Talking about Style by Pauline Rendall

New writers are often told that they must try and find their own voice. Whilst clearly true, it’s not always easy to establish this, at least to begin with. It’s also true to say that, the more one writes, the more likely it is to find one’s own voice.

            One way of getting a grip on this is through style. It doesn’t have to be unique to you, but it does need to convey, not just what you want to say, but the spirit of it too. It’s about developing your natural tendencies and polishing them to be the best they can be.

Unfortunately there are a few errors that can get in the way of good style. One example is in the use of clichés, which have a tendency to deaden style.

Some examples might be:

Leave no stone unturned

The luck of the devil (or the Irish)

What’s done is done

No good crying over spilt milk

Pangs of remorse.

Heartstrings tugged

The silvery light of the moon

He stood stock still

Tears stung her eyes

Her heart pounded

Petite and vivacious

White as snow

Black as coal

Soft as silk (or swansdown)

I’m sure you can think of loads more for yourself. And this doesn’t mean you can never use them, but if you do, you need to be sure exactly why you are using them. For instance, perhaps you might use them in dialogue, maybe to show that a character doesn’t have much education, or is an incurable romantic (there you are, there’s another one!). This is where the clichés belong to the character and not the writer.

There are also cliché situations, for instance:

Beginning an novel or short story with someone looking in a mirror

A suicide note on the mantelpiece

Someone dropping a glass (or anything) when they hear bad news.

The story that ends ‘it was all a dream’

And don’t forget cliché characters. These and the cliché situation are often referred to as ‘tropes’. The usual meaning for trope is an overdone literary device. Think back to Hollywood movies in the forties. How many Westerns have a dark-haired, often Hispanic, saloon girl. She’s kind and well-meaning (the’ tart with the heart of gold’ trope), but usually gets shot protecting either the hero or the golden-haired heroine. Or the gangster/bandit/highwayman/contract killer who has a change of heart, but who has to die by the end because we’ve come to like him and we don’t like to think of him languishing in jail. Up to a point, these tropes help us identify with the film or book. We’re comfortable, we know that right will prevail in the end. But haven’t they been done to death? Don’t we groan when we see it happening all over again?

            Here are some more:

            The handsome prince

The body in the wardrobe/deep freeze. (anybody remember Francis Durbridge?)

Twins brought up apart

The butler did it

Finding a long lost letter

The unloved fat boy

The solitary geek

The femme fatale

The picture/ornament under the sink that turns out to be worth a fortune

The broken down horse rescued from slaughter that turns out to be a famous show-jumper (I did that one!).

The country house murder with the final dénouement in the drawing room (only Agatha Christie can get away with this because she was among the first to do it).

Crime novels abound with them, as I know to my cost. How often is the body found by a dog-walker? The trouble is, that’s very often how it happens in real life. So do it once if you must, but no more than that.

Fantasy and horror stories also abound with them: the room suddenly going cold, the dog growling into the corner, the window bursting open,  the lights suddenly going out… there are people who do this brilliantly, but today it’s all a bit old hat.

One simple adjective to describe all of the above is ‘corny’. Try not to fall into the trap. This isn’t to say you can’t use clichés or tropes, but if you do, you need to find some way of making them fresh. Maybe you can use them but subvert them in some way. Maybe Puss-in-Boots’ feet are being rubbed raw by the boots and he refuses to walk any further, maybe Sleeping Beauty is male and is rescued by the princess. Existing examples might be many of the female characters in George R.R. Martins’ A Song of Ice and Fire’, where, for instance the little girl Arya Stark, orphaned and abandoned becomes, first of all, an adept swordswoman and then a trained assassin, while Brienne of Tarth is a typical ‘knight in shining armour’, displaying all the knightly values of honour and chivalry, yet is a woman, and mocked for her knightly attributes by the men around her.

But whatever voice or style you settle on, be sure to make it so fresh that your reader wants to turn every page. After all, that’s why we do it.

Show, don't tell - you've heard it all before but what does it mean?

If you've ever been on a creative writing course, or read books on how to edit, you'll have been exhorted at some point to 'show, don't tell'.  In other words, try and make your 'scenes' come to life.

