My Publishing Journey ... with Lorraine Mace

By Gillian Hamer

Lorraine Mace is an author, columnist and editor. In addition to a critique and author mentoring service, she also hosts creative writing workshops in Spain. A former tutor for the Writers Bureau, she is co-author of The Writer’s ABC Checklist. She is the founder of the international writing competitions at Flash 500 (Novel Opening and Synopsis, Flash Fiction and Humour Verse). Writing as Frances di Plino, she is the author of Crooked Cat Publishing’s D. I. Paolo Storey crime thriller series. Book 5 is due for publication next year.

Here she discusses why she writes, and what she has learned on her journey to publication.

Welcome, Lorraine, you've had a long and varied writing career. First question ... why do you write?
I write because I have no other way of getting the voices out of my head! I don’t mean the demonic kind (although readers of my Frances di Plino crime series might argue that point). I mean the multitude of characters who are alive in my mind.
They have conversations, arguments, fall in love, fall out of love, kill, maim, heal, nurture, work at jobs they love and at those they hate. They live and breathe and in my head and if I don’t write I have no peace.
Various plots and settings are also there, but it’s the characters who refuse to go away until I’ve told their stories that force me to write.

What’s your first writing memory?
I wrote a ghost story which was chosen as ‘story of the year’ in my school magazine. I can’t remember now if I wrote to a prompt or if the theme was open, but I can still remember the story – I would now rewrite the ending, but then I’ve come a long way since the age of thirteen!

What was the first novel you wrote?
The first novel I wrote was for children aged 8-12 and called Vlad the Inhaler. It’s the story of an eleven-year-old asthmatic hupyre (half human/half vampire). Vlad is scared of the dark, can’t turn into a bat and is a vegetarian who loves peaches. He has to battle bounty hunters, vampires, werewolves, witches and pitchfork wielding villagers. He starts the book hiding from everyone and everything but finds courage and self-belief along the way.

Was writing just a hobby to begin with for you?
Yes. I only took up writing short stories as a way of passing the time when we moved to France in 1999. I am ashamed to say, in my then ignorance, I thought all I needed to do was dash off a story and it was sure to be accepted.
It took several rejections before I was lucky enough to have one published in one of the women’s magazines – for which I earned the amazing sum of £350.
With ignorance reigning once more, I thought a door had opened through which my stories would flow in one direction and money would flow in the other. Anyone who has written fiction for the magazine market will understand how naïve I was back then!

When did you know you were ‘good’?
I don’t know that I have ever decided I was ‘good’. I knew I could write when I started getting more acceptances than rejections for short stories and articles, but even though I am now a published novelist I still don’t feel I have yet reached the point where I am totally happy with my work. As a writer, I feel I should never stop striving to improve and learn.

When and why did you decide you wanted your writing published?
From the moment I started writing my aim was publication. I feel, rightly or wrongly, that there is no point in writing unless you have readers to enjoy the worlds and characters you have created.

What were your first steps towards publication?
My first steps were disastrous! I finished writing my children’s book and immediately sent it off to several top agents. It was first draft and dreadful, but I was so proud of my achievement I thought it was brilliant. I have since learned the hard way that nothing should be sent out until it has been rewritten, revised and polished until it gleams!
My first published novel was Bad Moon Rising (written as Frances di Plino). It was accepted by an indie publishing house as an ebook only. However, I’m delighted to say it was later published in print and went on to be a finalist in the People’s Book Prize.

What has been your proudest writing moment to date?
When my ten-year-old grandson told me he loved my children’s novel. I have received many emails and letters from readers of my crime series, but nothing comes close to how I felt when Tegan said he couldn’t wait to read the second book in the trilogy.

Any mistakes you wish, in hindsight, you had avoided?
Yes, I wish I had used my own name for my crime series. As Lorraine Mace I have a fairly good author platform, but Frances di Plino was totally unknown. Instead of being able to build on an established reader base, I had to make people aware of this made up person.

What do you know now you wish you’d known at the start of your journey?
That getting an agent wasn’t the Holy Grail! When I was signed up by a top children’s agent I believed I had made it and that the next step (publishing deal, foreign right sales, film of the book and all the fabulous stuff authors dream of) would follow as a matter of course.
The reality was completely different. Acquiring an agent is just one tiny step on a very long treadmill that never seems to come to an end.

What top 3 tips would you offer new and up-coming authors hoping to publish?
Don’t ever lose belief in yourself or your work.
Rewrite until your fingers bleed – and then rewrite again.
Don’t believe your friends and family when they tell you how brilliant you are. You might well be brilliant, but until people who really don’t care if they hurt your feelings say you are, the compliments don’t count.

 Find out more about Lorraine and her books:

www.francesdiplino.com

www.lorrainemace.com

Writing Critique Service

www.flash500.com

Question Corner

Lorraine Mace answers readers’ queries.

Alicia from Estepona, Spain, wants to query magazines, but isn’t sure what she should put in the email. She writes: I’ve seen on websites and in magazines that freelancers should query before submitting articles. I’ve sent lots of emails asking editors if I can write for them, but only one replied and that was to say I had to be more specific about what I had to offer the magazine. Does that mean sending my work CV?

No, not at all. Sending a query is not the same as applying for a job. A magazine editor has certain slots that are written in-house by permanent employees. There are other slots that are written by freelancers, but the same writer will fill that column every issue. What you are looking to fill is one of the many slots supplied by freelance writers that are not allocated to a specific writer.

