You Are Not Ark Fleet B

In The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Douglas Adams describes an overcrowded planet whose inhabitants decided to relocate. They divided the population into three groups: Ark Fleet A, all the rulers; Ark Fleet C, all the people who did the actual work; and Ark Fleet B, the rest – all the middlemen, such as the telephone sanitisers, account executives, hairdressers, tired TV producers, insurance salesmen, personnel officers, security guards, public relations executives, and management consultants. Ark Fleet B left first, to prepare the new home planet for the others, and… Ark Fleets A and C settled back into life, in a less overcrowded planet. Rid of the fluff.

At the start of the pandemic, we all got a fresh perspective on whose jobs to value. The bin collectors, the delivery drivers, the medical staff. With a cousin in the army, helping with logistics, and his partner a front-line nurse, I jokingly but sincerely referred to myself and my work as “Ark Fleet B”: the inessential fluff that an indulgent late-stage society has developed, which the planet and its people are better off without. I even named our group-chat that.

They were saving lives and keeping people alive. I was stuffing handouts in envelopes and arranging absurd stuff on a slice of wood on a lazy susan and filming it while I pushed it round with a wooden spoon. Spot the difference. I know a lot of creatives felt similarly.

But during that same period, everyone, including me, was turning to the arts, and specifically to immersive stories, to keep ourselves sane, to look after our fraying mental health, so we could all do the life-and-death essential functioning we needed to. At the same time as I was mocking myself as a pointless Ark Fleet B person, I was recording creative-writing audios for my students, creating a Poem-a-Day project that offered respite from anxious thought, filling my website with free writing resources, and advertising those instead of my courses.

I knew that writing helped people find a respite of calm, absorbed flow, which they urgently needed. Likewise, I was writing daily poems myself, as a constant essential practice to hold myself together. Likewise, my partner and I were mainlining stories in the evening: books, TV series, whatever could absorb us and give us respite so we could carry on.

When my army cousin and his nurse partner got home, shattered from what they’d been doing, rigid with worry – they also sought stories, in film or TV or books, so they could recover, so they could carry on.

When people needed poems for funerals, because they needed to say what this meant and couldn’t find the words, those were there too. Written by people who probably felt they belonged on Ark Fleet B, recommended by people who felt their knowledge of poetry was 100% Ark Fleet B candidacy.

The arts in general, and stories specifically, were a mental-health lifeline. People had made those stories. People who were probably also feeling like they belonged on Ark Fleet B. We can call it “escapism”. We can call it respite. We can call it mental health. We can look to the physical health benefits of easing stress, and how much that heals, how much it wards off. We can look to the societal benefits of not going berserk with cabin fever, not fighting with the only person you’re allowed to touch, not blowing up the new group-chat with stress-induced anger, not tumbling into conspiracy theories out of boredom-meets-helplessness-meets-terror.

This isn’t the indulgence of a late-stage society either, of people whose food is delivered in crates and whose refuse is carried away by trucks. Stories, poems, music, art, have been vital to every society throughout history, especially in the hardest times. They’re not the tip of our societal Hierarchy of Needs: they’re part of the foundation. All that’s changed is how we name the different ways that stories-poems-music-art combine, from cave art and bards to films, books, lyrics. It’s always been essential, and healing.

Your writing – you, writing – isn’t inessential fluff or indulgence. You’re not Ark Fleet B. You’re a healer. Even if no-one ever reads what you write, society is better for you writing. That strange half-hour of filming the Display of Curiosities left me calmer than I’d felt in days, which meant I could support other people and not crumble / start screaming / snap. If all it did was restore me, that was already enough to be a help to others. But it did more: it helped other people find that space, so that they could help others, and so on, rippling outwards.

The arts do so much else besides, but if ever you doubt, remember this: you’re not Ark Fleet B. Or A, or C. You’re more like trees: you help people breathe. Filling your leaves does good.

If you're prone to thinking of writing and creativity as Ark Fleet B stuff, or struggling to defend its worth in your life even when you know how much it matters to you, the new Time To Write course will help strengthen your belief and joy in writing, and help you uncover the odd bits of thinking like this one to toss them overboard. Read more here.

Winter Writing Food: Stuffed Aubergine Parmigiana

 

 

Roasted aubergine halves stuffed with mozzarella and breadcrumbs, topped with a parsley garlic and cheese crust, baked in a sea of tomato, onion, and garlic.

As always, perfect writing food is quick (either to make or to double up another day's cooking) so it doesn't steal your writing time, low-carb so your writing time isn't sabotaged by sleepiness, and as much a treat as writing itself. 

This winter's recipe is a glorious indulgence. It's comforting, rich, low carb, colourful, and easy to reheat: a sumptuous writing-day treat. It's not traditional aubergine parmigiana; it uses some cheeky / outright questionable hacks, but it is utterly bloody lovely.

It's also a lot quicker than regular aubergine parmigiana. Still not objectively quick, it's not a five-minuter, but I've managed to refine the original recipe down to 1 hour of active time, and it makes 8 portions, so that's a very generous reward on the time. After you've made it the first time, you also have parsley-garlic paste stashed in the freezer for the next two times you make it, so that speeds things up too.

If you're having a full writing day, you can make it earlier in the day as a brain-break, and then hold off the final 10-20 minutes in the oven. Alternately, make it on a non-writing day and pad it out with crusty bread or fried / boiled and herby potatoes, so the precious aubergine boats don't all get inhaled.

If you're after something healthier, quicker to make, vegan, or gluten-free, try last winter's recipe. If you've got 1h40 to be around (1 hour of which is active time) and you're looking to treat your writer self, then you may want...

Stuffed Aubergine Parmigiana

Note: There are also pictures at the bottom of the post, to show some of the techniques / cooking in progress.

Serving and Times

Cooking: 1h40, of which 1h active

Serves: 6–8 or 8 writing-time meals

Ingredients

Main

• 1 onion, diced
• 60ml extra-virgin olive oil (¼ cup), plus extra for drizzling
• 4 medium aubergines
• 2 tsp pouring salt
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 x 400g tins whole peeled tomatoes
• 1 Tbsp red wine vinegar
• 15g chopped parsley to serve, plus crusty bread / potatoes when you have it as a non-writing time meal (so your lovely aubergine halves don't all get snaffled up)

Parsley-Garlic Paste

• 70g parsley, leaves and stalks roughly chopped
• 5 garlic cloves
• Zest and juice of ½ lemon
• 125ml extra-virgin olive oil (½ cup)
• ¼ tsp pouring salt (½ tsp flakes)

Parsley-Garlic Crumbs

• 80g parsley-garlic paste (¼ cup)
• 100g breadcrumbs
• 50g butter
• 1 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

Stuffing

• 50g breadcrumbs
• 340g of your 500g mozzarella (the rest is for sprinkling)
• 15g parsley, roughly chopped

Equipment

• Large shallow baking dish that can fit 8 aubergine halves next to each other (mine is 24cm x 34cm and 6.5cm deep)
  
• Full-sized oven tray
• Baking paper
• Large mixing bowl
• Optional, makes it quicker: a food chopper; a 400ml jar for shaking garlic; a mezzaluna for speed-chopping parsley.

