Looking good! Thoughts on typography by Jenny Harper

Anyone who knows me well knows that how things look is very important to me. I love art, and crafts, and spent a significant portion of my professional working life designing books and magazines. I learnt a lot about typography from real masters of the art when I worked at William Collins, as an editor. In those days, everything was set in hot metal type and we got hand-inked pull proofs to check. Making changes was incredibly expensive and authors were charged for any changes that were not down to printer error. In fact, we had to mark the proofs using three colours of pen: red for author's corrs, green for printer's corrs and blue for editor's corrs. Costs were allocated accordingly.

I know, I know, I sound as though I came out of the Ark! I was still working at Collins in the mid 1970s when the first computer-set dictionary was achieved, and I remember the excitement in the office when it happened. Proofs changed though – soon we were getting stinky ozalids rather than the elegant pull proofs.

Roll on another decade and I was found myself sitting next to a computer specialist at the University of Edinburgh as he tried to lay out a small brochure for me, using a piece of software called PageMaker on a tiny-screened computer called a Mac Classic. 'It'll never catch on,' I said as I squinted at the screen and tried to follow what he was doing. (Soon afterwards I got a Classic of my own. I still have it.) From being an editor, I found myself also becoming something of a designer, because soon I was designing and laying out books and magazines for a large variety of clients. The early lessons in typography began to stand me in very good stead and I became very interested in what typeface to use when, and why one typeface might be better than another for certain purposes.

I was understandably interested, therefore, in a recent piece in The Week entitled 'How typeface influences the way we read and think – and why everyone hates Comic Sans MS' This fascinating article started by pointing out that the announcement of the discovery of the Higgs Boson – one of the most expensive and fascinating experiments in history – was made using a typeface called Comic Sans MS. In the opinion of the writer, gravitas was thus seriously undermined and the reaction was not one of awe, it was simply to laugh.

Serious stuff, then. But can our views really be so deeply affected simply by how words look on a page? Again, the article continues by outlining an experiment where a serious article was presented in a number of different typefaces, from the aforesaid Comic Sans to Baskerville. The results, from analysis of the 40,000 responses, was that if you want people to take your work seriously, you should use Baskerville. Not Georgia, or Times New Roman, which are very similar, but Baskerville.

Why is Comic Sans seen as funny? It looks like a childish scribble, for a start, but to get technical, it's apparently something to do with 'the management of visual weight'. There's a lot of science behind typopgraphy. Why do serifs (those little trailing edges on fonts like Times but not on Arial) arguably make a font easier to read in large quantities? Why is italic more difficult to read – and capitals almost impossible in quantity?

Fascinating stuff and I could bore you with it for hours. But I won't. Instead, I'd like to ask you a question: Are you ever put off by the size of the typeface or the type style when you pick up a book and open it?

I am. Sometimes I put a book right back on the shelf if the type is too small, even though I feel I'd like to read it. Something in my head tell me this is going to be too intense, maybe a bit boring. I could be very wrong, but that's the message I get.

Remember all those Joanna Trollopes published in the 90s? They used a typeface called Melior, which was in common use for a certain kind of book. It got to the stage that if I picked up a book in that type I put it straight back down because I felt I knew exactly what I'd be getting and I'd already had it.

So, that brings me to another, related, subject. When we buy an e-book (certainly on Kindle), we can read it either in serif or sans serif, bigger or smaller, with more spacing or less spacing – but other than that, we have very little control over how it appears. How does this make us perceive the book? In one way we have ceded less power to the typographer, who could in former times have influenced our reaction quite considerably. In another way, we have lost all power ourselves.

And, in reading most books in one format, one typeface, will everything we read in time become simply one homogeneous, misshapen lump in our minds? We remember the look, feel, and heft of a printed book. We remember whether the paper was rough or smooth, yellow or white. We remember it was fat, or slight. We remember the cover. If we try hard enough, we probably remember the typeface too.

Are these losses important, at the end of the day, or are they offset by convenience?

Over to you!

ARE YOU A CAT OR A DOG PERSON?

'But there aren't any dogs in your stories!' a friend wailed at me. 'Or any cats for that matter.' Well, that wasn't entirely true because I did once have a short story published where a missing dog was instrumental in repairing a relationship between step-father and step-daughter. But the romance I wrote about how a cat got girl to meet boy and live happily ever after got me a rap over the knuckles from my, then, agent -'An absolute no-no, Linda. Never write another'. And I haven't. Certainly no animals - pet or wild - appear in any of my novels. Anna Sewell, of course, changed how we think about animals for all time when she wrote Black Beauty from the horse's point of view. Elizabeth Taylor probably eclipsed the horse for some, but the book - and the film - has stood the test of time.

