The weather is so much more than how wet you’re getting. It’s amazing how many writers overlook climate as a useful tool in both setting and also in telling the story.
Many years ago, we relied on the weather and took it seriously. Poor weather affected crops and livestock. Bad weather would even affect health – be it through famine or disease.
Nowadays we have supermarkets that will fly in food from around the world and central heating and air conditioning to ensure that whatever is happening outside, we don’t need to vary the climate inside our home.
But it’s deeper than that. Seasons reflect aspects of life and weather can be a great barometer (pun intended) for emotions.
In reality, we all react slightly differently to the weather. Some love the heat and others despise it. Even considering these variances, the majority of people will react similarly to most climactic conditions.
The English language is littered with idioms that reference the season or the specific weather. They don’t need explaining; we all understand exactly what people mean when they use one. That’s because they are understood as a subconscious level.
Even the most basic of weather descriptions convey a mood:
Spring = hope, new birth
Summer = adulthood, happiness
Autumn = preparing for old age
Winter = death
Sunshine = happiness, goodness
Storm = trouble, a change
Calm before the storm = trouble or a change ahead
Rainbow = hope, a link between two extremes (sun and rain)
Cloudy = confused, muddled, unclear
Clouds on horizon = trouble ahead
No wind = no change
Windy = change
Rough weather = problems
Fog = confusion, unaware
Rain = depressed, bad things
Snow = coldness, cleansing
This makes weather an ideal setting tool to convey what’s going on in the story or in a character’s head.
You don’t need to use the sledgehammer approach but I’d also exercise caution at being too clever. A few references, subtle ones, dropped in during a scene will convey the message.
As an example, if you used the rain as a portent for something bad about to happen, don’t have the character thinking, ‘It’s starting to rain and rain is a bad thing.’
Instead, reference the changing light – from bright to muted grey tones. You could even describe the rain, or its effect as resembling something inherently evil. The use of metaphors and weather work well.
Mention the noise that the rain brings; reference something having to stop because of the weather. Consider how inanimate objects react to the weather – or even how the characters change.
How does the rain affect textures? How does it change how things sound? Does its own noise drown out something the character was listening to? Does it simply stop whatever was making a noise? Does it therefore bring silence?
How does it affect the character’s senses? Does it affect what they’re doing? And be subtle here – does it affect their mood?
Remember to build the mood; don’t dunk the reader in it. Sometimes a sudden change in mood is necessary and an equally sudden change in weather is appropriate but this is likely to be the exception to the rule.
Sometimes the change, or even the manner of the change, is as important as the weather itself.
Let the reader join the dots. If you’ve positioned them well enough, they’ll get the picture. You don’t need to go over them with a wax crayon to convey the message.
Finally, never forget that setting is an integral part of writing a novel. Despite this, the use of weather is just one tool to set the scene – not your only one.
Many writers will tell you that they are great at research. They can spend up to six months prior to putting pen to paper – yet few actually bother to study the market they’re writing for.
Now it’s an interesting aspect, as many books on the subject will give you similar advice – but it’s not necessarily the guidance a marketing expert would give you.
The consensus advice from writing books is to go where the crowds are. On the face of it, it seems a sensible option. Lots of other books equates to lots of readers – and writing is a business like any other. No publisher would want to waste money printing for a market that doesn’t exist.
But think of this from a marketing perspective. If your book has a lot of competition, that means two things.
Firstly there is definitely a market. If similar books are selling, then people want to buy them. This stand to reason. This is a positive message to take to an agent or publisher.
On the flip side, you are up against a lot of other writers for that segment of the market, so why should an agent or publisher choose your ‘me-too’ book?
This is especially true when it comes to finding an agent. Every book I have read suggests you find an agent that represents someone like you. That means they ‘get’ your kind of writing and know how to represent you.
I can agree with that logic, but it doesn’t go far enough. If my agent represents famous Author ‘X’ and I’m like that author, I will immediately be seen as a pale imitation.
Secondly, if I’m submitting something at the same time as Author ‘X,’ which one of us do you think will get the lion’s share of the agent’s time?
Finally, the agent only has a finite amount of time. Do they want to spend that precious commodity trying to sell two similar books? Or would they rather have two dissimilar novels to pitch? I know what I’d do.
So let’s consider the opposite scenario – no competition.
Broadly speaking, this is the reverse of the ‘lots of competition’ scenario. If there is no competition, how can you be sure there’s a market?
On the plus side, an under-represented market means fewer competitors.
