words ‘n stuff

Slowly, slowly, catchy monkey

by Suw on May 17, 2012

It’s been a while since I last blogged, so I thought I’d just update you on what’s been going on. The first thing is that after I realised that the Queen of the May Kickstarter project wasn’t going to work out, I did a bit of thinking about what it was I was trying to achieve. I realised – and this is something that I probably should have thought about earlier – that what I really need to do is just fishing up the two novellas I’ve got in progress and get them out there.

So that’s my plan, and what a simple, elegant plan it is too! I am being very strict and spending time every day working on Queen of the May, primarily on preparing for what is going to be a significant rewrite. I will produce a handful of hand-bound books once it is finished, so you will be able to get your hands on a physical copy. 

I also realised that actually a big motivator for doing the Kickstarter project when I did it was, not to put too fine a point on it, money. As a freelance, it can be a bit scary when the work diary is a little sparse and after a big client was afflicted by budget cuts, I felt possibly a bit more pressure to ramp up the crowdfunding. Ach, well, live and learn, no harm no foul, and other platitudes. 

My blogging over on Forbes is taking up quite a lot of the headspace that I would have used on blogging here. That’s not necessarily a bad thing – the Forbes blog is proving to be quite good for profile-raising, which is what I need right now. I’m also getting quite a bit of contact from crowdfunding platforms and seeing research and information that I otherwise wouldn’t. Very useful! 

Finally, I just got diagnosed with a not inconsequential ovarian cyst which is currently some 8cm across. So I’m permanently a little bit achy, a little bit tired, and a little bit needing a pee. It’ll be a while before I get a judgement on whether they’re going to remove it or do something else – given my poor bladder is currently squished up into a boomerang shape, I really hope they chop it out. I’m not massively worried about it, as ovarian cysts are common and treatment is pretty routine, but I will be happy to have it gone. 

So, despite the quietude here, things are proceeding apace and hopefully I’ll have more concrete news on the ETA for Queen of the May once I’ve got my teeth properly into the rewrite. Patience, as they say, is its own reward.

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The law of unintended consequences: How barbed wire inadvertently fenced in the faeries

by Suw on March 13, 2012

Until the end of the 19th Century, the faerie and human realms overlapped quite considerably. The soft places, where the skilled can walk two paths at once, were once common. Clearings in the woods, hilltop earthworks, faerie rings and even the bottoms of gardens hid gateways to the Summer Lands through which faeries came and went quite freely. Such effortless access meant that human children could be easily replaced with faerie changelings and human adults lured or tricked into crossing the border into Faerie, mostly never to return. (Those who did came back… changed. Just look at Byron.)

But in 1867, Lucien B. Smith of Kent, Ohio in America was granted a patent on his invention of barbed wire and, in helping farmers around the world parcel up their land, so Smith cut the faeries off from the human world. As the barbed wire went up across the country, the faeries found their way blocked. The glades where they would slip from world to world were now surrounded by strands of galvanised steel that formed a barrier as impenetrable as a curtain of fire. As every child knows, faeries cannot abide the touch of iron and what is steel but iron with bits in?

The invention of the barbed wire fence did more to divide humans from faeries than any other single invention in history. And because we barely knew the faeries were there, they fell into myth and legend, their visits to our world put down as hoaxes or the tales of the over-imaginative, stories told to children to make them behave.

And over the last century or so, of course, us humans have become less and less likely to go a-wandering, less likely to stumble into those few remaining soft places and there lose our way. We might go walking up that hill, but never cross the barbed wire fence that keeps us out of the ancient tree-ringed circle at the top. We might wander through the woods but never leave the path to sit and daydream in that sun-dappled dell.

There are a few places where the Summer Lands still intrude upon our world. Little enclaves of the faeries’ world overlain on our own, where the link betwixt is strong enough to survive the encroachment of modern living. Places where the faeries are bounded on our side by iron, but where the the path to their lands can still be walked by those who know how.

