Writers in publishing houses have taken the editor for granted. Part of it may certainly be – as MCM suggests – due to the decreased investment editors have in writers, but I suspect a majority of traditionally published writers trust their publisher to bring quality to their work. More often than not such quality is attributed to book editors.

In the relationships between writers, editors and publishers, however, the balance of power seems to be shifting towards the writer.

Never before has the writer been presented with so many alternatives to the traditional publishing house. With the Internet, the iPad, and the increased competition from Apple v. Amazon, writers are now able to skip publishers entirely and deliver straight to the reader. It is likely that publishing in the future won’t be so much about publishing writers as it would be about empowering them.

With writers now able to write online – why, then, are editors still so important? The incorrect assumption to make here would be to say that the quality of writing in a post-publishing world would decline, and would happen due of a loss of editorship. But that assumption is merely that – baseless. There is nothing to suggest that editors would have to die along with publishers (if the publishers even die at all, which is unlikely) – rather, it is likely that writers will need editors all the more. To wit: here’s an example of an editor hiring a publisher. Absolutely impossible just a couple of years ago (not to mention crazy) but there it is, clear as day.

Craig Mod believes that editors will become increasingly important as writers become more empowered. I think this is true. But an interesting corollary to think about here is the changing nature of the editor. If the publishing equation has changed to favour the writer, then an editor’s loyalties will no longer lie with the publishing house they belong to, and instead change to favour the writer instead.

Why Writers Need Editors

Perhaps a more important question to answer is: do writers really need editors? Web fiction writer Lee L. Lowe turned to online publishing for the simple reason that she couldn’t stand being edited, and there’s something rather valid in that (another friend of mine told me recently that he was increasingly bitter at the way his publisher-appointed editor was treating his work … for ‘marketability’). If writers turn to the net because they can’t stand the nature of editing in a traditional publishing house, why would they want to hire an editor today?

The answer lies in the nature of writing. When you finish a book you’ve spent a year with, your first urge is to share it, almost immediately, with friends and family. This isn’t ideal, of course. Some of your friends know nothing about writing, and most won’t be able to give constructive feedback of any usable sort. (In fact many – my sister, for instance – will deliver judgment with a four word response: “Yes I liked it”.)

Writers tend to become wiser over time with whom to take their advice from. Most writers I know have a small group of friends and family they go to, after they’ve finished writing a piece. These people are the ones whose opinions they trust the most. Today – a portion of those people are likely to be Internet buddies, or writers clustered in small communities like this one.

When you hire an editor, what you’re essentially doing is that you’re paying for an extra pair of eyes. (A pair with good writerly instincts, of course.) And this is different from asking your writer friends for feedback. Hiring an editor is to force him or her to be on your team, to see you through the publication of your book. Stephen King once described writing as rowing a bathtub across the Atlantic, and what you’re doing, really, when you hire an editor is to invite someone else into your bathtub, some five hundred meters away from shore.

I’m not sure about you, but I think the monetary reimbursement is justified.

Editors of the Future

I suspect that the editors of the future will be exactly as MCM described, in the closing paragraphs of his post: smart, keen editors who still value quality and nurturing authors. The problem we might have, however, is for an easy way for writers to evaluate and choose good editors. There may be a technological solution to this (job boards for editors, anyone?) but by and large, I think this kink would work itself out, over time.

The more writers sufficiently capable of publishing on their own, the more demand for professional editing there would be. And you know what they say about necessity and the mother of all invention …

I look forward to the editors of the future. I hope you do, too.

Two things inspired me to write my new novel, Ho Springs, online, day by day, instead of writing it for a conventional publisher the way I did my first five novels.  Well, two things that are easy to explain.

The first was my husband, after watching the DVD of American Gangster, telling me he found the movie good enough but ultimately unsatisfying.   “It was a movie,” he explained, “so you knew from the beginning that everything really interesting was going to happen to Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe, and that it was going to build to this big climax at the end.”

That was the problem with conventional novels too, I thought.  They were predictable, limited and finite in form and scope.  Wouldn’t it be more interesting to write – and read – a novel that unfolded in a way that was both more leisurely and more compelling, the way TV shows like Mad Men and The Wire did?

The second influence was creating my blog How Not To Act Old after no one wanted to buy it as a magazine article, turning it into a book and making that book a New York Times bestseller.  That experience taught me that not only was it more fun and exciting to write without an editor between me and my readers, but my own creative instincts were often better than those of the traditional publishing world.

My experience writing five “real” novels and developing two big websites – I’m also a partner in the site nameberry.com, based on the ten baby name books I coauthored with Linda Rosenkrantz – put me in a unique position to create a piece of digital fiction that would combine the best of both worlds.  Rather than writing episodic pieces, I wanted to create a novel that included such conventional elements as a character-driven story, causally-related scenes, and an extended plot that would unspool in unexpected ways, but in a form that could exist only online.

My blueprint was a television series I’d created (but hadn’t sold) a few years ago, set in a fictionalized version of Hot Springs, Arkansas.   A place-based story was perfect for an online novel, I thought, offering a wide range of characters and settings and the potential for stories to expand in an unlimited number of directions.

The big problem was the name, Hot Springs.  The url hotsprings.com was obviously taken.  And then, driving one day, I had a eureka moment: hosprings.com, or Ho Springs.  I was so excited I did a u-turn and drove right back home to track down and reserve the name.

From that moment on, I knew the idea was right.  I wanted to create the site in wordpress, so it would be free and I’d have total creative control, but I couldn’t find a theme that included all the elements – videos, graphic windows that opened to places in the town and story, room for a big block of text.

I needed a designer – or, as it turned out, three designers.  I had a vision for a logo that would look like all the letters were in realistic flames, with the T up in smoke, which called for a photoshop expert.  My budget was zero, or as close to that as I could get.  I was lucky to find Katie Mancine who built me an amazing logo.

The only problem was, Katie said, she couldn’t design a good-looking site to go with that logo.  Rather, she sold me on the concept “Vintage Tourist Guide,” which was great, but in the end that didn’t work out either.  Katie finally ended up with the design you see now on the site, and my friend Dennis Tobenski, who’s really a composer, made the whole thing dance.  Combined cost: under $1500, and several hundred gray hairs.

Weeks and then months were passing, during which I found a musician, Matt Michael, to write and record two original songs for the site, and also drafted several writer friends to create independent blogs from the characters’ viewpoints.  But the only writing I was doing during this time was putting together the static content describing the characters and the settings.

A novelist creating a work for the web is not, then, just a writer, but a designer, a logician, a manager, a tech guy, a producer.

And then, once you do start writing – or at least, once I did – the process is different too.  I suppose you could write one long story and parcel it out day by day, but the whole point for me was to create it as I went along, publish it immediately, to swing by the crook of my knees with no net below.

That’s the only way to feel the wind on your face, which is something you rarely feel when you’re writing a conventional novel, one that won’t be published for two years or maybe five, that no other person may even see for all that time, or maybe ever.  Writing all my other novels, I’m a big planner, outlining the big story and even each individual scene, revising and reimagining, working on the same piece until I lose sight of where I started and when it will ever end.

With Ho Springs, I get up in the morning, having a vague sense of what I’m going to write about, from which character’s viewpoint, but letting myself be swayed by whatever I encounter between brushing my teeth and opening my computer.  A David Sedaris story in an old New Yorker got one of my characters beaten one morning; an email from a writer friend inspired me to make a video of myself talking about what had influenced me that day.

