Adding detail to your story

I started my career as a television news reporter. Being a news reporter means turning a lot of complicated information into a short package so the audience can easily understand what is going on. In television, the pictures help tell the story. The words back up the television footage.

Writing fiction works the other way round – you need to use words to describe the pictures in your head. Good description helps to draw in your readers and helps to make the story more exciting.

You might find these suggestions useful, the next time you write a story.

1. Use all of your senses when you describe something in your story.

Mostly, we rely on our sight. But other senses help to build up a complete picture of what is going on. Draw in your readers by telling them what you can see, hear, smell, taste, touch and how it makes you feel.

In my book, Blood Money, I describe what I can hear and see:

I’m thinking of money, not dangerous animals. That’s why I put my foot in the long grass without thinking at all. There’s a rustle just in front of my foot. I hear it before I see it. I scramble backwards. A long black body slithers out of the grass. It’s right in front of me. A tongue flickers. Then there’s a flash of red. ‘SNAKE!’ I scream. ‘Red-belly black snake!’(P.24 Blood Money)

2. Make your description as specific as possible.

There are lots of adjectives that sound cool to use, but they don’t always add  meaning to your story. Your house might be in “chaos”, but does that mean there are a few clothes scattered on your bedroom floor or does it mean aliens have invaded and set up camp in your kitchen? Make sure you don’t leave the reader to guess what you might mean.

How about a man with a “creepy face”? What is it about his face that scares you?

Here’s how I described something scary in Snake Surprise:

An ugly thing with a human body, ears like a rabbit and a face so grotesque it would make gladiators wet their pants, leaps off the roof of the houseboat. (P.19 Snake Surprise)

3. Use details that are relevant to the story.

That means the detail has to be useful to readers. You might not need to tell the readers that you have blue eyes, but if you have purple eyes and people with purple eyes have supersonic vision, then eye colour is a relevant detail. Make sure all the relevant details come out early in the story. Don’t surprise the reader in the climax with your supersonic vision. The reader will feel cheated. And be consistent. If your best friend has a broken leg at the beginning of the story, he won’t be playing rugby at the end of the story.

This is an example of relevant detail at the beginning of Shark Frenzy:

I made a deal with sharks. I don’t swim near them and they don’t play cricket. It may be a little unfair. I can swim, whereas they haven’t got a hope of hitting a six. (P.1 Shark Frenzy)

4. Make sure your description is part of the action.

Good detail advances the story. It doesn’t slow it down. In this scene from Tiger Terror, the description is part of the action.

Something wet hits me in the face. Cold, slimy fingers grab at my neck. I can feel them, even through the balaclava. Sharp talons scratch at my cheeks. I fight to get free. But I get more tangled. I gasp for breath. I’m going to be choked to death. (P.51 Tiger Terror)

TRY: Describe what’s going on in this picture – using all of your senses, and make sure the description is part of the action. 

Good luck.

Julie xx

Great advice from author and publisher Paul Collins

Multi award winning author and publisher, Paul Collins, has an exciting new young adult novel out. Mole Hunt is a dystopian thriller and the first story in The Maximus Black Files. He joins Write Now to share some tips on how to get published and what makes a great story.

Paul Collins with students from Springfield College

My advice to younger writers is that it doesn’t pay to tell the publisher your age (unless the magazine specifically wants work from younger readers). If your work looks professional, then your age won’t matter. Catherine McMullen was ten years old when she sold a story to the UK science fiction magazine Interzone, and has since sold stories to anthologies such as Spinouts. If you have sold stories already, you should mention this in your covering letter.

Remember that a rejection letter does not necessarily reflect on the quality of your work. It might just be that your article/story does not fit in with the publisher’s current requirements. A golden rule is to never let an unsold piece of work sit in your home for more than twenty-four hours. Keep sending it out until you have exhausted all avenues. Never throw a manuscript out. I have had novels accepted that had been rejected by the same publisher a decade before. Editors change, as do times. Indeed, as you become a more experienced writer, you can always go back to those ‘bottom drawer’ stories and re-work them.

Most publishers prefer a covering letter. The following is a good example. Under no circumstances do you tell the magazine editor how good your story is, or discuss its many merits. The editor will have his/her own opinion and will not welcome yours!

