The Guardian newspaper (in the UK) ran a feature in which they asked ‘some of the most esteemed contemporary authors’  for the ten golden rules they bring to their writing practice.  Here are some of the rules with which I agree or disagree, the name of the author, and my reasons:

Agree:

• “When I’m deep inside a story, ­living it as I write, I honestly don’t know what will happen. I try not to dictate it, not to play God.”  (Michael Morpurgo).  For me this works very well, and the key is to ‘live it as I write’.  The result, I believe, is a more genuine product.
• “The writing life is essentially one of solitary confinement – if you can’t deal with this you needn’t apply.”  (Will Self)  This is self-evidently quite true.
• “Respect the way characters may change once they’ve got 50 pages of life in them. Revisit your plan at this stage and see whether certain things have to be altered to take account of these changes.”  (Rose Tremain).  This is good advice.  A character may change for reasons that haven’t yet been made clear.  I think it’s important to recognise this, go back and add the clarifications.
• “In the planning stage of a book, don’t plan the ending. It has to be earned by all that will go before it.”  (Rose Tremain)  When I have formed a vague plan as to the ending, I find that there is a far better one that arrives by evolution.
• “Hold the reader’s attention. (This is likely to work better if you can hold your own.) But you don’t know who the reader is, so it’s like shooting fish with a slingshot in the dark. What ­fascinates A will bore the pants off B.”  (Margaret Atwood)  This is  very important, and I agree that the best test is whether what I’ve written holds my own attention.
• ” If you’re using a computer, always safeguard new text with a ­memory stick.”  (Margaret Atwood)  This may seem like a trivial point, but before I started doing this I would – for various reasons – lose several hour’s work.  Now, I religiously click on the ‘Save As’ button to send it to my memory stick, as well as my hard disc.
• “Read like mad. But try to do it analytically – which can be hard, because the better and more compelling a novel is, the less conscious you will be of its devices. It’s worth trying to figure those devices out, however: they might come in useful in your own work. I find watching films also instructive. Nearly every modern Hollywood blockbuster is hopelessly long and baggy. Trying to visualise the much better films they would have been with a few radical cuts is a great exercise in the art of story-telling. ”  (Sarah Waters)  This makes a lot of sense to me.  I like to watch good films critically thinking, ‘how could this be  improved?’  Spotting ‘compelling devices’ and making use of them in one’s own work is also good advice.

Disagree:

• “Work on a computer that is disconnected from the internet.”  (Zadie Smith)  This makes no sense to me.  Why would a writer want to deprive himself of a really useful tool?  I use the internet, for example, to find the names and locations of real places, to discover ethnic habits and customs, to find out how a character would get from place A to place B (if it’s important).  The reason I do this is to make my fiction as realistic as possible.  One has to be careful not to get distracted, but once I find the information I’m seeking, I return immediately to the writing.
• “Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue. The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But “said” is far less intrusive than “grumbled”, “gasped”, “cautioned”, “lied”. I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with “she asseverated” and had to stop reading and go to the dictionary.  (Elmore Leonard)  For me, the repetition of the verb ‘said’ would  be  boring.  The writer has to stick her nose in; after all, it’s her story.  Use of a different verb, other than ‘said’, can characterise the feelings of the speaker.
• “Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said” . . . he admonished gravely. To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing himself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange. I have a character in one of my books tell how she used to write historical romances “full of rape and adverbs”.”  (Elmore Leonard)  I tend to agree that it is best not to mix ‘said’ with and adverb; it is better to select a more expressive verb.  (See the comment above.)  But I don’t agree that the use of adverbs is a mortal sin.  Adverbs are part of the English language (and every other language, as far as I know).  Sometimes – not often, but sometimes – the best available verb on its own doesn’t adequately express the situation.  Then, I’ll use an adverb.
• “Don’t go into great detail describing places and things, unless you’re ­Margaret Atwood and can paint scenes with language. You don’t want descriptions that bring the action, the flow of the story, to a standstill.”  (Elmore Leonard)  I agree with the point about not bringing the flow of a story to a standstill.  But I will often begin a new scene – before any action takes place – to life with a brief, clear description.  I think it’s sometimes important to prompt the reader’s imagination. 

I don’t pretend  to have all the answers to this question, and it is a question I often think about.  But, I suppose it’s fair to say that I’m learning about what it takes, and trying to build the skills that I’m lacking.  Having said this, let me give you my current thinking about writing skills.