First things first – you need to know that what you want to write fits the magazine you are going to query. This means reading several back issues to get a feel for style, word length, tone and content.

Assuming you’ve done that and have an idea for an article that will absolutely fit with the magazine’s readership, the next thing to do (before writing the article) is to send a query to the editor.

You need to treat this as a business email. Editors are busy people, usually with inboxes overflowing with unsolicited emails. This means you need to make the subject line striking enough to stand out from the rest – more on this later.

What is a query?

This is simply a one page email outlining the article’s content and gives reasons why the editor should commission you to write it.

To whom and from whom?

Always address the editor by name and use Dear Whoever. Once you have built a relationship with an editor you can switch to Hi, Hello, or any other friendlier form of address.

Make sure you have your full contact details in (or after) your signature.

What to say after the greeting

The opening paragraph is crucial – this is where you will make or break your query. If it’s a strong opening the editor will read on. If it isn’t, he or she will move on to the next query. Below are some ideas for strong opening paragraphs.

The first line of your planned article – provided it is attention grabbing!

A quote from someone you have interviewed for the article

A shocking statistic

A relevant newspaper headline

Follow this up with a short description of how you intend to deal with the subject matter – including mentions of interviewees (if any).

Why You?

Having outlined the article, you need to say why you are the right person to write it. Give relevant details of your personal history that promotes your credibility and/or professionalism (as related to the subject matter). If you’ve been a chef in a top restaurant and want to give an insider’s view, mention the work background. However, if you intend to write on global warming, telling the editor how hot it was in the kitchen is not going to influence a decision in your favour.

And lastly

Mention any relevant writing credits if you have any and say you can produce clips (copies of previously published work) if wanted. If you have not yet had any success, simply leave this part out.

Subject heading for the email

Only decide what to put in the subject line after you’ve written the email. By the time you’ve reached the end you should have a better idea of what angle you can take. It needs to be to the point and eye-catching. A play on words or the punchline to a joke can work, as can a short, sharp statement. You need to tailor the hook in the heading to the subject matter of your proposed article.

Good luck!

Lorraine Mace is the humour columnist for Writing Magazine and head competition judge for Writers’ Forum. She is a former tutor for the Writers Bureau, and is the author of the Writers Bureau course, Marketing Your Book. She is also co-author, with Maureen Vincent-Northam of The Writer’s ABC Checklist (Accent Press). Lorraine runs a private critique service for writers (link below). She is the founder of the Flash 500 competitions covering flash fiction, humour verse and novel openings.

Her debut novel for children, Vlad the Inhaler, has now been followed by the second in the trilogy, Vlad’s Quest.

Writing as Frances di Plino, she is the author of four crime/thriller novels featuring Detective Inspector Paolo Storey: Bad Moon Rising, Someday Never Comes, Call It Pretending and Looking for a Reason by Crooked Cat Publishing.

Writing Critique Service

www.lorrainemace.com

www.flash500.com

www.francesdiplino.com

Question Corner

Lorraine Mace answers readers’ queries.

Jefferson from Carlisle writes to ask how he can build tension into his novel: I’ve written a spy thriller (well I think it’s thrilling) but people who’ve read it say it doesn’t have enough tension. One of my writing friends says it needs cliff-hangers. I thought I’d done that, but maybe I haven’t done it right. Can you help?

Before we look at how to use cliff-hangers, let’s first outline what they are supposed to achieve. A cliff-hanger should leave readers in suspense, desperate to find out what happens next.

This means stopping a chapter or scene at a point where tension is high, but then switching to different scene or point of view. For example: A rapist and murderer picks his victims from joggers and follows them for a few weeks before turning up on their doorsteps, pretending to be from DHL parcel delivery. Sarah has just arrived home after her regular morning jog when the doorbell rings and the man on the doorstep claims to have a package to deliver.

At that point the chapter ends and the next one opens with a friend’s point of view, planning to meet Sarah for lunch, or move to the police point of view following up on an earlier rape/murder. The important thing is to leave the reader worrying about what has happened to Sarah.

However, cliff-hangers are not the only way to inject tension. Why not try adding in a few (or all) of the following?

Surprise, Surprise

Turn the tables from time to time. What about having a character who appears to be the bad guy, but is actually an undercover good guy? Or vice versa. What about having someone who appears to be a loving mother desperate to save her only child from drink and drugs, but is actually the reason the character went off the rails in the first place?

The longer you can make the reader think a character only wants the best for the protagonist, the greater the fear factor when the truth is revealed.

Put us in the villain’s head

If readers know things the protagonist doesn’t (especially if not knowing will put the protagonist in danger) it will add to the tension as we watch the hapless character walk into a trap.

Have an unstable character

If one of the characters is violent, or likely to break down without warning putting others in danger, readers will tense every time that character appears in a scene.

Hold back information

Don’t tell too much too soon. Drip feed information only as it is needed. Don’t feel you have to lay everything out so everyone can ‘get’ the story – trust your readers. Crime/thriller readers, in particular, are very good at following complex storylines with minimal information.

Phobias always add tension

Your protagonist probably has more than enough to cope with, but if readers know he or she also has a phobia that can really ramp up the tension. For example, someone adrift on a raft in tropical seas is scary enough, but add to that a pathological fear of sharks and the tension rises even before the first sight of a grey fin.

