S. K. Dunstall

Sherylyn finished her children’s writing course subject by completing a 40,000 word middle-grade science fiction story.

Her tutor was a published author who wrote children’s books, and who has recently branched out into adult novels.

Sherylyn got marked well for the story, but possibly the best compliment was the note the tutor scrawled at the end.

This story is marketable.

For someone who wants to publish, that’s a nice compliment.

Sherylyn and I both did NaNoWriMo again this year. The blog—and everything else—suffered, but it’s been fun.

It was easier than both of us expected to make the 50,000 word count, even though Sherylyn missed most of the first week of writing because she was sick. She finished her story at 51,000 words and days to spare. I made the 50,000 words 29 November and then had to keep writing until 4 December and 59,000 words to finish mine.

Both of us ended up with stories we can continue with, which is good, and stories that the other writing partner is happy to work on, which is even better—because every once in a while one of us does write a story that doesn’t interest the other person. That’s never much fun.

Things we learned (or maybe things we knew that were reinforced)

• Sherylyn still writes much faster than I do
• Sherylyn’s story is more of an outline, while I tend to focus on one main character and follow his story through, knowing that I’ll go back and fill in the other characters stories post-NaNo
• We both have pet names that we use all the time, and pet letters that names start with
• We both have pet bad writing habits that we do all the time. I make my characters ‘jump’ around, for example, while Sherylyn always starts her first draft with conversation (usually gone by around the third draft, much to my relief, but that’s a whole other blog)
• There was a lot of cross-over in the stories, even though we didn’t let the other writing partner read our story until we were both finished. For example, we both had characters who got sick, both our main characters went on trips and so on. Maybe it shows we’re on the same wavelength when we write. At least we get the same story ideas around the same time.

Last year, after I finished my NaNoWriMo novel it took another six months to polish the story. I don’t know if this one will take as long. I do know there’s still a lot of work to do on it.

All the same, I’m pretty happy with what I’ve done so far and looking forward to draft two.

It’s a long-standing joke that Fantasy writers make up names for characters. If you look on the internet you can find a dozen fantasy name generators. Nowadays almost every how-to on writing fantasy nowadays warns you not to do this, and books like Diana Wynne Jones’ Tough Guide To Fantasyland poke fun at the names people create.

A weird array of names in your story is generally the sign of an amateur.

Because of this, I have always been very conscious of naming my characters. Early in the piece I, too, made my names up. Then I realised that it was a ‘bad thing’ and started using names from nature. Like River, and Blade. (In some people’s eyes this is another ‘very bad thing’, but when it’s done properly I love it. Robin Hobb does it well with Dutiful and Swift and Web and all the others.)

Even so, you can really only use this method in a small number of books—unless you’re writing a series, that is.

One thing I have always done is trawled the baby name books. I love them.

For a time there I tried to theme my names. In one story it would be Celtic names, so I’d choose Rhiannon and Grainne, say. In the next I’d use Scandinavian names, Axel and Britta.

No matter how I chose my names, I tried to keep within what I would call the current accepted practise for naming fantasy characters

• If you do make up names, make sure they’re pronounceable
• Don’t have too many weird and way-out names in the same book
• Don’t have too many names that sound similar
• Don’t give all your main protagonists names that start with the same letter
• Don’t mix your language of origin. For example, if you choose Greek-based names then all your characters should have Greek-based names.

It’s this last point I have some issues with.

Recently I’ve had a bit of an epiphany with names.

