Tag Archives: writers

Special Guest: Marnie Riches talks about creating memorable characters …

I’ve just observed an interesting feed on Facebook which debated whether a person who is not minority ethnic could write ethnically diverse characters with any kind of integrity. George McKenzie, the star of my debut crime thriller, The Girl Who Wouldn’t Die is mixed-race, so the discussion seemed pertinent to me at first. Should you only write what you know, as the handbooks say? White people, writing white people? Black people, only telling stories with a Black cast? Men-only books for men?

Hell no! If you wrote only the familiar, the bookshop shelves would be fairly empty. Harry Potter? Forget him! Lisbeth Salander? You’re joking! And as for the ethnically diverse and often criminal-as-hell cast of The Wire…not on your nelly.

Fact is, a writer should never limit the scope of the stories available to them. Write whatever takes your fancy! Create the characters that speak to you. But the veracity of your characters does matter. So, make sure your research is spot on, because if you don’t do your characters justice, your story will be weak. Then, your writing will lack integrity!

Switch on your senses. Go out into the world. Notice the component parts that make people who they are…

Dialogue

Building great characters on the page relies heavily on great dialogue. You should strive to reproduce the rhythms of natural speech as faithfully as possible, injecting just a little stylistic flair. Elmore Leonard was renowned for his blistering dialogue, as is Quentin Tarantino – a heavy influence on my writing. Watching great TV and films is perfect for learning about great dialogue.

Idiosyncrasies

How do your characters behave? What do they like and dislike? Do they have quirks and foibles? George McKenzie is borderline OCD. Her Dutch side-kick, Senior Inspector van den Bergen is a hypochondriac. Flawed characters are more believable because none of us are perfect.

Back-story

A character without a back-story is 2D. Even if you don’t incorporate it into your novel, it’s worth writing a separate piece, revealing your characters’ back-stories. If you know them, you can convince your readers that they are real.

Physical limitations

How does your character look, dress, walk, eat? What are their physical capabilities or disabilities? Does it ring true, that they can abseil off a building? It is far better to describe your characters’ visual appearance by dripping details gradually into the narrative, than to dump it all on the reader in a paragraph. Avoid exposition! It’s lazy.

Interaction and character arcs

Create a grid of your characters and make notes for your own reference on how each interacts with the others. This will help you to maintain consistency throughout the story. Then, do a little diagram, showing what your main characters’ arcs will be. How will the journey change them, as they face hurdle after hurdle? How will it change the way in which they interact with the others? Get these basic elements right and you’ve got strong foundations for your novel.

Now, go!  Make shit up but strive to make it the best shit you’ve ever read!

Marnie Riches grew up on a rough estate in Manchester. She learned her way out of the ghetto, all the way to Cambridge University, where she gained a Masters degree in German & Dutch. She has been a punk, a trainee rock star, a pretend artist, a property developer and professional fundraiser. Previously a children’s author, now, she writes crime and contemporary women’s fiction.

Her debut novel The Girl Who Wouldn’t Die went straight to the top of the charts and has already garnered stellar reviews. Links to the books and how to connect to Marnie below …

The Girl Who Wouldn’t Die

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Amazon UK:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Girl-Who-Wouldnt-Die-ebook/dp/B00U1K18VY/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1433089335&sr=1-1

Amazon Australia:

http://www.amazon.com.au/Girl-Who-Wouldn%E2%80%99t-Die-ebook/dp/B00U1K18VY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1428589822&sr=8-1&keywords=the+girl+who+wouldn%27t+die

Website: www.marnieriches.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Marnie-Riches-author/196117983745658
Twitter: @Marnie_Riches

Special Guest: Graham Smith

Graham Smith is married with a young son. A time served joiner he has built bridges, houses, dug drains and slated roofs to make ends meet. For the last fourteen years he has been manager of a busy hotel and wedding venue near Gretna Green, Scotland.

 An avid fan of crime fiction since being given one of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five books at the age of eight, he has also been a regular reviewer and interviewer for the well-respected website Crimesquad.com for over six years.

What the Hell do I Know?

Every guide I’ve ever seen on writing has a variation on the phrase “write what you know”. As I only read crime fiction and crime thrillers it is only logical that I write about crime. Sounds simple doesn’t it?

Here’s the rub. I’ve been lucky enough to never be the victim of crime, have never been involved in any kind of law enforcement beyond milk monitor and have generally lived a law-abiding life. (Other than perhaps an overly heavy right foot)

So with that experience or lack of it, I found myself wondering how to get inside the heads of my characters and how to create genuine realism when I had no practical experience to draw on.

