How to Make Words Work

Another out of print book - how fast texts become obsolete. This is about advertising and copy writing and it's a good read for an author as well. Howard talks about working like an athlete - practise hard and analyse your performance and you will improve. There is a lot about the power of words. Apparently just looking at the word 'happy' produces measurably different physical responses from looking at the word 'sad'. I can believe this because I had to read Midnight's Children for my course. A very useful exercise as it turned out, because when I said I hated it, my tutor, quite rightly, told me that wasn't a good enough response and to find out why. Imagine the worst foreign toilet you ever experienced. It's hot and you don't feel well. This book made me feel as if I was locked in a place like that. It made my skin crawl - and a lot of that was to do with the words on the page: snot, spew, sweat, soiled, creepy, foul, mire and many more, all in one sentence. When I'd finally got through it I picked up a children's book: rose petals, velvet, fresh green grass, sunshine and birdsong. The contrast was amazing.

Another good point he makes is that people have limited time and interest. You can capture them with the unexpected, surprise and involvement. To get them involved you make it personal. Not 'The Witch' but 'I married a Witch.' The facts are not enough. "Apples are good for you, contain minerals and vitamins and can aid good health" is an unsold book. 'An apple a day keeps the doctor away,' catches interest.

The point I find most interesting now is his comment that if you want to make 30 seconds seem like a long time, you don't do to much in it. He's talking about TV adverts of course, but he quotes Irving Berlin as saying about songs: 'All I need is a catchy phrase that anyone can understand.' If you have a few separate elements and you bring them together in a simple message, it's more effective. I think it's the same with books. When I read beginner's books (if you are published, everyone has a novel to show you!) they always seem woolly, diverse, scatter gun. There's too much stuff piled in there and it doesn't seem to fit anywhere. I think it's Orson Scott Card who says that readers all have a set of little questions in their heads and one of them is: 'Why are you telling me this?' Its made me think again about the importance of the high concept. Jaws is a good example - the book and the film are simply about a big fish and its effect on a town with a tourist beach. How simple is that? And how well does it work?

The final piece of advice is the one that stayed with me. I think of it every time I get one of those work emails where you have to fight your way to the meaning through a thicket of imperfectly understood grammar and business jargon. Howard says in all business communication your guiding principal should be: 'Would I say this to a friend?'

If you Want to Write

This is a great book - I remember enjoying it a lot. Her advice boils down to be brave and be honest, but she gives lots of fascinating examples, both from students she has taught and from famous people. For example, she says that Vang Gogh's first drawing was in a letter to his brother. 'It is so beautiful I must tell you how it looks...' he writes. Her style is charming too - I've kept lots of her expressions in my notes.

I think she's right when she says that if you are forcing yourself to write, then you are afraid you will fail. When you are sure, 'you smile and set about it'. Working with love is easy and interesting - there is nothing hard about it but your anxious vanity and fear of failure.

I also think she's right about living in the present: it's no good 'working up a lot of bogus feeling' because nobody will care a bit. 'My heroine is wonderful' is propaganda, and propaganda is not storytelling. Let a person come alive in your mind, and describe them accurately and objectively, then it will be interesting. Easy then! But she also talks about writing your true emotions and tapping into powers that will help you do that. A very good book.

Non-Sexist Writing

This is a useful and interesting book. I've made notes on three main areas. One is to think about individual words - don't say man the reception desk (especially if you are talking about a female) say staffed the reception desk. They give many examples. If in doubt you can always use the usual form, I'm never sure about words such as chair/chairperson/chairman, but it is good to be aware of the differences. The next is to recast sentences to avoid any awkward constructions when speaking generally - a child can feed himself, for example, could become a child can eat without help. The third section is very interesting - it's about trivialising. I think it was Adrienne Rich who said that being called a poetess brought out the terroristess in her. It can be obvious, as in two Thais and their wives, or more subtle, as in 'she helped slaves to escape.' Doesn't 'led slaves to freedom' sound stronger?

Style of Your Own

Another out of print text - you can tell it's a while since I read them! I enjoyed reading this book by Ivan Roe. It is for both fiction and non fiction. First he warns you to beware of out-moded styles. Childhood books can be very dated and what about the people who taught you? Look out for a bullying manner combined with the trick of exclusion:

• anyone who has thought seriously about...
• how many people stop to think...
• the OUTMODED idea that...
• Disregarding the one factor that could prove everything I say to be rubbish...

