Terrible Trouble

Hubble Bubble Toil and Trouble

I suppose we love to see our hero/heroines in terrible trouble so we can admire how they ultimately get out of terrible trouble. It’s what all good fiction is about, whether it be romance, horror, mystery or whatever.

The problem presents itself early on and usually the concerns and worries pile on as the story progresses.  But the thing that fascinates all readers is asking the questions of ‘how are they going to get through this or cope with that?’ This is where story gets to us because we put ourselves in their places and worry if we would do the same thing.  We root for them to succeed in their endeavours because if they can cope then so would we.  If it’s a good story, we identify with the character and we want them to succeed against all the odds. It confirms something to us about human nature and the will to survive, I think.  And when at the end they do rise up and overcome their terrible trouble we cheer for them.

As writers it is our job to create that terrible trouble and then throughout the middle of the story make the terrible trouble even more terrible until finally the hero has to step up to the mark in some way, deal with the terrible trouble and be heroic to save the day! Hooray!

 

So, do you find it easy to pile on the woe for your charcters?

IWSG - Target Practise

Talk about insecure - thats me! And it's why I joined Insecure Writers Support Group
But certain things do help me. I have certain rituals but then I guess, most of us do....One of the things I slavishly follow is word counts. I can no more give them up than I can eat just one small square of chocolate! For me it is ritualistic and necessary.
I set a target for my writing week and then for each individual day, depending on what else may be required of me in terms of the rest of my life, and then I go for it! You’d think that would be great, eh? Not a bit of it. You see for me it’s all or nothing… If something gets in the way and I have less time, I will abandon the day. It’s a case of ‘have a chance of getting there or not bother at all’! Can’t be healthy can it? Once I start however it would have to be a pretty serious emergency for me to forgo my target  and settle for less.
In my defence, I am generally realistic with what I can achieve – I learnt a long time ago that not being realistic was a sure fire recipe for disaster and next to know words done at all!! My method does get me there though so I have learnt to trust my instincts and respect my need for targets.
I think it may be the ‘tick off’ bit of my psyche that controls this. I love’ to do’ lists and can’t help but experience a sense of achievement when I tick something off. The word count sheet is similar and I feel satisfied when I can tick off that I made my target. Mo matter that the writing might be total garbage!! As someone said, elsewhere, you can’t revise or edit something you’ve not actually put down on paper. Now that’s another story…

Happy writing every one!

What rituals do you insist upon?

Seeing is Believing

In supernatural thrillers and horror stories one of the parapsychologies will usually figure somewhere along the way.  Clairvoyance is one of these. The dictionary says clairvoyance is ‘the ability to perceive things that are usually beyond the range of normal human senses’.  But I think many people associate it with the power to ‘see’ into the future.  (My current WIP features this a little so I must confess I am rather fond of it!)

Second sight or ESP is one of these ethereal subjects and it can be a particularly helpful plot device; remembering, of course, that we are talking about fiction and a willingness on the part of a reader to suspend disbelief.

The idea of being able to ‘see’ (or sense) something that is not within the bounds of normal is not a new one. It has been used from the early beginnings of the written word and tales from the classics and mythology are steeped in them.

The main areas of second sight seem to be Remote Viewing, where a person can ‘see’ something that is happening a long way away, Precognition, where a person can ‘see’ and foretell something that is about to happen, and Visions where a person simply ‘sees’ something (it may only be a flash image) but has no idea if it’s from the future, past or present.

Telepathy, premonition and telekinesis are also closely related to second sight.

Of course the scientific community does not accept any of this stuff as it requires proof that is just not available. The various researchers into the area are of the view that most of it is fraud, self-delusion and guesswork. But that doesn’t stop the believers and it certainly doesn’t stop the notion of second sight being fertile grounds for the imagination in fiction writing.

One does not have to believe these things to enjoy a good story that uses any these ideas. If you asked the population in general how many believed in the paranormal you would get a much lower number than those who read the fiction books and watch the films. This is what suspension of disbelief is all about; in that, just for the period that you are immersed in a good story, you are willing to step into a universe where all things are possible. This is the nub of all good plots and fiction in general. How else would we enjoy Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings?

