Hi everyone,

I've just joined as a trial member, having had this site recommended to me by another writer. As my profile says, I'm a 25-year-old freelance journalist and Learning Support Assistant writing my first novel. I've enjoyed creative writing since childhood. As I got older and further on in my education, the focus switched to how to make money from my writing (hence the journalism).

So far, I've had a smattering of advice from a published writer, a smattering of very honest advice from family, and attended a course run by Faber on the process of submitting work for publication. All these have been useful in their own way.

For many years I had ideas about certain themes I wanted to explore in a novel and it has taken a lot of time and many aborted attempts to figure out a way of framing an actual strong plot around those themes. I'm hopeful that I have finally cracked it at last. The reason I want to write is genuine enjoyment and a genuine belief that I can write well (this sounds arrogant but there are many other things which I can't do well - writing is as much a case of saving me from what I'm bad at as doing what I am good at).

My main problem as far as writing is concerned is gluing the joins. I can write good scenes/fragments but find it hard to thread them together and work out how to plausibly get from A to B to C.

The other problem that I've identified through feedback is that patches of my character description feel journalistic and overdone. I am used to profiling people in newspapers and magazines, where the object is to cram info about someone's life and career into a short piece, rather than to develop the character over many pages. My dad commented: "I feel as though I know everything there is to know about this character after one paragraph of description. There's too much loading the dice." I'm not sure how one overcomes this and would be interested to hear if other journos face a similar issue.

Finally, I've done quite a lot of looking into literary agents but I'd be interested to know if anyone knows of any which are particularly strong on LGB-themed fiction.

Thanks for reading! I look forward to getting started on the boards.

Hi, Maxine, and welcome to WriteWords.

Think of it as a marathon, rather than a sprint, and I'm sure - as you get feedback on your work and critique the work of your peers - you'll iron out the bugs in your writing.

If you need any help in navigating the site just give us a shout.


- NaomiM

Finally, I've done quite a lot of looking into literary agents but I'd be interested to know if anyone knows of any which are particularly strong on LGB-themed fiction.

You could try looking at who represents LGB-themed authors.

I can write good scenes/fragments but find it hard to thread them together and work out how to plausibly get from A to B to C.

Yes, I know several aspiring writers who are journalists who find this a hard part of the transition to writing longer fiction. How much do you think of those scenes in terms of where they're trying to get to? Not just an interesting/moving/resonant/comical moment, but something which means that the characters start, emotionally and practically in one place, and end up somewhere else?

One exercise I make students do is to think of the first five chapters of their novel, and write three sentences, max, about where the character starts, what happens, and where they end. And then, obviously, the next chapter starts there, and moves on. 'This chapter introduces X' won't do, because nothing happens. Obviously we do need introducing to characters, and places, and so on, but it always needs to be in the context of action: people doing things for reasons. If you've got scenes you're pleased with, then can they fit into this framework, so that they're part of a bigger story of what happens? You'll probably find that you to-and-fro between trying to work out how a scene you've imagined vividly can fit, and realising what the framework needs, and working out the scene which will embody it in particular, characteristic actions and settings.

The other problem that I've identified through feedback is that patches of my character description feel journalistic and overdone. I am used to profiling people in newspapers and magazines, where the object is to cram info about someone's life and career into a short piece, rather than to develop the character over many pages.

Does it help to remember that the basic motor of fiction is character-in-action? Those character profiles are terribly useful for you, but they're not what powers a novel. What propels the novel is what their nature makes them do: what they want, what they do to get it, what gets in the way, what the fallout is from that conflict. (And if you're thinking that this sounds awfully like the chapter-making exercise above, you'd be right...) We get to know a character in a novel by what they do and say, how they think about what happens and other people, how they react to events. In principle you don't ever need to tell us anything, explicitly about a character, but only show us how they act and think in that moment of the story...

Emma

<Added>

Sorry! MEant to say, welcome to WW!

My main problem as far as writing is concerned is gluing the joins. I can write good scenes/fragments but find it hard to thread them together and work out how to plausibly get from A to B to C.

Hi Maxine, welcome to WW. I have been struggling with exactly the same problem as I work on my first serious attempt at a novel. I have read 2 very helpful books recently, that are giving me approaches to gluing the scenes together. One is Solutions for Novelists. By Sol Stein; chapter one especially (but the whole book is very readable), the second is Plot & Structure by James Scott Bell. There is an enormous amount of helpful information in the latter, but chapter 10, entitled Plotting Systems, offers a wealth of systems, divided into 2 groups. There are those for the NOPs, No Outline People, and those for the Ops, (Outline People). I’m trying the OP Index Card System at the moment....

One exercise I make students do is to think of the first five chapters of their novel, and write three sentences, max, about where the character starts, what happens, and where they end. And then, obviously, the next chapter starts there, and moves on. 'This chapter introduces X' won't do, because nothing happens. Obviously we do need introducing to characters, and places, and so on, but it always needs to be in the context of action: people doing things for reasons. If you've got scenes you're pleased with, then can they fit into this framework, so that they're part of a bigger story of what happens? You'll probably find that you to-and-fro between trying to work out how a scene you've imagined vividly can fit, and realising what the framework needs, and working out the scene which will embody it in particular, characteristic actions and settings.

Emma I found this really helpful. Thank you.

Good luck

Cathy

Also worth bearing in mind that you can use the reader's own imagination to fill in the gaps, so often less is more.

Hi Maxine

On the characterisation point, I think a lot of writers aim to smuggle description unto the reader almost without the reader noticing. It's very effective when done well. As way of an example, there's a bit in Anna Karenina when Tolstoy's showing us how intensely irritated Vronsky is by everything Karenin does, even by the way he walks, 'swinging his whole pelvis and his blunt feet'. We're so caught up in the possibility of a face-off between the lover and cuckold that we don't notice how vividly Tolstoy's smuggled an image of Karenin into our mind.

Thanks everyone, especially Emma, for your advice. The thing about remembering to think of the novel as a series of actions is something I've heard before, in terms of a lot of novels being rejected because they are simply ruminations or descriptions with no recognisable story. It's something I've sought to avoid but it's more difficult when your plots are more emotion and character-led than "thing"-led, eg not a thriller or suchlike.
The worry about character description being journalistic specifically came about because I was looking at a particular segment in my novel (first person) in which the character describes her friend and I realised it looked like a cross between a Wikipedia entry and a newspaper profile. I've gone through and cut out the information that doesn't advance the plot. It was only a few lines but I think/hope it's makes a lot of difference. Thinking about the tone and style I'd use when describing a close friend (as opposed to writing a journalistic article) has helped too.

As for sequencing....the difficulty is hard to describe. Basically I know the outline of what I want the characters to achieve/do but I find it hard to work out how exactly they get to that point.