K.I.S.S - Keep It Simple Stupid

I was working on a bit in my zombie novel Dead Bastards where certain characters need to be in a specific place at a particular time.

I've spent weeks fretting over this, picking the brains of friends and family; it's given me sleepless nights and I’m at the stage where I feel like my brain is about to explode.

Then last night I realised one thing: I was over-thinking it. 

Readers don’t need you to tell them everything. When there are blanks they’ll fill them in and they’ll probably do it even better than you could have ever written it.

Don't over-think thinks like Malcolm In The Middle's Dewey

This realisation got me thinking of one of my favourite ever moments in one of my favourite shows. In Malcolm in the Middle, the youngest brother Dewey comes up with an elaborate ploy to convince idiot brother Reece that the aliens have arrived.

Dewey - "Malcolm, in school we learned the coolest thing: there were these people that did this broadcast to convince everyone that aliens were landing. So what we do is wait for Reese to fall asleep, then we flash some lights outside his window then we go to the TV, but we'll have already made a tape..."

Malcolm – "Dewey, you're totally over-thinking this. Reese, aliens landed down the street!"

And right enough, Reece comes running into the room wearing a mask and wielding a baseball bat and shouting "it’s every man for himself." 

Write your own version of The Walking Dead

Get your teeth into writing a zombie novel

I never expected to be able to write a zombie novel. I thought horror was best left to three of my favourite authors – Shaun Hutson, James Herbert and Graeme Masterton.

Then this image came into my head of a couple lying in bed when there’s a knock at the door. One of them pads down the hall, opens the door and finds his friend Archie standing there. Archie looks like he’s been mugged. Then they notice that his insides are dripping out…

And so Dead Bastards was born. 

Along the way I’ve learnt a few things -

1. Don’t concentrate on too many people’s stories.
This is a big mistake. Too many characters and too many stories distance the reader from the story you are trying to tell. You want to being everybody into the world you've created. 

2. Respect the genre. 
When it’s a genre that people are well acquainted with like zombies, you need to stick to the rules. By all means push the limits. I recently read a book by a well known author who gave one of his zombies the gift of thought. Bad enough, but he also gave them the cloak of invisibility. I threw that book across the room in a hissy fit. 

3. Make your characters distinctive.
People should know who’s speaking even without speech tags. This is tricky to do. 

4. Every step of the way, your characters must have a goal.
Simply surviving isn't enough. Just look at The Walking Dead. They always have a goal, whether it's to get revenge, find the rest of the group or help take Eugene to Washington because he says he has a cure.

For instance, in Dead Bastards they had to go to a shopping mall for supplies. There was no way out of it. Having goals creates conflict and brings your characters to life. Put your characters into a situation and see how they get out of it. 

5. Don’t do what writers of The Walking Dead’s did and get too bogged down with one aspect of your plot.
In the case of the hit show, they focussed too much on the Lori, Shane and Rick love triangle. In the end, I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who got bored with it. If I wanted that kind of storyline, I'd watch a soap opera. 

In a zombie novel, the zombies must be king. 

Now for the zombies

Now yo've got the book sorted, it's time to think about what kind of zombies you'll have? 
Will it be the shufflers or the runners?

Will they be smarter zombies or the standard slow kind? 

Choose wisely, then run (or shuffle) with it.

Remember, it's your story and nobody can tell it like you can:) 

Why not check out my zombie novel? 

Dead Bastards: Zombies hit Glasgow: How will the zombies survive? 

Check out the cover. It's pretty cool and is actually a scene from the book.

Dead Bastards is available in paperback and Kindle (although a book's probably better as a Kindle isn't much use against a zombie - trust me, I've tried). 

5 Common novel writing mistakes

This is how I am when I write a novel:)

Writing a novel is hard enough. Writing one that will not only get published, but also sell is harder still.

But, what if you're writing your novel and you think something's missing? Could you be making one of these common mistakes?

1. Writing what you think will sell and not what you want to write - We all want to have a bestseller; to write the book everybody is talking about. But we won't do that if we don't write from the heart, because if we don't enjoy writing our books; if we don't put our heart and soul into our writing, who on earth is going to enjoy reading them?

