WRITING WITH FEELING by Gill Stewart

For me the best writing is writing that conveys strong emotion.  But how do you do it?  How do you get that glorious intensity into words on the page?

  First, of course, you need to feel the emotion yourself.  You can try reading poetry.  Listening to music.  Wandering through a gallery or the hills above Moffat.  And FEELING – then describing the feeling.  That’s the hard thing – not just the feeling but the saying how you feel.  Finding those exact words to express it.  Maybe that’s how it is for painters, looking for that exact colour?  Or composers, for the right note, the right instrument and tone?

  But we writers only have words and word in my hands are such poor, sad things.  So often I want to go and quote from someone else, to show how words can really be made to count.  But that is cheating, so I have to try and capture that passion myself.

  It isn’t easy.

  Sometimes it helps if you take a picture and try to express that one moment in words: not the things you see but the things you feel, so the reader is there in the moment too.  Like this -

The silver snake of the slide.  The impossibly distant perfect houses.  The vicious crash and clack of the skateboards.  Green grass, even in winter.  And the grey grey sky, enough to make you cry.  That’s Kelvingrove Park on a grey day in February.

  Or you can listen to music as you write.  I know many people do that, but I find I can’t.  I can listen to music before I write, but then I have to have silence to delve into my own deep, recalcitrant feelings.

  And then, sometimes, when you do get into that moment, the emotion is there carrying you forward like a tidal wave and you just ride it and then look back afterwards to see if it has worked.  Riding the wave – maybe that’s the best analogy for me.  You can edit out what is unnecessary, but first you need to get the flood of words on the page to edit.

  When I can’t quite find the wave, I make myself keep on trying.  I think that’s what all writers do.  You don’t believe you have ever quite got there – remember the brilliance of the story when it formed in your head? the amazing image?  the feeling?  But we keep on trying.

Playing Fast and Loose With History: the Mysterious Case of Richard III

Good King Richard?

For anyone who, like me, has a lifelong interest in history, there’s only one place to start this week’s blog – with the monarch of the moment, Good King Richard III.

Did I say Good King Richard? Sorry, I meant Richard Crookback. Or did I? Actually I don’t know. The announcement this week that the bones uncovered in a Leicester car park are, beyond reasonable doubt, those of the last Plantagenet king of England, did more than provide an elegant ending worthy of a novel to Richard’s tragic tale. It also got me thinking.

Fiction, by definition, is Not True. It might include elements of truth and it might (if we get it right) ring true. But does that give the novelist a licence to play fast and loose with facts? You surely wouldn’t introduce a tank crashing across Bosworth battlefield to rescue the king even if you might just get away with a kitchen maid peeling a potato a couple of years before Walter Raleigh produced one for Elizabeth I.

Character is different, in my book at least. The beauty of historical figures is that they tend to be portrayed, whether as heroes or villains, by contemporaries who had a vested interest. Political spin is an ancient art – contemporary pictures of Richard were altered under Henry VII to portray him with that famous hunched back – but who knows whether the original portrait was itself a propaganda piece to show him as the flower of manhood?

Hero or villain - it's up to you

More than any other king, Richard has inspired a sense of injustice which continues to this day. By losing at Bosworth to a man whose claim to the throne was dubious at best (though perhaps Richard’s own might bear a little closer examination) and by being charged by Shakespeare with a catalogue of villainies which include the murder of his two young nephews (both of whom, incidentally, stood between him and the throne) he unwittingly began a campaign for the rehabilitation of his reputation.

Shakespeare gets a lot of the blame for this but to me his position is defensible. Richard III is a damn good play and I’d argue that it wouldn’t be quite as fine if he’d portrayed Richard as virtuous. Another example: in her Cousins’ War series Philippa Gregory depicts him both through the eyes of his wife as chivalrous, loving and under an obligation of crushing duty; and through the eyes of his sister-in-law (mother to the Princes in the Tower) as an obsessive, ambitious mass-murderer. For me, it’s the second of these scenarios in which he’s the more compelling character.