Time as an enemy

If there is all the time in the world to achieve a goal, there is little tension involved. However, if there is a time limit (four hours before a bomb explodes) the countdown adds to the fear factor. In Call it Pretending (the third D.I. Paolo Storey novel) a murder takes place every Friday and the killer leaves a note counting down the number of victims left alive. Six victims, six weeks, Paolo has limited time to solve the case and save lives.

Confined spaces

Put your characters into a confined space from which they are unable to escape (warehouse, boat, garage, loft). Even larger areas can become confined spaces if the protagonist has no way of getting out safely. For example, a forest can be a confined space if someone is being hunted.

Kill someone

If you kill off one of the good guys fairly early in the book, readers will worry even more about the others.

Twist before you go

If you can keep one final (plausible) twist in reserve for the last few pages readers will be reaching for your next book as soon as they put this one down (and they’ll buy the one after that and the one after that).

Obviously you don’t need to use all of these techniques, but if you pick the ones that will work best for your story, and incorporate them, I promise your readers won’t be complaining about lack of tension.

Lorraine Mace is the humour columnist for Writing Magazine and head competition judge for Writers’ Forum. She is a former tutor for the Writers Bureau, and is the author of the Writers Bureau course, Marketing Your Book. She is also co-author, with Maureen Vincent-Northam of The Writer’s ABC Checklist (Accent Press). Lorraine runs a private critique service for writers (link below). She is the founder of the Flash 500 competitions covering flash fiction, humour verse and novel openings.

Her debut novel for children, Vlad the Inhaler, was published in the USA on 2^nd April 2014. The second in the trilogy is due out in July 2015.

Writing as Frances di Plino, she is the author of four crime/thriller novels featuring Detective Inspector Paolo Storey: Bad Moon Rising, Someday Never Comes, Call It Pretending and Looking for a Reason by Crooked Cat Publishing.

Writing Critique Service

www.lorrainemace.com

www.flash500.com

www.francesdiplino.com

Question Corner

Lorraine Mace answers readers’ queries.

I received this plea for layout/punctuation clarification: Please could you clarify punctuation rules for dialogue by e-mail, which separates it from any spoken dialogue in the same piece? I would prefer this question not to be posted in your magazine, unless my contact details are suppressed. You may not need all of the sample, as the problem is really defined in the last paragraph, but I leave that to you.

This is the sample which accompanied the query:

Just then Joe’s phone rang.

‘We need to get together this afternoon,’ Sandra said. ‘Can you come over?’

‘Yes, sure,’ Joe answered. ‘What time?’

‘Three suit you?’

‘OK, see you then!’ Joe hung up, swore, and returned to his e-mail to Mike: “I have to see Megabrain at 4.30pm. She loves making me work late. I’ll get to Mario’s as soon as I can.”

There isn’t a definitive way of showing this, as it could be done in a few different styles. However, the main point to bear in mind is that the reader has to instantly realise what is spoken and what is written, without intrusive explanations.

As convention dictates that only the spoken word requires quote marks, I would advise against using them for the email exchange. It has been made clear Joe is communicating with Mike via email, so you could simply remove the quote marks.

Joe hung up, swore, and returned to his e-mail to Mike: I have to see Megabrain at 4.30pm. She loves making me work late. I’ll get to Mario’s as soon as I can.

If you wished, for added clarity, you could use italics.

Joe hung up, swore, and returned to his e-mail to Mike: I have to see Megabrain at 4.30pm. She loves making me work late. I’ll get to Mario’s as soon as I can.

Whichever style you choose, the two Cs should be in the forefront of your mind: clarity and consistency. Make sure it’s clear to the reader and be consistent in your usage. If you use italics for the email exchanges on one page, but not on another, the reader will get confused (and irritated).

Margaret from Exeter is having trouble with the pluperfect (even if she may not realise that’s where the problem lies): I’ve been told my flashbacks are clunky to read because I use too many hads, but if I’m already using the past tense for the main story, how else am I going to show that I’ve gone even further back? Is there another way to show that other than using had?

Let’s look at the definition of pluperfect in English: It denotes an action completed prior to some past point of time specified or implied, formed by using had and the past participle, as in he had wanted to meet her, but she had already left.

As a flashback shows action completed prior to the time she is writing about using the past tense, this definitely qualifies as a reason to use the pluperfect. So, Margaret is absolutely right in using it, but her friends are also right: overuse can be clunky and distancing to read.

 If we look at this short passage, you’ll see what I mean.

Michael had wanted to see for himself that Janet was meeting another man. He had sat at a corner table of the pub where he had been certain he could not be seen and had waited for over an hour before Janet had appeared. She had been alone when she came in. She had gone straight to the bar. As she had sipped her drink, a man had come in and had stood next to her.

When going into flashback it is important to signal it so that the reader is aware of what is happening, so using the pluperfect in the opening sentence is fine. However, to avoid the clunky feel, you should switch to the simple past tense as soon as possible.

Michael had wanted to see for himself that Janet was meeting another man. He sat at a corner table where he couldn’t be seen and waited for over an hour before Janet appeared. She was alone when she came in and went straight to the bar. As she sipped her drink, a man came in and stood next to her.

