GOALS AND OBSTACLES DRIVING YOUR PLOT

Every novel needs goals and obstacles. Or, rather, the main character does. So, I thought I'd offer you a practical lesson in this, in case it's something you haven't properly thought through. It may not just be the main character who needs goals and obstacles - there may be a secondary (and tertiary) character to focus on, too, though it's fair to say that minor characters don't have to have major goals and obstacles, or not obviously.

Ask yourself some questions:

1. Is my MC's goal interesting and important enough for this genre and for the readers I aim to snare? For example, the MC being desperate to own a dog might be sufficient goal for a gentle book for six-year-olds but not for most other readers. (Though it's not beyond the bounds of possibility that a good writer could create an exciting story out of this premise, by adding a great deal of extra interest.)
2. Have I put sufficient obstacles in the way of this goal? Have I paced them well, increasing suspense? Do the obstacles hang together within the story, rather than being completely random-seeming?
3. Do my readers care sufficiently about my MC that they are desperate for him or her to achieve the goal? The creation of a rounded character who we have strong feelings about is essential to keeping us reading. We must care and believe.
4. Have I created enough complexity by having more than one goal, and perhaps by running a sub-plot which will conflict and even become part of the obstacles? Secondary characters can be very useful in this. 

Let's look at different types of obstacle. They can be:

• caused by the MC's own mistake
• caused by the MC's enemy
• caused by a secondary character accidentally getting in the way
• caused by external influences
• caused completely by accident - don't overdo these or you'll end up with a mishmash of things and the reader will think you're just making it up as you go along. Which of course you are, but not in a good way. 

Obstacles should be:

• interesting
• relevant
• congruous
• sometimes seeming insurmountable
• frustrating for the reader but not too frustrating - you don't want the reader screaming at you. Much.
• generally increasing as the MC reaches the goal
• overcome at just the right speed, generating the amount of suspense you want. Too quick and it's a let-down; too slow and it can become frustrating.

One of the problems I most often see in aspiring writers' work is lack of focus on the goal and the obstacles, lack of real effort to ensure that this goal is genuinely interesting and exciting for the reader. You must define and sharpen the goal and obstacles otherwise your story becomes a walk in the park instead of the gripping adventure it usually needs to be.

So, leap out at your MC and give him the shock of his life. But make the readers suspect you're going to leap out, so that the reader hangs around, fingers over his eyes, hardly daring to read on and yet being unable to stop.

Get the goals and obstacles right and you end up with a novel that is likely also to have suspense, pace and narrative thrust. And most novels benefit from an awful lot more narrative thrust than I see in most unpublished (and some published) work. In fact, it's one of the main things I'll be talking about in my workshops and talks over the next months - including at the York Festival of Writing.

Talking of workshops, there are no spaces left at my What's Wrong With your Manuscript evening in Edinburgh but there ARE spaces on the Secrets of Writing for Children and Teenagers one. If you come to that, you will get an invitation to the launch party!

AS POINTLESS AS A POINTLESS THING: CARE WITH SIMILES

Remember when you were at school and you were learning Creative Writing? (You know - the bit squeezed between Passing Exams and Spelling. The bit where you got your story read out in class and your head stuck down the toilet in break.) Yes. Remember when the teacher got to Similes, and then Metaphors? And you were the only one who knew the difference? And then you got extra marks and ticks and things when you used a simile or a metaphor? And you came to believe that using similes was Essentially A Good Thing and the mark of A Writer?

Well, sorry. You are all growned up now. Do not add similes to your writing because you think you should. You don't get points any more. At all.

There is only one occasion when a simile really makes your writing better: when it really does make it better. A simile must ADD to what you've just said. It must make what you've just said clearer, and better. If what you're trying to say is very simple and is already clear, don't clutter it up with a simile. Only when the situation is complex, unusual, interesting, extra vivid or strange, does it need a simile to inspire and excite the reader. A simile is special, and should be used for special occasions and for special effect.

Why am I going on about this? Well, I have recently read several manuscripts which are passably well executed in many ways. Until the writer has thought, "Gah! I remember now: Miss Scroggins always used to praise me for using similes. Better put one in. NOW! Why? Oh, because. Because it would be sooo cool to get extra points, just as I used to when I was eight."

People, Miss Scroggins has forgotten you. She retired long ago and is now shacked up in Spain with  Juan, about whom she has been passionate since at least the Wars of the Roses and with whom she longed to run away, a dream which she was delayed from realising by her over-lengthy career teaching children such as you, whom she adored at the time but over whom her pension and some well-deserved sunshine now take precedence. Miss Scroggins has no hold over you now. She has no hold over her waistline, either, and has allowed herself to go gloriously to seed. Forget Miss Scroggins and her exhortations to simile.

Here are some examples of completely unhelpful and pointless similes:

His words paralysed me. I was like a deer that's been transfixed by an arrow, right in its spine, so that it was alive but could not move. [The first sentence says it all. The simile simply adds some wholly unhelpful and, frankly, bizarre, extra images. We learn nothing extra and yet are bombarded with extraneous images of a dying Bambi.]

He leaned over the counter and watched me like a diving hawk. Then he laughed, throwing his head back so that I saw his teeth. [Why diving? How is that like someone watching over a counter? And then the juxtaposition of him laughing and then having visible teeth conjures a weird mixture that does NOT have the effect of making anything clearer in the reader's mind.]

And here's a proper, useful simile, though not spectacularly original:

He moved slowly, like a lion. He knew where he would find them. [The lion simile means that the reader thinks of all the other things to do with lions: that they are strong, dangerous, hunters. You can imagine the lion moving slowly because he's powerful and confident. So, this simile ADDS to the image.]

That is the point: a simile adds.

Importantly, it adds everything about that image, so you'd better make sure you get the image right. The clue is in the word "image", because the point about language is that every word you use creates an image; the reader cannot help but picture things connected with that image.

Let me show you. If I say the word fire-engine, you will think of these things: red, something loud and something large, indicating danger. So, if I say that her lips were fire-engine red, you will think of her mouth as large, red, and probably loud. Possibly even dangerous. Or at least sexy in a loud way. (Not that I have anything going on with fire officers' uniforms, you understand.)

If I say the word strawberry, you think of these things: fruit, sweet, small, strawberry-shaped. So, strawberry lips, make you think of small, sweet, gentle, tasty, strawberry-shaped lips.

Letter-box red lips: bright, loud, large. Cherry-red lips... You get my point?

And so it is with similes: every part of the simile creates pictures and if you use an image with the wrong connotations you utterly wreck or disturb the reader's picture. It becomes a confusing mess.

My final point about similes is that they must be exactly right for the voice, the style of the piece. So, in a colloquial voice you don't want to insert a poetic or literary simile. Or vice-versa. Incendiary, by Chris Cleave, is a brilliant example of a book with an exceptionally colloquial voice, and here is an example of a wonderful colloquial simile in it, which is pitch perfect for the context:

We never did eat that sushi. I mean why would you? All seaweed and raw tuna sushi is. More like a fishing boat accident than a lunch.