From an agent’s perspective, it will be harder to pitch to one that doesn’t usually represent authors like you. But if you do convince them, you’ll be the only one in their stable who writes like you.
So, the marketing men will tell you, you have a dilemma. You can be like Richard Branson and Virgin – a well-known UK executive and his company. They always look to cream a small amount from a huge market. Virgin invariably go for the big, established markets – cola, transatlantic flights, mobile phones etc. Their philosophy is that there is always room for another player in these markets.
Some marketing people will tell you that being first in a unique category is better. If you can establish a market, you’ll have people copying you and this will grow your sales for you.
Most writers will say that they can only write the books they can write. They have limited control over which market they go for. I can agree, up to a point, until it comes to the time where they intend to post their manuscript to an agent or publisher.
Do they present it as a me-too product (and risk the agent ignoring it as they think it’s already overpopulated)? Or, do they try to create a niche within a larger market and suggest it’s under-represented (and risk the publisher ignoring it as a niche sounds like fewer customers and therefore fewer sales)?
The honest response is to go back to the market research that you should have done in the first place. If the publisher represents mainstream, mass-market books, you’d be better off likening your manuscript to the crowd. On the other hand, if the agent has a list of original authors on their books, you are likely to be better off selling your niche book to them.
When you’re considering writing a new story, just where do you get your ideas from? I have met many published authors and read interviews with countless more. Most of them confirm that this is the question that they get asked more than any other.
Many aspiring writers no doubt hope that the famous author will provide them with a web address – or book title – that will mean never having to think up an idea again.
Of course, successful authors don’t have a secret place they go to find new ideas. Most writers I’ve heard can’t even tell you where they find inspiration – it just happens they say.
Coming up with the idea is only part of the battle, as giving two writers the same suggestion and they’ll provide quite different books. Give a successful author the same idea and they’ll produce a much better quality book.
So what magic ingredient separates mere mortals from the literary greats? At this point, I’ll concede that I don’t believe there is a writing course out there that can turn a poor writer into a great one. It’s an inherent talent.
Having said that, I believe that with the proper guidance, most OK writers can become published writers – although I still can’t agree on one magic ingredient. I think it’s a potion and all the aspects of writing go into that potion.
I’m going to go off at a tangent now, but I’ll get back on track on coming up with ideas before the end.
I listen to a lot of podiobooks and writing podcasts. It’s a close community. I also frequent many of the forums. In addition, I am an avid reader of ‘How to Write’ books.
One piece of advice always comes through loud and clear – in order to be a decent writer, you must read. Every source I ever reference says this.
So I was looking at an aspiring author’s blog the other day and there was a link to their Amazon® wish list. As I’m always looking for new authors to ‘discover,’ I clicked on it. I had read works by half of the writers and had heard of about a further quarter.
What struck me – and produced a genuine ‘light bulb’ moment – was that I thought to myself, “You sure can tell what types of book this author wants to write.”
It was as simple as that.
When I’ve read blogs or interviews from successful authors, they say something quite distinct. For most of them, only a fraction of the books they read are within their genre. One even said they never read the competition. Many list non-fiction as their chief source of reading, and most follow the recommended ‘good books’ and classics, regardless of the section of literature it comes from.
So now I can finish the detour and bring us back on the original path. Poor writers don’t read much. Decent writers read a lot – but tend to focus on their genre. The good writers are the ones that read widely.
Take a look at your book collection. A few will have a wide selection, but I’m guessing the majority tend to read within a much narrower range. It’s understandable.
Many aspiring writers start out as readers and wanted to add to the body of work they enjoyed reading. And most readers tend to have favourite genres rather than an eclectic taste.
So, if you want to become a better writer, start acting like a published author and read outside your chosen genre – especially non-fiction.
Which brings me back to my original point. If you only read within your genre, your stimulation for new ideas is dampened. You’ll find yourself reworking plots from the books you read and you’ll discard them as being too like this novel or that short story.
If you read more widely, you’ll pick up inspiration from plots (or factual topics) outside your genre – which in turn will allow your creative juices to ponder, ‘what if…’
Now I’m not advocating plagiarism, but instead pointing out that reading non-fiction and new genres will inspire you in a way that your tried and trusted field never can.
And it will improve your writing ability too. As a good example, many aspiring novelists will want to include romance in their book at some point, but how many have read good novels from this specific genre? I’ll not ask for a show of hands.
So try reading some books that you wouldn’t usually read. It will seem strange at first, but you do want to come up with new ideas and be published, don’t you?
Any good story will have a reader one day say, ‘Now I understand. I realise that the reference to rabbits in chapter three wasn’t just a throwaway line and was significant.’