The other interesting thing for me is that if you have one character who believes in the paranormal and one that doesn’t then that sets the story up for even more conflict and tension, quite naturally without having to work at it.

What do you think? If you make a world ‘real’ enough for the reader, can you suspend disbelief?

How to Thrill to a Kill

“Kill a man and you are an assassin, kill millions of men and you are a conqueror, kill everyone and you are a God.” Jean Rostand.

I love that quote but life is not sacred in the telling of a good thriller story!

How many ways can you kill a person? How long is a piece of string, you ask.

One of the most intriguing ways I came across was using an ice stalactite! Believable or not – it was written into a story. Of course as far as working out what the murder weapon was, the police had a hard time for there was simply a pool of water on the floor by the time the body was discovered.

It’s fair enough food for thought though. Thriller writers have to come up with ever more ingenious ways to commit their make believe murders as we’ve all heard it all before.

In a seminar once, we were asked to look around the room and find ways to kill a person. It was just a bit of fun! But it was unsettling and yes, funny, what the imagination of 15 people came up with. Apart from the obvious ones like pushing guy through an upstairs window (we were on the 6^th floor at the time), strangling and bashing someone’s head against the floor, there were some inventive scenarios. One chap suggested grinding up the board rubber and shoving it down someone’s throat. Another wanted to crush a person’s chest by piling all the furniture (which was very heavy) on top of him, whilst someone else suggested using the light fitting to electrocute!

Perhaps those are a bit far-fetched but you get the picture…

So have you any interesting ways a villain could commit a murder?

From Backyard to Graveyard

A Grave Matter...

The subject of graveyards or cemeteries is something that fascinates me. As a writer of supernatural thriller novels the sombre oppressive atmosphere of a graveyard, imbued with such reverence and awe as befits the dead, is a great place to start. Its melancholy sense of past misery seems to hang in the air like some unholy miasma as legions of the living have cried rivers of tears in their intense grief and loneliness. What a sad place for the living…

Death is inevitable for all of us and in a graveyard we are reminded of the frailty of human existence like nowhere else. The fascination for me, when I visit graveyards, is to look at the oldest graves and inscriptions and wonder what happened to the person… Sometimes great ideas for stories spring forward from this as I try to imagine what life might have been like for the said dead person.

But apart from that there is the great unknowing… What does happen when we finally confront our very existence? Scary stuff, indeed, for most of us… Unless you have great faith in your own brand of religion/belief… Most of us do not want to be reminded that we are going to pass into the great unknown someday. Perhaps that is really the scary part about graveyards and cemeteries.

But spirits, ghosts and things that go thump in the night are also great things to think about in graveyards…



So let your imagination fly!! If you dare…

Do graveyards/cemetaries scare you or are they just places of great sadness?

How to make the Supernatural into Natural Thrillers

Making the Supernatural seem Natural?

Turning the supernatural into the super-believable? That, as I see it, is the challenge to all paranormal thriller writers. Making supernatural elements fit into a thriller story so seamlessly that the reader accepts them without question, is not easy.

After all the vast majority of readers who enjoy this kind of fiction are perfectly reasonable sane individuals who do not necessarily believe in ghosts, spirits and things that go ‘whooo’ in the night. But just like sci-fi readers, they want to wonder and ponder the unanswerable questions. Just for the time it takes to engage with the story readers will willingly believe if we give them a good reason to.

That’s not to say that once the book is read the reader will believe any of it but just for that book the reader suspends disbelief. This, of course must happen with all stories but it is so much more difficult when dealing with the paranormal.

Of course, making the world the characters inhabit detailed and colourful and having the characters themselves rich in human traits and emotions (even if they are spirits or whatever) helps. If the people in the story believe in the other-worldly elements and do so right from the beginning as a matter of course, then the reader will too. Events follow in a normal and accepted way and lo! - the supernatural becomes the natural for that story.

For me the furthest I will go into using the supernatural is to introduce elements of ‘what if’ into a story. What if someone’s soul/spirit does not die with them but carries on in someone else’s body? What if a spirit wilfully inhabits someone else’s body and makes them do things they would never normally do? What if someone has the power to read certain people’s minds? What if this power is hereditary and a child is unaware they have it? What if someone believes that if they preserve a person’s body after death they will gain power over life and death and eventually become immortal themselves? (See The Afterlife of Darkmares ). What if a person really does have a double and the double/doppelganger bends the person’s will to make them murder their own child?