It wasn’t until after I launched the site that I looked at what anyone else was doing in this arena.  The only site I’ve found that’s similar is All’s Fair in Love and War, Texas, by the brilliant Amber Simmons, which makes me believe God saved me from that Vintage Tourist Guide idea.  Penguin’s We Tell Stories is brilliant, but much more expensively and expertly produced than I could hope for, and more limited in writerly ambition.  Visually-based web fictions that blow me away include Unknown Territories and The Flat on Dreaming Methods.  But they’re movies, really, not novels.

Where is this project going?  My ideal vision is that someone like HBO or a publisher with a production arm will buy it and produce it as a multimedia property, with a television and a web and a book element working together.  I believe that this is how fiction will be written and published in the future, that this will become the new standard long after anyone remembers that Ho Springs ever existed.

Or I may take it down tomorrow and build something else.  The excitement is in creating something.  Holding it in your hands, or staring at it on a screen, holds so much less satisfaction.

Pamela’s personal site may be found here; with Ho Springs just around the corner.

I’m not just talking about MCM’s 3-Days-1-Novel experiment, which concluded recently (see: Novelr’s The Dispatch), I’m talking also about a few other sites/writing-experiments that’s been done over the past couple of weeks, all of which are structured around a few cool ideas.

A couple of weeks back Paul Graham – the founder of Y-Combinator – did one of his essays on a public EtherPad document. He made it available online, for anyone who was interested to watch him as he worked. (As I’m doing with this post – well, at least just the first bit of it)

Granted, EtherPad, like Google Wave’s writing-as-you-go feature, is a pretty new technology built specifically for web-based collaborative writing. It’s designed around the idea that it is far easier to work on the same document when you can see – live – what your other team-mates are doing to it at the same time. But a secondary feature of EtherPad is also this: you can now record and broadcast the document – any document – as you write it, making writing not so much passive as we’re used to seeing it offline, but as live and as active as all the other forms of web expression available to us: as active as video, say, or webcasts, or music.

Another, less technologically-advanced take on this live-writing gig is that of MCM’s one-chapter-an-hour-for-51-hours writing stunt. To be fair, this kind of marathon-writing extravaganza isn’t new, given that there is a 3-day-1-novel yearly competition held every Labour weekend since 1977 (for the record: I suspect the competition’s for writers who’ve gotten bored with NaNoWriMo – meaning, well – not many of them). And some months back, Penguin’s We Tell Stories did a live writing experiment – this one in Week 4 of their WTS project. The work, entitled Your Place and Mine, was written every day at 6:30 pm for exactly a week, and structured in such a way as for both authors to post responding installments, each of them writing from a different first-person POV. (It’s a love story: one author presumably writes from the male lead’s POV, and vice versa).

Robin Sloan covered this four days ago, over at Snarkmarket, and while he isn’t seriously thinking about putting the concept into practice, he does have a few ideas about the use of such live technology:

Think instead of a short story writ­ten with play­back in mind. Writ­ten for play­back. Typ­ing speed and rhythm are part of the expe­ri­ence. Dra­matic dele­tions are part of the story. The text at 2:20 tells you some­thing about the text at 11:13, and vice versa. What appear at first to be tiny, ten­ta­tive revi­sions turn out to be precisely-engineered sig­nals. At 5:15 and para­graph five, the author switches a character’s gen­der, trig­ger­ing a chain reac­tion of edits in the pre­ced­ing grafs, some of which have inter­est­ing (and pre-planned?) side effects.

I’m struck by another similarity: this sounds an awful lot like a reading, doesn’t it? Difference being that you aren’t actually reading a completed work, in front of a gaggle of listeners, you’re writing and they’re all crowded around you, staring over you shoulder as you work your magic. (Yes, a reading would have more similarities to a webcast). But here’s another element of the writer-reader experience, unthought-of before the Internet, possible today, and a pretty cool idea at that.

I admit that I’m not happy with the latest writing on Novelr. I feel that it’s starting to become too stuffy; too pedantic. Of the past 7 posts, 3 contain arguments that lack clarity and structure, 1 is a note on a month-long absence, and all involve writing processes that felt much like shitting through a bloody anus.  Moments like these call for a close look at my sentence-level construction … and I realized that I was using far too many long sentences. Dammit! I say. Bad habit of mine … and in front of a live audience, to boot!

On Novelr, I realize that I’ve got periods where I write stuff that I’m happy with – even two years down the road – and I’ve got periods where I just can’t seem to express ideas in a clear, chatty manner. I notice, too, that these writus horribilis periods seem to coincide with the waning of the moon, and are always preceded by a chorus of howling wolves. (I, err, was joking). But allow me to put up a short style guide for future reference, one you can bludgeon me over the head with if I stray too far from the beaten path. Also, feel free to learn from my predicament.

The Novelr Style Guide

The following are several tenets that I shall attempt to maintain over the next couple of months:

• This writer shall put a lid on multi-clausal, long-winded, over-comma-ed, unstructured, rantish sentences that, added together, create multi-clausal, long-winded, over-comma-ed, unstructured, rantish paragraphs. (Sorry – couldn’t help it … I swear that’s the last!)
• This writer shall use short paragraphs as much as is feasibly possible.
• This writer shall stop pretending he is writing for the New York Times. He shall be personal. And chatty. Oh yes, who doesn’t love a chatty writer?
• This writer shall stop playing casual games whenever he thinks he’s got a massive case of writer’s block.
• This writer shall ask good questions, and (hopefully) find unexpected answers to those questions.
• This writer shall attempt to be funny. If he isn’t funny, then he shall at least die trying.

I’m not sure how successful this style guide would be, considering that I’m supposed to have developed a proper style by now. (I have, after all, been writing here for about 3 years already.) But then again I seem to lose my way after every major examination in my academic year. No harm going back to the drawing board, and hashing out that idiot of a writer’s block. I’ll let you know how it goes.

[Update]: Thought I’d add several other things that I’ve been doing here at Novelr. All of the above are writing-related issues, things that I’ve been grappling with ever since I took that study break late last year (yeah, I lost my sense of direction during that period, which should change … in a bit). But the ones below are stylistic decisions I made, on the fly, while producing this blog. See if you’ve noticed any of them:

• Novelr is referred to as a separate entity. Never my community; always Novelr’s community. Never my writing; always Novelr’s wiritng. This is to remind myself that Novelr is supposed to be community-centric: the ideas and the discussions are Novelr’s, and hence belong to the community clustered around it.
• There are three kinds of articles in Novelr: Commentary, Ideas, and Bookmarked! posts. Commentary is a post providing in-depth analysis of a 3rd party link; Idea posts are original content written specifically for Novelr’s audience; Bookmarked! posts are collected links that I think you’d find interesting. This is an internal categorization, mind; not something you’d find anywhere in the blog’s archives.
• All posts must be edited at least twice before publication. Sometimes more after. If a large amount of restructuring is needed, the post will be updated with an (edited) tag attached to the title.
• I try to respond to all comments all the time. Lately, however, this has been erratic. Sometimes you guys are better at hashing out an issue than I am, and I gladly take a backseat in such situations. 

