Pushing Out The Boat

 My copy of the fabulous Scottish literary and art mag, Pushing Out The Boat, arrived this morning. My poem 'Goddess Of The Free' is on p46! There's much more than my poem in there, however - great stuff from cover to cover. I'm proud to be in there and privileged that I've been published there several times before. It's a brilliant magazine.

Adventures of a clapped-out retiree: Sing-a-long-a-Lou!

 Sing-a-long-a-Lou!

I’ve joined a choir.

Needless to say, it isn’t one of those choirs where you have to prove you can sing by auditioning. I’d never be accepted by one of those. I have a vivid memory of music lessons in secondary school where our teacher made everyone sing a solo in front of the rest of the class. I felt sick with nerves for days before it was my turn, and on the big day I stood up next to the piano, at which the teacher clonked out some tune or other, probably something from Joseph and His Technicolour Dreamcoat, and found that no sound whatsoever would emerge from my mouth. Eventually, almost wetting myself with embarrassment, I started to squeak feebly, so quietly that no one would have been able to hear me over the noise of the piano. No one was listening anyway, but it was still one of those terrible moments that has become etched into my psyche. Whoever said schooldays were the best days of your life was a liar.

 

I have, ironically, always loved singing. I sing around the house all the time, scaring the cat. As a child, I was dreadfully stage-struck but lacked all signs of actual talent. As a three-year-old I appeared on the stage of our local theatre with the rest of my ballet-class but it was a disaster. I’d been practicing my little solo for weeks – I had to do a dance while I pegged washing on the line, and I could do this competently at home or in the ballet rehearsal room. However, as soon as I stepped onstage, a murmur went round the auditorium as a hundred mums went ‘Ah, isn’t she lovely!’ or words to that effect, thereby drawing my attention to the fact that I was on a stage with a lot of people watching me. Of course, I immediately panicked and ran off-stage, never to return.

 

I loved musicals, however, and used to ‘perform’ numbers from them at home, making my little sister join in. My dad used to sing in working men’s clubs, and you’d think I might have inherited his ability, but I didn’t. A friend and I once sang ‘Frere Jacques’ in a round, and danced the cha cha, in a holiday camp talent show, and we came third, but that was only because we were very young and probably still had the cute factor. We obviously couldn’t shake off the showbiz bug, however, because, a few years later, cute days long behind us, we put on a show for our Girl Guide Company and invited our favourite teacher from school, Mr Dodd, and his wife (who was a folk singer herself) to come and watch us. Thinking about this now, I find myself cringing. I can’t imagine what I was thinking. We choreographed and performed our own dance number to Abba’s song Waterloo, involving a long wooden bench for reasons no one involved can now recall, and followed this up with a rendition of a song called ‘All I want is black bean soup’, which we’d heard on an episode of Starsky and Hutch.

 

The more I write this, the more I recall my childhood love-hate relationship with the stage. I had very little talent and hardly any self-confidence, but I felt compelled to perform. After watching the film version of Gypsy on TV, I remember organizing some kids in the playground to re-enact the Let Me Entertain You number, complete with cartwheels! I remember singing Paul McCartney’s Don’t go chasing waterfalls over and over again with my little sister, sitting on the stairs in our council house, while my mum had a friend over – what the friend thought of our dreadful singing she never said, but I can imagine! 

        My best friend’s mum was a member of a local operatic company and we used to watch a lot of their performances – one year we were asked to dress up as flapper girls and sell programmes in the auditorium, which I think we both thoroughly enjoyed – it was the dressing up bit of performing without having to do any of the actual performative elements. I went on holiday several times as a teenager with this same girl and her parents, and I recall us both singing a medley of songs from Cabaret [but mostly ‘Farewell, Mein Lieber Herr!’] in the back of their car all the way home from Northumberland. Her mum and dad must have been sick to the back teeth of hearing us trying unsuccessfully to emulate Liza Minnelli.

         Singing the same song over and over again was one of my teenage quirks. 

    It isn’t that I’m a dreadful singer. I’m not tone-deaf or anything. In fact, given the right song and the right circumstances, and usually when I’m alone, I can sometimes produce quite nice sounds. I have a narrow range, however, and I can’t go very high at all, particularly these days. And I get a lot of sore throats and chest infections so my voice is unreliable and my lungs are pretty useless. I actually went through a period of wanting to be an actress, not realizing that being dumpy, plain, with no charisma whatsoever, terrible stage-fright and an uninspiring voice with no power behind it were the sort of things that tend to derail a budding career treading the boards. Don’t put your daughter on the stage, Mrs Worthington, indeed.

        With such disadvantages, you might wonder why I decided to become a teacher. Believe me, so do I. Strangely, I haven’t had stage-fright about going into a classroom to teach, except in the first year or so, or if Ofsted were on the horizon. In fact, I now do private tutoring and I actually miss classroom teaching. I suppose it’s the closest I get to performing. I’ve been invited to read out my poems at prize-givings and open mic nights, but I never have the courage. I didn’t even give a speech at my own wedding. I panic whenever I get an invitation to record a poem for the internet. No one wants to hear my voice, I think. People will be shocked and disappointed!

        Anyway, my friend, B, has a pleasant alto voice, and more importantly has recently retired and is at that stage where she wants to pack every moment with frenetic activity. She wants to swim and walk and garden and go to the theatre and visit RHS gardens and NT properties and go on holiday and join things, on top of looking after her dad and her grandson for several hours a week. To be honest, I have no idea how she fits it all in and I am expecting her to eventually wind down and realise that just having a rest is one of the best things in life. But for now, she needs to be doing stuff and, needless to say, it was she who urged our other old schoolfriend, T, and myself to join the Rock Choir.  T’s voice is also tuneful and pleasant.