I know, I know. All of these have been done before but not by me and my imagination. I had fun with these stories and will continue to use similar scenarios in my writing. But apart from the paranormal additions my plots have conflict, suspense and follow normal storytelling rules and my imagination, with the help of my muse, adds width, depth and a sprinkling of magic – at least I hope it does…

Happy Writing!

Do you read paranormal thrillers?

 

How to make a thriller really matter - raising the stakes!

All the steps in creating a plausible plot in thriller writing, I believe,  must come from the premise of an antagonist (villain) wanting one thing and a protagonist (hero) wanting the direct opposite. This creates the basic conflict that will drive the story to its final climactic end. Layered in and around this conflict may be more subplots and story lines that enrich the central story. In other words the story is multi-layered and thick with intrigue and suspense. It is this potent mixture of forces set one against the other that is the engine behind any thriller story.

The stakes in a thriller must also be very high so menace and threat are around every corner. Of course, the greatest threat (and the one many successful stories have thrived on) is world domination or a catastrophic event that threatens the entire world. For example ‘War of the Worlds’, ‘Alien’ and various James Bond’s epics. Plotting a novel like this may start fairly worryingly but then the plot should rise to epic proportions and stakes go higher and higher as more danger is piled on and more people realise the gravity of the situation and a race against time.

But it doesn’t always have to be about threats to the entire world - it may simply be threats to a main character’s nearest and dearest! And, in my opinion, the best way to raise the stakes is for the reader to strongly identify with the characters in peril and thereby worry for their safety. So the plot cannot be all about action and suspense - character development and engendering empathy is integral to the plot too. Put together it should make for one heck of a thriller…

Worry ought to be a key element in a thriller, do you agree?

Vile Villains with Redeemable Flaws!

To say a villain in a thriller story is flawed is like saying coal is black!

Of course a villain is flawed, I hear you say, otherwise he would make a pretty poor antagonist. A “good” villain has a personality that most of us would not aspire to as he may be capable of the most dastardly (I just love that word!) acts. I am, however, talking about a villain who may be flawed because he/she has some decent human traits that show us he isn’t totally bad. The only villain who could be said to be totally bad is the devil himself, I guess. Most others started out as innocent babies and children but maybe something happened to make them bad. Or maybe not – maybe they simply have more of the undesirable human traits in their genetic make-up. Nasty traits do exist to some extent in all of us, but hopefully most people have control of those urges and anyway have more humanity and caring for fellow humans. 

How villainous a character is depends mostly on the type of story you are writing. If the villain is a love rival or a corporate executive he may not be so nasty in all areas of his life… But on the other hand, if he/she is a horror/supernatural villain, he may have no redeeming features at all. For example a bad character may be wicked and malicious to people but may love animals! In this way he is a flawed character and not true to the caricature of through and through evil which we may assume him to be. 

 Always, when using villains, a suitable adversary/hero is necessary and it is the juxtaposition of their characters that allow the most conflict and tension in a story.  The hero who has faults is a much more interesting character than the perfect boring type of individual. I think we can relate better to him because he is flawed – as we all are too. Similarly, we all know people who we consider to be horrible individuals but we know (maybe deep down) they will have some redeeming characteristics too.  

For me, giving my villains one redeeming human trait, amongst all the vicious, nasty ones, makes them much more interesting ( and indeed fun) and if their malevolent ways came about because of something that happened to them – well, it just makes them all the more intriguing. Not nice and not worth rooting for but maybe a little more human. And more importantly more believable…

Do you give your villains a small touch of the nice-ies?

 

Viva La Blog!

Viva La Blog!

 

I have been blogging for quite a while now and I absolutely love doing it – even though I am sometimes pushed for time. It’s a busy busy world, I fear…

I have relished reading many folks’ blogs (although actually wished I hadn’t visited with just a few) and I love the chit chat with commenting and reciprocating. I feel as if I have made many new friends, whom I will probably never meet, but I feel I know them reasonably well anyway. Their lives, I have learnt are just as full on as my own and I realise I am not the only one who sometimes struggles to keep all the balls in the air. Linking to other people’s blogs and joining in blog hops, tours etc. is also great fun.

