How are you getting on ? Well ? Not well ? Fast ? Slowly ? Given up ? No shame or blame whatsoever but it would be interesting to know if you are continuing and feeling confident or not. So do send in a progress report to me - mail@susan-hill.com. I will try and address any particular problems if I can.

Dialogue. Nothing better than good, nothing worse than bad. The first thing I have to comment on in 90% of manuscripts by aspiring novelists that I read is the dialogue - it is bad.

Some people can just do it. They are blessed with a good ear for dialogue as others are blessed with perfect pitch. If you have it, you thank God for it because if you do not, it is very very hard to acquire. But you can get better. How ? This really is something you can and must work on. Read. Read, read, read and read again. Always my mantra but I mean it even more here. Read novelists who write good dialogue. Many a good plot is ruined by bad dialogue. Some crime writers are briliant a dialogue. Some people who write light comedy are. It would be easy to say that good dialogue is god because it is 'like people really talk.' But it is only a version of that. People talk sloppily, they talk rubbish, they use cliches, they ramble on about nothing, they use code and shorthand and slang, they repeat themselves. Tape the average conversation and reproduce it faithfully and you would have absolutely awful dialogue for a novel. The trick is to make it sound as if this is how people talk but to be far more economical, cut out the repetitions and the hesitations, the witterings. What we are happy to listen to as we chat is nmot the stuff we wish to read in print.

Read novels, yes. But even more, read playscripts and screenplays. If yo want to know how to do it, read the plays of David Hare. Read Racing Demon. That is how people talk in ordinary life, it is convincing and true, yet it is NOT how they talk.It is tighter, tauter, each phrase tells, the humour is sharper, the images more dramatic.

Good screenplays will teach you everything about how to write good dialogue because in a film, other than visual effects, dialogue is all there is and you cannot hide behind well-written description. Read the screenplay of Notting Hill or Oceans Eleven if you want to know how to write dialogue. (Notice I am not recommending Art Films.) The best Hollywood scriptwriters write the greatest dialogue. It coaxes out the best in even so-so actors. Read Ian Fleming. Read John le Carre. Read Graham Greene. All masters of dialogue.

Do not sit listening to people and consciously taking down whole conversations but do listen out for those great over-heards, the non-seqs. the inconsequentially hilarious remarks. My favourite over-heard ever came when I was writing in the cafe attached to a garden centre. Two women came and sat down, obviously disappointed in the plants available. One said she just couldn`t find the sort of thing she liked. She had hoped, for example, to be able fill out her hanging baskets with some Bizzy Lizzies.

The conversation then went on.

'Oh, you don`t want Bizzy Lizzies.'

'Don`t I ? Why don`t I ?'

'Because there`s nowt artistic about a Bizzy Lizzie.'

They went chattering on about nothing after that gem. A lot of people write novels in which people chatter on about nothing, neither revealing their characters or moving the story on.

I still believe that an ear for dialogue is something you are born with - but, as with good make-up skilfully applied and the art of cosmetic surgery, there is an awful lot you can do to improve upon nature.

 

 

 

 

I mean 'continue' with what  I am writing at the moment, not continue writing at all.

I can only tell you how I know. How I have always known. There may be other ways and I may be doing some teaching of egg-sucking to grandmothers here, so forgive me if I am stating what you all know.

I have recently - post-Christmas - started 2 new books. One is long, a full-length crime novel (not a Simon Serrailler), the other is shorter and I am not entirely sure what it is exactly. I had been thinking about the first for over a year and made a lot of notes - and making notes is important. I have often said I`d rather lose an entire finished Mss. than the working notebook.

The second book has some elements which have been floating round for a long time but is mainly quite new and unscheduled, as it were.

The first book has ground to a halt for now. It just isn`t right. I don`t know why, but I know. I know because I have to drag myself to it and once there I don`t want to continue, I`ll go and change the kitten liter tray rather than continue.

The second, I cannot wait to get to and once I am writing it, I want to go on. I have a lovely thump of excitement in my stomach when I remember that I have started it, when I wake up, when I realise I can go back to it once I have emptied the kitten litter tray.

I have no idea at ALL why one is working and the other isn`t but my point is that you know you should go on with what you are writing when it excites you, you can`t wait to go back to it and it is going, or so you think anyway, really well.

And when a particular book does not attract you back,when you`d do anything rather than start again, when the whole thing is just draggy...then it`s time to set it aside, even if for the time being only.  Gut feeling. The book itself will tell you. Listen to it.

This is not the same as just procrastinating. Not the same as 'don`t want to work at all.' This is the thing you are working on telling you, if you listen to it.

It is probably the same thing my doctor sometimes says 'Listen to the patient and they will tell you what is wrong.' 

Listen to your book.

I`ll begin by telling you that my own second novel was a total disaster. I had published my first - apprentice work but not bad - when I was 19 and it got a lot of attention for that reason. Then came the second. It was a dire novel. It got no attention at all and it died. I wrote the next which was turned down. I remember nothing about it but I`m sure they were right. It was 6 years before I started all over again, having found my style and a way of writing which worked, in the meantime and so began the long haul back. But it was a new long haul. No quarter given.

Nothing much has changed since 1963 though everyone assumes it is much harder. But second novels remain hard. Hard to write. Harder still if there has been success/hype the first time. They are all waiting to pounce now. 'Follow that' they say, arms folded, expressions and challenging. If the first novel has done reasonably well - i.e. sold more than 1,000 copies, been reviewed a bit and the second is as good or better, publishers will often - not always but often - take another punt. If the first has not done well - and many first novels sell fewer than 1,000  and indeed, fewer than 500 copies - and the second is not stunningly good, the publishers will not take another risk. It is always said that nowadays they are only in it to make money and are answerable primarily to their finance people. Yes indeed. THEY ALWAYS WERE. 

So one swallow and all that. If you have had your first novel published you may think you are home and dry and have a career ahead of you. Not so. You need to make your second book much, much, much better than your first. And so on and so on. Every book has to make its way, there is no automatic right to have a novel published just because you have already done so once. 

This is going to be the hardest year on the street for publishers for a very long time.  It will be even tougher to have your book taken on, first novel, second, fifty second.

Advice ? Sure. Make it as good as you can and then drop everything and make it 1,000 times better. Because publishers will still be hungry for the best, the most exciting, the most promising fiction. Perhaps even hungrier. But no one is taking prisoners.

