Writer's Blog: Characters#2

Sorry about the extreme lateness of this post. Its been sitting on a tab in my browser for a long time. I thought I'd posted it - turns out I hadn't.

Chapter 5 of Writing a Novel looks to the subject of characters.

Characters are one of the most complex aspects of writing. Some authors describe how they can 'watch' their characters. Basically they know the characters so well that writing a scene about them is similar to the experience of listening to a conversation and just recording what is being said. I remember JMS saying that when writing a G'Kar scene he knew the character so well that he could just 'watch' and write what was being said.

I have not had that experience with my characters yet but it must be a magical thing. I even get into difficulties with how a character looks. For this at least you can cheat - well in a way. Sometimes I just simply search for an image of a person who looks like I want my character to look - then I just simply describe them.

Incidentally one of the best character introductions I've even seen is in Twin Peaks. Specifically the introduction of Dale Cooper. It is very simple. All he is doing is entering Twin Peaks and talking in detail about his expenses and, briefly, trees. Yet in that short piece, where he is speaking into a Dictaphone, we learn all we need to know about the character.

As with the other chapters this section gives a list of exercises to try. When writing science fiction or fantasy these sorts of exercises are quite complicated. If a character is living in a fictional world then, sometimes, everything about their life has to be invented. If they visited Mars you have to think of a good name for a city on Mars.

In the novels I have read the development of character is almost invisible. You reach the end of the novel and you know many details about the character but you can't always say how you know those things.

Writer's Blog: Writing a Nover - More Sub-plot Symbolism

This will be a quick run through of the remaining questions of Chapter 4 of Writing A Novel.

There are five more questions in this section.(Pages 46 & 47)

In the interest of expedience I'm going to skip over question 3. It asks about unwitting symbolic elements to the story and I don't feel I've much to say on that.

Question four is far more interesting. It gives three one line synopses of a story and then asks for thoughts on sub-plots. In brackets are the possible themes of the stories. I'm just going to look at one of them.

'An out-of-work actor impersonates a woman to get work, and becomes a soap-opera star (men are very different from women).' (P47)

Now I would say that if this is your story its probable going to be a comedy. (Though it would be interesting to see this as a serious story.) So that gives ideas of sub-plot. In this type of story the secret would be a big issue. A gay woman could fall for him, believing the disguise, or perhaps a gay man falls for him not believing the disguise - and all the while the poor out-of-actor is in love with the young casting director who may fire him if she finds out his secret.

As odd as it may sound I almost want to write that story now.

The last three questions are all about names. The name of the novel and the names of the characters. What is being emphasised here is that a different name can have a different influence on how the character is viewed. This is a personal thing. If, for instance, you were bullied for years by someone called Alex - then it is doubtful that you would name a character this. So the name of a character will never be right for everyone - just try and make sure it sounds right to you and isn't accidentally the same name as a, either fictional or real, famous person.

Writer's Blog: Writing a Novel - Sub-plot and Symbolism

Looking again at Writing a Novel I have decided to look just at the 'Things to Try' section.

I don't know what the rules are about quoting a novel on the Internet. Yet it seems to me that mention of new laws being passed and silly legislation come up far too frequently.

So here goes...

These questions come from page 46 and 47 of the book.

The first two questions cover the main plot and sub-plot of a novel. I am working on two novels. My fantasy novel is Lord of the Rings-esk but, I believe, still quite different. So it doesn't have much in the way of sub-plots. Rather the story is all about people doing what they think is best and the consequences of their actions.

My science fiction novel does have sub-plots. Actually the issue with it at the moment is that I'm not sure what the main plot is. I have a protagonist and it is the story of her life. I have flash points - events that spur her on - but I'm not sure how to interconnect them. In case that's unclear you can't just have the big events in a vacuum. Say you're writing a novel of two people and how they became a couple. A reader may know that is ultimately what is going to happen but you have to have mundane aspects of life interspersed.

This character joins Astrofleet, essential Starfleet, and it is about her career. However she needs to be actually doing something - even though the story is about her and not the mission.

I have watched several documentaries on Royal Navy ships, which gives something of an idea, but in my universe a lot of the day-to-day work can be done by robots. So if anyone from the navy, any navy, happens to stumble onto this could you answer a question for me? Say you're home port is in Portsmouth and you're deployed to the Middle East - on that journey, aside from drills and such - what do you do? I'd imagine that whilst travelling around friendly waters there isn't that much.