Lorraine Mace is the humour columnist for Writing Magazine and head competition judge for Writers’ Forum. She is a former tutor for the Writers Bureau, and is the author of the Writers Bureau course, Marketing Your Book. She is also co-author, with Maureen Vincent-Northam of The Writer’s ABC Checklist (Accent Press). Lorraine runs a private critique service for writers (link below). She is the founder of the Flash 500 competitions covering flash fiction, humour verse and novel openings.

Her debut novel for children, Vlad the Inhaler, was published in the USA on 2^nd April 2014.

Writing as Frances di Plino, she is the author of the crime/thriller novels featuring Detective Inspector Paolo Storey: Bad Moon Rising, Someday Never Comes and Call It Pretending

The fourth in the series, Looking for a Reason, was recently released by Crooked Cat Publishing.

Writing Critique Service

www.lorrainemace.com

www.flash500.com

www.francesdiplino.com

Question Corner with Lorraine Mace

Lorraine Mace gives some punctuation and grammar tips in response to readers’ queries.

Niall from Luton gets confused about quote marks and asked for some advice: I see some people use quote marks like these ‘ ’ and others use the ones that look like this “ ”. How can I find out which ones to use and does it matter?

As you’ve shown in your email, there are two different types of quotation marks: single and double. Double quotation marks are now used less than they were in the past, but some magazines and publishers still favour them over the single marks.

The best way to decide which to use is to check the house style of your target market to see which they prefer. If you’re planning to approach a magazine, finding out which they use is as simple as opening a recent copy and looking at the content.

However, if you are planning to submit a manuscript to a publisher or agent, very often they will have their desired formatting style on the submissions pages of their websites. If the guidelines don’t stipulate one or the other, I would simply use the style with which you feel most comfortable.

Do bear in mind that whichever marks you use for direct speech, you would then use the opposite quotation marks to quote 'speech within speech'.

Example:

‘I’m praying Jack hasn’t started drinking again. When he left this morning he said, “I’m going to the supermarket.” That was hours ago and he should have returned by now.’

The double quotation marks show that someone is being quoted word for word. If you use double quotation marks for the main speech, use singles for the ‘speech within speech’.

Other uses for quotation marks:

Idiomatic expressions, for example: He was always referred to as a ‘pain in the neck’. Note that when quotation marks are used in this manner the full stop or comma comes outside the marks, but if quotation marks are used for dialogue the full stop or comma comes inside the marks.

When quoting the title of a magazine article: ‘The Generation Game’ in Spanish Magazine, March 2007.

(The above answer was partly taken from The Writer’s ABC Checklist)

Michaela from Huddersfield has sent in an interesting question about using natural sounding speech: I recently had a short story critiqued and the person who commented on my writing said I was making a mistake when I wrote my character was sat at the bar. I don’t see what’s wrong with that – it’s how the character speaks. In fact, he didn’t pick up on almost the same words in dialogue, so I’m now even more confused.

This is a case of narrative versus dialogue grammar usage. In dialogue, we can use all sorts of incorrect grammar, because it is, as you pointed out, how the characters speak. However, in narrative (where no one is speaking) using exactly the same construction would, in most cases, be incorrect.

I’ll use your query term in the following example.

Dan sighed. “I don’t know why Jane got so upset. I was sat at the bar minding my own business and her mate came on to me. I didn’t start it.”

In the above paragraph, it’s fine to say I was sat because it is in direct speech and is in keeping with Dan’s character.

However, if we change things around a bit, so that we only have narrative, we cannot use the same construction because it is grammatically incorrect. We can only use Dan was sitting or Dan sat.

Dan was sitting at the bar…

Or

Dan sat at the bar…

To summarise: in dialogue you can use incorrect grammar, as long as it is in keeping with the way the character would speak, but in narrative you have to ensure the grammar is correct.

Lorraine Mace is the humour columnist for Writing Magazine and a competition judge for Writers’ Forum. She is a former tutor for the Writers Bureau, and is the author of the Writers Bureau course, Marketing Your Book. She is also co-author, with Maureen Vincent-Northam of The Writer’s ABC Checklist (Accent Press). Lorraine runs a private critique service for writers (link below). She is the founder of the Flash 500 competitions covering flash fiction, humour verse and novel openings.

Her debut novel for children, Vlad the Inhaler, was published in the USA on 2^nd April 2014.

Writing as Frances di Plino, she is the author of the crime/thriller novels featuring Detective Inspector Paolo Storey: Bad Moon Rising, Someday Never Comes and Call It Pretending

The fourth in the series, Looking for a Reason, was released by Crooked Cat Publishing on 28^th October.

Writing Critique Service

www.lorrainemace.com

www.flash500.com

www.francesdiplino.com

Capitals in titles, professional societies and word counts – Lorraine Mace answers your questions

Sean from Brighton sent in a formatting question: I never know when to use capitals in titles. I see sometimes there are words in the middle without caps, but I don’t know why. Also, should the title of a story have a full stop at the end?

I’ll answer the last question first, as it will be the short part of my answer. No, titles shouldn’t have a full stop at the end as they are not sentences. However, if the title forms a question, you should use a question mark or, if it is necessary to show shock, surprise or a similar emotion, an exclamation mark.

Question: Far from the Madding Crowd?

Exclamation: Far from the Madding Crowd!