Method

50 Mins Active Time

• Find a baking dish large enough to take 8 aubergine halves (mine is 24cm x 34cm and 6.5cm deep).
• Dice 1 onion med-fine and put in the dish with 60ml olive oil. Put in the cold oven, then turn oven onto 180° C fan. Set onion timer for 15 mins.
• Line an oven tray with baking paper. Halve the 4 aubergines lengthwise and score them deeply, criss-cross diagonally, not piercing the skin. Sprinkle about ¼ tsp salt on each half, pressing the aubergine edges down so the salt can fall into the cracks. Lay the aubergines face-down on the baking paper.
• Shake the 9 garlic cloves (4 if you have your parsley-garlic paste already) in a jar, to remove/loosen their skins.*
• Blitz the peeled garlic in a ninja/chopper. If you're making parsley-garlic paste, set aside just under half  the garlic to join the onions later.

• Make the parsley-garlic paste: Add to the 5 cloves garlic in the ninja/blender: 70g parsley, zest and juice of ½ lemon, 125ml oil, ¼ tsp salt. Blitz till smooth. Divide into 3 x 80g: one to use now; two in small jars for the freezer, for future.

• When the onions have had 15 mins and the oven’s hot, take the onions out and put the halved aubergines in. Set a 30-min aubergine timer.
• To the onion dish, add the remaining 4 cloves minced garlic, 2 tins tomatoes, ½ tin water (200ml), 1 Tbsp red wine vinegar. Crush the tomatoes with a masher. Pop the dish back in the oven.

• Fry the breadcrumbs: Melt 50g butter in a frying pan. Add 1 Tbsp olive oil, 80g parsley-garlic paste, and 100g breadcrumbs. Fry till golden, stirring regularly. Between stirs, you can mix the stuffing.
  

• Mix the stuffing: Roughly chop the remaining 30g parsley. In a large bowl, mix half that parsley, 340g mozzarella, and 50g breadcrumbs. (Set the extra mozzarella and parsley aside for later.)

• When the aubergines have had 30 mins, take them out the oven. Turn the aubergines face-up to cool and set a 15-min timer.

15 Mins Rest

• Finish anything not done, clean kitchen, chill, etc.

10 Mins Active Time

• Take the tomato dish out the oven.
• With a spoon, scrape the aubergine flesh from the skins into the stuffing mix bowl, keeping the skins whole. Mix well.
• Lay the aubergine skins on the tomato mix. Fill with stuffing mix. Drizzle olive oil over them.
• Put in the oven for 15 mins.

 25 (15 + 10) mins rest (or longer if you wish)

• After 15 mins (this can be 20 if you wish), take the dish out and top each aubergine half with the parsley-garlic breadcrumbs and the extra mozzarella for sprinkling.
• If you want to pause dinner, you can keep it out the oven for longer now.
• If / when you’re ready to eat, put it back in the oven for 10 mins if it’s still piping hot (or 15–20 if you paused it and it needs to regain its heat).
• Sprinkle the remaining parsley over it before serving. (It's fine to parsley the ones for the freezer too.)

Freezing

Refrigerate the tray overnight, to help everything firm up. The next day, use a flat spatula to scoop each aubergine boat, along with the tomato mix under it, onto tinfoil. Wrap the portions in foil and label with masking tape & a sharpie.

Recipe credits: Alice Zaslavsky in the Guardian. I've adapted the technique to streamline the prep, cooked the tomatoes and onion for longer, and adjusted the quantities to suit the amount things are sold in, in the UK.

* Shaking garlic in a jar to peel it: This is not a spoof hack; it really works. A 400ml jar works best, not a huge one. For older garlic, the peels will usually fall off after vigorous shaking. For very fresh garlic, the peels often don't come off, but the bash-about in the jar makes the fresh cloves easier to peel: cut off the blunt end without severing the peel on the other side, then use that to pull the rest of the peel off.

The cooking, in pictures

The stuffing mix in its bowl (before the aubergines are added) with the two extra jars parsley-garlic paste.

Two extra jars of paste labelled for the freezer.

Holding the scored aubergine open to sprinkle with salt.

Scooping the aubergine flesh out the skins.

Empty aubergine skins laid out on the tomato sauce.

Aubergine halves filled to be baked before their topping is added.

Aubergine halves baked, before the parsley is sprinkled on.

Aubergine parmigiana for my writing day.

Four portions for the freezer, for future writing-time joy.

P.S. If you find writing time hard to protect, then the brand-new Time To Write course will help a lot with that, from practical strategies like this to mindset-shifts that make it easier and more joyous. And plenty of literal writing time, built into the course! Read more here.

How Do I Write a Novel? An open letter to my younger self

When I wrote Word Count Is Like Paint, I realised that however sound the advice was, it would leave my younger self stranded. After all, how do you approach something as ambitious and amorphous as writing a novel, except with the one thing you can measure: word count? 

So this is my letter to that younger self, exactly half my age: she was having a kitchen-painting party for her birthday, in the photos below, so even our painting theme continues, and it's my birthday on Sunday, and I've just today finished my twelfth or thirteenth novel, depending how I count the two-volume one. And it's an open letter, because I thought you might find it useful, too.

Hey darling,

I know you’re longing to write a novel, you dream of being a novelist, and it seems as far off and unobtainable as being an astronaut. It’s not. You can totally do it and you don’t have to wait until some magic point of Readiness: you can start now.

First off, don’t worry about the words. I know it feels like that’s the main, most difficult thing, but really: you can do the words just fine. You’ve been inhaling novels since you learnt how to read. You know how the words go, in novels. The same way you learnt to speak, by being around people speaking? You’ve already learnt how to write.

You’ll get better and better at it, as time and writing go by, and you’ll discover exciting new things to do with style and words, but those are things you can only discover through writing – and what you’ve learnt from all that reading is more than enough to get started. Just go for it.

Writing a novel will take time and commitment, but you’ve already shown you’ve got that. Think of all your studying, the effort you put in – it’s like that, but this time with something that’s much more yours, that enthrals and delights you. It’s half commitment and half like falling in love, wanting to steal that time for it.

So you’ve got the commitment and you’ve got the words. You just need to know how to do it.

Here’s something that might surprise you and seem very obvious at the same time: the story is the main thing. Not how beautiful the words are. Not how important the Central Theme is. The story. None of your English teachers at school, none of your Eng Lit lecturers at uni, talked about novels as stories, ever, but that’s what they are. That’s why you read them. Even your favourite literary authors put the story first. The words have a job to do: to tell a story.

