The time has come to sell your masterpiece. You’ve written it, edited and polished it and written a synopsis, so what now?

Depends what it is. A novel needs to end up with a publisher, a stage play with a theatre group, a radio or TV piece with a broadcaster and a screenplay with a production company.

Do your research

My first port of call would be with the current Writer’s and Artist’s Yearbook, which is the bible for marketing the written word. If you don’t have one, buy one, or get access to one at your local library. Every publisher and agent of worth is listed here. Establish exactly what kind of material you have written and what market it would appeal to. Does the publisher you want to submit to handle horror romances?

A letter with synopsis will save you postage costs but most publishers will give some guidelines within the Yearbook as to how they handle submissions. Don’t try to outflank them with phone calls or personal appearances, you’ll just piss them off. Most nowadays will accept submissions digitally, that is as an email attachment.

Nobody will steal your material. The minute it is written you hold the copyright and it isn’t worth anybody’s while to infringe it, certainly not if you’re approaching a reputable company. If you’re still nervous, email yourself with a copy of your work attached, but don’t open it. This proves, at the least, that you had access to the material before anybody else.

Waiting

There is no avoiding the fact that you’ll have to wait for any response, possibly for months. This can be a killer, but the best thing you can do is to start work on your next project and forget about what you’ve just posted off.

With regard to agents, you’re unlikely to find one willing to take you on until you have some kind of track record. You should write them a letter asking them to represent you, together with your resume or track record. It’s best if you have a new piece of work for them to try and sell.

Please remember that publishers, agents, production companies, all, are commercial concerns, in the business of making money. If they think they can make money from your work they’ll grab you with both hands, but they are loathe to take a gamble on an unproven writer or experimental work.

Digital publishing

The day of the gentleman publisher, who considered publishing an author merely because he seemed like a nice chap are long gone. So, you have the challenge of not only creating brilliant material, but also convincing the potential buyer that it is brilliant. Modern technology has brought the writer new options in self-publishing.

Print On Demand (POD) can be arranged with specialist publishers for a fee. This means that your properly printed and bound books can be available to the public, but only when they want them. The publishers offer limited promotion, advertising or marketing. This is akin to vanity publishing.

To my mind the second option is more interesting, putting the writer in total control of the production and promotion of his book without costing him anything. This is in the form of ebooks.

Basically you write your material, convert it to an Adobe pdf file, design a cover, and sell it over the web. You’ll need to learn a host of new skills though.

Your marketing exercise is to get a copy of the Writer’s & Artist’s yearbook. You have just written a novel about a retired soldier’s search for the widow of the man he shot during a battle during the Gulf War (I). See how many publishers you can find who publish a book such as this.

Now, go to a public library and in the fiction section look for books published by the publishers you have selected. Do any of the books match yours in any way?

This is the last lesson in a complete creative writing course.  To return to the first lesson and a list of all the lessons click HERE.

Good luck with your writing career.

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Okay, you’ve sweated blood to get words on paper. You’ve burned the midnight oil to create. You are exhausted, destroyed, but ultimately fulfilled because you’ve finished.

And now I tell you to tear it all up.

Hate me? I don’t blame you.

But this is something you have to do. The art is in the editing, not the writing.

My system is this :-

I write the material.

I go back in with the knife and edit. I’m bruta;, words, sentences, paragraphs, even entire

chapters are chopped.

I go back over the bleeding corpse and polish it to shine.

Why go through this process, surely your words as they sprang from your fertile imagination are sacred?

Don’t miss the big picture

Far from it, as you write you are too close to the moment and miss the bigger picture. Only when you have finished will you see what you have actually written and only then, when sufficient time has passed, will you see the extraneous material you have inserted or the points you have forgotten to make. You must be prepared to annihilate your favorite passages, no matter how much you love them, or how much you sweated over them.

I get clever with this process and save every passage I excise, because I might be able to use it elsewhere. It’s plagiarising yourself, but it’s not illegal and they can’t touch you for it.

The writing sequence

You can get somebody else to edit for you, but it will make you a lesser writer. You must know, when you hand over your script that it as good as you can make it. If it carries my name, I wrote it, from start to finish.

