I’ve been a tad slack on the Twitter front recently, but I like to keep a record of good writing links around. I still mine my old link round up articles when I need to remind myself about topics like structure, characterization, and editing. Which is about every week. Maybe one day I’ll make a directory of them. Like I need a new project.

Also I wrote a nifty computer program which lets me easily linkify my tweets — so it’s words or phrases in the tweet that become clickable, and not an ugly URL at the end. Shame not to use it. </geek hat>

So here are a few writing related tweets from the last week.

If you missed The Guardian’s fiction masterclass you can still get it on kindle:

New inflatableink blog post: Preparing a story for workshop: #writing

A (hero’s journey style) narrative structure cheat sheet for #nanowrimo: Alexandra Sokoloff

Colm Toibin in a seminar: “Whatever they did to you as a child will emerge in your sentences” #writing

New inflatableink post: make your story funnier by telling fewer jokes #writing

Salmon Rushdie to write TV SF series. I’m interested, but sceptical.

I’m proud to see this: Writers in Support of the Occupy Movement

Where do you draw the line? RT (A blog post by Catherine Noble) A traumatising book led me to blog about fiction boundaries – what are yours?

“Hell is other people’s books.” Paris Review – From the Cloakroom, at the Booker, Jonathan Gharraie

@Coburnicus OK, so the richest 1% take home 175% more after tax than 30 years ago. But perhaps they’re working twice as hard.

@Coburnicus Or perhaps it’s a cycle of subsidy and influence:

I love Pratchett – and the adorable pedantry of the diehard Pratchett fan. See comment 1 to AS Byatt’s Snuff review

It says something for how busy I’ve been that I found this ten day old piece in my queue, unedited and unposted. And that I have no recollection of having written it.

So I’m on the road yet again, and I have a workshop story due in Monday. It’s going to be a hurried affair. If were to do it properly, these are the steps I currently have compiled in my story writing process document. As it is, this time round I’ll probably have to cut to item 9 real soon now.

1. Write first half of story. All is lovely and fun, and kittens and stuff.

2. Get bogged down in plot. Realize that I’m trying to write a novel-type plot in a short story’s space. Push much of the action outside of the story, and focus on a single hinge moment. Things go a bit better.

3. Read initial story. Feel bad. Hate myself and my obvious lack of talent.

4. Annotate a printout. Only focus on structure. How can this story work? What must go? What needs to be added? Don’t worry about the sucky prose. Just get the shape right. Keep a cut-bucket file for all the lovely bits that get snipped. I can consider resurrecting some of it later maybe. For now, if in doubt, cut it out.

5. Edit/rewrite based on annotations. Resist temptation to do anything more than obey the notes on the printout.

6. The story still sucks.  Repeat steps 4 and 5, but thinking exclusively about character. How do the characters relate to each other? To the story? Only address the points laid down in the annotation when reworking the prose.

7. Repeat 4 and 5  for dialogue, objects and symbols, setting. And take another pass to untell the story. That is, remove sentences like ‘he felt sad’ and instead let the world communicate emotion.

8. A language pass. Read the story out loud. When I get tangled or out of breath, edit. Be wary of anything I’m pleased with. It’s probably shit. Martin Millar wrote about a stage in his editing he called ‘bigging and nicing’-in which he takes out all the clever words. I’ll have to look out that quote one of these days.

9. (This item usually happens out of order, and prevents the other stages from being reached. Such is life). Run out of time. Do a combination of the other points all in one go, and very fast. Don’t skip the reading out loud stage though. I always regret not doing that one.

And what happened to the story? As predicted I ran out of time somewhere between points 5 and 8, and I skipped to 9. My workshop group will be let loose on it tomorrow.

My friend and fellow writer Tom described a meeting he attended yesterday for his day job. In fact, it was a call-in affair. While he was wandering a wind-swept university campus waiting to go into class he was also speaking to co-workers in London and Silicon Valley. The conversation made him glad of his new-found vocation. His plan to become a writer has left him partially protected from the language of corporate politics, of euphemism and hierarchy, which once drove him insane.

“Bob wants this by November,” someone said.

“It’s important we use best practices as defined by Simon’s Knit Your Own Cloud memorandum.” said someone else.

“I think Mary and Joe have a different timescale for their deliverables, so perhaps we should make their sign off retrospective”
(That last bit was code for “Jesus! Let’s route around the consultants, or they’ll tie us up in meetings for three months then stab us in the back. Laughing.” And on both sides of the Atlantic several people nodded quietly to themselves.)

