Q: Do you think people can learn to write well enough to have their books published by one of the big publishers, or is writing that well more of an innate talent?

A: (Salome)  Well, people do learn to write that well. I mean, every writer who has been published has learned to write well enough. Maybe only Harlan Ellison got his first attempt at a novel published on his first try. (I don't actually know if that's true. It might have been William Gibson.)

But is there something innate about the ability to write well? Yes. Just like some people are good at math, some people have facility with language. That's a definite bonus. Some people seems to easily access their creativity. Also a bonus. Some people are able to generate sequential ideas logically. This can be very helpful.

I do think that not everyone can learn to write that well. But people can and do. It takes a lot of work. Just sitting down and putting the right number of words on the page and roughly simulating a novel is unlikely to produce the desired result. It's like saying, I want to be a ballerina, putting on the costume and turning on the music. Will you instantly be a ballerina when you hop around in time to it? Will you be one if you imitate the dancing you've seen at the ballet? Clearly not. But it's the first step. With dedication and learning, you'll get closer. Actually F. Scott Fitzgerald's wife became a ballerina as an adult, though she was warned that it was impossible. So yes, it can be learned, with more or less difficulty, depending on your natural abilities, your commitment, and your willingness to learn technique.

A: (Tim) Yes, writing is a skill that can be learned. Some people have an innate facility, of course. But that's not the only way. The more inherent talent you have, the easier it is to improve, but it is possible to get better. Like every other skill, it requires dedication, study and practice to become good. Going from good to great is harder, and requires talent as well, but fortunately for the vast bulk of us mortals, truly great writers are extremely rare. There are things that make good writing less trying. Reading voraciously. Having a mind that makes lateral jumps. Self-discipline. Bravery. A good memory. But plenty of writers have made it into print with the Big 6 with nothing more than a whole heap of hard work and determination.

It's important to remember that there are no guarantees, and if you're after a Magic Pot of Gold, the odds of a lottery win aren't much worse. There's a lot of genuinely good writers who don't get published. Mostly, that's for reasons internal to them, but you never know how you'll do until you step up to that plate, and luck plays a savage part as well. So ask yourself why you want to be a good writer. If it's for fame, sex and/or money, well... Heh. There are far quicker, more reliable ways. 

Writing is an incredible activity. It's nourishment for the soul, your own little portal into true wonder. You don't need a Big 6 book deal for that. Just pick up your keyboard and write. But if you need to be good, because the fire in your mind will accept nothing less, and you're prepared to drive yourself relentlessly... then yes, you can do it.

by Tim Dedopulos

If green is the active colour of nature, then brown is its passive counterpart. The natural colours of human hair and skin are all shades of brown, with a greater or lesser contribution from red – the colour of human existence. It is the colour of bare soil, from which we grow our food; it is the colour of wood, which we build so much out of; and it is the colour of decay, fallen leaves and fecal matter. It surrounds all stages of our existence at a very practical level. It is impossible to talk about it symbolically without referring back to these realities – the colour is grounded, down to earth, rooted.

Like purple, brown is a combination colour rather than a wavelength of light in its own right. Often considered a close hue to orange, brown is obtained by combining complimentary colours – red and green, orange and blue, or yellow and purple. Brown is not a stimulating colour. Many people find it rather dull, even slightly depressing. It reminds us of our physical nature, brings us back down from heights of emotion, passion or fancy with the clear message that it is the real world which we live in – the one were we have to eat, sleep and ablute.

It has plenty of positive associations, however. It is steadfast, reliable, comfortable and dependable. It conveys warmth and wholesome honesty, lacking the ambition, greed, coldness or excitability that other colours might convey. It is consistent and trustworthy specifically because it is a little dull. Excitability, inconsistency and imagination are not desirable traits when you are choosing an institution to look after your money, or a person to drive your school bus. It is essentially stable and restrained.