We must be careful in these soft places. The faeries are quite capable of walking amongst us entirely unseen. A simple glamour can make us think that they are human or, indeed, that they aren’t there at all. And in the crush of city life, do we pay attention to the tall, beautiful lady in the park, sitting on the oak bench and watching our comings and goings? And when she offers us a buttercup, we should stay the hand that wants so much to betray us by automatically accepting. With faeries, a gift is never just a gift.

Support Queen of the May, a story about faeries, botany and the scientific method, on Kickstarter now!

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Queen of the May Kickstater project launched – please help spread the word

by Suw on March 10, 2012

At last, Queen of the May is up on Kickstarter and ready your support! We have 31 days to raise $10,000, and already have $1071 pledged. Even if you choose the lowest support level, which is $3, please do consider taking part as every little helps!

You can also help immensely by telling your friends about it. No matter how focused your own personal network, every mention of the project helps. Here are a few things you can do:

Use your social networks
Send a Tweet, update your Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn statuses, or leave a message on any other social network you use. Kickstarter provide a Tweet button that allows you to log in to Twitter and send a pre-written Tweet which says:

Queen of the May by Suw Charman-Anderson — Kickstarter http://kck.st/zv4p1f via @kickstarter

If you think that’s a bit boring, you can always try:

I’m supporting @Suw’s Queen of the May on @kickstarter and you should too! http://kck.st/zv4p1f (please RT!)

Or, of course, you can write whatever you like, just remember the URL: http://kck.st/zv4p1f

Kickstarter also has a Facebook Like button, which you can use to post to your Facebook timeline, but again, an original, personalised message will be more interesting to your friends. 

Write a blog post
If you want to write a blog post about the project, you can quote any of the stuff that I’ve written on the Kickstarter page or here to be part of your post. You can also embed the video if you like. The code is:

<iframe frameborder=”0″ height=”360px” src=”http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/suw/queen-of-the-may/widget/video.html” width=”480px”></iframe>

If you want to ask me specific questions or do an interview, please feel free to email me.

Tell your friends
If you have friends that you think might enjoy Queen of the May, why not just send them a quick email to tell them about it? Equally, if you’re on any mailing lists, forums etc. and feel like they might like to know about it, please do let them know. 

Share the link
If you’re a member of social sharing sites like Delicious, Pinterest, Metafilter, StumbleUpon etc. please do share a link to the Kickstarter project page. The biggest challenge for any crowdfunded project is to reach enough people and social sharing sites can be important sources of new supporters.

Every little really does help
It’s tempting to think that you have to famous to have an effect, but that’s not true and there’s evidence to prove it! Buzzfeed’s Jack Krawczyk and StumbleUpon’s Jon Steinberg recently collaborated on a project to analyse how links were shared across their networks. They said:

Our data show that online sharing, even at viral scale, takes place through many small groups, not via the single status post or tweet of a few influencers. While influential people may be able to reach a wide audience, their impact is short-lived. Content goes viral when it spreads beyond a particular sphere of influence and spreads across the social web via ordinarily people sharing with their friends.

[...] Even the largest stories on Facebook are the product of lots of intimate sharing — not one person sharing and hundreds of thousands of people clicking.

In short, lots of people sharing the link with just a few good friends is at the heart of what makes a project like this succeed, however counter-intuitive that might seem. I’ll write more about this in due course.

In the meantime, if you like the look of Queen of the May, do keep an eye out for updates from me on Twitter, as well as here on the blog and on Kickstarter. And here, for your delectation is the pitch video. Enjoy!

 

 

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Lessons from Kickstarter Part 4: Promotion

by Suw on March 1, 2012

This is Part 4 in my series of blog posts looking at the lessons I learnt doing a Kickstarter project. See also Part 1: Don’t Go Off Half-Cocked, Part 2: Rewards, Part 3: Budgeting.