Early last year, 2005 Man-Booker prize winner John Banville did a fiction serial called The Lemur over at the New York Times website. When I covered the attempt here at Novelr I immediately received a comment by reader Bill Hilton, who groaned about the choice of author. Why him?! Hilton asked. It turned out that Banville had made a couple of obnoxious comments upon winning the Booker prize some time back: he implied that a lot of middle-brow novels were winning awards lately, and it was good to see a book of real merit – his – fiinally win. Hilton then went on to say:

I wouldn’t mind, but (the Booker-prize winning) The Sea is the most pretentious load of old tosh that I’ve read in years.

I didn’t bother to follow The Lemur after that.

I think most of us now recognize the Internet’s potential for social communication and information dispersal. The tidbit about Banville wouldn’t have reached me if I hadn’t been writing a lit blog, and it also wouldn’t have reached me if Bill Hilton hadn’t passed by and commented on the piece. But consider the other things that made the exchange of bias possible: Mr Hilton had probably picked up the news from a newspaper or such during the 2005 Booker Prize news coverage – something that I couldn’t possibly have done given the limited nature of book news in Malaysia – and he’d probably remembered that tidbit when he read Banville’s The Sea. Also, NYT online had published the Lemur on the Internet, had released the item in their news feed (which I had subscribed to), and had taken the time to mark it as web fiction. There was a whole lot of variables that made this exchange of views possible, and the most astounding thing was probably the fact that I lived in Malaysia, an inherently non-reading nation. I wouldn’t have contracted a bias against John Banville had it not been for the opinion of a British reader who had more information about Banville than I did, and who lived in a nation where getting this information and finding his book was easier. Once upon a time a friend’s recommendation may have been limited by social and geographical boundaries. That time no longer exists.

The above example, however, is just one of many illustrating the social side of the Internet, and I’m sure you can all come up with more. Let me throw you another. It is now possible for you to read a poem in a book, enjoy said poem, and then go online, head to the publisher’s website, and email the poet your thanks. I remember a writer (can’t remember his name, for the life of me) who did just that, and who later commented on how the Internet’s connectivity added another dimension to his reading experience. I’m sure this was possible before, with post, but the Internet has now made it global, and painless, and very, very cheap.

The point I’m getting at here is that it’s becoming increasingly hard to enjoy books without some knowledge of the writer that wrote it. And, in web fiction, it is becoming near impossible to enjoy a work without interacting, and perhaps judging, the online writer behind it.

Let’s start with books. I’m pretty sure that certain writers are difficult people to get along with – H.P. Lovecraft, for example, springs to my mind immediately.  But that fact wouldn’t under normal circumstances affect our reading of their work. I wouldn’t mind reading Lovecraft, simply because I’ve never met him, and I’ll never know what a jerk he is. (Lovecraft was a recluse and was socially inept. He is also dead, but you get my point).

This barrier does not exist on the Internet. Much of web fiction exists on blogs, and reader-writer interaction is part of the whole blooking experience. I’ve talked about creating a reader community in your web fiction before, but an implication of doing so is that your readers are probably going to let their impression of you colour their judgement of your work. And there’s no way around it.

Allow me to give you a personal example. In my web browser I keep two reading lists – one of the works I’ll have to review as an editor for Web Fiction Guide, and one for personal enjoyment. When it comes to an editorial evaluation for a listing, or when I first begin to read a work, I never take writer personality into account. I read, I review, and if I like it I move the blook over to my personal enjoyment list (and subscribe to the feed, etc). But every so often I remove a site from that list. This usually happens after I form an opinion of the writer concerned, and when I find that I don’t like him or her. The first incident was because said writer lashed out at a reader who was commenting on her personal blog. I thought that was mean and rude and unnecessary, and after that I couldn’t bring myself to read her writing. I really tried. I liked the story, and I liked her style, but at some deep, subconscious level I couldn’t read anymore. I felt repulsed. And that was the end of that.

But of course that’s just me. I’m fairly certain other readers would just ignore the personal sections of a writer’s site, and ignore the commenting forms beneath each episode. This likely happens when the work is just too fantastic to ignore, and when said reader has made a huge emotional investment in the story. Personality bias doesn’t happen when you refuse to think about the writer.

There are two corollaries to this. The first is if you don’t let the reader in, and if you don’t interact with your audience, then you’ll have nothing to worry about. But why write online if you aren’t prepared to receive feedback or adulation from your crowd? The Internet is inherently social, after all, and you’ll be making a mistake if you don’t make full use of it.

The second corollary is: in the same way that you can turn a reader away with your personality, you can keep him reading when he likes you: even if your quality dips later on in your blook or if you take a break. And then it’ll be like reading a friend’s work – you may not like what he’s done to the story at a later stage, but you’ll still read him because he is your friend. And it may well be that the most successful blooks are those with strong writing and nice writers, and a good rapport with its audience.

I cannot help you with personality bias. When you really think about it, there’s not much you can do. You’ll get along with some people, and you’ll clash with others. And if the published writers of the world have to face it, in their correspondence, and in the falling barriers between reader and writer, then I suppose we online writers will have to as well, more than anyone else. And that is a frightening thought.

I’ll be taking a study break from Novelr until late December, which means my posts here will be fewer and further between. Yes, I know this sounds quite awful, but I’m currently studying about 4 hours a day and it’ll only get worse as my Finals approach. Guest posts and community alerts are welcomed – I can come online, but only in very short bursts – so please shoot me an email if you’d like to write something for the blooking community.

I’d like to do an open mike before I vanish. An open mike is a post where you take the center stage, be it in the commenting section below, or back in your own blog, about a topic I’ll be discussing today. Brains turned on, then? Alright.

Here’s what I’d like to know: would you rather censor foul language for the sake of your audience, or would you keep it in your story, because that is telling the truth? Where do you stand when it comes to vulgarity in fiction?

This is an argument I’m pretty unsure about, because there are very valid opinions on both sides. On one hand we have Stephen King, who defends his use of the f-word because he is writing about common, working-class people, and they say fuck more than they do foie gras. On the other hand (the cleaner one, you’d suppose) you have the argument that it is just impolite to litter your prose with, well, impolite language. The most creative treatment of vulgar language I have seen is by children’s writer Diana Wynn Jones. Yes, you got me right – a children’s author. In her book Wilkin’s Tooth the neighbourhood bully is a particularly rude child, and he frequently uses (in her words) ‘colourful language’. Jones treats this quite literally – her dialogue from the bullies is filled with “orange” and “black” and “you purple red green boy you!!” Witty stuff.

Where do you stand on this issue?

This article orginally appeared in Palm Sunday (New York, Dial Press 1999) from pages 65 to 72, 9 years before Vonnegut’s death. I thought I’d share it here.

Newspaper reporters and technical writers are trained to reveal almost nothing about themselves in their writings. This makes them freaks in the world of writers, since almost all of the other ink-stained wretches in that world reveal a lot about themselves to readers. We call these revelations, accidental and intentional, elements of style.

These revelations tell us as readers what sort of person it is with whom we are spending time. Does the writer sound ignorant or informed, stupid or bright, crooked or honest, humorless or playful– ? And on and on.

Why should you examine your writing style with the idea of improving it? Do so as a mark of respect for your readers, whatever you’re writing. If you scribble your thoughts any which way, your readers will surely feel that you care nothing about them. They will mark you down as an egomaniac or a chowderhead — or, worse, they will stop reading you.