I had the idea.

I started writing.

I went back and plotted.

I wrote the whole thing.

I edited.

I polished.

It’s a great thing, ego.

How do you tell good from bad? Again, a difficult question, but these are the things I’d check.

(1) Spelling and grammar

(2) Tense

(3) Flow

(4) Style

(5) Pace

Only when I was happy that all these elements were as good as I could make them would I go back and polish.

Polishing is not particularly onerous, and can be quite fun. There is a serious purpose to it, but a sense of elation will engulf you because you’re nearly at the finish line.

Polishing can be as simple as deciding that your main character doesn’t really deserve the name of Theodore and would be better as Butch. That’s easy enough to Find and Replace.

Look for things that jar and try to make things run smoothly.

Time is a huge factor in this. You must allow time to pass before you can go back to edit and polish. You must create some distance between you and the work. The brain needs time.

I am naturally impatient and have difficulty with this, but you should be prepared to go back and polish several times if necessary. You are the only judge, it’s your work.

Here’s an exercise in editing. Take a major piece of at least 5,000 words you wrote at least a month ago and edit it. Leave it for a week and go back and polish.

Now, leave it for another week before seeing if you can do any further editing.

Detail the changes you have made in the two versions. Try to establish what changes you made and why.

This lesson is part of a complete creative writing course.  To return to lesson one and a list of all lessons, click HERE.

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The writer’s ‘voice’ is vital but is generally misunderstood. What it essentially means is the tone and style that the writer writes in. The novice writer struggles to find his voice because he lacks the confidence to nail his colors to the mast. To say, this is what I write, love it or loathe it. To find your voice you must experiment with many different voices till you find one that suits not only your style of writing, but one that you feel comfortable writing in. Once you find it, you will slip into it as easily as your shoes and have no fears of facing the keyboard.

Look at the style in which I write this. My aim is to be informal, chatty and perhaps light-hearted because I believe that is what the teaching/learning process requires. For other projects I would adopt a voice that best suited the material and the potential audience. The good writer must therefore have a selection of voices from which to choose, but always one that is his own true voice.

How then does voice differ from style?

It’s a question of semantics. Your voice, in truth, is your internal thinking put on paper, whereas style can vary pace, tone and other attributes. For instance, I could describe a leafy garden in a slow, highly graphic manner, picturing every blade of grass. With this I would be lulling the reader into slowing their reading, whether to attack them with some shock revelation or to set the tone for a relaxed, perhaps romantic, read. But with the same voice I could hit the reader between the eyes with high color writing that would have him on his toes. Possible? Let’s try it.

There’s a small lawn area, where she used to lie during warm summers, and by the hedge the flowerbeds lent their hues to honor her. Color would be too simple a description for there was a give and take, she gifting the flowers beauty, while they reflected on her creamy skin and added their perfume to her scent.

OR

See the green, it’s grass, it’s wet. And that’s all it could be. Earth’s verdant carpet? No, it’s food, we eat the grasses like the cows. And her, as if she cared, sucking the sun in her tiny bikini that brings whistles from the builders..

With a seasoned eye you’d see the differences there. In the second version, shorter words and sentences, a staccato style. Neither of these is my voice, they are adopted for effect. The first version is too lazy for my liking, whereas the second is more likely to alienate an audience unless it was a style they were looking for.

Your written voice is therefore like your spoken one, variable.

So, how do you go about finding your voice?

Well, first of all you should do a lot of reading and find authors who write with a voice that you enjoy. Copying them may be your route to finding your voice. Discovering authors you positively hate should also tell you in which direction you shouldn’t head. Once you find something you’re comfortable with you have to try and copy the style. This can be a lengthy process, but the only way you’re going to find your voice is by writing. Page after page, chapter after chapter. It may become tedious, but in the end you will find a tone, a pace and a style – your voice

Here’s an exercise to help you find your voice. Write a 1,000 word short story in 3 separate style or voices.

You might find it easier to have a different character tell each version of the tale, to see it from a different viewpoint, to achieve this.

