A common writing wish is to write books for children. A children’s author has lots of genre options, just like authors who write for adults. There’s children’s fantasy fiction, adventure, crime, even horror. Why choose to write for children, though?

There’s something magical about a book that’s written for children. There are no holds barred with what’s possible. And children aren’t jaded. They haven’t seen it all before. They are still in that fabulous time of life when they’re still surprised and thrilled by the stories adults have become blind to. Writers of children’s fiction have this wonderful audience to write for.

Children’s Author Claire Fayers

One such writer is Claire Fayers, author of The Accidental Pirates series, Storm Hound and most recently Welsh Fairy Tales, Myths and Legends. Fayers weaves magic, mythology, humour and adventure into her stories. Her books are loved by children and parents alike.

Claire Fayers will be joining me on Clubhouse for a discussion and Q&A on 23rd September 2021 at 8pm (UK time). This is an exciting opportunity to listen to a traditionally published author give her experiences of being a writer of children’s books – and maybe even ask your own question!

Not familiar with Clubhouse?

It’s a fairly new platform with a real difference from other social media outlets in that it’s audio-only… great if you’re shy of being on camera! Think of it as a bit like listening to a podcast or radio show, except that’s it’s live. There are clubs and rooms on all manner of topics. These clubs are like communities of support, help, conversation and human interaction, which for many of us can be hard to come by these days. 

My Clubhouse club is called Writers’ Pool and is, unsurprisingly, about writing! I host regular rooms discussing various topics to do with writing and there’s a lovely ethos of idea sharing. It brings together people from all over the world who otherwise wouldn’t ever meet. How great is that?

One of the best things about attending a ‘room’ on Clubhouse is that you don’t have to speak if you don’t want to. You can remain in the audience and just listen. This makes it great if you’re doing other things at the same time or if you’re shy about joining in.

When you’ve got your confidence, though, you can come up on the ‘stage’. There you can ask questions, suggest solutions, or just reach out to other human beings with the same interests as you. Let’s face it – the people you live with don’t always understand what you’re talking about.

Authors on Clubhouse

Clubhouse is not just for those who love tech. I certainly don’t, and I find it super-easy to navigate. All you need is a smartphone.

I am very excited that Claire Fayers is coming along as a guest to my club very soon. It’s a great opportunity for you to ask a published full-time author your questions about writing and getting published. Or listen in and hope someone else asks your question!

Whether you’re a new writer or writing your third novel, a community to share ideas and receive encouragement is something special.

Follow my Club (Writers’ Pool) on Clubhouse to get this benefit. A community for writers to discuss, collaborate and support each other. It’s a non-judgemental, non-stuffy space which welcomes writers of all experience levels. It’s about helping each other up rather than knocking each other down. 

I run regular ‘rooms’ on the app about lots of aspects of writing and storytelling. Sometimes I invite special guests to join me in the room who can offer all kinds of valuable insights into the writing process and industry.

Writers’ Pool on Clubhouse

Clubhouse is an audio-only mobile social media platform which promotes real connection between people. There’s no pressure to speak in any of my rooms if you’re a bit shy. So whether you’re a speaker or you’d prefer to stay in the audience, my Club is a great way to get support and motivation in your writing.

What new writers find hard

Writers find it hard to put their story ideas onto paper for various reasons. It can be an unhealthy degree of perfectionism. It can be a lack of confidence in their skill or originality. It can be the lack of a writing habit – that is, a lack of consistent practice.

A new writer often meets a stumbling block early on when they realise that writing a novel (or any other book) is not as simple as they first thought. It’s the difference between appearance and reality. To the reading public, it looks as though an author sat down one day and produced the book straight from brain to page.

You should be reassured that this is not the case. An author does not sit down with just an idea, start writing, and have it all come out perfectly. Stream of consciousness writing is fine for your own diary or journal. It’s also fine for getting your initial story ideas out of your head so that you can stop carrying them around inside your brain. But that first brain dump is not what everyone reads on the bus or by the pool.

How can you make writing less hard?

There are two things to do. Firstly, learn about the craft of writing. Learn about creating characters, showing not telling, plotting, and a myriad of other skills. Secondly, form a writing habit. Write often. Even if you don’t like what you write, keep writing. You will improve if you keep at it. It’s impossible not to improve if you keep giving it a go.

There is also the option of getting help. 

Hiring an editor is the help most new writers have heard of. Most people are also aware that there are courses and programmes out there through which they can learn about the craft in a more time efficient way than ploughing through a whole library of books on the topic of writing.

Another option is story coaching. You can get help to develop your story ideas and characters. You can make sure you have a strong enough conflict in your story to sustain the plot. You can get the clarity and lightbulb moments to reignite your passion for your story and to get you over that road bump and back on the path to getting your story out of your head and into a book that will make others think you just sat down and wrote it!