            Look at this example:

Cherie was fuming, too wound up to get on with making dinner. She paced up and down the little sitting room. How dare he! And with that slut, Marcia, who'd been round half the street. Well, she'd show him she wasn't one to be taken lightly. Wait till he got home.

            She looked wildly round her. On the sideboard was an ugly bronze statuette that her grandma had given her. She pictured it buried deep in Kenny’s skull.

            When he came through the door he was as bright and cheerful as usual. Gave her a smacking kiss and asked what they were going to eat. She told him to sit down, that it wouldn't be long. She wondered how she was going to approach it, what the bastard would say. In the end she just came out with it. Told him straight she knew what he'd been up to with Marcia. But he just laughed. Said Marcia had come on to him, that there was nothing in it.

            Enraged, she grabbed the statuette and smashed it down on the back of his head. She saw the amazement on his face, and his mouth open to protest, but her rage took over. All she could see was the infamous red mist, and she brought the ornament down on his head again and again until he lay still.

Now the above gives you all the information you need. It's not badly written and the information contained in the piece is clear. It gives us the details we need and it does it succinctly. In fact, if you read 19thC novelists such as George Eliot, Jane Austen or Henry James then you'll find huge swathes of text written just like this, (the writing will no doubt be of a better quality – it will certainly be more long-winded) and this is how fiction was written then. To be honest, I rather enjoy it. If it's done well it engages the intellect and draws the reader into the author's thoughts very effectively.

Look at this passage from George Eliot's Middlemarch.

Her thought was not veined by any solemnity or pathos about the old man on the bed: such sentiments are easier to affect than to feel about an aged creature whose life is not visibly anything but a remnant of vices. She had always seen the most disagreeable side of Mr. Featherstone: he was not proud of her and she was only useful to him. To be anxious about a soul that is always snapping at you must be left to the saints of the earth, and Mary was not one of them.'

But today's readers expect a greater immediacy than that. They would expect Mary's feelings to be shown, rather just be told about them. In fact on the whole, today's readers want to be much more emotionally engaged. This is true of all fiction, novels and short stories included, but it is particularly true if you want to write genre fiction, such as crime, romantic fiction, spy thrillers or historical romances.

Have a look at the first extract rewritten to show, rather than tell, what happened between Cherie and Kenny. (I'm not going to try and rewrite George Eliot!)

Cherie fumed. Her breath came in short gasps and she could hear her heart beating.

            'That cheating bastard!' she said to herself. 'And with that slut, Marcia. How could he? What the hell has she got that I haven't?'

            She tried to steady her breathing, which was coming in short, sharp pants. She debated with herself how she was going to bring it up, shove it in his face. With one eye she took in the bronze statuette on the sideboard.

            'Right,' she said. 'Let's see what you've got to say for yourself. Let's see how you feel with that buried in your skull.'

            She heard his footsteps in the hall before he opened the door.

            'Hiya darlin',' he said. 'Good day?'

            'Oh, not bad, not bad.'

            'Dinner ready?'

            'Not yet. Won't be long.'

            He looked at her. 'Something wrong? Your face looks a bit blotchy. You sickening for something?'

            He stood up and put his hands on her shoulders. 'Keep still for a minute, will you. Stop pacing up and down. What the hell's got into you?'

            She looked back at him, her eyes like coals. 'Just one word. Marcia.'

            He stared, and his grip on her shoulder tightened.

            'What the hell are you…?' he began, but then started to laugh. He let go her shoulders and threw himself down into the chair.

            'So you heard. So what interfering old biddy let you in on that?'

            'Doesn't matter. What matters is, why?'

            'Why d'you think?'

            'How could you?'

            'Oh, give over. She was all over me like a rash. She wanted it. I just obliged. Didn't mean anything.'

            He looked up at her, offered his hand. 'Come on, Cher. It's not like you haven't been round the block yourself.'

            She reached out her hand to him as if in forgiveness, but with her other hand she grabbed the statuette and swung it down hard. Blood sprang to his forehead from the gash she'd made.

'For God's sake, Cher,' he managed. 'Be careful.'

