Category: Presentation

Is there a new trend for fiction with footnotes?

29/9/2018

I might have mentioned before that I’m something of a traditionalist in my reading. Print suits me better than ebooks and, while I’ve enjoyed novels narrated on the radio, I don’t think I’ve ever chosen an audiobook in preference to text. Regarding the content, while I relish originality, novelty for its own sake can be a turnoff. Post-modernism gives me the shivers. So I was surprised to read three novels in as many months with footnotes. Is this a new trend?

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I’m not telling you

19/6/2018

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I’m in a children’s playground, awaiting my turn at the top of the slide. I sit, push off with my hands, and down I go. Wheeeee! There’s no-one to catch me at the bottom, but that’s okay. I sit and wait, scanning the faces of the grown-ups, wondering which one of them will come and claim me. It’s only as the light begins to fade that I get nervous. As the metal beneath my buttocks cools. That’s when I realise no-one’s coming, and get up to wander alone through the world.

This episode came to me the way my stories sometimes do: vivid, urgent and determined to be told. But this wasn’t fiction. This was a metaphor for the origins of me.

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Does white space matter in #amreading fiction in print?

30/4/2018

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While I’m neither a reader nor a writer of poetry, I do appreciate that the shape of the lines on the page matters, the white space almost as important as the words. But does something similar apply to fiction? Do we need wide margins and paragraph breaks to give the sentences space to breathe?

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What's the difference between a draft and an edit?

14/4/2018

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In my recent post My fast first draft three years on, I mentioned having done four subsequent drafts and an edit of the novel I’m currently calling Matilda Windsor Is Coming Home. Now, I like to count drafts, but how do you define one? When does a read-through, picking up obvious errors, become promoted to draft status, and what’s the difference between that and an edit? When I put the latter into my search engine, the nearest I got – admittedly, I was too lazy to go beyond the first page – was a tangle of speculation on the difference between drafting and revising, none of which was entirely satisfactory. Pushed to come to my own definition, here are my thoughts, along with reflections on how I motivated myself to move from scrappy first draft to an edit.

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What’s your preferred length for a novel? #amreading

30/10/2017

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Like people, novels come in different sizes. With the rise in obesity, I don’t know what the average size of a human being might be, but I do know that the average for a novel is around 300 pages or 100,000 words – although it varies between genres, just as the average for a person can vary across countries. As a fairly small person, I’m nevertheless sometimes surprised to encounter a member of the same species who is two or three times the size of me. I suppose we have some kind of “standard” in our heads. Is it the same with novels?

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Does a ‘first draft’ video reflect badly on my published fiction?

27/10/2017

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Since undertaking my desk time audit earlier this summer, I’m hyper-conscious of time spent away from fiction. It’s especially pertinent right now as I’m on a roll with yet another draft of my currently nameless WIP, about a brother and sister separated for fifty years. But with an event to prepare for recently, I thought it would be a good opportunity to make some videos about my novels. Was it?

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A pilgrim’s progress through the dark side of digital: Broadcast by Liam Brown

18/9/2017

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Take our deepest fears about our dependence on digital and stretch them. Likewise our suspicions of the social media and tech companies for which we work as willing slaves. Add a taste of accessible philosophy (what’s reality anyway?) and neuropsychology (how can we trust our memories when they are subject to distortion?). Now send a naive and narcissistic vacuous life-style vlogger on a pilgrim’s progress through the landscape and you’ve got a sense of Liam Brown’s highly entertaining third novel.

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How to have a book launch party

11/8/2017

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While babies might have naming parties, couples wedding parties, a book launch party can be both celebration of a significant milestone and a marketing opportunity. I might be only on my second novel, but I have a fat party-to-publication ratio of 3:2. So, still buzzing from my latest, I hope these pointers based on my experience of hosting a launch party might be of use to others who have yet to foist one on your friends.

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Do you hear a voice when you read fiction?

29/6/2017

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Signing copies of my new novel, Underneath, for a couple of acquaintances recently, I was interested (especially given my recent post on the unconscious and hallucinations) when both said they heard a voice when reading a novel to themselves. Because they know me, and I have a distinctive voice (and not necessarily in a good way), I wondered if they thought they’d hear my voice when reading my novel (even if it is narrated by a man), as has been reported before (I didn’t ask just because I’m a narcissist). But no, one said she hears her own voice, the other a voice specific to the story she’s reading. I wonder what that’s all about.

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School of Velocity by Eric Beck Rubin

28/5/2017

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It doesn’t seem such a promising start to a friendship when Dirk steals Jan’s girlfriend. But before too long, Jan de Vries feels more at home at Dirk’s house in the city of Den Bosch than at his own in a village a cycle ride away. For years they’re inseparable, the more reticent Jan emboldened by his friend’s daredevil charisma, until, the day after Dirk’s drunken high-school graduation party, they go off to separate universities, Dirk to drama school in America, Jan to study piano at the Conservatory in Maastricht.

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The joy of rewriting

11/3/2017

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If there’s a honeymoon period in the transition from writer to author to novelist, it’s got to be the publication of that debut novel. It’s a place which might have haunted our dreams for years, without any confidence we’d actually reach it. No wonder it seems almost magical to see other people with your book in their hands.

By definition, a honeymoon can’t go on indefinitely. There is no fairy-tale happy ever after when real life intervenes. After two lovely launch parties for my debut, I came back to earth with a bump when I learnt that, as with being married, there’s nothing particularly special about having written a book.

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Don’t be seduced by the allure of romance!

14/2/2017

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If love makes the world go round, it’s hardly surprising that romance crops up as a subplot across most genres of fiction. But, as writers, we need to beware of letting the love interest get out of hand and obscure the more complex themes of our novel. As readers, we need to be alert to publishers dressing up a gruelling narrative as a modern Pride and Prejudice because, let’s face it, sex sells.