That is deliriously clever. I love that book, love it. So much so that I have to give you another simile from it.

They were shocking vicious things those helicopters. They were like fat black wasps looking outwards through their glittering eyes.

If it had just said wasps, we'd have thought of stripy yellow thigs, so the author cleverly specifies fat black wasps, and glittering eyes, so we still have the insecty nasty connotation but our mental image perfectly conjures those helicopters into fat black wasp-like things, and we find ourselves absolutely being able to picture them in the way the author wants. We have a sense of, Yes, they are exactly like that.

Three learning points about similes, then:

1. Only use one at all if you haven't made yourself clear already. A simile is supposed to add meaning, to make something clearer, to elaborate and enrich an incomplete picture in the reader's mind.
2. The reader, whether you like it or not, will take every aspect of your image and process it. So, make sure your image only has the connotations you want it to have.
3. And the simile must be chosen for its aptness for the voice, the style and the context.

 And leave Miss Scroggins out of this. The Sangria has addled her brain and she Does Not Care any more.

Meanwhile, I am not going to be able to give you the attention to which you are accustomed for the next few weeks. I have a leaky building situation which is as big as a mountain, as wet as the sea, as expensive as the Tah Mahal, and as irritating as a roomful of mosquitos with Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder, and which I need about as much as a dose of dysentery before a school event.

Which is probably what I'm going to get if my leaky, rotting bathroom isn't sorted out.

DIALOGUE TAGS

Following from my earlier post on dialogue, I now come, as promised, to dialogue tags. Dialogue tags are the he queried / asked / opined bits that come between the spoken sections. Once beloved of Enid Blyton and many others, their unnecessary use is now regarded as a bad habit and poor style. Perhaps surprisingly, it’s better to repeat he said, than to vary it with questioned, opined, muttered or expostulated. The main reason for this is that it’s too easy to be tempted to tell the reader how the speaker spoke, but often more satisfying for the reader when the attitude is revealed in action. Dialogue tags are just a bit lazy and spoon-feed the reader too much. At the same time, they give the instruction after the reader has read the dialogue: too late, in other words. Sometimes, they're necessary, but you should only use them when they really are.

Let me illustrate with an example of an over-use of dialogue tags:

“Do you want to come in for coffee?” she suggested.
“Is coffee all you mean?” he wondered.
“What else would I mean?” she scoffed.
“Well, just that I thought you might have some biscuits as well,” he responded.
“Aye, right!” she laughed.

Do we really need any of the words outside the speech marks? No: we can manage perfectly well with just the speech, if the dialogue is strong enough. And that’s the key: your dialogue needs to be strong. If it is strong enough, it is strong enough to do the job on its own. Then you will need very few dialogue tags, and then usually only to show who is speaking. (Young children need more dialogue tags, as it is harder for them to follow who is talking.) Dialogue tags should show who is speaking, not how he spoke, unless that feels absolutely necessary.

Often, you can make the dialogue speak for itself, without any dialogue tags. Take a look at the same conversation re-written:

Carmelle looked straight at him. “Coffee?”
“Just coffee?” He stared back, streetlight shadowing his jaw.
“As opposed to?”
“Well, biscuits. I was thinking you probably do a mean chocolate digestive.”
“Aye, right!” How did he manage to make the word digestive sound so desirable? Carmelle felt herself begin to blush.

Finally, just in case you haven’t quite got the point, here is an example of too many dialogue tags with the extra burden of unnecessary adverbs. (I've written about lazy adverbs here. Remember that there's nothing wrong with adverbs per se, just with their lazy use.)

“Listen,” she whispered conspiratorially.
“What?” he interrupted eagerly.
“Nothing,” she replied, hesitantly, deciding that she was not going to tell him after all.

And here is how you could re-write that without dialogue tags or adverbs:

She leant towards him, her hair brushing his cheek. “Listen. I ...”
His pulse quickened. “What?”
Carmelle took a breath. She paused. What if her informant was wrong? She shook her head, looked down at the stem of the glass pressed between her fingers. “Nothing.”

Well? Please tell me you think the second one is better. Yes, the second one uses more words, but it uses them better. It uses verbs and action, shows us how the two characters behaved, allowing us to feel that we are there, to experience what they do. It draws the reader into the conversation, relegating the author (me) to a very appropriate sideline. After all, when you go to a puppet show, do you want to see the puppeteer?

DIALOGUE TECHNIQUES

Good dialogue is very hard to do and some writers are much better at it than others, just as some actors are much better than others at doing accents. Good dialogue is dialogue that a reader hardly notices as good or not, but bad dialogue sticks out painfully, dragging the whole book down. Poor dialogue is certainly one of the things that can contribute to rejection, not on its own but then poor dialogue is most unlikely to be the only thing wrong.

The first thing to know about writing dialogue is that you should not try to write exactly as people speak. If you did, you’d have lots of ums, vast tracts of nothingness and many non sequiturs. At the same time, you mustn’t write dialogue that the characters would actually never deliver. So, we devise a kind of stylized representation of speech, something that feels very natural. In essence, good dialogue is not about writing as we speak; it’s about not writing as we would not speak.

Dialogue is usually best broken up into sections, separated by narrative. You are not writing a film script or a play – unless, of course, you are, in which case you are boiling a whole different kettle of fish. You do not have to relate the whole conversation; in fact, you shouldn't. Most parts of a conversation are way too boring to set down. Yes, no, I don't know, and OK should all be reduced to their absolute minimum.

Oh, God - so should Oh, God. Amateur writers put loads of standard minor expletives in their dialogue but, again, the fact that a real person might have used a word doesn't make it deserve a place in your book. This is not about being prudish and avoiding swearing - probably the topic of another blog post - but about creating flowing, strong dialogue.

Some other big bad things to avoid:

• As I say, too many yeses and noes. Better to replace some of them either with nodding / shaking of heads – though that can quickly become repetitive – or with the rest of the sentence and context indicating positive or affirmative.
• The blatant provision of information for the reader, which the characters would already know and therefore not say. For example, “Gosh, Sally, I hardly recognized you. You used to have dark hair with a fringe and now it’s a blonde bob. Did I tell you I recently saw Samantha, your younger daughter, the one who went round Australia? Lovely girl. She’s married now, of course, and they have a baby on the way.” Bleurgh.
• Dialogue tags – I'm going to tackle this in the next post, but dialogue tags are when we say, for example: he replied, she opined, he queried, she reiterated. Where possible, stick to said, asked, or nothing. I will show you how on Friday.
• Anything which makes it hard for a reader to hear the words in his head – this means that using dialect of any sort becomes very tricky for writers. You have to be very confident in your reader and in your writing to get away with the heavy use of an accent which that reader doesn’t speak. Trouble is, sometimes it would be absurd not to use dialect to some extent, if that’s how the character would speak, but do try to keep it toned down. Think of your reader.