This article is one of a series which, in total, comprise a complete creative writing course.  To return to the first lesson, click HERE.  To go to the next lesson click HERE.

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It’s amazing the number of writers who become fixated on pure prose, believing that the only avenues open to them are the novel or the short story.

This is arrant nonsense. If you are a creative writer you must be able to write anything, and that includes comic books, stage plays, TV scripts, movie screenplays and even the text on the back of your breakfast cereal packet.

Theatre, Radio & TV/Cinema

For this lesson I want you to consider becoming a dramatist. The dramatist is one who writes for actors to perform his words. This puts a layer between the writer and his audience, but the intelligent actor will consult the writer before delivering his interpretation. The three main avenues for the dramatist are theatre, radio and TV/cinema, and each impose different disciplines and skills which you must learn if you wish to enter this field. This is not the place for an extended education in the arts of the dramatist, only a brief introduction to other roads the creative writer may walk.

Let us take writing for the theatre first. Stagecraft is fascinating and frightening. The writer, introvert by nature, is thrust into a world of dramaturges, actors, directors, stage managers and most scary, audiences. The writer finds his true worth as he awaits the response of a live audience. Give him applause and he walks on air, give him silence and he hangs his head, but boos would surely lead to an appointment with his maker. It takes a brave writer who is willing to take on that challenge, but the risk is worth the prize.

Drama is dialogue driven

The first thing we must establish is that the dramatist is dialogue driven. Even in film, where the credo is ‘show it, don’t tell it’ it is dialogue which drives the narrative. With theatre, there are limitations on what action can be performed on a live stage, and with radio there is little else available apart from dialogue.

Long descriptive passages describing scenery will get short shrift in the theatre where budgets might be limited; in radio they are irrelevant and in TV and cinema they are more than likely going to be decided by a set designer anyway who will want to bring his own art to the production.

So drama really is the place for the dialogue specialist. The most dialogue heavy medium is radio, where not much other than sound effects or incidental music is available to the listener.

Radio problems

The challenge for the writer is in dealing with such prosaic matters as a character entering a scene. Within a novel he could merely state that Jim came into the room at that point, and with theatre, TV and cinema it is perfectly obvious that Jim has arrived. It’s only with the unnatural medium of radio that we have a problem. For another character to blandly announce, ‘Oh, here’s Jim’ only works so often and we need to work out other strategies to signpost arrivals and departures. A slamming door sound effect may announce an arrival or departure but not which character it applies to.

But even though largely limited to dialogue, do try to break it up with intelligent use of sound effects and music. Sound effects do not necessarily mean explosions and squealing tyres, a quietly dripping tap can speak volumes.

The primary problem with writing for theatre is the sheer physical difficulties that performing on a stage impose. The novel and the screenplay may allow you to have your spaceship landing, but physics and finance make it difficult on stage unless you’re working on a big west end show.

Start with community theatre

You’re unlikely to start there as a playwright, you’re more likely to find an opening with a small, local, community theatre. They’re often looking for contemporary plays because they’re fed up with doing Shakespeare or the other classics. But big name plays, by big name playwrights, cost big check royalties. So, a community group may be willing to pay you a small amount to write a play for them. They live in hope that they might unearth a gem, written by an unknown genius, and have their name permanently linked to it; and you have the opportunity of putting your work in front of an audience and also gaining publicity. Local newspapers love a story about the local boy making good.

I would advise getting to know your local drama group if possible. Their range of abilities are going to be presenting your work, so you really need to know what they’re capable of. If you write to their strengths you may just be on to a winner. Try to make your subject locally relevant as well, as this will help in pulling an audience as well as sparking media interest. Check your local newspaper and see what issues are irking the local yokels – a highway bypass? Dogs fouling footpaths? Rowdy kids? They’re all potential subjects for a play.

C’mon, you may say, a play about dog poo?

Yep, I could do it, I’d make it a comedy, and it would sell.

In the world of TV and cinema, because the rewards are so high, the competition is brutal, and I wouldn’t advise even attempting these markets until you have a decent track record behind you.

In any case, most production companies won’t look at unsolicited script unless it comes through an agent, and we’re not at that stage yet.

