The Know-It-All Narrator

robertmcloughlinWriting Advice, Writing Experiences

My unfinished novel started out as 50,000 words of notes on a story set in an exclusive five star spa resort. It’s centered around the people who work there, and in particular, the protagonist, a male massage therapist. I then wrote out scenes and chapters without clear character arcs nor plot, and ended up with a jig-saw puzzle of almost 140,000 words. After more work I finished a very rough first draft done with 78,000 words written in first person narrative, from the perspective of the male protagonist.

But now, I have become stuck and stopped writing/editing that draft. I’ve been trying to figure out how I might free up this log jam with my story. Writing it in the first person came relatively easy, as it does to most people writing their first novel. But my story is complicated. I fear that it will be misjudged by the reader, as it is full of ethical dilemmas.  I also have a large number of characters, which might confuse readers as to who’s who. I wasn’t happy at all with my draft and felt that I had hit a wall and didn’t know how to adequately tell the story.

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Writer’s Block

robertmcloughlinWriting Advice, Writing Experiences

This article could be more accurately titled ‘Writers Not Writing’. Writer’s block sounds like some sort of external agency which is standing at the door prohibiting writers from putting words on paper. Because I think I may have it, I’d like to explore what writers block really is, for my own benefit and that of others as well. Interestingly enough, the term ‘writer’s block’ was first introduced in the 1940s by a psychiatrist named Edmund Bergler. For 20 yrs. he studied writers who suffered from ‘neurotic inhibitions of productivity’. I love that label.

Apparently, under stress, a human brain will shift control from the cerebral cortex to the limbic system. The limbic system directs the instinctual processes of the ‘fight or flight’ response. The limited input from the cerebral cortex hinders a person’s creative processes. The person is often unaware of the change, which may lead them to believe they are creatively ‘blocked’.

Blocked writers may have an increased aversion to solitude. Which is a major problem, since writing usually requires time alone. Author Phyliss Kestenbaum found that she needed to write in order to be aware of emotions. But when she fell out of touch with her own emotions, she couldn’t write.  (more…)

How to Write Sex Scenes

robertmcloughlinWriting Advice

Sex must be mixed with tears, laughter, words, promises, jealousy, envy, travel, new faces, stories, dreams, fantasies, music, dancing and wine.       Anáis Nin

In my draft novel The Spa Resort there are several scenes involving romance, from enticing glances, to fully immersed lovemaking. Sometimes the characters fail clumsily. In other scenes they are seductive successes. As I wrote them I wondered what people would think. Would they be offended? Would they want the ‘juicy stuff’? Would innuendo be good enough? What kind of language should I use to describe these scenes? What if members of my family, friends, or neighbors read them? Would I feel embarrassed, be called sexist? Would I have to give my Boy Scout badges back?

So I thought I’d put a summary together of how other authors go about writing sex scenes. The spectrum is as varied as romance itself. On one end, there are gratuitous sex scenes put in just to titillate the reader. Just like in many of today’s movies where there has to be some nudity, a car chase, an explosion, and a fight. A scene where two people find themselves unexpectedly near a bed and feel compelled to rip each other’s clothes off then touch, lick, squeeze, and generally mimic a game of twister on that bed. Then there is the opposite side, obligatory (by genre) sex scenes where two people have met and over 20 chapters fallen in love despite themselves. Where their relationship naturally culminates in a passionate love scene, finally, often behind doors closed to the reader. (more…)

Filter Words

robertmcloughlinWriting Advice

‘The more I learn, the more I realize how little I know.’ A much heard expression from those who pursue knowledge. In my ‘learn as I go’ path of writing a novel I came across an expression I’d never heard before, ‘Filter Words’.

What came to mind had nothing to do with writing. When we were kids we had a fish aquarium with a filter that kept the muck out of the water. Recently we took some of our apples from the yard and brought them to an apple press. There we took the juice squeezed out from our apples and poured it into a jug, through a filter to keep out the bits of solid apple. To me, a filter has always been something to let the good through and to separate the bad bits out. But words as filters? This took me a while to grasp.

Most writers use filtering in their writing without even knowing it. Instead of saying, ‘There was a cat,’ we write ‘John saw the cat’. Instead of saying, ‘The cat hissed,’ we write, ‘John heard the cat hiss.’ The filter words here are saw and heard. They are some of the words we use to unnecessarily filter the reader’s experience through a character’s point of view.  (more…)

Scene Transitions in Novels

robertmcloughlinWriting Advice

In the first draft of my novel, ‘The Spa Resort’, I presently have 42 chapters and 190 scenes. I may not make any changes to the number of chapters. But as I edit, I definitely will be dropping or combining many of the existing scenes to something more digestible to the reader. In my editing, I will be going over each transition from one scene to the next to ensure that they flow seamlessly and are clear to the reader.

Did you ever read a book that had no chapters? It ends up ominously looking like one whole long chapter. Chapters are just another manner of creating a scene break. It’s the author’s choice whether or not they use them, or just write scene breaks into an ongoing story. Most authors though, utilize both chapters, and scene breaks to manage the flow of their novel. Personally, I prefer a book with chapters. It gives the reader a place for a bathroom break if nothing else. Individual scenes could be as short as a single sentence. Though in most novels, scenes run on average between 750 words all the way up to 5,000 words. You should be careful that your scenes don’t end up being interchangeable, or if nothing much changes from one scene to the next.

There are many reasons to end a scene and begin a new one:  (more…)