Although he performs his duties conscientiously, Tom has realigned his career goals. In fact he threw himself from the ladder entirely, gave up his seniority and returned to pure code slinging. Partly that’s because he enjoys code slinging, but mainly it’s so he can put his heart and soul into writing.

So, while he listened to plans laid and games played yesterday, it was with the detachment of a drone who’ll happily do the work and collect the pay however good or bad the decisions turn out to be.

He even permitted himself a moment’s feeling of superiority. These guys are all talking in code, he thought. They’re deluding themselves. They’re going to launch yet another doomed Big Push, and then a year later they, or people very like them, will find themselves at a near identical meeting. They’ll agree Mistakes Were Made. But, they’ll say, Bob’s new plan, or Harry’s make-it-so agenda, or Alex’s Project: System Do-Over will really get the job done this time (so long as they remember to route around the consultants).

Tom, on the other hand, is going to be a writer.

When I ran into him at the cafe this morning, though, he looked much less serene. He was staring at his laptop with a slightly crazed glint in his eyes.

“I can’t believe I thought they were foolish,” he told me. “At least they’re doing real things in the real world. I mean look at this.” He spun his laptop and showed me a fragment from his work in progress.

“I see your problem.” I told him. “You appear to be writing about a barn-sized beef sandwich.”

“I do, don’t I?” he agreed. “The thing is, sometimes that seems a perfectly reasonable thing to be doing. And then other times…” he shook his head.

I patted him on the shoulder and left him to it. And I think he’s still there.

Well it’s taken me two years, but I’ve finally got round to moving Inflatable Ink from its temporary home on Blogger to its own WordPress theme. I have nothing against Blogger but as a coder I like to be able to poke about under the hood. Also, after six months or so, Blogger took against my browser and quietly discarded any comments I posted. I worked around that, but after multiple browser upgrades failed to fix the problem I began to take it personally.

This theme, Inflatable, is built on top of a bare bones template called Toolbox by Automattic. Bare bones means that the theme does all the basics, but has very minimal formatting. I stripped out what formatting there was, and wrote and designed a bunch of features from scratch. Let me know if and when you find the inevitable gremlins — they’ll be my fault. Some are known to me already. Like the half-formatted 404 and search pages, for example. It’s definitely a work in progress. Still, I could have held off for months getting things just right, and frankly I just don’t have time for that.

It has been pointed out to me that I could easily have just chosen one of the hundreds of excellent themes available for customization, and freed up time for work, writing, and study. In retrospect, that would probably have been sensible. On the other hand, I’d like to integrate lots of cool stuff into this theme over time, and that will be easier with code I already know inside out.

Admittedly, when I’m supposed to be writing, I tend to goof off and code. And when I’m scheduled to code, I find myself stealing time to write. This blog migration has been an excellent tool in my campaign of procrastination. It’s amazing I fit beer in at all. Which is my cue to open a bottle, I think.

Post any bug reports in the comments!

Last week I mined a book I hated for some positive lessons I might apply to my own writing. Incidentally, later the same week Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff undertook a similar exercise at the Book View Cafe Blog. A different book, but it clearly drove her nearly as crazy as the one I’ve been wading through. Like Maya, I don’t intend to name my source of anti-inspiration, though there may be clues in the text or elsewhere in the blog.

This week, I’m returning to this rich seam for five final lessons.

1. Make your characters interesting
It’s worth asking yourself some questions about your characters. Do your characters have depth? Do they embody, or fail to live up to, values. Do they have questions about the world, do they have conflicts internal and external. In short does your reader care about them? If not, you may have a problem. The next two points take this one a little further.

2. Make your characters need something, and make it matter.
Most characters want something, but do they want it enough? Are they driven? Is their need deep enough to involve the reader? And when they are thwarted, must they reach deeper within themselves to find a new plan? Are your characters’ conscious desires at odds with their actual needs? Does that contradiction throw up new problems for them? Most detectives want to solve their cases, just as most plumbers want to fix the leaky pipes they encounter, but that isn’t enough on its own. A set of bland characters more or less keen to overcome a battery of obstacles and misunderstandings won’t make a compelling novel. If the characters don’t care enough, for deep enough reasons, neither will the reader.

3. Make your characters act on the world
Dynamic characters change the world around them. That’s not to say they get what they want, in fact the opposite is probably true. But they provoke consequences, and these demand new actions. Its in the crucible of the relationship between action and consequence that a character’s nature is defined, tested, revealed and transformed. Passive characters, on the other hand, ricochet unchanging from one crisis to another. Because they don’t seize the initiative we never see them truly tested, and they remain two-dimensional vehicles designed to cruise the highways and byways of the novel’s plot.