Whilst there is, for me at least, some pleasure to be derived from working out reward levels and toying with Excel spreadsheets in working out my budget, the idea of promoting my own project makes my blood run cold. I never have been one of the world’s natural bigmouths, and in all honesty, I dread the promotional work i’m going to have to do for Queen of the May.

I would love it if the world automatically rewarded hard work and quality, but it doesn’t. You have to get out there and tell the world that you’ve done something worth looking at. Here are few thoughts about promoting your Kickstarter project.

1. You have to do your own promo
Much as it would be lovely to just put stuff up on Kickstarter and let the community organically find you, that is just not how it works. There are lots and lots of projects on Kickstarter and, whilst a few people might trawl through the site looking for interesting stuff to back, you can’t assume that will result in enough people to fund your project.

You have to have a plan to promote your project and be willing to go outside of the Kickstarter community to do so. If you simply put up a project and cross your fingers, you will almost certainly fail.

2. Build your community before you crowdfund
By the time you’re ready to launch your project, it’s too late to build a fanbase around your work. You have to start collecting fans early. Whatever tools you favour, start now, because it takes a long time to build up a following and when your project starts you simply don’t have that time spare. Even social tools like Twitter and Facebook, often erroneously billed as a silver bullet, are not instantaneous and it takes time to connect with those people who are interested in your work.

3. You need a big, big fanbase
A rule of thumb for direct marketing is that between 0.1% and 1% of people that you contact will be interested in what you’re selling them. My mum teaches exercise and no matter what advertising or marketing we try to increase her class sizes, it comes in at around 1%. That means you should aim to reach about 100 or even 1000 times the number of people you need to fund your project.

So, if I think I need 200 people to fund Queen of the May, I need to reach between 20,000 and 200,000 people to find enough who are actually interested in what I’m proposing. That’s a lot of people.

4. Run an opt-In newsletter
One way to reduce the number of people you need to reach is to run an opt-in newsletter that people choose to receive. The idea is that if people are already interested in you and your work, then they’ll be more likely to act when you tell them about your new project. Giving them the ability to get regular news from you is a good way to keep in touch, but don’t expect everyone on your mailing list to read your emails. It’s common for even opt-in lists to have an open rate of less than 20% so if you have 100 people on your list, only 20 will actually read your emails. But, and it’s a big but, those people will be more likely to back your project than random Joes off the street.

5. Engage with social media
The amazing thing about Twitter is not that it’s an easy way to talk to people but that it’s a network of networks. If I send a tweet, someone in my network can send it on to their network, and someone in their network can send it even further. We’re out of the hub-and-spoke model of a newsletter and into the network-of-networks model of social media. That can really help news of your project spread outside of your immediate circle of friends and into the wider community.

Of course, you have to invest time in social media, whether that’s Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or something else, prior to launch. It does take a long time to build up a Twitter following, for example, so get going, get following and be talkative. I’m not going to write a full-on guide to social media in this post, but just remember to give more than you take.

6. Assess your channels
Do you know how many people you can reach, roughly speaking, through each of your promo channels? How many people follow you on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Plus? Do you know what level of overlap there is? Spend some time working out how many people you can reach directly, and then ask if it’s enough. If you only have a small network, that might have an impact on what makes a sensible crowdfunding target.

7. Time your announcements
Research has shown that there are four key times in the day when people are most active in email: on arrival at work, just before lunch, just after lunch, and just before they go home. Sending an email at one of these times increases the chances it will be opened and read. Equally, sending a Tweet in the UK morning will mean that Americans don’t see it as they will be asleep at the time.

So think about when you’re sending out emails and Tweets and Facebook updates, and try to make sure that you send at a time when your message is most likely to be received. If you have a blog, pay attention to what time people visit by installing a traffic monitoring package like Statcounter or Google Analytics. My blog seems to peak each day around lunchtime, so that’s a good time to post something new.

8. Co-ordinate across your channels
If you have several places you can promote your project, make sure that you think about how they work together.  If you’re writing blog posts about your project, make sure you post them on Twitter and Facebook, for example. Don’t just link to your crowdfunding page, but to discussion about it.

