More real.
Don’t worry if you have to repeat the process a few times until you feel you’re ready. That’s perfectly fine. And very relaxing!
PART TEN: When you are feeling good, and relaxed, and you can almost ‘touch’ the book and you can easily see it or conjure up a large colour picture of it in your mind when you close your eyes, or even with your eyes open, then turn to the next chapter!
Chapter 10
Making a start!
The time has come!
Now is the time for you to sit down at your laptop or device, to arrange your chair and your keyboard so that you’re comfortable, and to take a deep breath.
Open up your word document, or Scrivener, or whatever other writing or word processing application you chose. Pen and paper? Quill?
Move your cursor to the top of the page in the middle – perhaps by formatting it by centring it using Home/Paragraph/Centre or Control E – and then type the following magic words: ‘Chapter One’.
Now you have a decision to make. Your first writing decision within the book.
Are you going to give each chapter a title?
If so, now is the time for your first piece of creative writing: what are you going to call it?
Take two minutes, no longer, write something down and then move on.
Left justify the text and move to the first word of the first paragraph of your first book.
Are you nervous?
Are you excited?
Both are good feelings.
But now is the time to move forward.
Start writing!
At this point you should have an idea of how you are going to start the first chapter. You should also have an idea of what it is that you are wanting to cover.
If you don’t, just remember everything you’ve thought of so far in the chapters before.
The important part is to remember that SC is right there with you. Urging you on. Whispering in your ear what you should write next.
Trust yourself.
Believe that the words will come.
And they will.
Don’t worry if you write a page and then decide you should edit it. Editing comes later. If you have never written a book before, the reality is that you will take a while to develop your own style, or ‘find your voice’, as some people put it.
Writing is a skill. You have to develop and hone it.
Few of us are masters at it straight away.
But don’t be afraid to experiment. Play with the words and sentences and find a way of writing that you not only think the readers will enjoy, but which you are also comfortable with adopting.
In this book I am not setting out to teach you how to write a masterpiece, or what makes a good literary work of art. All I can say is that a lot of that is personal taste.
I for one, am no literary genius.
I have to admit that my writing style is not the most loved by everyone.
I start sentences with ‘But’, ‘Because’ and ‘And’.
My sentences are short.
Sometimes very.
My Grammar is terrible.
And I make hundredds of speling mistakes.
But, over the years I have developed a way of writing that I quite enjoy and which my ‘fans’ – that’s an interesting word! – seem to enjoy. People seem to find my ‘voice’ refreshing and different. Not everyone. Yet enough to make it all worthwhile.
So, be bold, make a start. Experiment. Have fun.
Start typing away.
Begin your journey and good luck!
Chapter 11
Writing each chapter as a mini-book
In the last chapter I confessed that I am not an expert who knows how to ‘write’. I have not yet written a masterpiece, or a book which is so beautiful that it makes people cry.
I’m reluctant to give readers any advice on how to ‘write’.
Personally, one of my own goals is to improve the way I write, to get better and better, and perhaps one day write a book which is critically acclaimed.
To learn with every book I write.
So, that said, and given that I don’t want to preach to you on the skills of writing, is there anything I can suggest to you about the mechanics of writing a book? Can I share any thoughts with you on how to physically make a book a page-turner, or to keep the book engaging, fresh, and exciting, throughout?
I’ve thought about this, and I believe there are perhaps two pieces of advice I can give here.
The first of these is to write each chapter as a mini-story in its own right.
Each chapter, I believe, should contain a small story, and should end on a cliffhanger or a question which can only be resolved by reading the next chapter.
By doing this the reader never gets the excuse to put the book down. If they are enjoying your writing, they will find your book very frustrating in a very positive sense: they will continuously be starting the next chapter and hoping to find some form of resolution or pause in the action so that they can finally eat, or sleep, or go for a walk, but the trick is not to let them.
Don’t let them go to sleep at night, by striving to make each of your chapters so compelling that they MUST READ JUST ONE MORE CHAPTER to see what happens next… and then the next chapter… and the next!
The second piece of advice I could possibly offer you, if you will let me, is to suggest that each chapter should be about five pages long. Not too long, and not too short.
Long enough to keep the action in the novel moving forward, but short enough to make it possible for a reader to digest a chapter in a short journey on a bus whilst commuting to work, for example.
Short enough to keep the reader moving rapidly through the book from one chapter to another, and giving the reader a sense of momentum.
Short enough to keep the tension in the book building from chapter to chapter.
But long enough to contain enough action to deliver each next component of the story.