        I have strong memories of being in the choir at school. Again, I joined because my friends were joining. I think of myself as quite an independent type, but in fact I end up doing many things serendipitously. The choir didn’t audition but the music teacher did prowl up and down the rows of singers, listening to them. I mostly spent the sessions moving my lips soundlessly and hoping she didn’t notice. My experience of doing the solo in front of the class freaked me out so much I couldn’t bear the thought of singing in front of strangers ever again. I was convinced I’d hit wrong notes and ruin it for everyone else. The thought of this was so horrible to me that I decided miming was preferable. I’ve been assured in recent years that the odd wrong note can’t be heard amongst all the other voices and each voice just adds more depth and richness to the overall sound of a choir.

        So, that’s all right, then.

        The choir we’ve joined is part of an organisation called The Rock Choir which runs choirs all over the country. It’s aims are to draw people together, create a sense of community, get people out of their houses, and cheer people up. So we thought we’d have a piece of that. It costs £300 for the full year of membership, paid in monthly instalments, and that’s a big incentive to stick at it. Personally, I was horrified by the cost, but I guess they have to pay the choir-leaders and the venues.

         Our choir leader is very good – young, skinny, slightly weird, extremely enthusiastic and with absolutely no sense of embarrassment. The other choir members are friendly and they sound fabulous when they all sing together. The songs are not ones I would choose myself but B and T seem to really love them. So far, the three main songs we’ve worked on have been ‘Video Killed The Radio Star’, ‘Jolene’ and ‘Going Loco Down In Acapulco’. One song we did was ‘Perfect’ by Ed Sheeran, a song I hate because the lyrics are just cliché after cliché and the line ‘you in between my arms’ drives me mad, but the choir made it sound lovely. One new member, however – the only bloke – spoiled it by piping up afterwards ‘I thought that was really healing, you know?’. Other than that vomit-inducing moment, I’ve been enjoying the choir, though I can imagine growing weary of the songs.

        It has made me realise how unfit I am, however, and I'm hoping the singing will improve my lung capacity. 

        If you want to join your local rock choir, here's a link:  

https://rockchoir.com/

Observations on writing: Writing a novel-series

 Writing a novel-series

Unless you’re the likes of J.K.Rowling, Jeff Kinney, John Grisham, Dan Brown or Stephen King, you’ll have to work very hard as a writer to earn even the equivalent of an average annual salary – and you’ll only do that if you’re also very lucky. 

It’s a sad fact that most writers – and that includes many truly talented writers – don’t earn enough to give up the day job. For many authors, writing is a side-hustle at best.

              One way to maximise your earnings, if you’re actually lucky enough to be published, is to create a novel-series. If you can create a series which becomes popular, you have a ready-made audience who are going to buy each new instalment (as well as telling their friends). This is, I suspect, the holy grail for many genre writers, and literary agents often like books which are presented as the ‘first in a series’. They can drop you if the first book nose-dives, but, if it’s even a modest success, they might well keep your nose to the grindstone as they know that novel series sometimes increase in popularity with each new addition.

There are different types of series, of course, whether we are thinking of novels, short stories or TV dramas. Some are sets of stories where each contains a fully-developed, self-contained story featuring the same central character/s, a genre particularly beloved by crime writers – an interesting, engaging character like Hercule Poirot, Sherlock Holmes, Sir Peter Wimsey, Inspector Morse, Cormorant Strike or Jackson Brody can provide the hook to draw readers in, even if each instalment tells a different independent story. Novel-series of this type can often be read in any order, though it is usually better to read them in the order they were published.

There are novels which are essentially detective stories but with a twist – the comic-absurdist Nursery Crimes or Thursday Next series of Jasper Fforde, for instance. Or they can be self=standing series in non-crime-related genres, such as children’s novels like the Jennings series by Anthony Buckeridge, comedy like the Jeeves and Wooster books of P.G.Wodehouse, or supernatural fantasies like Genevieve Cogman’s Invisible Library series.

 The type of series I’m interested in here are those which have both a self-contained story in each instalment and each episode also, simultaneously, plays a role in a larger, over-arching narrative. Examples are Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children series [Gothic/supernatural/YA], Jodi Taylor’s Chronicles Of St Mary’s [time-travelling historians/comedy/crime/mystery], Sarah Painter’s Crow Investigations  ongoing saga [supernatural contemporary female private eye], or Ben Aaronovitch’s Peter Grant stories [supernatural police procedural]. J.K.Rowling’s Harry Potter series are a good example, as are many classic series aimed at children such as Susan Cooper’s Darkness Rising quartet to the saga of Anne Of Green Gables  It takes great skill to plot novels like these, not least because initial ideas sometimes have to be seriously revised when a series takes off and writers are under pressure to write increasing numbers of instalments.

Some writers use particular gimmicks, devices to enable them to tell intricate and long-winded tales in as convincing a way as possible. Conan Doyle used the conceit that the slightly dull and unimaginative John Watson, Holmes’s sidekick, was relating the various cases to a general reader. In the children’s gothic-comedy series, A Series Of Unfortunate Events, the author is suggested to be a mysterious character called Lemony Snickett. Sue Townsend created the eponymous Adrian Mole in her diary sequence, his ‘averageness’ and ‘typicality’ making him a humorous Everyman. Some writers tell their stories in the words of a single character – Max in The Chronicles Of St Mary’s, Peter Grant in the Rivers of London saga, Thursday Next in Jasper Fforde’s comic series, Jake Portman in Ransom Riggs’ Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children. Others are narrated by an omnipresent, omniscient third-person story-teller.

