Writing About Writing

I’ve had a Kindle for a year, and it’s fast become my primary method of reading. I love the interface, the convenience, the way I don’t have to fill up any more space with piles of books, which attract dust in vast quantities and give me allergy seizures.

So, yes, I am an ereader convert. But some people, my so-called friends, are behind me on the development scale and keep lending me books made of dead trees. I finished one such novel the other day and thought I’d share some thoughts on my re-entry onto paper.

Get Some Physio

Considering how much Kindle hatred there is out there, you’d expect picking up a real book to be a revelatory experience, making the story a million times better and exuding some magic smell. (Because it’s always about the smell, isn’t it? Hey, guys, computers can have odour too, especially when the cooling fan fails and the motherboard burns.)

But you know, I didn’t notice much different. Yes, it’s weird measuring your progress in page numbers again, rather than abstract percentages, and feeling a physical change under your right hand as the plot falls away. And flicking through regular books to check stuff for your reviews is way easier, that is one big plus point for them.

But you know what I have to do with paper books? Protect the fragile little darlings from getting bashed around, especially this one that wasn’t mine, find my place manually rather than automatically, carry a heavier rucksack, accept that other people on the tube can see what I’m reading. (Fortunately, it wasn’t porn, it was The Time Traveller’s Wife. Untimely Book Review to follow.)

Get Some Therapy

So, inane revelation time: books and ereaders are different in some ways and not others. And, yes, there are problems with Kindle brand dominance – I’m not a huge fan of Amazon being the only place I can easily buy stuff.

But. I’d rather we talk about actual issues like that, rather than throwing a tantrum about methods of reading. It’s just data, and I say this as an experienced IT professional. I’ve always been insistent that how I display and consume my data is up to me, ever since I was a little boy and my Mum tried to make me read the Radio Times instead of using Teletext. (Sorry, American readers, I may have lost you there.)

And speaking of young kids: people who do things like refer to the Kindle as “the K-word”? Not a great look, folks.

So, where do you stand on the Kindle/book debate? Have you gone back to books, and did you experience whiplash? Comment! Below!

(And yes, I took that picture of my Kindle on top of a pile of books. I know, I know, the layers of meaning are stunning.)

Close followers of my work here, specifically the Friday stories, might note I’ve done a few in an all-dialogue format. Like this one, also one of my only “science-fiction” stories. Or kinda this one too. And the new one I’ve just written for Friday. So clearly I’m a big fan.

“Ah, Rupert, I see you are removing the badger from the toaster.”

This is the biggest issue I have when writing largely in dialogue, and I’ve been knocked around for it by tutors: the danger of getting over-theatrical.

This results in characters saying things like the above, basically filling in for the absence of prose or stage directions. After all, the reader won’t know what’s going on if the characters don’t state it, but they also end up talking in a way no-one does in real life.

On the other hand, this is a very specific problem. If you have any prose (or stage directions if you’re writing script) then, hey, problem solved.

“The angry badger has embedded itself in the wall whilst trying to extinguish the fire in its tail.”

Dialogue often has the fun bits, doesn’t it? This problem is particularly common in speed-writing projects like NaNoWriMo, but for me, it’s a never-ending battle: dialogue rolls off easily, prose requires hard work.

So, when editing, I end up chopping out a lot of the dialogue. Yes, even if that joke was awesome, sadly, it often isn’t necessary, so you have to kill your babies. (NOT LITERALLY FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.) I’ve also been writing more in the first person, which circumvents the problem by making narration more chatty. Clever, eh?

“Um, I don’t wanna, y’know, moan, but would someone reeeally put a badger in a toaster?”

It’s been established by smarter minds than me that fictional dialogue is rarely “realistic”. I may love the stylised dialogue of Aaron Sorkin, but people don’t really talk like that.

So we stumble across the distinction between “realistic” and “believable”. Strictly realistic dialogue would feature a lot of “um” and “kinda”, and reading it would be a nightmare. Awful BBC improv drama True Love featured actors improvising the banal conversations real people would have, and watching it was like dying and discovering hell is a never-ending bus queue.

So, in summation, dialogue is amazing, as long as it isn’t over-theatrical, over-used or too believable. Did I cover everything? What are your dialogue issues? Feel free to comment below, I need fodder for the follow-up post.

The real world isn’t as conducive to beautiful literary representation as it was back in the day. Real-life dialogue too often takes place via text, email or instant messenger, which means ur book might have 2 feature awful abbrvtns and smiley faces. 🙁

Many authors would rather be kicked in the crotch by a centaur (or a binary camel – see illustration to right) than incorporate any of that modern nonsense, but it’s increasingly hard to avoid. Everyone is obtainable all the time, so what’s your excuse for any character being out of the loop when they could call, email, text or tweet someone? Isn’t it funny how they keep losing their mobile phones?

And that’s not even getting into the woe of the crime/mystery writers, who have to explain why the puzzle wasn’t unravelled in seconds thanks to modern forensic technology. Small wonder that many detective stories are now set in the past, where authors can wallow in old fashioned sleuthing without having to worry about whether the murderer left a DNA sample when he shoved his thumb into the victim’s eye socket.