Internationally, brown does not see a lot of variation in its meaning. It is rarely used politically, not appearing often in logos or flags. For most advertising purposes, it is found to discourage sales. The colour is just not an aspirational one. Its most common application is in uniforms that want to indicate that the wearer is trustworthy, steady, reliable and unthreatening. As such, the colour is often found in service businesses worldwide. International package delivery company UPS have even trademarked a specific shade of the colour as an important element of their corporate business, a hue now known officially as “UPS Brown”. Not all uses have been so wholesome, of course. Symbolism can deceive just as effectively as any other form of communication. The most reviled brown uniforms of recent memory are those of Hitler’s ‘Sturmabteilung’, the stormtroopers who formed the paramilitary wing of the Nazi party.

by Tim Dedopulos

Since there’s still some uncertainty about the specific answers for the Great Global Treasure Hunt on Google Earth, I’ve decided to put final page-by-page solutions up on the Internet. Many of these solutions are explained in much better detail on YouTube, courtesy of the Carlton Books stream. I recorded videos explaining all the pages on the same day, shortly after the hunt closed, so I’m confident that Carlton will have them all up in due course. In the end, there were 77 correct solutions entered, and the winner, selected at random, was Herr Knichel, of Germany.

Page-by-Page Breakdown

#1: Solution: Stonehenge, Wiltshire, England. Meaning: A stone circle. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inDsYfX7u0w

#2: Solution: The Devil’s Playground, Kelso, California, USA. Meaning: Sand. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EleBqglP6d0

#3: Solution: The Temple of the Masonry Altars, Altun Ha, Belize. Meaning: Masonry. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-UKbAtf4xI

#4: Solution: Deer Trail, Colorado, USA. Meaning: Bulls. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2q9W84jMBdo

#5: Solution: Bologna, Emilia-Romagna, Italy. Meaning: Bologna, Italy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LapNXCjKP4

#6: Solution: Annonay, Rhône-Alpes, France. Meaning: Ferrara, Italy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3R7V0sFFZU

#7: Solution: Hawara, Faiyum, Egypt. Meaning: The Minotaur.

#8: Solution: Ø, Viborg, Jutland, Denmark. Meaning: Ø as a shape.

#9: Solution: Asian Gallery, Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo, Japan. Meaning: Art.

#10: Solution: Three Graces National Park, Northern Territories, Australia. Meaning: Boticelli’s Primavera (‘The Allegory of Spring’).

#11: Solution: The Cave of the Apocalypse, Patmos, Greece. Meaning: St. John.

#12: Solution: The Clarence Hotel, Dublin, Ireland. Meaning: Bono da Ferrara.

#13: Solution: Clerk’s Well, Farringdon, London, England. Meaning: Wells.

#14: Solution: Tel Hazor, Yesud HaMa’ala, Hula Valley, Israel. Meaning: Freemasonry.

OVERALL SOLUTION: 44.4907, 11.3483. Francesco Del Cossa's stained glass window of St John of Patmos in San Giovanni Church, Monte, Bologna, Italy.

Derivation:

#1. It is a circle of stone.

#2. It is made of glass.

#3. It is stonework.

#4. It is in Italy (and Bologna).

#5. It is in Bologna.

#6. The creator, Del Cossa, was from Ferrara.

#7. Restating the link to Italy and Bologna.

#8. It is very near a well shaped like Ø that is visible on Google Earth.

#9. It is a work of art.

#10. The creator, Del Cossa, artistically depicted allegories of the Spring months.

#11. It is of St. John, in a church dedicated to him.

#12. It was created by an artist of Ferrara.

#13. Clue #8 depicts a well; also a well is a circle of stone.

#14. The creator’s father was a stonemason.

by Salome Jones

Stories are made out of difficulty. A writing teacher I had in grad school referred to a climactic point of difficulty in story as ‘the swirling vortex of doom.’ He pointed out how novice writers would do a great lead up to the SVoD and then in the end, veer off and make it suddenly resolve without ever letting us see how the tension played out.

Here’s an example. Tom and Keira are traveling down the highway in the desert when their van breaks down. Tom thoughtfully lets Keira drink their last bottle of water. Then they take off walking through the desert. Tom gets dehydrated and passes out leaving Keira alone and confused. 

OH NO! EVERYONE IS GOING TO DIE! DA DA DON!

At this point, the reader is glued to the page wondering what will happen next. The novice writer doesn’t want to write this scene. It’s difficult. Requires delving into dark emotions. She thinks, oh well, they’re going to live, so might as well just jump to post rescue. Tom wakes up in the hospital and Keira tells him how he almost died and she rescued him.