That’s when I had a career saving epiphany. I might not have the first-hand experience of crime but I’ve read enough good and bad books to teach me what works in terms of pacing, tension, creating drama and engaging characters. My day job brings me into contact with a varied cross-section of the general public which allows me to observe interactions and find the basis for characters. Ergo, I know the framework which makes for a great story and I get to meet lots of interesting characters.

My wife and son were watching one of those reality shows / contests recently and there was a person who came onto the stage. They were cowed, timid and looked to my writer’s mind as if they’d been bullied and made to feel worthless. I found myself cheering this person on and hoping they’d qualify for the next round. I knew when I felt such empathy for this stranger competing in a show I don’t care about, there’s no way I’m not going to use those traits to create a character I want my readers to care about.

From there it was a simple matter of creating situations and putting the characters into them and seeing how they reacted. After that, I kept throwing obstacles at them and generally being horrible so the situations I created were filled with drama, conflict and either suspense or tension.

One situation in particular is the driver of my novel Snatched from Home. Without giving spoilers, I had a middle-class man amass such large gambling debts his children were kidnapped to force him to pay up. My son was the same age as one of his children which made research easy. The interplay between the man and his furious wife was garnered by me putting myself and my wife into their situation and imagining what she’d say to me and do to protect our son.

Other elements I included were all little bits of things I’ve heard or seen people discussing. Like the general feeling cops are bound by too many rules and it was better in the old days when they’d dish out a quick spot of justice down a dark alley.

So to sum up, I guess I know what keeps me turning pages, people and what my wife is like when she’s angry.

Links to Graham and his work …

The Major Crimes Team Vol 1: Lines of Enquiry

UK

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Major-Crimes-Team-Lines-Enquiry-ebook/dp/B00U0N3FG8/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1424951840&sr=1-1

US

http://www.amazon.com/Major-Crimes-Team-Lines-Enquiry-ebook/dp/B00U0N3FG8/ref=sr_1_5?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1425557648&sr=1-5

Snatched from Home 

UK

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Snatched-Home-Would-Children-Harry-ebook/dp/B00U0GRQCY/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1424951840&sr=1-2

US

http://www.amazon.com/Snatched-Home-Would-Children-Harry-ebook/dp/B00U0GRQCY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1425557558&sr=8-1&keywords=snatched+from+home

Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/grahamnsmithauthor

Twitter

https://twitter.com/GrahamSmith1972

Website
www.grahamsmithauthor.com

Life’s a Pitch – Alexandra Sokoloff

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I’m often asked to speak to groups and classes of aspiring writers, and recently I was speaking to a college writing class, and I realized something that I’ve known for a long time, but I’ve never actually put into words.

Life is a constant pitch meeting.

There were a few dozen kids in this advanced class. Okay, not all kids! I talked for about forty-five minutes, my whole story of breaking into the film business as a screenwriter and then moving on to write novels, all the usual, and for the rest of the two-hour class I was just taking questions.

Out of the whole class, only five of the students asked questions, although more did answer when I asked them questions to draw them out. And out of those, only two people voluntarily told me what they were working on, in detail. And those were two out of the three who continued to ask questions throughout the class.

Guess which students I remember from the class?

Not only that, but these two guys caught my attention from the very first moment they walked into the class. They are attention whores. One walked in with a Nerf — Uzi, it looked like, in violent neon colors. At the slightest prompting he pulled that puppy out of his backpack, loaded a clip of Nerf bullets with awesome efficiency, and fired several lethal rounds into the whiteboard at the front of the class. It was a thing of beauty.

The other shuffled in, collapsed into his seat in a posture of abject and total martyrdom, made sure everyone could see the bruise under his eye, and proceeded (again with the most minimal prompting) to tell a woeful tale of being assaulted by his girlfriend over the weekend. She subsequently harassed his roommates, who called the cops and had her arrested.

Now those are entrances. Those are characters.

I don’t know if either of those guys can write worth a damn; I don’t know if they’ve got the drive and dedication to do what the job is, but I would give them a chance to show me more, just because they’re standouts — and because in two hours I learned so much more about them and their writing than I did about anyone else in the class. They moved themselves to the top of the theoretical list just by being forthcoming. They put the spotlight on themselves.

Furthermore, the guy with the Nerf Uzi draws and writes comic books, and the guy with the out-of-control love life is writing a wacky romantic comedy.

Do we see the pattern here?

They were illustrating the kinds of writers they are, in clothing, props, actions, and their entire personal presentations. They were pitching their writing with everything that they did that night. And oh, do film executives love visual aids. Who doesn’t?

At twenty-two or whatever, these kids already have it down.