Does this sound like you? Have you hit a bump in the road with your writing? Lost direction with your character and plot after a few chapters? Or got a load of notes but no idea how to form them into the story as it sounded in your head?

I have the perfect package to help you navigate that writing ‘road bump’ and move on with your novel-writing journey. My Navigate Your Writing ‘Road Bump’ Package helps you figure out the shape of the book you’re trying to write so that you can get over this sticky patch and move on with clarity and confidence.

How to start writing a novel

You want to write a novel. You’ve got some story ideas bouncing around your head, but you don’t know how to even begin. Every novel you read makes you want to write your own book too, yet it also scares you. 

Those novels you read are just so… good. They’re polished and clever and well written. It makes you feel that you could never write something good enough so you maybe shouldn’t bother.

Advice for writing a novel

If you’re a new writer, I’ve got a reassuring message for you here about how novels get written. Before you start searching for advice like ‘Tips for Writing a Great Novel’, there’s something very important and powerful to understand.

A novel – in its finished form that you’ve always read – is not downloaded onto the page in a perfect flow. It does not pop out of the writer’s brain, down their arms, through their fingers and onto their manuscript as a crafted story. Novels do not appear as a manifestation of their authors’ stream of consciousness.

Every writer of a great, good, or even decent novel has a process. This process does not involve being a conduit through which a perfect novel streams out fully formed.

How to write your first novel

It’s unhelpful to think of writing your novel in terms of typing Chapter One and trying to get the words to come out right.

You’ll get on better if you think of the story in your mind as a lump of marble. It’s unformed at the moment. It’s not much to look at. But the potential is there for something beautiful. In fact, the material that the final work of art is formed of is already there. Your job as a writer – as a storyteller – is to find that story and to shape it into what it’s meant to be.

All novel writers do this in one way or another. They take an idea – their lump of marble – and they start shaping it. The rough shape of their plot and characters often begin to emerge first. The world the characters live in starts to become real. 

Gradually the story becomes more defined. The problems, emotions and motivations of the characters come into focus. Eventually, the novel is ready to share with the world. It is unveiled like a statue at an exhibition. Everyone marvels at the writer’s talent and skill, perhaps unaware of the work behind the scenes.

You can do this too. You can write a novel. It is not only for those ‘special’ ones. The only difference between them and you is the place they are on their writing journey.

Advice for Writers: Show don’t Tell

The advice writers are most often given is ‘show don’t tell’. In Facebook writing groups, critique groups, writers’ circles, creative writing workshops, the mantra is ‘show don’t tell’.

What does it even mean? What are you supposed to achieve with that?

It sounds confusing. It sounds like you’re meant to draw pictures for your readers rather than write them a story.

Creating a world of story

I remember when I was a child visiting my grandparents. My grandfather was a reader of crime novels, war stories and spy thrillers. Every week, he would visit the public library and take out another two or three books. 

I watched him reading them. I would try to guess what exciting things must be happening in the story. I always knew when he was in the middle of a dangerous bit because of his physical reactions. His legs twitched and jumped as if he were running away from an enemy soldier or spy. His fingers ran along the edges of the pages almost like he was grabbing for a gun. 

He enjoyed the thrill of those stories. He felt the excitement as if the events were real. He felt it physically.

The writers he enjoyed most were those who drew pictures for him so that he could see, hear, feel, smell and even taste what the characters were experiencing. They didn’t go in for long descriptions of scenery or detailed character sketches. Those writers created a world of story and dumped my grandfather into that world unceremoniously.

Those writers focused on the experience of the characters in the story, how it made them feel, and what they were struggling to achieve, and made it become real.

Writers who ‘show don’t tell’

That’s what writers who ‘show don’t tell’ are trying to achieve. A good writer will get out of their own way and stop dictating facts to their readers. They won’t tell their readers what they are supposed to think. Not directly. A good writer will show their readers the world from the point of view of their characters. Then they let their readers experience the events along with the characters.

It’s like living another person’s life. Even sat in your armchair in front of the fire, just like my grandfather did, you can go anywhere, do anything, be anyone. You can be James Bond. You can catch that spy and hunt down the criminal mastermind.

As a reader, you know that. You’ve had that experience yourself, whatever genre you read. As a writer, it’s your job to give that gift to your own readers.

I can help you start doing that exact thing. Access my FREE workbook to help you learn the difference between showing and telling in your writing…

Write a story that will make someone cry

Many writers wish they knew how to write a story that will make someone cry. They want to know how to make their readers feel such strong emotion that they sob while reading about fictional characters. Many such writers get part of the answer on their own: they understand that to make people cry they need to have characters in their stories who feel strong emotions themselves. However, they are often still missing a key part of the characterisation process. That key part is character resilience. 