            As she swung the ornament again and again she said between gritted teeth: 'And don't call me Cher.'

This time the writer has explored the action and dramatised the incident so that it appears like a scene in a play, showing events as they are actually happening, thus carrying the reader along. The first two extracts are simply recorded events (the first one) or recorded thoughts (the second).

Of course there are times when 'telling' is actually the best vehicle for getting something across. The reader would be exhausted if every page contained drama and conflict, and the writer needs to work at varying the pace as well as trying to put events across dramatically.  But there are other mechanisms, which when done sparingly, can also ensure we are shown rather than told. In fact here is another passage from Middlemarch that uses another technique, that of the internal monologue.

Lydgate, in fact, was already conscious of being fascinated by a woman strikingly different from Miss Brooke; he did not in the least suppose that he had lost his balance, but he had said of that woman, 'she is grace itself; she is perfectly lovely and accomplished.' Plain women he regarded as he did the other severe facts of life, to be faced with philosophy and investigated by science.

In my own novel, Hangman's Wood, I use this technique to reveal both the fate of one of the abductees and the state of mind of one of the perpetrators without taking the reader through the incident.

He enjoyed the pleading most, he decided.  That's when you really felt their terror, when you got up close. She'd begged and cried so much he'd actually got bored. Eventually he'd had to stop her babbling, stop her with a good hard slap to her fat, white face. That had put some colour in her cheek. He had hated her whiteness, thought she looked like undercooked pastry.

It had been easy, he chuckled to himself, getting her into her car and then driving it out of the car-park. He'd checked out where the CCTV cameras were the day before and seen they didn't cover the whole of the site. And it was such a murky, drizzly afternoon, dark already by four o'clock, that no-one was going to pay much attention. Just wanted to get in their cars out of the weather. The security guy wasn't doing much, either. Keeping himself dry, Graham supposed. So it had been a matter of minutes for two nice young men to offer to help her put her heavy shopping in the boot of her car, then bundle her into the back.

The reason I chose this method was because at that point I needed to do a couple of things. I’d already described one abduction in dramatic detail, and another through various conversations after the event, so I needed to find another technique to describe this event. I also needed to think hard about the pace of the story, and in fact at this stage I wanted to slow things down a little.

So despite the instruction to ‘show, don’t tell’, it’s also important to vary the method of showing. And sometimes a bit of ‘telling’ enables the writer to vary the pace and give the reader a bit of breathing space. And pace is something I'll look at in another article.

This article was written by Pauline Rendall (Paula K. Randall), and is a version of an article previously published in Ezine magazine.

Achieving authenticity

All writers need to do research. We're often told to 'only write what you know', but clearly there will be times when this is impossible. For instance, did Hilary Mantel ever actually meet Thomas Cromwell? Did Thomas Harris ever commit cannibalism? Did Tolkein live in Middle Earth and commune with elves, wizards and hobbits? I think not!

And therefore the committed and conscientious writer must undertake a great deal of research, a lot of which will never reach the pages of the novel, but will ensure that we don't make ridiculously inaccurate statements. Because, funnily enough, it's not being right that matters. It's not being wrong!

So I asked crime writer, probation officer and all round knowledgeable guy, Michael Craven, to give us the low-down on some aspects of research that may well help you not to seem an idiot. It's already given me some food for thought for my work-in-progress Washed in the Blood, which deals with this very thing.

Bodies Found In Water

by Mike Craven

This short article is designed to give crime writers a few facts about bodies found in water. Of course, some of these may not fit in with your plot or theme and that’s fine. Some writers want every fact to be correct but most of us simply want to get it right when there is nothing to be gained by getting wrong.

So here are a few facts that are useful to know about a corpse being found in water when it comes to plotting your novel or short story. In no particular order they are:

•                Bodies found floating in water will ALWAYS be lying face down with the head hanging. There are often post-mortem injuries to the head because of this as the body is buffeted against things in the water. Normally, pathologists can easily distinguish between ante and post-mortem injuries due to the presence or lack of blood. However, as the head hangs down in the water, blood congests there and post-mortem injuries will also bleed.