• Our last couple of books have been science fiction and in these I tried to make the names modern, not too way out, but still a little science-fictiony. I have thought a lot about how names might change over four of five hundred years.
• Names go in cycles. According to Behind the Name the top five boys names in the US today are Jacob, Michael, Ethan, Joshua and Daniel. The top five girls names are Emma, Isabella, Emily, Madison and Ava. In the 1950s it was James, Michael, Robert, John and David, and Mary, Linda, Patricia, Susan and Deborah.   I know that when I went to school a name like Emily or Jacob was considered old-fashioned. We felt sorry for the poor kids saddled with such ‘old’ names. Recently I was speaking to a younger man (late teens or early twenties) and he was trying to guess my name and my sister’s name, just based on the initials. His first guesses were wide of the mark. “You’re a generation out,” I said. “Go back a generation before.” Interestingly enough, he then got both names on first try.So if I was choosing a name for a science fiction character I should probably think of old-fashioned names first and make a modernised take on that, rather than choosing a name that is currently trendy.
• I look at the phone list at work sometimes and I would love to use some of those names for my characters. Yet if I did—whether it be for science fiction or fantasy—many readers and critics would think it a hodgepodge of names. We’ve got English names, we’ve got Russian names, we’ve got Indian names, we’ve got Asian names. All mixed together in one glorious mix of people. Sangeeta sits next to Simon who sits next to Yu who sits close to Evgenyia.
• Choosing names based on a particular language or civilisation makes sense, but only up to a point. It makes for a cohesive story world, yes, but it also binds you into a pre-defined place in fantasy. Your readers expect it too. If I see names like Grainne and Rhiannon and Caitlin and Bree I am expecting a world based around Irish/Celtic myth. If I see Demi and Leonidas I’m expecting a world based on Greek mythology.Maybe that works for you. For me, I don’t want people to come to my fantasy with expectations of what it’s about. I don’t want people to come to my stories already knowing the background. I want them to find a whole new world that they haven’t seen before.

So I have decided. It’s back to just picking names I like, no matter what the name’s origins. If the name sounds interesting and fits my character, I’m going to use it. And if I end up with a phone list of names from all eras and all parts of the world, I’ll be happy, even if it does make me look like a rank amateur.

As writers, Sherylyn and I are both dialogue people. We can make words come out of our characters mouths with an ease that other writers we know struggle with. The hardest part, for us, is putting some emotion and colour around those words.

Because we’re such big conversationalists, we usually hit the story talking, as it were, and keep going from there. My first drafts always used to start with conversation, although I don’t do it as much now, while Sherylyn’s still do. By around the third draft we’ve usually managed to kick the habit.

Starting a story with conversation is not quite taboo, but it is frowned upon, and is something a beginning writer should avoid where possible. There are famous and popular exceptions to every writing rule and I’m sure we can all name at least three books we love where the story starts off with someone speaking. In general, however, it’s a good rule to be aware of.

Back when I didn’t have so many novels under the bed I used to think this was simply a bias of specific agents and editors. I could name books that did it. Books I enjoyed. Books that were popular.

Three things changed this.

• The first one is, obviously, experience. The more one writes the better one’s writing becomes. Or that’s how it works for most of us, anyway

The other two are connected, and they are both to do with the explosion of writing sites on the internet.

• Agent and publisher blogs which, in general, give you a better respect for agents and how they work. Or at least those whose blogs you follow. The agent becomes an authority and what they say helps you to understand and improve your own work. A number of agent bloggers I admire say that opening a novel with conversation is an automatic negative that the writer has to overcome. Best of all, they explain why it’s a negative.
• Lastly, online writing sites like Authonomy expose you to a huge range of writing from people whose work ranges from publishable now to first drafts that need a lot of work. I participate a lot in online writing communities and I see a lot of writing that doesn’t make it to the bookstore. Many of the stories that don’t work open with conversation. When you’re reading multiple stories like this you start to get a feel for what works and what doesn’t. It works a lot like an agent’s slush pile. I imagine that prolific users of sites like Authonomy—can I say serious users, not those who are in there for the votes but those who are in it for the community and to better their own writing—plus say, Critters, would be better able to pick the promising stories out of the slush than they were before they started.

“Start in the middle of the story,” the experts tell you. You can’t get more middle than the middle of a conversation, surely.

So what makes stories starting with conversation so bad?

Another thing they tell you is that you only have a few lines to grab the reader’s attention.

They also tell you that the reader has to get the context of the story quickly. Lose the reader on the first page and you’ve lost them for the whole book.

I believe that one of the main reasons starting with conversation doesn’t work is because the reader has no context for that first line. They have no investment in the characters, they have no interest.