Once you’ve created this character we admire, give them something to struggle with. Give them an event that’s really hard for them to cope with, because it challenges the thing they care most about. If they care most about their young family, threaten that family. If they care most about getting a promotion that they’ve worked for since forever, introduce a character who’s even better qualified.

OK. You’ve challenged your character and they’ve answered the challenge. What next? Your character now needs to encounter hardship and difficulties on their journey to solving the problem. Things have to be hard. You have to give them something that’s difficult to achieve. You also have to make the obstacles in their way tougher and tougher to overcome. Their emotions need to be stretched tighter and tighter as they start to crack under the pressure.
They might feel a great temptation to give up and let the bad guy get what he wants. They must sink into a pit of despair. And there must be a terrible loss. To make someone cry when they read your story, you must put your character through an event that is too much for anyone to realistically bear. But even that is not enough.

You must go a step beyond this. What will make your reader cry is not so much the fact that something awful has happened. What brings your reader to tears is your character’s reaction to this event. There will be the immediate despair, of course. But then he or she must show their true mettle. They must pick themselves up, look their defeat in the face, and face it anyway. They must be defiant and resilient even though it is surely impossible that they will overcome.

Again, The Hunger Games offers us a great example of defiance and resilience. Katniss loses a friend and ally. She initially despairs but then shows her true courage and is defiant in the face of the enemy.

It is the resilience of the human spirit that makes a reader cry, not the sight of a character crumbling.

Will your character finally overcome the obstacles to their happiness and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat?

Maybe. That’s up to you. You’re the writer. In a sad story with a tragic ending, certainly your character won’t. But they’ll go down fighting. The key to making your readers cry when they read your story is always your character’s resilience. 

Are you writing stories that no one will ever read?

‘Sure, I’ll read your boring novel. The way you’ve told it is like wading through mud, your characters speak like robots and you’ve written lots of dull and pointless description, but I know you’ve spent time writing it and you think it’s fabulous so of course I will give up twenty hours of my life to make you feel good.’

… said no reader EVER.

I spend some of my social media time in support groups for writers and storytellers. I like to keep up with current issues, see what people are worrying about, and it is always possible to learn something new.

Some of the time, though, I end up shaking my head in disbelief. Recently I saw a thread started by a young writer who was worried that he was wasting his time. He was concerned particularly that he might be creating stories that nobody else would ever think were worth their time and effort to read.

Out of the shadows already had come fifty or more group members, almost all singing from the same song sheet…

‘Don’t worry about it, man. So long as you’re writing what YOU love, that’s the point.’

‘Just write from your heart and there will be people who resonate with your story.’

Stories that readers find irresistible

That poor guy was expressing his concern that he might not find an audience to read his stories. He was terrified that he would put them out there and get nothing but tumbleweed around them. He was writing because he wanted to have an impact on people and make a success of himself as an author, not so that he could tuck it away in a drawer or create a support group for a specific issue.

What he wanted was to make his stories irresistible. The reason he posted in that Facebook group that day was because he knew his stories WEREN’T irresistible.

Now I don’t know what was good or bad about his writing: he didn’t share any extracts in the thread. But he knew it could be better and he knew it was his job to make it better.

That guy looked to be in his early twenties. Many of the people offering him ‘advice’ must have been twice his age, at least. He didn’t know it, but he had wisdom that those ‘experienced voices’ simply didn’t have and probably never will have. Despite his lack of confidence, he had grasped the truth that no audience out there will ever read something just because its writer loves it. He could see that every person who chooses to read a story will do so because they can see something in it for THEM. What’s more, he could see that it is up to him to engage people in his stories.

Nobody owes him their time, effort or money to give him an audience. That goes for the rest of us too. It is the job of all of us to write stories that are irresistible.

The One Thing that Makes a Good Story..

What makes a story a good one?

Ask one person and he will say, “Action, and lots of it.”

Ask another and she will say, “I want to get to know the characters and what makes them tick.”

Ask a third and you will get the answer, “I want to feel like I know the world where the story is set.”

These three people have very different ideas about what they want in a story, right? So how can we pin down what makes a good story to just one element?

The clue is right there, staring us in the face. We just have to take a step back to see it.

What wisdom can you take away from this blog?

This.

You have to know who you are writing for. Know your audience. What sort of person are they?

Then consider this. What are they looking for when they read your story? What kind of beginning, middle and end will satisfy them? What kind of point do they want your story to make?

Because that is ultimately what makes a good story… a story that satisfies the desires of the audience. So get to know your audience. Knowing your audience leads you into the style to suit them.

Want to learn how to transform the impact you have with your stories? Find out about my membership community for writers, Storytellers Elite.
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Could you really write a book?

