SIX SENTENCE SUNDAY

It's been a few weeks since I've played Six Sentence Sunday and I've missed it, so here's a clip on the subject of character from my new book for writers.
 

To come alive on the page, your hero and heroine must be more than two-dimensional cardboard cut-outs that you move around the stage. You should not be asking yourself “what can I make them do next”. If your characters are blood-and-bones, heart-and-soul real, you will know what they would do, just as you instinctively know what someone close to you would do in any given circumstance.

You may hear authors talking about characters who “take over” the story. That is not because the author is not in control of her characters, but because she has created three-dimensional, living, breathing people, men and women she knows so well that her writing brain is flying ahead of her fingers on the keyboard.

To truly know your characters you must understand not just what they look like, where they went to school, what they do for a living but see them living in their own world, having a life before you write Chapter One.

Here's a link to download to your Kindle.

Liz Fielding's Little Book of Writing Romance

Some of you may have noticed the "Coming Soon" title on the sidebar of my blog. Not quite as "soon" as I'd hoped, alas.

I was planning to launch Liz Fielding's Little Book of Writing Romance as the New Year dawned - to go with all those New Year resolutions - but I'm beginning to discover the frustrations of being a publisher.
It's not all done once the author has written The End.

It is, however, getting closer.
Tomorrow I should have the production proofs and, hopefully, if all is well, it won't be long after that before the book will be downloaded onto eBook platforms and available for download to your eBook, phone, iPad or PC.

So, what it is?

My Little Book of Writing Romance is, basically, a primer. A beginner's book of writing romance. The book I wish I'd had when I was a new, know-nothing writer hoping to be published by Mills and Boon.

There were very few books about how-to write back then. There was no internet where you could go for advice, no opportunity to chat to authors, take a class. (Now I'm sounding like the Ancient Novelist, but honestly, it wasn't that long ago!)

When I first put pen to paper (and it was a real pen and real paper) and wrote the first books that were rejected, I was on my own.

I wrote three whole books — every word of 55,000 words — before I picked up on the fact that I only had to send three chapters for them to know it was tosh. I don’t regret that. Finishing a book is a huge step forward and each one was a huge learning experience.

The only feedback I had was from the editor who read my efforts. I still have the letters – they are very precious to me, even the one that said my efforts were a little “wooden”. Kindly editors pointed me in the direction of writers I should read — Sara Craven, Elizabeth Oldfield — and said they would read my next effort, but there was no solid advice (it wasn't their job to teach me how to write).

I learned by reading, by practice (you learn a lot writing three books). I taught myself to be a writer. I also learned that I wanted it badly enough to keep doing it. There is a word for that. Bloodymindedness?

It’s more than twenty years since I received “the call” on a sunny summer afternoon.
Since then, I’ve published more than sixty books, won awards and had a wonderful career and it's time to pay it forward to a new generation.
I started this year with my involvement in Mills and Boon's New Voices competition and that inspired me to put together some of the stuff I've learned over the years.
Liz Fielding’s Little Book of Writing Romance is a straightforward, no-nonsense book that helps the new writer to translate the story in her head into the written word.

How to start. How to grab your reader on the first page, tackle conflict, dig deep for emotion. How to give your reader a hero and heroine who had a life before your book begins, who are meant to be together — who don’t just fall in love because you put them together in a book — and who your reader can imagine having a life after they read the last page.

Real people, taking the journey of their lives.

It's nearly there.  Another week. (Fingers firmly crossed!)

Leave a comment telling me why you'd like a copy - I've copies for five lucky readers. The dipping hat will come out next Sunday evening.

A BUSMAN'S HOLIDAY

What do writer's do when they take a day off? Go on a writing course, what else?

I am very fortunate in that I live close to the amazing crime writer, Sally Spedding - stories to raise the hair on the back on your neck - and she recently ran a three day course on Writing Crime with a Difference at the lovely on Huguenot mansion, Glynhir, which is a couple of miles down the road.

Why crime?

Writers do need to stretch themselves, give the imagination a workout, from time to time. And I love reading crime, watch crime drama on the television and - like every other writer I know - I have a book in my bottom drawer that keeps calling to me. So I gave it day out.

There were ten of us including the French Consul, a criminal psychologist, a criminal lawyer and some fabulously talented writers who could write wonderful stuff at the drop of a hat. That's something published writers never have to do. Write something and then read it aloud to total strangers. Something I have never done, since I never belonged to a writing group, or had a crit partner before I was published. Deeply, deeply, scary.

I had to produce my hero and his Nemesis - and have them confront each other. I had to write about the motivation of two of my characters. And I had to write a prologue.

This was difficult. My idea of crime writing is more Janet Evanovitch than P D James and the opening of my book is very "women's fiction", but there is a crime in the present that is fired by something dark and horrible that happened in the past. And wow. Suddenly I was thinking about my story on a whole new level. The prologue I wrote was rubbish, but I was there at that moment in the past and it is so perfect start for the story that I'm bubbling with enthusiasm again.

And if any of you write crime and need someone to read your novel, Sally charges a very reasonable £100 for a detailed critique of a full length ms. You can get in touch with her via her website.