Straight title: Far from the Madding Crowd

As you can see from the title I’ve borrowed in the explanation above, some of the words are in lower case. What I’ve used is called title case.

This is because capital letters are used only for the first word and the principal words.

So, you would use capitals for all words which are not articles (a/an/the), conjunctions (any joining word such as and/but/or) and prepositions (such as on/in/with/from).

If a title starts with an article, conjunction or preposition, that would be capitalised, but only in that case.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix does not have the conjunction, articles or preposition capitalised. However, if the book title hadn’t included Harry’s name, the first article would need to be capitalised as it would be the first word in the title: The Order of the Phoenix

Alice from Tenby wants to join a professional association, but has been turned down by the Society of Authors: I’ve self-published my first novel and I think it’s going to do really well, but when I tried to join the Society of Authors, I was told I didn’t qualify because I’m self-published and haven’t yet sold enough books. I know from an author friend who is a member that the Society offers authors lots of help and advice with legal matters. Is there something similar for self-published authors I could join?

Yes, what you’re looking for is ALLi (The Alliance of Independent Authors), a non-profit association of author-publishers. On their website it states: We offer connection and collaboration, advice and education. And we campaign for, and further the interests of, self-publishing writers everywhere. I’m sure you will find everything you need on their website. The address is: http://allianceindependentauthors.org/

Veronica from Marbella has a problem with her novel being too long: I’ve been told by many people (and seen it on countless websites) that publishers won’t look at debut novels that are too long. I’ve been told mine, a story set in the days of the French Resistance, should be between 70,000 and 90,000 words. I’m only about two-thirds of the way into it and it’s already over 85,000 words. What should I do? Should I cut out one of the characters? Change the plot slightly? Take out one of the subplots? Please help, because I can’t bear the thought of spending all this time writing a book and then being told it’s too long to be published.

First of all, the thing to bear in mind about word count guidelines is that is all they are – guidelines. If a stunning novel landed on an agent or publisher’s desk that they simply couldn’t put down, there is no way it would be rejected as being too long, even if it was well over the standard word count!

Secondly, you have said yourself that you haven’t even finished the book yet, so there is no way of knowing what should be cut, if anything.

A first draft is just a way of getting your thoughts and ideas down on paper. When you go through your first rewrite you will automatically cut sentences, paragraphs, maybe even entire scenes, because they don’t fit. You may find that you have two or three minor players who could be morphed into one stronger character, which again would affect the word count.

On second, third, fourth and fifth drafts, you’ll tighten dialogue, cut out all the padding and unnecessary adjectives and adverbs.

By the time your novel is ready to be sent anywhere, it will be a much smoother, sleeker beast than the one you are currently wrestling with. Get the words down and leave the worries about length and publishing needs until you’ve polished your baby so that it gleams. If it does that, no one will care if it’s a few thousand words more than the guidelines say it should be.

If you have a question for Lorraine, email lorraine@quinnpublications.co.uk

Lorraine Mace is the humour columnist for Writing Magazine and a competition judge for Writers’ Forum. She is a former tutor for the Writers Bureau, and is the author of the Writers Bureau course, Marketing Your Book. She is also co-author, with Maureen Vincent-Northam of The Writer's ABC Checklist (Accent Press). Lorraine runs a private critique service for writers (link below). She is the founder of the Flash 500 competitions covering flash fiction, humour verse and novel openings.

Her debut novel for children, Vlad the Inhaler, was published in the USA on 2^nd April 2014.

Writing as Frances di Plino, she is the author of the crime/thriller series featuring Detective Inspector Paolo Storey: Bad Moon Rising, Someday Never Comes and Call It Pretending

Writing Critique Service

www.lorrainemace.com

www.flash500.com

Frances di Plino

Question Corner with Lorraine Mace

Unblocking the Blockage

Gerard Young is suffering from something many writers have faced. He writes: I have a problem and I need some advice. I have a crippling writer's block that I can't get rid of. I have some ideas for stories but when it comes to writing the story, nothing. What should I do? Would enrolling in a writing course help in any way?

Enrolling in a writing course might well be the answer to your problem, but I doubt it. If you have ideas already, but can’t bring yourself to write them, being on a course might add to your woes, rather than easing them.

There are as many reasons for writer’s block occurring as there are suggested ways of dealing with it. As I don’t know you on a personal level, I will have to put forward several things for you to try. I hope one or more of the following will do the trick for you.

Have a set time to write

Whether it’s first thing in the morning, an hour when you get home from work, half an hour during your lunch break, set aside the same time every day. It doesn’t matter what you write. The important thing here is to train your mind to accept that this part of the day is writing time.

Another trick under this heading is changing the time you’ve set aside to write. If you have already made the decision that mornings are your writing time, but it no longer works for you, change the time. Write in the evening instead.

Relax and stop looking for perfection

Don’t read what you’ve written so far. Just get on with the next bit. Turn off your internal editor. Many people stop writing because they cannot produce perfect prose in a first draft. Nobody can! Don’t allow the fear of imperfection to get between you and your writing. There will always be time to polish that imperfect prose. Get it written and edit it later – much later!

Don’t write

Sounds like a contradiction, I know, but maybe your brain needs time to formulate the ideas properly before you settle down to write. You might have so many ideas in your head that you aren’t able to decide which one you want to develop. Go for a walk. Take a train journey. Spend an evening with friends. Forget about writing for a while. You’ll come back to it refreshed and raring to go.