The key to writing dialogue is to read it aloud, preferably imagining yourself acting it. If you’re not an actor, as I’m not, this is difficult but it’s the very difficulty which will help you think more carefully. If there’s a bit of dialogue that keeps jarring every time you read it and you can’t find another way to express it, turn it into narrative instead. Better no dialogue than poor dialogue.

I admit that dialogue is not something I find easy or something I shine in. Perhaps that's why I'm extra careful with it and extra aware of when I get it wrong. I spend a lot of time trying not to get it wrong. Good dialogue sings and makes your story sparkle and come alive. Bad dialogue is horrible and drags a book right down.

She opined.

CONFLICT – WHY SHOULD WE CARE?

Because readers care and publishers care. So, if you want readers and a publisher - or even just one of those - you must create conflict for us to care about.

Without conflict, there’s no story. That’s not quite true. I’ll rephrase: without conflict there’s no story that anyone would actually bother to read. Therefore, lack of sufficient conflict is a very important and common reason why publishers reject books. Conflict is the thing we care about, that threatens the main character, that the character struggles against. So, whether it’s unrequited love, unrevenged hatred, unatoned remorse, or unattained zen, conflict is central to your book and must be central when you pitch the book. Multiple conflicts (within reason) are also a good idea, because you can solve one fairly early on, giving the reader some pleasure, but keep the others till later, ratcheting up the tension.

Conflict is not literally a conflict between two people. Two characters hating each other does not make a conflict, in the context of a novel. Conflict is what carries and drives the story forward: who will win? Will the MC discover she's being stalked before the stalker kills her? Will the detective find the murderer before he strikes again? Will the woman manage to find strength to leave her abusive partner? Will the boy die of leukaemia or not? Will the girl find the strength to stand up to the bullies / stop taking drugs / speak out about her rape? Will the estranged son find peace with his father before it's too late? Conflict is the struggle in the reader's mind as he desperately wants a particular thing to happen but fears that it won't.

Think of conflict as the obstacle(s) in the way of your hero. The more daunting the obstacle, the greater the struggle, and therefore the greater the excitement and pleasure when the conflict is overcome.

Make sure your conflict is one the reader will believe in and care about. Set problems in the way of the conflict and don't deviate from the path as your characters work around those problems. New plot strand? Is it relevant to the conflict? It must be. Everything in your story should focus on either moving towards or slipping back from resolution of the conflict. The reader needs to worry all the time about whether resolution is goign to happen. Readers should be on the edge of their seats, rooting for the MC all the time, desperate for everything to work out. We do not want to be diverted by loads of irrelevancies. Or even any irrelevancies.


Don’t only think about conflicts in connection with your MC, though. You can also have bigger conflicts: for example, conflicts between races and religions; between good and evil, male and female, emotion and logic, luck and talent, superstition and science, Aristotle and Plato, red wine or white – anything that’s right for your story and your theme.

The conflicts must progress in a controlled fashion. Not in a straight line and not always in the same direction – setbacks will increase tension. But you must be absolutely in control of how quickly, slowly, smoothly or bumpily your conflict develops.

The conflict should worry the reader but also create ambivalence. For example, if the girl needs to break away from the control of her parents, don’t make those parents too starkly awful: paint some different shades so that the reader can see both sides. Things and people are rarely all good or all bad; things wished for rarely bring unadulterated joy; events feared are rarely exactly as expected; death is rarely entirely sad or survival entirely marvellous. Be subtle in the strength of your conflict and in subtlety will be your strength.

But the most important thing about conflict is, as I said at the top, that the reader should care. Different readers will care about different things. An eight-year-old child might care very much about whether she’ll be able to save up for a new Barbie; a grown man won’t. This sounds obvious, but too often writers pitch novels where I question whether anyone would care enough or whether this conflict is anything other than run-of-the-mill. Yes, in real life I care very much whether my family appreciate the casserole I am making this afternoon, and we could well have some major conflict if they don’t, but that doesn’t mean that it’s sufficient conflict for a reader.


Different genres have different needs for conflict, both in terms of level and type of conflict. In a romance, for example, a personal conflict will suffice; whereas in a high-concept thriller, you'd usually need something which threatened or affected a wider population. In a crime novel, you'd expect high conflict, because if a major or violent crime is committed there would need to be not only major motivation but also dramatic fall-out.

So, take a look at your book now. Is strong conflict central to it AND have you made it central to your pitch to publishers? If so, hooray – you’re on your way. If not, back to the drawing board.

AND NOW UNPUTDOWNABILITY (via Nick Cross)

Nick Cross, whose writing blog I really really like, put a link to his post about Unputdownability in a comment under my recent post on Page-turnability. And his is such a good and relevant post about making your writing zing with unputdownability that I simply want to send you over there.

Of course, as there are different sorts of readers, there are different things which make a book unputdownable. Racing action is only one of them, but Nick knows what his potential readers want. You need to know what your potential readers want. If your readers want something slower, something that digs its way deeper into the mind and is unputdownable because of how it traps the reader in some other way than desperately needing to know what happens next, that's fine. But whoever your readers and whatever sort of book, surely we all want to hear the words, "I just couldn't put it down."

TOP TIP 2: PAGE-TURNABILITY

It's the new mantra. Of course, lots of readers have very understandably looked for page-turnability ever since pages existed. Now, it's virtually essential if you want your book published. There are two reasons for its new necessity. The first reason may be spurious. The second is not.

1. Nowadays, we are told, readers don't have time to hang around.
2. Publishers demand page-turnability because page-turnability sells more copies and more copies are what they MUST sell, because the income on each copy sold is so much less than it was. (As I said here and here.)

Reason 1 may be rubbish. Certainly, many readers are happy to sit with a deeper and slower book. But a) there is some worrying evidence that the attention-spans of many people are shorter; b) there are certainly more demands on most people's time, so books are in stiffer competition; c) crucially, whatever the truth, publishers believe that shorter and faster are what readers want, and since publishers are the ones selling our books, that's what goes.

Reason 2 is undoubtedly true. More readers will read your book if it has page-turnability than if it doesn't. You need more readers - wherever you stand on the art / commerce continuum, if you want to be published, you need to be able to attract more readers than you would have done five years ago, because of falling unit income. (No, I don't like thinking about "unit income" either, but I find that published writers tend to be far more realistic than unpublished ones.)

So, how do you achieve page-turnability? Here are the methods - apply them more rigorously or less rigorously, depending on your wishes, your genre, your book, and just how much page-turnability you're after.

STAGE ONE - apply the machete

• Shorten chapters, unless they are already stupidly short. Alter the places where they begin and end so that they usually end mid-action. Give every chapter a knife-edge beginning and ending. Do not let your reader stop reading.
• Remove much more description than you want to.
• Ditto with back-story, philosophy, scene setting and world building. Just because you know it, doesn't mean the reader needs it. Think iceberg.
• Remove at least two of the first five chapters. Just do it. See what happens.
• Remove all your favourite sentences.