The most damning revelation you can make about yourself is that you do not know what is interesting and what is not. Don’t you yourself like or dislike writers mainly for what they choose to show you or make you think about? Did you ever admire an emptyheaded writer for his or her mastery of the language? No.

So your own winning style must begin with ideas in your head.

1. Find a subject you care about

Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.

I am not urging you to write a novel, by the way — although I would not be sorry if you wrote one, provided you genuinely cared about something. A petition to the mayor about a pothole in front of your house or a love letter to the girl next door will do.

2. Do not ramble, though

I won’t ramble on about that.

3. Keep it simple

As for your use of language: Remember that two great masters of language, William Shakespeare and James Joyce, wrote sentences which were almost childlike when their subjects were most profound. “To be or not to be?” asks Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The longest word is three letters long. Joyce, when he was frisky, could put together a sentence as intricate and as glittering as a necklace for Cleopatra, but my favorite sentence in his short story “Eveline” is this one: “She was tired.” At that point in the story, no other words could break the heart of a reader as those three words do.

Simplicity of language is not only reputable, but perhaps even sacred. The Bible opens with a sentence well within the writing skills of a lively fourteen-year-old: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”

4. Have guts to cut

It may be that you, too, are capable of making necklaces for Cleopatra, so to speak. But your eloquence should be the servant of the ideas in your head. Your rule might be this: If a sentence, no matter how excellent, does not illuminate your subject in some new and useful way, scratch it out.

5. Sound like yourself

The writing style which is most natural for you is bound to echo the speech you heard when a child. English was Conrad’s third language, and much that seems piquant in his use of English was no doubt colored by his first language, which was Polish. And lucky indeed is the writer who has grown up in Ireland, for the English spoken there is so amusing and musical. I myself grew up in Indianapolis, where common speech sounds like a band saw cutting galvanized tin, and employs a vocabulary as unornamental as a monkey wrench.

In some of the more remote hollows of Appalachia, children still grow up hearing songs and locutions of Elizabethan times. Yes, and many Americans grow up hearing a language other than English, or an English dialect a majority of Americans cannot understand.

All these varieties of speech are beautiful, just as the varieties of butterflies are beautiful. No matter what your first language, you should treasure it all your life. If it happens to not be standard English, and if it shows itself when your write standard English, the result is usually delightful, like a very pretty girl with one eye that is green and one that is blue.

I myself find that I trust my own writing most, and others seem to trust it most, too, when I sound most like a person from Indianapolis, which is what I am. What alternatives do I have? The one most vehemently recommended by teachers has no doubt been pressed on you, as well: to write like cultivated Englishmen of a century or more ago.

6. Say what you mean

I used to be exasperated by such teachers, but am no more. I understand now that all those antique essays and stories with which I was to compare my own work were not magnificent for their datedness or foreignness, but for saying precisely what their authors meant them to say. My teachers wished me to write accurately, always selecting the most effective words, and relating the words to one another unambiguously, rigidly, like parts of a machine. The teachers did not want to turn me into an Englishman after all. They hoped that I would become understandable — and therefore understood. And there went my dream of doing with words what Pablo Picasso did with paint or what any number of jazz idols did with music. If I broke all the rules of punctuation, had words mean whatever I wanted them to mean, and strung them together higgledy-piggledy, I would simply not be understood. So you, too, had better avoid Picasso-style or jazz-style writing, if you have something worth saying and wish to be understood.

Readers want our pages to look very much like pages they have seen before. Why? This is because they themselves have a tough job to do, and they need all the help they can get from us.

7. Pity the readers

They have to identify thousands of little marks on paper, and make sense of them immediately. They have to read, an art so difficult that most people don’t really master it even after having studied it all through grade school and high school — twelve long years.

So this discussion must finally acknowledge that our stylistic options as writers are neither numerous nor glamorous, since our readers are bound to be such imperfect artists. Our audience requires us to be sympathetic and patient readers, ever willing to simplify and clarify — whereas we would rather soar high above the crowd, singing like nightingales.

That is the bad news. The good news is that we Americans are governed under a unique Constitution, which allows us to write whatever we please without fear of punishment. So the most meaningful aspect of our styles, which is what we choose to write about, is utterly unlimited.

8. For really detailed advice

For a discussion of literary style in a narrower sense, in a more technical sense, I recommend to your attention The Elements of Style, by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White. E.B. White is, of course, one of the most admirable literary stylists this country has so far produced.

You should realize, too, that no one would care how well or badly Mr. White expressed himself, if he did not have perfectly enchanting things to say.

In Sum:

1. Find a subject you care about
2. Do not ramble, though
3. Keep it simple
4. Have guts to cut
5. Sound like yourself
6. Say what you mean
7. Pity the readers

I was reminded today that good writing isn’t everything. It was four in the afternoon and I was stuck at a turning point in one of my manuscripts, and it hit me that everything I’d done to improve my writing did not matter then and there. I could have just as easily messed up the entire project by tackling the scene the wrong way, even if I did write it beautifully. This wasn’t a matter of description or style or clarity of thought – it was something more. It was story.

Story is that extra something we writers don’t really understand. Take a stroll through any bookstore today and you’ll find writing titles jumping out at you: The Elements of Style, for instance. Or On Writing, that highly popular craft manual by Mr King. But pause for awhile and note that Mr King didn’t write a book called On Storytelling. Nobody has, in fact – I’m still looking for solid works on storytelling alone.

What I’ve realized is that writing is actually the easy part of the craft. The other part – the harder one – is the ability to create a mind-blowing good tale. And that isn’t something that can be captured in a book – I’ve yet to see manuals entitled How To Write Like Steinbeck, or Where To Find Story Ideas. Things like that fall from the sky, or they don’t fall at all.

I read an article last year by a writer turned editor complaining about how hard it was to filter short stories for a collection. She quickly identified two kinds of submissions – the first was by a good storyteller with bad writing (which she could work on), and the other was by the writer who could write beautifully but had nothing to say. The first needed a lot of polishing; the second, however, was impossible to work with. These 2nd category stories were beautiful on the outside, but in the end the aforementioned editor found them to be empty. Rotten apples. Hollow cores.

So I took a break from my manuscript today. I didn’t know how to go on from that turning point – the possibilities were just endless. But that’s not the point here. The point here is that I’m thankful for the storytelling department. For my storytelling department. There are people out there who can’t pull a good yarn even if it was staring them in the face, good writing or not. And I know my writing’s not perfect, but I’m working on it.

I’m just thankful I’ve got something to say.

Anybody creating on the Internet will have to face their audience sooner or later. This is particularly true if you’re using a blog – and yes, most of us do, whether we’re artists, writers, or musicians.

Now the problem with all this is that writing and feedback simply don’t mix. Writing is best done alone, with a cup of coffee at your favourite desk, and a cat curled up at your feet. I look for feedback only after I’m done with a story – and even then I have to be careful who I ask. I have five friends whom I ask for feedback. Each of them gives me a specific type of criticism – some I go to for their clarity, and others I go to just to gauge their reactions (these people are my Average Joe testbeds). I’m sure all of you have your own teams of feedbackers – these people may consist of your professors, your spouse, or your bestest friends. And these people are people you trust.

