Write it now, part 13: novels and novelability

In this series we’ve been exploring writing in all its forms. Today we’re starting a detailed look at one of the most popular forms of writing – fiction.

Jane Austen. Public domain, from http://www.wpclipart.com/famous/writer/writers_A_to_D/ Jane_Austen_coloured_version.jpg.html

Fiction, and particularly novel writing, is the writing that attracts the most interest. It’s where most people start. I was trained in it myself, way back when. Most ‘how to write’ training today is geared towards fiction, and I’ve noticed that a lot of online discussion is predicated on the assumption that any book being written will, by default, be a novel.

Not all books are, of course. But it’s true about a lot of the books that are written these days – and certainly that’s true of the books being self-published on Amazon.

Fiction is also where the money is. The only billionaire author, and most of its millionaires, are novellists.

So where did the ‘novel’ come from? The form we know and love today emerged in the late eighteenth century. Jonathan Swift had something to do with it. So did Jane Austen – she, in fact, is often regarded as the inventor of the novel in its modern form. That’s not quite true. But certainly she helped shape it. Specifically, she found new ways of engaging reader emotion – she created interesting characters and set them to interact on a stage identifiable to the audience.

In her classic Pride and Prejudice (1813) the main emotion was – well, pride. By modern standards Austen’s style was pompous, even clunky. Check this out:

“She hardly knew how to suppose that she could be an object of admiration to so  great man; and yet that he should look at her because he disliked her was still  more strange. She could only imagine however, at last, that she drew his notice  because there was a something about her more wrong and reprehensible, according  to his ideas of right, than in any other person present…” (Pride and Prejudice, 1813)

But that was perfectly acceptable in that age; Austen was a great novelist, a great story teller, and we can but lament at the way her premature death cut short her career.

Nor was Austen alone. In 1816, Mary Shelley took novel writing in different directions with Frankenstein, effectively a foray into science fiction. Novels, it seemed, did not have to be ‘real’ in order to engage their reader – indeed, one of their appeals was that they allowed readers to escape.

By the early nineteenth century, then, the modern novel was fairly on its way. Understanding how the novel journeyed over the next 200-odd years is handy to know if we want to write one – because it allows us to understand how the form has always been shaped in the specific by contemporary need, contemporary ideal – and it is still changing. Next week.

Meanwhile, do you have thoughts on why novels are such a popular first stop for people wanting to write? The creative urge? Expression of a story? All these things? I’d love to hear from you.

And have any of you seen  ’Ink and Incapability’, from Blackadder The Third (BBC 1988).

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2013

Next week: Write it now – the evolution of the novel; also more funnies, more writing tips, and some highly refined geekery.

Inspirations: Music, art, writing and unleashing the inner geek

As a writer, I have never regretted chugging through the Royal Schools of Music grade system. Music offers skills that feed directly into writing. Learning how to write a tune to words, for instance, rammed home why it’s important, even in prose, to have rhythm.

The panel of one of my analog synths… dusty, a bit scratched, but still workable. Pop quiz: can anybody identify it from this clipped close-up?

There’s a more subtle side to it, too. Music is about evoking emotion in the recipient – the satisfaction of listening, hope, despair, anger, laughter. So is writing. That’s one reason why rhythm of words is important. For writers, as for musicians, it helps evoke a response.

I still have a small collection of vintage analog synths. They all work – including my Moog, which was old and battered when I bought it in 1987. The fact that it functions 37 years after it left Moog’s Trumansburg factory is testament to the quality.

It is also an expressive instrument, meant to be played like a violin, not a piano. You can do things with pitch-bender, potentiometers and modulation wheels that give the sound life. If you have never heard a Moog 24dBa high-pass ladder filter being overdriven, you’ve missed something. Here’s someone using the filter as a resonator. Here’s Erik Norlander playing the biggest Modular Moog I’ve ever seen.

The worn out ribbon pitch-controller on my Micromoog. Apparently Bob Moog invented that device for Beach Boys keyboard player Brian Wilson.