One thing I'm slowly discovering about a novel is that it doesn't have to be about anything. I'm reading Looking for Alaska at the moment. Its a good book but actually not a lot happens. Its a difficult thing to explain. There are a few actual events but mostly its people smoking and drinking. The character's are clear though and the first person narrative is very helpful.

Writing is a strange thing.

Writer's Blog: What's in a Name?

Writing a Novel

Names are perhaps one of the most complexed things when writing fiction. I find this quite difficult as it often seems like I need a new name every other page. The reason for this is that I'm writing a science fiction story with many jobs on the starship. I don't want to say 'The Communications Officer' all the time.

Having said that the names of secondary characters probably don't mater too much but the main character makes a big difference. The name may effect how your character is seen by the reader.

Mr Watts tells us: 'No names are neural in fiction - they all carry the weight of their predecessors.' (Writing a Novel p 44)

Watts gives the example of a name such as 'Juliet' - It carries such weight that the question has to be asked - 'Does the resonance suit your intention?' (p44)

Its not just character names that are discussed. The title of our work and the job of our characters are also important. I will be discussing this in a future post.

Writer's Blog - Symbolism

'A symbol is anything that stands for anything else. Of course, all language is symbolic - the word 'dog' has never yet bitten anybody - however, the literary forms referred to as symbolism are: metaphor, simile and allegory.' (43) Writing a Novel.
The chapter goes on to list the purposes of symbolism.

1. To Demonstrate a Concept


2. To add a further dimension


3. To sneak behind the rational mind

These concepts are rather complicated. Basically the emphasis in this section is that writing is a form of lying. "love is not at all like a rose, nor the moon like a balloon) P44 Meaning that words are already an agreed symbol. If there was some undeniable truth to words then there wouldn't be many languages.

I think the most interesting thing discussed in this section is the importance of names. It talks of how the wrong name can carry too much weight and not work in the story.

I remember hearing that Captain Jonathan Archer in Enterprise was originally to be call Jackson Archer.This was shelved when it was realised that there was only one Jackson Archer in the US. So it was then decided to call him Jeffrey Archer!

I have occasionally searched for the names of my characters. As I write this I seem to remember talking about this before. Of course its impossible to cover all possibilities. I might give a character a name that rhythms with a famous American chat show host. So on the whole I think worrying about such things is a little silly. When we consider the international nature of publications every name will sound silly somewhere.

Writer's Blog - Sub plot

Writing a Novel continues with a chapter on sub plot.

Sub-plot is basically a secondary part of the novel, or television episode, that compliments the main plot. At least that would be how I'd define it. Of course this has been done badly as in Silent Enemy, an episode of Enterprise. The summery, or Cliffnotes version, is that the ship is being attacked and the captain keeps ordering Hoshi to find out Reed's favourite food!

So to the book. The chapter begins with, oddly enough, a simple definition. Since I couldn't hope to match eloquence of Watts I'll start with that.

'The sub-plot is a subsidiary storyline which runs parallel to the main story, a narrative strand that can be taken away without causing the whole book to unravel.' (p41)

As mentioned above Enterprise got the idea of the sub-plot wrong in Silent Enemy. However I would be remiss if I didn't mention where Star Trek had done it well....



This is widely regarded as the best of the Star Trek cliffhangers. - As an aside its wonderful to be able to say that without having to put references!

Anyway this is the point in The Best of Both Worlds where Riker shows he can command the Enterprise. (Its later undone as the must be the reset button!) Its where the sub-plot combines with the main plot.

Of course its not totally necessary for the plots to combine in quite this way. A sub-plot can have little to do with the main thrust of the story but can help with character development. I'm trying to think of an example of where this was done and am coming up empty. I am trying to bring in a subplot in my novel. One of my characters discovers her magical ability and wishes to use that to help her mother, who is in a state of depression, it is not directly related to the main plot but it should serve to show what sort of person this character is.