Now imagine an online situation, where you blook your story and this unknown dude comes up and says: “hey I like your story but can you please do this: *insert*” Or he comes up and he tells you how to improve your writing. The second is okay – hey, we’re all learning, aren’t we? – but the first is downright horrible. And the worst kind is the one that comes up and tells you: “I absolutely love your story. The way you handled this blah scene was amazing, and the way you construct your blah blew me away!”

The effect of all of this is to paint the writer into a corner. All writers have egos, and all bloggers have bigger egos than writers. We only take criticism from the people we know and we trust, and this applies to life as it does to writing. The first kind of comment distracts you from your story, the second kind annoys your ego (if that’s inflated this is a bad thing for said reader) and the third risks you doing something other than storytelling (like – I don’t know – showing off?).

On top of all of this is the simple fact that Internet criticism is propelled by the lowest common denominator. Youtube comments, for instance, are at monkey level. And blogs attract like comments: thinking blogs attract thinking discussion, self-help blogs have this ethos of helpfulness about its commenting section, and blogs that diss celebrities have equally mean feedback.

So what does this mean for us? How can we write and not be detracted by all the chatter coming back?

My solution is, unfortunately, multi-pronged. I would suggest finishing the whole damned story offline, edit it, bounce it off your circle of feedbackers and then blook it, and I would think this the best way to do blog fiction (feedback can come at the end of the story, at a comments page). But not everyone follows this model. Some of us come to blooking because we want to create never-ending novels, and another attraction to the medium of blog fiction is the flighty feeling of cooking up a story under heat of reader anticipation.

So my other suggestion would be to create an ethos on your site that promotes chatting with the author, but not monkey level communication. You can do this through many ways – for instance a commenting policy telling readers what not to comment on. But the best thing to do, I believe, is to interact only with the things you are comfortable with – the themes in your story, for instance, or a certain character’s ability to deal with tragedy, etc etc. Salinger said a good novel makes you feel like you want to chat with the author who wrote it – but the important point here is to keep it to a chat.

I no longer comment on writing when I visit a blook. Long experience has taught me not to, because it is disrespectful of the other writer’s process. So I keep it to discussion about the themes and ideas brought up in his or her story, or I ask her about the characters, and certain points of the story I might not be sure about. I would suggest other blook readers to do the same.

One last thing before I close on this topic: can online feedback ever help? And the answer is yes, absolutely. But the caveat is to get to know the people commenting first – to read their writing and understand their views and to trust their opinions. And then wonderful things can happen, and constructive feedback that doesn’t bring out the ego-lion in you can start coming back and forth. Part of my feedback circle is the Chawlk writing community, and I know and love and trust the people there, even if I’ve never met them in real life.

So writing online can be a real challenge, especially if you don’t plan to finish it and write in solitude beforehand. But, like all things, practice helps. And if you ever start thinking yourself Shakespeare – bounce off your feedbacker circle. They’ll kill you and you’ll be better for it.

Now go write. And leave me a comment.

Bob is a blook writer. He hosts his blook on Wordpress, buys his own hosting plan, and has completed a masterpiece: a beautifully written work entitled Bob’s Blook.

One day he steps out of his house to pick up a pound of beef. It is a wonderful day for a walk down the road: the sky is an azure blue, his garden is in full bloom; the smell like wine in the air. He hums as he steps out of his front yard – there are library books under his arm he wants to return – and as he turns to head down to the shops he is hit by a speeding car.

Let’s take our mind off Bob for a moment (he won’t survive, if you’re wondering) and give some thought to his blook. What will happen to it? Bob has not left the password to the Wordpress blog to any of his acquaintances, nor has he left instructions for the maintenance of his domain name or his hosting plan. Both will expire, and when they do, Bob’s blook will be no more. Since all copies of it exist solely in the digital domain it is highly likely no trace of Bob’s Blook will remain after a 5 year period. There is no chance of a grandson finding a dusty manuscript in a drawer, and there is certainly no chance of publication after death – a Children Of Hurin will certainly not happen here.

Poor Bob.

The above story brings us to the topic at hand today: we’re not going to live forever. When we’re gone, what’s going to happen to our online scribblings?

It’s a handy thing to note that the printed page will still be accessible 100 years from now. The digital page, however, may not. Times change, so do file formats. Who isn’t to say that HTML would be phased out a century from now, and that PDFs are to be laughed at?

Dave Winer gets down to the heart of the matter in his article Future-Safe Archives, which was sparked off by the death of blogger Marc Orchant.

People are humble, no one wants to come out and say their work has any value that’s worth preserving past their death, but come on, we know that’s not true. If Shakespeare were alive today, he’d be writing on the web. As would Hemingway or Faulkner, Vonnegut or Mailer, John Lennon or Dylan Thomas, Carl Sandberg or Robert Frost. Mozart, Bach and Beethoven. You think there isn’t any great literature out there on the web? I wouldn’t be so sure about that. What if there is? And what if a baby born today becomes a great creative force? Or what if there’s a social disaster like the Holocaust? Did you know that there are preserved diaries from pre-revolutionary America? Writings of ordinary people can be of enormous help to historians. And if we believe in citizen journalism (I do) why not citizen historians? Shouldn’t we be thinking out into the future? We should!

Winer humbly admits his entire web presence will disappear within mere days of his death. He runs his own server; tweaks and maintains it on a weekly basis. And in days his site will be gone, and the thoughts that defined him will be lost forever.

I agree with Winer’s view that creating future-safe archives will require ‘foresight and planning’. I intend to leave some form of continuation for all my web projects should I – knock wood – get hit by a bus. But, should it prove to be too complicated to protect my digital content, I have this to say:

There will always be paper.

I’ve been following Write Now Is Good for quite some time now, and after my recent Internet inactivity I logged in to Netvibes to find a whole list of posts Kristin’s done on her writing efforts for the month of November. She’s linked to a series of Pep Talks from NaNoWriMo, written by authors all over the world, and man oh man is it good stuff. I’ve been forcing myself to write, these past few weeks, staying as far as I can from technology as possible (and failing miserably, as it goes), but either way it’s still been an uphill battle to finish my aim of 10 pages a day. Neil Gaiman’s, in particular, made me smile:

… I called my agent. I told her how stupid I felt writing something no-one would ever want to read, how thin the characters were, how pointless the plot. I strongly suggested that I was ready to abandon this book and write something else instead, or perhaps I could abandon the book and take up a new life as a landscape gardener, bank-robber, short-order cook or marine biologist. And instead of sympathising or agreeing with me, or blasting me forward with a wave of enthusiasm—or even arguing with me—she simply said, suspiciously cheerfully, “Oh, you’re at that part of the book, are you?”

To all writers out there, regardless of whether you’re in NaNoWriMo or not: keep going, you’re nearly there.

The situation comes first. The characters – always flat and unfeatured, to begin with – come next. Once these things are fixed in my mind, I begin to narrate. I often have an idea of what the outcome may be, but I have never demanded of a set of characters that they do things my way. On the contrary, I want them to do things their way. In some instances, the outcome is what I visualized. In most, however, it’s something I never expected. For a suspense novelist, this is a great thing. I am, after all, not just the novel’s creator but its first reader. And if I’m not able to guess with any accuracy how the damned thing is going to turn out, even with my inside knowledge of coming events, I can be pretty sure of keeping the reader in a state of page-turning anxiety. And why worry about the ending anyway? Why be such a control freak? Sooner or later every story comes out somewhere.