That is foreshadowing at its best. The reader wasn’t clubbed over the head with the rabbits in chapter three and with the benefit of hindsight; they see where they figured in the story.
Poor foreshadowing, therefore, telegraphs to the reader that what has just been said is important. You know the sort of line:
‘I love you Sam and I’d even overcome my fear of heights if it meant saving you.’
Guess what? The character will have to overcome vertigo later in the story in order to save Sam. That’s not foreshadowing, that’s telling.
Similarly, there is no point in having foreshadowing that is so subtle that the reader wouldn’t remember it.
If you have to explain that, ‘in chapter three the main character sees a copper roof and the atomic weight of copper is…and in scene seven of chapter nine you see a spider, and a spider has eight legs. And if you multiply eight by the atomic weight of copper…’ then you’ve lost me, and every other reader too.
Foreshadowing can be regular subtle references or it could be one chance remark. My personal favourite is in the first Harry Potter book, where the identity of Nicolas Flamel is revealed on the train to Hogwarts. Yet as a reader, you were more interested in the strange sweets and ignored the fact. When you found out who he was – much later in the book – I imagine every reader groaned at the same time. Of course, how did I miss it?
Some examples of foreshadowing
1. The sight of an object
It is typical to see either a common object in an odd place or a strange object in an ordinary place – without explanation. It is the lack of explanation that forces the mind to overlook the clue. Then, when revealed, you remember.
Similarly, an object will reference a character’s past e.g. a telescope on a desk that turns out to indicate that the character used to be a sailor.
2. The spoken word
A chance remark from a character often proves prophetic. A common approach is for a character to interpret a remark in one sense (and therefore lead the reader to think the same way). Then later, the true intent of the remark is revealed. As long as the story is clear that a point of view character made the assumption, the reader will not be upset. If the interpretation is made in the voice of the author or as a definite statement, the reader will feel cheated. Be warned.
3. A deed
Sometimes a character will undertake a task on a local level that will symbolise an act later in the story. For example, a childhood game of hide and seek may foreshadow a character running and hiding for their life later on.
4. A prediction
This is not usually a subtle foreshadow and involves a character predicting something that will happen in the future. It may be subtle or quite general and only after the event will the foreshadowing become apparent. For example, a prophecy may talk of a hero flying and later in the story; a character arrives by plane to thwart the antagonist.
As with the spoken word, it often helps if the prediction is taken as literal and the eventual truth is a subtle variation on the actual meaning of the prophecy.
5. The use of old wives’ tales
A reference to an old wives’ tale can be a form of foreshadowing. For example a character can walk under a ladder or break a mirror.
If the tale is common enough, it doesn’t have to be explained.
To summarise, good foreshadowing is a useful plot device that can both consciously and subconsciously let the reader know what’s happening. But don’t forget that not every twist and turn has to be foreshadowed. Not everything but certainly the climax of the story.
If the protagonist defeats the wizard with a homemade wand he put together between chapters seven and eight and we didn’t read about it, then the reader will feel cheated. If, on the other hand the hero borrowed a book on wands and showed an interest in the magical properties of the elder tree, then the reader will forgive not being shown. You’ve foreshadowed and built suspense – and that’s never a bad thing.
The solution to coming up with a unique plot is to understand what that actually means
At the risk of spoiling the joke, I’ll start with the punch line – there is no such thing as a unique plot.
There, that’s got it out in the open.
Too many writers never put pen to paper because they can’t think of a unique plot. They have plenty of excellent ideas, but when they sit down and analyse their creation, they see a strong similarity to this book or that movie and they wring their hands with despair.
There are a whole host of reasons why you’ll never find a unique plot. Every reason makes sense but should never stop a writer penning that great idea just because it’s similar to a recent bestseller. In fact, there’s a good reason why it should encourage the author, but I’ll save that surprise until the end.
I’ve been told by different sources that there are only one, three, seven, twenty or thirty-six different plots. I have no idea which version is true and I don’t particularly care. It’s an academic debate. My opinion is these aren’t even plots – they are conflicts, but I’ll leave that debate for another day.
If you analyse a plot enough, you come across enough similarities to categorise is as one basic concept or another. So on a purely logical level, discarding a story because the plot is similar to lots of other books is quiet ludicrous. It’s supposed to be similar – the academics tell us so – and that’s why there are only 1/3/7/20/36 categories.
The next point is that we’ve been telling stories since we could talk. All the unique plots went thousands of years ago.
