The advice I hold on to is; let it run free in the first draft and tame it in the edits! And; a good book is made in the editing process. Can't remember where I got that from, but I think it's true, however much I hate editing!
Jxx

Wasn't it Trewin who said in that interview,

'books are not written, they are rewritten'?

And Pratchett

'The first draft is us writing the book for ourselves'.

they are 2 nuggets i've acquired this week

Two things I've found useful:

Telling detail - those little particulars that bring a character or place to life. One example I spotted recently was how it looked like a mother was dislocating the baby's arm to bend it into a woollen jacket. Or something like that, I haven't got the book here. It was Trezza Azzopardi and she does this sort of thing to perfection.

Character motivation - for every single thing that any character says or does, especially when they are reacting to extreme circumstances, it's worth asking: would this person really act like that in this situation?

Hope that makes sense, Rod.

Rod's makes a good point in his last one. One potental trap in using the first person is having the character go on an emotional roller coaster within the single scene.

I agree with almost everything others have said (though I often fail to live up to it - especially 'beginning near the end' and excising adjectives and adverbs.

But the one thing I can't agree with is Naomi's comment (sorry, Naomi!):

Unless you are aiming at literary fiction the writing should be invisible; it should only convey the story, not the words.

For me, as both reader and writer, it's always as much about the way the words are put together as it is about (i) the characters or (ii) the story (in that order!). And I don't see why that has to be confined to so-called 'lit fic'. 'Even' (eek!) in a crime thriller, a comedy or a romance, words which are clever and give pleasure in themselves are a big point of any book, for me.

I agree very much with the thing about enjoying it. Readers won't if you don't. And most of all I think I agree with Cherys's thing about avoiding 'off-the-peg' writing - a great way of putting it! I try to have my cliche alarm constantly set, and I always try to ask myself 'is there a less boring way of saying that'?

Rosy x

The only excuse I have, Rosy, is I've been reading Sebastian Barry (first The Secret Scripture, and now The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty) and if ever there was a writers who's prose begged to be read twice it's his, first for the story, and second to savour the choice and arrangement of the words, but it does not make for easy reading, and I would certainly trip up over such prose if any part of it were picked up and plonked in a commercial novel. It's the virtual writer waving his arms at the reader saying look at me, aren't I clever. To which the reader might reply, sure you are, now lets see you do it for the rest of the 80K words in the novel.

It's all a matter of taste, isn't it, I guess? Sometimes there are clever-clever writers who just annoy me. They just don't happen to do it for me. But sometimes there are writers who just make their prose sing and adnce and it's a delight - and it can be just as true in so-called 'commerial' fic, I think.

R x

For me, the key thing is that you have to find your own way to your own voice. To do that, I believe you have to hold the reins of two beasts often pulling in opposite directions: what is perceived to be good practice and what your instinct tells you to do. So, on the one hand, listen closely to advice from anyone who's further up the path than you, but on the other, keep it in mind that there are lots of myths around writing. (Believe me, some of these myths are so powerful that even if you see through them you won't dare even mention them in public!)

And the other thing I'd say is another two-beast situation: get in as close to the emotion of your book as you can while also making it story-able. What I mean is that it's all too easy for a writer to do the opposite: create a scene that's story-effective enough but leaves the reader to invest the emotion in it. Fiction, for me, is all about emotion and not just at the climax: in every scene. But I do think it's the writer's job to access it for the reader, then translate into a story that grips.

Terry

One of the most useful tips I got from Sol Stein: make your dialogue oblique wherever possible. It keeps it alive and characterful. In other words, if one character says:
'What's the weather like today?'
- the other might answer:
'My gums ache. They always ache in spring.'
Er, well, hope you see what I mean.
The other one, also from Sol, is to be continually aware of your reader and what he/she needs.
Susiex

<Added>

And then take the reader somewhere they're not expecting to go.

make your dialogue oblique wherever possible

Good one, Susie. Reminds me of one agent's phrase, cast against poor dialogue 'he's leading the witness, m'lord'.

Here's a rule of thumb that is open to interpretation, but is mainly aimed at those who choose to experiment with the conventions of the novel:

"If you have to explain it, it's not working."

And a more obvious one, but still often ignored: write a lot. I can't think of any other art form where so many proponents do so little of the actual art. Yet still expect to master it. The thing with doing more of it is it's the only way to have it coming out of your fingertips as second nature. And it's that second nature that looks like magic to the reader. Because what practice does is help you by-pass the normally obstructive inner voice which tells you how to do it laboriously, step by step, which results in wooden prose and obvious dialogue, into something much more fluid and unpredictable.

An analogy for me is football. I played the game for many years; always had a ball at my feet. A point came when during a game I could run down the wing, say, and not think but feel how and when to kick, so the ball would bend into the space the centre-forward's head would be in five seconds' time . . . to try thinking out the process would take too long. Well, one's thinking process wouldn't even believe it possible, because there are too many variables to compute.

That 'oblique' dialogue is a good example of the same effect in writing. It's just that I believe the obliqueness which delights the reader will only come when a writer has practised so much that her mind can jump to it naturally and in flow.


<Added>

Please excuse that mangled sentence at the end of the first paragraph - I obviously need to practice more!

Terry, there's no better advice anywhere that your last post.

Thanks, Susannah. I recall we had a very productive dialogue about fragments a while back.