And this is where your reader pours gasoline on your book and burns it as a substitute for the exciting part that you left out of the writing.

This is known as cheating the reader. This scene, the tension, the suspense? That’s what readers work through the other parts of the story for. That’s the pay off part. The page turner part. It’s also a great way to show character. Keira goes through a personal trial during the time when Tom is unconscious. She not only keeps it together – or doesn’t – but she gets him and herself to safety. There’s a whole story in that. There’s a whole movement of a novel. Unless your book is about something completely different and this is just a moment of past, there’s no reason, and no excuse, for leaving this to our imaginations.

It’s like stringing a lover along in the most delicious possible way and then saying, “Well, we’ve done this before so you know how it ends. I’ve got to do the laundry now!”

Would it come as a surprise if the lover never came back for seconds?

by Salome Jones

Your job as a writer is to overcome the various hurdles to getting readers' minds to switch over from reading and comprehending words at the conscious level to transforming those words into an active imaginary adventure.  The fictive dream, it's called. There are all sorts of things you can do that will derail the fictive dream. They fall broadly into these three categories: boredom, confusion, and cheating. The kind of lack of coherency and consistency that usually comes from writing about things you know little or nothing about can fall into any of these categories, but it's most likely to fall under the category of confusion.

The same kind of process that happens to a reader who's fully immersed in a book must happen to the writer, only in reverse. Writing is a kind of reverse engineering of the fictive dream. Just like performance artists - actors, ballet dancers, musicians - in the moment of creation, a writer must be able to internalize, assimilate, and reproduce information in a personalized expression of the creative workings of her or his mind.

A piece of general advice ​​I can give you now is to take a look at your favorite book. Find a scene that you really like and take it apart. Figure out what makes it work. What do you like about it? Is it at the level of language? Is there some surprise revealed there? What makes it a surprise? The essence of being a good writer can be distilled down from learning to read like a writer. As if taking apart plumbing to figure out how to be a plumber, look at the mechanics of a book.

I'll talk about some specific techniques you can use to accomplish this reverse engineering process in future posts.

by Tim Dedopulos


Image streaming is a wonderfully effective technique for boosting creativity, improving your visualisation skills, and unlocking the full power of your subconscious mind to find stunning solutions to difficult problems.

To get the best results, you really need a dictaphone or some other sort of voice recorder. If you can’t get hold of anything like that, even on your mobile, then you can make do without it, but your sessions won’t be anywhere near as effective. Get yourself into a location where you’re happy to talk out loud without fear of being overhead (if that bothers you).

Now, start the recorder, close your eyes, and imagine yourself in a room. Any room at all. Whatever comes to mind. Start describing the room you are imagining, out loud, in as much detail as you can muster. Don’t let yourself stop talking for any more than an instant, or the amount of time it takes to draw a quick breath. Speak quickly, faster than you usually would. If you find yourself hesitating or pausing, just say the first thing that comes into your mind, even if it’s total nonsense. Especially if, actually.

When there’s nothing more in the room for you to describe, turn your attention outside the room. Head out of the door, look out of the window, if there are no openings, blow a hole in the wall with dynamite or laser-beams or ninjas. Keep describing everything you imagine. Don’t try to guide the images, and don’t think about what you are saying. Do your best to just connect your mouth to your imagination, and let it run wild.

Move through your imaginary landscape however you see fit. Leap out of windows and fly, if you want to. It’s all in your mind. Just don’t try to censor or predict what you are going to encounter, and keep talking about it. If any other thought occurs to you in the meantime, blurt it out. If the landscape shifts suddenly, roll with it. Your only job is to keep your m

For the first week, just keep the cascade going for five minutes. You’ll find that your mind resists you at first; and you’ll spend a lot of time saying “ummmm uhhhh ummmm” or cursing repeatedly as you try to find words. This to be expected. You will improve. Make a point of listening to the tape you make a couple of hours later.

