Another week has passed us by and here we are at the end other another month too. Although I’m happy about the amount of writing I’m doing, I’m not happy with the amount of completed work I have done.
I was pleased with the progress I had made with my new novel only to find I’ve ground to a halt and haven’t even thought about going back to it.
I wonder now if this is a good sign or a bad sign. I don’t think its writer’s block, as I’ve been busy writing a short story, which I’m very excited and pleased with. It was very easy to write and I’m in love the main character, though he isn’t the kind of person you would want to meet.
This is where, I think, the problem lies with my novel. I think the idea behind my novel is great and most of what I’ve written so far I’m happy with. Even the characters in my novel are coming alive slowly and I’m beginning to feel they are right for the storyline. However, if I’m honest there are grey areas in my idea and I think the concept is a little beyond me. I know the cliché about writing about what you know, but as writers, we need to reach beyond our own safety zone and stretch our imaginations to develop.
Where the short story came completely from my imagination and drew on pure emotions with a hint of horror, my novel, on the other hand, comes from imaging what the future might be like and draws on the past, by imaging what it might have been like.
There are, of course, books you can read to find out what the past was like even reading novels written by others to get the feeling of how people may have spoken, dressed and lived etc. Even with the future, you can find web sites, books, and films of other people’s ideas of what our futures maybe like, but what if you are trying to create something, which is completely your idea – difficult as I’m finding out.
The secret to great writing is to make your book or story so utterly believable that your readers will talk about your characters, as though are real people.
Some of you may remember Dirty Den from ‘Eastenders’ or the killing of J.R in ‘Dallas,’ both of them were soap opera characters yet the viewing public became so obsess with what happened to them and who had killed them off, in the programmes, it was as if they were real people. Even their deaths made it to breaking headline News. It was as though everyone knew the characters personally, as they all spoke about his or her theory on who had killed them off.
The writers and programme makers must have had a sense of wonder and amazement to think they had created such realistic characters. Sadly, though they don’t always get it right.
When a storyline doesn’t work, it has the opposite affect and the reader or audience feel robbed and let down as the sense of reality is lost. Take the famous case of Bobby Ewing in the shower. Again, Bobby Ewing was a well like character in an American Soap Opera ‘Dallas’ watched by millions around the world. The programme writers decided to have him killed off. There was such an outcry at his death that they turned it into a dream sequence so they could bring him back.
The reality of the show was lost from that moment on; it was as though the writers had run out of fresh ideas too. I remember watching a scene where one of the women was taking up in a UFO so the programme makers could change the actress who played the part in the show. After that episode, I stopped watching the programme as I felt it was too stupid for words and my sense of reality was lost. If it had been a sci-fi programme, I could have accepted it, but not about an oil rich family living in everyday America in the 1970’s.
This week I had some great feedback about my short story, even having a conversation with three of my friends about my main character as though he’s real. It was amazing to hear someone say them found the main character to be rude and spoke down to them, which is why they didn’t like him at all. It left me speechless.
They each had their own theory of why he had behaved in the way he had, which was interesting to hear as each of the readers chatted about the different pieces information about the character within the story. I can understand now how background information and how you fit it into your story is important to keep the sense of reality going for your reader.
The most amazing thing of all was when one said excitedly she cannot wait to read my next story. Oh, how I would love to be able to write another piece of work like it, but now I live in fear I couldn’t write something as good or even better.
On
Akasha’s blog she has asked, ‘What’s the shortest poem you can write? Here's mine.
The Gun
A life gone.
Blood on the street.
A cold stone, with words so incomplete.
Okay, I know, I should be busy work on my novel or even a short story, but you know how it is... There I was thinking, 'Hey I’ll just check my emails, when the next minute I’m surfing the net'. 