4. Use repetition sparingly and knowingly
Repetition is a powerful tool when used cleverly. There’s something about foreshadowing, for example, that is immensely satisfying. There’s a nice click as a pattern set up early in a story reverberates with a more significant but similarly shaped element later on. The running gag relies on repetition, as does the rule of three (where a  hero makes three attempts on an objective in three different ways, only succeeding the third time round). In these instances though, repetition is an evolution, not a straight echo. It’s is used with economy and with a light touch.

Overused, though, repetition can quickly annoy the reader. Perhaps a character is in the habit of contradicting in thought the spoken statements of those around her, for example. That’s a nice effect used once or twice. If it’s repeated often and by more than one character, then the device becomes clumsy and irritating. Add repeated expostulations, plot elements, sentence structures, and so on, and reading your story soon becomes a kind of drudgery.

5. Don’t signpost every single symbol and reference
The world of a character can be used to engender emotion. This resonance or ‘objective correlative’ is the stronger for being unstated. If a character is trapped in a situation, for example, and happens to see a poster, or hear a snatch of a sermon that echoes her state, having her explicitly think “just like my life right now!”, can empty the effect of the resonance and make the story seem slavishly literal and empty of mystery.

Last week I took time out to compose some flash fiction, and pickings were light in any case, mainly because I’m still travelling. So here’s a round up of some of the links I picked up and tweeted in the last two weeks or so.

Scott Myers at GITS will be analysing a draft script of ” “Gladiator” all week – script available online!

Labor day: Writers’ memories of factories – Paris Review and Jeff Cohen celebrates unions – http://t.co/0wikK3G

New opportunities for short form authors in the e-reader age – The Book Deal

“Meat hacks mind and mind hacks meat” Elizabeth Bear on speculative fiction and the Singularity

NOW is the time to start #NaNoWriMo: Alexandra Sokoloff

How assumptions about power shape character @JulietteWade

A plague on your movie.. or book. Contagions in fiction. Paris Review

Skills writers need. I’d add ‘commitment to finish projects’ – my own failing @CherylRWrites #writing

It’s more important to make a character compelling than likeable: T.N. Tobias

You can learn as much from a book you hate as one you love. #writing

If you’re outlining for #NaNoWriMo right now this terribleminds post is a must-read @ChuckWendig

OK, I’m in for #NaNoWriMo this year.. my prep method: many many prompted free writes from which I’ll select story ‘tentpoles’ #writing

another frustrating book mined for writing lessons. book view cafe blog

It’s not me, it’s you. Author dumps publisher for misrepresenting her as chicklit writer (at launch party!)

This last prompted a discussion with @TheresaStevens about the difference between romance and chick lit. She kindly offered this tweet-length distinction:

Romance is folkloric in origin & structure. Chick lit is a modern coming-of-age tale. Both are for female readers, though.

Congratulations to Literary Lab’s @LadyGlamis on the publication of her book!

“marketing is like plastic surgery: you only notice it when it’s done badly” – blogging and seduction @justinemusk

I have Nicholson Baker’s House of Holes lined up. Meanwhile The Millions rounds up responses to the joyous muckiness

GF Bailey: a Margaret Atwood essay: “plots… just one thing after another, a what and a what and a what.” #NaNoWriMo

A few weeks ago I read a book I didn’t like. I didn’t like it so much I threw it away. From a distance. Quite hard. The next day, I fished it out from its corner, and because I was due on the road, I bought Kindle and audio copies to complement my battered print edition.

Why buy multiple copies of a book I hated? It seemed to me that by working out what provoked such a strong negative reaction in me, I might distil some positive rules of thumb for writing.

In this two part post, I present my findings.

1.Define rules for preposterousness, and then use them well.

Readers will happily accept all sorts of crazy and impossible premises, so long as you establish the rules of the game upfront, and then retain internal consistency. So if you make it clear that your story is set in a future without modern transport, you can get away with plot devices that rely on it being hard to get about fast. On the other hand, if you don’t properly establish this facet of your future world, you will irritate many readers when you apparently forget that your protagonist could probably solve a crucial problem by simply calling a cab.

Even if you flag and explain a piece of nonsense properly, it should probably be interesting nonsense, and nonsense that is worth exploring in its own right—not just a transparent bit of plot convenience. Otherwise your reader will see you’re manipulating the universe for your own ends, and she’ll resent it.

2.Make your characters distinct from one another

Characters with similar names, similar verbal ticks, similar jobs, or similar.. er characters, can all make for confusing or uninteresting fiction. It’s not always possible to make characters so distinct in their voices and concerns that you can do away with speech attribution altogether, but it is a good idea at least to avoid making them interchangeable.

