Authors Electric

Ocean surface wave. Jon Sullivan. I read a few ‘how-to write’ books when younger but as I remember, they concentrated mostly on how to lay out your book and how best to approach publishers. Apart from that, they directed you back to good writers with the instruction to pay attention to the way, for instance, dialogue was used to tell the story and reinforce character. These peeled back the Art a little, so you could take a look at the hidden art. Some things I’ve seen lately differ from this in that they seem to be trying to provide a formula or recipe for writing a story or novel. Write so many words, make chapters so long, put in so much description, add a certain mix of characters… O.C.E.A.N, for instance. It stands for:—  Openness — Conscientiousness — Extraversion — Agreeableness — Neuroticism  It began as a a tool used by psychologists to assess patients but has been co-opted by writers to help them build and understand character. Each of these qualities...

A friend of mine who is an author has recently signed up for an MA in creative writing.  It's going to cost her a lot of money and won't necessarily make her a better writer, but she's convinced that it is the magic ingredient she needs to be successful.  A lot of people seem to think so, and universities are currently making a lot of money out of their creative ambitions.  But, as someone who has taught creative writing in universities and tutored students at MA and Ph.D level, I'm not convinced that it will. In fact, it might be counter productive. Here are some questions you need to ask and a run-down of the pros and cons. 1. To begin with, there's the Cost  - a part time course at a small university starts at around £3,000 a year. Most charge much more. That's quite an investment in your future, considering that the average author earns less than £10,000 a year.  £5 - 6 thousand would be quite usual. UEA has turned out some bestselling authors su...

Last month I reviewed two writing related apps (Story Lines and Name Dice) and as the feedback was favourable I thought I'd repeat the process. However unlike the two previous apps these provide inspiration for the poet. So here goes... Poetry Creator Developer: Tiny Mobile Inc. Free to download with in app purchases I love this app. It's fun, easy to use and really does push the creative process. Think fridge magnet or rip it poetry. When you first open the app you are supplied with a number of words on a 'board' which gives you the starting point for your poem. These words you simply drag into place to create your poem. If you struggle there is a pull out 'drawer' (found on the right hand side of the screen) which contains additional words which you can pull into play. You can increase the number of words by going into the 'mix-tionary' and  just slide the selectors.  You can download additional dictionaries (shown as installed on the image o...

A whole heap of radio plays ...I'm lurking in there somewhere! Before I begin: if you’re somebody who gets pleasure from writing stories or poems purely for enjoyment or fulfilment or as a way of exploring human nature but doesn’t have any great need to communicate or disseminate the work or only to a select group of friends, then this is probably not the post (or rant) for you. There’s nothing wrong with writing just for fun. Lots of people do it, just as lots of people paint and draw or play sports for love and without any thought of turning professional, even though many of them are arguably more talented than some full time professionals. I remember back in my teens writing only because I loved what I was doing, although even then, there was lurking at the back of my mind the desire to make a career out of it. Along with that was the hope that somebody, somewhere, might pay me to write. And in fact quite soon, the BBC  did pay me to write a whole heap of radio plays, so ...

          Parody is enormous fun, and I teach a class on how to write it each term in my creative writing courses Malden Centre and Surrey Hills Onward Learning   because the students enjoy it so much. It doesn't seem as daunting as starting something from scratch. It’s actually a very good way of finding out about other writers’ styles, although you have to choose someone with a distinctive voice. Hemingway is an excellent subject, with his absence of adverbs, and reasonably easy to do as a consequence. Chandler and Spillane are good targets as well. Probably the most famous parody of all is Cold Comfort Farm , by Stella Gibbons, which took the mickey out of the accounts of rural life by writers such as Mary Webb, D.H. Lawrence and Thomas Hardy, concentrating on sexual undercurrents, muddy fields and inheritances. This is one of my favourite passages: …He looked up as Judith entered, and gave a short, defiant lau...