Do you have to have one ? Do you really, really need one ? What exactly do they do ? Is it all just a rip-off ? Many of you on the course will have your own opinions and possibly experiences too and you may think this is not a post you need bother with. Up to you of course but I am sure it is one worth writing and you may know nothing about the subject. You will certainly have heard that most major and many smaller publishers will not read manuscripts which do not come via an agent. I think this is a total disgrace. They are cutting their own costs by not employing people to read the UMs ( Unsolicited manuscripts - I dislike the  term 'slush pile.') but passing the financial buck so that agents will have to. Of course there are a lot of rubbish UMs. But gold is found too.

So, the first reason for trying to find an agent to employ- and you can use the word 'employ' here, for that is just what you will be doing -is to get your book read. One of the goalposts has just been moved back a bit, that`s all.

But apart from getting an agent to read your work, and, you hope, like it well enough to take you on and submit it to publishers, what is the point ?

Let`s go back before we move forward. This first goalpost is very important. If you have an agent and your agent is any good, they will have a reputation, publishers will take them seriously and trust their judgment. They may not always agree with them or buy what they offer but they know agents will not send out complete junk. The better your agent, the starrier the name of their firm, the bigger their reputation ought to be. Ought to be. Some small agents whose names you never see in the gossip columns and the Trade Press chatter, are quietly among the best. They all network and have their contacts but they do not all do it in the public eye and at all the best parties. Smart ain`t always best though it is generally the most expensive and has the sharpest suits.

Your reputation to grow will start at the moment you get an agent. You have already got onto the most important rung of the ladder. (Though submitting via an agent is NOT the only way. More of this later.)

What is an agent for after this ?

They are on your side. They fight your corner. They get you the best deal. They should tell it as it is. They know when to push for more and when to stop and accept. They look into your contract - every boring, small-print line and clause and sub-clause of it,. It is their job and arguably their most important one -to make sure you are not cheated but are given a fair deal on every count, especially on all those little details you do not understand and those events which may never come to pass but are covered just in case.

They keep publishers on their toes. They should make sure you are not dumped, dropped on, ignored, given no attention by publicity and marketing or in a lot of other ways, published badly or under-published. They will be a lot better at arguing with a publisher, if an argument should be necessary, than you will be. They are like a good defence counsel and a good defence counsel is always on the client`s side but knows when to settle.

They try to sell your book to foreign publishers and they know which and which not to submit your book to. They sort out the very varyied and complex foreign contractual stuff and other things like tax witholding. They try to sell film and tv and other media rights, large print and audio book rights and deal increasingly with digital matters.

They chase payments for you - a hundred times a week. They invoice for your VAT if you are registered.

I could go on. And this is only the business side. I have had the same agent for over 35 years and she has been the constant factor, the friend in my corner,  the one who makes me see sense and climb down, the one whose judgment I trust more than that of anyone else, who looks after the detail in a way I should but don`t and is overall my prop and stay. Your aim should be to forge such a relationship with an agent. It is still possible, though of course agents, like everyone else, move, change, go to live in Tasmania or retire.

Can you do without one ? YES

And then again, NO.

You can certainly start without one. Long Barn Books, my own small publishing company, reads far more mss from authors than from agents.  But once we take a book on and especially if I am pretty sure the author is going to have an ongoing career, I urge them to get an agent. 

HOW DO I FIND ONE ? The Writers and Artists' Year Book. The best are all there and you learn their requirements.  A clue to how good they may is should be the names of existing clients. But new young agents may be keen and hungry though they have not yet built up a list of famous names, so they should never be ignored.

Is there any quick rule of thumb to guide you ? I have one. It is probably prejudice and ignore it by all means. And there are a handful of honourable exceptions but in general, I would never go to an agent whose offices were in the country and not in London. 

I now await a deluge of protest from all agents everywhere else.

 

 

 

I said there would be a lot of practical stuff from now on. Firstly, I would like you to look at the new Richard and Judy Book Club titles - read them if you want to, of course, but initially I mean look at in terms of the genres, themes, and etc. You will find that most of them deal with countries other than this one and times other than now and several deal with war in one way or other. These are the books which have meat - the writers have something to write about, a story to tell, a time to immerse themselves in, another country to describe. This is the sort of book which a lot of people are reading now. They want meat. Thin, beautifully written, inward-looking contemporary literary novels are not fashionable and the 'me' novel does not find a place in this selection. Now R and J is not the be-all and end-all but they DO have a finger on the reading pulse. And if you want to succeed as a novelist now you do need to look at what is fashionable (awful word), what people are publishing, reviewing, readingm discussing, buying now. Crime fiction is, as ever, popular and there is a lot of Fantasy about. But the R and J list not only contains some very good books, it will show you what people like to read today, And although it is true that you write what you want, you cannot afford to ignore what others want too. Of course fashion changes. And I am not suggesting you copy any of these novels. Just that you study them carefully and take note. There is not a bad book among them, by the way.

Next up, AGENTS.

Christmas is in 3 weeks. This is the moment for you all to take stock. I have had 256 pieces of work sent in to the extract from a genre novel TTD. I have responded to about 50. There are some people out there who should now go away and forget about writing other than for fun. There are some who could write a novel now. And most are in between.

But it is quite clear to me that some of you are professional CW Course-takers. You might go on for the next 20 years doing one CW course after another, submitting work, chatting about your wok on forums, talking about being writers, the hardships and delights.  It is now time for all of you to put up or shut up. You need to take a very hard look at yourself now. What is your aim ? Have you learned anything from me which makes you feel your writing has improved and your attitude to it ? Have you doubled the number of books you read to see how the best writers do it ?

Or are you going to trundle on, knitting a bit of the scarf and then unpicking it, for the rest of your life ? Be honest with yourself. Be brutal.

After Christmas I am going to write a series of posts about the realities of 1. the writing life and 2. the book trade as it is right now, the realistic chances of getting published and if you are published, what exactly that is likely to mean in terms of sales, money, fame and your future.

But please spend the next few weeks deciding if you are going to be a professional or an amateur, a progressing -to-a-novel writer or a professional course-taker.  If you are going to be a writer, it is now time for you to forget about doing any more TTDs and start your novel. And finish it too.

So no more from me until after the New Year. Have a very happy Christmas and New Year and I wish you the best and most productive, decisive and positive year to come.

Do continue to use the forum if you want to. I will pop in there from time to time.

