How do you get writing feedback?

When I first started writing I knew little about it and decided I needed some instruction. I tried a distance learning course, which I didn't get on with: I soon found what I wanted to do (novel writing) and the assignments were at odds. Something had to go and it was the course, but I wasn't wrong about needing feedback. I went along to a local writing group and tried that for a while, but that didn't do the trick either. You will find writing groups are filled with would-be poets and people who think they can write flash fiction and short stories, and again there is little place for useful comment on any extended piece of work. However, the guy who ran the group, someone who is a published novelist and who works as a freelance editor, told me about another group he ran - this time just for novelists. It is a quarterly workshop where each person present reads out a part of their work in progress which is then suitably interrupted, criticised and commented upon. You need a thick skin for this, of course, but everyone is in the same boat and it really does work. Best of all it's free!
Jack Orchison, November 29, 2013.

What's your writing background?

Many writers are brought up with words and the love of books and many come to work in the area in some capacity, and others have qualifications in English (language or literature). Yet many do not. I'm a scientist, and know other scientists who write - strangely this is rarely sci-fi, which has the most knowledgeable and discerning readerhip of any genre. I started writing short stories ten years ago and encouraged the rest of the family to do the same; it was a scheme to get my sons writing. In the end only I stuck at it. I realised my stories were getting longer and darker. They were heading towards the horror novel, which is my main interest now. In case you wondered, I'm the only Jack Orchison in the UK. I'm the one on Google+, with a picture on Picasa, and I'm the inventor with published patents, the scientist with published papers, and the guy with the chemistry PhD thesis. And my two blogs, of course. Plus, I don't have anything to do with that social network beginning with F. Jack Orchison, November 28, 2013.

Deep, dark dread

Hello again. Today I'm looking at story genre, the type of story I like to write and how to get into the right mindset.

I can (and do) write in different genres as ideas strike me (adventure, mystery, serial killer, fantasy, sci-fi) but the one I like the most is the horror/chiller type.

So, as a scientist (a chemist in the manufacturing industry), why should I be so interested in scaring myself and others? Well, when you deal with hard facts all day I think it is exciting to consider the unknown, the unknowable, the unproven and even the unthinkable. This is what I like to call the deep, dark dread. There I am, poised over the keyboard (or, quite often, with pen and paper - low tech is good too), a quiet mild-mannered person; how do I conjure up the requiaite backdrop populated by some hideous evil?

Apart from gods and demons, vampires, werewolves, monsters of folklore (or those invented by HP Lovecraft, for instance), ghosts, aliens and elusive creatures (crypto-organisms), you need to think of your ultimate alter-ego: all the things you are not. And you will soon get the idea, especially when your foul character exists just a whisker away from real life.

Imagine what you could have, could be: murderer, psychopath, robber, rapist, thief, conman, fraudster, imposter, embezzler, assassin, gang leader, drug pusher, arsonist, kidnapper, terrorist...the list is very long. And if some of these don't sound scary enough, imagine the blackness they can paint over a victim's life. Indeed, horror and terror don't need to be caused by monsters: what someone will do to their fellow man or woman can be quite enough.

And remember this: any one of these horrors could exist where you live. They could even be round the next corner. Or standing next to you. Or in a book repository with a gun.

Jack Orchison, November 22, 2013.

Favour fo a Friend

It can be easy for people to get jealous when someone they know brings a new book out. But I'm not like that - I want to congratulate everyone whose hard work has come to fruition. Which is why I am so pleased that, after eight years, my friend Christine Johnson, who writes as CJ Harter, has finally published her first novel, Rowan's Well. It is a well-crafted psychological family drama set in the north-east of England. She is working hard to promote it with newspaper interviews and an agreement with a bookshop. Please visit her facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/cjharterbooks ,  and also don’t forget to visit  the sites where you can buy the book at http://www.feedaread.com/books/Rowans-Well-9781782999317.aspx  and http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/363464  : and here is the link for  Kindles http://tinyurl.com/oxfk2fc  

Where do you get your ideas from?