              Of course, like any kind of writing, there are excellent ones and less excellent ones. The most successful are often boosted by the celebrity status of the writer – The Thursday Murder Club series springs to mind. And for every Terry Pratchett or George R.R.Martin, there are lesser writers who don’t write as well but still make a reasonable living out of their writing and have a loyal fan following. I’m thinking of writers like Wilkie Martin [cosy detective], C.J.Archer [romantic comedy in a mildly supernatural pseudo nineteenth century London], Liz Hedgecock [cosy detectrive and romance with a touch of the supernaturals], Heidi Goode and Iain Grant [comic fantasy], etc. Such writers start by capturing the interest of readers and building a fan-base which then guarantees that their novels have an audience for as long as they remain popular. Many writers whom we’d consider to have created a successful career from their work have written many different series, often in different genres.

There are some problems with writing such series, however.

1.      The Tyranny Of Fandom

If your series becomes very popular, it is obviously an excellent thing. Or at least you might think so. However, there is the ‘Sherlock Holmes’ problem. Arthur Conan Doyle became so bored with writing his Sherlock Holmes stories that he killed his hero off at the Reichenbach Falls, only to face an uproar from the consulting detective’s hordes of devoted fans which forced him to bring the beloved Sherlock back to life. Being forced to write endless stories about the same character must be a trial, particularly if you have lots of other ideas for novels you never get time to write.

 

2.      ‘Declining Interest’ Syndrome

On the other hand, if you write a series which relies too much on the plot to keep readers interested, your readers might well be hooked by the first book and want to keep on reading to get to the end and resolve the mystery or whatever. However, if there isn’t much more than a cracking plot, they are unlikely to want to ever re-read the books and they might well give away the plot to potential future readers who might then not want to buy any of them.  The plot itself might not be enough to keep them reading to the end. Novels that rely on gimmicky plot devices often suffer after their initial popularity fades. You need compelling characters, interesting settings and situations, and varied, intelligent plot-lines to keep readers hooked.

 

 ‘Jasper Fforde Syndrome’

This is where you write novels which have a rabidly loyal horde of fans who read and re-read your work and think you’re one of the best writers who ever lived. I am one such Jasper Fforde fan and I share the frustration many of us feel about the fact that Jasper just doesn’t write very fast. Unlike writers such as Terry Pratchett (who regularly churned out at least two novels a year and who must have spent most of his adult life writing novels or autographs), Jasper Fforde can take years to finish a book. He wrote a brilliantly weird and funny novel called ‘Shades of Grey’ in 2012  (nothing like the awful bestseller ‘Fifty Shades Of Grey’), promised a prequel followed by a sequel, but neither have so far appeared. Apparently, a sequel [Red Side Story] is to be published in 2024. Douglas Adams once commented that he had to wait for enough ideas to pile up before he could write a new Hitch-hikers novel, and I think this is true of Fforde (and probably one reason his books are so brilliant). Leaving long gaps of time between novels, and frequently delaying publication dates, can build up a fevered anticipation for the next novel – but it might also end up frustrating and boring your readers. You have to be extremely talented and extremely popular before this approach works.

 

4.      Knowing when to stop

Some writers are pressured by publishers, and by the necessity to maintain their income, to stretch out their stories over a much larger number of books than was originally envisaged. This can lead to plot glitches, and to changes in tone and atmosphere. Do your characters remain the same age over twenty instalments? Do the books cover a realistic time-span, possibly more than one generation? Are you beginning to repeat ideas? J.K.Rowling planned for her Harry Potter novels to cover Harry’s secondary school years, which gave them a natural end-point. But more open-ended novel series appear to have characters who never age – even though it is difficult to see how all those adventures could fit into one year of a person’s life.  You might have originally planned to write a trilogy but then, due to the demands of success, you end up like Douglas Adams writing a trilogy in four parts (which in his case was a good thing). Writers need to know when to stop. Eventually, long-running series can become repetitive, dull, even nonsensical. What were once contemporary settings can become outdated. Ideas that were once fresh can become stale. Readers can gradually stop reading so the series plods on desperately trying to bring in enough money to keep the writer from starving. Quit while you’re ahead.   

 

5.      Other writers taking over

Some series produce characters who become iconic and live substantially longer lives than their authors. Sherlock Holmes is a classic example, surviving in film and TV versions, embodied by actors as diverse as Basil Rathbone, Jeremy Brett and Benedict Cumberbatch, the series extended into spoof, pastiche and homage – Holmes has been portrayed as a teenager and an old man, a drug-addicted Londoner living in contemporary New York with his female sidekick Watson, or a ‘high-functioning sociopath’ living in London with his best friend (in Charlie Brooker’s immortal phrase, ‘a wizard and a hobbit’). Not only have modern writers written new instalments of Conan Doyle’s stories (as has been done for other series such as James Bond and The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy), but he has appeared in cameo roles in other series such as the Enola Holmes series which focus on Sherlock’s talented sister or The Irregulars, which focus on the gang of street urchins who are Holmes’s secret eyes and ears. There are several series of novels which makes Mrs Hudson the brains behind the icon, and several which explore Holmes’s sex appeal! Obviously there are always copyright issues – you can’t simply pick up someone else’s character and write your own stories, at least not outside the realm of fan fiction. But once books have existed long enough to be no longer in copyright, they quite often start to appear again, sometimes transformed beyond recognition. Whether this is a good or a bad thing is open to discussion, but I would suggest that it is one of the greatest tributes that  can be paid to a writer who has created something extra-special.

 

The following points all take examples from a specific series of books by a current writer, C.J.Archer. Archer is an American writer who has written several successful series and has been a USA Today bestseller. I am going to pick out elements of her books that I don’t think work - but, let’s face it, I bought every book in The Glass and Steel series so they were obviously interesting enough to justify my spending hard-earned cash on them (unless it is just my OCD tendencies). There are thirteen books in Archer’s Glass and Steele series and I’ve reviewed them in an earlier post. I’m currently reading the final book in the series. The characters reappear in a new series set in the next generation, so they are obviously popular enough to make it worth writing more about the world Archer has created. Revitalising it by moving on to the next generation is a clever trick worth remembering.