One of the other great things about blogging, I have found, is that it sharpens my writing up and gets me to practise being brief and concise without losing any of the essence of what I am trying to say.  In fact, I would say I am probably a better writer because of blogging. I am constantly stimulated and enriched by reading other blogs – I never realised there were so many interesting and innovative bloggers out there. .. Fine fodder for inspiration and good story ideas!!

 I used to worry about the time it takes up but nowadays I am much more chilled out about it as I realise it is actually helping me become a better writer.  It is teaching me something else too – perseverance! When I started I had no followers or readers and rarely did anyone say anything useful to me. Now I get so much from my comments and loads of advice and tips about writing generally, that I sometimes feel a little swamped. But it all comes directly from blogs. Viva La Blog!!!

BUT I do have one or two small gripes… (Please bear with me as I’m sure other people might agree with me.)

Why do people use the captcha? I know it is supposedly more secure but it makes me want to scream.  I have sometimes spent more of my precious time trying to get it right than I did reading and writing a comment! I refuse to do it anymore. If I cannot get it right the first time now I am inclined to leave it! Which is a shame when I have read a post and have something to say… It also makes me wonder if those bloggers really want comments when they are making their readers jump through hoops.  The reader should always come first in our thoughts and plans – I say!

The second gripe is about the length of some blog posts! I do not have time to scroll and read through great long excerpts or ‘all around the garden’ opinions. Please, please be brief-ish! I for one will be much more likely to return and read future posts.

There! Gripe done! I feel so much better…

 Do you have blogging gripes? or am I on my own?

Airy Scary..

Atmosphere

Atmosphere, in my opinion, is one of the most difficult things to grasp in writing thriller fiction. In my own preferred genre it is perhaps a little more clear-cut as all speculative-type fiction should be suffused with a sense of the unnatural or unknown. A kind of fearful anticipation of what could happen or what might happen - that is beyond our normal understanding.

But I think atmosphere is important in so many other ways. It creates certain expectations in a reader that must then be lived up to.

Atmosphere is created by various things. Settings help to a large extent and so do characters themselves but also the language used can also create atmosphere. But the atmosphere must fit with the story and so it is something I always give a great deal of thought to before I even begin writing.

I suppose the easiest atmosphere to imagine is a scary one such as the type used in ghost stories. The clichéd haunted house that creaks and moans or the fog- shrouded moor that hides dark secrets. The hooting of owls and wild life at night - or the abnormal absence of the same!

Other types of genre fiction have their own clichés, of course. I do believe atmosphere is closely related to the emotion you are trying to elicit in your reader. If you wish your reader to feel anger than an unpleasant atmosphere (or setting) will help. If you are looking for a tender emotion then a romantic setting may help. However it is not just about setting. A harsh factory floor can be made atmospheric and romantic with the right words and actions.

The trick (and the challenge) is to create your own sense of atmosphere to embed in your story, without it being clichéd. More difficult than it seems, I feel. For atmosphere is ethereal and like beauty, is in the eyes of the beholder ( apologies for the cliché).
Do you find it easy to develop a sense of atmosphere that fits with the story/genre?



Inspirational Eureka Moments

My dictionary tells me’ inspiration’ can be ‘a good idea, creative influence or stimulus’. In terms of writing, that definitely fits the bill! But my idea of inspiration is not a flash of insight or a good idea but moments when my dear friend, Mary Muse is sitting on my shoulder.

My friend Mary calls at some odd times and sometimes when I desperately need her, she doesn’t visit at all! But all is not lost, as almost always when I need inspiration, Mary comes calling eventually.

I believe inspiration is actually the end product of lots of subconscious thinking. And although inspiration can suddenly arrive – almost a ‘eureka moment’ – I often realise belatedly, that my brain was working on the problem all the time – albeit in the background. It is moments like these that make me persevere when I have a problem with my plot or the mechanics of writing seem to be going nowhere. It is what makes me come alive and sparkle with enthusiasm at some new idea that has abruptly come to me. It restores my faith that I knew what I was doing all the time (even when, in my heart of hearts, I knew that was not the case).