Although the main point is that each chapter should deliver one core building block or piece of the overall story-jigsaw-puzzle that you need to build throughout the book, it may also contain a few smaller, minor points.
You start the chapter, construct a vehicle for delivering the next point of the storyline, and then once that’s done you prepare to cut-and-run: but not before you drop the cliffhanger, teaser or question that makes the reader move to the next chapter and alludes to the next piece of the jigsaw puzzle!
Never be tempted to drag a chapter out unnecessarily. Be ruthless.
To recap on this chapter then… Each chapter should:
Be about five pages.
Deliver one main ‘point’ of the story.
Provide a teaser pointing to the next chapter.
Then you’re done. Move on. Next chapter.
(Actually, now’s the time to move onto Chapter 12)
Chapter 12
Plotter or Pantser: How to write the book (Part Two)
Welcome to the second part of the extended chapter on ‘Plotter or Pantser’.
If you can remember we previously talked about the ability to write by the seat of your pants without great amounts of detailed planning, as opposed to spending months or years making detailed plans for every aspect of the plot and the characters that appear in the story.
My strong encouragement was to just sit down and start writing - and to let SC plan and write the book for you whilst you are sleeping, walking, talking or doing something completely different.
Even when you are asleep SC is active, dreaming, thinking, paying attention to what’s going on, and keeping you safe.
Have you ever wondered why you don’t fall off the side of the bed? It’s because SC knows your position on the mattress, and when you come to the edge of it, SC spots the fact that a limb is hanging over the edge, and either makes you roll back onto the bed, or monitors your position so you don’t go further over the edge.
SC is always active. In other words
, SC always has your back, and is constantly working on your behalf!
So, with SC on your side, you can be both a Plotter and a Pantser: you do the Pantsing, and SC does the Plotting!
It sounds ideal! And it almost is.
What I didn’t tell you completely upfront in Part One, however, is that the Plotting-Pantsing thing you have going on between you and SC is actually a ‘partnership’.
You have to work together to get the whole book written.
Also, SC doesn’t suddenly download the whole book into your conscious brain in one instant, moment of time.
What actually happens is that SC writes the book through your conscious self one chapter at a time, and only upon demand.
Perhaps explaining it better in another way, effectively, you are the manager of the partnership, supervising what jobs SC has to do, and telling SC when it has to deliver on or complete the tasks you set it!
Also, whereas SC does most of the plot setting and character development, you have significant input into steering the direction of travel and setting the pace of the book. If something suddenly happens when you are writing the book – like when the main character was suddenly killed off in my book The Messiah Conspiracy – you could, if you want, ignore that development or reject it, and force SC to come up with an alternative.
Now we come to the crux of the matter in the Plotter-Pantser relationship that you will have going on between your subconscious creative self and your conscious self - the discussion of how you go about writing all the individual chapters in the book.
Some of you may have spotted the fact that until now I have only suggested how you write the first chapter, the last chapter and the middle chapter.
“But what about all the rest?” I hear some of you asking!
Good question. In fact, excellent question.
And this is the answer: previously, we talked about how the goal was to end each chapter on a cliffhanger, or a question that can only be resolved by reading on further.
The cliffhanger or the question raised at the end of a previous chapter can therefore act as the guide what you write about in the next chapter, where you resolve in the new chapter the question raised in the last.
Sometimes, however, when you have several storylines developing and running throughout the book in parallel, it is possible that the ‘next’ chapter may not follow on directly from the previous one; it could be the next chapter relates to a prior preceding chapter.
In such cases, when the next chapter to be written doesn’t actually automatically connect with the chapter directly before, you may have to resort to going for one of your walks, going swimming, taking a break, or having a bath, etc., and simply asking SC what happens in the next chapter?
As you become more experienced at writing, you develop the ability to maintain a small list of questions and actions that need to be resolved or occur in the coming chapters, and to keep this list forefront in your mind.
Whenever you have a moment away from writing, you will find yourself thinking about what’s on that list, and considering how to write about it, or connect different items together.
You begin to ask yourself how to write about and connect or create elements of the story, without even really realising that’s what you are doing! It could be that SC begins to take the lead and start prompting you to think about certain things, instead of the other way around.
Whichever way it happens, I find that personally, for me, the best way to initiate the whole thought process about “what should I write about in the next chapter?” is to go swimming.
After a couple of lengths of swimming, my mind goes blank, and I can block out the rest of the world and focus on what’s going to happen in the next chapter.