A novel is a substantial story, but not as long as you think. (Remember that 1500-word essay you were set? And you turned in 4500 words? Yeah. You don’t have a problem with writing too little.) But it’s substantial enough that you need to chunk it, both in story terms and your own progress.

Novels are measured in word count (I know that seems batshit, when words are such different lengths, but yes it works – they average out) and for your first novel, you should aim for 80k. I know you’ll overshoot. We want max 90k. (Trust me on this. This is very important. Do not spend ten years writing an absolute masterpiece that’s 330 000 words long. No-one will publish it, because they can’t; it’s too bloody long. Now matter how good it is. Just, y’know, a tip from the future.)

So aim for 80k. To make that manageable, chunk it into five parts; let’s call them acts. (I know your uni film course said three acts, but films are much shorter than novels, in story terms.) Make the first and last one about 10k words each, and the middle three about 20k words each. (Beginnings need to work fast and endings are often quicker than we expect, so those two get less.)

Don’t worry if that word count seems huge compared to the academic essays you’ve written. Fiction is much easier and chews up word count, because you don’t have to research or prove everything; you can just make it up. A good meaty scene with two characters actually doing stuff, somewhere interesting, and having an argument, can easily chew up 1500 words.

We’re using word count to measure the total size of the novel, and the approximate size of each act, but we’re not going to use it to measure progress. (That’s important. I’ll come back to that.) We’ll use the story to measure progress.

To do that, we need to map out the story across acts. Think of any story you know well. Lord of the Rings, if you want. (Btw, you’re going to meet someone who loves it as much as you do and you’ll get to introduce him to Terry Pratchett. Good things are coming.) What’s the main story line in that? Write that down in your notebook, in a sentence or two.

Now, what are the main points where things change, in that story line? For instance, the first one is when Gandalf tells Frodo he has to take the ring out the shire. Those change points are what mark the end of one act and the beginning of the next. You want four of those big change points (turning points) for the switch from one act to the next.

Your story also needs a thing that sets it going at the start (eg Bilbo giving Frodo the ring) – we call that the inciting incident, but it can also be the ongoing situation at the start. It doesn’t have to be massive, but it gets the story-ball rolling. And at the other end, an ending, which you might know before you start writing, or you might figure out much later.

You can map that out on one page of your notebook or a scrap of A6, to get going. Treat yourself to a coffee out, even a month of Saturday morning coffees if you want to keep brainstorming and coming up with ideas, but then dive in and start writing. You just need enough plan to give you a direction to write in. You’ll learn so much more about the story, and get to know the characters, through writing. And your plan will change, as you get to know it all better, and that’s fine – great, even. The initial plan is just your springboard.

Don’t get caught up in word count. I know I said 10k, then 3 x 20k, then 10k, but that’s a rough guide. I know you love spreadsheets, but try not to make a pie chart. Some acts are longer, or shorter. You might discover new change points, so your story has six acts, or seven, or ten. But you need some clarity, certainty, and structure to start with, so start with 5, and then be flexible.

I know what you want to know now, because you’re me: I stood shivering at those London bus stops with you, on the way to a temp job, leaden as the sky, notebook in our handbag, staring into the cosy coffee shop we couldn’t afford. How do I find The Idea? A good enough Idea, Worthy Of A Novel?

That’s the second thing your teachers and Eng Lit lecturers got completely wrong. And most of the world still gets wrong. The idea doesn’t matter. It does to you; it needs to, to you; but it doesn’t need to be Worthy, novel-length, or prize-winning. Ideas aren’t those things. It’s writing that grows ideas into novels, and the original idea can be lost as a seed-husk in the full-fleshed fruit. You don’t need to wait for The Idea. You just need an idea that will help you start writing. Everything grows from there.

It doesn’t need to be The Best Idea, either, because this won’t be your best novel. It’ll be your first, your best so far, but you’ll keep writing. Of course you will. So you’ll keep getting better.

All the idea needs to be is something that excites you to write. The way you keep thinking about sunsets. Or the creepy atmosphere of that field when the mist creeps over at night, which puts you in mind of witchery. Or the dreadful fog-horn sound of that misused amp and the description you’re writing of the building next to you. Small, such small, seed ideas that you’ll grow into novels by writing them.

I have so much more I could tell you. So much more I could advise. But most of it won’t make sense until you start writing. In fact, telling you all of it now would hold you back. Remember when you were 14 and you read every book the Wynberg municipal library had on writing? The car park’s hot tar and eucalyptus-tree smell wrapped through them? And how you couldn’t write for almost a year, because you knew too much about it but not how to do it? That’s why I can’t tell you the rest, now.

But I can tell you this: you can write a novel, and you can start now. The idea only needs to entice you; the rest will grow. The story matters more than the words, and you can do the words. Chunk the story into five acts, around change points, and use word count as a loose yardstick of story, not your metric. You can learn so much more when you’re writing, but you need to be writing.

And you can; you just needed to know how to get started. Now you do.

All my love,
Megan

P.S. If you do want to learn the other stuff, and write alongside it, I’ve learnt an awful lot in the last 24 years, including why you’re still sitting on a short story you wrote when you were 21 and why you’ll only publish it when you’re 30. That’s in the new Time To Write course. And a bunch of the other practical stuff about writing a whole novel is in Story Elements.

Writing Skill: Sexy Letter

To whet your appetite for the Sexy Scenes workshop, December's online weekend workshop, I've got a delicious writing skill for you, as a great way in to writing the "naughty bits" in fiction: a SEXY LETTER.

Sex scenes and sexy snippets aren't just the realm of bonk-busters, Soho bookshops, hide-from-my-history sub-reddits, and excitable fan-fic: heaps of mainstream and literary fiction includes sex, often very explicitly, for excellent reasons. Sex matters in characters' lives. It can change their lives, reshape the plot, even play a role in the revolution. Three of the most mainstream / classic / Respectable novels we'll look at in the workshop are AS Byatt's Possession, Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale (the positive consensual sex scene in that, not the awful "ceremony"), and George Orwell's 1984. They include the sex scenes because they matter. They also include the sex scenes because the authors knew that it mattered and included what was right for the story, instead of stopping where embarrassment dictated or vocabulary failed.

It's worth expanding your writing repertoire to include the sex scenes. It's also extremely fun. And here's an especially fun, freeing way to get started.

One character is writing a sexy letter to another character. A very sexy letter. The character writing may or may not intend to send the letter. They might change their mind while writing it, perhaps even several times. It can be a confessional letter in a newly blossoming relationship, or writing within an established relationship. But it is very definitely a sexy letter.

So who are the characters? 