STAGE TWO - apply filler
Now that you've cut so much, see if there are any holes. Fill the holes with action. No murder for forty pages? KILL someone. No threats, sinister appearances, ghosts, car chases, unsheathing of knives, MC hanging off a precipice, revealing or touching erogenous zone (if age appropriate), thunder storm, escaping tiger in this chapter? WHY NOT?

STAGE THREE - stand back and admire

Read it. What do you think? The reason I ask is that I'm doing this at the moment and I am surprised at how much I like what's left. That's what I'm offering my readers: something I like and I really want them to like. If, however, thinking as a reader - and thinking as a reader who is less keen than you are as a reader - you really, really, really, want to put something back in, do.

But I bet you won't. Because what you'll be doing then is spoiling a clean piece of writing which has true page-turnability, and you will not be making it more likely to be published.

If being published is not what you want, ignore all my advice.

REALLY, ACTUALLY, ABSOLUTELY, ADVERBS ARE MUCH MALIGNED

Some people have so got the wrong end of the stick about adverbs. Adverbs are not bad - using them lazily is.

Did you spot the adverb in that sentence? Should I have expressed that better? Differently? Ooops - "better" and "differently" - there go two more!

I have blogged about the poor use of adverbs before. Once in a post about "over-writing", because adverbial diarrhoea is part of that. And once in a post about the importance of showing more than telling.

It would help if you were to skim those posts to see the contexts, but I will quote from the second post here:

1. Go easy on the adverbs. Adverbs, used lazily, are an immature writer's stock in trade. Yes, they roll off the tongue, but so does dribble.

Let me elaborate on why it is absurd to claim, as I have heard people do, that adverbs are bad. (And after that I will show you how bad they can be in the hands of certain writers.)

Take the second sentence of that extract: "Adverbs, used lazily, are an immature writer's stock in trade."

The adverb is, of course, "lazily". (By the way, "of course" works as an adverbial phrase, as you'll see if you replace it with a true adverb: "obviously". Are you going to tell me that using it was bad? It's not bad, because it says what I want to say accurately and succinctly. OMG - two more adverbs! Slapped wrist, naughty author!)

Anyway, back to lazily. "Adverbs, used lazily, are an immature writer's stock in trade." Would you suggest that I should have avoided this adverb?

If I'd left out the adverb, we'd have been left with. "Adverbs, used, are an immature writer's stock in trade", or, more normally, "Adverbs are an immature writer's stock in trade." But they are not. So it would be wrong. What I am trying to say is very simple:

Adverbs, used lazily, are an immature writer's stock in trade.

OK?

There is no better way to express that sentence and I wouldn't want to because there is nothing wrong with it.

So, what do we mean when we CORRECTLY find fault with adverbs? Because it is the case that lazy over-indulgence in adverbs is an example of weak or immature writing - though many authors, at least in highly commercial genres where style is less of an issue, do get away with it. (Because it is partly to do with style, meaning and prose skill, not anything at all to do with faulty grammar.)

Here's the rest of the extract from that original blog post, immediately following the extract above. It shows some extreme (imaginary, because I wrote them) examples of how badly adverbs can be used. (By the way, see how I would have altered the meaning of that sentence by omitting badly).

Compare:

"Listen," she whispered conspiratorially.

"What?" he interrupted eagerly.

"Nothing," she replied, hesitantly, deciding that she was not going to tell him after all.

with:

She leant towards him, her hair brushing his cheek. "Listen. I ..."

His pulse quickened. "What?"

Carmelle took a breath. She paused. What if her informant was wrong? She shook her head, looked down at the stem of the glass pressed between her fingers. "Nothing."

Well? 

The second is so much better, isn't it?

Now, that was an example of adverbs in dialogue tags, but you will see how over-use of adverbs spoils writing in normal narrative too. Try this - I've put the adverbs in italics:

She walked slowly through the woods, stopping occasionally to pick a flower, sadly thinking back to the time she'd walked here with her young daughters. Their cheeks had glowed rosily after a late summer picnic, and she could picture the hair sticking damply to their foreheads. The air had been heavy with birdsong then, but now the silence fell eerily around her and suddenly she felt a chill pass down her back. All things pass, she told herself.

It's a rubbish piece of writing in many ways and some of those adverbs are mere tautology, but the main thing is that they are lazy, for differing reasons.  

• Slowly wouldn't be necessary if more care had been taken to choose a better verb than walked. 
• Occasionally is fine and necessary, though it would be better if we actually saw her do it once and the rest of the thoughts happened during this one moment of flower-picking.  
• Sadly shouldn't be necessary from the context of the para and if the rest of it were written better.
• Rosily is tautologous after glowed and damply is pretty obvious or would be unnecessary if the foreheads were described as sweaty (or something).  
• Eerily is not too bad but I'd rather be shown other aspects that made me know it was eery, without being told it so obviously. 
• And suddenly is a word which should only be used when there is no alternative - here, it could be omitted without loss of meaning. And, therefore, should be.

So, adverbs are not bad but careless or lazy over-use certainly is. Certainly, really, actually, truthfully, adamantly, obviously, very much is. OK?

It's worth saying, too, that lazy use of anything is an immature or poor writer's stock in trade, too. Let's not blame it all on adverbs. I have seen other forms of crapness. Really.

PACE - IT'S NOT A RACE

Let's talk about pace. The word is fairly explanatory. Speed. How quickly the plot develops. But it’s not as simple as that. For a start, not all types of book need to be “pacy” (fast) and not all types of reader require the same level of pace. “Pacy” is not necessarily a value judgement, either, simply a statement that this book moves quickly. Yes, many (most?) readers like a story to move sufficiently fast, but not too fast and not all at the same speed. Your reader needs to be able to breathe.

You must vary the pace, otherwise three things will happen:

1. Your story will be monotonous and less enjoyable.
2. Your story will be monotonous and you will look unskilled.
3. The moments of climax and greatest tension and power will be less powerful.

The most important thing to say about pace is this: you must control it. This means that you must:

1. Know what you aim to achieve with the overall pace of this book.
2. Decide at which points in the story you want to speed up and where you want to slow down.
3. Know how to achieve those effects.

Regarding the first point, this is a decision you have to make on your own, based on your understanding of your readers’ needs, the requirements of your genre and what is right for this book. Some types of book allow a slower build, and attract patient readers who are happy to delve into details; whereas others need a car-chase or murder every five pages. If you don’t know this about your genre and your book, then you have a problem which I can’t solve. So, bugger off and go and do some more reading.

WHEN to vary pace

You will need to build this into your plan. If you are a formal planner, you can make a physical note of the places where you want to create a change of pace. Or, if you’re like me and not a formal plotter, you will have to learn to get a feel for these moments.