One of the doyens of the Moog, way back, was Brit prog-rock icon Rick Wakeman. He defined the ‘rock opera’ via such classics as Journey To The Centre Of The Earth (1974), essentially a modern oratorio.

I saw him in concert, here in New Zealand, last year – and @grumpyoldrick didn’t disappoint. He spilled off a flight from the UK and gave a 2 1/2 hour show, using the Wellington City Council’s Steinway Model D, all from memory. He had the audience in stitches – he is a great comedian. Along the way he explained how he had been taught to put feeling into music. You close your eyes and imagine what you want to convey – the feeling of a summer’s day, for instance.

To me, that summed up music as art. Art is about conceptual shapes and patterns that convey feeling and emotion. Notes are flawed tools to express an inexpressible form – idea, which is emotional. The essence of art is conveying that emotion, however imperfectly, by whatever medium, to others. And that is true of writing, too. The medium is words; but the essence is emotion.

Wakeman was taught that about his art from the beginning. Others, including me, had to learn it later. The hard way.

Do you find art in music, in writing? How do you see these things?  is music inspirational for you in these ways? I’d love to hear from you.

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2013

Sixty second writing tips: music for the writing mood

One of the best tools writers have is music, for many reasons. One of them is something to listen to while we write – squashing intrusive background noises. And, more particularly, to put us into the right zone.

That, to me, is one of the strengths of ‘music to write to’. It can help create the right emotional space – perhaps the same emotional space as I’m trying to evoke in readers. For me, it shouldn’t intrude to the point of killing the words and ideas. Usually I’ll pick instrumental music, often chamber music, which is able to set a mood without being too intrusive. That, in fact, is exactly what it was written for (Mozart wrote muzak…get over it…)

There is an exception. If I’m looking to write high fantasy I’ll select Epica or Nightwish (the pre-2005 stuff) at planet-crushing volume (several notches up from “11”).

Do you find music helps you write? Does it set your mood? What music works best for you – and when? And does anything with spoken word kill the words you have in your mind? Do share!

 Copyright © Matthew Wright 2013

Inspirations: summer in the middle of Middle Earth

We’re having a heatwave here in New Zealand. Ten days of settled, golden weather, like when I was a kid – and no, that’s not just nostalgia on my part. The climate has changed.

I thought I’d share a few pictures I took over the past few days of the city I live in. For some reason it’s been tagged ‘the middle of Middle Earth’ just now, though I suspect Tolkien never envisaged his world looking like this.

Oriental Bay – named after one of the original colony ships that arrived in 1840 and a popular walk for Wellingtonians today.

Karaka Bay – on the eastern side of the city where Port Nicholson opens out to the sea through a narrow channel.

Crowds heading to the ‘Sevens’ rugby – really, more a chance to dress up and have fun than about the sport. Was the guy in front trying to swim upstream? And no, this is not tilt-shifted. It’s what came out of the camera.

Brick monastery on Mount Victoria with the sandy beach of Oriental Bay below. The sand was imported from Golden Bay, all 30,000 tons of it.

A rather busy photo of the ‘Bucket Fountain’ in Cuba Street. Iconic since the 1970s.

Immortal words from Iris Guiver Wilkinson – journalist and author from the 1930s, better known as Robin Hyde, a woman whose personal story was as tragic as some of the tales she wrote. Part of the Wellington Writers’ Walk.

I find the place inspiring. Do you?

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2013

Write it now, part 3: passion and learning – the writers’ toolbox

I thought I’d start today’s post with a story about someone – not me – who attended a course on writing childrens’ books.

The average age of the audience was about 60. Most, it seemed, had retired and decided to ‘become’ childrens’ writers, mostly by picking up a pen for the first time and writing. After all, childrens’ books don’t have many words. They’d written letters, diaries, corporate reports and so forth. How hard could it be? So they were asking questions about whether to have the publisher contract read by a solicitor, and how much advance to negotiate.

‘No no’, the facilitator said. ‘Before you can sell anything, you have to learn how to write.’