I have mentioned before that the hackneyed 'show don`t tell' knee-jerk advice is not written on tablets of stone. It all depends, as with most things. I am in the middle of writing a novella which is entirely 'Tell'. But you do need to know the difference and when to use one or the other. The best way of finding out is to look - as always - at what the best writers have done.  As a writer who almost always 'tells' I would like you to study Anita Brookner. Choose any of her novels - the early ones are the best but only just.  I recommend PROVIDENCE and FAMILY AND FRIENDS but find what you like the look of, ignore anyone telling you they are for women - rubbish.  Read and study very closely to see how she writes. It is not the story - the narrative line - you need be concerned about, it is HOW she tells it. She is a cool mistress of the flexible and elegant English prose style but she is also an extremely subtle writer with a sharp eye for human self-deception and frailty and the ability to judge clearly and accurately but always compassionately. Comment on the forum if you want to by all means but this is a  close reading and studying and learning exercise not a writing one. Notes may help you of course.

 

GENRE.

I know many of you have not yet decided what you are writing, in terms of genre. Fine. But many of you have. I would like everyone to think at this point about a genre novel no matter whether it is something you ultimately want to write or not because the skill in writing within a genre is one well worth acquiring.  Of course in many senses any genre novel is no different from any other - you should write as well as you know how but avoid pretentious or 'fine writing', study the best practitioners within the genre, avoid cliche and too many adjectives at all costs. You need to learn how to sustain a narrative line and how to engage the reader from the beginning. But a genre novel well done is a fine thing and your TTD is as follows.

First choose your genre. CRIME. SPY NOVEL. HISTORICAL NOVEL - and within that you can have a sub-division of HISTORICAL CRIME (very popular at the moment) or HISTORICAL ROMANCE. CHILDREN`S NOVEL - for the 9 and overs. FANTASY and FAERY.

If you have another you are passionate about choose it but I am absolutely no judge of Science Fiction.

Now...write ONE PAGE or at the very most two, from your chosen genre. Not the opening page, not the last page.. something from somewhere in between. I want to read it and know what kind of book it is from what you have written, I want to feel involved straight away, I want to know you can write well and I want to want to read on - back to the beginning and on to the end.

This is quite a tall order. I am asking you to send me something from a work which may not even be 'ongoing.' But you have to make it so for the purpose of the TTD.

 Send in when you are ready if you wish to, to the usual e-mail. I stress 'if you wish' as no one following this course has to send me anything.  I will make some notes later about the genres and post them up too. But for now, what you should be doing for a long time is 1. Thinking and 2. Reading.  There`s plenty of time for the writing.

I occasionally look at other CW courses and their lessons and I am struck often by the assumption that there will be DRAFTS of your book... they talk about your first draft, your second, your ninety-ninth draft, and I bet these little words put the fear of God into most students. You have already filled a notebook full of ideas and plot lines and character studies and opening paras and started writing.. you then have ahead of you draft after draft until you are ready to chuck the whole thing out of the window you are so screaming with boredom. I`m not surprised.

With this as with anything, there are NO RULES. Except the rule that you have to write a good book and that before you submit it to anyone you do have to make sure about spelling and punctuation and basic grammar - but then, you would do this anyway, you have been doing it since school essays.

Otherwise, you do what you want andwhat suits you. But I would suggest that if you are doing more than 2 'drafts' you are very unconfident and/ or your book simply is not ready to be written yet. I have never ever done more than one draft in my entire writing life.. I write the book once, end of. I then, of course, read it carefully for discrepancies, repeated words, mistakes and etc. I may chop out the odd page or paragraph though this would be unusual. I will certainly sometimes tighten up sentences. But this is not writing a new draft, this is editing the first and final draft.

If I am having a hard time with a book as I write it, I would rather ditch it and start something else than re write and re write and drive myself nuts.

Do NOT think I am recommending this to you. And do NOT think I am telling you there need to be several drafts. I am saying do what works for you and your book. If it goes well and you are confident you have got it right first time do not for heaven`s sake think it can`t be, there must be some mistake, you`ve only written the book once. It can be.

I have a very strange way of writing anyway - I just sit down and listen to the story being told into my ear by some inner voice.. the sub or unconscious I suppose. I told this story at a literary lunch years ago and the other speaker, Michael Bentine - ex-Goons and writer of autobiographies of his childhood among Spiritualists - decided I was a natural psychic and that I was being dictated to by the spirits. Hm. I don`t need an explanation, it happens to be the way it is with me and I accept it gratefully.

Do what is right for you. Have confidence in yourself. One draft or one hundred.

There are no set books on this course, as you will have noticed - it`s not that sort of course. There are strong recommendations though and you would do well to take note of any books and authors I mention because, as I have said and said again, the more you read of the best writers the better writer you will be. But the Paris Review Interviews are rather different. I read them when I was starting out 50 years ago in their original form and although I did not understand them all and did not think others relevant to me - which is still the case, and will be with you - I was inspired by many of them. They have been re-issued by Canongate - Vol 1 and now vol 2 are available and I do urge you to buy or borrow them if you can. You will learn how the best writers write, how they tackle problems, what they do on a day to day basis. Pick and choose among them and remember that these are all Great Literary Novelists, so you won`t find anything about writing thrillers or children`s books. But the way they work as described may be extremely helpful and inspiring nevertheless.

I like this from Toni Morrison when the interviewer is checking that this is indeed how she works. She says, 'I do. I don`t think it's a law.' Almost a passing comment but it sums up a lot of what I have been trying to say on the course for weeks.

The only thing I would warn about is that possibly just because these are Great Writers and rare and exceptional ones, they take their art very seriously - and with beginners who do not even know if they have any ability, that is an ever-present danger.

Each volume is a large well printed well made paperback and costs 12.99 full price. You will get them cheaper online somewhere and they are a wise investment because you will read and re-read them.

do not use a fancy word or an unusual word or a grand word or an obscure word when a plain one will do. Perhaps you think language is important. Well, it is. Very. So, you think, I won`t be run of the mill, I`ll show them I know about that., So you search and search and rack your brains for an unusual or long or grand word when one is not needed. And it is one of the things any editor will tell you marks out the amateur from the pro. Of course you can sometimes dazzle with a wonderful word. But when you are describing something or opening a chapter, don`t draw attention to yourself. We`re not interested in you. We want to know if you can make us want to read on - good story, strong characters. If you were James Joyce or Lawrence Durrell, fine. But chances are you are not.

Plain and simple is best. Less is more. Save your really amazing word for  special occasion.