You may find interesting elements or surprising bits of imagery when you listen back. You’ll have no real clue what you were saying for most of it, so don’t expect to remember them. Make a note of anything that leaps out at you from the ramble for any reason. You may find that these have a bearing on your current life situation, or that draw parallels with problems you are having. By listening back over the stream, you also help reinforce to yourself that what you’re doing is important, and as a bonus, it will help you prevent having big gaps in your speech and lots of umming and ahhing. Jot down anything that seems out of place or grabs your interest, but don’t feel you have to transcribe the entire stream. After the first week, increase to ten minutes, and then again to 15 minutes or more.

Cascading is a wonderful practical tool as well as a great exercise to the creativity. If you have a problem, a difficult situation, a puzzling question or a creative challenge that is giving you some trouble, cascading can solve it for you. Before you start the session, think of a physical object that represents the problem (the link can be as tenuous as you want, so long as you know the object represents the problem!). Just before you close your eyes, say “I am going to come up with great solutions to my problem of <…describe the problem…>.”

Then, when you start cascading, begin by describing the object, followed by a room that you might typically find it in. Pay particular attention to other objects in the room, or the territory outside the door. Recording will prove particularly important here because you won’t remember everything you say – maybe not even half of it – and you may miss vital clues to solving the trouble.

Go back over the tape slowly afterward, and consider how the symbolism of things you mention in the cascade can help answer the question. Your unconscious mind is very creative and eager to help when you pay it attention, and I have never known cascading to fail to come up with innovative options. This is particularly true the further into the cascade you go, so if you can keep it going for 20 or 30 minutes to work on a problem, so much the better.

by Salome Jones

There are a number of obvious and often talked about things that inexperienced writers do that out them. The most commonly discussed one is called by various names: telling, exposition, summary narration, sometimes excess backstory or too much description.  This badger deserves its own post because it's a complicated thing that takes many writers a while to understand even when they know about it. More about that another time.

The other things I notice as an editor are more subtle, and also much easier to fix. Here are a few of them.

The use of the word 'then'

New writers often use 'then' as a segue for the actions of their characters.

'He loaded his bags into the car. He made sure the tires were full of air. He then got in his car and drove away.'

This is a perfectly grammatical set of sentences, but I'd be willing to bet if this use of 'then' is in one place, the entire book will be speckled with 'he then' sentences. The thing about 'then' is that it's an adverb. It obviously relates to the time of things. As a general rule you want to avoid overuse of adverbs, But more specifically, the time sequence of a series of events should be clear from the writing. If it is, you don't need 'then.' It's redundant clutter. If it's not, you need to rework your sentences. Adding 'then' is a weak way to resolve the issue.

A rare 'just then' or 'then' used in dialog can work fine. But using 'he then' the way you would 'and' is distracting and unnecessary.

Also, 'he then' is for some reason often used by novice writers instead of 'then he' which works a lot better as a time sequencer if you need one. (Though only occasionally, not left and right.)

'Once again'

The phrase 'once again', like 'he then,' doesn't add any additional meaning. It seems intended to avoid repeating 'again.' It doesn't. It only adds another word that isn't necessary. What can you use instead of 'once again'? For example:

'He studied the lock for a moment and this time he turned the key upside down before attempting to insert it into the slot.'

'After several minutes, he picked up the hammer and began beating the doorknob with it, if anything, even harder than before.'

In other words, write about what happened. Add something to the story with this action. Otherwise, why have the character repeat it?

Non-parallel sentences

Sentences must be parallel. What does this mean? It means that when you use conjunctions, you have to join constructions together that are similar. Here's an example of a parallel sentence:

'She doesn't like washing dishes or doing housework.

You can see that the two sections of the sentence joined together by the conjunction have a similar structure.

Here is the same sentence written without the parallel structure:

'She doesn't like to wash dishes or doing housework.'

Sentences in which the subject does a secret switch

Here's something I see I fair bit of:

'John picked up the ax and headed for the door. Swinging the ax back, Amanda stepped in front of him.'

Now the subject of the second sentence begins as John, but then a new subject is introduced. The first part of the sentence doesn't have a stated subject so the assumed subject of this sentence would be Amanda as she's the only stated subject. But we know that it's John because, well, he's the person with the ax.

This is an example of the dreaded dangling participle. 'Swinging' is the participle here. It's dangling because the subject to which it refers has stood it up.