Read more

Reading helps the creative juices to flow. I find reading in a different genre to the one I write in is beneficial, but you might find you get better results if you read material similar to that you want to write.

Set deadlines with a writing buddy

Find a friend, online or in real life, who also wants to get back into writing on a regular basis. This works well if you lay out some ground rules first. Decide how many words per day, week or month you will each write. Then set deadlines for exchange of material. It’s a bit like running with a friend, or going to the gym. It’s easy to backslide when you’re on your own, but much harder to drop out if you’ve committed yourself to a word count and deadline with someone else.

Work on more than one book, story, article or poem at a time

This doesn’t work for everyone, but some writers find it easier to switch between works, depending on what moves them for that day.

Writing exercises

I’ll be honest, writing exercises for the sake of it isn’t something that would work for me, but I have been told that many writers swear by it as a way to overcome writer’s block.

However, there is one thing that I do, which could be considered a writing exercise. Try interviewing the characters you want to write about. Put together a series of questions and then write up the answers as if you were the character. I find characters come to life if I allow them to answer for themselves. Believe me, once that happens, your characters will live in your head, nagging nonstop until you write their story.

Make sure your writing space works for you

Is your desk covered in scraps of paper? Do you feel hemmed in and uncomfortable? If your work area doesn’t make you feel creative, it will stifle the urge to write. Spend a bit of time making your writing area somewhere you want to be.

Remember that writing is fun!

This is the biggie, for me. Most of us write for pleasure. It’s fun. We create worlds and people to populate those worlds. Then we make life difficult for them so that they have to overcome obstacles in order to succeed in whatever we have decided they should do. We have the power to make them fall in love, fall out of love, go to war, lose a battle, find a friend, betray a colleague, become a saint, sup with the devil, rise like a star, fall into despair. How can we not enjoy ourselves?

Let go of your inhibitions – write and have some fun.

If you have a question for Lorraine, comment here or email lorraine@quinnpublications.co.uk

Lorraine Mace is the humour columnist for Writing Magazine and a competition judge for Writers’ Forum. She is a former tutor for the Writers Bureau, and is the author of the Writers Bureau course, Marketing Your Book. She is also co-author, with Maureen Vincent-Northam of The Writer's ABC Checklist (Accent Press). Lorraine runs a private critique service for writers (link below). She is the founder of the Flash 500 competitions covering flash fiction, humour verse and novel openings.

Her debut novel for children, Vlad the Inhaler, was published in the USA on 2^nd April 2014.

Writing as Frances di Plino, she is the author of the crime/thriller series featuring Detective Inspector Paolo Storey: Bad Moon Rising, Someday Never Comes and Call It Pretending.

Writing Critique Service

www.lorrainemace.com

www.flash500.com

Frances di Plino

Question Corner with Lorraine Mace - Answers to questions on that, which and where

Seb from Inverness sent in a question over when to use that and when to use which. I know this is something that vexes many writers, so hope the answer helps.

Seb says: I’m not a novice writer by any means, but I can never decide what the rule is over that and which. Is there a simple way to remember?

Okay, the basic rule is this: if the sentence doesn’t need the clause (it makes sense without) you use which. If the sentence does need the clause you use that.

The car, which is green, has a manual gearbox.

The car that is green has a manual gearbox.

The two sentences look identical at first, but the meanings are not the same.

The car, which is green, has a manual gearbox. This tells us there is only one car and it has a manual gearbox. The clause (the words inside the two commas) isn’t necessary to illustrate the meaning. It is additional information and doesn’t affect the fact there is only one car and it has a manual gearbox.

The car that is green has a manual gearbox. This sentence suggests there is more than one car, but it is the car that is green that has the manual gearbox. The phrase ‘that is green’ is necessary to show clearly of all the cars on the forecourt, it is the green one that has the manual gearbox.

The proper phrase for it is a restrictive clause because another part of the sentence depends on it. You can’t remove that clause (that is green) without changing the meaning of the sentence.

Nancy, who is currently living in Barcelona, is doing a non-fiction writing course. As she says: living abroad, it’s not always easy to carry out research. Do you know of any good reference sites?

As I wasn’t sure what topic or categories would be of benefit, I’ve collected a range of online reference sites, all of which are useful for those of us who have limited access to English language libraries and museums, but are equally useful to readers who aren’t resident abroad.

Dictionaries

Ask Oxford has built a database on grammar, usage and words, as well as giving a quote of the week, word of the day, spelling help and origins of words and phrases. http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/

Cambridge dictionary is useful: http://dictionary.cambridge.org/

Merriam Webster www.merriam-webster.com/ is another good online dictionary and http://thesaurus.reference.com/ is useful when an alternative word is needed.

Quotes and Sayings

www.quotesandsayings.com/ is a wonderful site to find quotes by subject or author, excerpts from speeches and poetry, and a good selection of proverbs and sayings. The site also provides the full text of several books by Arthur Conan Doyle and the following works by Shakespeare: All's Well that Ends Well, As You Like It, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, The Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest and his Sonnets.