• If you have a story in progress, you can use your existing characters, if it suits them. 
• If you've done any of the other writing skills, you can use the characters from those. Most recently, we've had two skills focused on romantic relationships: Deluded Diary, for exploring new love, and Prove It's You, for exploring established love.
• If you don't have any characters from your work or previous skills, you could jump into either of the two above, spend ten minutes on that to discover the characters, and then come back to this.
• If you'd rather dive straight into writing a sexy letter, you can use this quick character gen to whisk up two characters. (Feel free to adjust the ages!)

Then decide which character is writing the letter to the other, grab some pen and paper, and start writing the letter, detailing – in plenty of detail! – exactly what they're imagining, remembering, longing for, hoping, fantasising, fixating on... Remember: they might not send the letter. So they can say whatever they want. (And you don't have to show what you write to anyone. So you can have them say whatever you want.) Give yourself permission to enjoy it, to get hot under the collar, even to giggle in shock at yourself. And have fun!

This is a delightful way to approach writing sex scenes or sexy snippets, because the nature of a letter means that you're focusing on the desire, not the instruction-manual mechanics. It's the desire that makes a scene zing – which is not to say keep it abstract, desire is wonderfully specific, just trust that the form of letter-writing will take it in the right direction. Plus, it's the character writing all this, not you, so through their (eager, ardent) voice, you can find the freedom to say all sorts of things that you might hesistate to write in your own voice.

The Sexy Scenes workshop is running online, on Zoom, on the weekend of 7–8 December, 10am–12:30pm both mornings UK time, and you can join from anywhere in the world. We'll be looking at heaps of excerpts, from the very explicit to the deeply suggestive, and exploring all the words, strategies, and approaches we need to write sex scenes and sexy snippets. Read more about it, including the workshop guidelines, and book here. Just three places left, so do book fast if you'd like to join!

 

Word Count Is Like Paint

Say a novel is 90,000 words and you have three writing evenings a fortnight. Two of those fortnights you’re on holiday, so call it 24 fortnights a year. That gives you 72 writing evenings a year. So to write the novel in a year, you need to write 1250 words every writing evening. Cool. Sounds doable. Let’s g–

HOLD IT RIGHT THERE. Word count is like paint.

This September, Will and I set about repainting the living room. We knew the size of the walls, and they all needed to be covered in paint, so measuring our progress in inches of paint would be reasonable, right? Our 30 square meters worked out as 46,500 inches of paint. We wanted to finish it in two days, so call each day eight hours, so we’d each need to paint 1,453 inches an hour. Cool. Sounds doable. Let’s go.

Will, wielding the roller, had a great painting day! He did loads! Me, going around with the cutting-in brush – I didn’t do nearly so well. Very few inches indeed. I guess I’m just a slower painter.

That was the afternoon, though. Actually, we both had a terrible painting morning. We were vacuuming walls, sugar soaping, dusting behind radiators, moving furniture, laying paint sheets – classic PAB (Painting Avoiding Behaviour) amiright? Not an inch of paint applied. Disaster.

Yeah, yeah, without that, we’d get paint clagging up with invisible spider webs and dust bunnies, paint peeling where there were grease marks, paint spattered on the sofa and floor, yadda yadda yadda… Pfft. Just excuses. Just putting off getting started. Painting nerves, right?

The next day, sadly, when we moved onto painting the skirting boards, dado rail, and cornices, Will’s painting streak evaporated. He actually did even fewer inches than me. While I got on with the business of getting paint on surfaces, you know, actually painting, he procrastinated, faffing about with “caulking” then “letting it dry”, he was “rehanging curtains”, “rehanging paintings”, “taking up paint sheets”, “carrying furniture”, “cleaning the roller”… He probably had some kind of Painter’s Block, right?

Obviously, this is absurd. The prep is essential. Clean-up is essential. Painting with a roller (province of Will’s long reach) is wildly different to cutting in edges and trimmings (province of my steady hand). Will’s expertise with caulking is a lot better than hurriedly bodging paint into the gaps, and of course it needs to dry before it’s painted. Of course the room needs to be put back together. While we want every inch painted, we can’t measure progress by inches painted. That would be unhinged.

It’s exactly the same with writing and word count. We know roughly how many words we ultimately want, for a short story or a novel, but we can’t measure our progress in word count. Any more than we can measure our painting in inches.

Here are just some of the important writing activities that don’t add word count, add it very slowly, or actually subtract it:

• Researching things that’ll change the plot shape (eg a particular law for a court case)
• Researching details that’ll make it convincing (eg when a crescent moon is visible)
• Deep-dive brainstorming stuff you need to make up (eg the food / market for your world)
• Deep-dive planning crucial info (eg currency for a story where money matters)
• Reworking a first-draft scene to be less clichéd / adverby in its second draft
• Reworking a second-draft scene in response to feedback on characterisation, logistical details, etc
• Cutting a scene’s tangents to make it pacier
• Turning chunks of exposition into detail drip-fed through existing scenes
• Editing generic words (eg “tree”) into specific words (eg “mangrove”)
• Creating a plot map or tension map (at the start, in the middle, or to rework the story)
• Refining the opening / ending lines of scenes and chapters to enhance narrative tension
• Revising a character’s dialogue to make it more their voice
• Rereading the whole story to assess it for redrafting
• Creating an overview by chapter
• Identifying plot holes and issues
• Resolving plot holes and issues
• Moving scenes and tweaking them for their new position
• Making a spreadsheet of the timing / calendar across the story
• Cutting paragraphs, scenes, even chapters
• Fine-grain editing of the near-final draft

Unlike painting, there isn’t One Right Order to do these. You don’t have to plan before you start putting down words. A lot of those things happen alongside, between, or after the activities that do increase word count – but note that I don’t say alongside, between, or after the writing. They’re all part of the writing. Just like everything Will and I were doing was part of the painting.

A lot of gung-ho writing advice says “Just get the words down!” I also say, “Write it badly, you can fix it later.” But fixing it later is part of the writing, whether that’s at the end of the scene, the chapter, the story, however you prefer to work. So is planning, if you need to know where the story’s going before you start getting words down. So is reworking, so is research, so is editing, so is all of it.

They’re not “writing nerves”, WAB (Writing Avoiding Behaviour), procrastination, or Writer’s Block: they are writing. And rather than being a sign that you’re “scared of doing the writing”, they make you a lot braver about writing. How much easier is it to rough out first draft when you know you’ll sort out the details later? And how much easier is it to sort out the details when you’re not beating yourself up for “not writing”?

You can have a brilliant, incredibly successful, deeply valuable writing session that doesn’t increase the word count at all. You are not Lorem Ipsum: your purpose is not word count. You are a person: your purpose is a wonderful story.

If you want to read more about breaking free of the wordcount-goal trap, read this tip: Set time not goals and this article: The Joy Is In the Doing.