Television sitcom

If you really must tilt at windmills try writing a sitcom for television. A half hour program only requires a 30 page script, so it’s not going to kill you time-wise and because there are so many TV production companies, you might manage to sneak something through. I’d try my hand at gag writing for a sketch show first though, just to ensure you have the comic muse.

Remember this – every line of dialogue in a sitcom script must either move the plot forward, be the set up line for a gag, or be the punchline to a gag. Nothing else.

The downside is that just about every possible subject matter has been mined for sitcom material so finding something new to cover is going to be difficult, but that doesn’t mean you can’t try.

For some reason comedy writing attracts collaborations. If you’ve ever thought about co-writing search out some local writing groups or place an ad in your local supermarket and see if you can find somebody on the same wavelength as yourself.

A screenplay is akin to writing a novel

When we come to writing a movie screenplay we’re really up against the big boys. A screenplay is akin to writing a full length novel and will take just as much time and application. Cinema is the visual big daddy. Don’t say it, show it, the producer will scream, and this means you have to pare dialogue to the bone. This doesn’t mean you can’t have lengthy monologues, but they’d better have dramatic weight or they’re going to get laughed out of court.

The best way to learn how to write a screenplay is to read a few. Quite a lot are available online to download. A fascinating exercise is to read the screenplay while watching the actual movie on DVD. If you don’t get the process with that, you never will.

Exercise

I want the exercise for this lesson to be fun and one that you do really for your own pleasure. There is learning involved, but it will be subliminal.

Select one of your favorite novels which has been translated into a motion picture. Go online and see if the movie screenplay is available for download.

Read the novel, read the screenplay and watch the movie.

Now write an essay (1,000 words) on how the novel has changed in the process of being transformed into a screenplay and then being filmed.

This lesson is part of a complete creative writing course.  To return to Lesson One and a list of all lessons click HERE.

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So what is a plot?

In its simplest terms it is a plan of action, and where the writer is concerned it is the sequence of events which make up his story.

Here is a sequence of events :-

George woke up that morning.

He showered, shaved and brushed his teeth.

He ate the breakfast his wife had prepared.

He dressed and drove to work.

At his desk he checked his emails.

He processed some orders his company had received.

He ate lunch in the local pub with his friend Bob.

In the afternoon he presented his monthly report to his boss.

He visited the factory and checked output with the foreman.

He drove home and played with his two kids.

He ate dinner with the family.

He watched TV.

He went to bed.

Fascinating? A day in the life of? No, I’d expect you’d say it was boring. Why? Because nothing out of the ordinary happens. There is no plot, or at least none that would interest a reader. So rule number one of creating a plot must be that something happens. Let’s look at that again.

George woke up that morning.

He showered, shaved and brushed his teeth.

He ate the breakfast his wife had prepared.

He dressed and drove to work.

At his desk he checked his emails.

He processed some orders his company had received.

He ate lunch in the local pub with his friend Bob.

Bob told him he loved him.

In the afternoon he presented his monthly report to his boss.

He visited the factory and checked output with the foreman.

He drove home and played with his two kids.

He ate dinner with the family.

He watched TV.

He went to bed.

Well, something certainly happened there. George discovers that his friend Bob is gay and is in love with him.

Does that make this a story?

Not to my mind. What we have is an incident, with no consequent resolution. What are the options?

George is disgusted and breaks off his friendship with Bob.

George admits his own homosexuality and returns Bob’s love.

George tells Bob he knew he was gay but, as a heterosexual, cannot return his love.

This addition of complication starts the process of creating a plot. How much further complication we add is down to the writer. The reader expects a certain level of complexity, but not so much that he loses track of events.

At this point I’d just like to emphasise that physical action is not necessary to create a story. The entire sequence of events could take place inside George’s head. His motivations, desires, fears and thoughts, if portrayed in a logical sequence, would make for a perfectly acceptable tale.

Classical storytelling techniques require a protagonist (the hero) and an antagonist (the villain).

With a three act set-up we create a conflict in the first act. In the second we resolve it, In the third we find that the resolution is not adequate (rising conflict) and further efforts on the part of the hero are required to reach the denouement.