Look at the great writers - go back to Graham Greene and Dickens and the Brontes and Penelpe Fitzgerald and Jane Austen and George Eliot and John le Carre and Ian McEwan... look at the words they use. Look closely. Look at a couple of pages and see how they use plain sinewy words which do great service.

And always ask yourself  before you use a difficult/grand/unncessary word- is this a cliche word ? It probably is. Is this a cliche phrase ? Ditto.

The art is to be plain clear and simple without being dull and boring. Look at George Eliot.. good role model.

 

This TTD clearly appealed to you for fun  but there were some very good paragraphs and the point was that it focused your attention, gave you something very specific around which to create your character.  Some of you over-described the person, there were the usual cliches - if I don`t teach you not to use those before I die......

But I was pleased with the way in a small space you started a story by bringing one person alive.

I don`t believe in endless exercises but the occasional very specific one makes you sharpen your pencils and think carefully.

It was almost a short story in a paragraph assignment - never satisfying to read in my view but these almost all made me want to read on - which is the point, let alone be a fly on the wall of the Dragons' Den when your characters came up the stairs - especially the man with long sleeves hiding the scars on his wrists.

A longer post later about the word 'DRAFTS.' It should hold absolutely no fears at all for you - I have very good news about Drafts.

 

 The CW world is full of people telling you what you should do and can do and cannot do and should not do and you should take no notice of most of them – probably including me.

The point is that it is YOUR writing, YOUR book. Did James Joyce take notice of CW  courses about spelling and punctuation and did it hold back his career ? Quite. For every single rule you will find a successful writer who has broken it.

One of those I have come across more often than almost any other is probably ‘Show, don`t tell.’

Er, why ? It entirely depends. On you, your writing, what you are writing, what works best for what you are writing…. Some novels show, some tell, some do both.

I have just finished a novel of 100,000 words which is virtually all ‘show.’ I have also just embarked on another, shorter, very different one, which is virtually all ‘tell.’ Neither is right, neither is wrong. One worked for the first, the other for the second and I could not have swapped them.

So do what you like and what works, what you are most comfortable with.

 

Look at other writers, see what they do and learn from them. I cannot tell you often enough that you will learn best from reading intently and carefully and intelligently to see how it is done by the best practitioners.

 

Trollope – both shows and tells.

Dickens – ditto.

Graham Greene – shows almost always.

Anita Brookner – tells.

Ian McEwan – does both.

Beryl Bainbridge – generally shows.

Most crime writers show.

 

 

If you are writing in the first person you will always be telling.

 

Feel what is right for you. Balance the two. Or not. When you find a novel or a writer whose work strikes a chord with you – this is the kind of book you want to write, the sort of writer you want to be- study what they do and how they do it.

As a reader, if you find a novel unsatisfying, see if it may be because it is TOLD when it is the kind of book that might be better as a SHOW book…it may not be of course.

But generally speaking this is not a good rule. But in Creative Writing, as I keep saying, not many rules are.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You should watch this. It is a marvellous lesson on the psychology of the individual, as Jeeves would say'; it is a most revealing programme about human beings and the way they behave, the way they show what they are really like while thinking they are concealing same. And it is worth watching because the Dragons tell it straight. I have been reading the new book about the series and I find I am the Deborah Meaden of the CW world. Like her, I tell it straight. I am tough. I know what I am talking about and I have experience. I am successful, like her and I want you to be. I can help you if you do not strike attitude and bluster and come on full of opinions and knowing better. I am determined that some of you will succeed but I know those who never will. It`s up to them whether they listen to me or not. Deborah Meaden says she is warmer, funnier and easier than she has to appear on DD. I am the same. But we both have huge ambitions for those we take on. I am not exactly taking you lot on but you have put yourselves in front of me - those who are sending in TTDs at least - because you want to succeed, you know you can learn from me, you value my opinion and you understand that there is absolutely nothing personal in anything I say. Think Deborah Meaden when you get cross with me and do watch DD. You will find a wonderful array of characters who could appear in a novel of contemporary mores without many changes.

The Dragons themselves are of limited interest in that people who are in business and whose aims are ambitious and money-centres are not very well rounded. They are various examples of the same type. Naked ambition and worldly success are not especially attracxtive or interesting beyond a certain point. We only see this side of them in the programme of course - they will be very different to their families and friends. But the stream of punters coming up those stairs contains a wild whacky and wonderful assortment of human beings. Watch them closely.

Now, a TTD. TTD 7 I think but correct me if I am wrong.

Create me a character in no more than 2 paragraphs - male or female, any age, but the character is going to appear in Dragon`s Den, looking for backing. You may choose to present them there, or at home, or when they have failed and afterwards, or succeeded ditto. You may present them as honest, cunning, stupid, clever, ambitious, pompous, two-faced, fresh and open, young, old, male, female, hopeless, hilarious.. anything. But I want to know that person and I want you to make them so interesting that I will want to know more. I want them to be at the beginning of their story.

And remember, NO CLICHES. And do not over-describe.

Your character-paragraphs need not be the opening of a novel though - I`m not trying to make things even ore challenging for you !

I have read the chapters which were sent in prior to today. Thank you. One of the things I noted and which is so so often a real problem with new and aspiring writers is something that could be solved easily - by reading more novels by the best. This is why the course focuses on giving you things to read. That is the way, by studying very carefully how the best published writers write, you will learn.

The one thing you all do and which the quickest way to indicate that you are inexperieced is to use CLICHE.  Far too many verbs had the cliched adjective attached to them, almost as if they were joined at the hip. There is always a better alternative. You do not have to use the cliched word and phrase like a knee-jerk. THINK every time you are about to use an adjective or a descriptive phrase. Then ask, is it a cliche, is it really necessary, can I think of something better, and above all, is this EXACT. In one chapter we have 'his sigh floats heavily down the stairs.' Is that really what sighs do ? How does a sigh float ? How does it float HEAVILY ? In the same chapter 'accusing foosteps retreat across the landing.' Stop and think about that one too. In another chapter there are 'the dazzling days of his early career.' and again 'quietly basking in the satisfaction.' DAZZLING and BASKING are cliches in this sentence. We all say in casual talk'look at him, basking in his own satisfaction,' because we use cliches... but when you are writing you have to be nmore perceptive. This does not mean digging into the thesaurus for the most recondite and clever-sounding adjective or adverb you can discover. That is just as bad.

