A writer's look at the writing industry and the Internet.

Following my own advice on the power of the writing group, I made contact with a local writing group a few weeks ago and began chatting with the secretary, Josh.

The group are called Reading Writers, based in Reading, Berkshire (it’s not meant to be a play on words).

Josh seemed a nice chap and we discussed things ranging from all my queries about the group — including if they were a specific genre group, a literary ‘knitting circle,’ consisted of members with a broad range of levels and types of experience, published and unpublished writers, hold competitions and perform critiques and other challenges to help you progress as a writer — to ideas about publishing, writing tools and software, and other general banter. The whole email experience made the group feel accessible and worthwhile, and I thought I’d share my own experience in case it’s useful to others.

I ended up being the first arrival after the chairperson and secretary, so it was a good chance to introduce myself to them while we set up the tables and chairs. Twenty minutes later the room was full and the meeting began. Tonight’s topic was the Submission Pack and was led by two of the group’s published authors, one primarily a writer of poetry and the other of commercial women’s fiction (chick lit, I think).

The tutorial was run by a combination of lecturing, giving handouts, and individual and group exercises (yes, one of the tutors was a teacher until recently). I don’t think I’m giving out confidential or copyrighted information here (please let me know if I am), and I’m doing so to give you an example of what a writing group can be like.

The Submission Pack — the collection of documents required when submitting work to editors and agents — consists of the following information:

• Autobiography. Roughly half a printed page about you, not your story. Think of it as a job application.
• Synopsis. Roughly one printed page, based around the three-act structure (or similar), including the resolution and ending. It will be read by editors and agents, not your audience.
• Blurb. Not normally written by the author, though sometimes it is requested. Regardless of this, it is an invaluable exercise should an agent ever ask you, “So what’s your story about?” Doing this before you start speaking with editors and agents will provide you with the ‘elevator pitch.’ Condensing it down to a single sentence will provide you with the classic ‘strapline’ or ‘logline.’ Or you can try making something up on the spot when asked. Good luck with that.

The autobiography was approached by getting us to brainstorm and individually list:

• Publishing history. It’s surprising what you can put down, even if you don’t have your name in a magazine or on a novel yet, including any writing prizes and awards.
• Writing qualifications. This including memberships to any writing or reading groups, online communities, and courses taken.
• Unique selling points (USP). Anything that is specific and unique (or rare) to you, not your work. This can include particular skills (e.g. you were once a demonstration parachutist), experience (e.g. you once flew a Cessna to Marrakech and back) or facts about your life (e.g. your family escaped attempted genocide in another country, you have a disability)
• Other relevant information. Anything relevant to your bio that isn’t covered above.

The synopsis was approached by one of the tutors providing us with a synopsis from one of her recent novels and having us go through it, with the aid of a handout that showed the three-act structure and what is expected of a synopsis, and to identify each act. It showed us that a 100,000 word novel with multiple background plots, story arcs, points of view and other complex structures can be condensed into a single printed page that provides an introduction, an explanation of each act as it applies to the main character or characters.

Once we’d done that, we were asked to work in groups of three to write a synopsis of the classic Cinderella fairy tale. I found this initially difficult as I’ve not read, seen or heard that story in its entirety since I was a child but, after a few minutes quite a bit of it came back to me. In reflection, what I found most notable was that the bits I remembered first were the important parts of the three-act structure (rather than the details of what people said, etc): the problem definition and setup, the event that starts it all, high and low points, the darkest (rug-pulling) moment, climax and resolution. That was enough to bullet-point the exercise, and from there it was straightforward.

The blurb was approached by providing examples from popular current books:

• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
• The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
• Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

Look at the Product Description section for each of these books on Amazon (links provided) — that’s the blurb. In each case, it is a single paragraph that provides a broad overview of the story without going into detail or ruining the ending, but getting you interested. The idea is to hook the potential reader.

From there we were provided a handout containing two groups of straplines and one group of book titles. The first group were actual novel or film straplines that most of us recognised, the second were similar to the first but were written by one of the tutors and we got some of them, and for the last group we were asked to spent 2-3 minutes writing our own straplines. I found writing the straplines quite challenging, and I think it may have been because I tend to write a lot and then edit down to a manageable size; the cost of that is time.