Can good storytelling be reduced to such a simple formula? The answer is yes and no, but in essence it always boils down to these elements.

If you think this is very restrictive look at the variations that can be injected into the above. There can be more than one protagonist (the hero often has a sidekick). The antagonist can also have one or more henchmen. The problem posed which leads to the conflict can be anything from a missing baby’s rattle to the theft of a nuclear weapon. And, within the confines of a story arc that means conflict-effort-resolution we can add as much complication as we can imagine.

Why doesn’t the Bond villain just shoot Bond when he has him prisoner? Because it would make a lousy story. How believable the villain’s motivation is for keeping Bond alive (and thus allowing him to escape) is entirely up to the creative skill of the writer.

There are rules, but they are not hard and fast. They can be played with and modified, but it is essential that you know they exist. Let’s get creative again.

George’s wife, Sally, is driving home from her evening class.

On a lonely country road she is stopped by a terrifying sight, a UFO.

The aliens from the UFO kidnap Sally.

The aliens are a species called the Darg, who are collecting specimens of life from across the galaxy.

So far, so X Files. Where would you go next? Because there still isn’t a story, all we have is a situation. Is this Sally’s story, telling of how she attempts to escape from her abductors? Or is it George’s, as he tries to rescue his wife? Perhaps it is the chief Darg’s story, as he learns to appreciate humanity. The variety is almost endless. Maybe George doesn’t want Sally back, because he’s run off with Bob. Hey, that’s two stories, Bob’s and Sally’s. Wouldn’t that be interesting? It’s called running dual plots and is a common way of fleshing out a story. The denouement of both tales here would probably require Sally’s escape and Bob’s realisation that she is his true love to coincide at the conclusion.

I’m only trying to poke your creativity here, to let you see what possibilities lie in creating characters and running with them. You don’t know where you’re going to end up, or do you?

Here sits a basic problem for new writers, whether to plot in advance or simply to start writing and see where it leads. There are some who will laboriously detail each character and each event before they begin writing. If it works for them, fine, but I find the process boring.

The alternative is to have the kernel of an idea and to start writing immediately while full of fire. The flaw with this system is that you can often end up in blind alleys in your plot and can’t find a way out. Every decision you make as to how your plot develops will have consequences. You can’t have Bob being gay and then running off with Sally without some very sharp explaining that your readers will accept. That’s when unfinished novels get thrown into a drawer.

So, what’s the answer?

For me, it’s this.

I have an idea.

I might take a few swift notes, a rough guide to plot and the main characters.

No more than a page in all.

I begin writing the piece, enjoying the freedom to create.

But I know that danger lies ahead. With every word I write I am locking myself down as to the directions I can take. I also know that the original enthusiasm and inspiration can disappear quite quickly.

So at some point (perhaps 5,000 words) I stop.

Now I do the drudge work. The character sketches, the plot development, the relationship arcs.

How does that work?

If you recall the first lesson on writing non-fiction you’ll know what’s required. A dissection of what you’ve got so far.

Write a synopsis of your idea. It should be no more than 200 words at this stage.

List each character. Give them a brief physical description together with what type of person they are. Cross-reference them, noting their relationship with each other, even if it means saying something like ‘Sally doesn’t know Bob.’

Note the situation your characters are in. Where they live, what they do, how they think.

Return to your synopsis. Is there enough story there to fill your story length (short story/novel). If not, what believable complications can you add to flesh it out? Add this to your synopsis. Does your denouement make sense? All your story and characters arcs must conclude here, so don’t leave any loose ends. Under no circumstances can you write, ‘George awoke and realised it had all been a dream’, unless you have a very valid reason for doing so. That does not include being unable to find your conclusion. Your options are to continue writing till the conclusion presents itself, or to go back in your narrative to the point where you got locked in to the story you eventually wrote, and change it. Characters have a habit of taking on their own life and often the most densely plotted narrative can be thrown off course by a line a character utters or an action he takes. You, as the writer may feel that you are in control, but I have my doubts. When this happens, just keep writing and let the buggers sort it out for themselves.