Novelists are perfectly entitled to do what they like with a character as long as there’s no-one they can libel by so doing. Richard may well have been wronged but the man’s been dead since 1485 and we’ll never know for certain what he was really like. In my book, writers can play with his character, for better or for worse, to their hearts’ content, though I’d prefer it if they kept to the hard facts as they’re known and undisputed. So do what you like with Richard - but please, no tanks on Bosworth Field….

What’s in a name?

by Mary Smith

Am I the only writer who agonises over what names to give my fictional characters? I can write about someone for quite a long time before the name arrives and it may change even then as the character develops further. Maybe some parents should wait until they know their offspring’s character before they bestow a name?

Names are so important to the story and there is such a lot to bear in mind in choosing the perfect name. For a start, it has to fit the personality of the character so it wouldn’t do to call the romantic hero Reggie, would it? Humphrey doesn’t really hit the mark, either. The name also has to fit the physical description as well as the personality so Doris wouldn’t really do for a willowy blonde (apologies to willowly Doris).

There are names in books we never forget because they are just so right. Think of Holly Golightly in Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind, Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina or even Harry Potter. I wonder how long it took J K Rowling to come up with his name. Dickens was a master at choosing names: Mrs Gummidge, Uriah Heep, Ebenezer Scrooge, Tiny Tim – all unforgettable and so evocative of the character.

Of course, we couldn’t use Dickens-era names now and even more ordinary names go out of fashion. We have to be careful when writing a contemporary novel, not to choose a name which was popular twenty years ago but is no longer in use today. It’s also important to be sure if it is a historical novel you haven’t chosen a name which wasn’t in use during the time period of the novel.

This was brought home to me a couple of years ago when crime writer Catriona McPherson provided a competition prize in which the winner had her name given to one of the characters in the next book. Catriona’s crime novels, which feature upper crust sleuth Dandy Gilver, are set in the 1920s. I rang her up to tell her the woman who had won the competition in the magazine was called Lynne. There was silence for a moment or two before Catriona said, a bit hesitantly: “I’m sure it will be all right.” She called me back to say she’d had to check if the name Lynne was actually in use in the year in which the next novel would be set. Fortunately for the magazine, Catriona and the competition winner, the name Lynne was just beginning to be used at that time.

What about nicknames? Should we give our characters nicknames? It’s something I’ve never done and now I’m writing this I am wondering why not? Lots of people have nicknames so it should be natural for characters in novels to have them. I love the names in Damon Runyon’s collections of short stories On Broadway. His characters are dudes, dolls, bootleggers, gangsters and drop-outs in the seamy side of New York with names such as Hymie Banjo Eyes, Widow Crumb, The Lemon Drop Kid (who always has a bag of lemon drops) and Dave the Dude.

My novel No More Mulberries is set in Afghanistan and the majority of the characters are Afghan with Muslim names. I break the rules about not having names begin with the same initials and sometimes the names are very similar – but that’s the way it is in Afghanistan. I know my chosen names fit the characters but I wonder if readers who don’t know the country and the culture feel the same.

There is plenty of advice out there about where to find names for characters – church yards (especially for older names), baby-name books and websites or the phone book. Somehow, it doesn’t seem quite right to simply choose a name from a list.  How do other writers decide on names?

Robert Burns fever - am I a heretic?

It's that time of year again. Across the world, Burns fans have been gathering to celebrate the life and works of Rabbie, Scotland's favourite poet. For the past 20 years I've been going to a supper hosted by my husband's debating society – originally a men-only group modelled a little on the Bachelor's Club in Tarbolton, which Burns himself attended. There have been some great evenings, some inspired ones, and some that are best forgotten. There's the usual ritual of piping in a haggis, the Address to said beastie, the Immortal Memory to the Bard, followed by toast to the lassies and reply etc etc. And in the case of this group, there's a pretty good ceilidh thereafter, as there are some fine musicians in the Society (Aly Bain is a member, though he's quite often busy on Burns Night!).

And so I ventured out once again on Friday night, for more of the same.