One other thing. Every publisher who receives piles of manuscripts weekly knows one sure sign of the amateur - the first person narrative present. 'She comes down the stairs and looks into the study.'   Please do not use this tense unless you are 110% certain it is the only possible one. It is a difficult tense to read and it should be used sparingly.

I found one or two chapters which made me want to read on though none made me think I would put down whatever I was doing in order to continue. The opening paragraphs were generally far too full of detailed description to hold me. I liked this. It would be even better if the writer 'said no' instead of 'declined' and the man was 'waiting for' not 'awaiting' but it is a good opener. Unusual. No flowery descriptions. Intriguing. It does not, alas, continue quite so well because we are given something like a lesson in politics and contemporary affairs in the course of the scene which slows it down.

'On the morning of the funeral, Juan Linares drove down from Leon to Granada and arrived half an hour early.  An American waiting outside the church recognised the journalist and asked if he might like to sit with his group. Juan thanked him and declined. They had met once at a party at the Intercontinental Hotel, when the American had been awaiting a residency permit. '

This is good too.

 

The boy crept through dry grass and over the gate and then began to run until he reached the natural barrier of the river. Not even a river, he thought with angry scorn, a stream, shallow enough to wade across in his trainers and hardly get his feet wet.'

(I don`t know why my own text takes on the font of the previous extract, sorry. I can`t find a way to sort it out.)

This chapter was promising though the writer used italics too much. Use of italics for emphasis in conversation and prose = bad. Very very very very occasionally if at all. The reader can bring their own emphasis.

I wanted to know more about this boy as I wanted to know more about the funeral in the passage above.

For this post though the message should be loud and clear. Write a note and stick it above your desk. NO CLICHES.

 

 

Thank you for your chapters - please keep them coming. I am reading them all and comments will follow.

Because of a sudden invasion of spam mails - 3,000 an hour - and until further notice please use my alternative e-mail for all messages.. it is susanhillwells@googlemail.com. The other is being suspended until we can work out what has happened. Thanks

I should really head this, The Perils of the Notebook because there are one or two. But the benefits outweigh them. I use a spiral bound Reporters notebook and have done for years - I use A4 as well but those are for planning once a book is underway. I can`t  really sit in cafes/trains with an A4 hardback notebook.

It is a vital part of writing.. when you are in the middle of something or when you are not. BUT the peril can be that keeping a notebook becomes a form of shilly-shallying. I have stressed how to avoid the Inner Nazi whose favourite words are Must and Should and Ought and others similarly guilt-inducing. It is good always to have a notebook on the go - or two. I have two, one for the book in hand, the other for random notes and ideas.

The latter has no downside but the former can, if you are not careful, turn into two and three and four notebooks, full of careful plans and notes and drafted chapters and character-biographies and place descriptions and names and goodness knows what all.. remember Mr Casaubon ? If you have not read MIDDLEMARCH then you are in for a treat, it is a wonderful novel. But Mr Casaubon spent his whole life on the preparation of his masterwork, on the notebooks in fact and was never ever going to write the actual book.  It happens. You will know when you are filling the notebooks instead of taking a deep breath and making a start... better to start before you think you are ready or you never will be.

Now... TTD 6.. This is a big one. I want the first chapter or the last chapter or ANY chapter of your novel. I want to see them all please. Whenever you like to send them - no hurry. But eventually. There will be other posts but no more TTDs for a time... that`s quite enough of a challenge for a while.

I`ve mentioned this before and even gave you a TTD about it - write for 20 minutes only. Not a second longer. It is worth another post about time as I am receiving desperate e-mails from  people saying they are in full-time work or have young children and cant devote the time they feel they should to writing. Note the word 'should' which is a banned word along wit 'ought' and 'must' - vocabulary of the inner Nazi. Do not worry if you have only a short amount of time... far better half an hour and focus completely and accomplish something in that time than two hours faffing about. Now the inner Nazi may say 'But if you do as much as that in half an hour see how much you would accomplish in three hours - or four - or eight.'  It ain`t necessarily so. I often accomplish far more in one focused half hour than a whole morning. I wrote my first novel at the end of every school day while doing four A Levels. I usually only had half an hour, and a big longer at the weekends but I knew that time was so sacred I really used it to the full.  Acres of time do not mean a huge and wonderful output. They can but they do not always. So don`t beat yourself up and use the short time well.

The other good way of using time is having a notebook with you and use the time if you commute or sit outside the school gates waiting or for fifteen minutes before you go to sleep... A.S. Byatt said that if she lost the only copy of entire finished novel it  would be far less of a disaster than if she lost her working notebooks and I agree..... you can spin and weave thoughts and ideas in a notebook.. write odd things about your character.. or ask yourself questions.

ASK QUESTIONS.

That is a really useful thing to do. I often find a notebook page that says

Where is this story going ?

Do I need to have chapter four ?

What on earth is X or Y (character) doing in this book ? Good reason ?

That sort of thing - then think about the answers..it really helps. This is where you are working and probably doing the most useful work but in bursts of 10 or 15 minutes.. or even 4 or 5 minutes. You can sort something out in that time or have a very good idea. Never underestimate the value of this sort of time spent well and never fall into the trap of thinking that somehow you are only working when you actually at your desk writing. You are working when you`re asleep in fact... a lot of problems and ideas get sorted out while your subconscious has a nice empty time to itself and you are not filling it up with other stuff. So value those small amounts of time and don`t worry if you do not have many long stretches. So long as once you have begun a book you can find an hour of concentrated time - with luck an hour a day - you`ll finish it.

Now TTD6

TITLES. I often make up titles or titles pop into my head, without any actual book in sight. I have dozens of titles in search of a novel. A good title can not only attract readers whereas a bad or dull one can put them off - a really great title can inspire you. So first, list the ten best titles of novels  - you don`t have to have read the novel, just list the title. It should make you think 'I want to read that' but also, 'I want to WRITE that.' Any novel from any era at all.

Now, make up six titles for novels you would like to write.  Or more if you can. Do ten and you are really coming on. Send them all to me when you`re done (mail@susan-hill.com). I`ll put them up - anonymously, as usual. No one will know it`s you except you.

They can be introduced to us, the readers, in a variety of ways - straight, direct, as in 'Let the Reader be introduced to Lady Carbery', in a conversation... the moment a character appears, however s/he appears we start to know them, see them, hear them, dress them, we start to do half the work for the writer. Never underestimate how much of a co-creator your reader is.