In screenwriting, because so much of the job is pitching, you have to stand out for simple job survival. Film executives will take six or seven or ten pitch meetings in a day. Of course you have to have a great story to tell, but you equally have to make sure they’re actually awake enough to pay attention.

And it’s a lot the same if you’re an author. The more interesting character is going to get more attention from the media (essential for an author’s job survival). You will get more attention from your publisher if they sense you will get extra attention from the media. That’s just reality.

Take a look at successful authors you admire. There’s something beyond their amazing writing, isn’t there? They’re also fascinating people. They have star power in person. You can always find them in a room, and once you spot them, you can’t take your eyes off them. Watch Lee Child smoke a cigarette, for example, and tell me that’s not a living advertisement for the Reacher novels.

Now, that is not at all to say that you can’t make a bestselling career as a recluse. It’s happened throughout the ages. Great writing finds a spotlight, even when the author can’t. But I suspect it’s a lot harder to make a career that way, especially these days.

Even though I wasn’t handing out jobs in that class that night, I am a highly connected industry professional who was right in front of those students, at their disposal, for two hours. That’s an opportunity that doesn’t get handed to most people every day. There is no reward for being shy in that situation. You need to milk an opportunity like that for all it’s worth.

But the fact is, the Universe is always handing us chances to get exactly what we want. It’s a matter of whether or not we’re prepared enough, professionally and emotionally, to take the chances we’re given.

Sometimes we’re just not ready.

Those two guys I’m talking about didn’t know who I was or that I was going to be in class that night. They didn’t put on those little performances for me. They are clearly people who are always performing. But the point is, you never know when someone who can help you is going to be watching, or who might take an interest in you and your career simply because you’re interesting.

If you are ready… and that’s a big if — you need to put yourself out there so that people can see who you are. You need to talk passionately and specifically about your work. My friend and literary idol Margaret Maron calls it “sparkling,” and Margaret truly does. You have to sparkle.

This really goes double and triple if you attend writing conferences. Conferences are expensive investments in your career, and you need to make the most of the hundreds of opportunities that will present themselves to you over a conference weekend.

You aren’t ever going to be on all the time, let’s just be realistic about that! But you can talk passionately and specifically about your newest projects (without dominating the conversation to the point of being obnoxious and a turn-off) so that editor or agent on the sidelines of the group will make a mental note (“Read that author” or “Keep track of that person”).

You have to sparkle, whatever that means to you.

And if you find yourself resisting this idea, perhaps you might consider this question: Do you not present yourself at full power because somewhere inside you don’t feel ready?

I think that’s an important question for all of us to consider, and regularly. Because when it feels like we’re being held back, it’s usually something inside ourselves that is putting the brakes on.

So think about the last time you were in a group of authors or aspiring authors. Who stands out? Who stood out? Who presents an intriguing sense of the kind of writing that they do? Who sparkles? Who makes you want to know more

Let’s hear it, so we can all learn something!

    —- Alexandra Sokoloff

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Alexandra Sokoloff is the bestselling, Thriller Award-winning and Bram Stoker and Anthony Award-nominated author of eleven supernatural, paranormal and crime thrillers. The New York Times has called her “a daughter of Mary Shelley” and her books “Some of the most original and freshly unnerving work in the genre.”

As a screenwriter she has sold original scripts and written novel adaptations for numerous Hollywood studios. She also teaches the internationally acclaimed Screenwriting Tricks for Authors workshops, based on her Screenwriting Tricks for Authors workbooks and blog.

Her Thriller Award-nominated Huntress Moon series, following a haunted FBI agent on his hunt for a female serial killer, is out now. Huntress_Moon_TM_CVR-FT

 http://alexandrasokoloff.com

http://www.screenwritingtricks.com

@AlexSokoloff

https://www.facebook.com/alexandra.sokoloff

Welcome to MJM Ink

Nav button 3A warm welcome to MJM Ink and thanks for tuning in!

Over the years I’ve delivered milk, sold shoes and suits, worked in a bar and in a bank, been employed in a coffee shop, was (briefly) the poet-in-residence for an adult gift shop (don’t ask) and latterly I was a regional sales manager for Faber and Faber.

The one constant in all of that has been my love of books and my need to write.

I am delighted to be opening up this service through MJM Ink and I look forward to collaborating with you to help you achieve your writing goals.

I have been published in fiction, non-fiction and poetry (don’t mention the gift shop) and, although my publishing credits are mainly in the crime/ psychological thriller area, the tenets of good writing and storytelling hold true for all genres.

So whether you are writing commercial or literary fiction, romance, crime, fantasy or horror, let me help you move a huge step closer to your literary dreams.

Have a look through the website and if you need any clarification – or to begin the process, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

MJM