Should I confess? I find the ritual format depressing. Why on earth do we celebrate the work of such a wonderful rapscallion in such a mind-numbingly unoriginal way? Okay, there's plenty to talk about, because like that English giant of literature, Shakespeare, you can pick any aspect of the man and his works to make more or less whatever point you want to about life, love, politics or the human condition. And it's certainly true that Burns's work has that rare quality of universality (dare I say, even more so than Shakespeare's, because he seems to resonate across all nations and classes?). We know a fair bit about his life, which was deliciously scandal-ridden. It was also quite hard – he died of a disease of poverty (rheumatic fever) and enmeshed in debt.

But Burns Suppers seem to have become a self-perpetuating industry, and no-one seems to challenge this. (With the magnificent exception of Kenneth Roy – see http://www.scottishreview.net/KennethRoy52.shtml?utm_source=Sign-Up.to&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=286564-The+case+for+abolishing+Burns+suppers+  ) What would Burns himself think of these events? I suspect he'd be having houghmagandie under the table with some wench – and who could blame him? In my opinion, there's a very good reason why there are no Shakespeare Suppers every year on 23 April, or Jane Austen Suppers on 16 December.

On the other hand, the continued existence of this annual shindig does help to keep Rabbie and his works alive, no doubt about that. So – good thing or bad thing? And if we ditch the suppers, how should we celebrate the birth of our Scottish national poet?

NEVER JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS COVER ...

....as the saying has it. Just before Christmas an artist friend, Roger, and his wife came to supper. Conversation was lively over the boeuf bourginon, as always. Then Roger said, 'You do all realise that society as we know it today couldn't function without artists.' We were all rather stunned - such a grandiose statement - but then he is an artist and a very good one. Back in the day he designed record sleeves for major groups - think, The Rolling Stones, Status Quo etc. He has work in the V&A. We asked him to qualify his statement. He did - with a looooong list of things that had started life on the drawing board/computer. Packaging for just about everything. Clothes. Cars. White goods. Garden tools. Mobile phones.....on and on and on the list went. 'Book covers,' I said....one he had left out. And it got me thinking. Are book covers a largely overlooked - although very important - part of the publishing process? I was curious how covers are designed so I asked Berni Stevens (she designs all the covers for my publisher, Choc Lit) how she goes about it. 'I always try to read the book if I have the time, or skim read it if the deadline is looming,' Berni says. 'I find it gives me a better insight into the book and often helps me think of an angle for the cover.' Berni works by using a method called photo illustration. She uses library images and then puts lots together in Photoshop to change colours, add different backgrounds, and sometimes even adds people. Sometimes, she will take her own photos if she can't find exactly the perfect photo that she needs. 'It is quite time-consuming,which a lot of people don't realise," Berni tells me. 'The thinking - generally - is that everything to do with computers is fast. Not necessarily so!' I asked Berni if she has a favourite book cover. 'Fashion changes with book covers the way it does with everything else. But a highlight of my career was working on the cover of an unauthorised biography of David Bowie. I'd recently been to one of his concerts and was a huge fan. That cover was a real labour of love and I was allowed to try out lots of different finishes. The CEO of the publishers said she didn't even know how to begin telling me how wonderful she thought it was, and I was over the moon.' I had an over-the-moon moment of my own regarding an illustration that went with a story I had published in Woman's Weekly. I e.mailed my editor there and asked her to pass on a message to the artist to say how thrilled I was with it. So, imagine my suprise when I got an e.mail from the artist himself saying I was welcome to have the original watercolour for a donation to a charity of my choice. That illustration now hangs on the wall in front of my desk. So, book covers.....all published authors will have experience of these. When Choc Lit agreed to publish my first novel, TO TURN FULL CIRCLE, I was sent six images from which to make my choice.....although I was told that wouldn't necessarily be the one that would make the final cut, as it were. Three of those images were portrait shots and I fell in love with one of them instantly. But it was not to be. I was, however, allowed to have a say in the final decision of the colour for my book cover. Thinking about all the above got me thinking about myown favourite book cover. For me it's a How-to book - MAKING SHAPELY FICTION by Jerome Stern. It's in an Art Deco sort of style, which I love. And it does what it says on the tin. So, that's my favourite cover - what's yours?