Writing Skill: Prove It's You

Ahead of the GETTING ROMANTIC online weekend workshop, I've got a brace of free Writing Skills lined up for you, to get your pen moving and inspire you with the story possibilities of a soupçon of romance. The workshop explores writing both new and established love, so last week's Deluded Diary played with new love, and this week we're diving into the riches of established love: Prove It's You.

For this, you need two characters who're already in a romantic relationship, whether that's months, years, or decades. You can pick two characters from your work in progress, if you have one and it has suitable characters. Alternately, you can whisk two characters into existence with this very handy generator.

One of the characters is going to send the other a message – maybe a text from an unknown number, or an email from a new address, or a physical letter, or through a messenger, whatever suits your story or your preferences for setting and time period. But they need to prove it's them who's sending the message. That it's not a scam, a trick, a sinister ploy, etc.

So what can they say in the message, as something only the two of them would know? That someone else couldn't take a chance on making up and getting right? For example...

    “He said it’s safe to come down. And that he’s alright. And he said to tell you…” The voice sounded puzzled. “Sardines and beans?”
    She gulped. He was alive. By the seas, he was alive.

If you're using a work in progress, you can brainstorm ideas from your existing writing. Flip back through it, if you need to refresh your memory: what are the moments that are pivotal and unique to them? What unique details are in those moments? What in-jokes would only they understand? What memories would both treasure? Try to find at least five options. Don't worry if you can't find much, though: this is also an opportunity to invent it, and dramatically enrich their relationship, so if you don't have enough, skip instead to inventing it from scratch.

If you're inventing from scratch, think of your own close relationships – not necessarily romantic; it could be siblings, friends, or any longstanding warm relationship. Think of how many in-jokes and shared memories you have. Food, places, repeated sayings, specific sights; moments that were terrifying, surprising, dreadful, hilarious, dreadful but hilarious in retrospect... And look for the unique details within those. Picking thorns out of someone's head. A blow-up sofa. Saying "It's a little bit nice" and falling about laughing. Gargling a song. That's the kind of wealth you want for your characters.

To keep this a ten-minuter, spend five minutes brainstorming as many possible details as you can. You don't need the backstory here: just throw down phrases, places, sights, names of birds, anything at all. As you scribble, ideas for back stories for some of them might pop into your head. After that, for the next five minutes, pick 2–3 of the details you jotted down, whichever most appeal to you. What's the story behind that detail? What makes that such a treasured and pivotal moment between them?

Have fun, and relish the richness of discovery!

Why this Skill?

The specific details of what only each other would know are the idiosyncracies that make a fictional relationship close and unique, rather than a generic Love Interest. A genuinely close relationship will always create its own rich history, filled with these sorts of details. Making the character prove it's them is a great test for whether the relationship's invented details are standard-issue (rose petals and champagne; a sunrise; a wedding day) or unique to them. And if the story doesn't have enough of that detail yet, this is a lovely way to invent it!

The GETTING ROMANTIC workshop is two half-days on 26-27 October 2024: live, online, and open to bookings from anywhere in the world. Through games, discussion, and quick-fire writing, you'll explore how to create convincing romantic relationships in any genre, which matter to the plot and to the reader. All in fabulous company with a lovely bunch of creative people. Click here for more details and to book.

Writing Skill: Deluded Diary

To launch the online GETTING ROMANTIC workshop, I've got a brace of free Writing Skills lined up for you, to get your pen moving and inspire you with the story possibilities of a soupcon of romance.

The giggling trembling agonising bewilderment of new love is a riotous joy to remember and write, however lurchy and nauseating it may feel at the time when you've no idea how things will play out. It's also a brilliant way to delve deep into characters, because so much of that new love is about discovering the other person, and the fascinated attention to their every whim and habit. The GETTING ROMANTIC workshop explores the story possibilities of both new and established love, so the first of your two new skills is Deluded Diary: a delightful exercise playing with new love, character, and voice.

Your character is freshly, staggeringly in love. Proper, giddy, even-the-trees-look-different love. It's completely sincere, completely heartfelt, nothing to be mocked here, though we might smile and giggle alongside them. They're writing about this in their diary, and about the person they're so dizzyingly in love with. 

All the while, though, they are completely oblivious that the other person fancies them right back, just as fiercely. We can tell, though. It's blindingly gloriously obvious, from the diary, but your character genuinely has no idea. And while we're completely sympathetic to the passionate sincerity of their love, we've got one hand clasped across our mouth to suppress the giggles that they don't realise.

So that's what you're going to do: write their diary entry! Just one entry, if you like; more, if you get enraptured in it. Give yourself ten minutes, and then if you need to get about the rest of your day, you've dipped in enough to get a sense of it; if you want to keep scribbling away, do.

For the character, you can use an existing character if you have one handy. If you'd rather grab a brand-new character, this character-cameo generator is delightful. It gives you enough info to dive straight in, without overwhelming you with detail. And of course, feel free to change any of the details it offers you. 

So choose your character or whisk one up with the generator, set a timer if you want to do it as a time-limited exercise, and start writing their diary!

Why this Skill?

Strong characterisation is essential to writing a compelling romance or romantic subthread, and through the diary, you get a two-for-one on characters. Firstly, the character writing reveals their personality, through what they say and their voice. Secondly, the description of their beloved gives some insight into the other character. Writing a diary entry also allows you as the writer to indulge in all sorts of flights of feeling: it's the character writing, not you, and they're writing for their own eyes only, so there's no need for Polished Restrained Prose – which leaves you free to explore the full range of their feelings. 

The GETTING ROMANTIC workshop is two half-days on 26-27 October 2024: live, online, and open to bookings from anywhere in the world. Through games, discussion, and quick-fire writing, you'll explore how to create convincing romantic relationships in any genre, which matter to the plot and to the reader. All in fabulous company with a lovely bunch of creative people. Click here for more details and to book.

Writing Skill: Register Mismatch

 

To whet your appetite for the Writing in Style course, I've got a brace of delicious quickie Writing Skills for you: ten-minute activities to hone different aspects of your writing. The first was a crafty technique for spookification; with the second, we're playing for laughs instead of fear, with Register Mismatch.

"Register", in language, is how formally or casually we speak, in different situations and to different people – for example, the way we speak at work is different to how we chat with friends to how we address a cat. Playing around with register is a great tool for humour, whether you're writing comedy or just want to include some lighter moments. One of the ways of doing that is to mis-match the register with the situation.