9. Don’t overdo it
I probably underdo it, but really, seriously, don’t overdo the self-promotion. Nothing puts people off a project more than someone who does nothing else but whitter on about it all the time.

10. Make it easy for people to help
When I’ve been promoting Ada Lovelace Day in the past, I’ve noticed that people really do like it when you give them a pre-written tweet to copy and paste, or write an email that they can forward. People are generally willing to help you get the word out, but the easier you can make it for them the more likely they are to take action.

11. Ask friends, but don’t impose
It’s well worth tapping friends up for help, especially if they have bigger networks than you. But if you do, make sure that you don’t impose on them. Give them a heads-up on what you’re doing and the opportunity to help if they want to, but don’t put them in a position where they feel obliged – it might backfire.

Self-promotion for most people is really hard. It’s well worth thinking ahead about how you’re going to promote stuff in a way that you’re comfortable with, and how you can co-ordinate it to make the most of every bit of activity. Whatever you decide, you can’t escape the fact that a good promotion plan could make or break your project.

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Lessons from Kickstarter Part 3: Budgeting

by Suw on February 28, 2012

This is Part 3 in my series of blog posts looking at the lessons I learnt doing a Kickstarter project. See also Part 1: Don’t Go Off Half-Cocked and Part 2: Rewards.

Budgeting. For many people, budgeting is the worst part of any project. The tedium of researching suppliers, figuring out numbers, minimum runs, working out overheads, it’s all a massive pain in the neck. It’s also utterly essential if your crowdfunded project is to make, instead of cost, you money. So here are a few tips for making budgeting easier.

1. Use a spreadsheet
I’m in the middle of working out budgets for Queen of the May, which means that I have a spreadsheet with all my costs in one sheet, and three other sheets with my reward levels and backer projections so that I can see how many people I’ll potentially need to reach different targets. The sheets are interlinked so as I refine my reward costs, that’s reflected in my projections. It’s relatively easy to do that in programs like Excel, so if you don’t know to do formulae in spreadsheets then now is a good time to go and find out.

2. Use scenarios
You should explore difference scenarios in your spreadsheet. How many rewards do you need to sell in order to meet your goal? What would happen to your numbers if you saw runaway success? How would that affect the number of rewards that you’d need to make or have made? How would that affect fulfilment and admin costs? If you don’t know what will happen in different scenarios you open yourself up to problems.

3. Know your reward costs
It can be difficult to pin down reward costs without precise order numbers, but you have to do your best. You need to know how much each reward costs so that you set your prices at a level higher than your expenditure. That might seem blindingly obvious, but it’s far too easy to set the reward levels at what you think people will be willing to pay, rather than what you need to earn to make the project at least break even. A miscalculation on your reward costs can end up losing you money, so be very careful.

4. Remember P&P
Don’t just run the numbers on your materials. You need to know the cost of packaging and postage as well, which means knowing how you are going to send your rewards out. In a box? A padded bag? Wrapped somehow?

Many crowdfunded projects ask international supporters to add a certain amount for the extra postage, so make sure you know how much that is. However, please do tell what you mean by ‘international’! You can’t assume that everyone knows where you are.

5. Understand your minimum runs
For many items that you could be ordering, there are either minimum runs or short runs become very expensive. You should know exactly what minimum runs are and how much they cost. Don’t do your calculations purely on the pro rata cost per item.

For example, if you’re buying postcards and the minimum run is 100 for £50, then even if only one person selects the postcard reward you’ll still have to shell out £50.

6. Don’t forget fixed costs
Once you’ve calculated the costs of your rewards, you need to calculate your fixed costs, ie ones that don’t go up depending on how many rewards are ordered. This is stuff like design costs, prototyping costs, or software. Just like your minimum run costs, these costs won’t go down, so you need to make sure that your goal covers them.

