Helping Authors to Get their Writing
'Publisher Perfect'
Advice for Novelists
I'm hoping to add new tips whenever I have the time. Let's see how it goes!
Tony D Triggs
Chekhov's Gun
Never forget the famous advice summed up in the words 'Chekhov's gun.' Around the year 1900 the Russian novelist Anton Chekhov made the point that anything featured early on in a novel has to play an important role later. If your opening chapter directs your readers' attention to a gun on a wall make sure it gets fired!
Cut the Cackle!
Keep jargon to a minimum. Write what you mean and mean what you write. Save gobbledygook for silly or evasive characters.
Two into One
Avoid using two words where one will do. Let's take adverbs and 'speech tags' in particular.
It's all too easy to write the following:
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He said angrily.
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She remarked uncertainly
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He whispered confidingly.
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He said, his voice breaking in evident cowardice.
Now let's re-write them:
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He barked.
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She murmured (with her hand half over her mouth).
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He whispered.
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He whimpered.
The general message is 'choose your verb and save your adverb.' As for the second sentence's hand over mouth option, remember that a picture can count for a lot!
Choose your Moment
Let’s imagine that your character, Jenny, has curly, honey brown locks. This may be something to share with your readers but not at a time when Charlotte is racked with anxiety. ‘She coiled her hair round her fingers till it hurt,’ conveys her state of mind: aware of a threat, aware of pain. ‘She nervously fiddled with her honey brown locks’ is probably too detached and sickly.
Let the Words Breathe!
A fast pace isn't always good. You can sometimes gain by slowing things down.
Think about the following phrase in Golding’s Lord of the Flies:
the fall through the air of a true, wise friend called Piggy. This is how a character (Ralph) recalls a fatal fall that he and the reader have already witnessed. In such a context, the two words ‘Piggy’s death’ would have made perfect sense, so why does Golding spin things out? Well, he wants to convey Ralph's recoil from the horrible memory of Piggy's collision with rocks. Unable to picture the moment of impact Ralph gives his friend a second or two in the harmless air.
My next example comes from an 11-year-old whose work I was shown because of its promise. In an episode featuring childhood twins facing a grandmother’s strictures she wrote as follows:
Reluctantly, Charlotte gave her assent and John, grumbling, agreed.
In other words The twins accepted what Grandma said, though they didn’t like it. The young author’s way wins out because its slower pace – reflected by the three commas – conveys the twins’ reluctance and the fact that grumbling takes time.
Slowing the pace can let you speak volumes!
Bring it Alive!
Show things rather than spelling them out. My example comes from my play The Fire of Love, which features Margery Kempe, the medieval hysteric, and puts her on trial for blasphemy, just as the church of her time did. John, her senile husband, trying to defend her, tells the court:
A week ago las’ We’nsday she go to market to get my suet – she do a right good suet pie – an’ home she come cryin’.
To the court, the bit about suet and pies is irrelevant drivel, but it shows the audience the couple’s love and their straitened means. It also shows how badly John will defend his wife, thus building up the dramatic tension.
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