:

 

6.      Repetition

One of the things I find irritating about her writing is the repetitions of phrases, particularly phrases that strike me as being slightly odd or irritating even the first time they appear. Characters in the books are always ‘flattening their lips’, for instance, either in anger or irritation or to indicate the falseness of smiles. I don’t know how to flatten my lips. Maybe it means stretching them out wide so they flatten out – but this would suggest a facial expression suitable only for The Joker. Characters also frequently ‘bite off’ dialogue. This phrase suggests to me that they are making sharp exclamations, interrupting others or breaking off their own longer speeches. It implies aggression, hostility, or at the very least frustration. Yet characters ‘bite off’ (presumably their words) even when they aren’t particularly exclamatory.  Look at this example:

 

“Because we know the location of the bomb in advance,”

Brockwell bit off through clenched teeth.

 Here, the character not only ‘bites off’ the words, he does so ‘through clenched teeth’. Try saying those words yourself through clenched teeth. Unless you’re a skilled ventriloquist, you’ll find it difficult, particularly if you try biting them off too. 

        The problem with a series of books is that a writer’s pet expressions become amplified by frequent repetition, so the reader just can’t get away from them. If they start out as weak or annoying, things can only get worse. Each time they pop up, the reader gets another tiny hit of irritation, which, sadly, can only increase as the novels progress. In Archer’s case, it was the behaviour of the main characters, India Steele and her lover (later husband), Matthew Glass, that truly set my teeth on edge. Matt frequently rubs his thumb along India’s wrist or jawline or neck in a way that I find, frankly, quite creepy. In later books, he is forever ‘guiding’ India by putting his hand on her lower back (‘Matt’s steadying hand on my lower back’) – If you want to steady someone, you don’t do it by placing your hand on their lower back, surely? Also it would look odd when a woman is wearing a floor-length Victorian day dress. It makes me think he’s actually fondling her arse, and it also implies to me that he is determining her movements by pressing her lower back as if she is some kind of automaton. If this phrase appeared once or twice in a thirteen-book series, I’d never have noticed it, but it appears so often that it now glares at me like a metaphorical Belisha beacon.

              CONCLUSION: If you are going to write a series of novels, bear in mind that many of your readers will, like me, have OCD tendencies, and therefore, like me, they will buy the next instalment straight after the first and read the whole series as fast as possible. Such people will notice repetitions, and if you repeat phrases they don’t like, you risk making them decide never to buy another of your novels (after they’ve finished the current series, of course…).

 

7.      Plot loopholes

In Chapter 6 of The Spymaker’s Scheme, India and Matthew are undercover in a meeting with the head of the Wool Guild. They are pretending to be Mr and Mrs Gaskell. Matt begins by explaining to the guild-master:

 

“My wife’s father was a  rug-maker from Bristol.

He recently passed….He was friends with another rug-maker

in London and my wife would like to notify him of her

father’s death in person…But his wife informed us that he

had disappeared…We hoped it was a domestic issue between

Mr and Mrs Pyke and that he was merely staying elsewhere.”

 

The real reason for their visit is to get some information out of the Guild-master about Mr Pyke, a rug-maker who has vanished. The guild-master claims he knows nothing and India then says:

 

                           His wife suggested it was because he was a magician…“

 

If Mrs Pyke had said that her husband’s disappearance might be because he was a magician, why would they think it was just a domestic incident? Wouldn’t their father, Mr Pyke’s old friend, know he was a magician? Wouldn’t they, as rug-makers themselves, know that the guilds would not give licenses to magicians so magicians could not legally set up shop as carpet-manufacturers and had to keep their magician status secret? It would seem out of character for these Bristol rug-makers to ‘out’ their missing family friend to the head of the guild. Yes, India and Matt are only pretending to be rug-makers from Bristol, and they might want to test the guild-master’s attitude towards magicians, but it seems to me to be a strong hint for the guild-master that they aren’t who they claim to be. Yet it isn’t until they are leaving and are greeted as ‘Mr and Mrs Glass’ by their friend, Professor Nash, who just happens to be at the guild in a rather clunky and inauthentic narrative device, that the guildmaster becomes aware of their duplicity.

              This sort of thing isn’t terrible. It’s the kind of thing you get in a lot of mediocre writing, and mediocre writing is often much more successful than you might expect. Most readers aren’t all that discerning. If they have a lively plot and interesting characters, a bit of humour, romance, mystery and intrigue, they don’t care all that much about the occasional clumsiness. But, in stories that are stretched over multiple books, writers need to be extremely alert to plot holes. Readers get to know the worlds, the people, the back stories, the attitudes and behaviour of key characters very well, simply because they are reading so much about them.    

 

8.      Disappointing entourages

It has become something of a standard feature of plots involving mystery, quests or crimes-to-be-solved, and even in romances, to have a small group of interesting characters surrounding the protagonist. Frodo had his fellowship; Holmes had his faithful sidekick Watson, his smug brother Myecroft and the bumbling police inspector LeStrade; Harry Potter had Ron and Hermione; Buffy had Willow and Zander, Dawn, Angel and Spike; even Nancy Drew had Bessie and George. In many modern novel-sequences, I have noticed that this posse has become a regular feature, filled with increasing weird or wonderful characters. Supernatural tales can really go to town with a whole cast of minor exotics such as vampires, werewolves, goblins, elves, demons, witches, etc. But even novels set in the real word can push the envelope when it comes to secondary characters. A maverick PI might have a best friend who is an ex-con, a reformed forger,  a stripper, or all three. A schoolgirl heroine might have an entourage consisting of her ninja granny, a male friend who is secretly gay and a mysterious clown who travels the world with a circus. The protagonist’s ‘family’, whether that is genetically determined or a metaphorical family, is often presented as a bunch of weirdoes who gain authority and gravitas by their association with the protagonist. They make the protagonist seem more ‘normal’. They might have special skills that are very useful to the protagonist. They might function as methods of highlighting certain character-traits of the central character, or provide sub-plots to keep the reader interested, particularly in a long novel-sequence.

