Writing Tips From Fay Weldon
Introduction
If you’re a would-be novelist – the kind of writer who just wants to get published, who hasn’t been to a creative writing class and has no wish to do so, preferring to plough your own lonely and idiosyncratic furrow – you may find this ‘helpful hints’ column useful.
If you read a lot – and I hope you do – much will be second nature to you anyway and you don’t need telling. I wrote twenty-five novels without benefit of training before being transmogrified overnight into a Professor of Creative Writing, and seven years later can at least codify the errors writers-in-training tend to make, and hand them on to you, anarchic lot that you are. The State pays me to teach, so teach I will.
Browse the posts below for writing tips. The latest tip is first on the grid. New tips will be added regularly.
Why will no-one publish my novel?
Writing Tips From Fay Weldon Why will no-one publish my novel? Why have agents and publishers shaken their heads and said ‘not for me’, given you at best a rave rejection – ‘We found the novel imaginative and touching, etc, etc, but not for us. Sorry.’ Or a straight...
The Rules of Vonnegut / 9
Writing Tips From Fay Weldon The Rules of Vonnegut / 9 Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish it by themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages. And there it is, my point made clear and...
The Rules of Vonnegut / 8
Writing Tips from Fay Weldon The Rules of Vonnegut / 8 Give your reader as much information as you can as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. This is the Rule I spend most time discussing with my students, and the one with which they have most difficulty. That’s...
The Rules of Vonnegut / 7
Writing Tips From Fay Weldon The Rules of Vonnegut / 7 ‘Write to please just one person. If you open a window on the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.’ Choose a reader, someone as like you as possible (same gender, same education, same temperament)...
The Rules of Vonnegut / 6
Writing Tips From Fay Weldon The Rules of Vonnegut / 6 ‘Be a sadist. No matter how sweet or innocent your leading character is, make awful things happen to them in order that they reader can find out what they are made of.’ Don’t be too preoccupied with your own...
The Rules of Vonnegut / 5
Writing Tips From Fay Weldon The Rules of Vonnegut / 5 (Sorry to have been so long getting round to this if to this. I’ve been busy writing a novel, as I hope you too are doing. The rules are not commandments, just a check list against which you can test your own...
The Rules of Vonnegut / 4
Writing Tips From Fay Weldon The Rules of Vonnegut / 4 ‘Every sentence must do one of two things: reveal character or advance the action.’ If it’s not, what is it doing in the book? Cut it. It’s no use just ‘expressing yourself’. You’re writing a novel here. No-one...
The Rules of Vonnegut / 3
Writing Tips From Fay Weldon The Rules of Vonnegut / 3 ‘Every character should want something, if only a glass of water.’ Your main characters need to want something important – whether success or true love, revenge or forgiveness, peace of mind or excitement: should...
The Rules of Vonnegut / 2
Writing Tips From Fay Weldon The Rules of Vonnegut / 2 ‘Give the reader at least one person he or she can relate to.’ The reader really wants to read about himself, herself: so make it possible. Have one admirable person amongst your den of thieves, one firm apple in...
The Nine Rules of Vonnegut / 1
Writing Tips From Fay Weldon The Nine Rules of Vonnegut / 1 Bless’d be his name! Kurt Vonnegut [1902-2007] was an American author who wrote fourteen novels, three short story collections, five plays, and five works of non-fiction in his lifetime. A hard worker, a good...
The story so far
Writing Tips From Fay Weldon The story so far Should you be in the middle of writing a novel it’s good idea to stop every now and then and devote a hundred words or so to writing down ‘the story so far.’ It focuses the mind on what you’re doing and where you need to...
The Cosmic Statement
Writing Tips From Fay Weldon The Cosmic Statement Picture yourself as halfway through your first novel. You meet a literary agent at a party, and she (usually a she) asks you, ‘And what is your novel about?’ You have a glass in your hand, it is a social occasion, she...
Novel, or screenplay?
Writing Tips From Fay Weldon Novel, or screenplay? Are you writing a novel, or is it more like a screenplay...? I’ve been silent for some time on this blog; but then I’ve been doing what academics do at this time of year – marking. For me it’s creative writing from...
On creating character
Writing Tips From Fay Weldon On creating character I’d written some 25 novels before I went anywhere near a creative writing class, and then I went as a tutor not a student. So I missed out on the conventional terminology – I still have to look up words like...
Notes on structure
Writing Tips From Fay Weldon Notes on structure All art forms have a structure. Basic rules apply. A novel’s just two or three hundred pages covered with words unless it has a shape, a form. It can be full of characters and events, and people changing their minds (and...
An old-fashioned feel?
Writing Tips From Fay Weldon An old-fashioned feel? If you’re an older writer – or sometimes when English isn’t your first language – everything you write can seem to you to be faultless, flawless, and the grammar perfect. But others complain it seems to come from...
But is it going to ‘work’?
Writing Tips From Fay Weldon But is it going to ‘work’? I worry about students writing novels who say: ‘It came to me in a dream.’ Inspiration’s all very well but it does need to be tempered by reason. Be careful you’re not writing a novel which makes sense to no-one...
What age are your characters?
Writing Tips From Fay Weldon What age are your characters? What age are you going to make your characters? It matters to publishers, it matters to marketing and PR people. You may chose to ignore this horrible fact and pursue your literary ambitions unmoved by the...
Notes on dialogue
Writing Tips From Fay Weldon Notes on dialogue I try to have a snatch of dialogue on the first page of a novel. It suggests to the reader that this is a book in which something is going to happen; it isn’t just going to blether on and on. The attempt, I find, helps...
What is your new novel about?
Writing Tips From Fay Weldon What is your new novel about? By which I don’t mean what is its genre, or what is the plot, but what is it actually about. Why do you want to write it; what do you want to say? Once that is decided, the novel becomes much easier to write....
Words to look at twice
Writing Tips From Fay Weldon Words to look at twice Avoid the sloppy use of ‘he’ or ‘she’. Observe this lamentable piece of writing: “Alice had brought her little girl Sonia with her, charming in her fur muff and little fur boots. (Who was charming? Alice or Sonia?)...
Titles and names
Writing Tips From Fay Weldon Titles and names On thinking up titles Useful to see a novel as a fictionalised essay. It’s not just words, plot and character, it’s about something. If the title doesn’t come to you instantly and you feel adrift without one, decide what...
Writing Tips
Writing Tips From Fay Weldon Writing Tips - Introduction If you’re a would-be novelist – the kind of writer who just wants to get published, who hasn’t been to a creative writing class and has no wish to do so, preferring to plough your own lonely and idiosyncratic...