7. If you can’t cost something, set a limit
Sometimes it’s impossible to figure out an exact cost. For example, I can’t get a cost for the leather-bound editions of Queen of the May without knowing how many have been ordered and exactly what the design is. I won’t know that until the project is funded and the design completed, so instead, I have set a limit which I won’t exceed. I know I can get them made for less than that limit, but exactly how much they will cost will remain up in the air until the project is funded.

8. Wages
If you want to work on your project full time when your fundraising drive is complete, you’ll want to factor in wages. This does mean having some idea of how long things will take, which is tricky estimate accurately, and then figuring out how much you need to cover your wages for that period. Be generous in your estimates as it’s only too easy for things to take a lot longer than anticipated!

9. Leave some wiggle room
You’ve carefully worked out reward costs, know your minimum runs, understand your fixed costs and have set limits for rewards you can’t cost properly. Sadly, it’s almost certain that you’ll forget something! It’s important, therefore, to leave some room between your combined costs and the reward levels you set in Kickstarter. This wiggle room gives you a cushion in case costs go up unexpectedly, or in case you underestimated something.

With Argleton, my printing costs doubled because the paperback book had to be stitched as well as glued. Luckily, although I hadn’t costed this in, I had over-funded and so had a bit of spare cash. Wiggle room isn’t a luxury, it’s an essential.

As tedious as it is, working out your budget in detail will help you avoid nasty surprises once your fundraising drive has completed. Once the money’s in, you are committed to providing the rewards you have promised, whether you are covering your costs or not. Don’t let a small miscalculation turn your project into a white elephant.

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Planning my next novelette: Queen of the May

by Suw on February 3, 2012

It’s amazing how much you can achieve through creative procrastination. I finished up the first draft of my next novelette, currently titled Queen of the May although that might change. The transcription from my handwriting wasn’t too bad, but it has resulted in a lot of errors because my writing has a tendency to get a bit scrawly when I get over-excited. The first first draft came in at 21,673 words, a number which is steadily decreasing as I tidy up the copy.

But I have to confess that editing out weird typos is not exactly the most thrilling of pastimes, so I’ve been putting a lot of energy into planning my next Kickstarter project and, this time, getting my costings spot on. I’m talking to Oldacres in Hatton Garden again for printing as they did such a great job last time, and between us we’re trying to figure out how to do a better job on the paper cover for the hardback.

Last time, we used just normal paper stock with a laminate finish. It looked really good, but it was a bitch to work with when binding. Not only did I have to deal with the paper fibres swelling, as is their wont, but the lamination worsened the problem meaning that I had to tape down each sheet in order to work with it. Since then I’ve done a couple of bookbinding courses at Falkiners, both of which were fantastic. I learnt some new techniques and got to play with some materials that I’d never have used on my own, and that experience has altered my thinking on how to bind the next set of books.

Firstly, I want to use Japanese paper for the paper-covered hardbacks. Japanese paper is made differently to western paper and because its fibres are random, rather than being all lined up as in our usual paper, it doesn’t curl when wet. This makes it a joy to work with. Japanese papers are also stronger, so you can work with a thinner stock which allows you to get much crisper, cleaner lines. But when you buy decorative Japanese paper, it has usually been screen printed, so although we can buy white sheets, how we print it is something that we’re still trying to work on. Oldacres are currently experimenting for me with some samples from John Purcell Paper, a wholesaler. I am very anxiously awaiting the results!

Secondly, the methodology I used for the silk covers last year turned out to be horribly, painfully time-consuming. I translated my “design” into blocks of colour, cut the right shapes out from appropriately coloured dupion silk, bonded them together and then sewed over the joins with embroidery. A very time-consuming process. The embroidery alone took 16 hours per cover. Beautifully as they came out, I cannot go through that again! So now I’m looking at the possibility of screenprinting, or maybe just doing a simpler embroidered design. This is going to require some serious and careful thought as it will have a big impact on the cover design. (You’ll be glad to hear that I’m not going to be doing the design myself this time!)