              However, it isn’t enough to make the characters simply unusual. India’s sidekicks are her husband, Matt [tall, handsome, vulnerable, quick to leap to her defence, a romantic hero who was brought up in the Wild West), Willie (a bi-sexual Calamity Jane living in aristocratic London), Cyclops (a huge black guy with one eye who is a ‘gentle giant’) and Duke (a bit of a nonentity). There is also an outer circle of characters who are still part of India’s ‘family’: Aunt Letitia whose main role seems to be as a social snob who sometimes surprises you with her tolerance; Inspector Brockwell, a police inspector with slightly autistic traits who is Willy’s sometime lover; Lord Farnsworth, apparently a fop and a dandy, though the novels aren’t set in the Regency period, but possibly ,much more intelligent than he seems. The problem is that the central group in particular feel like they were invented for two reasons: 1) to appeal to Archer’s American readers as well her English ones; and 2) to tick various diversity boxes (black, bisexual, cross-dressing). None of them have much in the way of back-story. I’m on book thirteen and I still know virtually nothing about Willy, Cyclops or Duke in terms of their upbringing and previous adventures. I’m not sure how they became involved with Matt, except that Willy is his cousin. Matt’s own previous life in California is alluded to but rarely explored further. And they are, frankly, extremely dull. Willy sounds interesting in summary: a Victorian young woman who wears men’s clothing, carries a Colt, and lives a wildly unconventional life full of gambling, extra-marital sex with all genders, self-assertion, and visiting horse auctions, bare-knucklre fights and illicit poker games. But in fact mostly we see her sulking or threatening people or refusing to answer questions about her personal life. She has the attention span and emotional complexity of a toddler, and her schtick rapidly grows boring. Cyclops, too, though he is likeable, seems to become less compelling as the books progress. He started with lots of potential, particularly as he becomes involved in a love-subplot with a friend of India’s, but the obstacles between him and the object of his affections are easily overcome and never fully explored. Duke seems to eat, make the occasional wisecrack, bicker with Willy and occasionally spends the night with his mistress, a rich widow, but we never really find out what he's like beyond the fact that he's good-humoured, kind and loyal. These three are essentially Matt’s body guard, and they are as interesting as this sounds. They have so much unfulfilled potential as characters. Some of them return in the spin-off series set in the next generation, but they are just as dull in those books.

              CONCLUSION: it isn’t enough to just give second-tier characters, the ones who form the protagonist’s Scooby Gang, some freakish or unusual traits or experiences. They have to be believable, likeable, compelling characters. They have to have reasonably complex back stories and, in a long series, they need to be at the centre of gripping sub-plots which intersect with the main plot. The reader has to at least find them engaging. Otherwise, why are they there? If Duke, for instance,  was removed from Archer’s stories, I don’t think the readers would notice. That can’t be a good thing, can it?

 

 

 

9.      Plot Exposition

Another thing writers risk when they are writing novel-series happens when they are under pressure to produce the next book as quickly as possible, so they resort to lazy ways of letting the reader know what’s going on. If a reader jumps on the train halfway through the journey, they need to be informed somehow of what’s gone before. You don’t want readers getting confused and jumping off, never to return. What you need to do, ideally, is make each episode as enjoyable as possible so that a reader can follow the story but is also sufficiently intrigued to decide to find out what the first book is called and start from there.

              Consider the following extract:

 

                         “Confront Sir Charles Whittaker?”

                     “Oh dear,” Aunt Letitia muttered.

                     I gasped.  “Is this about Sir Charles setting a thug

           upon him in the lane on the day Lord Coyle married Hope?” 

 

This is unnatural dialogue, intended to give the reader information. It is expositional speech, not the sort of thing people tend to say in real life. All three characters present are fully aware of the incident where Oscar is attacked by a thug sent by Sir Charles. They know it was on Lord Coyle’s wedding day and they know Lord Coyle married Hope. It is a bit of clumsy writing that many readers will accept as an occasional thing in a novel-series, but writers should avoid doing it too often. Readers are surprisingly tolerant of such devices, possibly because they understand the necessity of letting new readers know plot information and this is one of the quickest ways to do this. Nevertheless, if repeated too often, such techniques can soon grow wearying.

If you are thinking of writing a novel-sequence, there are lots of How To... books on the market that deal with the subject. The best thing to do is to read as many examples of  ovel sequences from your chosen genre as you can, then plan very thoroughly. 

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PUBLICATION NEWS

 I came third in The Fosseway Writers' Group Open Poetry Competition, with my poem 'Mirror' (I won £20). Another poem, 'Pencil Stubs', was also Commended

  The winning poems will appear on their website once it is updated:

https://fossewaywriters.wordpress.com/

My story 'Shadow-caster' was accepted by Black Hare Press (I got paid $17) for an anthology called 'Five Years'. Here is the link from their email:

"All PATREON and DARK MOMENTS stories will be included in YEAR FIVE, pre order link here - https://readerlinks.com/l/3037784. Our PATREON can be found here - https://www.patreon.com/blackharepress."