How to fix this:

'John picked up the ax and headed for the door. As he swung the ax back, Amanda stepped in front of him.'

If you're going to change subject mid-sentence, you have to clearly state who the subject of the first part of the sentence is.

Sticking unrelated actions together  with 'and,' 'but,' or a semicolon

'He walked to the door and there was a boy standing across the street.'

These two sentences have been stuck together with 'and.'

'And' is only a word. It's not magic glue. It doesn't create a relationship between two unrelated sentences. Sentences connected by 'and' should be related by subject, or joint activity.

'He leaned in and she kissed him'

You see that one of these is the result of the other. They're connected in time. They depict an interaction.

You can do the same thing with clauses.

'He walked to the door and saw a boy standing across the street.'

Now there's a relationship between these two things. The relationship is the 'he' subject is the one doing both the walking and the seeing. He's doing them in relation to each other. You assume that he sees the boy through the door.

This would be acceptable, and possibly even better:

'He walked to the door and looked out. There was a boy standing across the street.'

Some writers will try to splice these two sentences together with a comma. It looks better than 'and' stuck in there willy nilly, but it's still wrong. You need a full stop or the sentence needs to be altered. You can't stick two complete sentences together with a comma. (Unless they're part of a series. Like this: 'He walked to the door, the dog ran up to him, the policeman turned on the siren, and - boom - he passed out.)

Well, you can, but it will set you up for a visit from the grammar police.

by Tim Dedopulos

Forgive me, I’m pushed for time today. Some last bits of writerly advice for specific fields from assorted masters…

Elmore Leonard on thrillers:

1. Never open a book with weather.
2. Avoid prologues.
3. Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue.
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said”…he admonished gravely.
5. Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.
6. Never use the words “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose.”
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
9. Don’t go into great detail describing places and things.
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

Ronald Knox on crime:

1. The criminal must be someone mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to follow.
2. All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.
3. Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable.
4. No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end.
5. No Chinaman must figure in the story.
6. No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right.
7. The detective must not himself commit the crime.
8. The detective must not light on any clues which are not instantly produced for the inspection of the reader.
9. The stupid friend of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal any thoughts which pass through his mind; his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly, below that of the average reader.
10. Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.

Andrew Motion on Poetry:

1. Decide when in the day (or night) it best suits you to write, and organise your life accordingly.
2. Think with your senses as well as your brain.
3. Honour the miraculousness of the ordinary.
4. Lock different characters/elements in a room and tell them to get on.
5. Remember there is no such thing as nonsense.
6. Bear in mind Wilde’s dictum that “only mediocrities develop”— and challenge it.
7. Let your work stand before deciding whether or not to serve.
8. Think big and stay particular.
9. Write for tomorrow, not for today.
10. Work hard.

Kurt Vonnegut on Sci-fi and black satire:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

by Tim Dedopulos


In addition to his speed-writing thoughts, Michael Moorcock has also offered some writing tips that are more geared to writing in general. It seems only fair to share those, as well. I wouldn’t want to give a bad impression of the poor chap…

There’s some overlap with the speed information, which I’ll crop out for brevity’s sake. So. Michael Moorcock”s Rules of Writing:

1. My first rule was given to me by TH White, author of The Sword in the Stone and other Arthurian fantasies: Read. Read everything you can lay hands on. I always advise people who want to write a fantasy or science fiction or romance to stop reading everything in those genres and start reading everything else from, Bunyan to Byatt.
2. Find an author you admire (mine was Conrad) and copy their plots and characters in order to tell your own story, just as people learn to draw and paint by copying the masters.
3. Introduce your main characters and themes in the first third of your novel.
4. If possible have something going on while you have your characters delivering exposition or philosophising. This helps retain dramatic tension.
5. Carrot and stick – have protagonists pursued (by an obsession or a villain) and pursuing (idea, object, person, mystery).
6. Ignore all rules and create your own, suitable for what you want to say!

As a little bonus something, you might be interested in Jack Kerouac’s list of 30 hints and tips for writers. Some of them are a little, um… Kerouac. You’ll see what I mean…

Salome did a Q & A with Bees Make Honey Creative Cooperative yesterday. You can read the article here.