King makes it seem so easy: why ever should you have to ‘be enslaved to the tyranny of the outline and the notebook filled with “Character Notes”?’ And I must admit, it does make writing sound fun. But after giving it a try and thinking about the possibilities of this technique – I have to say that the differences in story and plot really depend on what kind of writer you are, and what kind of stories you write.

Story

Story is what King advocates: he starts off with an idea, and instead of pulling up his sleeves and pushing characters around, he sits back and just ‘write what happens’. He alleges this is more organic and inspired, and some pretty complex books of his have come out of this style of writing (Doleres Claiborne). To his credit his arguments do make plenty of sense – and he throws in a caveat: “… each of the novels summarized above was smoothed out and detailed by the editorial process, of course, but most of the elements existed to begin with …”

Story works where there is a situational premise (Richard’s Undead Flowers, for instance: what happens if there are the undead and the living live together, side by side, in a village?). And I believe story also works when you’re writing a blook … for the reasons King gave, as well as its suitability to the medium.

Plot

Plot is what King calls the ‘jackhammer’ of the storyteller’s arsenal. But despite all the things he says against it there are authors out there for whom plot works well. Generational epics (like Steinbeck’s East Of Eden, for instance) have to be plotted, and couldn’t have been pulled off without some planning. And you have Jefferey Deaver, who swears by the importance of outlining before beginning a book. So plot does work, and is in fact needed for novels with a high levels of complexity. Even King admits to plotting (The Dead Zone), though he says this is the exception rather than the rule: ‘I have written plotted novels, but the results, in books like Insomnia and Rose Madder, have not been particularly inspiring.’

Plot … Story … Eh?

And me? I try to plot. Really I do. I outline and decide what happens in chapter 18, and which character gets killed off by chapter 23. But honestly, I have no discipline following any of the plotting I’ve done … so what King writes serves as a lovely excuse for me not to plot. Which I will, in my next manuscript.

Here’s a shoutout to you fiction writers out there: which works for you? Plot? Story? I’ve got one part of an interview with Authors on the Web on exactly that, and the replies are mixed. Are yours? I’m interested to know.

I found this through 9rules, and I thought I’ll share it here.

Eight rules for writing fiction:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. Now matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

- Vonnegut, Kurt Vonnegut, Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons 1999), 9-10.

Most of you who have been following Novelr know what I see as the answer to the “Don’t Read Text Online” conundrum. In a sentence: shorter, bite-sized, standalone posts, with clear, unembellished writing.

I’m beginning to see that I was wrong. I’m beginning to see that Cory Doctorow isn’t completely correct.

Short text is not the only way forward, and I probably had this coming to me: Lee didn’t agree with my point that dreamy prose won’t work online. With good cause, as I now see. What brought about this sudden epiphany, you may ask? The answer may be a little ironic: an article entitled ‘Reviving Anorexic Web Writing‘, from A List Apart Issue 242. A design website for heaven’s sakes! It swept the carpet from under my feet and I suggest that you read it in its entirety before continuing with this post.

Seriously. Go read it now. Reading quotes will just dillute the point Amber Simmon’s trying to make. Done? Okay …

In The Defense Of Brevity

Much of what I’ve talked about has been proven to work online: bulleted points, lists, (short) length, as well as subheadings. All this works to promote scannability of an article – to direct reader attention to ideas and paragraphs you want them to pay attention to. You see this everywhere you look: the NYT splits long posts into multiple pages; news sites put up subheadings to tell readers which part of the article says what.

In fact, writing like this probably works best in the majority of cases. I cannot imagine reading Faulkner-like prose while browsing Google News, nor can I imagine stinging social commentary while reading a blogging tutorial. My writing on Novelr follows this advice – it produces organized, rant-free posts with enough impact to start a discussion going – which is my ultimate aim.

(At least, I hope it does … most of the time.)

Fiction Is A Different Story

Now here’s the clincher: if online prose is condensed and changed to suit scan-click ADD readers … then doesn’t that sacrifice quality on the altar of readership? Changing the way people write to suit the medium is something Cory Doctorow champions, but Amber Simmons fights against.

She has strong reasons.

… the advice to omit words, chunk content, use bullets, and keep it short remains. This is sometimes, but not universally good advice. I thought I was the only one who felt this way until I read Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think! wherein he writes, “No one is suggesting the articles on Salon.com be shorter.” I cheered inside! Except that people are suggesting this. Because we haven’t yet figured out the difference between content and copy.

She even gives us an example. My Body, by Shelley Jackson, is ‘real writing: beautiful, lucid, captivating.’ The lack of headlines and bullets mattered not, the lack of pictures mattered not.

“Give me passion and give me flair,” she says, “and I will give you my full attention, page after page after page.”

I gave My Body a try, after reading her article. I found myself captivated. Enthralled. Pinned to my seat by a woman who loved her body and was not shy to pen it. Beautiful.

Writing long …. but getting read?

Much of what Simmons has written is heartening. She closes with a clarion call for writers of our (the Internet) generation, and asks us to provide what she calls the ‘heart of the web’. But there are two parts to this – she assumes there are already a great many designers out there who – in their chase for usability and wow – fail to provide good writing.

Design and writing has to go together for a great user experience. The entire Issue 242 in A List Apart was about writing – how better design can be achieved with your choice of words, etc etc.

The same goes for blooks.

We already have a one-up in the writing arena. If we don’t, we probably will be – what writer does not seek to improve? But Simmons is mistaken in the sense that all beautiful prose will be read. The writing may be the heart, but wrapping a heart of gold with a misshapen body isn’t going to win the writer any brownie points.

What I’m trying to say is this: long prose will be read, provided we do everything in our power to make it easier for the reader to read it. This obviously crosses over to the realm of design (A List Apart’s forte).

I can already think of a few points off the top of my head: big fonts, a suitable font family, less links. But I’ll leave the nitty gritty and the details for another time. For now, I’m happy with the realization that short isn’t the only way forward.

Thank you, Amber.

PS: She has another brilliant piece on writing here, about (of all things) firing your readers. Hmm!

Take 24 (the TV series) as an example. The concept is pretty simple to grasp: each episode is 1 hour (of a day), and 24 makes up the entire season. This makes for pretty interesting plotting: you have the end in sight, now what is going to happen within those 24 hours?

Another example of this is Life Of Pi. Early on in the novel Yann Martel tells us he would give us Pi’s amazing story in exactly 100 chapters. As the book went on I found myself wanting the book to last longer, and I used the chapters as a yardstick for how much story there was left.

This has an interesting effect. In 24 the characters are plunged into a crisis, and the writers throw complication after complication at them. In writing, set periods coupled with non-stop hurdles prove for very interesting stories. When your characters are in deep, deep trouble readers are probably wondering how you’re going to get them out again … which is very good if you’re writing with a need of holding the reader’s attention.

Like, for instance, the computer screen.

I wonder how far I can push this concept – really short storytelling in … 25 chapters? Should be interesting, don’t you think?

I have writer’s block today.

Took a few minutes to get away from the computer; to smell the flowers in my garden, listen to the birds, watch my dog lolloping around. Then a rogue bee came and chased me back inside the house. The stark whiteness of the computer screen is biting at me now.

The writer’s block won’t go away, dammit.

I’ve been writing since I was 7, and I know the feeling well. You want to write something, anything, and yet your fingers freeze. The paper crinkles in your hands; its blankness a testament to your failure. I check back the archives in this blog: I’ve written about how computers don’t help me in being productive, I’ve also written on what I do to overcome writer’s block.