Like the central theme of a novel Watts notes that a sub-plot also requires an arc. Watts also notes the dangers of the 'two-headed monster.' (p42)

'Beware of developing the sub-plot too much: you may create a two-headed monster, that is, a story with two distinct plots of equal weight, which can be confusing to the reader' (p42)

I'll discuss more on that next time. (Which may be tomorrow)

Writer's Blog - No Title Comes to Mind

Its Thursday. That sounds like the beginning to an even worse song about a day in the week. With that sentence I jump on the bandwagon of bashing Rebecca Black. Perhaps this is just a shameless way to get more hits on this site - but to be honest its just what occurred to me when I started writing this post. Basically I'm surprised at myself for actually keeping up with blog posts as I intended.

The other day I submitted a story for a competition. The competition is for Writing Magazine. This took some time as the upload didn't work. The problem was my story had a question mark in the title and for some reason that wasn't allowed! Anyway it is now submitted.

Tomorrow I will get my results for university. The funny thing is that I only found out about this thanks to Facebook - I don't think I've received official notification from the uni.

Anyway on to Writing a Novel.




As you'll remember from the previous two posts I was discussing the eight point story arc. As I believe I mentioned it is important that the arc is not the only thing used to bring out the story. Watts states 'I find [the 8 point story arc) most useful as a checklist against which to measure a work in progress.' (p38)

So when you embark on your novel keep this in mind. Also a novel doesn't need to have one protagonist - it might have many. The eight point arc might be required for all characters.

I've discussed this section of the book in quite a lot of detail. This chapter finishes with a couple of exercises to try. It has lists of character, object and setting. From these three it suggests that a story can be formed. Since I am already working on two novels, plus short stories, I don't want to start yet another. If you want plots for your story a google search of plot generator should get you started. I particularly like Seventh Sanctum- it has many generators for stories.

Happy writing.

The next chapter of Writing a Novel is on Sub Plots and Symbolism. I'll begin working on that post now. I will either set it to come out in a few days or failing that it will be on Tuesday.

Writer's Blog ...and so it continues.

It was back in March that I last discussed Writing a Novel by Nigel Watts. I was looking at Chapter 3 which details the concepts of the eight point story arc. You can click here for the earlier post.

I won't go into the details here but if you want to know about this type of an arc then Daily Writing Tips describes it well.

For this post I want to discuss the rest of Chapter 3. Watts goes on to discuss arcs of a novel in general. The arc is the change the character undergoes across the story. Sadly character change and growth can something be rare in fiction. This is especially true it television which often makes use of the reset button. I particularly rememberer Earth: Final Conflict being bad for this. A new technology would be introduced at the beginning of an episode and, for various reasons, be unusable by the end. Admittedly I didn't see it all the way through and I believe it is said to have later improved. Anyway I'm getting off topic...

To show the merits of the eight point story arc the example of Jack and the Beanstalk is used. It is highlighted that Jack and the Beanstalk is not the tightest of stories. Naturally it was written for children so the plot, were it written for adults, would no doubt be tightened.

Watts tells us: "The protagonist should pass greater and greater points of no return, facing greater dangers and having greater pressure put on his resources." (p36) This is important to ensure that the story continues. Also I feel that the protagonist has to believe that these challenges are achievable - or at the very least the cost of failure is so high that there is little other choice. Finally Watts breaks down the plot of this fairy tale into its minor, major and grand plot points. The main thing to take away from this is that the difficulties are what makes a story. Jack steals gold from the giant, this version uses an ogre, if it had been a gift their would be no story.

Well I've just done a preview of this post and its quite long. So I'll finish with a quote that Watts uses to illustrate this point. I will certainly be making another post on Tuesday and may post one before then.

Nothing progresses in a story, except through conflict.

Robert McKee

Writer's Blog 2011-03-28

I think it was last year that I started looking at "Writing a Novel" part of the teach yourself range.

This next section is about the eight point story arc.

1. Stasis


2. Trigger


3. The quest


4. Critical choice


5. Climax


6. Reversal


7. Resolution

Anyone who's studied scriptwriting will probably recognise these. Each one of them can be phrased differently. I've heard "Stasis" expressed as "Who is the protagonist and what do they want?" This is a good place to start as it keeps the Vorlons and and the Shadows happy.

I was first presented with this idea in class. I must say that I misunderstood it. This is not a strict code rather it is guidelines. It is useful as a plan for a film or a novel. However in my opinion some subversion of the structure is advisable. Otherwise every story would be the same.

Everyone has seen films that follow this structure. To me it seems that particularly romantic comedies follow it. You must have seen them. The relationship is all going well. Then suddenly their is a hiccup. Somebody acts stupid, or a secret is revealed, and it looks like the couple will not live happily every after. Then we get the montage and they get back together in the end.