A frequent quote I have come across a few times in the blogosphere is “all who wander are not lost” and whilst I cannot recall where this comes from, I do know it is certainly true of my own writing. Sometimes I do seem to wander all over the place and even get totally off course with my story but there is always a way to salvage things and that is when my muse is most often helpful as it may even suggest a new direction or a new story line which makes the tale much better and enables me to feel inspired and filled with renewed passion for my writing.

It was just such an inspirational moment when it occurred to me to put two ideas I had been considering for a story, together and tie a known historical event - the plague in 1665 - in to a contemporary story of mother love and murder. The result was  The Afterlife of Darkmares  - my latest offering...

Does your muse visit you at crucial times? Does inspiration come easily to you?

Creepy Crawly Jiggery Pokery

The Unfashionable Flavour of the Occult

Nowadays Occultism ( the study of the supernatural)  is a subject that is rarely seriously discussed. The horror genre has moved on - in the sense that much of the horror story telling today is set in everyday life - and the tales tend to express the fear of the unknown in ways that many of us can relate to.

The word Occult is described in the dictionary as ‘secret, mysterious and supernatural’.  A meaning that signifies to many the ‘practise of the Black Arts’. That, in itself, is a term that has fallen out of fashion nowadays.

Many believe in the power of good and evil and the eternal struggle between these two extremes of our human condition but the Devil himself and the pseudo-science of demonology have long since fallen by the wayside for most people. We no longer live in the superstitious dark ages of magic, mayhem and witchcraft.

However that does not mean that many of the paranormal aspects of the occult have disappeared. Indeed, they are alive and well in many good stories today.  For example vampires, monsters and other worldly beings are in full flavour at the minute. 

For me the use of ordinary people - rather than devilish, vampiric, evil monster/villains -  gives a much greater feel of horror. After all it could be me or you trapped in a modern horror story… (A La Mr King).

But the Occult is still very useful in a modern horror story, as there are lots of subtopics within it. The influences of things like astrology, ESP,  numerology, clairvoyance, telepathy, telemetry, premonitions, doppelgangers and hypnotism – to name but a few – are still with us and can be used to good effect in a good thriller/supernatural story. Everyone knows what these things mean even if they don’t believe in them.  But…. Haha, you say… You just never know…

That, I believe, is their power. As Shakespeare said in Hamlet:

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

Do you enjoy a story with some supernatural-type elements in it?

 

A Curious Thing Happened...

One of the things I learned early on in my novel writing was that you must have fully formed multi-dimensional characters. I wondered what this actually meant and after reading around and talking to other writers I realised that the characters (at least the main ones) must come to the page with an agenda, motivation, likes, dislikes and tons of personality.

Of course, you cannot bore readers to death with masses of personal history, but what you can do is compile a character sheet with all the personal traits you want the character to have – as recommended by many a ‘how to write’ author… But wait… That still didn’t feel quite right to me. How can a simple list of likes, dislikes make a person? The answer is they don’t!

But I made my lists anyway and then a curious thing happened… I found myself wondering ‘why’ this character would like this and ‘why’ did they hate that?  I started writing more (on my character sheet) about the character’s childhood, upbringing, status in life and what brought them to this point in their existence. Suddenly I had a story character with formidable motivation who felt real – great! But it did not exactly fit the plot I had in mind. What to do? I changed the plot.

I did this with other characters too – especially the antagonist – trying to go against the main traits I had in my protagonist. Voila – I had inbuilt conflict. When I finished doing all the character sheets I realised I had stacks of back story which I could draw on at any point in my story without going into information and descriptive overload.

I have to say this method of drawing up extensive back story really worked for me and I think my stories benefitted enormously from my knowing what motivated the characters.  Most of this work never saw the light of day, of course, but it helped me to have it in my mind that a certain person would react/behave in a certain way because they were pre-programmed by fate, upbringing and circumstance. I like to think my characters ‘came to life on the page’ – tried and trusted cliché I know…  Sorry.

So now, when I am trying to put a story together, I start with the germ of an idea and then go onto character pretty quickly so I can write their history and what makes them the person/character that they are.  It generally results in a well-rounded, believable plot too. At least that’s what I like to think…

So, do you write character sheets that tie in with the back story?