After the meeting had finished around two-thirds of the group went to the pub next door for drinks, so it was great to sit down with a pint and chat with people from all walks of life, and different generations, all with the common interest of writing. Each person wanted to know what I wrote and what I thought of this and that, and was equally passionate about sharing their writing styles and thoughts. Around the table were writers of chick lit, Regency period historical fiction, erotica, hard science fiction, fantasy, poetry, romance, etc. Fascinating.

So that was my experience at my first writing group. I have to say that it was one of the most enjoyable evenings I’ve had in some time, and I can’t recommend the experience enough to other people. If you’re a writer and are not a member of a writing group, you’re doing both yourself and a writing group somewhere a disservice.

Among the many the things I’m striving to achieve in my writing career, I am currently trying to get my head around the concept of pre-planned writing. As a lifelong pantser, an instinctive technique that has served me well in all my short story writing, this is coming as something of a shock!

To aid with this, I’m making use of Randy Ingermanson’s Snowflake Method, which essentially sees you start at the logline of a book (the one-sentence summary of what it’s about that also doubles as your “elevator pitch” when you try to sell it) and then gradually expand into paragraphs, pages, character sheets, etc, until you’ve done all your plotting, design and preparation and only then do you begin writing the first draft. As someone with a technical background, this makes a great deal of sense intellectually: you wouldn’t build a house without architectural plans, and I do outline my technical writing. Just not the fiction.

This method is at least notionally similar to the concept of mind mapping,* where you write a single word or concept in the centre of a page, draw annotated lines out from it representing major points, draw annotated lines out from them, and so on and so forth. Which in turn is similar to the idea of lists of lists, as found in productivity systems such as Getting Things Done. Essentially an hierarchical (or structure chart) representation with few high-level bits at the top and increasing numbers of lower-level bits as you go down. Very logical to anyone who’s studied Computer Science!

However, all my fiction to date has been achieved by pantsing, and I suspect it goes back to the creative writing lessons we did in English classes at school. They always gave us a writing prompt consisting of part of the opening sentence and told us to go nuts:

Forcing open the door of his mangled car, John staggered away just as…

Now tell me you couldn’t write ten pages from that prompt? I could, always have done and fast. I love it. This is what “writing fiction” has always been for me. But I don’t want to have my writing career defined as “great flash fiction writer — shame he never wrote a novel.” What’s worse, many prompts and ideas come to me in the same way. It’s rare that I remember my dreams, but when I do they either stick or I write them down in a notepad I keep beside my bed, or in the 14x9cm Moleskine I carry with me everywhere (it doubles as my To Do list, so it’s not all about writerly appearances).

The most recent dream-generated prompt I remember is simply, ‘You’re dying…’ From that I’ve somehow decided that this is the start of a science fiction mercenary story (I’m thinking Babylon 5 meets The Jackal), and I’m 5,000 words in and on the second scene. From here I could take this story in a thousand directions and could just continue writing it ad nauseum, but without structure, logic or a compass. In its own perverted way, this has led to indecision that has resulted in a kind of writers’ block: I have plenty of ideas but, because I don’t know where to go from here, I’m stuck!

This is where I’ve realised that this story has the potential to become a novel and I want to do it properly. Hence the Snowflake Method. Although I’m currently in the process of studying my first creative writing short course with the Open University, I don’t want to sit still. There is no rush, but I know the danger of allowing yourself to feel as though you’re never ready or that the timing is never right. I’ll finish this course first, then I’ll just do that course before I start. Besides, if this course does show me a better way to do this, I can always start again.

Right now I’m at Step 3 of the Snowflake Method — building the character summaries with name, one-sentence summary, motivation, goal, conflict, epiphany, and a one-paragraph summary based on all that — and I’m already beginning to see a way out of the pit of indecision. It may simply be the enthusiasm for a new methodology, but it seems that the characters are starting to take on their own lives and motivations, which in turn determines how they’ll react to given situations, and how those situations will resolve.

It’s too early to tell, but I have a sneaking suspicion that by doing all this preparation and design, you effectively end up with the writers’ equivalent of Choose Your Own Adventure: the characters will react in specific ways to any given circumstance (the rowdy guy will always choose the fight option, etc), and it effectively writes itself. I can’t wait to find out…

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* If you want to give mind mapping a try, I’m a fan of the free multi-platform software, FreeMind. I don’t buy into the “tap into the unused 99% of your brain” pseudoscience that you sometimes see surrounding the technique, but it does seem to be an effective way of gathering and recording thoughts.