I ask questions, think about what’s on the list I just mentioned above, and wait for answers to pop into my mind.
After I’ve finished swimming I go to the sauna, and very often, while I am relaxing in the sauna with a blank mind, the answers to the current questions I have been asking just pop into my head. Swimming and the sauna both work for me. For you it might be golf. Or skiing. Or walking… It could be one of many different ways where you manage to relax, block out your other worries and thoughts, and start to imagine the next scenes in your book.
I think it’s important to say here that you approach and do this chapter by chapter. Generally, I tend to write one or two chapters a day, so I get plenty of time in the morning, afternoon, evening, or overnight to think about and plan what will appear in the next chapter when I get a chance to sit down and let it be written.
Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day.
Tomorrow is the first day in the rest of your life.
A book appears chapter by chapter. One page after the next.
Good. Excellent! So now we know, in advance before we sit down at the keyboard, what the main points are that will need to be covered in each of the next chapters you will write.
You approach the book, one chapter at a time.
Well, almost.
There are two exceptions.
Firstly, as you get towards the middle of the book, you have to start considering how many pages you have to go before you hit that magic middle point. You then have to translate that number of pages into a number of anticipated chapters.
And then, you need to start thinking about the various plot points that may need to be covered or resolved before you get to the middle point of the book.
One way of doing this it to consider where you are now in the plot that is developing, where you need to be to reach the middle point, and then to work backwards in your mind from the action that takes place in the middle to where you are now.
You may then come up with a shortlist of actions, sequences or events that need to happen to the characters before the middle point of the book can be reached. This short list of actions may then dictate what the content of the next few chapters has to be.
Likewise, when you are on the home straight and heading towards the end of the book, you need to do the same.
Consider where you are now, where you need to be at the end of the book, what events have to take place before the end so that the end can be reached, and then work backwards to generate a list of actions you need to write about in the coming chapters…
Phew...!
Take a breath…
So, what have we learned in this chapter?
(Hopefully something!...?)
My intention is that you would learn that a book is built chapter by chapter. Not instantly, all at once, but gradually. From one scene to another.
This is important, because it means that in the interplay between your conscious self and your subconscious ‘creative’ self, you do not need to consider everything all at the same time. You only need to worry about one chapter at a time.
Worrying about one chapter, is far more manageable than worrying about fifty, or a hundred chapters! (How long is your book going to be?)
In the next chapter we’ll look very briefly at how to make each chapter come alive using the power of visualisation which is at the heart of the Irvine Method.
Chapter 13
Building colour and detail into the book: use the power of visualisation!
To be frank, I am not a very good writer. My ‘prose’ is very clumsy, my speling is terrible, and my Grammar ain’t good. It’s awful. My books could probably all do with more editing to spot the mistakes I haven’t noticed.
However, many of the two million people who have downloaded my books seem to enjoy them, and a lot of them give me a similar compliment, which goes something like this:
“Your books are like little films that run in my mind. I can see the action and feel what the characters are experiencing!”
I take that as a great compliment.
It also makes me smile because it means that I have achieved what I really have set out to do.
When I write, I try to describe in as much detail as I can what I see in my own mind.
When SC – my subconscious self – guides me to write a scene, I try to see in my mind’s eye anything that the characters in that scene would be doing, and then to describe it.
If for example, the scene has a character walking into a room, looking round the room and then doing something in the room, I force myself to imagine the door, the room on the other side of the door, and its contents and orientation. I then force myself to experience the sensation of the character walking into the room, and describe through his eyes what they see. Then, if the character does something in that room, I try to summarise the action.
I try to make a little video of the action in my mind and describe it to the best of my ability, so that someone else could also experience that scene just as I had done.
There is also something else.
I try to write in a way that stimulates readers’ senses.
In any scene, I try to imagine and then describe what a character may see, hear, smell or feel, describing in as much detail as possible, what the sensations are that they feel.
Some people are visual, some are auditory.
So, if you want to describe a bright, sunny day where the hero of the story walks through a forest in autumn, crushing the red, bright yellow and green autumnal leaves beneath his black shoes into the brown earth, you might want to pepper the text with references that could stimulate their sense of sight. Do you get the picture?
For people who respond well to the description of sounds - who are ‘auditory’ in nature - the same walk through the forest should emphasise the dry leaves crunching beneath the hero’s feet as he runs through the trees. It’s raining, and the sound of raindrops dripping from the wet leaves onto the ground is soon drowned out by the crashing thunder which explodes across the sky.
Get Writing! How ANYONE can write a Novel! Page 5