And these moments are when, exactly? Usually, either just before or just after moments of great tension or drama. Here are some options:

1. You have been building up to something, dropping clues, winding up the tension…and you take a breath, offering a slightly slower scene, trusting that your readers will stay with you, tormenting them slightly. This must be carefully handled because if your readers aren’t 100% with you, they may lose interest.There's only so much torment they'll take: judging this is part of the dark arts of being a real writer.
2. You are building up to something (as above) and then pile in a fast, dramatic scene which the reader thinks IS the culmination but actually there’s MORE to come. So, a sprint towards but not quite at the end of an already fast race.
3. After 2. you will certainly need to slow down.
4. After several scenes of drama and Big Moments, you could / probably should slow down with a more gentle scene, before moving forward again into the tension.

So, HOW to vary pace?

1. Chapter ends and cliff-hangers

This is where I get to show you my patent breathing exercises. (Not for the first time, but some of you are new to this blog). And, more excitingly, where I teach you how to control your readers’ breathing. How amazing is that? That’s real power. You, the author, god in your own world, get to control a reader's breath.

Think of one chapter as one breath, in and out. Now, you can either breathe in first and then out, or the other way round, yes? First, try the in-breath first, finishing on a big exhale. It feels complete, doesn’t it? Well, that’s like a chapter that finishes at the end of the dramatic moment, with the tension released. The reader could stop reading for the moment and pick it up again later.

Now try breathing out first, followed by a big in-breath. Not complete, is it? You can’t stop there; moment of tension; what’s going to happen next? That’s like a chapter that finishes just before the crucial event, a cliff-hanger, the reader on tenterhooks. No way is the reader going to put the book down now.

Controlling your chapter breaks in this way is your most effective single tool for controlling pace. This was a revelation to me when I first discovered it. By varying the point in the action where you end your chapters, you control whether your reader will be likely to choose that moment to put the book down for a rest, or whether he will be compelled to read on. Of course, you are supposed to allow your reader to rest at some point, otherwise you risk exhausting him at the wrong moment, but you want him to rest at the time of your choosing. This is about control, which is probably why I love being a writer: I'm a control-freak.

2. Chapter lengths

The length of your chapters (or sections within a chapter if you have chosen that device) also affects pace. Clearly short chapters create greater speed, a kind of breathlessness. I use short chapters most of the time now; this is partly because in recent years I’ve written almost exclusively for teenagers, and they are very busy creatures who need extra work to keep them reading. A more normal method, and the one I’d use for writing for adults, would be to vary chapter length, using shorter ones for greatest impact and pace.

3. Sentence lengths
Again, short sentences create a faster pace and are very useful to create suspense. If you use them all the time, their ability to create suspense lessens. So, keep them for when you actually want them. (Short sentences have other uses as well, and suit certain voices, so it’s not only about pace.)

4. Sentence style and formality

If you are using a formal, strictly-grammatical style, accurately but self-consciously juggling your subordinate clauses and phrases, incorporating participles and absolutes like a descendant of Cicero, your pace will tend towards something slower and more considered than otherwise. However, do note that long, complex sentences do not suggest pace. While you can’t pepper a Woodhousian formality with the literary equivalent of a high five or Yo! Dude!, you will need to find a way to vary your pace by simplifying your complex sentences at the right moments.

4. Taking a break

After fast-paced sections, and after or before major climactic episodes, taking a break for a more gentle scene can improve your book in many ways:
•    It allows the reader to reflect, to process better what has happened or is about to happen.
•    It gives you an opportunity to show your characters in a different, more enriching light.
•    By providing contrast, it actually heightens the drama.
•    It allows your book to become multi-dimensional.

The first time I remember consciously doing this was in Fleshmarket. One of the (many) negative comments my irritatingly perceptive editor made about the not-very-good first draft was that it was relentlessly grim. Bearing in mind that this is a book about death, surgery without anaesthetic, blood poisoning, filth, poverty and dead bodies, I took this as a compliment but I also had to deal with it. So, one of the things I did was to take the two most down-trodden and abused characters up Arthur’s Seat one hot summer evening, where they made a fire and cooked steaks, breathing the fresh air and looking down on the distant grimness of Edinburgh. This offered the reader a break from the awfulness of what happened – and made the forthcoming horror even more horrible…. (Pause to rub hands in glee.)

So, that's pace for you. It's all more or less going into Write to be Published, but you read it here first, you lucky things. Besides, you have to wait a whole year for that to come out.

THE GREENGROCERS' APOSTROPHE'S SOLVED

As in The apostrophe of greengrocers IS solved. That is the only meaning of that sentence written in that way. A word (in this case apostrophes) can only have an apostrophe if it "owns" something that follows or if something is missed out (in this case the first letter of is).

I could equally well have written greengrocer's as greengrocers', because it's up to me whether I mean one or several. This is all about meaning and clarity, not obfuscatory rules. (Yes, I know, we could probably manage without apostrophes at all, but since we have them, let's get 'em right.)

Several of you have asked for a post on apostrophes. Oooh, the pleasure! I haven't done this since I was an English teacher. Apart from the times I taught my daughters. Forcibly. While serving them fish fingers.

By the way, it will be embarrassing if there are typos in this post, especially if they are apostrophe-related! But I can't check it properly until it goes public, and I'm busy surrounded by boxes and may not have internet access. Fingers crossed...

APOSTROPHE RULES
First, forget about "before the s or after the s". We will not be thinking like that, because that way confusion lies. The letter s has absolutely nothing to do with apostrophes. OK? Thinking of s is what has led so many astray.

There are only two reasons to use an apostrophe:

1. ABBREVIATION - WHEN TWO WORDS BECOME ONE or when something is missed out of a word (though many such omissions are nowadays not represented by apostrophes)

Read these examples, because each shows a different aspect:

• didn't, can't, mustn't etc - you know this, and I don't need to explain oddities like won't
• It's a lovely day - BUT NB NB NB NB NB: it's ONLY HAS AN APOSTROPHE WHEN SOMETHING HAS BEEN MISSED OUT, ie when it stands for it has or it is. NEVER ELSEWHERE
  
• The dog's going to eat its dinner - because dog's stands for The dog IS going...

Some things to consider:

Nowadays, generally speaking, you do not normally need an apostrophe to denote letters missed from the beginning or end of a word, but you do when TWO become one, such as can't - originally can not

In the old days, any missing letters needed to be indicated by either an apostrophe or a full-stop, but not any more. For example, 'phone is now just phone. (There's nothing wrong with 'phone, but it's not needed.) Photo would certainly not be photo'. Therefore, photos* would NOT have an apostrophe. If in doubt, leave it out. These vagaries are a matter of common practice.

*I don't know why this troubles people but please remember that you do NOT just add an apostrophe to denote a plural. The s does that all by itself. This is the problem that greengrocers have. Apples, bananas, peas, etc. No apostrophes. Not unless you're selling the apples' possessions.