I do like it when characters are introduced by other characters - being talked about or watched. Have a look at another way - if you can find a copy of Muriel Spark`s THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE .. look at the 3rd paragraph of Chapter One. Miss Brodie is introduced - after a dozen lines we know exactly what kind of woman Miss Brodie is, long before we meet her. Look at how it`s done.  It works.

But if you write in the first person introducing both the character of the narrator and other characters is rather different. This isn`t really a new TTD so much as part of TTD2 but find a few novels written in the first person and see how it is made to work.

Some suggestions tomorrow... If people really really can`t get hold of the Muriel Spark, I`ll copy it out.

Not every writer feels as strongly as some of us do about places. I find them almost as and sometimes more important than characters and I certainly believe that many places help to form the people who are born and bred and live in them if they are there for long enough. Places that we simply visit influence us strong too - if they have something remarkable about them. It need not be a whole city - Venice - a whole landscape - the Cumbrian Fells ; it can be a single house, a single hill, the lamplit corner of a street. Whatever wherever, the place seems to send out a sense of itself, of its own being, a presence which awakens a response in us. Or not. It is a very very personal thing.

Read Hardy for  a sense of place. Read Dickens. Read Emily Bronte. Read Lawrence Durrell. Not all writers have it or rate it as important but if you don`t make places and their effect on people significant you are perhaps denying yourself not only a great satisfaction as a writer and a great pleasure to the reader, but turning your back on a very useful fictional tool - to say the very least.

TTD 5 is divided into parts. This is TTD5 (A).  Go somewhere alone and relax, in an armchair, in bed, so long as you don`t fall asleep, on a train.... and think about places in your life ; real places first of all. Childhood places. Holiday places. Places you have visited  since then. Places you grew up in. And then when you have a few in your mind, think if they have had any lasting effect upon you, made an impact. If not, ignore them. If so, think some more. When you have two or three places - doesn`t matter if they are cities, landscapes or small cottages or warehouses or stretches of beach.... get paper and pen and start thinking pen in hand. Write down words and phrases which come to mind when you think of your places - don`t describe them, just think of words... adjectives or snatches of sentences. Think more than you write.

Then think whether the effect they have had on you is something important and permanent, formative even - or whether it was fleeting.  What was your response ? Intellectual ? Emotional ?

Good /bad, happy /sad, strong/ weak, unique or common.

Think of this place or these places as if they were characters - in a way they are, because like other people they have power to affect you and change you. For example, I dislike mountains if they are close to me - snow-covered are better than highland mountains covered in grey granite but none of them are good. I feel oppressed, afraid, depressed anxious, I want to escape. More than anything, I want to see what is behind the mountains and around on  the other side... they seem to blot me out and blot the future out. I have been quite strongly spooked among mountains.

This part of TTD 5 may take you half an hour or a couple of days or you may keep coming back to it. Good. It will be time very well spent.

If some of you don`t I shall worry.Listen..

Learn to use writing time properly. Misuse of time is likely to inhibit your writing seriously. I should not, in fact, have said 'misuse' - it may trigger a load of guilty, self-blaming reactions. You believe that misuse of time means not spending enough time writing ? I BELIEVE EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE. You have an inner voice. It issues edicts and terrified, you obey. These edicts are extremely severe, far too severe. They tell you that you are lazy and procrastinating. Who is this inner Nazi ? Try to impose far too strict a writing regime in response to him or her and you`ll end up not writing at all, then feeling guilty, then not writing some more, then calling it that fancy but rather impressive sounding name 'Writer`s Block.'  There`s no such thing actually. It`s the inner Nazi again.  It has probably also made you Be Serious.

When do you like to write ? Note the word 'LIKE' ? I know of course that you are likely to have a full time job and/or a family - I am not being insensitive. But, think. What is your favourite writing time ? In the middle of the night ? AT dawn ? In the evening after supper. Before breakfast ? Sunday morning ? The time for writing is a personal choice albeit partially dictated by other circs. When you have your time and especially if it had been difficult to carve out - do not overdo it and think you HAVE to (Have to, Must, words of the inner Nazi again..) sit there and write for 4 hours because otherwise it`ll be another day/week before you can get here again. Whatever, if you are a beginning/aspiring/unpublished writer, you will not be able to sustain four hours. Few professional writers could. I can`t. Oh I know what they SAY, in those interviews. 'Writes in a strict routine from 8 a.m.to five p.m'  No they don`t.

Instead, and if you must have an inner Nazi, turn the whole thing on its head. I MUST not write for more than 20 minutes. I will not ALLOW myself to continue after this time even if I am enjoying it and in the middle of a really good stretch. Try that.

20 minutes.  If you`re good I might let you do 30 next week.

But whatever you do, do NOT sit there for 4 hours, or 3 or even 2, trying to force yourself to write, trying to think, getting up four times to clean the sink and have a coffee and check the e-mails and then feeling guilty and making yourself add that time to your 4 hours so they are now 4 hours 15 minutes...

TTD4  Write for TWENTY MINUTES ONLY at any one sitting. No more.  And if you haven`t got going  after FIFTEEN minutes, stop, get up, go away. Do no more that day.

I promise you that before long you will be begging me to let you do an hour.

 I have had a number of e-mails and read comments etc on the forum about your writing in which I read ‘I have no idea of what to write about’, ‘I keep looking round me hoping something will come’ ‘I wonder where people get their ideas from as I don`t have any’ and ‘How do I come up with ideas for a novel ?’

 

It is precious little use wanting to be a writer if you have no idea what you want to write or write about. If you are really a writer your head will be fizzing with ideas – stories, characters, situations. You will grow stories on your stories. To want to write in some sort of vacuum is a strange ambition. If you have written, say, three novels and have no idea for a fourth, then you will wait and go about your life and one will come. By then you can just trust that it will. You are already a writer. But if you have no ideas and sit biting your metaphorical pencil, I wonder why you want to write at all ?

 

Being a writer – as in novel/fiction – is not  primarily about language or characters or plots of structure or whatever other semi- technical words you may have come across or been taught – it is about telling stories. You may tell them in any way you like. You may be telling them as adventures, thrillers, moral stories, poetic stories, fables, fairy stories… but you are telling stories. That is your business.

 

 

One very good opening sent in by a new CW course member.

I have noticed that when someone asks for you on the telephone and, finding you out, leaves a message begging you to call him up the moment you come in, and it’s important, the matter is more often important to him than to you.