It seems that every other person these days has a book in them, whether it’s a book to tell their own story, a novel, or a book to complement their business. Do you recognise yourself in this?

How many of those people actually write their book? I don’t mean start writing it and leave off a thousand words in, or get an outline put together and do a bit of research about CreateSpace… I mean actually write an entire book. I don’t mean writing a first draft and then leaving it to gather dust in a drawer, either.

Elizabeth Gilbert (she’s the one who wrote Eat Pray Love) in her fabulous book Big Magic, which is about living a creative life, tells us about her idea for a book that got away. She started working on it, then for one reason and another she abandoned it. The idea left her and found someone else to write it. Someone else wrote the book instead of her.

Chances are, seeing as you’re reading this article, you’ve got an idea for a book. It could be a book you’ve been looking for but haven’t found anywhere. It could be a book which will motivate and help a particular group of people – people who really need to hear what you’ve got to say.

Here’s the thing. If you don’t write it, they’ll never hear it, unless they hear it from someone else. 

So why don’t YOU write it?

Excuse number one you might be making… “I don’t have time…” or “I’ll do it when I’ve got more time…” Let me ask you this: WHEN do you imagine you are going to have more time? When the kids are older? When they move out? When you win the lottery? When you’re in a residential home for the elderly?

How do you think those people who HAVE written books managed to do so, or at least when they were writing their first book? Few of us have a writing hut we can escape to for hours on end. What you do – what we ALL have to do – is fit your writing into the cracks in your life. That half hour when the kids are at their swimming lesson. That lunch break. That time between dinner and bed. If scrolling on social media is more important to you, carry on. If that soap opera is so vital, don’t let me stop you. Crack on. Someone else can write your book instead of you.

If you really want to write your book, you will. If you want to find excuses, you will. 

Excuse number two you might be making… “It’s too hard.” Writing a book IS hard – at least, writing a book worth reading is hard. There are various promotions out there which promise that you can be published thirty days from now. You could be, indeed. That doesn’t mean what you’ll have written will be any good.

It was Ernest Hemingway, apparently, who wrote, “The first draft of anything is sh*t.” In thirty days, you could possibly write a first draft of something. Or anything. Would you be happy with that as your legacy, though?

Writing a book is hard work. Some people call it practice. Effort. There’s no getting around it. Does that mean it’s too hard for you? It depends…

If you want to put in the work, you will. If you want to decide it’s too hard, you will.

Found this article useful? Try this one… https://bestbookyoucan.com/writing-business-book-know-start/

Three myths about good writing

There are many myths about what makes good writing. Here I debunk three of them…

1. Good writing needs to be grammatically correct.

Not always. Controversial? Not particularly – just common sense. Take another look at those three sentences you’ve just read. Every textbook of English grammar states that a sentence needs to contain a main verb, yet those sentences do not have a single verb amongst them (main or otherwise). Did that stop you understanding them? I doubt it. I am not saying that we should throw the rules of our language out of the window and burn them all on the bonfire while we dance around it wearing bear skins. As a general rule, standard English is the way to go.

But (and how dare I start a sentence or a paragraph with a conjunction!) there are times when we can bend or ignore the rules. There is indeed wonderful beauty in the standard English rhythm of Dickens’ “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.” (A Tale of Two Cities) but there is also beauty in the truth of the words, “I’m pore, I’m black, I may be ugly and can’t cook, a voice say to everything listening. But I’m here.” (The Color Purple, Alice Walker). Celie’s voice couldn’t talk to us in standard English – it wouldn’t be true. So that is writing myth #1.

3. I need to use lots of unusual words and long sentences so that it doesn’t sound simplistic.

There’s a world of difference between simplistic and simple. Simplistic is bad. Simple is good. Avoiding swallowing a combined edition dictionary and thesaurus does not make your writing simplistic. Treating your reader as if s/he is stupid makes it simplistic (see the above note about too much detail). Simple is beautiful. Simple doesn’t tangle your reader in sentences which use three different types of subordinate clauses plus an embedded clause (and no, it’s not desperately important whether you know what they are or not). Simple doesn’t leave your reader baffled because you’ve used three words in a row s/he doesn’t know. Simple writing lets your reader read it without drawing attention to itself. Your reader is free to enjoy the story. Simple! Writing myth #3.

So what am I really telling you?

Good writing serves the reader, not the writer. How can you engage your reader in the story? How can you make your characters come alive and dance for their audience? Anticipate what the reader will want, then give it to them (though tease them now and again by making them wait a while for answers). The reader isn’t thinking ‘How can I admire this writer?’ but ‘Am I enjoying this story?’ That, dear reader, is the crux of it – write so that your reader enjoys the story.