard, as you struggle away at the paragraphs and sentences , to keep in mind what the whole thing will seem like to the reader. I’ve rewritten this manuscript six times now and I can barely imagine how it will read to a fresh pair of eyes. Over the various drafts I’ve cut scenes out, replaced them with other scenes, emphasised themes and de-emphasised them again. I’m getting the author’s equivalent of double vision. I was building up an idea in chapter nine today when I realised that the explanation on which the idea depended had been deleted from chapter three about two drafts back.

Like a concussed and semi-inebriated doctor at the roadside, I’m beginning to wonder which reality I’m in. And there’s delicate work that has to be finished before the Production van, blue lights flashing and sirens wailing, comes haring up to carry the victim away.

A fortnight ago we left our hero the author in the middle of a metaphorical car-chase. This week we find him struggling in a huge web. And it’s one of his own devising.

What we’re trying to do is to combine two characters into one. And this is in a novel that should be complete and in the last stages of editing before it goes to production. So we want to change as little as possible while we do it. It’s a bit like saying to an architect, as you watch the roof being put on his new cathedral –‘You know, I don’t think you should have those twin towers at the east end. Couldn’t it be a great big dome instead?’ And as his face falls, you add ‘…without redesigning the whole thing, of course.’ And you mean this to be reassuring.

Underlying every story there is – or should be – a web of supports and balances, a bit like the arches and buttresses of a cathedral. Each scene should be supported by the scenes preceding and following it, not simply in what is said and done but in mood, pace, variety, so that everything is given the right emphasis and the reader is carried through the story. Ideally this structure should go in naturally at the first writing , without too much labour or conscious thought on the part of the writer. (It’s always best when things happen naturally). After that, any time you go back and rewrite a scene or replace it with another, you have to look not only at the new scene but how it fits, consciously and subconsciously, with the others around it.

Now in this case we are not replacing any scenes. I can find ways of getting everything that needs to be said and done said and done with the new diminished cast of characters. If it’s no longer possible for the two-into-one character to take part in a scene with the hero (because she simply wouldn’t behave in the way that the scene calls for) I can bring on a supporting character to do that bit instead. Easy. Change a few words and turns of phrase, and the scene still works fine. What’s worrying me is what all this is doing to the subconscious structure of the novel. Every time I pull on a thread, other threads in the web get pulled too. I may be pulling things out of shape without knowing it. For example, this same supporting character appeared and did a scene with my same hero two scenes back. Now, even though everything she says is consistent, the set-up feels repetitive. Flabby. We’re losing momentum, here.

Or are we? Is it just that I’m losing confidence? I’m right in the thick of it at the moment, with web-thread wrapped round my arms and over my face. What I’m afraid of is that when I finally pull myself free and look back at what I’ve done I’ll find my once-trim structure all ripped and baggy. And at this stage in the process, that will not be good. Why don’t spiders get caught in their own webs? Because they know which threads not to touch. Why don’t architects redesign cathedrals? Because they brain the person who suggests it. But authors, it seems, are a different species. They are bent on self destruction.

…And while we are building worlds, let’s also talk about women.

As I’ve said elsewhere (That Woman), you have a choice when telling stories that are set in traditional societies. Either you cast your heroine in a traditional role and let her exert such influence as she can within those confines, or you make her an exception to the traditional stereotypes – a Joan of Arc if you like – in which case you must be prepared for much of your story to be about why she’s an exception.

With fantasy, however, there’s a third option. You write about a society that allows women to have power, maybe even swing swords, so that they can take on heroic leading roles naturally. Easy? Let’s think about it.

As writer, you could just say ‘It’s my world, and I make the rules. Women can be knights and swing swords like men. It’s part of the scenery. So there.’ But how come? Do our knights and warriors and other quasi-medieval types all have 21st century western ideas about sex equality? Without any wrenching social changes? I put my hand on this scenery and I know it’s made of cardboard.

So let’s give women a source for their power. In the novel I’m working on at the moment, I’ve borrowed a concept that has come up here and there in history – that is, that the right to own land descends through the woman. I’ve taken it a step further. It is actually the woman owns the land. (OK, so now who’s boss?) There still has to be a reason why the people believe that is right, but the traditional associations of earth, water and Earth-mother are there if I need to make the case.

But when you are world building, you have to think things through. What other effects would this custom have? There must be some, otherwise it still feels unreal. The sister inherits the land, the brother has to leave to find a wife who has land. What effects has that on cohesion, mobility and protection of the ancestral territory? Do the men work the land under the woman’s direction? Or do they just hunt and fight? My fighters have Kings, who are married to Queens. What is the balance of power between Queen and King? Who actually gives the law – or do they have different areas of competence? A single bit of invention can have very far-reaching implications.

Now, we don’t want long explanations. We don’t want Tolkien-style appendices. What we want is that the reader should be able to sense, without diverting from the story, that all the obvious questions have answers. Better still, the answers should be there for them, perhaps planted in conversations or asides, before they’ve started to ask the questions. Look, you say to them, the scenery in this world is real. Now carry on reading.

That’s the trick of world building.

Carrying on from the idea of fantasy world building, let’s have a look at names.

The name of any fictional character is likely to tell you something about them. They also tell you something about the world the character is in. This can be true for any genre but it is particularly true for fantasy. If you are serious about your fantasy - and some of us are - then the names you see on the page matter. A name that looks as if it’s just been made up ain’t good enough. (I can think of one or two in The Cup of the World that I regret!) It should look like it comes from somewhere, in the way that our own names do.