Museums

www.24hourmuseum.org.uk is a gateway to various UK museums, galleries and heritage attractions.

www.britishmuseum.org/ provides access to a database of about 5,000 artefacts from the British Museum's collections.

www.cornucopia.org.uk/ produced by the Museums, Libraries and Archive Council, this is an online database of more than 6,000 collections in the UK's museums, galleries, archives and libraries. 

www.iwm.org.uk/ The Imperial War Museum covers conflicts from the First World War to the present day.

www.museumspot.com/ is an American site that provides information on museums and galleries worldwide.

www.nationalgallery.org.uk/ the National Gallery Search allows you to explore by artist, subject, theme or title. 

www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/ the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television gives details of the collections which include the world's first negative and the earliest television footage.

www.npg.org.uk/live/index.asp the National Portrait Gallery lists collections by name of artist or sitter, by medium, or by subject. 

www.nhm.ac.uk/ the Natural History Museum has details of the museum's collections, information about research, details of services and access to the catalogue. 

www.tate.org.uk/ the Tate Online gives access to works in the Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. 

Fee-paying sites

The British Library http://www.bl.uk/ gives online access to this incredible resource and offers copies of documents for a fee.

www.britannica.com/ is the online version of Encyclopaedia Britannica.

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Lorraine Mace is the humour columnist for Writing Magazine and a competition judge for Writers’ Forum. She is a former tutor for the Writers Bureau, and is the author of the Writers Bureau course, Marketing Your Book. She is also co-author, with Maureen Vincent-Northam of The Writer's ABC Checklist (Accent Press). Lorraine runs a private critique service for writers (link below). She is the founder of the Flash 500 competitions covering flash fiction, humour verse and novel openings.

Her debut novel for children, Vlad the Inhaler, will be published in the USA on 2^nd April 2014.

Writing as Frances di Plino, she is the author of the crime/thriller series featuring Detective Inspector Paolo Storey: Bad Moon Rising, Someday Never Comes and Call It Pretending.

Writing Critique Service

www.lorrainemace.com

www.flash500.com

Frances di Plino

Question Corner with Lorraine Mace

What’s the Point (of View) Problem with Head hopping?

Geoff from Barnsley says: I want to write my novel using omniscient point of view, but the friends who have read a few chapters say they can’t follow what’s going on. I want all the characters’ emotions and thoughts to come to the fore, so that my readers know what everyone is feeling. Can you help me to write using this technique? I really don’t want to use limited point of view.

First and foremost, you have to give due to consideration to why you want to use omniscient point of view. Only by knowing why can you decide how and when to use it.

The structure in a novel using this technique is vitally important – even more so than when using third or first person point of view. This is because it is so easy to confuse and/or alienate the reader. You have to know when and where to use it and what effect you are aiming to achieve.

If you have information to impart that is vital to a scene, you need to open that scene in omniscient, so that readers know immediately they are being narrated to by someone who is not one of the characters in the book. If the omniscient narrator is a character, readers need to know that too, so that they can accept this voice intruding from time to time, or filling them in on details the other characters don’t know.

Don’t open with a character’s actions or dialogue, because readers will believe they are in that person’s perspective, which is then thrown off balance when an absent narrator, or one of the other characters, lets us in on their thoughts and feelings within the same scene.

If you want to use omniscient so that you can tell the reader about a period in time and its history, or a new world and future technology, it is fine to use an absent narrator, but you have to use it in the right way. You cannot drop an omniscient voice into the middle of a scene and expect the reader to know that is what you are doing. Open scenes with it and even close scenes in the same voice, but when actually in the scene itself, pick one point of view and stick with it.

Whether you have finished the novel or not, I feel you need to draw up a complete outline of the story. When using omniscient point of view, you have to bring your reader up to speed on the vital aspects, but leave out any details that are not important for the reader to know. There will be masses of information that you (as author) need to know, but that doesn’t mean your reader has to be informed of every tiny detail. You are there to entertain, not to lecture.

You still have to develop your characters or your readers won’t care about them or what happens to them. The reader has to identify with the characters, not the absent narrator. For each scene, pick one main character to follow. Don’t head hop around the minor characters.

Omniscient point of view does not mean giving all the characters the same importance in the story. It means using the unseen narrator’s voice wisely to impart knowledge that you cannot otherwise let the reader in on.

Read Joseph Conrad. He was brilliant at limited omniscient point of view.

Limited omniscient means you limit yourself to being in one character’s head at a time. If you really feel you simply have to change point of view within a scene, do so by showing the reader you have moved to a new point of view.

In a romantic scene, for example, you could open from the girl’s point of view. We see and hear what she sees and hears. We are her as she looks at the love of her life who she feels has betrayed her.

Then the boyfriend could reach out and take her hand, while telling her he has been faithful. In the next sentence you can move into his head as he observes her reaction. The rest of the scene can then be shown from his perspective.

However, once you’ve made the switch, don’t be tempted to move back into the girl’s head. Stay with the boyfriend until you move to a new scene.

True omniscient viewpoint (where we know everything the author knows) is extremely difficult for readers to follow and is almost impossible for authors to get right. Even experienced and much published writers struggle with it. By using limited omniscient you’ll find the challenge less stressful, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy.

If you have a question, email it to lorraine@quinnpublications.co.uk.

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Lorraine Mace is the humour columnist for Writing Magazine and a competition judge for Writers’ Forum. She is a former tutor for the Writers Bureau, and is the author of the Writers Bureau course, Marketing Your Book. She is also co-author, with Maureen Vincent-Northam of The Writer's ABC Checklist (Accent Press). Lorraine runs a private critique service for writers (link below). She is the founder of the Flash 500 competitions covering flash fiction, humour verse and novel openings.

