Writing

Six ways for a writer to handle the Covid pandemic

October 26, 2020 by Mo Fanning Leave a Comment

I can’t be the only writer unsure how (or if) to deal with an unpredictable global pandemic. COVID-19 didn’t exist when I started work on my upcoming novel – and given a whole chunk of the action hangs off events at a seaside cafe, I could have done without it hitting. I don’t mean to demean people who lost loved ones or suffered through lockdown, just for now, this is all about me.

There’s a sound argument that books are where the reader goes to escape. The world is ugly, so why drag misery to the table? I thought the same a few months ago. Now, I watch films, drama, and comedy on TV, and flinch as characters get too close or hug greetings. The rational me knows this isn’t an issue, but I feel like I need to make my story resonate more and mirror the time in which it’s set. And that time is ‘tomorrow’ – the immediate tomorrow, not the sci-fi future.

After scrolling many a blog and social media site, it seems there are six ways for writers to handle Coronavirus.

Ignore it

Pretend COVID never happened. Write the story you always aimed to write as if nothing in the world changed. Tell your story in a parallel universe. Most books reaching the shops were written long before the pandemic hit, so they make limited or no reference. They work. Why wouldn’t yours?

Predict how it might be

Soap operas have come back to UK TV screens. They’re filmed months in advance and handed the onerous job of having to appear current. The writers make their best guess at how things might be. And given our government’s hobby of confusing the Holy Bajesus out of everyone, that’s no straightforward task. Assuming your book comes out in six months, might there be a vaccine, might it be on ration, might more be dead, might there be an even bigger lockdown, or could everything go away … like Trump insists?

Sunny uplands

If you are as crazy as a coot and Trump’s predictions resonate, you could set your book in a time when the characters are ‘back to normal’ with the odd snippet of dialogue talking of how hard COVID life used to be. Things might be better. Lessons learnt by everybody. It might be a gentler world. I’m a natural cynic, so this isn’t the path I ever plan on taking. It sounds too much like science fiction.

Dark and desperate

I’m more prone to take this (total opposite) approach and force my characters to grapple with a post-COVID world where air is in limited supply and everybody lives in bubbles. There’s a place for this – and many TV commissioning editors are crying out for this kind of trite nonsense, but what if we move out of the shade in six months? It’s going to date your story – like that entire chapter I set in an Internet cafe in The Armchair Bride. That’s egg on my face.

Change your time

Most of us tell our stories in the here and now. With the here and now being just a tad weird, maybe we should change the timeline. If jumping into the future isn’t safe, why not skip back a year and set it in the recent past? To be fair, this is the safest bet. Although … if you gravitate towards present tense, a ‘find and replace’ exercise won’t change every ‘is’ into a ‘was’.

Write in the now

Perhaps the most straightforward way to write our stories is to react as if it’s unfolding now. Keep the references to lockdown light and universal. Stay out of places you know will be closed – don’t write scenes in nightclubs. Your characters can still meet in pubs or coffee shops by all means, but sit them at a table, not jostling for service at a bar. Romantic fiction suffers most here – how would two strangers overcome social distancing?

Whatever you choose, I wish you writing wonder.

Writer’s block – yet another writer with yet another tip

July 29, 2020 by Mo Fanning Leave a Comment

Writer’s block is painful. Everyone gets a form of it at some point, and most writers have ways of dealing with it. A frequent fix is to ‘just write anything’ until the feeling of being blocked passes.

I recently stumbled upon a new tip for dealing with writer’s block, and it’s working like magic; not just to free up a brain jam, but also as a way to build an effective and engaging narrative dripping with that magic ingredient, conflict.

Write the last line first.

I’ll give that a moment to sink in.

When you start a new story or chapter or scene, write the final line of dialogue before you get going (or when the block sets in). This means you spend the rest of your writing time working towards that outcome, shaping actions and words around creating this natural outcome.

The last line should either tie everything up in a nice bow or deliver a cliff-hanging incentive to read on.

‘And that’s why we should never have done it’ was the example handed down in a recent script-writing workshop. We set off writing dialogue, not knowing our characters, but knowing where we needed to end up. Keeping the outcome in our heads and having it so clearly defined influenced so much of what came before. Lo and behold, the writer’s block lifts.

Choosing something that would make the reader want to turn the page when creating your final line chapter ends helps give your narrative force. Think how you might write a scene or chapter in your work in progress that ends on any of the following:

‘What now?’ she said. ‘How the hell do we make this right?’
‘This is all your fault. I never want to see you again.’
‘She’s going to hit the roof when she sees it.’

Writing: it’s my job to point things out

February 10, 2020 by Mo Fanning Leave a Comment

A frequently quoted ‘rule’ for writing is to write something every day. No matter if it’s good. No matter if it’s bad. Set yourself a window – anything from ten minutes to every waking moment – and sit in front of a screen or an empty piece of paper and write. The idea being if you do this each day, a habit forms and something good will come. As advice goes, it sits up there with ‘sometimes, even a blind squirrel finds a nut’.

Writing isn’t a natural thing for us as a species. For most of evolution, nobody wrote anything – fair enough there’s the odd cave drawing that historians insist are early attempts at storytelling. On that basis, bus-seat sharpie-penned pledges of Kazza luvs Jez carry equal value.

