Research - and how to be disciplined!

Yours may be a contemporary novel critiquing modern society. You may be creating a world from archived materials and ephemera. But the chances are that, in the end, you’ll have so much well-researched information threatening to overwhelm you, you’ll be tempted to include it.
This overload is not desirable. In fact, avoiding it is essential if you want your reader to stay with you. So what do you do with this embarrassment of riches?
I posed the question to the massed ranks of the LinkedIn Historical Novelists and their replies were so useful, I’ve asked permission to share. Here are some of their suggestions.
First and foremost - when you’re writing a novel for an audience - you should remember you are doing so as an entertainer, not a teacher.
You may enjoy the chase – following research trail after trail. But if you think you’re going to lose yourself and your grip in this, you may need to hire a researcher. This professional will not only track down what you need to know but also create a filing system so you can find the information again.
A reader has a right to expect accuracy and if accuracy is the hallmark of your research, you can be proud. But the task may be complex. For example, if your characters are setting sail from Australia in the 1900s, you need to control the charts to establish the route, consider the weather conditions for a summer or winter voyage and establish an accurate time-line.

One of the major problems attached to too much research is The Dump. But how much is too much? And how do you know if you’ve included too much information? Don’t worry - you’ll recognise the Dump. It’ll take the form of a close-grained passage that advances neither the story nor your knowledge of the internal workings of a character and – during a re-edit – you’ll be tempted to skip it.  A good rule of thumb is: Never bore yourself or your reader!

But apt scientific fact or concise historical detail can add so much. And – with a light touch - you can avoid the Dump. Vary your approach. A straight account of fact may appear like a rock in the shallows. But you could write in bored teenagers responding to a parental account of an event. Or set women gossiping about it at a village well? Or a newspaper report? The possibilities are many and your writer’s craft will help you explore these  - while keeping your reader attentive.
So what do you do with any excess information? You could use it in a blog?  Or write another novel based on it?  Nothing – ever - need go to waste!

The name of the pen!

This morning, I’m juggling with the idea of names. Character names deserve their own post – so I’ll leave them for now. But what about author’s names – noms des plumes?

I used my name, Elizabeth Gates, in full (never Liz) when I was a journalist because it lent a sort of gravitas to my persona. And dealing with huge issues as I did – life, death, injury, cynical greed, fatal incompetence etc – gravitas was precisely what I needed.

But now, as a writing and communication coach and story-teller, I introduce myself as Lizzie Gates. A family name and – although I’m a professional still – this hints at a more approachable persona than the more formal Elizabeth Gates.

However, now I’m writing fiction, I have had a blinding insight into the whole ‘name’ thing. I can chose my name to fit the genre.

I was always drawn to writing comedy and I saw myself doing this under the name of Poppy Winthrop. But, for my historical novels, I’ve chosen to write under the name of my great-great-grandmother, Abigail Newsham – because she lived at about the time when the action in my current magnum opus is taking place.

What fun we can all have with names.

Pen or Keyboard - the means of committing creative words to paper

There is nothing like hand-writing your thoughts. Sometimes when I'm journaling, I look at the tip of my pen or pencil and think 'Was all that stuff in you? Or in me?' Of course, I know it was me. I'm not losing my grip here. But the magic that seems to happen when I put pen to paper doesn't seem to happen when I sit at the computer. Just an observation. Not a recommendation to restrict writing to pen and paper.But I do think that pen and paper capture the Artist-Writer and the computer deals with the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder requirements of the Inner Editor. So - as usual - I can see a place for both.

A new start!

I've just started writing a novel again - well, two actually. And this after decades of Writers' Block Blues. Several things have prompted this. Joining writers' groups has brought me out of the woodwork and positive helpful critique from the members has given me confidence. Also, I've finally recognised that I produced my first novel (100,000 words of it) when I should have been revising for my O-level Chemistry and my O-level Physics. That little excursion taught me a lot about writing. And a rather unpleasant fact about life - to wit, ignore science at your peril. My life as a medical journalist - 25 years' worth - would have been far easier if I'd spent time doing the groundwork in the School Laboratories. But hey! The enthusiasms of youth - I wanted to write a novel, couldn't help myself writing a novel, so I did. And, at this point, the exponential parallels in all our lives should be jangling.

Writing with confidence

For me, as a writing coach, one of the most revealing questions directed to an agent and listed – among many - in Harry Bingham’s Getting Published (A & C Black 2010) is:

Are you taking on me or my book?

You need to know it's you. That would mean they are on your side, they believe in you, they’re going to work for you, they have not assumed you are a one-trick pony.This will do wonders for your confidence as a writer. And the confidence to say ‘I am a writer’ is an elusive quality among the unpublished but hopeful.

This of course is a nonsense. Publication in itself is not proof of writing talent. It is, it’s true, a form of external evaluation and accreditation. But - like many of the people sitting in my workshops – many hopefuls could in truth and in confidence make the statement ‘I am a writer’.

But they don’t.

Word Choice

A glance at any local paper throws up a fine crop of furious residents and heart-broken pensioners. Avoid such clichés. Journalists use clichés for speed - and sometimes out of laziness. Either way, the words and images have been used so often that - in comparison with their former vibrant selves - they are milksops. This is the writing equivalent of crying ‘Wolf!’ And you’re better than that.

Writing Game

• Read something published.
• Underline the clichés.
• Find words, phrases, imagery which you judge more vivid and apt – making the piece in your view a superior version of the published work
• Take a piece of your own writing and do the same.

On the other hand, educating the editor is not your job, either. The editor represents the reader and the standard of English he promotes is on a par with the standard of English of the readership. He/She may have favourite words. An editor of a national magazine was once hooked on the word, 'clement', and this produced, as George Orwell would have said, some ‘barbarous’ prose. But it is not your place in life to correct busy people.

You may however permit yourself the occasional flight of fancy. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo author Stieg Larsson’s translator Reg Keeland uses the word, Gallimaufrey, to mean medley. Originally meaning a hash of odds and ends of food (see OUP, The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary), the word is rarely used in spoken English today. Hmm, sad. And would you be the one to tell him?

Writing Game

• Read a good dictionary
• Find seven new words of the calibre of gallimaufrey– as quaint, archaic, poetic, tuneful . . .
• Try to introduce one of these into your conversation as often as possible, each day for a week.

Storying and Plotting - what's the difference?

We all love stories. And story-telling is a uniquely human skill. It’s unlikely that a flock of birds, for example, would spend their time telling ‘sad stories of the death of kings’, as Shakespeare, a master story-teller, put it. Unless of course, these birds are descendants of Jonathan Livingstone Seagull. But then, that would be another story. You see how it goes.

Stories allow readers to understand other viewpoints in other worlds – ranging from other people’s minds to other people’s cultures. There has been a growth, for example, in novels which explain a Muslim viewpoint – Sebastian Faulks’ A week in December or A Thousand Splendid Suns by Afghan author Khaled Hosseini. These novels are best sellers because people want to understand the Muslim point of view and these novels seem to help.

Readers achieve this understanding because they engage with the novel’s story. Put simply, we as readers enter the dream world of the novel and we learn what that world and those people are all about. And, as writers, to engage them - to take them by the hand and across the threshold - we use plot and structure.

Writing game:

1. Choose one of your favourite books
2. Which character do you like best and why?
3. What is the problem or conflict your hero/heroine has to deal with?
4. What is the most important moment in the story for you?
5. Are you happy or unhappy about the way the story ends?

If you repeat this with several novels, you’ll begin to understand why these are your favourites.