CD is one that gets people tangled. Originally it would have been C.D. and you could still write this. Would you say CD'? No, so don't write CD's. (You'd write the CDs' cases though, following the possession rules below - as in the cases of the CDs.)

The most important thing to realise with plurals is that if you would not have had an apostrophe for the singular, you do not for the plural. Because apostrophes play no part in forming a plural word.

20s, 1960s, 80s etc do not have an apostrophe because there is no abbreviation going on.

Some unusual abbreviations, such as 'em for them, would have an apostrophe, simply as a favour to the reader, who might otherwise be confused.

To repeat: nowadays, generally speaking, you do not normally need an apostrophe to denote letters missed from the beginning or end of a word, unless it's required for clarity, but you do when TWO become one, such as can't - orginally can not.

2. POSSESSION - ONLY WHEN THE "POSSESSOR" COMES IMMEDIATELY BEFORE THE THING POSSESSED.

And the only thing to remember about the position of the apostrophe is that it comes immediately after the "possessor". So, if the possessor is plural, put the apostrophe after the plural form.

So, the dog's / dogs' dinner:

The dog's dinner - the thing possessing the dinner is the dog (one dog) so the apostrophe goes after dog.
The dogs' dinner - the things possessing the dinner are the dogs (more than one dog) so the apostrophe goes after the dogs.

If you remember to think "after the possessor", you won't have a problem with, for example, the Joneses' house = the house of the Joneses. The Joneses are the possessors.

Exceptions? One exception and one extra point.

EXCEPTION. These words never, ever, ever have an apostrophe, even though they look as though they should**:

theirs, ours, yours, hers (or, more obviously, his and whose)

Never. Got it? Don't worry about why - just remind yourself that the word mine doesn't have an apostrophe so why should theirs etc? What, because there's an s at the end of theirs? So? We're not thinking about s, remember? S has nothing to do with apostrophes. As I said.

And remember: it's ONLY has an apostrophe for abbreviation - it is or it has

** Technically, these are not even exceptions: in fact, since the object possessed does not come immediately after the word, there's no need for an apostrophe, within the rules. You don't say yours house, do you?

EXTRA POINT. Sometimes you have to notice that the "thing possessed" is omitted, or "understood". For example, I'm going round to Jane's. This has an apostrophe because we mean Jane's place or Jane's house. Another example would be, This is Sally's, not Joan's, book.

CAUTION - be careful to remember the rule with irregular plurals. This is another reason why you must focus on "after the possessor". For example, the children's party or the people's princess - both follow the rule as long as you are not doing that "before the s or after the s thing."

That's it in terms of rules. But of course, that's not quite the end....

...because there are some occasions when the rules are hard to interpret. Or even a bit fluffy and annoying.

A few examples:
1. three weeks' time - because we mean a period of time of three weeks BUT we say in three weeks with NO apostrophe
2. for goodness' sake - because it is for the sake of goodness
3. Accounts Department does not need one, because Accounts is being used as an adjective, describing the department, not indicating possession
4. three hours late - does not need one, because late is not a noun and can't be said to be owned*** by anything.

[***Thanks to eagle-eyed Dave Bartlett for correcting my confused brain there.]
 

Sometimes it's entirely up to the person creating the phrase. For example, the people of The Writers' and Artists' Yearbook decided that they meant many writers and artists; but the people of The Writer's Handbook decided to refer to one writer. Both equally correct.

James' or James's?? Bit of an argument there. Usage tends to favour James' in the US and James's in the UK. No doubt this will change and I wonder in which direction...?

And there are times when it comes down to usage and all you can do is look the phrase up on a reputable website and see what the experts say: there's no way I can go through everything here. If in doubt, check.

Do you want to do a quiz? There's one at the bottom of this article here, which also, I see, gives a clear list of apostrophe rules. Between my explanations (especially the "after the possessor" rule) you should have it cracked. There's some nifty footwork on gerunds, too.

Now, I know I haven't answered every possible question, but it would get too bitty. Get your head round the rules first and use sensible internet searching for individual phrases that pose you a problem.

Here are some more resources that seem good at a quick glance:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A790175
http://www.eng-lang.co.uk/apostrophe_rules.htm
http://www.grammarbook.com/default.asp

I also just came across this recent Litopia podcast - I haven't listened but it's Eve Harvey so it will be good.

That's it. You're armed. Go out and prepare to laugh at greengrocers.

STORY STRUCTURE AND SHAPE

(To the eagle-eyed among you  -  no, you have not gone mad: this is a post from last week. The reason for that is complicated, but then so is my life at the moment... So, yesterdays and tomorrows are misleading because yesterday is about four days ago and tomorrow was yesterday. See, I'm really making your brains work today. You may even need to go and make some Brain Cake.)

Yesterday, I had a sign. [Tomorrow I'm getting a sign too  -  but that's the one in front of my house saying For Sale.] Actually that's not as irrelevant as it might seem, for it was thanks to the imminent For Saleness that I was yesterday clearing out some stuff, of which I have too much, and came upon the sign which is the subject of today's lesson.

The thing I found was a large board covered in blue material, with pieces of white card pinned to it in vague lines. In fact, perhaps you'd like to see it now happily affixed to my office wall.

Those of you prone to serious plotting of your novels might recognise this thing. It is a storyboard. A board on which to plot stories. Or put your plumber's business card on, if you prefer. I don't normally use them [storyboards, not plumbers], which is why a) this was stuffed behind a sofa and b) I was surprised to find that it existed. But it reminded me that I did use it to help me plot my last novel  -  not the last one I had published: the last one I wrote, which is the next one that's being published, the details of which I won't burden you with because you'll hear way too much about it when the time comes.

Look closely at the pic. That is the state the board was in when I stopped using it and stuffed it behind a sofa: not when I'd finished the book, but when I'd got the idea of the plot of my story and didn't need it any more. My "system" is unorthodox  -  I plan as I go, never in advance, and use the board more as a reminder of where I've already been, rather than where I'm going. But enough of my unorthodox systems and back to the sign.

This was a sign of two things.
First, it was a sign that I should be plotting out my next novel. (Which I will, I will, o wondrous agent.) Second, it was a sign that I have never done a post on structure and that I fully intended to.

I fully intended to particularly ever since reading and bookmarking this v interesting article which appears to be about structure. Actually, it's not really  -  it's more about plotting, which is a) not the same though b) it's what my board-behind-the-sofa was all about. So, you see, it was a sign after all.

Today, on a two-for-one basis, I am going to say something about plotting AND  structure.

What I'm going to say about plotting is this: do whatever works for you. Or don't. As I've indicated, I don't do this plotting / planning / organised stuff. I just write and muddle along and sometimes do some backwards plotting but mainly I walk the dog and it all becomes clear. Honestly. So, can we leave it there?

But, structure, now that's seriously important. And you can't just do what works for you. You have to do what works for the story.