Her debut novel for children, Vlad the Inhaler, will be published in the USA on 2^nd April 2014.

Writing as Frances di Plino, she is the author of the crime/thriller series featuring Detective Inspector Paolo Storey: Bad Moon Rising, Someday Never Comes and Call It Pretending.

Writing Critique Service

www.lorrainemace.com

www.flash500.com

Frances di Plino

Question Corner, with Lorraine Mace

Patrick from Edinburgh has been attending a writers’ group where more experienced writers talk about story and backstory. He isn’t sure of the difference between the two and sent in this heartfelt plea: Please can you explain to me what backstory is. Isn’t that the whole point of telling a story – to let readers know what’s happened to the character?

Let’s start by defining story: a story is a series of events, taking place in a particular setting, which cause a character, or characters, to undergo change or growth.

Now to define backstory: backstory is everything the author needs to know about the characters and setting in order to create a credible and riveting story.

Notice I said everything the author needs to know. The reason for the emphasis is because the reader doesn’t need to know all these things. All the reader needs to know, or rather wants to know, is how the characters react and what part the setting has to play in events.

My day job is critiquing the work of other writers and I deal with a large number of beginners, who almost invariably begin with a backstory info dump of astronomical proportions.

Whenever I point this out to the author, I get a reply explaining exactly why it is essential that the reader knows immediately that Freddy, who is nearly fifty, on the fat side, with sandy hair, hazel eyes, dark eyebrows and a lop-sided grin has only been out of prison for two weeks after being sent down for twenty years for aggravated assault while robbing a post office, not just one post office but a string of them and a bank, too, although he wasn’t actually convicted of the bank job because the cashier turned out to be an unreliable witness (in the end he only served fifteen of the twenty term because he got time off for good behaviour, although he wasn’t really good but the screws were on his payroll so didn’t report that he’d been running a gambling and drug ring on the inside, although one did try to grass him up, but he soon put a stop to that by getting the screws who were on the take to beat him up) and in the first week after getting out he tracked down his old girlfriend because she’d stopped visiting him and he had to beat her and her new boyfriend to a pulp because he couldn’t let them get away with making a fool of him.

If the reader doesn’t know all that, the aggrieved author will ask, how will they understand why he did what he did in week two? Quick answer? They’ll never need to understand, because they won’t read far enough into the book to care!

Taking the example above, how much does the reader really need to know? Very little. All of it is backstory and slows the storytelling.

Some advice given me to when I started out as a writer was to open as close to the action as possible. This is impossible to do if you start out by telling the reader who the players are and why they are there.

Let’s take Freddy and, instead of lumping all that information into the intro, put him right into a pivotal scene instead. If the book opened with Freddy confronting his ex-girlfriend and then beating up the boyfriend, the author would have the perfect opportunity to let the reader know that Freddy is just out of jail. Freddy could berate his ex-girlfriend because she didn’t wait for him. She, in turn, could impart all sorts of information about Freddy and his past as she begs him to spare her new lover.

If we really needed to, we could also learn that Freddy is a bit overweight because he isn’t as fit as he used to be before he went inside. How would the author tell us this? He wouldn’t – he’d show it by Freddy being surprised at how slow he is in attack and being horrified to find he’s wheezing at the end of the fight.

An info dump in the opening paragraphs is the kiss of death to any novel. Opening paragraphs have to hook readers and compel them to read on. They need to make the reader wonder why the characters are acting as they are. As I said earlier, the author needs to know everything, but readers only need to know just enough to intrigue and keep them turning the pages.

Readers can find out a few chapters further on what Freddy got up to while he was inside – provided it’s essential for them to know. But this doesn’t mean it’s okay to use info dumps later in the book. The moment a passage of backstory appears on the page, the author’s voice takes over and the reader is jolted out of the story.

Characters should be just like the people you meet. You have to get to know them by their actions and dialogue. If they speak for themselves, readers will believe in them and follow wherever they go. If the author speaks for them, that connection is broken.

One of the reasons writers are hammered with the mantra of “show, don’t tell” is because it is almost impossible to make an info dump of backstory if you are showing your characters in action, but all too easy to do so if you go into a long spell of narrative.

So, to summarise: think of backstory as an iceberg. It is everything that has happened to the character up to the point he or she appears in the story. The author needs to know all of this so that the players act in character. The reader only needs to know the iceberg tip – just enough to keep them intrigued and desperate to turn those pages.

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Lorraine Mace is the humour columnist for Writing Magazine and a competition judge for Writers’ Forum. She is a tutor for the Writers Bureau, and is the author of the Writers Bureau course, Marketing Your Book. She is also co-author, with Maureen Vincent-Northam of The Writer's ABC Checklist (Accent Press). Lorraine runs a private critique service for writers (link below). She is the founder of the Flash 500 competitions covering flash fiction, humour verse and novel openings.

Writing as Frances di Plino, she is the author of crime/thriller, Bad Moon Rising, featuring Detective Inspector Paolo Storey. The second in the series, Someday Never Comes, was released earlier this year and the third, Call It Pretending, will be out in December.

Writing Critique Service

www.lorrainemace.com

www.flash500.com

Frances di Plino