Learn From the Best

Lessons from the Masters

Every now and then I am reminded why I love reading so much and why I still aspire to being a better writer than I am!

One of my all time favourite horror writers is Stephen King and I am sure there is not a single person who loves books who has not at least heard of him.  Dennis Wheatly before him and then Mr. King were the two authors (in my misspent youth) responsible for my fascination with tales of the supernatural and paranormal. Later I also became a huge fan of many of Dean Koontz’s books too. Ah, but that was when I was younger and more impressionable…

No, wait, I am still impressionable if the right kind of story comes along!

The reason I am reminiscing about my early sojourns with Stephen King and horror writing is that I recently read his latest offering. And what a delight it is too. I have to admit that one or two of his books over the last few years have been rather too rambling for me and did wonder if this would be the same. But, no – this is King at his best! The main thing for me is the absolute attention to detail and the quirky bits of imagery that transport the reader back to an age that has long since gone. I was around in the late fifties and sixties but only as a child so the detail has me totally hooked.  For those not familiar with this book it is all about time travel and changing the course of history. Fascinating stuff, anyway, but Mr King handles it so well… But then he would – he has many years of successful writing under his belt and the largest number of best sellers so he should know what he is talking about.

I am just about to decamp to one of Mr Koontz' books too - not visited his stories for some time. So I will see how or if he has changed. One thing I do know, he is still one of the biggest sellers of the genre so still has much to say to someone like me...

I only wish I could write the same!!

Oh well, onwards and upwards!

Who do you aspire to as a writer?

In The Dark of the Night...

“With light is coupled warmth; with darkness cold”

I guess there is something so old and primordial about using night-time or darkness to enhance the fear factor in thrillers. It strikes me that the dark can be a source of so many fears that in and of itself it could be something to explore in depth in a novel.

An old favourite of mine, Dennis Wheatly,   once wrote that existence is dominated by two powers – light and darkness. When life is devoid of light all progress is halted and if darkness continues unchecked death and decay will follow. So light is therefore associated with powers of good and darkness with evil.

Everyone is familiar with the notion that everyday familiar non-threatening things in the day time can take on a strong aura of menace at night. I know this can be attributed to something as simple as not being able to see well but God (or whatever you believe created us!) has equipped us with a certain amount of night vision. But there again, maybe it’s the fact that one can see in the dark to a certain extent (especially in good moonlight) but not with full acuity. This allows the imagination permission to come into play to fill in the bits our senses are not able to pick up. And no matter how hard you try to neutralise imagination it will have its day!

Many children are fearful of the dark as night-time/sleep-time is a time when they have to cope on their own, without the reassurance of others around them. No small wonder then, that they imagine bogeymen in the wardrobe and things crawling under the bed! 

So it is a well-used vehicle in many horror/thriller stories where one wants to create an unsettling fearful atmosphere or simply to enhance the tension and fudge what’s real and what is not. There is always a feeling of relief for the reader when night turns to day and the plot can roll merrily along without the uncertainty of the dark interfering.

Dastardly deeds are also often committed under cover of darkness and it is easy to see how darkness is associated with evil and how day (light) with goodness. All extremely subjective, by the way, but that is how it is generally perceived.

I feel the dark is a very useful tool to use in supernatural, thriller stories and I use it frequently. In fact my latest book has ‘dark’ in its title and I notice that many more thriller/horror stories use the word in their titles too. It signals a certain kind of story to a read, does it not?

What do you think? Do thriller stories set in darkness conjure up feelings of fear and tension in you?

The Click is KIng! Long Live the King!

The click is mightier than the pen - they say...

I once put pen to paper (literally) and wrote.

Now I click, tap and navigate. What a huge change to the way we all communicate. I can’t even remember when I last received a hand written letter.   I am not a bright, young thing (although I’d like to think I’m still reasonably bright!) but I know many others of a similar age group who are also very au fait with computers and indeed to some degree, social networking.

For me the keypad is quicker than the pen when it comes to getting tumbling thoughts and ideas down on paper. Free writing engages the creative right side of the brain and not the analytical, logical left brain. I believe getting something, anything, down on a blank sheet is the best way to avoid writers block and so I often use free writing to help me think and get going on a project.