My story 'The Horse On The Hill' has been accepted for publication in Allium Magazine in one of next three editions in 2023:

https://allium.colum.edu/

April's Writer Showcase

 Jane Langan

Last month, I began my showcase series with the talented Ruth Loten, and this month I'm going to showcase her friend and colleague, another student from the OU Masters In Creative Writing 2020 cohort, Jane Langan. Like Ruth, Jane is also a valued member of the Twenty-Twenty Club, a group we set up for MA alumni to give writing feedback to each other. Since completing the Masters Degree, she has continued writing and also co-founded and co-edited the literary magazine, Makarelle. Her most recent project is setting up an independent publishing company, with Ruth, called Castle Priory Press. Scroll down to find out more about Jane and her writing, including one of her stories and an in-depth interview containing many insights into the life of a writer.

 

Jane Langan

Biography

Until recently Jane was one of the editors and co-founders of Makarelle, an online literary magazine, which she founded with two other MA alumni, Ruth Loten and Dini Armstrong. After publishing six successful issues, they decided they needed to focus on their own writing and so they closed the magazine.

Jane has self-published a poetry collection called Blood Kisses, with Amazon. She has also been published in the anthologies Footprints and Echoes, Makarelle ONE, Dipping Your Toes and Where’s the Manual and Other Thoughts on Parenting. She was shortlisted in Fish Publishing’s lockdown Haiku competition and had a special mention from The Welsh Poetry Competition. She was longlisted in the Mairtin Crawford Award and has been published in a number of online journals.

She and her friend, Ruth Loten, who met whilst doing their Masters in Creative Writing, have recently started a hybrid publishing company which offers reasonably-priced assistance with self-publishing. They hope to create a community of writers who will help to market each other’s work.

She has recently completed a female-led coming-of-age novel based in the 1980s, and an anthology of short stories. Hopefully, both will be available soon. Her current project is a more speculative novel about women who develop magic at the same time as getting the menopause. She is also working on a collection of poetry relating to family and phobias. 

Publication and links:

I’ve been writing a blog since 2009: http://www.howilikemycoffee.co.uk/

You can find her on Twitter and Instagram at @muddynosugar

Castle Priory Press hybrid publishing house can be found here: https://www.castlepriorypress.com/

Jane’s poetry collection is available here: https://amzn.to/40QtHXF

 

Here is an example of Jane’s work:

 

Fairy Clocks

 

You couldn’t help but hear the thudder. I’m sure it has a proper name, but that’s the noise it makes. The sound of the earth being flattened, levelled, straightened. Almost a torture, almost against its will. 

            I looked out of my bedroom window. There he is, my neighbour, whose garden touches the end of my garden. A man, past his best, soft-bellied, heading towards middle age. I name him Charlie. His wife and child are tucked away inside. Charlie is bothering an older man. The man’s experience etched into a weathered face; his white hair curled from underneath his woolly hat. I can tell my neighbour knows nothing about gardens. Nonetheless, he feels the urge to tell the man how to do his job. I watch the old man turn on the thudder and tune out the whippersnapper at his side. I smile, close my windows, attempting to ignore the cacophony and the heat.

The next day the old man is back, repeating the process, collecting his spirit level and placing it on the ground. This man is all about detail. Charlie seemed to have no concern for personal space. He stands far too close to the gardener. 

            The following day the old man lays fresh topsoil, raking it until it looks as fine as flour. When he’s finished, he sows the seeds and ties string to pegs around the outside and across it, like a chessboard. It is a perfect rectangle, about two metres by five metres, surrounded by grey square patio slabs. 

It is only that night I realise something else has changed. Charlie has floodlit the soil. The light shines through my bedroom window, making it past the chinks in the slats of the blind. I close my eyes and try to ignore it. 

            Over the next few weeks, I watch as the brown soil turns green. My neighbour became almost religious in his attention to his new lawn, watering it twice a day at the same time. The light remains on every night. Brightness waking me up at three in the morning. All I can think of is what I would like to do with that light and Charlie. The middle of the night is not a time for rational thought. 

            A few weeks later, the old man reappears and removes all the strings. The lawn’s grand opening. A perfect oblong of green, green grass. My neighbour has bought a garden sprinkler. He moves it throughout the dry days. A blackbird, in its element, appears on a damp sprinkled piece of lawn to peck out worms, excited by the prospect of rain. Charlie runs out of his house and tries to shoo the bird away. I half expect him to hammer in a sign saying, ‘KEEP OFF THE GRASS.’ 

            The light continues to shine in my window. It feels too late to say anything. I have missed the opportunity to say something politely.

In the early hours, I worry about the light pollution and the hedgehogs who visit my garden and inwardly continued to despise the man and his landscape shaped lawn. 

            I never see the wife or child set foot on the grass. I wonder what he wants it for. It seems to serve no purpose, if it’s not to stop his toddler scraping his knees on the patio. None shall enter his verdant, shorn pasture. His land.

             Spring comes. The dandelions I encourage to feed the pollinators grow in my garden. Soon, they become the familiar seed heads we blew as children, beautiful fairy clocks. It is an idea I thought of as I lay awake staring at my illuminated striped ceiling in the middle of the night. A nugget of mischievousness. Gleefully, I pick the seed heads and blow the fairies away. The breeze picks them up and they dance and swirl in the air. The tiny naughty fairies cavort over the fence at the end of my garden.

 

 

And finally we come to The Big Interview, where Jane kindly answers writing-related questions and lets us into some of her writing secrets...

 

How old were you when you first knew you wanted to be a writer, and what set you off on that journey?

I can’t remember a time when I haven’t written. I was always writing something, whether it was short stories, plays or poetry. My friends still remember a funny essay I wrote at school about how I wanted hair like they have in the Cosmo. I still don’t have hair like that!

 

Tell us about the books that have shaped your life and your writing career.

That’s a really tricky question – as an avid reader it’s like choosing a favourite child, but I’ll give it a go!

One of the first books I truly loved as a teenager was Brighton Rock by Graham Greene – It made me realise that older books didn’t have to be stuffy and old-fashioned.

Similarly, Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd was full of unsaid simmering passion – I always said I was going to call my first child Bathsheba, but fortunately I didn’t.