The following is how you lay out your manuscript. Most publishers do not require you to put in indents at the beginning of paragraphs, because when they format your file, they will have to take them out. Make sure that you have no fancy fonts or illustrations. Keep it simple! This means no illustrations such as butterflies in the margins. Publishers only have to delete them.

Word count: 2300 words

Paul Collins
PO Box 1339
Collingwood
Vic 3066
Australia

The Thing that went ‘Blerckh!’
by
Paul Collins

‘Blerckh!’

‘That was truly gross,’ I said to my best friend, Daniel Barnes – Barnesy to me.

‘It wasn’t me,’ he said, ‘but I wish it was.’ Barnesy looked around. No one was there.

‘Ace!’ I laughed and pointed down at his foot. The fattest, pukiest glob of bubble gum was stuck to his foot. It was so gross it had anchor lines stretching back to the main wad stuck on the footpath.

Barnesy lifted his foot and shook it. The bubble gum wouldn’t let go.

I cacked myself laughing. ‘It’s caught you, Barnesy – now some big fat spider’s gonna come and take you away!’

Barnesy frowned. ‘Seriously, Fletchard. You’re so loserish.’ He tugged so hard his shoe came off.

That threw me right off. ‘Let me tell you, Barnesy,’ I gasped, ‘you look so funny.’ I sat down on the footpath, tears of laughter screaming from my eyes.

Barnesy gave me a filthy look. He bent down to pick up his shoe. He pulled with two hands. He steadied his feet and hauled with all his strength.

Nothing. The shoe was wedged there.

Barnesy jumped back.

Blerckh!

‘What’d it do, bite you?’ I howled.

‘Shuddup, Fletchard.’ Barnesy glared at me. ‘It just went “Blerckh!” again.’

I swallowed hard. My stomach was aching too much. I had to stop laughing. Cars were slowing down looking at the idiot on the footpath who was losing it with tears. I pushed myself up, my whole body shaking with laughter.

‘It just burped?’ I repeated slowly, hardly daring to breathe.

Barnesy checked me out. He was about to lose it.

‘Serious? It burped?’

Barnesy let go of his shoe. It snapped back to the footpath. ‘It’s stuck,’ he said. ‘The gooey stuff’s got it and won’t let it go.’

‘Weird,’ I said. I could have laughed my head off. After all, it wasn’t my shoe that was glued to the footpath. Instead, I shook my head in sympathy. What are friends for?

‘I can’t walk home with only one shoe,’ Barnesy said seriously.

‘You could take the other one off and leave it,’ I suggested.

‘That’s really dumb,’ Barnesy said. ‘I’d rather have one shoe than none.’

‘But one shoe’s no good to you,’ I pointed out.

‘The gunk’s not going to have my other shoe,’ Barnesy said firmly. ‘No way.’

(You will note the double spacing between sentences (you can use 1.5 spacing). This is so that editors have space to mark in corrections etc. Also, take notice of the border around the manuscript. Do not print both sides of the paper, and make sure you number each page and have a title on each page. This is in case the pages get loose or rearranged. Do not clip or staple your manuscript.)
What makes a good story?

Basically, most stories have a beginning, a middle and an end. If you are writing a fiction story for a magazine that publishes 2000+ word stories, your manuscript will have about nine pages.

During the course of these pages, you should have drama (perhaps mystery), conflict (obstacles to overcome, dilemma), humour (if possible), a focus, as in ‘where is this leading?’ (towards a logical conclusion, the reader hopes!), and obviously the climax.

You start out introducing your character. Here you will set the scene for what is about to follow. In the above story, The Thing that went ‘Blerckh!’, the conflict is between two best friends, Barnesy and Fletchard. Barnesy also has a problem (obstacle), which Fletchard thinks is funny. So there’s humour in the first couple of pages, too.

The middle comes around pages six and seven. Barnesy can’t dislodge the gum from his feet. They discover a man is picking up all the globs of chewing gum. Here’s the mystery – why would someone go around picking up chewing gum? The obvious way to find out is to following the man (we’re heading toward a logical conclusion).