Your story must have a shape.
That's what structure is. That article that wasn't about structure did start to talk about it  -  the three act / five act stuff. And I remember long ago attempting to be taught about short stories and learning that you had to have a conflict, then an obstacle, then another obstacle, then a bigger obstacle, and then (if you had time) a really massive obstacle which seemed insurmountable, and then a resolution. Obviously.

Well, stuff that, frankly. Have as many obstacles as you like: obstacles create reader motivation and story-pull, not structure. That's the driving force, not the shape of the road. The shape of the road is important, but it's not as important as the driving force. [Though, as with roads, if you get a good shape, it helps the driving force.]

Structure is shape. 
I know I've had two glasses of wine this evening but I see shapes in stories. The shapes are spikes and curves. No squares. And they have direction, left to right. And though they move up and down (probably those are the obstacles getting in the way) they move upwards overall. And they always end way higher than when they started. But the last movement is downwards, after the climax, the outlet of breath, the sigh of relief.


Below, you will see why I'm not an artist. It is my shape-based impression of three stories:

The first one is Fleshmarket. Note the seriously major opening  -  that's the shocking surgery-without-anaesthetic scene, which causes people to faint; then we gear down (relatively) and then we gear up in stages towards the climax. And breathe out for the resolution, wiping away a tear.

The second one is Deathwatch  -  no shocking opening, just a build-up of suspense until the big climax and, again, the release and wiping of ubiquitous tear. [I do like the odd tear at some point, preferably near the end.]

The third one is a totally crappy structure such as I would never write. No tension, no shape, no driving force towards the end, either  -  just three boring car-chases. No wiping away of tear at the end, no outbreath of loveliness.

Talking of breath, breathing describes another form of structure: chapter structure. 
There are two ways of structuring your chapters, breathwise. Generally you want a mixture and the precise choice at any given moment depends on the pace and feeling you are trying to create.

Let me explain. [Thank God for that, I hear you say. What the hell is she wittering about now?] See, we breathe in and out. [You're still with me?] We breathe in before we breathe out, not the other way round. In, out. Not out, in. We breathe in when we're expecting something, getting ready for something, including something scary or dramatic. We breathe in before speaking, before jumping into water, before eating, before screaming, before dying. We breathe out when we've done those things. We breathe out at the end of something. So, if you end a chapter on a knife-edge, before the dramatic thing has happened, it's like ending after an in-breath, in other words mid-breath   -  and the reader cannot stop there: the reader must read on, in order to breathe out, to finish. So you drag the reader along. Whereas, when you end the chapter after the thing has happened, the reader can relax.

And the point is this [and it is the WHOLE point about writing]:
You, the author, god in your own world, get to control the reader's breath. Because sometimes you want your reader to relax and sometimes you don't.

How cool is that? To be able to control someone's breathing? That is power indeed.

Another thing about shape:
Of course, we also have to feel that the story is a rounded whole, however many spikes and peaks and troughs and prickly sharp bits there are. The whole thing has to feel complete, like an in- and out-breath, like a circle. So, beginning/middle/end, three acts of five, symphony or concerto (because music loves these shapes and structures too), it really doesn't matter  -  just as long as you know what shape you're creating and why, and as long as you are in control.

And then there are arcs.

You've probably heard of story arcs? Well, see, shape again. Told you. You can picture your stories like arcs, if you like. But I prefer spikes. What you could do is imagine an arc gently curving over those spikes  -  comes to the same thing: overall shape of the story, and the shape must be going upwards. A symmetrical arc would be like that boring car-chase story 3. 


Now I guess I'd better get to work on that storyboard. Because I must remember that finding it was a sign that I am supposed to be working out a new novel. Thing is, though: a storyboard doesn't really help with shape [or mine doesn't]: that's something you just have to feel. Feel yourself draw the reader upwards; feel where the points of highest drama should come; don't peak too early; remember your breathing.

Before you go back to your own storyboards, I thought you might like to see my desk, with the storyboard positioned above it. Until yesterday I had lovely glass shelves above my desk but, because of that For Saleness thing, I had to take them down and polyfilla the walls [and, er, cover the polyfilla with pictures]. Funny thing is, though: if I hadn't taken them down, I couldn't have put the storyboard up there. Clearly, then, a sign.

And then I thought you might like another picture:

Nothing to do with signs or storyboards, but very sweet. Because I'd like you to finish this lesson with an out-breath, a finishing, a resolution. But for goodness' sake, there's no need to wipe away a tear. It's just the Halloween chocolate judge, his dog, and a picnic. 

BIG MISTAKE 3: OVER-WRITING

Thing about writers is we're passionate about words. (If you're not, bugger off, please).

Trouble with being passionate about words is we sometimes don't know when to rein in our passion. I admit that I'm guilty of this quite often. There are people in my life who do their best to stop me, and very grateful I am to them.

They are, in no particular order:

• my husband - "Shut up: you're banging on."
• my editor - "OTT" / "suggest omit?"
• my internal editor - "do you really need both those descriptions you're so horribly proud of? Would you consider killing one of the babies? No? Well, I'll do it for you and it won't be pretty."

Personally, I blame it on primary school teachers. (With all respect to them for the otherwise wonderful job they do and all the nasty things they mop up.) See, when kids start to write stories, they're told to use adjectives, and adverbs, and detail, and the five senses; and then they get onto similes and metaphors and other devices. Whenever children use these techniques, they get praised. So they use more. And more. Some children don't and they don't get praise, so they fade into the background and become the ones who don't consider themselves writers. Meanwhile Arabella and George have their stories read out in class to demonstrate the richness of their language and the vividness of their imaginations. And so Arabella and George gorge on more and more adjectives and clever-clever literary devices and get carried away into some kind of ecstasy as they sit in their teenage rooms and pour their hearts out into their diaries by moonlight.

Other kids are asleep, but Arabella and George are floating on moonbeams and diving into liquid worlds and sherbet dreams and the parts of their brains that are good with words become passionate about words and lo and behold, two hopeful writers are emerging.

Thing is, no one tells them to stop. No one tells them that just because an adjective is beautiful, five adjectives are not necessarily five times as beautiful. No one tells them that words are valuable, that they need to be chosen perfectly, that effort goes into the positioning of each word, and, crucially, its removal if it is not the absolute best one for the job.

So, grown-up now, Arabella and George begin to write novels. They write for themselves, because they must be true to their souls. They put everything into their oeuvres, their whole beings, all the power of language that they can muster. They read their work aloud to themselves, over and over again. They make themselves cry and shiver with the piercing anguish of their prose.

One day, they are ready to send their oeuvres off to publishers. They visit a well-known blog, called Help! I Need a Publisher! - though, in fact, they believe that they should really be on a blog called "Help! I'm a Publisher and I Really Need You, You Fabulous Writer!" And they follow all the stunning advice about covering letters and synopses and sample chapters and tailoring the submission properly to the right publisher. They don't even include any toffee, or glitter, or naked photos of themselves, though George is tempted because he has a kind of Byronic air of which he is more than faintly proud.