None of it is working now. The paper is laughing at me on my desk.

Top 5 Things To Do When Your Paper Begins To Laugh At You

1. Make a cup of coffee. I find this helps in the most dire of situations – the caffeine will then either: A) inspire you ; B) make the paper laugh louder. In case of B), prepare a bottle of vodka. If vodka doesn’t inspire you I don’t know what will.

2. Read a good book. One that explores themes relating to suffering, obstacles, sex and murder. Note: all these elements can be found in the Bible. I’ve always found it fascinating how Solomon could describe women:

Oh, you are beautiful, my darling! Oh, how beautiful! Your eyes behind your veil are like doves. Your hair is like a flock of female goats descending from Mount Gilead.
(Song of Songs 4:1)

Don’t ask.

3. Take a nap. And maybe when you wake up the page will be filled with words. You can hope. Pray. Fervently. Or at least dream about ideas descending Mount Gilead like a flock of female goats …

4. Play Desktop Tower Defense. I mean, seriously. This little game is addictive. And making sure the monsters don’t get through is sure a lot better than stressing over some lousy deadline you’re supposed to be working towards, right? Right?

5. The truth. Somedays you just can’t overcome your Writer’s Block, no matter what creative things you do. And when you get one of those days the best solution would be to force yourself to write – be it for a research paper or a blog or a newspaper article – just close everything down, bite your lip and tackle that topic head on!

There. I’ve completed this blog post as part of Darren Rowse’s group writing project. And my paper is still empty; it is still in front of me. “What are you going to do with me now?” it taunts.

I take up my pencil.

“I’m going to write.”

I’m finding that my computer doesn’t really help the writing process. And that doesn’t make sense – what is so different about writing with a pen and writing with a keyboard?

Everything, as it turns out.

I write best with pencil and paper. Pens won’t do, since I can’t stand crossing out phrases that could be improved upon. Pencils give me the freedom to doodle along the margins and to mind-map all my plot ideas, themes and characters … in cute little bubbles. It’s aesthetically pleasing.

Composing my thoughts on the computer, like in Wordpress or in Word is an entirely different thing. I don’t see the empty document window or text box as a canvas on which my art can be crafted and molded on. I see obstacles to my creativity (and my lovely email inbox).

Writing this post has taken me 2 hours. During that time roughly 30 minutes had been spent on actual typing and forming sentences, while the other 1 hour 30 minutes spent on surfing Amazon, checking email, catching up with friends on Skype as well as reading up on the latest reviews over at the NYT.

In contrast, it takes me roughly 4 hours to write a 3000 word chapter on paper. That means 750 words an hour – a hefty pace, considering I spend a lot of time on rewriting entire pages.

You know what? I should spend more time writing my posts offline. I believe the quality would improve, as well as give me the time to doodle and drink coffee (no fear of a short circuit!) and to smell the flowers and run from the bees.

Take a day away from the computer. It helps.

The following are first lines – from some of my most loved novels:

Call me Ishmael.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

When he was nearly thirteen my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.

All day, the colours had been that of dusk, mist moving like a water creature across the great flanks of mountains possessed of ocean shadows and depths.

“Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes.”

Can you recognize any of the above? (Don’t you go and Google them … I’ll put up the answers at the end of the post).

Are first lines that important? I usually read at least half a novel before developing an opinion about it (a possible exception is online fiction, or something that I know is from the slush pile) – and even then I don’t judge something by its first line alone. I read at least two pages of rubbish before I decide to call it rubbish.

But I’m not spokesperson for the world at large. Nor are novels what we usually read online.

So should you give thought to the first line in your writing?

The answer? It depends on the medium. Novels can get by with absolutely pathetic first lines, though writing overall still has to be good, vigorous and well structured. You wouldn’t have thought that To Kill A Mockingbird – one of the greatest novels ever written – started with an extremely unimpressive first line now, would you?

Once we take it online, however, the first lines of posts, episodes and chapters become absolutely vital. Which of the following would you rather continue reading?

I’m so tired to blog today because a lot of bad things happened to me while I was coming back from school and it was so horrible to be stuck between this woman that stunk like a fish market and a man who looked like he came straight out of The Departed – it nearly made me puke after the heavy meal Kristin made me eat during lunch break as well as the breakfast Mum forced down my throat.

Or:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

Alright, so the second example was borrowed off Dickens. He wrote sharp and beautifully, and that first line from A Tale Of Two Cities still sticks with me today. Unfortunately for me, he peppered the rest of the first paragraph with variations of the first line, making me rush through to get to the meat of the story as soon as possible.

The first line in online writing should be concise, to the point, and attractive enough to draw the reader in. You’re not going to get anywhere with:

Hello, my name’s Kevin – but that’s not important.

So what should you aim for in your first line?

1. Sentence level elegance. Your first line doesn’t necessarily have to be short. Properly structured long sentences still work the same wonder if done correctly. For this I refer you to a very enlightening article over at Poynter Online. Read it here.

2. A hint of what lies beyond. Can this be accomplished in a sentence? Not impossible, but you’d need the skills of a good wordsmith to make every letter count. Rather, aim to set the tone for your introduction – and the chapter beyond it – with your first sentence. The second and third are equally important to draw the reader in, though it probably won’t end up in the sacred halls of first (one?) liners that sticks to the mind.

3. Relevancy. Since the first line sets the tone for the introduction as well as the chapter – make sure to revise, revise and revise again. Sometimes the first line is forgotten as the main meat of the article/post/chapter is rewritten – and thus the introduction feels off tangent with what you’re trying to say. The internet is the domain of unforgiving eyes – if your direction, tone or story is not apparent within the first few lines interest would be extremely hard to generate. And thus your reader goes off to check his email, his friend’s blog, or some distraction the internet is all too happy to provide.

4. The Set Up. I don’t like novels to throw me into the chaos of a world I haven’t even begun to understand. I didn’t particularly like the way To Kill A Mockingbird started, but Harper Lee cushioned the abruptness of the first line with a few pages of backstory. Here’s a good example of The Set Up in a first line:

The dark man fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.

From Gunslinger, Stephen King.

Ample opportunity for the author to explain – who is the dark man? Who is the gunslinger? Why the desert? Why is one following the other?

5. The Hook. This one doesn’t set up the story, nor does it offer a glimpse of what lies beyond. It just hooks you, pulls you in. Makes you want to know more. One example:

Today my Grandmother exploded …

From Ian Bank’s Crow Road

Does it set up the story? Possibly. Is it elegant? Quite. Does it give a hint of what lies beyond? Absolutely not.

What it does remarkably well is to make you want to read more. I do, and am currently reading up on the book at Amazon. Powerful stuff, this first sentence.

*Note: As promised, here are the books from which the first lines at the introduction of this post were taken:

‘Call Me Ishmael’ – Moby-Dick, and is one of the most famous in American Literature.

‘It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.’ – Cheeky set up, this one: Pride and Prejudice.

‘When he was nearly thirteen my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.’ – An abrupt start to an amazing novel: To Kill A Mockingbird.

‘All day, the colours had been that of dusk, mist moving like a water creature across the great flanks of mountains possessed of ocean shadows and depths.’ – Man Booker Prize Winner of 2006 – Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance Of Loss.