2. Writing too much back story - Writers need to think like the readers they are and what can be worse than wading through heaps of backstory to get to the real story? You've read 30 pages of a novel and you know every intimate detail of the main character's life but guess what - the story hasn't started yet or its been dragged down by all that mind numbing backstory.

Tip - A little back story is fine, but generally back story should come out in dribs and drabs in the course of telling your story. Not as an avalanche.

3. Using the wrong point of view - Are you telling your story from the right POV? Is first person too restrictive (you can only tell the story through your narrator's eyes) or is third person not intimate enough?

Changing POV can work wonders.

4. Starting the story too late or too early - Every story should begin when something has actually happened or is about to happen. You need to hook the reader from the start, not expect them to skim read through a third of the book before they get to the good part. They won't. They'll put your book down. They won't buy the next.

One of the best books for writing tips.

5. Being too predictable - Have you ever read a book and thought "I feel like I've read this before" when you know you haven't? Why not follow a tip from Stephen King's On Writing and think "what's the most logical thing that should happen next?" then write the opposite.

Writers, what to do when you get a bad review

The advice from other authors is to ignore reviews, but it's hard to ignore them especially when your publisher keeps going on about how reviews get you sales. When you get a really bad, withering review that makes you think you should never inflict your writing on the public ever again, you just want to dive under that duvet and never come out again.

But, is getting a stinker of a review really so bad? Well, yes it is, but here are some things to think about before you think of chucking this writing game in.

It helps if you write the answers down. That way your brain absorbs them and you can move on from the bad review, because you've got to move on so you can get on with writing.

Another great thing to do is answer these questions as though it's someone else's book that got the bad review; one you've read and know well. I use a similar technique in my bullying book, Bullying A Parent's Guide,  and to deal with my social phobias. 

Trust me, it works.

First off, look at the review -

1. Has the reviewer said anything constructive, that you can be used to improve the author's writing? For instance, a reviewer might spot a continuity error or that a writer over does speech tags. Or they might say that they couldn't see your characters, so you need to work harder on that. 

2. Do they talk about themselves in the review? Good reviewers don't talk about themselves, no; they talk about whatever they're reviewing. The over-use of I is a sign of an ego. The reviewer’s saying, "Look at me, look at me" and not here's a review.

3. Look at their other reviews. What kind of things do they say? Are they constructive in their criticism or venomous? Do they always seem to give good reviews to the top publishing houses, whilst slating self-published books or ones from smaller publishers?

I got a reviewer who admitted to not reading all of another book they reviewed because they "knew how it'd end." Why didn't he just read it then to see if he was right?

Another reviewer complained that a book with a bloody hand on the cover wasn't the erotic fiction they expected. Hey, I know what people do in their bedrooms is their business, but murder sex re-enactments? Now that is weird.

Does a good review come with a price tag?

4. Do they review for a site that charges for some books to feature on the site? I call these subsidy reviews. How likely are you to get a good review if you don't pay and are not with one of the big publishers who send them books and will probably stop sending them books if they start giving bad reviews? Mmm, we wonder.

5. Did the right person review the book?
There are books that have popular cross appeal, like books by Stephen King, but most books have a specific readership.

I wrote Hell To Pay as an escapist piece of fiction for women who were sick of seeing women being the victims of appalling crimes like rape and not getting justice. I gave the book the sub-title Die Hard for Girls.

A male reviewer on a well known book review website that charges some books up to £145 to be featured (I didn't pay them a penny because as well as paid for reviews they legitimise themselves by doing reviews for books like mines from commercial publishers) panned the book calling it "reverse misogyny" because my heroine Nancy got revenge on the men who raped her and murdered her parents. In fiction, clearly just like real life, women are allowed to be victims, but woe betide them if they fight back.

I disregarded his comment because the book's not aimed at men who think women should behave like they're in a Jane Austen novel. It's aimed at modern women who are just as likely to punch a mugger as hand over their handbag. I make no apologies for that. 