It's a matter of attitude, he says. Are you telling people or sharing with them? Readers should be thinking about themselves and their own discoveries as they read. Readers are always alone, even if they are on a crowded beach, and they want to escape for a while, have their mind massaged, but not pummelled, and to learn something. They like to read quickly, and hate dull sentences and having to look things up. That's why you should use short sentences, personal pronouns, active verbs and concrete nouns. Concrete terms are easy to understand. Abstractions slow things down. Roe thinks that long descriptions are dull (so do I) and he suggests looking for a couple of good observations which will help the reader to fill out the rest. Here's one of my sister's that I liked. 'He had a face like a smashed plate.' If you can start the reader's imagination, then you have engaged their attention.

Roe gives quite a lot of examples of how to be concrete, including a good analysis of the Gettysburg Address. He finishes by saying: Don't worry! Know what you want to say, use your ears, then say what you mean.

A Text Book One and a Half Inches Thick

On corporate strategy. And the writing is small and the pages are thin. I do seem to have mismanaged my life! I have to put down my current project of reviewing writing books, which I was enjoying immensely, in order to wade though the next set of course work, which no doubt will do me good but couldn't be described as enjoyable. I feel like the old nursery rhyme which ends 'And the pig won't go over the stile and I'll NEVER get home tonight.'

I need to keep the idea of teaching creative writing firmly in mind. I'm reading corporate strategy in order to complete my course work and get my degree and then do a PGCE and then, finally, get to talk about writing all day. It all makes sense, honestly!

The Way to Write Crime Fiction

This book seems to be out of print. My notes from it are mostly copied paragraphs from crime fiction - she quotes Ira Levin, Graham Greene and so on. She advises that the elements you need are:

• A criminal case which contains a violent death. It should have its own special features which often hold the key to the mystery . It should be set in a normal setting, but contain unexpected elements.
• Excitement - create it in your style with simple uncluttered writing and short sentences, then raise questions or pose threats or reveal mysteries on every page and finally, create situations which require an immediate response from the main character.
• Characters - have a limited circle of suspects, each with motive, means and opportunity. Then a hero who is dependable, honest, lacking in self-confidence and slightly awkward. They must beat danger by being brave and persevering. Sidekicks should be dumb, and they must say what they are thinking. (Radice points out that Maigret is his own sidekick. He lies awake in bed asking himself obvious questions.) Then a villain - who will be interesting to the reader because criminals are active and free in spirit nor do they knuckle down under routine and a boss.
• Clues which add up to a tenable ending which the reader could have arrived at by a process of deduction. Clues can be hidden in lists, which readers always skim over, or you can use misdirection: go on about the great relationship a woman has with her daughter so we don't expect the man in the case to be her estranged son, or announce a false fact loudly, or by having lots of people assume that it's so.

And that's it! Probably there was more in the text if I'd known how to find it.

Plot Number 14 Love

I only made notes on plot number 14, love - ignoring the other 19 because I was still trying to write for Mills & Boon at this point. Tobias begins with a bit of a lecture on sentimentality. I don't know if I made the connection at the time, I've not noted it, but he's making the same distinction that CS Lewis did: sentimentality relies on the reader's experience rather than creating a fresh experience for them. He's rather stern about sentimentality being a BAD THING, but as Lewis says, that might be what the reader wants. It's probably a good idea to be aware of the difference, whichever route you go down.

RB does give a good example of sentiment - a poem by Edgar Guest that goes: 'Sue's got a baby now...' we don't know anything about Sue - nothing - so we have to draw on our own associations of motherhood in order to create a picture. He says: 'an' she, is like her mother used to be:' Well, how was that? There's a whole range of mothers out there. (I am still haunted by a report I read on a child with brain damage & learning difficulties caused by 'non-accidental head injuries'. What horrors lie behind those four careful, professional words? Is that sentimentality? It's my experience and imagination filling in gaps?) Anyway, the poet goes on a few lines later to say that Sue is 'more settled like' and again you have to put your own ideas there. One person might imagine Sue previously running around with bikers, or shooting up heroin. Another reader's ideas of giddy rebellion might be Sue wearing short skirts and handing her homework in late.

As for love, Tobias says only that a love story is essentially boy meets girl BUT, and someone or something always gets in the way. All the plot hinges around the BUT. I made dutiful notes (this was 1996) but I've read better books on romances since. The most interesting point he makes is that love is not a gift, it must be earned, and that love untested is not true love.