I've just finished a script based on this structure. In the planning stages I thought it to be a terrible encumbrance but in the final analysis it has been most useful.

The way I was taught was that these eight points then become part of a larger plan. For me this was forty points altogether. My script basically goes through and intersects all those points. Then will come the editing phase and hopefully the result will be an excellent script.

I have a scriptwriting tutorial later in the week. I will look more closely at this structure then. Until then: Good night, good morning, good afternoon and good evening. - depending on where you live.

Live long and prosper.

Writer's Blog 2011-02-11

In continuing to look at Writing a Novel there's a paragraph I'd like to share with you:

There is a basic human need for fiction, a need which comes on the heals of our primary requirements...There have been storytellers since people had full enough bellies to stop and think for a moment...the audience is seeking the fulfilment of these same three needs: entertainment, escape, understanding. (p16)

Each chapter has many exercises. At the end of this chapter we are asked to think of our favourite story.

I can't say what my favourite story is. Frankly it depends on a great many factors. I'll probably have a different answer depending on who I'm with. Two excellent stories come to mind though:
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and the Old Kingdom trilogy.

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy is a great story. I've read it, listened to it and watched it. So as not to ruin it for you, this is the story of a man who travels the galaxy in his dressing gown. The radio version is the best, followed by the book, then the TV series - the movie? AVOID. Okay it wasn't that bad. It wasn't Star Wars prequels bad. But it doesn't hold a candle to the BBC series.

The Old Kingdom trilogy is a set of fantasy novels. I have been looking at the follow up book, Across the Wall, recently for a critical essay for university. I found I remembered very little of the original trilogy other than the fact that they were very good books. They are not your typical fantasy novels. I don't really want to say more than that other than: 'They're brilliant - read them!'

I would just like to highlight something I tweeted the other day. Recently I've been watching Charmed. I completely missed it in its original run. It must have been on a channel other than BBC! Anyway I just wanted to say how much I appreciate the writing in this series. In one of the last episodes I watched, Piper brakes up with her boyfriend. They talk briefly, he calmly says he understands, kisses her and leaves. I'm glossing over the details but the point is that there were no feelings of hatred and it was calm. Often when a relationship ends in film or TV there's always crying and swearing and, in the case of Buffy, death. These two people were written like human beings!

Writer's Blog 2010-01-26

I would imagine that most writers buy writing guides. I have many. In this image I'm holding Writing a Novel. It is part of the teach yourself range. At the end of each chapter it has exercises to try. So that is what I'm going to do.

The first chapter deals with planning. I am not a great one for planning. Usually I prefer to make a start and see where the story goes. In the same way that sometimes just playing a game is a better way to learn, rather than reading the rules.

I have a vague idea of where my novel is going. I uploaded some sections of it here but I think that quite a lot has changed since then. I'd rather not upload my plan but I will discuss something else the book talks of and that is why I want to write.

I wish I could say that writing is purely my passion. This is not strictly true. I enjoy some of the process, such as universe creation, but it still feels like a slog. Maybe there is nothing wrong with that. While the act of writing isn't so interesting the telling of the story is. If I had children I would probably be telling them stories of my own creation every evening. Hopefully they would be interested. As I have no one to tell stories to, I write them down. It would be nice if I could make money from this one day. However if I won the lottery, which would be magic considering I don't play, I think I would continue to write and upload them for free.
Making money is simply a factor of life. So when I say I want to make money from this it is a matter of practicality. Of course I could just get a job but that to me seems rather dull.

Part of my reason for writing is also, I'm not sure how to put this, for lack of a better word, copying. I don't mean writing Stellar Conflicts, Star Wars, I mean taking a pick'n'mix of ideas. So maybe you have a story about a vampire hunter but he/she is in the twenty-fourth century. From the excellent Firefly we know that strange genera mixes can work. Sometimes in reading or in watching films I try to guess the plot. Then when I get it wrong I can write that story. More than that though there are times when other works of fiction have ideas that aren't used beyond one episode/chapter. As a writer you can take those on board an make something great.
I have no proof of any connection but TNG had an episode about, what was essentially, a stargate They didn't use beyond that episode, and one of DS9, but for the various Stargate incarnations it is the entire premise.