Personally, I’m weirdly fascinated by the possibilities, but I have worked in IT for five years, own a smartphone and use Twitter to an unsettling (or just annoying – follow me now on @NickMB!) degree. So I’ve written a range of stories, not to mention a novel, exploring the exciting new worlds of internet communication.

But even I hit problems occasionally. Primary among them: people using a computer is not the most dramatic activity. It becomes harder to really get body language among the dialogue when, often, you’ve only got one half of the conversation visible, and all they’re doing is typing. Are you going to sully your novel with internet messages containing actions between asterisks? *cries*

Of course, you can always send them off on merry internal monologue and that’s your one scene or short story sorted, but it’s hardly the long-term solution. What happens next time?

As I say, I like this stuff, but still work hard to find new ways of expressing the use of computers. So, how do you get around this? Is there an easy answer, beyond “stop writing about geeks, you geek”?

All suggestions welcomed. As hinted earlier, this is somewhat of a pet topic, so I imagine it’ll come up again.

As I hinted in my awkward-yet-strangely-touching intro post, one of the problems with suddenly deciding to blog about writing is that everyone else has been doing it for some time, and many of them have more experience in the field.

More to the point, there is a lot of basic writing advice out there in one form or another, including endless retweeting of trite inspirational soundbites. So much so that I long ago started ignoring them –  nonetheless, that doesn’t make me right. Or write.

So, to inspire me as much as anything, here are four bits of obvious writing advice which I have picked up over the years on sufferance.

1) Carry A Notebook To Write Something In

A writer should have a notebook on them at all times, in case that crucial idea for a story comes to you whilst walking down the street, using the crapper or drinking heavily and staring into the abyss.

I don’t do it, obviously. I have a smartphone, so just send two or three word emails to myself whenever an idea comes to me, and then sometimes forget what they mean.

2) Write About Something You Care About

It has to come from your soul, be meaningful to you first and foremost, and if it isn’t, the audience will know, because apparently you are writing to an imaginary audience of psychics.

There have been some very fluffy phrasings of this one, and it’s perhaps true that something you genuinely believe in might end up working better than some dribble hacked out to appease the masses. However…

3) Write Something That Will Sell

Particularly in these troubled times, we probably shouldn’t overlook commercial reality. Some young writers get their start churning out not-really-their-thing fiction or copy for websites, and I’m 99% sure they didn’t dream of doing that in their youth.

So how am I reconciling items two and three? Well, badly. Because, yes, you gotta make a living, so the trick is enjoy the pure act of writing even if you aren’t working on the dream project. Otherwise you’ll be pretty miserable.

4) Actually Write Something

See also: “Writers write!” and “Don’t just talk about it, do it!” This one is so painfully obvious and over-blogged that I almost didn’t include it on my blog list of obvious advice, but it’s earnt its place through sheer repetition.

So there you go. Write if you want to write. Pee if you need to pee. Breathe if you want to live. Don’t say I never teach you anything.

Which brings us to the end of our list of four well-worn pieces of writing advice. Next week, I may try and say something more novel, but for now, let me know in the comments if I’ve missed anything, um, obvious.

Hello. I’m going to try something adventurous now on this blog where I post my writing: I’m going to blog about writing.

Well, to give myself scope, I’m going to blog about anything relating to writing or stories, incorporating book reviews and even methods of typing if I have something to say about it. The schedule is weekly on Tuesdays, to provide a small break before I post a story on Fridays.

Not that I always make the Friday deadline, imagine I won’t always make this one, but I’d like to give it a go. I miss blogging regularly, and I’ve got the mundanities of real life more or less covered on Twitter.

I’ll do an introduction here, even though a lot of my potential readership probably know who I am: I’m Nick Bryan, 28 years old, London-based, I write stories, mostly in the black comedy region, I have various novels in a few stages of half-finished, one of which might have potential, I am also (as of this writing) a short distance from finishing an MA in Creative Writing from Goldsmiths College. If you’d like to buy a longer story by me, there’s one in this anthology. There won’t be too much self-promotion, I swear.

To be honest, I would have done this long ago, but I always found myself wondering what I have to add to the “blogging about writing” field – I mean, it’s massive. I’m sure there are more blogs about writing than there are books. Or words in the Bible. Or copies of Romeo & Juliet in schools worldwide.

And here I am, largely unpublished and living in a small room. Still, now my MA is all over bar the crying (and dissertation writing, then more crying), I need an outlet to discuss these things, and I already had the website ready.

So, join me next Tuesday, when I attempt to say something about writing! (Don’t worry, I drafted the first three posts before I put this first one up, to avoid the humiliation of declaring a new blog project and delivering nothing.)

If anyone has any deep thoughts about what makes a good writing blog, let me know in the comments below. My plan so far is to write down the issues that come to me when I work and hope people give me the solution. Or at least a hearty “me too!”.