Now is a good time to pause and reflect on what I’m saying.
A lot of writers – the ones that get published – aren’t really interested in this debate. They just get on and write. This discussion is for the rookie writer. I’ll be more specific, this debate is of most interest to the wannabe writer. The one that yearns to write but feels what they have to offer isn’t original enough.
The key word was in the last sentence. Original. Original is not the same as unique. Striving for a unique story is going to stop you ever putting pen to paper. Seeking out an original story is easy. Yet for some reason, despite their power with language, writers tend to get these two words muddled up.
If you listed your favourite books (or films) of all time and considered their plots, you’d be amazed a how many of them – if you broke them down into a simple form – were similar. Each is original, based upon the setting, the characters, the language etc. but none could be called unique.
Consider Walt Disney. He made a fortune recycling the works of the Brothers’ Grimm. Did anyone mind? Hardly. His strength was in taking a standard story and making it original through the magic of setting, characters and dialogue.
Take William Shakespeare. Not exactly unique in his own right, yet his plays have spawned so many obvious remakes that were successful. Sometimes the story was copied in its entirety, other times an element was borrowed. Invariably the setting was changed – either to present day, the future or even using animals instead of people.
Think about the following:
Romeo and Juliet = West Side Story
Taming of the Shrew = Kiss Me Kate and 10 Things I Hate About You
The Tempest = Forbidden Planet
Othello = O
Henry IV Part I = My Own Private Idaho
Hamlet = Lion King
Twelfth Night = She’s the Man
There are significantly more books out there that use one of Shakespeare’s plays as a starting point. It’s where they go from there that makes them original. Just setting Macbeth in the 21st century isn’t enough. You need to make more changes to make it original.
I chose films rather than books, as the titles above ought to be familiar to all of you. The fact that they were based upon five hundred year old plays did not affect their box-office.
This brings me neatly to the promise I made earlier. I suggested that similarities to existing plots are actually a good thing (and I am in no way advocating plagiarism). As they say in all of the good washing powder adverts – here’s the science.
Using a plot that’s already been proven to be successful makes the story more saleable – not less. Think about it. The plot seems vaguely familiar but the characters, setting and actual reason for the conflict are new. This makes the story original yet familiar – a recipe for success. Agents and publishers will recognise this and will see it as a factor in your favour.
The only word of warning I would voice is to make sure that you don’t imitate this week’s bestseller. That’s too familiar. Use the classics or at least something that was on the best-seller’s list ten years ago. Make it original – take the element of the story you’re basing it on that means the most to you and change as much as you need to make it your story.
You see, being original is easy once you know what to copy.
I do not consider myself a book critic – and would never use this space to comment on anything I didn’t like just for the sake of it.
Instead, I’d rather focus on books that, from time to time, really hit the spot.
I’m not an avid sci-fi reader, but as a writer that wants to get better, I take the advice that going outside your usual tastes is a positive thing.
And, by chance, I happened upon Altered Carbon. I’m not even sure why this book – above all others – pulled me in. It was an on-line buy, so I presume it was a recommended read at one of the many up-selling pages put in front of me.
Whatever the reason, I can only thank those marketeers for doing so. Richard Morgan has blended, for me, a mix of sci-fi with an old fashioned detective novel. The sci-fi wasn’t incidental – and that was a big plus for me. I found the pace fast enough to keep me reading and wanting more.
It’s a first-person story (and that does put some people off) but I have to say, it worked for me. The plot was the key driver as I soaked myself in the gritty realism of the not-so-near future that had enough of today’s references to keep it grounded.
The good news for me is that the main character comes back for a couple more books and they’re in my ‘basket’ as we speak. As Altered Carbon is almost a decade old, you may find the average book-shop may no longer have a copy but make the effort to track one down.
Writing offers an opportunity to do something that filmmakers and artists can’t. You can allow your reader to get into the head of your characters.
Unlike TV, where you are a casual observer, writing permits you to weave a spell over the reader so that they become the character. They get to share their hopes and fears, experience the highs and lows – and at the very end of the book, walk away.
Despite this gift, too many writers throw it all away by committing basic point of view errors.
These errors can be obvious – and the reader winces when they see them. Or they can be subtle. The reader may not even recognise them as an error, but they jar anyway.
At the very best, a point of view error will pluck the reader out of the head of the character and put them in the narrator’s viewpoint. At worst, they will be confused and be unsure as to what the character does and doesn’t know.
Either way, the reader will be less able to identify with the character and that will ultimately weaken the story.
The following common errors are written from the point of view of John.