To use our own well-overdue-for-an-update novel in progress, Barrain:

I’m not sure how many revisions ago, but once we started the novel with:

“One man masterminded all of this.” In spite of her determination not to be, Taliah was impressed.

She might be talking about someone organising a barbeque for all we know. We have no idea who Taliah is, and we have no idea what the ‘one man who masterminded all this’ did to impress her, or why she didn’t want to be impressed. As yet we don’t even care.

In the latest re-write we put some context in first—before she speaks.

It wasn’t a battlefield, it was a slaughter yard.

Dead bodies lay everywhere amongst the smouldering ruins. Some of the bigger warehouses still burned, the flames unchecked. The enormous vultures that flickered in and out overhead were almost hidden by the choking black smoke that hung over everything.
In spite of her determination not to be, Taliah was impressed. “One man masterminded all of this.”
Barrain

We’ve added four sentences and moved one around. Now we have context.

We know where we are. We’re on a battlefield. We know—or we will when I fix the second paragraph—that we’re probably on a different world, because the vultures flicker in and out. We know what the man did that impressed Taliah so much. We don’t yet know why she didn’t want to be impressed, but that can come. We start to get an idea of who Taliah is.

We know now whether we want to spend a bit more time with her or whether it’s not our type of story.

You’ve seen it in the movies, you read about it in books, particularly whodunits and thrillers. The hero needs information. This information is hard to get. It’s on a government computer somewhere.

Our hero goes to a friend or a workmate or a relative who, just coincidentally–or not so coincidentally if the writer has laid the groundwork well—happens to work in the department that can give him the information and says, “Please. I need this.” Sometimes, depending on the movie or the book, it’s a matter of life or death.

So the friend/workmate/relative goes off to get the information for them.

And that’s where my credibility stops and something inside of me starts screaming, “Do you realise what you have just done?”

Nowadays information is better protected than it ever was and in any big company, and in many small ones, there’s an audit trail of who accessed which bit of data and when. Not only that, you can’t look up just anyone’s data. If the friend/workmate/relative goes outside their need to know they start tripping security flags. Someone is going to investigate.

The penalty for accessing data you’re not allowed to is instant dismissal.

Even if the breach is small. Even if it doesn’t hurt anyone.

What can the secondary character say? “But it’s life or death for my friend.”

Most bosses would reply something along the lines of, “He should have gone to the police then. Or come to the boss here and explained the problem.” Which of course, the hero can’t do because a) no-one would believe him, and b) they still wouldn’t give him what he needed to know, which is why the hero got his friend to do it in the first place.

Collateral damage to secondary characters is a fact of fiction.

I accept that.

I don’t know why this particular case bothers me more than most. Maybe it’s because it’s such a thoughtless thing to do and because the consequences for the secondary character can be devastating. Maybe (probably) it’s because I and many of my friends work in environments where data is protected and we have seen first-hand the effects of even minor security lapses.

To me it makes for a selfish hero, so focused on his own problems that he doesn’t consider anyone else. That always makes me like him a little less.

Writing time is scarce in a full working day. I take any time I can, even lunchtime, to write.

I have it down pat now. Pick a not-so-busy time to eat, find a quiet cafe, order food, then pull out the PC and start working. Since I purchased a netbook my writing productivity has increased fourfold.

I am often approached by other people who are interested in buying their own netbook to ask how I feel about mine. I tell them it’s great, and talk about the things that were important to me when I bought it. Could I touch type on it? Were the control, shift and alt keys in the right place? Then they ask the question that’s important to them. How do you access the internet on it?

The fact is, I seldom use the netbook to connect to internet. The screen is too small, access is slow(ish), and I’d rather use the full-size, faster PC at home.

Yet for most people, how and whether their computer connects to the internet is the only question.

Sometimes I feel I am the only person left in the world who doesn’t need internet access 24-7.

I use the internet, of course. I use it for research. I use it for email. But I don’t need it on all the time. In fact, it’s nice to be able to sit down, uninterrupted, and just write.