So, first off, spend a couple of minutes brainstorming a) very sophisticated actions, and b) very crass actions. For example, sophisticated actions might be…

• sweeping up to the red carpet at a glamourous award, greeting the crowd and fellow red-carpeters
• meeting the king at a Buckingham Palace garden party
• graciously hosting an elegant meal
• waltzing around a ballroom with the cream of society

And very crass actions – I'm thinking of that New Year's mayhem in Manchester photo for inspiration, to start with. So that might be…

• being absolutely hammered and trying to ask someone on a date while fighting the police off with a bin lid
• dumpster-diving in your dressing gown and slippers for something important you lost, and trying to explain it away to a passerby
• taking the wrong route home, climbing through a hedge, tearing your clothes to distressingly revealing degrees, walking through a bog, losing one shoe to it, and also falling faceforward into it at one point (only some of which I've done making my way across Port Meadow in winter!)

Once you've brainstormed both lists, pick one item from each list, to describe in the most opposite way possible. Start with the "crass" action: describe it in the most elegant, formal, and sophisticated language possible: "Enamoured by his charm, I once more thrust my distressing shield, still fragrant with kitchen discards, at the officer of the law, thus buying me time to beseech..." etc. And then for the elegant action, describe it in the most casual, slangiest, vernacular way possible: "I ponced my way up the long rug, with a proper arse wiggle for the gawkers, grinning at my chums in their penguin get-up..." etc. If you'd like to keep this to a 10-minuter, spend 4 minutes on each.

Then reread, share with your writing buddies if you can, and have a good giggle!

Writing Skill: Dark Beauty

To whet your appetite for the Writing in Style course, I've got a brace of delicious quickie Writing Skills for you: ten-minute activities to hone different aspects of your writing. The first, with the nights drawing in and the time of ghoulies 'n ghosties approaching, is a fab technique for the spookification of absolutely anything: Dark Beauty.

First off, choose a location that you think is just stunningly beautiful. Not creepy at all: gorgeous, soothing, filling your soul with beauty. Somewhere you've been on holiday perhaps or somewhere you've recently visited – a picturesque village, beautiful gardens, the inside of a college if you went to Oxford Open Doors. It can be just one building, if you like: standing at the bus stop one evening, I was blown away by how picture-perfect the Royal Oak on Woodstock Road looked. Anywhere, wild, rural, suburban, or urban, that you think is unequivocally beautiful.

Next, you're going to describe its beauty – but with the most menacing verbs you can find. Let things loom, creep, snake, throttle, seep… (Verb: a doing word. Test it by putting "to" in front of it: to loom, to creep, to snake, etc.) I suggest you spend ten minutes on this, though you could do more if you fancy a longer writing session. And have fun with it!

When you’re done, type it up and schedule an email to yourself for a week’s time – without specifying that you were practising using creepy verbs. When you reread it with fresh eyes, you’ll be surprised at how effective your verb choices are and how much subtler it feels to read than to write.

What you're doing in this prompt is called writing around a semantic field: your semantic field is "danger" and the verbs you're choosing all reflect that. The actual thing you're writing about isn't dangerous – it's beautiful! – but the way you're writing about it creates that sense of danger. We all know how powerful description and sense of place can be for creating a mood in a story. That doesn't limit you to places that echo that mood exactly, though: by playing around with your semantic field like this, you can make any place reflect any mood that you want it to! That gives you a lot more freedom to choose more original and exciting locations, which itself helps the story live on in the reader's mind.

Finding Your Own Style

When you think about your writing style, it’s easy to feel caught between an amorphous blue cloud – a sense of self, unrealised or indefinable, an elusive mystery – and a bristling red pen, scratching things out and dictating schoolish rules.

Like most writers, I started with no idea what My Style was, beyond a vague hope that I must have one (surely?) and an iron conviction that I was a Good Writer. I wrote my entire first novel like that. Looking back, it was mostly transparent prose in literary register, with some of Angela Carter’s influence on immersive description, and some of AS Byatt’s influence to pare that back. It did work out as a decent style, because I had good models, but it wasn’t mine.

In fact, I’d written an entire novel without using one of the most powerful tools available to me: its style. I was like an artist whose composition and perspective are coming along nicely, but who hasn’t yet discovered colour. To take the metaphor further – there’s nothing wrong with using just black and white; monochrome artwork has a fantastic tradition. But to stick to that just because I didn’t know about colour, or know how to use it – that was missing a trick.

Almost 13 novels later, I still can’t tell you what My Style is – not because it’s stayed amorphous and mysterious, but because I have many. It depends what I’m writing. Our writing styles are always plural: our own voices change and grow continuously, just as we do, and shift like a ventriloquist with different genres, stories, and character voices. I have many colour palettes at my disposal now. And I know when to choose monochrome.

So how do you go about finding your style – or indeed, styles? Will working on your style spoil its authenticity, pruning back the very things that make it yours? And won’t a course on style just teach you to write like someone else?

How you do you find your style?

Most of us start by copying other people’s styles, as I did – and that’s fine. It’s a great way to learn. The writers you copy can be a useful indicator of your own taste in style, too: who do you want to write like? Who do you want to influence you? Who do you not want to influence you, even though you like their stories? Having a sense of your own tastes and working with good models is a great start.

From there, you want to strike out further – “breaking the rules”, writing the way you’re “not supposed to”, giddy with a sense of daring, playful and perverse. It feels naughty and wrong, because you’re no longer copying something you’ve seen before. You’re writing your way.

Don’t worry about overdoing it. You can always trim it back in an edit, if you need to, but it might turn out that you don’t need to. You might become even more daring.

It’s about permission to write “improperly”: again, in ways you haven’t seen before. So here’s your permission: write improperly. Go wild, do whatever the hell you want, and see how it turns out.

Will working on my style spoil its authenticity?

It’s tempting to see our first drafts as a pure untouchable thing, the original expression of self, and to think that tampering with a word would sully it. But your self is as much there in the editing process as in the writing, and we’re always developing as writers, even across a single piece. The you that’s finished the short story has more writing experience and more knowledge of that story than the you who was writing it.

Our first drafts, if we’re really writing freely, are often a patchwork of several things. Our most unusual and original phrasing leaps out, because we didn’t censor it: hurrah! The most familiar copy-paste phrases (the clichés, the collocations) flood the page too, because they’re right there, at your fingertips, on the shelf, on tap, easy as pie: that’s fine. When we’re making things up, we often need to grab whatever language is to hand, to capture our ideas.

Some odd things happen, too. The –ing words that felt so lively and energetic in the writing feel limp and flimsy on a reread. Those unstoppable tumultuous sentences that seemed to gallop through the action are now slowing it down. That slew of vivid emotive adjectives now feels syrupy. And so on. Some of our choices are about the process of writing, not the final effect we want.

So, we start tinkering. We consult our own tastes, for what to keep, We consider the experience of reading it, not just of writing it, for the effect we want. We wash away some of the mud, so the bits we want to keep sparkle, and we add some flourishes.

Your thoughtful assessing mind is just as authentically you: this is simply another, equally authentic, part of the process.

Will a course on style just teach me to write like someone else?