I’m also looking into possibilities for a leather-bound version. I’m talking to a number of binderies about my options, both for them to provide the binding service, and to explore whether there is any way that I can work on the leather bindings myself, under supervision. Whilst I worked with leather in my second Falkiners course, I have neither the equipment or the experience to do the leather versions myself. BInding in leather, even if it’s just an A6 novelette, is going to be far from cheap, but the results will be stunning.

Soon, I’ll have my costings nailed down and then I’ll be in the right position to start my next Kickstarter project. I have had a few ideas for exclusive rewards that I’ll be listing, but their numbers will be very limited indeed. I’ll be announcing the project through my mailing list first so if you want to be amongst the first people to know when it goes live, join the mailing list now! I send out very few emails and I manage the list using Mailchimp so you can set your preferences for type of email and can unsubscribe at any time without any risk of your email address winding up in the wrong hands.

I’m very excited to be planning my second Kickstarter project. It’s been 18 months since I put Argleton up, and the Kickstarter community has expanded dramatically over that time, so I’m eager to see what sort of support it’s possible to get now. My goal will certainly have to be a bit higher than last time in order to pay for a designer and my time: If writing is to be sustainable, it has to provide me with a modest living, and I would be very happy indeed if it could do that independent of the behemoth that is Amazon.

In the meantime, though, there’s only so long I can put off doing that edit!

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The best advice for writers, bar none

by Suw on January 21, 2012

Nick Mamatas says it better than I ever could: Ten Bits of Advice Writers Should Stop Giving Aspiring Writers.

The best Christmas present you can give a new author: An Amazon review

by Suw on December 19, 2011

Last month there was a great blog post by Anne Allen about how important Amazon reviews are to new authors:

[...] Amazon reviews, which were only mildly significant three years ago, now have a make-or-break impact on an author’s sales.

When you’re buying an ebook, there’s no helpful bookstore clerk to tell you what might be appropriate for your nine-year old niece, or if there are any new cozy mysteries you might enjoy, or whether the new Janet Evanovich is up to her usual standards.

Instead, you check reader reviews and Amazon’s “also bought” suggestions. These are all generated by consumers, which gives the ordinary reader immense power.

The post then goes through some really good guidelines for people who might want to leave an Amazon review for an author they like. It’s well worth a read, even if you’re familiar with Amazon, because Anne gives a very clear idea of how the whole review system works.

I didn’t quite understand the power of Amazon reviews until I started publishing in the Kindle stores. I have books available now in six stores:

The only store in which I have any reviews so far is the UK store and sales in that are way ahead of every other store, even the US store. Now admittedly there are potential language issues in the French, German, Spanish and Italian stores, as the buyers there might not be so interested in an English language book. But that shouldn’t be the case with the US and, in fact, the majority of my Kickstarter supporters were from the US so in theory I should have a good showing there. But so far, I do not.

I think this is down to reviews. I have three good reviews so far on Amazon UK, none in the US. It’s a shame that reviews don’t cross-pollinate stores, but there we go.

So if you’re feeling generous this festive season and you have read a book by a new author that you liked, it would be a wonderful thing for them if you took 10 minutes to write even a short review, or just give a star rating. Four and five star ratings are particularly useful as Anne explains:

Anything less than 4 stars means “NOT RECOMMENDED.” Don’t expect an author to be pleased with 2 or 3 stars, no matter how much you rave in the text. Those stars are the primary way a book is judged. Without a 4 or 5 star rating, a book doesn’t get picked up in the Amazon algorithms for things like “also bought” suggestions. Giving 1 or 2 stars to a book that doesn’t have many reviews is taking money out of the author’s pocket, so don’t do it unless you really think the author should take up a new line of work.

If a friend asks you to review something you found amateurish, or wasn’t your cup of tea, just tell her you don’t feel you can review it. That happens all the time and we appreciate it.

On the other hand, a 4-star review that recommends the book even though you have a few reservations, will earn you eternal gratitude from the author.