And then there was Argos - not, not the cheapo retail outlet! - the dog of Odysseus who was the only one to recognise his owner after a twenty year absence. Poor Argos then died, but has remained a symbol of fidelity and love. I am, most definitely, a cat person, although I don't own one. That said,a neighbour's Bengal seems to think it lives here most of the time.

I can't think of a single book I've read in recent times where a pet of any sort has been crucial to the story. Is it because there are none? Or few.... There is, of course The Hound of Baservilles, but hey, that's crime not romance....and who would want a dog like that around? I've never owned a dog. I know there are those who think I must be a sad person but I simply don't want the tie that comes with dog-ownership - neighbours are happy to feed cats when one goes away but most draw the line at daily dog-walking. I do have a grand-dog, Guinness - my son's dog - so if ever I get the urge to write a dog into a novel I have some handy hands-on research. Write about what you know, is a good maxim, so perhaps because I know so little about animals - and pets - is the reason they don't feature in my fiction. Do you write animals - wild or domesticated - into your fiction? I'd love to know.

Coincidence? Really?

By Jennifer Young

Picture the scene. My husband and I, on a rare Friday evening out, are in the bar of a hotel. We haven’t been here for years. “Ah,” he reflects over his glass of wine, “I used to come in here every Friday after work.” He names his colleagues – let’s call then Ben and Jerry. We enjoy our meal and as we go out through the bar, there are Ben and Jerry, sitting in the corner.

We’re still laughing about it in the morning when we’re out for a family breakfast at the local farm shop. One of us mentions my sister who, as far as I know, doesn’t even know this place exists: within minutes, in she walks. And so we joke about who we’re going to meet next that day and of course, as we stop off for weekend treats at the local shopping centre, who should we bump into but another family who live a good fifty miles away, buried in the depths of rural Perthshire.

I wonder just how much of that you believe. Have I strained your credibility? Can you believe one of these meetings, or two, or three? Can you believe them over the space of a week but not a day, or do you struggle with the fact that only one of these meetings took place where we might reasonably have expected? Are you shaking your head thinking: oh, come on…you surely don’t expect me to believe that?

Did you believe A Tale of Two Cities?

Personally I’m highly critical of coincidence within a framework of fiction. I regularly shake my head over it. But I do believe in it. In real life it’s serendipitous, comes out of nowhere and when we met Ben and Jerry in that same place after all those years I didn’t shake my head and think it too much of a coincidence. (I never quite believed A Tale of Two Cities, for example.)

In fiction it’s different. I find myself irritated by too big a coincidence, especially when it’s so clearly a mighty contrivance, a crank of the handle that seems the only way to shift a creaking plot. I can think of very many. And yet I’m sure other people’s lives are full of coincidences of the highest drama.

TV presenter Richard Madeley, for example, described an incident in his family history when his grandfather, travelling to the First World War, met a group of Canadians in the same direction – and they included his two older brothers, with whom he’d lost touch after they emigrated. If I’d read that in a novel I wouldn’t have believed it. So perhaps being true isn’t enough – whatever you write has to be credible.

Back to Ben and Jerry, my sister and brother-in-law, our friends from Perthshire. I’ll tell you now that the tale as I told it wasn’t a hundred per cent true. But I’m interested to know which element, if any, stretched your credibility too far and what might have made you nod and find it satisfying. Tell me – and then I’ll let you know the whole truth.

Do I know this place? by Mary Smith

After reading Jenny’s excellent post last week about how we create our characters I started thinking about the settings into which we put them.

Without a setting to provide the background and framework of our story, the characters would be living in some kind of a vacuum. No matter how well developed they are, there would be little to engage the interest of the reader as nothing very much can happen in a vacuum. If there is no place there is no story.

Even in a short story where a limited word count means only a few deft brush strokes may be used to describe the place, we still, as readers, want to know where the action is happening. Providing a strong sense of place adds depth to our writing.

Robert Louis Stevenson said we are creatures of our environment – which means we must make sure our characters are creatures of their environment. Jekyll and Hyde’s Edinburgh is a good example, or think about how important the desert island is to the plot and the characters’ behaviour in Golding’s Lord of the Flies, or what Tara means to Scarlet O’Hara in Gone with the Wind.

I suppose, in many ways, the setting is another character to be created with as much care as the other people in the story. Place, whether it is a city, small town, a world in a far away galaxy or a prison cell, has to be as believable as our hero and heroine. If it is a real place, the task is easier – as long as you get the detail right because for sure if it is a real place someone will be ready to point out anything you get wrong.