1. ‘John stared at Jane. She was thinking about last night.’
This seems quite obvious. How does John know what Jane is thinking? There are no clues given and it isn’t even speculative e.g. John hoped she was thinking about last night.
2. ‘John stared at Jane. He didn’t think he’d noticed how blue her eyes were before.’
How could you not know if you’ve noticed before? A narrator could speculate. You can speculate about a non-point of view character, but if you’re inside John’s head, you know if you’ve noticed something before.
3. ‘John stared at Jane. He barely suppressed a smirk.’
For a start, we tend not to know if we’re pulling faces. Smirks are something that we tend to do involuntarily. The second point is, how does he know he was a) going to smirk and b) that he suppressed it.
4. ‘John stared at Jane. She stared back with an angry frown on her face.’
If we’ve established that John knows Jane really well, then there is some mileage in this sentence – but it would still be better to indicate that it is an assumption e.g. ‘John knew that look…’ If they do not know each other intimately, I would suggest that John might suspect a frown, but he couldn’t deduce it was an angry one. It could be from frustration, or she could be faking it.
As a side note, if you say someone is angry – they have to be angry. If you want to fool the reader into believing they are angry, you have to leave all the clues but let the reader deduce the ‘fact’ for themselves.
5. ‘John stared at Jane. He marvelled at the platinum and topaz earrings she wore.’
This is one that could be fine or could be really wrong. If John is in the jewellery trade, he could possibly know exactly what the earrings are made of. Or he could have bought them of course. Otherwise, it’s not something he should know. Giving a character knowledge outside his established frame of reference is sloppy writing – especially if the composition of the earrings is important later on. If it’s necessary, give him a reason to know.
6. ‘John stared at his wife Jane. She had short, blonde hair and was slim and athletic.’
When was the last time you looked at someone you know well and actually thought about their features? You just don’t do it. Again, you’ve leapt out of John’s head and become the narrator. If she’d dyed her hair, or lost lots of weight since he last saw her, he would notice. Otherwise, it’s a cheap writing trick to describe a character.
This isn’t a definitive list, but it represents the main ways that writers – even seasoned ones – make point of view errors.
Don’t let your readers disengage with your characters. Point of view is a powerful writing tool. You have to work hard to get the reader inside the character’s head. Once in there, make sure you keep them there.
If there is one subject that I’ll come back to time and time again to share my confusion – it has to be voice.
I have read so much on the subject and it all seems to make sense, but then I’ll read an article, or hear a podcast that makes me doubt myself.
A lot of the time it is conflicting advice that makes me wonder. One blog will assure me that voice is your unique style of writing. That makes perfect sense. But if I write in first person, won’t all my novels have the same lead character?
It was barely fair to go the full week without a full reference to the book that I rate above all others for characterisation.
This book is genuinely my bible. It runs at over 250 pages and it’s fair to say there is no padding. It’s the sort of book I would first recommend reading three times.
The first time, just read it and go with the flow. The second time you highlight the key points and the third run has me pencilling in notes of my own.
It starts by looking at the ‘externals’ of a character – how they look, where they are from, how they speak.
Then it moves on to the ‘internals.’ This covers topics like attitude, their thoughts and how to treat antagonists.
The third part concerns character and plot and touches on topics such as point of view, secondary characters, character change and using old plots in a new way.
Overall, I can’t recommend this highly enough, It’s one of the half a dozen books on writing that I refer to every now and then – to solve a particular problem. So three reads are never enough. There are always nuggets you need to go back for and dig out.
Buy it if you are serious about creating strong and believable characters – you won’t regret it.
In one sense, what follows is not about characters – but deciding who tells the story as well as whose story it is can’t be anything but.
So, to clarify matters, I’m not talking about point of view (or POV). This is not a debate about first person versus third person. Regardless of the outcome of that conundrum, you will need to decide:
- Who is the story about – typically this is the character that undergoes a transformation or at least experiences an arc during the novel
- Who tells the story – and this doesn’t have to be the main character. Think Dr. Watson and Sherlock Holmes here.
The main character is the one we’re rooting for to win the day, to overcome the antagonist or personal challenge and stand tall at the end. Actually, I’ll amend that. Sometimes the hero isn’t the main character or the viewpoint character. You’ll occasionally come across a bad-guy that is the main character and we hope that he’ll get his just desserts by the end of the book. And of course we have anti-heroes.
Sometimes the main character is so wrapped up in the doing that to tell it from his eyes wouldn’t work. Often we need to be the judicious and observant bystander to truly appreciate what’s going on.