Tolkien took this to an extreme. He invented whole languages and scripts for his peoples, and their names derive from these like plants growing out of rich soil. His world is deep (in this respect), and his lesser imitators have benefitted endlessly from his work simply by imitating him. But for those of us poor mortals who would like to make ‘real’ worlds without spending a lifetime on just the one book - well, we need to cobble things together a bit more quickly than that.

So here are a few questions I think about when making up fantasy names:

What is the culture of these people? What is the nearest comparator in human history?

Also, what is their history? How did they get to where they are? Are they pure blooded, or mongrel? (The Cup of the World people are definitely mongrel, but to be honest that’s a bit of post-facto rationalisation.)

What is their language like? What sounds predominate? Is there a common ending to male and female words, like -us and -a in Latin?

Are there different kinds of names for different social classes?

And what blurrings have occurred, with time and use? A system that is too rigid and logical won’t feel realistic either. It ought to feel that it has grown into place, over time.

Looking at this list, it quickly becomes clear that names shouldn’t just be invented in isolation. The world - the society, culture, language and history - ought to be imagined as a whole. The more thoroughly that is done, the more naturally the patterns of name-use should emerge.

Before we get carried away, there is one further, major consideration: how much otherness is the reader going to stand? Extraordinary names are hard for the reader. I have certainly been guilty of giving my characters names that are difficult to pronounce - and also that are easy to confuse with those of other characters a page or two later. For The Lightstep there were so many long and difficult names that my publisher had to persuade me to put in a cast list, so that the reader could remind themselves who this man ‘Bergesrode’ was whenever he turned up and why he was different from that bloke ‘Balke-Horneswerden’. Two long names beginning with B, occurring again and again. Whoops. And that book isn’t even a fantasy. It’s a historical novel. Which makes the point that however fantastic the worlds we conceive, our real human history can be more fantastic still.

I played truant from work this morning. I went and met a bishop, and talked to him about storytelling. The bishop nodded sagely and sipped his coffee. And I posted a fellow author, also with thoughts on storytelling, and that was the morning gone. The author hasn’t got back to me yet. Maybe he’s still sucking his teeth over the interminable rant I’ve sent him. It’s on the subject of world building.

World building. This is where you’re creating an alternative world for your reader and you have to let them feel that they know how it works. It might be a historical setting. It might be a fantasy world - or indeed a whole series of parallel worlds, like Pullman’s Dark Materials trilogy and others. It might even be something set here and now, but in a place stuffed with bizarre and improbable characters. Think of James Herriot’s Yorkshire Dales or of Cold Comfort Farm. Anyway, world-building is very much on my mind at the moment, which is why my poor colleague got a dump from me on the subject.

I’m in the opening chapters of my new novel and am describing a fantasy world. It’s a different place and a different time. There are different customs, landscapes, laws, and systems of government. Oh, and there’s magic - of a sort. When it comes to making your reader comfortable with the world of the story, anything that smacks of magic is really problematic. It’s the power to do things that couldn’t normally be done. To break the natural laws. And if they can do something magical on p 52, John, why can’t they do something like it on p137 and so rescue the princess and defeat the baddies before we’ve even reached Chapter 7? What, exactly, is possible in this world, and what isn’t? This has to be got right. The reader must be able to feel, as they journey through the fantasy land, that if they took a detour and looked at those mountains closely they wouldn’t find that they were just a painted backdrop. But at the same time I’m trying to develop a story. I could write passages on the geology of my mountains, but just how long is the reader going to wait around while I explain all these things?

The secret of world-building is to have thought it through yourself, who these people are, what their history is, how their society works and so forth. Then you pick from that only what the reader needs to know, and you build it in to the narrative before the reader realises they need it. Do it quickly and firmly, like a cartoonist drawing a human face in just four lines of his pen. You don’t need to describe the whole world and everything in it - heavens, no! Not even Tolkein, who invented languages and scripts and wrote out thousands of years of history for his Middle Earth, could do that. A lot of it should emerge from the way your characters talk to each other and the assumptions they are seen to share (I took a look at this in The Craft of Conversation.) Does it sound easy? It isn’t. But world-building is part of the fun, for both reader and writer. So have fun while you do it.

My hero Gilbert has just fallen into a well.

There were two ways of doing this, and like a patient, professional actor he tried both for me. Take One: we lowered him into the well on a rope held by three of his men, with whom he had an argument about whether they could have a horse to help them pull him up again. Then he looked for treasure in the wall of the well, gyrating slowly on the end of his rope while continuing to argue with the men above him, and so on for a thousand words or more before finally the inevitable happened and he got his soaking.

Take Two: I dropped him in with the first sentence of the chapter. In you go, Gilbert - Splosh!

There is no doubt in my mind which is better way. To prove the point I have done it to him again, in the first sentence of this post. And I’ve saved a thousand words to boot.

The late Jan Mark, a writer whom I was just getting to know when she died, would say that comedy was the only emotion that you could not fake on the page. The hottest love scenes can be written with a cold heart (and many are.) The most poignant tragedy can be written with a cynical smile on the lips. But you can’t fake laughter. You have to be laughing yourself when you write, she said, or it doesn’t work. She was right.

On the face of it, Take One should have been better. There were many things there that ought to have been funny. But there’s a world of difference between something that Ought to Be Funny and something that Is - just listen to any comedian on an off day. The tense build-up isn’t actually tense. The release isn’t a release. The well-turned phrase that the reader wants to rush off and read aloud to a friend - it doesn’t come. And you can’t make it come. And you’re left looking at what you’ve made and thinking ‘Why doesn’t it work?’ Like a failed Noah looking at his ark and saying ‘Well I made it 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide etc. Why doesn’t it float?’ Answer: because you made it of concrete.

Only the laugh within you will make it live. What makes me laugh? In you go, Gilbert - Splosh! There, I did it again.

Sorry, Gilbert.