SWWJ Regional Meeting in Chichester
I've spent today in Chichester, West Sussex, at the Society of Women Writers and Journalists' regional meeting.
The day was excellent. We spent the morning talking about writing in general. I gained lots of information to help me market my books on-line, and could also give others some help.
After lunch we had our speaker, Patrick Easter. Patrick writes historical crime. His books deal with the major themes of the historical period he's writing about. He's tackled piracy and slavery among other topics.
Patrick was a policemen in the Met, and his stories are based around the River Thames. He finds the stories he writes about from looking at original eighteenth-century documentation. Things he reads spark off ideas, and he then turns them into novels.
My favourite quote from his talk is:
"Never underestimate the power you have as an author to excite people."
He explained that what he meant by that was that we might think we lead ordinary lives, but often other people see novelists as exotic and special creatures. The point he was making was that experts are usually willing to help a writer because of this supposed glamour.
He said that, for him, any synopsis he writes early on in a book's development serves no useful purpose. By the time he's finished the story it bears no relation to the synopsis. Haven't we all found that!
In my case I now do detailed chapter plans for my books. Panthera: Death Song, which I'm coming to the end of writing now, has five viewpoints. The story is intervowen between these and I felt I'd never be able to keep things straight if I didn't map out in detail what happened in whose viewpoint. I've more or less stuck to it, but I've added in extra chapters in different viewpoints, and I've chopped off chapters in different places when I realised I could get an extra cliffhanger end if I did so. Although I have 24 pages of chapter plan, it's covered with notes about information changed or moved to different chapters.
I've never tried to write a synopsis before I've finished a book, but Patrick pointed out that if I ever got offered a three book contract I'd have to do so. I'd have to write synopses for the second and third books before I'd even started them. I think I'll worry about that if I ever find myself in that lucky situation!
The day was excellent. We spent the morning talking about writing in general. I gained lots of information to help me market my books on-line, and could also give others some help.
After lunch we had our speaker, Patrick Easter. Patrick writes historical crime. His books deal with the major themes of the historical period he's writing about. He's tackled piracy and slavery among other topics.
Patrick was a policemen in the Met, and his stories are based around the River Thames. He finds the stories he writes about from looking at original eighteenth-century documentation. Things he reads spark off ideas, and he then turns them into novels.
My favourite quote from his talk is:
"Never underestimate the power you have as an author to excite people."
He explained that what he meant by that was that we might think we lead ordinary lives, but often other people see novelists as exotic and special creatures. The point he was making was that experts are usually willing to help a writer because of this supposed glamour.
He said that, for him, any synopsis he writes early on in a book's development serves no useful purpose. By the time he's finished the story it bears no relation to the synopsis. Haven't we all found that!
In my case I now do detailed chapter plans for my books. Panthera: Death Song, which I'm coming to the end of writing now, has five viewpoints. The story is intervowen between these and I felt I'd never be able to keep things straight if I didn't map out in detail what happened in whose viewpoint. I've more or less stuck to it, but I've added in extra chapters in different viewpoints, and I've chopped off chapters in different places when I realised I could get an extra cliffhanger end if I did so. Although I have 24 pages of chapter plan, it's covered with notes about information changed or moved to different chapters.
I've never tried to write a synopsis before I've finished a book, but Patrick pointed out that if I ever got offered a three book contract I'd have to do so. I'd have to write synopses for the second and third books before I'd even started them. I think I'll worry about that if I ever find myself in that lucky situation!
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