Fact is that writing is a learned skill like any other. It takes as much time to become fully competent as to become a concert pianist, or a surgeon, or engineer. By this I mean, ‘make it part of your soul’ – unconscious competence. Doing the mechanics of it without thinking – allowing you to focus on the quality. The typical estimate to get there for any skill is about 10,000 hours. Writing is no exception. It includes time spent receiving formal instruction, even if you pick up self-learning after that (most writers do). Most of it is time spent on your own, writing.

Typically, a writer will push out about a million words to get unconsciously competent. Often these are exercises. Usually the process is completed as they swing into their publishing career -  two or three books in, even.

Now this is a typewriter I didn’t wear out – my trusty Adler Gabriele 25, bought new in 1983. It survived. Partly because it is built like the proverbial. But mainly because I switched to computer. I still typed around a million words on it, many of these exercises that weren’t published, but which did teach me to write.

I did that. I wore out two typewriters along the way. But wait, I can hear you saying. What about passion? The satisfaction of writing – the pleasure? Sure, absolutely. Passion is essential. And you have to find it satisfying, too. The feel-good factor. That’s certainly why I write.

I think passion translates to a drive to get that competence. To do the hard yards. To be prepared to take lessons. To write. And then throw away what you’ve just written. And write some more.

What’s more, today’s market demands more than just competence as a writer. It’s a crowded world and authors need a whole toolbox of skills. That applies whether you’re self-publishing or going the traditional route. It includes – but is not limited to:

1. Learned and practised writing skills including style, structure, content and ability to write to a specified length.
2. An expertise in the topic they’re writing on (be it fiction or non-fiction).
3. An understanding of the market – how crowded is it, what will work, what won’t, the likely audience. And how to sell the book into it.
4. An understanding of proofing processes, systems and publishing mechanisms.
5. A professional approach – meaning the written material isn’t used to define your sense of self-worth.

It sounds daunting. But it isn’t. Not when fuelled by passion.

I’m going to cover the items above as we go along.

Passion and learning. And that begs a question. Are writers born or made? I think it’s ‘both’. People are born with the aptitude – they want to write; they have to write. But they still have to learn, if they want to succeed. And that learning never stops.

 What do you figure?

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2013

Coming up this week: Summer inspirations, more on kindness, and sixty-second writing tips.

Write it now, part 2: do you write because you have to?

Welcome to part 2 of this series on the A-Z of writing. In these initial posts I’m exploring the foundations of the art – what writing’s about (emotion), why we write, and what’s needed to learn about it. In a few weeks I’ll be moving on to some of the tips and tricks that writers use – some how-to posts, and a lot more.

Today – why do writers write? It’s not an idle question. Do writers write because they’ve chosen it as a hobby – a pastime, or entertainment? Or something more serious?  I figure there will be as many answers to this question as there are people who write.

To me, writing is about doing. It is more than a pastime, though I do pass the time with it – and enjoy doing so. And for most people who write, I think, it is the doing that counts. Writing – practising, learning, doing – is the priority. Committed writers push at it, barrel out text, push projects to completion – make it happen. They will keep pushing – looking for agents, looking for publishers. Some even make a living from it – if they’re lucky.

They write because they have to.

I think that applies to most writers who make a career of it, whether they write fiction or non-fiction, whether they freelance as journalists or focus on books.

The pertinent question is why. Why is writing a compulsion?

Personally I don’t identify myself as ‘a historian’ or ’a writer’, or anything else. Writing is what I do, not what I am. I think writing is an expression. It is a way of sharing. It is also, I think, a way of understanding the world, and for expressing that understanding in ways that cannot be conveyed in speech. It is a way of communicating concepts – often flawed, maybe, but a way. To some extent, too, I think writing acts as a way of recharging the batteries. Know what I mean? Writing suits, I think, people who are more introverted than not.  Sometimes.

Everybody has their own reasons why they write – what pushes them. Why they have to write. But there is,  I think, always going to be a commonality. Maybe a surprising commonality.

Why do you write? Do tell. I figure we’re going to find a lot of like-minded people.

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2013

Coming up: Inspirations – the city rising from the wreckage; more on kindness; sixty second writing tips, and more.