The reverse happened to me when I visited a book group to discuss my novel No More Mulberries. It is set in Afghanistan but the places, other than the major cities, are fictional. I was taken aback when a member of the group arrived, armed with her world atlas, asking me to pinpoint on the map of Afghanistan the village of Sang-i-Sia. She was quite miffed when I explained it didn’t actually exist!

While writing this and mulling over decisions about settings, I have realised one of the problems I’m facing right now is the setting (s) in the biography I’m struggling to write. I have a wonderful archive of material including letters but I don’t really know what the interior of her house was like,  or the inside of the laundry she operated. I need to remember the R L Stevenson comment and start sketching in details of my subject’s surroundings.

I’m curious about how writers decide where their story is going to take place? Is it based on a real place you know well? Or, do you use a picture from a magazine – a lovely house, perhaps, and set your characters loose in it?

Do I know her? by Jenny Harper

'The Girl with a Pearl Earring'
by Johannes Vermeer,
via Wikimedia Commons

How do you create your characters? I find that sometimes they bounce into your head fully formed, but sometimes they evolve as your story evolves and you get to know them. Sometimes a character in a newspaper or magazine photograph begs to be written into your story – but sometimes you have to sit down and search for them.

I like using photographs as a stimulus and it's good to have them by you as you write, to remind you of that stubbly chin or that faraway look, or the eyes the colour of the sea in November.

Perhaps one single image can set off a complete idea for a novel. Think of Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier – she must have had a moment of blinding inspiration sitting in front of Vermeer's famous portrait. Interpreting the look on the face of the little serving girl and developing her imaginings into a full-length novel – how brilliant is that?

Film stars are a great source of inspiration, not so much because we use their personalities as the basis for characters (which of us really knows a film star?), but because of how they look.

Quite often, I find that characters and plot are inextricably linked. The story would not have been set in train at all, for example, if Joe hadn't been such a dozy guy that he completely forgot to bring flowers home on his first wedding anniversary/forgot to turn up for a crucial meeting/stepped out in front of a car and got himself run over because he was dreaming about Jane.

So far so good. But what happens when the character you're writing about is based on someone you know? Your mother-in-law, for example? Does that inhibit you or stimulate you? What will she say when she reads it?

I haven't actually tried this technique yet, but I'm assured by some very experienced writers that people never do recognise themselves – and if the character is bossy, or malicious, or greedy, or has some other negative trait, they are quite likely to 'recognise' the woman down the road! I'm really tempted to try it and see what happens.

Have you ever based your character of someone you know? And have there ever been repercussions? Do tell!

THE LONELY WRITER IN HER GARRET......OR NOT?

Writing is, for the most part and for most writers, a solitary life. There are, of course, those who share offices with partners/friends but I'd bet my last ink cartridge that they are alone in their heads all the same. If we exchange ideas with someone else then it is not our sole work, in my humble opinion...:) But we do have to put in the lonesome hours. I often forget to eat when I'm deeply into something. Mugs of coffee go cold. It's only when I start to feel very uncomfortable that I realise I need the loo. All self-inflicted lonesomeness. I'm sure there are many of us who stop work-in-progress for a few minutes (hours??) to look at Facebook or Twitter or trawl the internet for interesting snippets of this or that. But it's not the same as seeing someone, is it? We don't hear things like, 'Oh, I do like that colour on you' or 'Mmmm, you smell nice, what's the perfume?' So, as good as Facebook and Twitter and the like are for social networking we do, I think, need the physical. I go for a walk most days - for at least half an hour, up hill and down dale, and at a fair lick. Often, a sticky plot patch will unstick while I'm catching my breath after a steep climb. Or I'll meet someone I know and pass the time of day. And get those above-mentioned compliments which are so good for the soul, are they not? Writing has, quite literally, opened up my world. I have been on two writers' workshop holidays. One in Italy and the other in Corfu. In Italy. June Tate, Angela Arney, and Kathryn Haig were the tutors and I learned such a lot from the experience - not least that I love insalata tricolore! On that course I met a young American girl (same age as my daughter)called April who has remained a dear friend, even though she has now moved to Australia with her husband. And here she is in her local newsagent in Perth, excited to find one of my stories in Woman's Weekly. I have used the little hilltop, walled, town we stayed in - Sarteano - in more than a few short stories, so well worth the journey. In Corfu I met someone whose face fellow novelpointsofview members will recognise. June Tate and Angela Arney were again the tutors, and Katie Fforde joined them this time, following Kathryn's untimely death. There was a young local girl on this course - she'd been a ballerina (and yes, she was called Angelina!)in Russia until injury forced her retirement - whose English was excellent. I'm sure I'll never forget the beautifully scenic if terrifyingly hairy ride when she took three of us to the north of the island for dinner with her family. Being a member of the Romantic Novelists' Association drags me away from my swivel chair and my desk piled high with notes and pots of paperclips and pens. I've attended two conferences but the old cloth ears problem means I don't benefit from it as much as I could. I've become good friends with many I've met at the conferences and also the RNA events held in London. And here I am with Margaret James and Jane Bidder (aka Sophie King and Janey Fraser) when we did a presentation at Exeter Library. So, we do have to keep a balance, I think. But it's not all jollies.....the sun is shining, I have work to do, so I'm going to have to close the curtains and revert to that lonely writer in her garret.....for a little while:)

