Quite a few times I get asked about the journey an author makes, the transition from initial idea to the story itself and one of the things which always amazes me is the degree to which most of those who email me are hang up over grammar, commas and fullstops and the length of each paragraph.
I am going to use an analogy here. Writing a novel, particularly a fantasy novel is very much like building a house and you are the architect. Your job is to make sure that the house really looks like a house that the load-bearing walls are where they are supposed to be and that the foundations are also exactly where they are supposed to be.
If you get hang up on the kiln temperature at which the bricks were fired you may end up forgetting the real reason you are there.
The analogy I use here is, of course, a little bit of sophistry. As an author you are solely responsible for every single molecule of the creation you are putting together which means you are not only the architect worrying over things like pace, structure and characterisation but also the editor looking at grammar, syntax and appropriate vocabulary. |
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Tips on how to write a good fantasy novel |
By most accounts fantasy fiction should be the easiest one to write: minimal research, nil chances of getting locations wrong, characters which do not really need to tap into everyday life, a plot that is, well, pure fantasy and an audience ready to leap into suspension of disbelief mode with both feet.
So, why is it so hard to write? Why are there so few good fantasy fiction novels, why is the genre facing an identity crisis?
There are many reasons and the first one has to address not why, but what. What exactly is fantasy fiction and why do we read fantasy fiction novels? I might be tempted here to use the clichéd thing about there being as many reasons as there are readers but I would be lying to both you and myself.
Fantasy fiction, beyond any other type of fiction, is leapt into by a reader with two distinct needs in mind: first he wants to escape reality, even for a while (and in that he would be in very good company indeed) and secondly he wants to reaffirm his belief in the working order of the universe (and we all need that from time to time). You see, beyond anything else, fantasy fiction tends to draw on the archetypal stereotypes that govern our psyche. |
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The perfect gift for the discerning fantasy novel reader |
I promised myself I would not do this so now I really need to explain why here I am putting pen to paper to promote the book I have spent a large part of my life living in. Ok, if the previous sentence does not adequately explain it maybe I should stop before I start.
I have a personal mission here. I firmly believe that good writing should not depend on finding a publisher willing to spend money to promote a book. On the face of it the very act of finding a publisher should act as a natural sieve sifting through the garbage and delivering the gems but publishing, unfortunately, has rarely been just about that. It is also a business and it needs to bring out books which means it needs to have a physical product to sell on a regular basis irrespective of whether it is of real value or not.
Now you might argue that good books are written all the time and you will be right but it is simply not possible for every book that is published to be good. Books are published because they found the right person at the right time, because the marketing angle was right, because the agent (if one was involved) knew the right editors and had the right connections, because the publisher had received such atrocious offerings that month that the drivel they published was actually better than what was on offer. |
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I don't do interviews to promote my book |
I don’t do interviews, I haven’t given Press Releases and I don’t talk to the Press. If you’re a writer you prefer to let the work speak for itself. That has always been my take on it and I have never really felt the need to change.
A little curmudgeon-ish of me, I know, but writing takes me somewhere I sometimes rather not go, where all my dreams and all my hopes lie either being born or dead and I bring that out into the book and it becomes something else, a journey into a place I did not even know existed with all the experiences and all the souvenirs lying there in the words.
So why this? Why the website? When I first put pen to paper I felt certain this book would be published. I sent it off, as writers do, I waited and got back glowing readers’ reviews and recommendations (one even called it “Mad Max on speed”) and along with it there was always a rejection because it didn’t fit into something. It was too short, too sharp, too graphic, too violent, too referential of a complex culture, too whatever and you know, I thought long and hard about changing it, increasing the length, making it softer taking the graphic scenes of sex and violence out and in the end I decided not to and went back on stacking supermarket shelves for a living. |
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