Recently, I’ve enjoyed anything by Sally Rooney, I think it helps that I spend a fair amount of time in the West of Ireland where many of her books are set so I can visualize the places and the people easily.

I also like supernatural fantasy books. Alice Hoffman’s Practical Magic series are easy reads as are V.E Schwab’s. Whereas Samantha Shannon writes epics that could rival Tolkien in their world building (I realise that’s a tad controversial, but I believe it). The Priory of the Orange Tree is a monster of a book, but so worth the effort.

These days I tend to prefer a female writer but having said that I have just read The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne which completely blew me away.

 

Have your children or other family members inspired any of your writing?

When I was small, my dad would quote from The Jabberwocky and read Winnie the Pooh books to me. My dad was a writer and was full of words, and his influence had a profound effect on me. I started my Masters in Creative Writing course two months after he died.

One of his favourites was Mary Webb, in particular Gone to Earth (there’s a 1950’s film of it) and Precious Bane. She wrote poetry and fiction about nature and how it influences the world.

Similarly, he loved Spike Milligan and had all his books. He found the surreal nature of them hilarious.

He always encouraged me to write and be creative.

My daughters inspired me to write the novel I’m currently trying to get published. The main character is a similar age to them and, although it is set in the 1980s, it helped me get into the mindset of a person in that age group. 

 

Does the place you live have any impact on your writing?

Where I grew up influences my writing as much as where I live now.

I grew up in a small village called Bayston Hill near Shrewsbury. It was a beautiful place to grow up. I woke up every day to a view of the Stretton Hills and ran feral as a child, usually only returning home when I was hungry.

When I talk to my husband, who grew up in a city, I realise that my childhood was very different from his.

I still visit regularly, having friends and family who still live there.

I find many of my stories are set in small villages or about young women who grew up in small villages and then moved to the city, which is where I live now. As they say: ‘write what you know.’

I left home for Uni at eighteen and went to London, then moved to Birmingham where I have lived for the last twenty-five years.

 

How would you describe your own writing?

I have delved into many genres, having written fantasy, speculative, historical and contemporary fiction, along with writing poetry and very occasionally plays. I think, sometimes I’m influenced by what I’m watching on TV or what I’m reading at the time and at other times it is just what my imagination needs to push out of me.

I think my preferred genre is speculative, where it’s a real-world setting but with a bit of a twist, but it’s always character-driven.

I use poetry to springboard my fiction and some of my stories have grown from a poem I’ve written. Writing poetry is what I do when I am stuck.

 

Tell us about you approach to your writing. Are you a planner or a pantser?

Mostly, I am someone who just writes. Then the planning starts to happen as I go deeper into the novel writing – I have an A5 notebook for each novel and I use index cards for each character and place, adding details as I write to ensure the information about each character stays the same.

However, with historical writing I tend to research more to ensure certain things are factually correct. There’s nothing worse than reading a novel and going, nah, that didn’t happen then. It ruins the flow for the reader. I have been dipping in and out of a novel I am writing set between 1945 – 1968. I have used letters and diaries that belonged to family members, which helps with the language and how people talked at the time and looked at old newspapers and got some archived censor’s records from the National Archive which proved to be fascinating.

Google scholar is also really useful.

 

Do you have any advice for someone who might be thinking about starting to write creatively?

I would say four things. Firstly, find a course to suit you –I have had so many people say to me ‘Oh, I’m going to write a novel, I have a great idea’ but they never do – it’s much harder than you think. A good course will help you with structure, character and world building whilst also allowing you to be creative and express yourself.

Secondly, join a writing group and share your work. Thirdly, develop a thick skin, as not everyone will like what you write.

Finally, if you are serious about writing, treat it like a job. For me, it’s not a case of waiting for inspiration to strike. I go to my desk at the allocated time and write until the time I say I’ll finish. I do that nearly every day. You have to stretch your writing muscles like an athlete (an athlete who drinks too much coffee and eats too many Twiglets!).

 

What do you think is the value of writing groups?

I am a member of two online writing groups and recently one face-to-face group. The benefits are talking to other people who write. It’s a solitary profession and it’s nice to chat.  It’s also nice to share your work and seek feedback. Other group members often, in effect, become your beta readers

Another benefit is realising you’re all in the same boat – trying to get anything published is a massive undertaking.

 

You have an MA in Creative Writing from the Open University. Would you recommend such courses, at whatever level, to people starting out as writers?

The MA is the only big creative writing course I have done. I have done smaller ones online but the MA was probably the most helpful – not perfect, but it helped me find my mojo again after a lengthy dry spell.

I have thought about running creative writing workshops – in my previous life as a manager, I ran training workshops all the time on various subjects, with some success. I suppose, at the moment, I don’t feel qualified enough. Maybe when I have had a few more things published…watch this space.

I do plan to go on an editing course with the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading in the near future. This is to support my new venture with my friend from the Masters course, Ruth Loten. We would like to offer editing and proofreading as an additional option to our hybrid publishing house.

 

What do you think about getting feedback on your work from other writers and/or non-writers? How often do you act upon suggestions made by feedbackers or beta-readers?

I have always found constructive critiquing useful for my work. Usually, I ask other writers for this as I have found, in the past, that general readers tend to offer less useful advice and are more concerned about hurting my feelings – which is lovely, but not helpful. Other writers know that just being nice won’t improve the work.
            Having said that, I think, like anything, you have to take some of the feedback with a pinch of salt as it can be more about personal taste than actual flaws in the writing itself. There is always the risk that if you over-edit you lose the ‘you’ from your work, the very thing that makes your writing your writing. It is a fine balance.

  

You have experience of editing a literary magazine (Makarelle) and of self-publishing. What have been the challenges and rewards of such experiences?