For Valentine’s Day, I’m reviving a post that appeared in October 2015 on the Reading Writers website, which is now defunct.

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Finding comfort in books with blue covers?

30/11/2016

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One of the pleasures of the physical book, as opposed to ebooks, is the value it confers beyond the words within it. Many of us find, despite potential minimalist inclinations, there are books we don’t want to let go of. Part of the pleasure of the book is to look at it.

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The aftermath of war in The Gun Room & Now and Again

10/11/2016

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These two novels explore the impact of two of America’s controversial wars (Vietnam and Iraq) on combatants, observers and their nearest and dearest.

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Margaret and Jeanette do Shakespeare

5/10/2016

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After lapping up Anne Tyler’s updated Taming of the Shrew, I was keen to feast my eyes (and brain) on some of the other titles in the Hogarth Shakespeare series. Because the bones of the stories and characters are, to a greater or lesser extent, already familiar, the novels provide a unique insight into the workings on the authors’ imaginations. For the reader, the interpretations highlight the particular passions of our favourite authors. For the writer – especially one like me who continually asks herself How am I going to pull this one off? – they are a lesson in casting the spell that renders the most crazy plots convincing.

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Clear destination or magical mystery tour? #amreading

30/9/2016

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at Bakewell bookshop last month

As I’ve been out and about talking about my novel, I’ve been surprised to meet – in stark contrast to the predominant aversion to spoilers – a couple of people who like to look at the ending, perhaps the last couple of paragraphs, before turning to the first page. Now, I like the ending of Sugar and Snails, although it’s been suggested that some might find the issues insufficiently resolved. (I do get asked if I’m planning to write a sequel!) Because it tells of a destination rather than the journey, I don’t think reading it in advance would constitute a spoiler (although, prattling on at one talk about how I was pleased with the ending, I did have a friend tell me afterwards she thought my ending wrapped things up too much).

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Any advice on questions for book groups?

30/8/2016

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Children’s need to belong, or the fear of exclusion, can be as intense as the need for sleep and sustenance, so they often band together in cliques and clubs. One of the weirdest fictional clubs I’ve come across, is the arson club in Jesse Ball’s novel, How to Set A Fire and Why. Memoirist, Irene Waters, is after your memories of joining a club: when did you join, why did you join and are you still a member?

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In Brontë Country: Howarth vs Stanage-NorthLees

20/4/2016

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We British are proud of the Brontës, especially in cinematic form played out by attractive actors. But the Japanese are the real fans, apparently, making pilgrimages to the village on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales where the sisters penned their novels. One such tour is the launch point for Mick Jackson’s fourth novel for adults in which the eponymous “heroine”, after a few days drinking with her sister in London, travels north with a coachload of older women. But Yukiko is no Brontë aficionado. Instead, armed with a handful of photographs taken in the area, she considers herself a psychic detective, intent on discovering the secret of her mother’s visit ten years before, which she believes precipitated her suicide back home in the snow.

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Further instructions for a novel: Neverhome by Laird Hunt

30/11/2015

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I was strong and he was not, so it was me went to war to defend the Republic. I stepped across the border out of Indiana into Ohio. Twenty dollars, two salt-pork sandwiches, and I took jerky, biscuits, six old apples, fresh underthings, and a blanket too. There was a heat in the air so I walked in my shirtsleeves with my hat pulled low.

So begins the story of the transformation of Constance Thompson, wife and farmer, into Gallant Ash, fearless soldier and folk legend of the American Civil War. Hers is a story of love and loss, deceit and duty, and the way in which violence can be used as a defence against unbearable pain that, in the end, brings its own trauma. It’s also the story of how women are airbrushed out of history.

While I’d recommend this novel to readers, I want to focus, as I did some time ago with Instructions for a Heatwave, on what we can learn from Laird Hunt’s sixth novel (although the first to be published in the UK) as writers, whether we are looking to write historical fiction or not.

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Never let me go: the dilemma of lending books

4/11/2015

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So, you’re midway through composing a blog post when, in a flash of inspiration, you hit on the very book that will nail the point you want to make. You scuttle off to your “library”, zeroing in on the shelf where – however eccentric your filing system¹ – you know it will be waiting for you. Except that it isn’t and, you now remember, it did a flit some time back. You lent it to a trusted friend – his/her exact identity lost in the mists of time – and it’s never been returned.

It’s happened to me a couple of times in recent months. The book in question was one of my favourite novels, namely – I kid you not – Never Let Me Go². I should’ve taken more notice because I’m bereft without it. I want to break into friends’ houses at the dead of night and go rummaging through their possessions till I find it. I’ve asked around of course, but no-one has fessed up.

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<<Previous

Is there a new trend for fiction with footnotes?

I’m not telling you

Does white space matter in #amreading fiction in print?

What's the difference between a draft and an edit?

What’s your preferred length for a novel? #amreading

Does a ‘first draft’ video reflect badly on my published fiction?

A pilgrim’s progress through the dark side of digital: Broadcast by Liam Brown

How to have a book launch party

Do you hear a voice when you read fiction?

School of Velocity by Eric Beck Rubin

The joy of rewriting

Don’t be seduced by the allure of romance!

Finding comfort in books with blue covers?

The aftermath of war in The Gun Room & Now and Again

Margaret and Jeanette do Shakespeare

Clear destination or magical mystery tour? #amreading

Any advice on questions for book groups?

In Brontë Country: Howarth vs Stanage-NorthLees

Further instructions for a novel: Neverhome by Laird Hunt

Never let me go: the dilemma of lending books

2018 Reading Challenge

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