Not if I’m running it! I actually held off teaching anything about writing style for the first 8 years of running courses and workshops, because I was concerned about exactly the same thing. I did not want to create some School of Megan! Over those years, I gained a lot more experience in varying my own styles, in noticing and appreciating the different strengths of various styles, and in helping my students refine their own styles through individual feedback. Then I felt ready to teach style, in all its glorious possibilities.

That's why the Writing in Style course isn’t about The Correct Way To Write: it’s about the many various ways and why we might choose each. There are some common principle of good writing across styles, which we’ll also explore, and you’ll look at how to use those for the style you’re working on, for the piece you’re working on – and when to ignore that principle, because you want a particular effect.

Above all, the course is about finding freedom: the freedom to be you on the page and the freedom to experiment with new approaches. You'll explore a wild range of styles in your writing, build your confidence in writing first draft, and develop a repertoire of techniques to refine and enliven every page – all through imaginative adventures in language and storytelling. This is your chance to experiment, to discover all the ways you can experiment, so you can choose the colour palette you want when you’re writing.

Autumn writing food: Roast Butternut

 

 

Roast Butternut with chorizo or halloumi, goats cheese, toasted walnuts, and mint on a bed of greens

As always, perfect writing food is quick (either to make or to double up another day's cooking) so it doesn't steal your writing time, low-carb so your writing time isn't sabotaged by sleepiness, and as much a treat as writing itself. 

Roast butternut is wonderfully easy to prepare in bulk – if anything, it's quite hard not to do in bulk, with the size of some butternuts. And it's easy because you don't have to peel it. That's so important that I'll shout it:

You don't have to peel butternut!

It's actually better if you don't peel it! So if you've been labouring away at an orange rock with a peeler, or you've gone off butternut because it's "mushy", let me set you free. LEAVE THE SKIN ON. It roasts beautifully, with lovely texture, and if you're boiling your butternut for soup, the skin softens enough to blend up smoothly.

In this recipe, we're roasting it in chunks, so we get lovely caramelised textured butternut, with the rich umami and chewiness of either chorizo pieces or halloumi tossed in smoked paprika, offset by the creamy tang of goats cheese, plus fresh mint to add a lively zing, and all served on a bed of fresh green spinach which softens deliciously under the roasted heat without quite collapsing. Amazing treat food for an autumnal day, and the roasted ingredients (butternut, chorizo/halloumi, walnuts) freeze beautifully for future writing sessions. 

This is one where I make lots for that evening's cooking, and portion up the extra for writing days. For this recipe, that means the full quantity of butternut, chorizo/halloumi, and walnut, which is the part I'll freeze. And then just enough goats cheese, mint, and baby spinach for what we'll eat that night, with any extra saved for that week's writing day(s) and work-lunches for my beloved. For future writing days where I want this dish, I'll get more goats cheese, mint, and baby spinach. And any of those I don't use will make a great goats' cheese and spinach frittata.

I've tinkered with this recipe for years, varying timings and toppings, and bloody love it. I've got both omnivore and vegetarian versions for it, colour-coded below. I don't have a vegan version; I tried to work one out and realised anyone who's actually vegan will be more skilled than I am at what to use in place of the chewy protein (chorizo / halloumi) and the creamy tang (in this version, goats cheese). If you come up with a vegan variation, please let me know! But whichever version, the recipe starts with this:

You don't have to peel butternut!

So before the recipe, here's how to disassemble a butternut without peeling it or risking limbs:

• Wash the butternut well, as you'll be eating the skin.
  
• Lay it flat on the board and cut it in half widthways just above the bulge. The top end has no seeds. (Make sure to hold your non-cutting hand above the knife, pressing on top of the knife.)
  
• Top end: Cut the stalk off the top. Cut the rest in circles about an inch wide. Lay the circles flat and cut each one into 6 segments, the way you'd divide a pizza, so they each have skin attached.
  
• Bottom end: Stand the bottom end up and cut it in half vertically. Scrape out the seeds with a spoon. Lay each half face down on the chopping board and cut it into half-circles about an inch wide. Lay each half-circle flat and cut each one into 4 even pieces, again each with skin. The final round end will have a hard stem bit in the middle that you need to cut out.
  

Voila! Stress-free butternut chunks. 

Scroll on for the recipe or download it as a PDF here. 

To use the PDF as a scrollable on your phone, download Adobe Acrobat Reader free from Google Play or the Apple Store. When you open your PDF in the Adobe Acrobat Reader app, tap the Liquid Mode icon at the top for easy scrolling. The method repeats the quantities so you don't have to scroll back and forth.

Roast Butternut

Serving and times

• Prep: 10–20 mins
• Cooking: 1h10
• Serves: 4–6

Ingredients

• 1 very large / 2 small butternut (2kg +) chopped into 1-inch / 1.5 inch at widest chunks, skin on
• 2 teaspoons chilli flakes (or 1 tsp if you don’t want it too hot)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 6–9 Tablespoons olive oil
• 100g walnuts
• Small handful mint (approx 5g), finely chopped
• 125g goats cheese (more if you’re feeling generous)
• 260g approx baby spinach (or a mix of baby spinach and peppery greens eg watercress, rocket, etc)

Plus: omnivore version

• 1 ring chorizo (225g), sliced into ½ cm rings

OR

Vegetarian version

• 225g halloumi, sliced in 5mm slices, tossed with 1 teaspoon smoked paprika

Method

• Set the oven to 180 C fan.
• Chop the butternut with skin on and toss it in the 6–9 Tablespoons olive oil, 1-2 teaspoons chilli flakes, and 1 teaspoon salt.
• Spread the butternut in a large roasting tray so the pieces aren’t on top of each other
• Put in the heated oven and set a timer for 25 mins.

OMNIVORE VERSION:

• After 25 mins, toss the butternut and set a timer for another 25 mins.
• Meanwhile, chop the 225g chorizo.
• When the butternut’s had 50 mins total, scatter the chorizo on top and set a timer for 15 mins.

VEGETARIAN VERSION:

• After 25 mins, toss the butternut and set a timer for another 30 mins.
• Meanwhile, slice the 225g halloumi and toss it in 1 teaspoon smoked paprika.
• When the butternut’s had 55 mins total, scatter the halloumi on top and set a timer for 10 mins.

BOTH VERSIONS CONTINUE HERE:

• Meanwhile, chop the small handful mint and get the goats’ cheese ready to serve. Divide the greens evenly between the plates.
• When the timer goes, scatter the walnuts on top of the roasting butternut and chorizo / halloumi. The walnuts will take 3–5 mins depending on your oven – keep a watchful eye on them so they don’t burn!
• Dish the roasted butternut, chorizo/ halloumi, and walnuts onto the plates, on top of the greens. Divide the goats cheese between them, in scattered bits. Sprinkle over the mint and serve.