Inspirations: the spirit of deco and the art of the abstract truth

A while ago I spent a delightful few days in Napier, New Zealand, enjoying a weekend celebration of 1930s elite lifestyles, an annual event inspired by the architecture that dominates the centre of town. By design it was more Hollywood fantasy than reality, but that made it all the more fun. An inspiration.

The ‘art deco weekend’ also brought just about every 1930s car in the country into one spot, and that got me thinking. There were hundreds of them, polished, preened and restored. And they were more than just demonstrations of the love their owners had poured into them. Though they were that. They were more than just world automotive history. Though they were that too.

They were art. Art in the sense of abstraction – of the way concepts can be poured into something real, then invoke emotion in the recipient. Perhaps, if the artist is lucky, the intended emotion.

These cars encapsulated the spirit of the early twentieth century, an age of shapes and forms made possible by the wild collision of new thinking, new materials and new demands – particularly the need for genuine streamlining in ever-faster aircraft. That translated into art, it translated back into the everyday on the ground, mingled with infusions of Mayan styling, and lifted everyday objects like cars, tea-cups, buildings, vases, furniture – and everything else it touched – above the mundane. In part it was a product of depression thinking; a rejection of gloom. And ultimately the whole floated on a conscious effort to transcend the nineteenth century – to simplify, to streamline. Literally.

It came out in writing. What is Hemingway, with his sparse style, if not art deco? The styles that emerged in everything from ashtrays to pens to cups to buildings to cars to art were an explicit rejection of art nouveau. Modernism – of which ‘art deco’ was a part – took the new and exalted it.

To me it came together in the cars, because they were art for everyman, art in a real sense; an ultimate expression of the materials of the twentieth century – metal, chrome, glass, rubber and bakelite. Conceptually they carried a vision – accessible to everyday people, even if only as a drive-past glimpse – of hope in an age beset by war and depression.

Suddenly it was 1940…

And isn’t that inspiring?

That relationship between time, society and art hasn’t gone away. And art is an expression of human abstract endeavour - encompassing not just painting, drawing or sculpture, but all the ways in which we can communicate through the abstract. Writing, for instance.

What do you figure?

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I’ll be back blogging full-strength from 14 January. Here’s what’s coming in 2013:

- posts on kindness and the positive side of the human condition…with
- some posts on my favourite writers
- some posts on New Zealand scenery and photography
- a systematic how-to series on writing
- some science geek posts
- a short series on history mysteries
- and more

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2013

Summer skies, blue waters and a promise for the year

There is a pleasure about summer that seems to blow away the cobwebs of a busy year and the gloom of winter. Today I thought I’d share a few pictures I took recently in Napier, New Zealand.

It’s my home town, though I don’t live there these days; and it underscores the fact that there is a lot more to New Zealand scenery than Tolkien landscapes. Especially in summer when the blue skies stretch huge from horizon to horizon and the water laps against beaches lined with pohutukawa. These pictures are unedited apart from some minor cropping, adding my copyright notice, and re-sizing to fit the blog. I was playing with a polarising filter and new lens – looking to capture the feel of the day in a place deep in the South Pacific where the summers are Californian and the architecture pure Hollywood.. What do you reckon?

Ocean going waka moored against East Quay, Ahuriri harbour, Napier New Zealand. Earlier in 2012, I spent hours standing in Awarua harbour, Rarotonga, trying to photograph this one.

Greywacke brought down to the sea by the rivers that cross the Heretaunga plains give Napier’s beaches their shingled look – and tint the summer sea azure.I went for full polarisation with this one to bring out the clouds, which the hills inevitably sweep into interesting shapes.

The Tom Parker Fountain, on Napier’s town centre foreshore, was donated by local identity Tom Parker in 1936. Though modelled on an English example, it is pure deco, a Hollywood fantasy in a townscape that was once going to be rebuilt along the lines of Santa Barbara. At night the water is lit in rainbow colours from beneath. I’ve been photographing it for years in many weathers and seasons.