In fact, 4-star reviews can often be the most helpful. If a reader sees something like, “I loved this mystery, but the humor is pretty farcical. If you’re looking for a standard whodunit, this isn’t it,” or “this is awfully intellectual for something called chick lit.” Those offer honest information to buyers, without telling them not to buy.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t be giving 1-3 star reviews. I’m just saying that on Amazon (not all review sites) 3-Stars is usually taken as a negative rating. If you intend to be positive, then 4 stars will better convey that sentiment.

This was certainly something I hadn’t really thought about in detail before reading Anne’s post.

So if you have a favourite author who’s either just starting out or hovering around in the midlist, why not take a few moments over the Christmas holidays and leave them a review?

Argleton: Now available in (a few) libraries

by Suw on December 5, 2011

A couple of weeks ago I offered a few copies of Argleton to any libraries who wanted to claim them. I ended up with 15 libraries showing interest, so decided to simply say yes to all of them and send out 15 copies. So if you want to borrow a copy of Argleton you will soon be able to do so at these illustrious institutions:

Public libraries

Schools and university libraries

 

Thank you all so much for your support of Argleton!

Novelising a script

by Suw on September 18, 2011

I was talking to a friend about my upcoming writing projects, one of which includes novelising Tag, the screenplay I wrote seven years ago. I got to thinking about some of the pitfalls of a taking a script as a basis of a novel. I have already had one stab at writing the novel version of Tag, three or four years ago, but wasn’t quite in the right mental space for it.

But starting to think about it again, I had a flash of understanding: What is shown in a script can only too easily be told in its novelisation. Authors alway say “Show, don’t tell”, but what is showing in one medium may mutate into telling in another.

A script is a starting point, a sketch, which a whole host of other people turn into a fully-fledged story. A script just has to say “An English soldier crouches in a WWI trench, up to his ankles in fetid water”; the scene itself is realised by the set designer, the costumer designer, the actor, the lighting designer, the director of photography, the sound designer… All these people, and more, affect how this single line comes across on screen.

In a novelisation, the very worst thing one could do would be to simply write, “An English soldier crouches in a WWI trench, up to his ankles in fetid water” and then move on to the next line. What is sufficient in a script may need significant unpacking in a novel. What does the soldier feel? What can he smell? How does the water feel seeping into his boots? Can he hear the enemy nearby? Or his comrades, recently wounded, screaming in agony?

This might all sound blindingly obvious, but I think it’s an easy pit to fall into. It’s also a thought that I suspect will make novelising Tag a lot easier when I finally get round to it.

In praise of the cliché

June 25, 2011

Suzannah Windsor Freeman, writer of Write It Sideways, has a post about how important it is to avoid cliché in writing. She splits clichés into three main types: Overused expressions Hackneyed plots Stereotypical characters And she gives her readers some good advice on how to avoid them. But clichés aren’t all bad. The human brain [...]

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Taking off my overcoat

June 15, 2011

I always used to think that blogging was for the terminally under-employed or the terminally not-very-happy-with-life-right-now’ed. Certainly that was true of me when I started this blog and at various stages throughout its history. Indeed, I often combined both conditions into one great big fugue of skint unhappiness, and was verbose with it. These days, [...]

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Writing digitally on paper

December 30, 2010

I’m writing this biog post not on my laptop, or my iPad, or on my iPhone, but with a pen in a notebook. As I write, the pen tracks my movements by referring to a special pattern of dots on the paper, and when I plug it in to my computer it will upload an [...]

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Long words

November 18, 2010

I’ve never signed up to the belief that short words are in some way inherently better than long ones. George Orwell, in his essay Politics and the English Language, said, “Never use a long word where a short one will do.” But I always felt that he was being rather unfair to long words. Even the [...]

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Google Scribe: Heaven help us

September 8, 2010

I thought I’d have a little play with Google Scribe, so I started off with “I was walking down the” and then accepted every suggestion Scribe had to offer. This is what I got: I was walking down the street from them and they are nothing but another form of therapy for these patients is [...]

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