Cakes and Ale, W Somerset Maugham

And an irresistible one from me, remembered for some reason in the bath tonight. I looked it up to check that I remembered right but I did because once read hard to forget, it`s so intriguing.

'Some years ago there was in the City of York a society of magicians.' Perhaps it might be the opening of a children`s book.

But it isn`t.

CHARACTERS.

Or in other words, people. I wonder how you are coming on with the job of tracing a character from his/her beginning to see EXACTLY how it has been done.  No rush but when you are ready and if you want to, please let me know what novel you chose and what character from it. I dislike the word character... probably because my mother always told me unpleasant experiences would be character forming and I took up the baton so now my daughters hate it too. But one can`t keep on saying 'imaginary people.'  Is there no other word ? I don`t know one.

 

 

Characters. People. Bods. Some myths to be demolished here. Let`s go back to Genesis. Listen.

'Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild creature that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, 'Did God say you shall not eat from any tree in the garden ?'

I know we all bring baggage to this - we know the story, we know the serpent and who he is and what he did later. Try and dismiss all that and just read the extract again, forgetting that the serpent is a creature - as of course the author of Genesis must have done, as the creature starts to talk like a person not an animal. In three lines, there is a character. One adjective describes him ONE. 'Crafty'.  And he asks a question of the woman. It seems an innocent enough question - but as the only adjective we have is 'crafty' it must be a significant one, so the question is probably not so innocent. There we have a character.

Listen.

'Fat Ivan looked unsmiling and in silence at his son for a moment. Then he spat once onto the flagstones, turned away.'

There is a character.  Two lines. We learn a fair amount in two lines. But the point in both these instances is that WE, the readers, do a lot of the work. And that is what you should be doing - leaving the reader to do a lot of the work. Because a book is re-created every time it is read and in a different way every time, by every reader. A novel is a two-way process. The reader creates as much as the writer and it is always very satisfying for the former. A novel which over-describes, puts far too many adjectives in, leaves the reader with less to do. Make your reader work - he won`t notice. Did you think you were working when you read the above extracts ?

So, TTD 3. Choose a novel from the list of suggestions below - but if you want to choose another of your own, do. And take a character who appears at or very near the beginning and who is obviously going to re-appear and perhaps be a central figure in the novel ( i.e. not the waiter who appears holding a tray on which is a note, hands it to someone sitting there and leaves without speaking. Well, not unless he is Jeeves ...)

Now you need paper and pen as well as the book. You are going to track this character and note in your mind and on paper exactly how he/she is introduced and re-introduced for several chapters. Is it 'now the serpent was the most crafty...' or 'There was once a man who had three sons' or is it 'Alice was feeling very tired of sitting..' or is it .. well, look at some novels, any novels and see how a character is made to appear. Because that is 'creating a character.' That sentence about Ivan above... can you see him ? you know what he is wearing ? What is his face like ? What kind of a man is he revealed as already ? I`ve written a couple of lines but you, the reader done the work to flesh them out. I just made up Ivan.. he is not from a novel. But he exists. I have created a character. He has been made to appear. You have breathed life into him, just as God made Adam from the dust and then breathed life into him. It`s as simple as that. Everyone who sent in an opening paragraph - however good or bad - created a character. But what next ? Choose your character. Scoby ? David Copperfield ?  Jeeves ?  Simon Serrailler ? Oh, whoops, they`re all men. Dear me. Jane Eyre anyone ? Try an Anita Brookner heroine. Or a character in Penelope Fitzgerald`s THE BLUE FLOWER.

And discover by reading and re-reading very carefully and making notes, just how their creators started to create them and notice how much work you, the reader, are being made to do ?  You will learn a lot.  Let me know what character you have chosen and from what novel in a while and any notes and comments and I`ll choose some to put up.

There will be some more comments and notes but no other TTD for a while. You`ve got plenty to do. And if you want to do the exercise with more than one book, good - make sure you choose different kinds of novel.

 

The tall man was a stranger in the village but he didn't wander aimlessly, he strode along like someone who thought he might be late (for something.) People stared at him as he passed, fascinated by his peculiar gait. He juddered like a walking puppet whose strings seemed forever about to fail him, each (angular) step appearing, to some, as if it floated just (the barest whisper ) above the sun-warmed concrete. He turned left abruptly, climbing three steps up to a green painted door. The house (he stood before ) rose straight up out of the pavement. Large and Victorian its walls had been abandoned to the (ravages ) of green ivy, the twisted strands of it a (thin ) disguise around neglect and decay. The man knocked at the door. A moment later it (shuddered ) open, a small woman peering out of the smoky darkness within. “Yes,” she said as if he'd asked her a question. “Yes.” 

 

 

Well, the man might be interesting but his odd walk could be described in far fewer words.. nobody`s walk is as interesting as all that. Gait is a non-word. There is a cliche adjective for almost every noun...how can  a a door 'shudder' open ? 

This could be an opening in three sentences and have much greater power. There is a man. A house. A woman.  That`s all but we could still be drawn in. A house can be made interesting - neglected, ivy-covered etc. but in a dozen words.  Is this historical ? It feels as if it is, apart from the concrete. So, might be interesting but what is wrong with this is wrong with dozens of the others that came in. If you are going to use an adjective find a good not a cliched one. And use them sparingly. Go back to Graham Greene. See hoew well and how sparingly he uses them. Too many adjectives diffuse the power of the language.

 

 

I`ve bracketed what could do to go.

 

 

It is simple. It is not over written. No cliches. Not an adjective for every noun. It interests. It says a lot in a few lines. It sets up questions. I want to read on. So good start. I copied it from the e-mail without the name so that I did not even register who wrote it. I will do that with the other examples coming up. But whoever wrote this, you know who you are and this is good.

Some things are irrevocable   .  The day my grandmother walked into church and made her marriage vows in front of God, the vicar and hardly anyone else, she did something from which there was no turning back.   Of all the old family photographs I have collected, I can find none of that day.  I only know what she told me, about the suit she bought with coupons   and how my grandfather stumbled over the words of the service.  How they went on honeymoon to her aunt's house near Ramsgate, crammed onto the train with their cardboard suitcase and my father, a serious little blond boy of two, held between them. 

Not all the course posts will be things to do.. some are simply comments for you to digest and they are generally based on my own experience.  I have had  a busy day so am behind with the Opening Paras post  but I will do it.