•                Typical signs found when a body has been immersed in water include anserina cutis (goose bumps), where skin has swelled and wrinkled, and adipocere which is the transformation of the fatty layer in the skin to a soap-like substance. Depending on the water temperature this last process can take months.

•                A body in water will normally sink as the specific gravity (SG) of the body is similar to water. Having sunk to the bottom, putrefaction commences and this will eventually lower the SG, causing the body to rise. Attached weight (heavy clothing, weights etc) may delay the body rising but will not normally be enough to stop it altogether. In cold water, putrefaction is delayed so the body will not rise as quickly as it would in warmer water. In water that remains very cold all year round the body may never rise.

•                Medically, a pathologist will not be able to prove the cause of death was drowning. There are some pathological changes that are characteristic of drowning but they also occur in other deaths (heart failure, drug overdoses, and for crime writers, head injuries). A diagnosis of drowning is largely done by excluding other deaths.

•                There are suggestive indicators which can help with diagnosing whether the body was alive or dead when it entered the water.

1.   Large quantities of water in the stomach indicate the body was alive when it entered the water. If water is not present or present but in small quantities it suggests that death occurred before the body entered the water.

2.   Hands gripping foreign materials. Struggling victims may clutch at anything they can. Evidence may be found during examination (fingernails etc). Occasionally something happens called cadaveric spasm, essentially the body goes into rigor mortis instantly. Anything the hand was holding at the time could well still be held there. This would suggest that the victim was alive when they entered the water.

•                For writers wanting some technical details that may emerge from a post-mortem when the cause of death was drowning, the following would be typical:

3.   A fine white foam may be seen coming out of the airways (mouth and nostrils). If it is wiped off, pressure from the lungs will force it to reappear. This indicates that the body was alive when it entered the water. Unfortunately, this foam also occurs in cardiac victims, drug overdoses and head trauma.

4.   Damage to the middle ear, typically a blue/purple discolouration of the bone of the mastoid air cells. However, this also occurs in electrocution, head injuries and some forms of suffocation.

5.   Shoulder girdle bruises. People struggling against drowning often rupture muscles in the shoulder girdle, chest and neck. This may only occur in 10% of drownings and is not conclusive.

•                For crime writers, it is very rare for a murderer to kill his victim by drowning. This would normally require the murderer to be substantially stronger than the victim or for the victim to be incapacitated somehow (i.e. drunk or unconscious). Far more common is a body being disposed of in water and a drowning to be staged.

To summarise, pathologists and the police have certain reliable pointers that suggest whether the victim was alive or dead when they entered the water. It is difficult to stage the pathological changes that occur during drowning and it is unlikely anyone could successfully kill someone and then fake their drowning. However, the difficulty for fiction writers is that drowning cannot be definitively proved during post-mortem. There are indicators but they also occur in other deaths, making it very difficult to differentiate whether someone drowned or died from other causes, a heart attack for example. 

The author of this guest post is Michael Craven. Michael was short-listed for 2013 Debut Dagger. You can follow his very useful blog at www.criminaljusticewriters.com.

Getting in the Press!

This article was in the Colchester Gazette. Do I really look like this? Oh well, it's good publicity!

Ready for publication? Part 2. The Feedback

In the last post we were waiting for my debut novel to come back from my editor. Was I going to be dancing round the house, reading bits of the report out to anyone who'd listen? Or was I going to be completely crushed?

Well neither, as it happens, but it wasn't altogether comfortable reading. There were twenty-eight pages of where I'd gone wrong. And the thing was, I could see that the editor was right. I recognised what she was saying. She wasn't telling me the book was terrible. In fact quite a bit of what she said was complimentary. But she certainly didn't pull any punches in the places where she felt I needed to tighten up the dialogue, places where the plot was falling flat, additional scenes I really ought to write, scenes I didn't need. And that, basically, my main character was a wimp!

The novel needed a lot of work. But was I downhearted? Well, yes, if you want to know the truth. But I'm a bit of a sticker, and besides, I was starting to see where I could make improvements. And the editor was very helpful: I sent a couple of revised scenes to her for comments and she made more observations and suggestions. Then having rewritten it almost from scratch, two of my writers' group members had a go at it. This didn't result in a re-write, but it certainly pointed out some careless mistakes and some more tightening up of dialogue and action.