Towards the end, Fletchard and Barnesy discover the ‘man’ is from another planet. They follow him. It turns out that his special gum has been snaring Earth objects, which are valuable on his planet. The boys also discover that he has caught lots of cats and dogs. To release them, they might jeopardise their own safety (a moral dilemma). This is where the characters need a resolution. In this case, they put the animals before their own safety, but of course it’s a wise decision because all the animals get free and so do the boys (climax).

It makes good sense to be creative when considering how your character resolves their problem. In the case of Barnesy and Fletchard, they discover a giant plug. Do they pull it, or will it put them in more danger? Only when the old man screams at them not to touch it, do the boys decides it’s a good idea to ‘pull the plug’. The ending is where all the loose ends are tied. In the case of The Thing that went ‘Blerckh!’, the boys vow to look for the old man again, because they want to get back to his planet.
Know Your Characters

There are basically two types of fiction writers – those who concentrate on characterisation and those who lean toward writing good plots and action. Writers rarely succeed in being excellent in both. Authors who write plot-driven stories filled with twists and turns and brilliant foreshadowing often receive letters of rejection claiming that the characters are two-dimensional or lack depth.

It’s easy enough to draw up a checklist of necessities for your characters: what they look like, colour of hair, shape of nose and nationality etc, but these mundane items should be a given. Your characters need filling out – especially the main protagonists. Giving your character a quirky nature is one way to add a bit of depth: their eye might twitch when agitated or they might stutter. James Bond liked his martinis shaken not stirred, and when introducing himself, he would say, ‘Bond. James Bond.’ Your characters might have a ‘rising inflexion’, which means almost every second sentence seemingly has a question mark, even when they’re not asking a question. The more you fill in along the way, the easier it will be for the reader to identify with them.

Never make statements to the reader. Commonly known as ‘show don’t tell’, the following is an example: ‘Keiren didn’t play sport because he was no good at it’. Far better to give a reason: ‘Dom’s older sister was the captain of both the seniors’ cricket and rugby teams. No way could he compete with that; instead he spent most of his time in the library’. In the first version we know that he doesn’t play sport because he’s no good at it. In the second version, we learn why Keiren is no good at sport (he’s daunted by his sister’s superiority), and we learn that he’s a reader because of it.
The rule of thumb is that if you know your character inside out, and convey your knowledge in your story by showing and not telling, your finished work will be much richer for it.

When editing your work – commonly known as ‘polishing’, watch out for the obvious mistakes of over-writing. These include repetition, using the same words too many times, labouring a point, using more words than necessary to say something simple.

My greatest tip to anyone is to persist! Remember that many publishers have rejected most of the best-selling books of all time before the books saw print. And this applies to short stories, too.

Good luck with your writing. I hope these minor tips prove helpful.

Paul Collins’s latest books are The Glasshouse, illustrated by Jo Thompson and Mole Hunt, book one in The Maximus Black Files. His website is: www.paulcollins.com.au.

Ten ingredients for writing a great story

I have put together a list of ten ingredients for a great story. In the coming months I will be going through each of these things in more detail, but I thought I’d start with a list (because I love lists).

Ten tips for writing

1. Keep a journal for snippets of conversation, story ideas, newspaper clippings, bus tickets – anything that might be useful in a story.
2. Make a plan for your story. You need to start with a rough idea of what will happen, who will be involved and where it will be set.
3. Create a back story. This is the background to your story – what went on before the story started. This information doesn’t all go in your story but helps you to work out why your characters act the way they do.
4. Start your story with a problem. Give your audience an exciting start to your story. But remember it has to build to a climax, so don’t throw everything at them in the first paragraph.
5. Add obstacles and build to a climax and resolution. Make sure if you want a happy ending that your characters have the ability to overcome the obstacles.
6. Use detail to add excitement by using all of your senses when you write. What do your characters see, hear, smell, touch, taste and how do they feel about what is going on.
7. Use dialogue to add interest to your story. Dialogue is also useful as a transition – to join parts of your story together.
8. Edit your story. Read over the story, asking yourself if you have answered the questions – how, when, where, why, how?
9. Remove anything that doesn’t add to your story. When in doubt, leave it out.
10. Rewrite any parts of your story that need to be improved. You can add dialogue and detail to make it more exciting. You may need to do several rewrites to get it right. I do!