To freeze:

Freeze just the roasted part (butternut, chorizo/halloumi, and walnuts) in portions. Take note how much you actually eat: it often looks too small, without the other ingredients. To reheat it, defrost fully, roast for 10 mins at 180, then serve with greens, goats cheese, and mint.

Enjoy, happy writing, and spread the word: you don't need to peel butternut!

 

Coming Next:

WRITING IN STYLE
COURSE

Live online OR in person
OCTOBER–NOVEMBER 2024

Explore a wild range of styles in your writing with new adventures.

BOOK BY 1 OCTOBER

AUTUMN AND WINTER WORKSHOPS

Online weekend workshops in October & December

Choose which workshops run, from 25 possible topics.

VOTE BY 29 SEPTEMBER

Should I Just Give Up Writing My Novel?

It’s a fair question. Writing a novel takes a lot of time and dedication. Some people will rush in to say “Nooo! Never give up!” But if you’re asking, it deserves consideration. Maybe that specific novel is something you’re ready to ditch; maybe it’s become an albatross around your neck. You don’t have to carry on if you don’t want to. It doesn’t make you a quitter.

Or maybe you’re having a standard creative crisis point, the ones every writer and creative gets, but you don’t know about those yet. And if you ditch this one, the next project will reach the same crisis points – precisely because they are standard.

It’s not a question I can answer for you. But I can pose the questions which will help you decide and I can tour you through the standard crisis points you might be having.

The Characters that Let Your Stories Fly

When I started writing more keenly, I thought what I needed most was to plot better. I worked on that, hard, and my stories grew wings… but somehow they didn’t take flight. They felt like planes circling the airport, even with their immaculate flight plans.

What I actually needed to learn took me much longer, because I didn’t realise I needed that: to write characters unlike myself. Not just the wrong ‘uns, all of them. Especially the main characters.

Again and again, in my teaching, I’ve seen other writers hobbled by the same thing. It’s not a glaring lack, like plot, but it stops stories flying. And you don’t know why – because our selves are a blind spot to us. How we are, that’s just normal, right? But other people are different. And until all our characters can be too, including our main characters, we’re clipping our stories’ wings.

It is a blind spot, because our selves are our normal. So before we launch into why it's important, here are two quick tests of whether you’re stuck in characters like you:

• The Three-Traits Test: Can you (and your writing group / buddy if you have one) quickly and easily write three separate personality traits for them? If you can’t, they’re not fully characterised, and likely a diluted version of you.
• The Reaction Test: When your character reacts to something big (a heartbreak, discovery, thrill, frustration), can you say why they specifically react like that? Or is their reaction just “normal” to you? Because them being just normal might be them being just you.

If, in your writing so far, your characters are mostly you, especially the main characters, you have a wealth of discovery and joy ahead of you. Because this is what characters unlike you – again, especially the main characters – will give you.

You get more vivid characters

We don’t see ourselves as clearly as we see other people. Like fish not noticing water, we live inside our own traits without realising how much is specific to us, rather than standard-issue human, so we don’t describe those characters well. Without that clarity, our characters-like-us stay vague, undifferentiated. Worse still, to make the character “not us”, we often strip away what is unique and interesting, leaving the character not only blurry but bland. When your character’s not you, they become crisply drawn with distinct personality.

You vary your characters across stories

Even if your stories are wildly different, having much the same person at the centre of each gives them a sameyness. That gets boring for the readership you want to grow and boring for you as a writer. Different central characters bring fresh sparkle and variety to both your stories and the writing process.

You vary your cast within stories

The disjuncture between different types of people is a rich narrative seam. It increases your story’s depth, intensifies the point of view, and offers wonderful narrative tension as your disparate characters connect and clash. For that to work, all your characters need to be different, not just the “villains” of the piece. That also means learning to see the value in traits very different from your own.

You get wider scope for stories

As your characters open up in variety, so too do your storytelling possibilities. There are stories I’ll never be able to tell about a Meganesque character, even if I dress her up as an astronaut, a religious peasant, or a cursed child in a desert land. As soon as it’s not me, though, I can write about a Machiavellian commitment to social change, a status-driven ambition, a rigid adherence to minutiae, or a stone-cold indifference to others’ opinions, and how those traits play out to the good. When your characters aren’t you, your stories open up in exciting new ways.

You get more consistent characters

Once a character isn’t you, they start shaping their story themselves, because they have a distinct personality, which you can identify, and they act according to it. When your characters are still “basically you” and you’re trying to write a specific story, the events and character are often at odds. A Meganesque character doesn’t make sense as an astronaut: yes, she has the maths skills; sure, I can give her the fitness levels; but an astronaut needs the easy equanimity and (to me) near-bland resilience she simply doesn’t have. That clash will show in the writing. When your characters aren’t you, they stay in character – their character, not yours.

It’s easier to write about autobiographical events

The big things that have happened to you, which you want to approach in fiction or auto-fiction: surely, given they happened to you, perhaps even shaped you, this is where the character should be most like you? Counterintuitively, no. To make fiction about that, or even the thinly veiled memoir that is auto-fiction, you need artistic distance. That’s hard to get about something you feel so vulnerable, pained, or raging about. Putting clear blue water between you and the character – making them distinctly not you, or unlike you, in a few significant ways – helps hugely. It lets you write about it in a way that does draw on your experience, with all the insight that gives, and also with the objectivity that makes it the stuff of story.

You get to step through the magic doorway, regardless

There are times when writing seems impossible: when you’re so stressed it feels like you can’t breathe; when you’re crying so hard you can’t see the words. If you can step through the magic doorway into your story’s world, it’s transformative. You enter a flow state and your breathing returns to normal. Your tears dry and you rediscover a part of your life that doesn’t hurt. I’ve done both, but it’s only ever been possible when my characters weren’t basically versions of me. Having characters that aren’t you lets you step into your story world, whatever’s happening with you.

*

All your characters will always, in some way, be you: after all, you’re writing them. But instead of having mini-yous or bonsaied-yous enact every story, you get to act out being all those different people. Your stories’ freedom becomes your freedom.

And you do have the skills to do it. You live in a world brimming with people who’re very different to you. You socialise with them, work with them, and make a dozen accurate predications a day on how they’ll behave, without even noticing. That’s part of being human. That’s the same skill you can bring to your writing, to create characters unlike you and set your stories free.

If you want a rocket-booster to get your stories airborne, the Characters Unlike You workshop is on 17 August 2024, 10am–4pm, in Oxford. You’ll explore 8 personality analyses (encompassing types, spectrums, and shifts) to heighten your awareness of your own traits and create characters unlike that. Across the workshop, you’ll also try out 7 different tools to develop those characters. You’ll leave with 3 new characters, totally different from you, whose strengths you admire, and an ongoing toolbox for creating characters who make new stories fly. See all the details and book your place here: bookings close Thurs 15 August 2024.