Make every word count

Writing is a long and sometimes lonely journey

When giving feedback this is something I often talk about.  Making every word count and ensuring that each word moves the story forward. It sounds easy doesn't it but it can be a little difficult and easy to forget when you get wrapped up in your story telling and the sound of your own voice. We all do it particularly in that first draft when we get excited about our subject. I personally killed three chapters out of my latest WIP. They were great but they did nothing for the story. They were fabulous if you wanted to know about horses though!

It is all about keeping the writing tight. Lots of unnecessary words end up slowing your story down and taking your reader away from the main point and main thrust, Impacting on the pace and therefore potentially losing the interest of the reader. How do you spot it? That can be the hard part. It is looking at sentences and paragraphs and asking yourself. What am I trying to say? Does it say what I want it to? Am I showing it the best way I can? And yes I am sorry often it comes back to that show not tell too (see previous post).

But and there is a big BUT it is not all about making the writing so tight there is no colour to it. When a reader reads your writing they need to feel your story. They need to experience it and become part of the narrative so they forget everything else that is going on around them and live it. You remember those stories that stay with you for days after you have finished reading them? That is what you are trying to create with your words when you are making every word count.

No one ever said writing was easy. Writing is a long and sometimes lonely journey.

I would suggest you can't do anything about making every word count until you have finished your whole story. I wouldn't try and do it while first writing the story because you might stop your creative process. Get the story down first. It is part of the editing process because until the story is finished you won't know which words are important! You won't know what is at the heart of the story you are trying to tell. Be patient and listen to your gut it is inevitably right. Go on have fun writing over the Christmas period.

I finished lecturing on Friday on what turned out to be a strange and difficult semester for me. Not one I ever want to repeat. I have never felt so disconnected and yes that favourite word discombobulated. My colleagues and friends have been brilliant and kind and generous with their support. They have touched my heart. My body has gone into melt down now as I have pushed it too hard. I really should know better. I have been disabled long enough to know what I can and can't do but apparently not. However it is the build up to Christmas which I love so much that has to make everything better.

Narrative

I have been a bit quiet on this blog recently because I have been very tied up in a momentous event, for me anyway, my daughter got married to a wonderful man. The whole event got me thinking about the layers of narrative in our lives.

The photo is one of many that were taken in a shutterbooth which caused a great deal of hilarity for many people at the wedding. This picture in itself has so many layers of narrative to it. A photo of 3 women who happen to sisters who all have stories to tell. It is a narrative of happiness and laughter but also missing and loss partly embodied by the white rabbit.

I love using photos as triggers for writing as you know (I have previously spoken about how Trafficking was inspired by a photo). You look at a picture and you take in what you see but also what you don't. What are these people thinking? What do they do? Where is their family? But also you spend your life creating narratives as you tell the stories of your day to those who care. Or retelling a funny/sad story you have heard. It is all about spreading those narratives.

When writing you have to understand narrative too. Your story should have multiple layers creating depth to bring the story alive. Narrative allows you to create links between events and cultural moments that are part of a developing story. You cannot have a story without a narrative, it is naturally integral. In the same way narrative is not only confined to 'realist' writing. It may not be immediately obvious but all stories in whatever format will have an embedded narrative.

There will be a narrative within each scene, chapter and complete story. As you develop your characters they will develop their own narrative in the same way that any setting will also have a narrative behind it. Not necessarily always obvious but there to inform your writing. Having an understanding of all these narratives will help you add the required depth to your story. For the reader this embedded narrative gives them the tools to decipher and make the connections between the various clues that when linked create the story and those pictures in their mind. But the cause and effect within a narrative can also be used to confuse the reader. This is reliant on the reader wanting to impose a narrative on certain sequential events. It is up to the writer then to turn this narrative on its head and prove the reader wrong, as in all great thrillers/crime stories, where you are certain you know 'who did it' only to proven totally wrong by the end of the book.

Look at the world around you and explore the narrative you are in. When reading think about the multiple layers of narrative involved and this awareness will be reflected in your own writing. Have fun with it.

I would like to introduce you to the very talented Caitlin Gilligan singing her own song Moon Child. I just love the imagery and narrative she uses here. I'd rather be putting the stars in your eyes and painting the sky with you too. Check out Caitlin''s page https://www.facebook.com/caitlingilliganmusic

The narrative of moments in time

I have just attended a fascinating and thought provoking seminar by Prof Jen Webb, a visiting academic from Canberra University. Her seminar started with her personal narrative of 9/11, where she was when she heard etc. This started me thinking about how we all have very personal narratives to momentous moments. We all can say we remember exactly where we were we first heard the news and the images started being broadcast into our lives, like the one at the side here. However, even if we were in the same place as other people that narrative is going to be yours alone as it will be defined by your experiences, thoughts and cultural moments.

For me 9/11 is in extricably linked with serious illness. I hadn't eaten anything or drunk properly since the December of the previous year when I had had surgery that went wrong. I was lying on my bed starving to death watching people jumping to their deaths. I felt connected to them. I had met my own terrorist in the surgeon who had operated on me. He had no grievance against me personally or even my country, unlike the 9/11 bombers, but I was one of Blair's initiatives - do them quick in private hospitals and churn them out then we can keep to our waiting list target.My surgeon was a bureaucratic terrorist primed to meet and beat targets.

But that is irrelevant now as I survived at the intervention of another surgeon, maybe a peace-keeping one who gave me a tube into my stomach that keeps me alive. I was lucky those in the Twin Towers on that fateful day weren't. I have a whole new life and the person I was then watching the Towers fall almost doesn't exist anymore. I have a new narrative based on survival and the future, not on image and money as it once was.

As I said I was lying on my bed to weak to move watching the tv in embarrassed fascination. You felt you should look away but you couldn't, there was a morbid fascination. It was almost too huge to comprehend and there was always this thought that it was a joke. It was just a disaster movie and someone's cruel script being played out in front of you. Unfortunately it wasn't,those people jumping weren't stunt men, those buildings collapsing were not choreographed, instead this was the moment that the US knew, what the rest of us had known for a lot longer, what terrorism was.

As an aside I heard that the French railways had to apologise for a press release that went out saying that several hundred people had died in a bomb blast on one of their trains. It was fake and it had been a scenario they had been working on to test all their systems...just someone forgot to tell the PR man...oops...we laugh about it but the fact is it shows us that people are out there creating appropriate discourses 'just in case'.

I wonder how many 'just in cases' there are and how many will end up being used?

Now some gloriously naf music but I do believe what it says: (they won't allow me to embed it so you will have to click on it) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHzMLGH1Rfs&feature=related