You’ll find this at times, that it’s not actually you doing the writing, that the characters take over. You don’t need to fight this, it’s a good thing and will lead to some of your best writing. I’ve seen writers return to stuff they wrote years ago and recognise it, but not the fact that they wrote it. This is the subconscious taking over and allowing you to write on autopilot.

Some people call this being taken over by the muse.

Here’s an exercise to help you develop a plot.

Okay, here are a bunch of characters :-

Joe (42) A joiner

Louise (38) Joe’s wife. A hairdresser

Tom (14) Joe and Louise’s son

Martin (24) A professional wrestler

Sandy(19) A female student

Jack (60) A retired dentist

Des (30) A soldier

Mandy (25) A barmaid

Write the synopsis for a plot (500 words) that brings these characters together in one place.

This article is one of a series which, in total, comprise a complete creative writing course.  To return to the first lesson, click HERE.  To go to the next lesson click HERE.

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The term creative writing is used to discern certain types of inventive or artistic writing from other general types of writing. The field of creative writing is broad and includes many different formats and genres of writing. The broad and general description of it is purposeful in its effort not to limit the imagination of the potential writer, or that of the reader. Creative writing is totally different from other types of writing, such as technical writing, scientific writing, or copy-driven journalism. The discipline of creative writing includes, but should not be limited to, works of fiction, poetry, personal memoir or autobiography, song lyrics, plays and screenplays, and any mixture of the above.

By and large, writing is a skill that is innate to a person. Just like with other proficiencies, most types of writing often comes easier to some people than to others. Therefore, it is often thought that a person cannot be taught how to write, especially creatively. Despite whatever natural talents for writing a person might have, those talents often need to be developed in order for the writer to realize his or her fullest potential in the craft. Learning how to write creatively must begin on the inside. A certain amount of individual experience, opinion, and innate sensitivity must be tapped when taking on the task of creative writing.

Creative writing is an artistic expression, like painting or composing music. It is therefore subject to criticism, both constructive and disrespectful. This should in no way deter a person from writing creatively, or in any other way. Sometimes, artistic expression is done just for the sake of doing it. There does not have to be a reason to create something, and there does not have to be an explanation behind the creation. The personal expression is free. This sentiment holds especially true with creative writing.

Creative writing courses are extremely popular and widely available in various formats. Short-term workshops ranging from merely a few hours to a day or several weekly sessions are available through public libraries, community education centers, and even community colleges. They are for everyone from the beginner to the seasoned writer looking to polish his or her skills.

In a creative writing course, there are many potential topics to discuss and methods to teach at length. These topics include, but are not limited to, techniques on brainstorming and exploring creative ideas, overcoming writer’s block, learning how to structure work, overcoming the fear of people reading/judging the created work, editing completed work, and getting works published. Though some will argue that true creative writing cannot be taught, it is widely acknowledged that certain skills can be mined and honed, as well as certain techniques taught, to make almost anyone at least a fair writer, and not be afraid to unleash his or her creativity.

Many budding writers opt to study creative writing in college. Often it can be an emphasis within a major in English, and a 4-year bachelor’s degree can be earned. This can open doors to many professional opportunities, as well as equip a writer with the skills to either take a stab at freelance writing, or translate his or her creative writing skills into other professional arenas, such as public relations, advertising, or editing.

For those whose writing ambition is to do creative writing as more of a hobby, looking to the Internet for creative writing websites is a good way to get work seen and gain insight into the craft. Many creative writing websites offer bulletin boards where writers can post works to be read and enjoyed, and where feedback can be given reciprocally. Also, writers can find a real community of individuals looking for other writers with whom to trade and share ideas.

Some creative writing websites also offer some of the same lessons and pointers on brainstorming and formulating ideas, editing, publishing, and other techniques that many workshops or writing courses offer, except it often does not cost anything online, and it is more convenient. There is also the appeal of the relative anonymity online, for the shy writer who is not quite ready for the face-to-face public arena. True creative writing might not be a learned talent, but the ability to tap inner creativity is possible for just about anyone.

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