GOOD LUCK!

Anyone for a blueberry with that rewrite?

Hearing Voices

It’s always enriching for a writer to hear the experiences of a best-selling author. Just listening to their stories, the inspiration for their books, the routines they follow, provide clues to how to improve your writing. And when that author is Pulitzer Prize winning author Geraldine Brooks, I have to admit, I’m hanging on every word.

This week I listened as the author of March, Year of Wonders and my favourite, People of the Book, shared snippets of her journey from her time as a foreign correspondent in the Middle East to her latest book Caleb’s Crossing.

If you haven’t read Caleb’s Crossing, the book is about the first Native American to graduate from Harvard. Yet, the story is told by a young Puritan girl who befriends him. So, why did Brooks choose Bethia Mayfield as the narrator? Apparently, that’s the voice she heard when she was researching her story. As Geraldine Brooks puts it: she wouldn’t be so presumptuous as to try to write a first person account in Caleb’s voice. But she was able to write a convincing story in Bethia’s voice from the shreds of evidence that remain of colonial life in North America in the 17th century.

How wonderful to have a voice emerge from the archives, but as Brooks admits – if she can’t hear a voice, she doesn’t have a story. And that’s an important point. The voice is a crucial element of storytelling – a fresh, credible voice can make a novel, a clichéd, contrived one can break it.

When I wrote the Hazard River adventure series, I used the voice of a ten-year-old boy. It wasn’t hard to hear the voice – he was yapping away in the background. My own sons inspired the characters in the series as well as the adventures. I faithfully followed the advice: write what you know.

I shared the inspiration for the Hazard River series at a festival for young writers and readers earlier in the week. The aptly named Voices on the Coast is a celebration of storytelling on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland. I was there to help inspire the next generation of writers, but the process works both ways. It’s hard not to be energized by students who are so enthusiastic and talented – bubbling with imagination and ambition. I am inspired to get back to a half finished story on my computer, follow the voices and find out how it ends.

I’d better get on with it or the voices I’ll be hearing will be those asking for help with Maths homework and questioning what’s for dinner.

Aleesah Darlison, Steph Bowe and me (above) at Voices on the Coast. A big thank you to the organisers of the festival as well as the very helpful student presenters and techies.

How’s my front cover in this?

There’s a theory that book sales increase along with the number of teeth on the front cover. With this theory in mind my publisher, Ford Street Publishing, enlisted the talented Marc McBride to do the artwork for the Hazard River series. Marc, who is famous for the Deltora Quest illustrations, is not known for his subtly. Rather, he’s notorious for adding the fear factor to everything he touches. The result for the Hazard River series is a collection of eye-catching front covers.

The front cover of Shark Frenzy features the gaping jaws of a monster shark poised ready to snap up a boat full of children. Then there’s the sinister snake on the cover of Snake Surprise, a tiger on the front of Tiger Terror and the gruesome gob of a bat on Bat Attack. I can’t wait to see what he comes up with for the next books in the series Blood Money and Toads’ Revenge.

Kids love all of the Hazard River front covers, but they really go for the toothy ones. A random sampling of my son’s Year 4 class found the Bat Attack front cover scored particularly well on the ‘awesome’ scale, which tends to support the theory.

But what do parents think? One friend can’t even look at the front cover of Snake Surprise because she’s so scared of snakes. Another is terrorized by the Bat Attack cover and I have to admit that even I am frightened by the front cover of Shark Frenzy and I know what happens. (No children actually got eaten in the writing of that book.) The truth is – the books are all action-packed fun with an environmental twist. The nasty-looking animals are all good guys in these books. The baddies are smugglers, dodgy developers, and unscrupulous fishermen. Shark Frenzy starts with a dead shark washed up on the bank of Hazard River. It has no fins. When Jack Wilde and his friends decide to investigate, they find fishermen are killing sharks for their fins.

Shark finning makes for an interesting theme, but a dead, finless shark doesn’t make a great front cover. A monster shark with its mouth open does. Sorry to any squeamish parents, the kids’ votes win on this one. Please ask your parents to turn away the next time you pick up a Hazard River book. Or maybe ask them to grin and bear it, if you’ll pardon the pun.