Coming up this year:

The response to my last post, making 2013 a year of kindness, has been just fantastic – and everybody agrees. Thank you so much for your support! And let’s do it.  The year of kindness. So – on this blog, this year, we’ll have:
- posts on kindness and the positive side of the human condition…with
- some posts on my favourite writers
- some posts on New Zealand scenery and photography
- a systematic how-to series on writing
- some science geek posts
- a short series on history mysteries
- and more

Copyright Matthew Wright © 2013

Writing inspirations: reflections of Brugges

Half a millenium ago, Brugges was a thriving trading town, one of the largest in northwestern Belgium. Isolated when its harbour silted, the old town was left to decline, and the relentless march of urban renewal bypassed the town centre. Today, that fabulous collection of preserved  medieval and early modern buildings has become its drawcard.

Outside the old medieval wall and canals, Brugge is like any other modern European town – busy, a little grubby, polluted. Inside them, though, the town centre is almost like a theme park, deliberately cultivated for its history. But it is a real town, a working town, a place where people live, work, eat and contemplate.

The hardest part was photographing it. Tourists interposed themselves into every picture, jostled and bumping around with waving happy-snappy cameras. I solved it by getting up at 6.00 am and wandering through the town centre at dawn. I captured these pictures, among others. I used one of them in a travel piece I wrote for a metropolitan newspaper back in New Zealand; the others are published here for the first time.

There is something about dawn stillness that forces contemplation; that forces one to think. Especially in a place like this. Brugges.  This Belgian town has seen the passage of time like few others. It was past here that von Falkenhayn and his army advanced in late 1914 at the culmination of the ‘race to the channel’ – and they were stopped not far to the west, at Ypres.

All these things fuel thought; and for a writer, that is food and drink.

What do you think? Have you been to Brugge, sat and contemplated the place? Are there places of stillness you enjoy – where you can think and let the world’s troubles pass you by? Do share!

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2012

Nano writing tips: making dialogue real

One of the hardest skills to master in writing fiction is dialogue.  It’s extremely difficult – even well established authors often struggle.

When it comes to quick-fire dialogue, it’s hard to go past Hemingway – check out Farewell To Arms, for instance. Much of the time he didn’t even have to put ‘he said’, ‘she said’ – the speakers  were obvious from his choice of words, and their speech painted their characters in ways that made them alive. Brilliant, brilliant technique. But also one that’s very difficult to master.

The reason is that people don’t talk in prose. Try transliterating a conversation – it’s full of half-sentences, broken phrases and misplaced words. That’s because words are only half the way we communicate; there also body language – gestures, expressions, even the context. Imagine two people talking about a flight of passing birds. They might not mention  what they’re looking at, because they both know.

Written English is a different ball game. It’s linear – it presents one idea at any moment. It’s a thread. So you, as author, have to disentangle not just the broken dialogue people actually use, but also present the simultaneous experience of conversation – context, body language and so forth – as a string of words. What’s more, ideally the style should be not dissonant from the general style of your book – you’re providing a consistent reading experience as well as a story.

Just to add spice to the whole issue, dialogue is also the way that your characters convey their reality. It will make them come alive.

My suggestions:

1. Speech (disentangled, processed and reinterpreted by the mind) usually parses in iambic pentameter (“I WANdered LONEly AS a CLOUD’).
2. Different people have different patterns of speech – but not too much. Overstating in your novel can appear contrived.
3. Don’t spell out speech characteristics. Bring them out – for instance, in the way a character reacts. “Fred’s mouth dropped open. ‘Will ya look at that!’ We know he’s surprised.
4. Convey some of the background as your own prose, around the speech – don’t try to work it into the dialogue – avoid: “‘Look, Wilma, at that flight of Pterodactyls over there where I am pointing, with the light on them.’”
5. Vary lengths. People don’t always talk in four-sentence blocks. Sometimes they just get in one word. Multiple quick-fire snap back-and-forth dialogue can be effective, sometimes.
6. Sometimes, not speaking is effective – focus on the reaction.

And finally – the piece de resistance - do what John Steinbeck suggested – read it aloud as you write it.

Do you have a technique for dialogue? What are your experiences writing it? I’d love to hear from you.

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2012