And then guess what, I bit the cash bullet again. I paid for another critique. There was a 20% discount for a second read, but as the novel was now fifteen thousand words longer, it didn't really work out much cheaper. I chose to go with the same editor as before, because I felt we had developed an understanding of where my novel was going. And this time I got about twenty pages of notes. But at least now the changes were minor, and there were more positive comments. One excellent suggestion she made was to re-write a particular scene from the point of view of a different character. So I tried this, and she was right, it worked really well.

Of course, I didn't do absolutely everything my editor suggested. I'm not a sheep, after all, and in the end it's my novel. But her advice and recommendations were invaluable, and enabled me to create a much stronger story and with a much more credible main character.

Another good suggestion she made was to read it aloud to myself, all the way through. So a packet of Strepsils later I could now see how often my characters began dialogue with 'Well' (even though I'd known this and thought I'd eradicated it already) and the fact that the police discussed a partial thumbprint five times. Five times. Please!

So if you're reading this and you're in a similar position, don't try and go it alone. Don't be abashed at asking for help. Read the acknowledgements bit in a lot of novels and you might wonder how much the author actually contributed. Get the best advice you can, and that probably means paying for it some way or another. It might mean you undertake a serious creative writing course, such as a degree or an MA, like Sue. Or get yourself onto an Apprenticeship scheme like Clare. Or, like me, work with a professional editor you feel is on your wavelength. And if you can, find a group of writers with some experience to help you stay on the straight and narrow. If there isn't anything near you, join an on-line critique group such as Word Cloud or Authonomy. If you like crime you could join my Google+ group Creative Crime Writers. Post your stories or reviews on there and join the community.Creative Crime Writers



The other thing you need to do is read, read, read, especially, but not exclusively, in your chosen genre. It's only by studying others that you learn what works and what doesn't.

Altogether my book went through at least seven re-writes, probably more. It was at this stage I began the wearisome process of submitting to agents. And you know the rest. That's where we came in.



Next time I'll talk about getting your book ready for e-publishing.

Ready for publication? by Paula

One thing that this novel-writing enterprise has taught me is that I don't handle rejection well! It's no good telling me that Black Beauty was rejected nine times and Harry Potter, seven. Or that Ian Rankin had to write eight books before he acquired a name for himself. And I just read in the Afterword to one of Simon Kernick's novels that he had three hundred standard rejections before he finally got a two-book deal. He was certainly determined! But good for him; he now has several best-sellers to his credit.On top of this there's all the waiting time. Waiting for this agent or that publisher to decide whether or not your precious manuscript is for them. Of course, what you should be doing during this time is writing the next one. Only it's hard to type while you're biting your nails down to the quick. 
    So after four rejections (I know,  I know, I'm a wimp, have no persistence, no backbone etc. etc....) I decided to go it alone and publish my debut novel, Hangman's Wood, on Amazon and various other e-publishing sites. 

    Now, I'm not so arrogant that I think every word I write is a pearl beyond price. In fact I know quite well it's not. And I'm not above taking advice and acting on it. Quite the reverse, I value candid feedback, even when it hurts. So if you're interested in how I got to the point where I felt ready for publication, I'd better tell you first that I spent quite a bit of money, as well as effort. It took a lot of soul searching. I'd attended a writers' conference where I met several other writers in my situation, many of whom were considering using a professional editing agency. And these agencies, if they're any good, aren't cheap. And when you've no experience of using a service, you don't really know what to expect, and you can't help worrying that you may be throwing good money after bad. It really does take a leap of faith to decide to spend that sort of cash, especially when you don't really know what you're going to get for it. But anyway, against the advice of all my non-writing friends, I did it. I paid the money (about £400) and sat back and waited anxiously for the feedback. Of course, what you really want to hear is: This novel is fabulous. It's completely ready for publication. Or even: All this work needs is a little tweaking here and there. Because you've already spent ages polishing it, haven't you? It isn't your first draft, after all. Well, in your dreams. 
    Next post I'll write about what really happens!