Using the keypad rather than the pen gives me a quicker easier way to use this stream of consciousness writing and make some sense of it. In longer pieces (and especially at the beginning of a novel when my thoughts may be a little muddled anyway) it’s far easier for me to rush on knowing I can come back and sort it later. Editing with pen and paper just leaves me with a confused mess of crossings out and no sense of what I am really trying to say.  Having said that, I have friends who continue to write in longhand – at least initially. They still cherish the feel of pen on paper and love to fill the blank white pages of a notebook.

Just occasionally I write something longhand – maybe a rough draft of an article or something short. However I do find the writing tends to end up almost note-like with no proper sentences. I guess that’s because my hand cannot keep up with my brain! No, wait… That can’t be right! My brain is definitely a slowcoach… (Thinks….)  Or maybe not…

Long live writers of all kinds!

So do you still write longhand occasionally or are you a total keyboard convert?

A Small Rant - Is This Etiquette?

I’m never quite sure what to do with reviews - apart from read them where they are posted! Do I put them on my blog/twitter/facebook or not?

 Etiquette (social media-style) says it is not a good idea to keep pushing your own work on blogs/twitter (but then again I thought that was the whole point???) I guess it’s a matter of not boring folks rigid with it and being judicious about how much self-promotion is a good thing… Heck, I’ve often been very irritated on twitter by the increasing amount of people who only seem to self-promote their own stuff – they never seem to join in conversations.  AND I do get tired of having their latest blog/ book release shoved down my throat endlessly.  Don’t get me wrong, I am always pleased for other people when their books are published and I do understand the need to self promote – we all need to do it. I’m just not sure it should be done all the time at the expense of other articles, news items etc.

I also hate it when folks post long, long excerpts of their books on their blogs – especially when the said excerpt is out of context. As if I’ve got half a day spare to read their pages-long post!!  (squeaky voice rising hysterically)

Okay, my rant is now over!!! I am calm…

But wait… Back to my review – to post or not to post??  Should I join in? Mmmmm…. Err yes…  What a hypocrite you say! And you are right. So here is my review (taken from amazon): Ta Da!

The Afterlife of Darkmares

“Having read P J Newcombe's third thriller - the Afterlife of Darkmares I found that it was just as I had expected. I've already read the first two and so I knew that I was in for a good read. I wasn't disappointed. The author has developed a way of weaving the twenty-first century story of a troubled mother and her son, into hypnotic paranormal episodes with great skill and sensitivity as Grif has unbeknown, even to himself, released an evil entity. The suspense is such that you must turn page after page . . .

Still grieving herself from the loss of her daughter, Kate gets help with her son Grif's tormented life from Ben the sleep therapist. At one of the sessions Ben asks Grif about his sister and dad.

"Megan died and Dad left home," Grif said flatly.

The continuing tale of Kate seeking help from the specialist is thwarted by steady pushing from the police to prove in some way that she was responsible for Megan's death, and the tension builds. She suspects that her estranged husband may be spreading malicious rumours. Now the darkmares really begin for Kate as the parallel story of the plague in the village of Eyam, four centuries ago unfolds and is skillfully woven by the author into the present day story forcing Kate to delve into the supernatural for an answer.

This thriller is skillfully plotted with strong rounded characters, making it not only a good read but gives the reader insight into how flimsy the threads of life are. I thoroughly recommend it. The Afterlife of Darkmares in an excellent read in every sense, but not for the faint hearted.”

AFTER THOUGHT!
(P.S. Just so you know - I am definitely NOT against promotional stuff on blogs/twitter etc - I simply think some folk have nothing to give/say other than self promotion and I think that spoils it for the rest of us...)

So do you ever post reviews on your blog? Do you think there is a limit to how much self promo work should be done through blogs/social networks??

Camera, Lights, Action!

Write like a film director? Maybe...

One of the things I found hard to get to grips with when I first started writing thrillers was the idea of tension or conflict on almost every page. ‘What, every page,’ I asked myself? Surely not…

But then I realised that the kind of reader I was aiming for wanted and expected a thriller to be a fast-paced page turning epic that took them on a roller coaster of a ride until they came to the satisfying ending. Okay, perhaps not always that fast, but it is definitely a different kind of read from a literary, Jane Austen - type story.