Other things to consider -

1. Look at all your reviews. What have other reviewers said - reviewers who aren't family or friends? If every reviewer hates your book, then you should start to worry.

2. Have you won any writing awards? Placed in any contests? Had good reviews on sites like youwriteon.com or authonomy?

If you have, how can your writing be as bad as that review makes you think it is?

3. Do you have a history of getting published? Relive your successes.
Now, that feels better.

4. Look at reviews top authors have got on Amazon. Are they all five star glowing reviews? I doubt it.

Look at all of the one star reviews for authors who get advances in the hundreds of thousands or even the millions. 

Stephen King has got one star reviews, so has Harlan Coben and Frederick Forsyth. In the case of Day of the Jackal, one reviewer said "Derivative and lightweight. Another wannabe Ian Fleming best forgotten." 

Now get writing. The worst thing you can do after a bad review is to dwell on it.

Getting Published: The Hard Truth

At times when you're trying to get published it can feel like you're standing outside a shop where the closed sign has gone up and then they pull down the shutters when they see you coming.

It's tough going but there are some things you can do to give yourself a fighting chance -

Read as much as you can and in as many genres as you can. Whenever I'm stuck with a bit in my novel, reading inspires me.

Write as much as you can and accept that you may have to write a lot of novels or non-fiction books before you get published. This may be because your first work is rubbish/not what they're publishing right now/needed more work that you realised. I wrote 4 full sized novels before I had my novella accepted by Pulp Press. I also started many more.

Accept you will have some near misses. The man who discovered JK Rowling was interested in my non-fiction book but it came to nothing. The publisher of my first ever published book, a humour title wanted my next two books, but then they decided to cut back on their publishing schedule and they couldn't do the 2 books.

Don't be snooty about any other genre. This is important because you might be missing out on the genre your writing might be most suited for.

Get to know other writers so you can share your tales of woe and success. Yes, I did say success. My favourite writers' forum is Talkback. Great people who are so supportive and know what it's like to be a writer.

Keep on submitting to publishers and agents and ALWAYS follow their guidelines. If you don't you might as well throw your submission in the bin. For instance, most agents & publishers don't want to see your full manuscript they may want to see 10,000 words or their first 3 chapters and a synopsis.

Get feedback on your work wherever you can. It's so difficult to see your work as others see it. If you can't get feedback edit your work by printing it out or viewing it on an ebook reader. It helps you to get your editor's hat on.

P.S. After writing this, I got the first rejection for my zombie book. Off to cry into a bucket then I’ll give myself a kick up the backside and get on with it. Writers who get published get published because they NEVER give up.

Things that have helped my writing

Here's some of the thing I have learned so far –

When telling the story from a particular character's POV ask what would he think of characters as they are introduced and remember what they think of others  also reflects his or her own life experience.  

For example - a 40-year-old teacher at a school disco may think the girls have turned up in their underwear and not their best party gear.  Well, when he was younger girls wore more clothes, or at least that was his recollection of things.  

Giving characters a theme tune that makes you think of them when you hear it can work wonders.  For instance an elderly woman who dreams of going windsurfing could have Young At Heart.  A man who thinks he's god's gift to women could have You're So Vain.  You play the song or hear it in your head and hey presto they're there in the room with you.  

Speech tags he said and she said, may seem repetitive, but when you're reading they fade away and it’s almost like you don't see them.  If you try and vary tags and write things like 'she said angrily,' 'he said brightly' that does start to grate with the reader.  So minimise the use of these if possible.

When someone is speaking break up the dialogue with A and B.  

A is for action i.e. 'She stopped speaking to brush the hair from her eyes, and then she inspected her chipped nail polish like she'd find the answer there.'  

B is for body language.  What are her lips, mouth, hands, shoulders doing?  Is she sitting up straight or is she slumped?  Are the feet still, shuffling, tapping, moving, shoeless (she's so relaxed she's kicked off her shoes).  

It can be distracting to write when Elvis is in the next garden.  Yes really.  I live next to a pub beer garden and the impersonator is currently belting out Love Me Tender.