Why Do We Read? by Gill Stewart

The idea for this blog came from Linda’s recent post For Whom Do You Write? which got me pondering on all sorts of fascinating topics such as the value of enjoyment, snobbery in literature, books versus films, to name but a few!

I realised that a lot of my thoughts came back to the question Why Do We Read?  Not why should we read, but why do we?  I came up with the following list of reasons:

  1)      For enjoyment.  This is purely to be entertained, to pass the time in a fun way.

  2)      For experience or self-improvement.  I put this in because I couldn’t find a better explanation for why I read poetry.  Sometimes I don’t even enjoy reading it, but a good poem gives you a glimpse of something different, something new.  This isn’t the same as 3), where something definite is gained.

  3)      To gain information.  I also separate this from 4) below as here I mean information for information’s sake, because it is something that interests us and we want to know it with no particular end purpose in mind.

  4)      To acquire knowledge for a particular purpose, e.g. reading for work or to pass an exam.

  5)      For the sake of appearance or status.  This might seem an odd reason for reading (it is to me!) but I’m sure we’re all familiar with the person who ‘only reads a book if it has been on the Booker list’ or buys a certain type of book in order to leave it artfully lying around the house. 

                                  

These categories are neither exhaustive nor mutually exclusive.  I read Christina Courtenay’s Trade Winds (above) mostly for enjoyment, but I also derived pleasure from learning about places and customs I was unfamiliar with (eighteenth century Sweden is fascinating).  I am currently reading Virgil’s Aeneid (yes, still, it’s taking a long time!) for a whole variety of reasons including a desire to understand Latin so as to better understand English, for the story, for the poetry and for the exam that I’ll be sitting the week after next.

This great and varied enjoyment is the main reason I would want my children (in fact, all children) to read, and to love reading.  Why, then, do schools insist on introducing young people to books via ‘classics’?  School may well be the only way into reading for children from non-reading homes . How is a self-consciously clever or literary book going to teach them to enjoy reading?  It may, if it is a good story, but so many of the books currently pushed in schools are not.

Take Lord of the Flies for instance.  It is a book that is interesting, that explores various themes and is extremely well-written – but is it enjoyable?  If we want children to think about the psychology of groups and the causes of violence there are other ways to get them to do this, without making it an exercise in putting them off books for ever.

Spies by Michael Frayn is another case in point.  Again, it is written by someone who is a craftsman of the English language, but it is very contrived, setting up mysteries to be solved, introducing themes that are clearly there purely so they can be discussed and written about.  Books like this win prizes, presented by literary, adult writers to other literary, adult writers.  They are not what I would choose to give to a young person in the hope of imbuing them with a lifelong love of reading.

The Harry Potter series, on the other hand, is widely denigrated by the writing establishment (despite the early books winning the ‘Smarties’ Children’s Book Prize 3 years in a row – voted for by children).  They say it is too accessible that the language is clumsy and not challenging.  Yes, but it is brilliant entertainment!  It is a story that makes the child enter an imaginary world where their own imagination still has to do so much of the work (think of the Hogwarts you saw in your mind’s eye when reading versus the Hogwarts that is presented to us fully-formed on the cinema screen).  It teaches empathy, explores the battle of good and evil, not to mention masses of magic, a lot of adventure and a little romance. 

I think what I am trying to say is that there are many reasons for reading, all valid in their own way.  But if we put children off reading before they even start, they are missing out on so much: on the enjoyment of a good book, on the incredible amount of knowledge that is out there.  Reading has been likened to a conversation with people you’ve never met and maybe never will, who perhaps died centuries ago, but their thoughts and discoveries and stories are still there for us to access.  But only if we are not put off reading!

Why do you read?  And how do you think we can get others to read more – if indeed you think we should?