‘”Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes.”‘ – The beginning of a masterpiece: Tolstoy’s War and Peace.

It must be noted that this post was inspired by a 9rules note. A big thanks to them for making me read up the first lines of my favourite novels.

An anticlimax is personally one of my most feared nightmares – it means you have to revise a major part of the novel, or at least put the climax on hold until you can figure out a way to make it bigger, better, more twisted and more shocking than anything you’ve thrown at the reader so far. Here’s my top 10 list of successfully writing an Anticlimax – found mostly through trial and error.

1. Never plan ahead. While writing your novel take care to never plan more than 2 chapters ahead – that way you get to make sure incongruous details pop up at the last minute, and ensure that your pacing is like that of jerky Chevy.

2. Introduce a new plotline at the last minute. There’s nothing more satisfying than knowing you’ve thrown your reader off the buildup to your climax. One of the best ways to do so is to have your protagonist killed, brought back to life, get a new love interest, before finishing off the antagonist/challenge poised. This works well especially if it’s way off course.

3. Have plenty of explosions. Place them strategically all over the novel, at various scenes in the build-up to the climax. Then have the smallest explosion ever at your climax, simply because you’ve run out of fuel. In other words: make sure your build-up is more exciting than your climax.

4. Make sure the final confrontation/culmination is very short. Half a chapter is good. No, wait – 50 words is better. In case of a mystery, use the following paragraph (exactly 50 words):

Detective walks up to killer. “You’re under arrest for the murder of Victim A, B and C. Put your hands in the air.”

Killer: “Gee. You’re one smart guy. Must’ve been all the forensic evidence I left lying around. When do I get out so you can catch me again?”

5. Drag your final confrontation to half the book. The idea here is to make bring the reader to the edge of his seat – and keep him there for as long as it takes to get him bored.

6. Kill off your antagonist before the climax. Alternatively, have the problem solve itself before your protagonist finds out (that there actually is a problem he’ll have to solve).

7. Kill off your protagonist before the climax. And then have a supporting character with no emotional connection with the reader solve the entire problem. What an amazing plot twist! you tell yourself.

8. Have everything miraculously fall into place during the climax. This works like a charm in romance novels – especially after you throw a thousand and one very interesting challenges in between the said couple. An anticlimatic scenario: Male Lead’s ex girlfriend (who is a wildly successful popstar) dies in carcrash at the same time Female Lead’s father falls down stairs while serving tea and has a new take on life (and no longer resents the relationship). They get together, Female Lead’s credit card debt suddenly disappears due to a glitch in the credit card company’s computer and Male Lead gets his job back because his boss suddenly realizes he can’t live without him, nevermind that Male Lead has punched aforementioned boss over Female Lead.

Cue for happy ending. (This is also a good place to announce a pregnancy – very exciting stuff, isn’t it?).

9. Change the tone of your novel during the climax. It works. Trust me. Note to Dan Brown: write like Jane Austen at the climax of your next book. Jane Austen: rewrite Pride and Prejudice to include an albino murderer who wants to kill Mr Darcy, just at the moment when Elizabeth and him finally get together. Ahh. What thrill!

10. Leave your novel/novella/post hanging …

One last note on writing an anticlimax: it has all got to do with pacing. But pacing your novel is something that has to be learnt, which brings me to Faulkner:

Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique. There is no mechanical way to get the writing done, no shortcut. The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory. Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error. The good artist believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice. He has supreme vanity. No matter how much he admires the old writer, he wants to beat him.

Write long, write badly, make mistakes. Then learn from them. The list above are some of mine. How about yours?

To writers still aspiring to be taken up by one of the traditional publishing houses: our eye to writing heaven has just gotten smaller.

Let’s look at the odds working against authors wanting to publish a first novel:

There are hundreds of competent writing courses out there, which in turn raises the quality for submissions to publishers. Your writing, if beautiful, has to compete with hundreds of others who are more or less as good as, if not better than, yours.

So let’s look at the other factor in getting published: content. Or topic. Or what you write about. If you’re a novelist, the story you present in your first novel must be distinctive, fresh, and easily marketable. It is perhaps this last point that provides us with some worry – more and more marketing campaigns in the publishing industry have huge pictures of good looking authors to use while promoting their fiction – authors are sold next to their books.

Let’s talk about reading habits:

In a survey of 2,000 adults, a third had not bought a new book in the previous 12 months. 34% said they did not read books. (Expanding the Market, Book Marketing Ltd, 2004)

Whether they use the internet or not wasn’t asked, though I believe it should – the internet is primarily a text based medium where reading reigns supreme. Back to the topic at hand: less and less people are reading books, buying books, enjoying literature. There are a myriad of reasons, but let’s just step back and conclude that while book nuts are not shrinking dramatically, they’re not growing exponentially either.

But the number of books, content and writing out there are growing exponentially.

A lot of the above points are discussed and presented poignantly in a Guardian Unlimited article I’ve just finished consuming. The future looks bleak.

Before I became a journalist, I worked as a reader for Jonathan Cape and Chatto & Windus. I learnt that if it is true that everyone has a novel in them, most people would be best advised to keep it there.

And then there was this story Kate Kellaway had to share that struck me:

One day, I came upon a first novel. I found it in the slush pile, but there was nothing slushy about it. It was a fairy tale for adults which Cape went on to publish: A Mirror for Princes by Tom de Haan. This was a pseudonym because de Haan, who worked in the City, did not want anyone to know he was a writer. Everyone at Cape was surprised by his quaint, refreshing lack of ego. (Did he see novel writing as a vice?) Tom Maschler, then the editorial director, pointed out that his insistence on a pseudonym might make it tricky to publicise his book. But de Haan would not budge and Maschler tactfully gave in.

Today, de Haan would not have got his own way (and perhaps his books might have sold better). Certainly, the idea of a novel quietly selling itself now, with no sense of the writer behind it, is far-fetched. Kate Saunders, one of the judges of this year’s Orange Prize for fiction (the longlist, just announced, has half-a-dozen first novels on it), says: ‘It is harder for first novelists to get noticed now. They will find, increasingly, that they are judged alongside their work – and are less likely to be taken on if they are not photogenic or newsworthy.’

If that doesn’t make you sigh and throw your hands up in frustration I’ll admit you’re superhuman. Yes, the eye of the needle to heaven is tiny. The article tries to throw some hope our way with five case studies of successful first novelists at the very end, just before the conclusion. They’ve made it, and I think constant perseverance might serve us all well, but we’ve got to admit somewhere along the way that the odds are just stacked so high against us. There has to be a smarter way of getting published (I hear people screaming the word ‘novel in blog form’ at this very instant). But there’s still a few kinks with that concept … and I’ve already listed down the reasons we probably won’t read fiction online.

Is this bad for literature? What does this mean for aspiring writers? And is internet the next frontier of publishing?

Either way it looks bad – if only the best, most refreshing, most marketable novels get published, then the not so good, not so refreshing and not so marketable ones end up online. Which just makes things worse for the lot of us online readers – who already have to grapple with the problems of reading off a screen, and the instant enjoyment that simple to read items like news and gossip offer us.

This one bears thinking about. May I harness your brains as well?

PS: I can’t bear writing such a depressing post, and concluding it on such a dour note. Let me close with a one liner:

Bad spellers of the world, untie.

Hope that helps.