Hello again, and special greetings to my readers in the USA, Germany and the Ukraine, as well as those in the UK. Today I will look at another commonly encountered writing phrase: 'Where do you get your ideas from?' It's the question most asked of writers, both professional and amateur, published and unpublished. It's a good question, too. Stephen King, in his book 'On Writing,' likens creating a story to carefully excavating a fossil - in other words, the story is already there for us to get if we are determined enough. The story idea is thus the exposed weathered bone or footprint which leads us on to discover the rest. For our stories we must ask ourselves: What if? What could that mean? What is that person's past? How old is that building? Look at everyday things in a new way. Connect them, find a link. The story, complete with genre, will suggest itself. So, how does this all work in practice? Here's an example. A while ago I saw a calendar photograph and wondered where it was. It turned out the picturesque whitewashed cottage next to the winding river was in a village in Norfolk, England. I began to wonder who lived there. Then I saw a sad little news item in a paper - a little girl, due to compete in a horse-riding comtpetion, was kicked to death by another horse in the same field. The man in the cottage became her father. I soon had him losing everything - a widower with no children and whose business was going to the wall in the harsh economic climate. And the only thing he had left to keep him going was his faith. Then, as I looked at the history of the area (you must always do your research), the parish church and ecclesiastical things generally became prominent and I found a centuries-old scandal. I needed to somehow connect the present day with the past. But how? I had the main character be a builder and make an archaelogical discovery as his team dug the foundation for a kitchen extension - work he was doing for a woman who becomes his new love. A woman who has a little girl. The answer to his prayers. And together they solve the past mystery. The component parts of a story rarely come fully formed - sometimes the connections are made over months or years - but there is no great mystery. No real secret that writers know and the rest do not. No Ideas Store Inc. What you need is scattered around and absolutely free. You just need to see the possibility in the mundane, and once you do it's like floodgates have opened. Suddenly, those disarticulated bones assemble into Stephen King's fully-fledged dinosaur and there's no stopping you. Jack Orchison 8 November, 2013

Write what you know

Many people may know me as a chemist who works in the manufacturing industry (indeed, I have papers and patents with my name on them), but not many will realise I am a writer (a would-be novelist)in my spare time. Yes, the guilty secret is out! For a moment I want you to consider the title of this post. It is a commonly given piece of advice, but what does it really mean? You cannot take it at face value, otherwise all writing would be about everybody's boring jobs and mundane lives. Not many of us have careers like Clive Cussler! No - it means you should use your imagination, do your research, read, listen and observe. In other words, write what you can find out. But there is more to it than this. The foregoing will only get you so far, such as your fictional landscape, a few scene ideas and a wooden character or two. What you really need are the aspects that generate the important bits - character motivation and conflict. These bring the story to life, add layers and complexity, make the characters seem like real people, and make the reader keep turning the pages. A story is an emotional journey for the main character(s)and the writer alike. You have to be there, crying, laughing and loving right there with them. This is where we come to the fundamental truth behind the lie on the phrase 'write what you know.' Paradoxically, it really is within all of us, for who has not experienced the joy of (or longing for) love, the destructiveness of envy and jealousy, the loss and tragedy of death, the euphoria of achievement, the embittering effect of failure or rejection, loneliness - the list goes on. And it is these that drive our stories and characters. And I have found something else, too. You may find you gravitate towards certain topics or issues an find it hard to see why - the sort of thing Freud would have got excited about. For a long time I wondered why I wrote about young characters and why the main character in my first novel-in-progress was an only child. Then it hit me: I was at primary school with a girl called Julie who later died of a brain tumour. She was an only child. And a mere fourteen years old. Her face is burned on my mind and you, dear reader, are the first to know this - forty years on. Jack Orchison, 30 October 2013