3.Check facts and idioms

I believe story matters more than detail, but factual errors can puncture the illusion you’re trying to construct, and then become disproportionately annoying to some readers. If your story is set in a foreign country, include at least one native in your team of beta readers if you can. Misused idioms or glaring errors of geography and culture might not matter much to a domestic audience, but it’s an international market, and reviews travel. If the book is set in a particular historical period see if you can get access to an expert on the era.

Charles Stross posted on this subject (http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/09/why-wikipedia-is-the-writers-f.html) in 2010.

4.Have your characters’ stories differ in significant but complementary ways

If your story has multiple threads, either because it is a multi-protagonist novel or because it weaves subplots around the main character’s journey, try to make the threads differ. Have peaks and troughs at different times, illustrate different facets of the same theme, have one thread complicate another. If your stories all rise and fall in the same ways, at the same time, with characters facing similar challenges in identical fashions, your readers may find your novel repetitive.

5.Make something happen

Sounds obvious, right? But it’s easy to get lost in the fantastic detail of your world and your premise, and forget that your readers really stopped by for a story. If your prose is brilliant, they may forgive five chapters of scene setting. Or they may not. Best not risk it. Hit them with story early on, and keep them reading.

Part two next week.

This is my entry for the Platform Campaign Flash Fiction challenge.. somewhat hurried to make deadline!

Waiting.

The door swung open. The receptionist had returned and they all looked up.

She glanced at the mechanical flip-ticker on the wall. Marcus stood and stretched. He felt the others watch him make his way to her. Jealous.

He handed her his ticket. It was damp and creased from an age of holding and folding.

She unfurled it. Long, slender fingers. “This way, then,” she said.

Marcus, and a floral fragrance, trailed her along a short grey-painted corridor. She opened a door, and nodded to him. He considered life resumed. A rain soaked pavement.

“You’ll need this.” She handed him a blue ticket stamped Y90.

He took it, and stepped in.

Rows of seats. No windows. Waiting people took him in, and looked away. A ticker on the wall read A15.

He turned to explain she’d made a mistake. To protest. To complain, but the doorway was empty.

He stepped over outstretched legs, and around bags and found an empty seat beside a woman in an ultramarine trouser suit. As he sat, a vague memory of somewhere else faded, along with the scent of lavender. He settled down to wait.

The door swung shut.

I got diverted this week by the.. twitteriness.. of Twitter. It is, after all a social network. So as well as posting writing links, I found myself engaging in a feud about cats and hats, and ultimately cats in hats. Along the way I came up with reasons why writing is like sex, and posted far too many altogether uninteresting progress reports on my daily wordcount target.

All this digression may have been influenced by reading Grace Dent’s excellent and very funny book about the network (How to Leave Twitter).

I have also just embarked on one of my periodic US trips, so the writing-related links might be a little more sparse this time round.

some tough love from Alex Epstein (Crafty TV Writing – recommended) in response to an unsolicited request for advice.

Nina Badzin’s Twitter basics: “No pictures of your cat”. *sigh* my cat is so much better looking than I am. I did change my cat avatar – a controversial decision as it turned out. In taking new cat photographs I invoked the spirit of Mrs Slocombe but don’t watch the video if you’re not a fan of infantile innuendo

Moving from cats to dogs: Chris Dolley had me at ‘Zaphod’, but this tale of a dog’s life is lovely enough without the hook. Zaphod’s Last Run

Some found graffitti, which suggests just because you know how to write doesn’t always mean you should. Still, possibly the name of my new band. If I could sing or play an instrument.

Charles Stross in Q&A at session at Apple HQ (videos).

An Anne Patchett piece on writing became available in Kindle format, discussed at LATimes’ Jacket Coy

Log your activities, and find time to write you didn’t know you had: quickwritingtips – #writing

“You can learn a lot of things from a great first page (also from a bad first page…)” – Maggie Stiefvater

Formula for a compelling plot. With examples. RT @CDaleyAuthor: On the blog: The Plot Skeleton.

I have no attention span. But upped my writing sprints – – from 10 to 15 minutes. Seems to be working #amwriting

less fun alone? over too fast? overexposed? sometimes messy? MT @Chindu: How #Writing is Like Sex | Psychology Today

Neil Gaiman quotes Gene Woolf: “You never learn how to write a novel… You only learn to write the novel you’re on.”

How do you keep conflict alive when you’re only going to meet the nemesis at the end? GITS on True Grit