Meanwhile... people running round my mind. Characters. I don`t know how they get there, where they come from but they take up residence. Some people and their stories and the places in which those stories are set - always very important to me - appear, I write about them, and they disappear again, having found themselves in their book and off into the world. But others.... my novel AIR AND ANGELS had been running round my mind for about 8 years before I finally discovered what to do with it. I had notebooks ( very important - we`ll come to notebooks..) filled with random jottings about them and at first they were going to be in a screenplay for a film. But I discovered the hard way that I am not a screenwriter. That was abandoned but the people and their place just hung about. Occasionally I got out the notebook and added a bit and re-read and thought but they stubbornly refused to fit themseles into a novel. Eight years is a long time but I wrote several other books and thought they would probably remain like pressed flowers in the pages of the notebook forever, until they dried and went semi-transparent and very very thin. And then one day, clunk-click, I was looking at a book of photographs of Edwardian Cambridge for something quite different, and the people took a great leap, en masse, out of the notebook and into a novel set in and very much concerned with Edwardian Cambridge. I started and finished it very quickly, as I always do and as I only ever do one draft of any book - we`ll come to that too - that was that.

And now I think it has happened again and it is very exciting. A set of people again and an idea and some places and a series of scenes, in the notebooks, running around my mind- and they have been there for at least five years. I actually started writing the novel about them - got perhaps one third of the way through - but it just was not right. I ditched it. But they never left the notebook or my mind though I have written half  a dozen very different books since. But then I read something in a newspaper - and it happened. Suddenly I know why they are still there and why the last novel didn't work out. I was trying to write the wrong sort of book for this particular story, these people but reading a stray paragraph in a paper made everything fall into place. I know exactly what kind of book this should be. The moment it came to me they leaped up and down and started to put themselves into a narrative and a structure and chapters and the scenes began to slot themselves in. I have been watching it happen in my head all day and not long ago, I jotted down three or four sentences in the notebook to firm it all up.

And this is how it sometimes happens. It can be annoying to have them running round your mind when that is all they will do but let them be, go on with life, something will go click. That is when the random jottings in the notebook will come to life. It`s the most exciting part of writing a novel. It doesn`t always happen like this and over the years there have been the people and the stories which have stubbornly refused to fit themselves into the right mould and then come to life - or vice versa and that is a very bad mixed metaphor. I have learned that the worst thing to do is try and force them. Never worry at something beyond a certain point, never get angry and frustrated or you will end up throwing your writing at the wall as with those infuriating metal puzzles you sometimes get in Christmas crackers and which cannot be made to come out. Many a time have I slung those in the bin with the turkey bones. No good ever came of it.

Leave them be. But from time to time, get out the notebooks, read, think. Nothing ? OK, back they go while you get on with a totally different book. It may take a few months or a few years and there is really no way of knowing which or why. None at all.

Anything you read or see or hear or overhear or think can be a trigger for it all to come together which is why all the time you are going about whatever you are going about you are actually writing. Because the actual putting down words on paper part of writing is just that - part, and I sometimes think it is the least and smallest part.

I said that you had to know what kind of book you were proposing to write when you started and some people have taken me to task about this on the Forum, so let me clarify. Of course some novels are not strictly in  a genre at all - though not many. Those that are not generally go into the 'lit fict' bracket. But if you do not know that you are embarking on, say, a crime novel or a historical romance, before you start you are going to find yourself in trouble before long. This should not be a strait jacket AT ALL. I have never found it so. If you do not want to write in a genre then fine.

Once you know that you are trying to write, say, a spy-thriller, then you are free to make of this what you like...every genre can be moulded and changed. But there are some basic rules.. no crime novel without a crime, no historical novel set entirely in 2007, no misery memoir - God I hate those things - which is a rollicking laugh from beginning to end.

I hope I have made myself a little clearer. More later.

No, not a good, a great example. Wilkie Collins. Not every novel he wrote has stood the test of time and his short stories are not much read now but any writer would be proud to have written the two we still buy and read and admire, THE WOMAN IN WHITE and THE MOONSTONE. They were hugely popular when they were written, the former in particular and Collins deliberately did a very important thing - he showed that a popular, best-selling genre can become great literature as well. I have just read this in the Cambridge Companion to WK and I would urge all those who may think it beneath them to write a crime novel, a historical romance, a Gothic novel or any other genre piece to take it to heart.

'Collins's own ambition was to be a writer for all classes. His professionalism bred a sense of duty to his paying public and his first hand knowledge of the financial insecurity to which artists artists were always vulnerable committed him to an uncontroversial popular art. His great achievement was to show that a low, popular art form was capable of extraordinary subtlety and power. He discovered that it was by giving the reading public what it wanted - 'violent and thrilling action, astonishing coincidences, stereotypic heroes, heroines  and villains, much sentimentality and virtue rewarded and vice apparently punished at the end' - that you could tell it what it did not want to hear. ' Take good note of that.

YOU ARE CREATING NOT ANALYSING

One of the problems with many CW courses, especially degree courses, is that they encourage not only analysis but over-analysis. I noticed that when some of you sent me your Good/Bad first lines you gave reasons for their goodness/badness which had more place in a Literary Criticism than a CW course. Do not over-analyse. Think hard, yes.. notice what great writers do. But do not spend too much time being  a literary critic when what you want to be is a novelist/creative writer. You are building up, not taking apart. making not breaking. It is useful to be able to understand why something doesn`t quite work but if you read enough and write enough gradually your instinct will tell you the reasons. LISTEN TO YOUR INSTINCT.  I learned to make a beef casserole by watching my mother make them.. she never used a recipe and nor do I. I put in this or that and mix it up and rely on my instinct to tell if if I need a bit more salt or fewer onions or whatever. I vcan now write, say, a piece of journalism of 800 words more or less straight off, without counting the words every 2 lines.. and that is because my instinct knows when I`m there. I have written pieces of that length for so many different papers and magazines for so many years that I do it by feel. And you need to be able to do that with your own writing. So don`t analyse. Get on with it. You`ll get to know by feel when something 'reads right' or 'reads wrong.' Your reader won`t analyse - unless they are doing a degree in lit crit. They will know if it reads right or wrong because they are experienced and well-practised readers.

TOMORROW.  I am going to put up some of your opening lines and comment on them so this is a last heads up - if you do NOT want me to put up your lines (they will appear anonymously) then please e-mail me and say so. mail@susan-hill.com

 

 

 

I would like to quote from a few of the opening lines of your books - those you have written. I would do so without any identification but if you strongly object to my doing this even so please e-mail me at once. If you don`t object you needn`t do anything.