And they are rejected. Because you can bet your bottom dollar that their work is over-written. Thing is that A & G, potentially talented though they may be, are totally up themselves with the beauty of their prose and they have forgotten that this is not about them: it's about the story / work / book /reader. Of course, we must write from the heart and I would never advise selling out at the expense of the quality of your writing - though you may earn more if you do - but if you put yourself and the pleasure YOU derive from your own words above the work itself and the pleasure the reader will take from it then you may as well talk under water.

Help! How do I know if I'm doing this horrible over-writing thing?
So far, I've suggested a cause and a result, and you'll have gleaned something general about what over-writing is, but I haven't shown you how to spot it in your own work. It's easier to spot in others' work, because it's damned irritating. It's like seeing someone a bit over-dressed for the occasion - you know, when someone has just gone that little bit too far to show off the gorgeous legs and Manolo Blahniks when all we're doing is digging a ditch; or perhaps like wearing two diamond necklaces - very vulgar, dahling. It's showing off, preening, and no one responds well to it. When we find over-writing in someone else's work, we may mutter under our breath, "Ok, ok, you really fancy yourself, don't you?" and it gets in the way of the story that we were trying to read.

And this is the main point about over-writing: it gets in the way. It ends up hiding the true beauty underneath, covering it with glitz and frills.

So, on the basis that you are looking carefully at every word you use, because I know you are, here are the questions I think you should ask yourself when checking your work for over-writing. Ask yourself these things especially when it's a piece of description, high emotion, or when you are feeling particularly proud of yourself:

• have I paced the surrounding sentences so that this bit has enough space to work? So, if my gem is surrounded by loads of other gems, is it going to be noticed? No? So, bin some gems. Give the purple sentence some space. You can't see purple on a background of purple
• have I said the same thing twice? (I do this a lot. I even do it quite often.) Or if not exactly the same then is half my description more powerful than the other half?
  
• have I used three adjectives where one (or a different phrase altogether) would have worked harder and maybe ended up being more meaningful?
  
• is this in fact a bit of action where the reader doesn't want to be held back by description anyway? Will the reader be tempted to skip to the action?
  
• is this actually beautiful or is it in fact absurdly flowery? Am I being like a child who thinks that My Little Bride Pony is genuinely tasteful? Am I being greedy and deluded?
  
• if it is genuinely beautiful, is it in keeping with the rest of the work / section? Am I "in voice"?
  
• have I been guilty of "showing, not telling"? (This is often over-used as a crit - sometimes, telling is the right thing to do, but only if it's the right thing to do. I've written about it here and here.)
• have I overdone the adverbs? Especially in dialogue tags - eg. "she said, resignedly" (because it would be much better and more skilful if you showed in other ways that the person spoke resignedly - otherwise [think about it] the reader won't know how to read it until after reading it and getting to your adverb, by which time [if you're a crappy writer] the reader will have read it excitedly or poignantly or something quite differently.
• if I cut this paragraph by 25% would it be even better? (Yes, it would, trust me.)

One trouble is: over-writing is all relative. What's beautiful prose to someone is self-indulgence to another. You have to work out where you want to be on the spectrum. Michel Faber is my writing hero - his prose is gorgeous, his imagination extreme and his vocabulary and imagery rich and rolling, yet he thinks about every word (or he seems to) and every word works. You have to read every word because there are clues everywhere and you can't afford to miss them. That's how I'd love to write. But everyone's different and I'm not saying other styles aren't just as valuable. Just make sure you're clear about what you want and whether your readers want the same.

I'm currently going through my next novel, Wasted, with my ruthless internal editor's hat on. The novel is done and dusted and my editor wants me to release it for copy-editing, but I'm convinced there are more things wrong with it. One of the things I'm looking for, because I tend to get carried away, is over-writing.

I thought I'd give you three extracts that I picked up and thought about at length:

1. "Their heads tell them that this is fake, ordinary, or has a boring explanation - Farantella is ill or messing around with them."

There's an example of "the cliché of three": fake, ordinary, boring. I realised that ordinary and boring are too similar to be useful, so I changed it to, "Their heads tell them that this is fake, or has an ordinary explanation." No frills, no fancy stuff. No showing off.

2. "For they both feel it: that there is something heavy in the caravan, something thickening the air, a chill breath of strangeness."

This one I haven't finished with. It feels over-written, though it occurs at a moment where I am wanting the reader to pause and savour the atmosphere. But it's that "cliché of three" again, and I'm not sure I'm happy. I'll have to think about it. It may get to stay. Or it may not. I'd rather think of something with one or two phrases, otherwise it looks as though I'm struggling to find the right phrase.

3. "Soon, but not very soon, disentangled but still with the blush of him hot on her skin, Jess goes into her house and smiles goodbye to Jack, standing there, watching her."

This gets to stay. This baby lives. Jack and Jess are passionately in love and every touch is almost unbearably electric. I need to show this, even though I have not described their kiss. I am "showing" the effects of the kiss, the parting of their skin, rather than "telling" you about the kiss. (Frankly, showing and not telling with kissing is often preferable - the imagination can fill in the details without feeling as though the author is being a voyeur ...) So, I judge it not over-written but strong. You may disagree! Of course, all this is about context, and you haven't seen the contexts, but I wanted to show you a little of how I go about trying to be ruthless about over-writing. And sometimes failing.

Do remember that in the end you have to judge this yourself. Some genres require and tolerate greater or lesser levels of prose; different books and different topics require a different treatment.

For example, my first novel, Mondays are Red, is heavily loaded with description, which in a different context you might call over-writing. But it shows a boy waking from a coma, hugely disorientated and with an acquired and exaggerated version of the sensory condition, synaesthesia. So, you get pretty over-the-top description and a deliberately confusing multi-sensory layering - it's a book you either love or hate, depending on whether you can let yourself go with the strange descriptions. Whereas Wasted has whole pages with virtually no adjectives and adverbs at all, completely pared back, interspersed with the occasional sentence suddenly rich in description. The intention there is that you will notice the description much more starkly, because it will stand out.

It's that thing about not being able to see purple against a purple background.

But, whatever you're writing and whoever your reader, it is worth considering whether you can apply these adages to your work:

Less is often more
Flowery is not good - delicately floral is.
Over-writing is in the eye of the beholder - and you do care about your beholder
It requires much greater skill to say something in a few words than in many

And finally, that old chestnut:

If in doubt, leave it out.

If you apply that last one correctly you cannot be guilty of over-writing. It's the most important task of the internal editor: to ensure that every word works and earns its place.

Finally, finally, newbies to this blog, or people with duff memories like mine, may be wondering what Big Mistake 1 and Big Mistake 2 were. They were, respectively, Voice and Pace. And the greatest of these is voice.

Voice defines you and defines your book. It's the hardest thing to teach. Compared to voice, over-writing is a complete doddle. So, no excuses now and no pressure. Go and seek out your over-written passages and where you find them, cut them out. And watch how something much stronger appears.