Writing for many years was the preserve of the elite. Even now, it remains a strange way to communicate.

When I stand on a stage and tell jokes, I see faces. The feedback is instant and I sense when an audience needs me to clarify or drop planned patter and jump to another topic. When I write a story, my words vanish into a void. Short of the occasional Amazon review, I don’t know who reads my books or how much they understand of the worlds I create.

Writing short set-ups

I try to find something interesting and point it out. I’ll ask you to look at someone or something and understand the flaws and persuade you that what I see is of interest. When learning the language of stand-up comedy, I picked up on how the shortest set-up works best. If a comic needs to explain the premise, chances are it’s unfamiliar.

It’s not the job of a writer or comedian to ram information into the brains of an audience.

The worst writing (and comedy) happens when those in charge abandon ‘joint attention‘ in favour of trying to sell their audience into an idea or world. It’s incredibly hard to do surreal comedy or writing and do it well.

Some of the worst writing advice is to create words for yourself and never consider the audience. For me, the audience comes first. I am part of the audience, but I’m also aware when what I find funny might be too personal. I’m not here to impress with clever plot twists or elaborate language and don’t care what you think about me. I’m not in the book. When I’m on stage telling jokes, you see a version of me.

What I aim to do is point out what’s there … if you look in the right places.

This is how we function as humans. Side-by-side we scan those around us, our landscape, the absurdity and improbability.

It’s my job to point things out.

Phoning in the dialogue

October 23, 2019 by Mo Fanning Leave a Comment

I’ve never claimed to be anything but an ill-informed Luddite when it comes to mobile phones. Or phones, as I believe the youngsters insist on calling them, refusing to believe there was ever a day when we tied them to a supporting wall with wires. Or that ‘the house phone’ once lived on a special table; one with space for the telephone directory … and a tin to hold coins left by neighbours when they came to borrow your ‘party line’.

But I digress.

It’s editing season on ‘The Toast of Brighton‘ and that means chapters where I skimmed scenes (in the hope inspiration might strike later). It’s later now … time to plug the gaps with sparky conflict-building dialogue.

I often find it helps me if I write any new exchange independent of the draft itself. I open a blank email and begin the exchange, leaving out dialogue tags and actions, hearing only what two (or more) people have to say. A short edit later, and it’s ready to drop in.

A hidden dialogue assistant

Well, blow me down, if I didn’t stumble on the dictation feature on my phone this week. On a wobbly bus into Brighton, my thumb bounced and a pop-up message asked if I wished to let technology do the typing.

I didn’t need asking twice.

To be clear, I waited to get home before acting out a fight between a reformed alcoholic and her cheating husband … but being able to let rip in character was amazing.

Amazingly productive.

Sure. My phone mishears the odd word. If I don’t edit right away, it’s a struggle to make sense of things. Unless in the habit of saying ‘full stop’ out loud between characters, you get one long Molly Bloom soliloquy. But the freedom of being able to play your characters and talk as they talk is so freeing. I imagine this would help any writers who get told different characters sound alike.

Maybe I’m the only one blown away by this. Has everyone else has been doing this forever?

Ban ‘real life’ dialogue – My first act as leader

September 23, 2019 by Mo Fanning Leave a Comment

Time to talk writing. In particular, tips for writing dialogue. One of my first acts as leader will be to ban ‘real life’ dialogue.

It’s something I cover in ‘Talking out loud‘ – a guide to writing sparkling dialogue – there’s an extract below.

What is ‘real life’ dialogue? I will use the phrase a lot. So get used to it.

It’s my mission to correct any idea you might have that dialogue on the page should reflect the conversations you have or hear every day.

When I first started to write, I was sure of one thing.: my characters would speak like the people around me. They’d um, err and repeat themselves. They’d talk nonsense and occasionally get things wrong.

‘Hi,’ Andy said.
‘Hang on, I’m erm, just finishing off this email, I . . . yep, that’s about it. Right.’ Kieran looked up from his keyboard. ‘What can I do you for, kind sir?’
‘OK, so listen. Say no if you don’t want to, but you know, I was just thinking, and God knows, I don’t do that often enough, but, would you, err, like to look after the new girl?’
‘Oh, erm, right, yeah, well, urm, sure, yeah, but, erm. Well, I’m not sure I’ll have enough time, like because this report is kinda urgent, but you know . . .’

Soon enough I learned that if the written world sounded exactly like a real life conversation, I’d got it wrong.

Writing dialogue

Writing dialogue isn’t about reproducing real life, it’s about creating an impression of it – and let’s be honest, making it better.

Just like when you write a book, you cut scenes that don’t progress the plot, the same should apply to conversations between your characters. Work out what matters and what moves the story on. Show conflict (or collusion) and boil down your dialogue.

Real-life dialogue quickly becomes unreadable.

Journalists have it in their power to make their interviewees look dumb by printing what they say word-for-word. And while they might be tempted where they find their subject boring and unpleasant – or where they turn up three hours late – these journalists know it won’t make for sparkling copy. Or repeat business.

As writers, we want our characters to carry the story; they need to come over as real. But real people are weird. They don’t always talk about important things. They pass comment on the weather or tell you what they binge watched last night on Netflix. And unless you’re writing a particularly niche story, this probably isn’t what your readers want.

Read more in ‘Talking out loud‘