I found the most rewarding thing with Makarelle (and I suspect it will be the same with the self-publishing) was reading other people’s work – I find it fascinating seeing other people’s creativity and imagination. Some of the things I have read have been brilliantly written and it is a crime that they haven’t been published and promoted by massive publishing houses.

The challenging part is the opposite side of that. Saying no to people’s work that has clearly had loads of love and care, but wasn’t right for us. That is the worst part as I know exactly how it feels to get that rejection email.

The other challenging element is the technology and hidden costs. It is an expensive business even when you are trying to do something pro bono. Writing, and everything associated with it these days, is not a money-making business unless you are lucky enough to have something you write turned into a film or TV programme.

 

Where do you get your ideas from?

Sometimes I am in a situation and I think, what if? For example, if I was at a party – what if someone started choking on poison? Or one of our friends was a spy? Or the cat started talking?

Similarly, I have a lot of old diaries I pull incidents from. Or I use things I have been told that I extrapolate and extend into fiction.

Sometimes I stare at the dreaded blank page and can’t think of a thing to write, but then I usually just start writing something and hope that a nugget of an idea will appear.

 

They say that successful writers need to be selfish. How far do you agree with this? 

As I said previously, I treat writing as a job. But I am also self employed and sell gifts and vintage items on Etsy as I still need to earn a living. So I divide my time. I usually do Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings working on my shop (with little bits of time elsewhere when necessary) and then the rest of the time I work on writing projects. I have a list of tasks to achieve and I tick them off when I have completed them – this gives me a sense of achievement.

In my previous life, I worked as a manager and had to be very good at time management, I have brought this into my writing life. I set myself realistic targets and goals.

  

Beyond your family and your writing, what other things do you do?

I tap dance, which my knees don’t like but the rest of me does. I danced as a child and loved tap dancing then. I took it back up about six years ago when I was about forty-nine. I would recommend it to everyone. I love it.

I also do pilates when I can – I love this less but I do it to keep strong.

I also garden. I grow tomatoes and other veg most years in my small garden. I am in a constant battle with bindweed … as I don’t use chemical pesticides, I suspect this battle will go on forever.

I am quite crafty. I can sew, knit, embroider, make candles, earrings, that kind of stuff. Mostly, I knit as I can do it watching the TV and I find it quite relaxing.

I suppose the other thing I do is Lego – I started doing it when I was working as a manager and felt quite stressed. It is very process driven and you don’t really need to use your analytical problem-solving brain, so I find it quite relaxing. Nowadays, I don’t find I need it as much AND it’s a very expensive hobby.

 

Would you describe yourself as a ‘cultured’ person?

If cultured means I like to go to the theatre, art galleries and museums, then yes, I fall into the category. Sadly, I can’t afford the theatre as much as I would like these days as it is so expensive. Having said that, I did recently go to see Good Grief at the Door Theatre at the Rep in Birmingham, which was excellent.

I studied Drama and English Lit for my BA and my parents took me to the theatre quite a bit as a child. Initially, I had plans to become an actor but as I got older, I became more introverted and would have liked to be a lighting designer. Unfortunately, that didn’t pan out.

So, yes, I still love all things theatre and my daughters have caught the bug. One is doing costume production at Uni and the other wants to be an actor and has just done her gold medal Lamda exam.

I occasionally read ‘literary’ novels, but I prefer more modern ones. Rachel Cusk is a favourite and I recently read Metronome by Tom Watson which could probably be described that way.

The most literary thing I have ever written was possibly one of the short stories I wrote for my masters. My tutor hated it, and I got a very poor score for it. I have re-written it since then, fixing some fundamental errors but the story is the same.

 

How did the Covid pandemic affect you as a writer?

Initially, not too much but over time it had a massive impact. I fell into the clinically extremely vulnerable category so spent nearly a year unable to leave the house (even now I still wear a mask in crowded places).

This took a toll on my mental health as I had come to terms with my condition prior to Covid, having lived with it for many years – suddenly I had to reassess and it made me feel fragile. I have had six jabs since the vaccine became available and yet I still fear catching it. Only one of my immediate family has had Covid and that’s my eldest daughter who caught it at Uni. We have been extremely careful.

As far as writing goes, last year wasn’t good for me, all the Covid stuff caught up with me and my youngest daughter wasn’t well either (with another long-term condition). Your health, both mental and physical, go before all else and if that equilibrium is off then writing suddenly becomes less of a priority.

 

There is a lot of talk at the moment about political correctness, about the Woke movement, about cultural appropriation, about diversity. What are your thoughts on this, with regard to writing?

Personally, I wouldn’t take on a persona from a culture that isn’t my own for my main protagonist. Perhaps as a friend, but it is not something I am comfortable with.

I want my writing to be accessible to all and I don’t want people to read it and go, ‘Well she shouldn’t be saying that’!

The fact is people from other cultures and from the disabled and LBGQT+ communities are under-represented in literature. Things are improving but it is still not enough.

Maybe I’m a lazy writer but I prefer to write about what I know and understand. I am an adopted white woman who is heterosexual and has a long term health condition that is classed as a disability. 

I don’t tend to write about my disability because I don’t want to see it that way. However, I do hope to write something about being adopted at some point.

 

Where would you place your own stories, on a continuum with PURE FANTASY at one end and COMPLETE REALISM at the other?

Most of what I write is rooted in something I’ve experienced. When it becomes horror, fantasy, sci fi or speculative – that’s when the writing fun begins and my imagination kicks in. Even in my non-fantasy novels, most are based on my own experiences or people I have met, but then I fictionalize it and slowly the characters and experiences become less mine and take on a life of their own.

 

***

Thank you very much, Jane, and the best of luck in your future writing and with Castle Priory Press.

 

Next month, I will be showcasing writer Beck Collett.