One reason for this is that nowadays readers are also used to watching movies and TV that fast cut to the action and leave little in – between. When I am writing I visualise every scene as if I am watching a film and I cut in and out as if I’m a film director.

I am not saying that all types of fiction should be like that – far from it - but if you are going to go with a genre you’d better give it due thought. As to veer away from it, is bound to disappoint readers who expect a certain kind of read with a certain kind of genre.

Seeing my story as a film may not always work out well but it gives me a way forward, at least. I also try to infuse each scene with some degree of tension even if it is only a character’s inner thoughts which may be in turmoil. There are of course, other things that can add to tension such as setting, weather and bigger picture happenings (e.g. war, plague or world events).

Scene and chapter endings are also places where tension should be enough to ensure a reader continues to read - in other words, the cliff hanger ending. Not always easy, but one way is to leave a scene early in the middle of conflict (and sometimes switching to another point in the story) so that the reader must continue to read to find what happens.

All if, buts and maybe’s you say… But that’s how I do it…

So what about you? Do you cope well with tension and conflict in your writing?

Horrifyingly Macabre?

Macabre stories??

What a scary word macabre is to most people…

The dictionary defines it as ghastly or gruesome but in my mind, I always associate it with supernatural goings on. Books such as Stephen King’s “Danse Macabre” also spring to mind.  In his book King talks about the world of horror writing and it’s history and origins – an adventurous read if you are interested in horror literature. When I looked up the term ‘Danse Macabre’, I discovered that it appears to originate in medieval times and signified skeletons and other dead spirits dancing and leading mortals to their grave. A kind of unholy procession. There are quite a few artists’ impressions from that time depicting dancing gleeful skeletons holding hands with the dead and the still living.  Ugh! Nice pictures…

But I am thinking of the more common use of the word...  Macabre seems to be a word used for describing a grim or ghastly atmosphere.  It is generally only found in horror/paranormal -type literature. I think it is a wonderfully descriptive word which everyone knows the meaning of but it is rarely used in everyday conversation.

It’s almost as if it is beyond our understanding and therefore terrifying.  When one is struggling to describe a scary atmosphere or aura macabre is a good word to use…

Do you have favourite words that are relevant to your genre?

Lightbulb Moments on Dark Themes

Lightbulb Moments on Dark Themes

So where do the ideas come from?

It is a question I often get asked - as does every other writer. But for the writer of horror/supernatural stories the questioners are even more fascinated by how or why the ideas strike. The answer, of course is they come out of my imagination but they may have been sparked by something I have seen, heard or experienced. Or sometimes tiny nubs just appear from apparently nowhere… But I don’t believe they are apropos of nothing, they have just oozed up from my subconscious.

Perhaps I can give an example of how it worked for me with one project.

The original idea for my latest book “The Afterlife of Darkmares” came to me from apparently nothing?? I had been tossing around some occult-type ideas that might seem fairly believable when the thing suddenly presented itself. It was simply an image and I can still clearly remember the  ‘eureka’ feeling it gave me. The picture in my mind was of a 12 year old boy standing rigidly in a graveyard, hands by his sides, his glossy black hair - pageboy style -  gleaming in the sunlight.  His clothes were old fashioned – as if he’d stepped out of the pages of some 60’s magazine. He wore a buttoned up paisley shirt, a hand-knitted waistcoat and  smart black trousers.  There was something very off centre about him…

Where that image came from, I have no idea, but it must have arisen from something in my subconscious mind.. The scene was so vivid I used it as a jumping off point for my story. At that point I had no idea what my story would be about but I knew I had to use that scene somehow. The boy is called Grif and he is central to the story and the entire plot of the supernatural thriller “The Afterlife of Darkmares.”.  

I then used free writing to further explore and develop the idea.  As I did this and the plot began to identify itself I became more and more excited and enthused by my slowly ripening story. For me this is the best part of writing a book. The creating of the story!!.

So what is your favourite part of writing a story? Do you dream up ideas or characters first?