First of all, a writer has to be fluent in the language in which s/he is writing.  In my opinion, an extensive vocabulary and a thorough understanding of the rules of grammar and syntax are essential.  Vocabulary is important so that the writer can select the words that convey just the right nuance of what she is trying to say.  Because good writing is literature, making grammatical errors can make the author seem illiterate.  And if grammar is about the use of words and phrases, syntax, which is about the structure of sentences, is also very important.  Of course, the rules of grammar and syntax can vary from language to language.  In German, for example, the verb is often placed at the end of a sentence, after the subject and object.

It isn’t just about writing in one’s mother tongue.  For my two step daughters, their mother tongue is Italian, but from the ages of 7 and 9 they have been immersed in English: at school, with their friends, and their step-father.  Now, they are both totally fluent in English, and their mother says that their Italian vocabulary and grammar has not kept up.  So, if they ever decide to write, they will probably do so in English.

So much for the universal requirement to be a writer.  If one is  going to be a writer of fiction, several other skills become important: creativity and voice.  Creativity is about the ability to present interesting and different characters and situations.  Having a ‘fertile imagination’ would be a part of the creative skill, but, as I’ve said in other posts, the characters and situations should be interesting and different, but they should also be credible.  If they are not credible, the writer will lose the interest of her readers.  If the situations and characters are not interesting and different, they may well be just boring!  Voice is about the projection of the characters and situations onto the page.  It’s about the use of language to make them come alive.  Part of voice is the ability to project feelings, emotions, personalities and values: subtley but clearly.  Voice is also about being a good story-teller, about setting the scene so that it seems real to the reader, and about making the reader reluctant to put the book down.

As our publishers are constantly reminding us, being successful as a writer of fiction is about more than language skills and writing techniques.  It is also about marketing.  Successful writers have niches that they serve.  J K Rowling, the creator of Harry Potter, specialised in imaginative books for young people.  It will be interesting to see how she does in writing adult fiction.  The relationship between the writer and his niche is essentially a marketing relationship.  The writer understands that niche market sector, and he presents a brand that the market sector comes to know and love.  The author, whenever s/he is interviewed or appears before live media, is always selling her brand to her market sector.  (So a successful writer is also a good salesman.)

Finally, there is that illusive but all-important commodity: luck.  It’s about meeting the right person at the right time.  That chance meeting (all else being equal) can make the difference between a best seller and an also-ran!

An article in today’s The Daily Telegraph caught my eye.  On page 5, the caption is “The genius of Shakespeare is in grammar, not the words.”  It goes on to say:

“For centuries, Shakespeare has been celebrated not just for his genius as a playwright but for creating many of the most commonly used words and phrases.
But an academic has challenged the view of Shakespeare as the father of modern language, claiming that he was no more inventive with words than his contemporaries”

Jonathan Hope, from Strathclyde University, compared Shakespeare’s work with that of Thomas Middleton, Ben Jonson and Thomas Nashe.  These men were, in proportion to the volumes of their work, responsible for inventing just as many new words.  But, according to Mr. Hope, Shakespeare reinvented grammar, breaking away from the conformity of traditional rules.

“Mr. Hope highlighted a passage from Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 4, where Shakespeare plays with the normal rules of English that demand a sentence is structured in the order of subject, verb, object.  In the scene the queen says to her son: ‘Hamlet, thou has thy father much offended.’  Mr. Hope explained: ‘In present day English we would expect, ‘Thou hast much offended thy father, Hamlet’.

As you may know, other languages don’t follow this subject, verb, object convention.  In German, for example, the verb is often placed at the end of the sentence.  So in German, it might be, ‘Thou, Hamlet, thy father hast much offended.’  To me, this sentence seems a bit awkward, because it’s not immediately clear who is the subject and who is the object.

Nevertheless, I am very much in favour of creating different sentence structures to make it interesting for the reader.  But more importantly, different structures can convey sightly different meanings by emphasizing one part of a sentence over another.

Let  me give some examples:

• “Handsome John passionately kissed pretty Mary and held her hand in the dining room.”  (conventional, except that the prepositional phrase at the end kind of dangles)
• “In the dining room, pretty Mary was passionately kissed by handsome John, who held her hand.”  (in this version, Mary and the dining room assume more importance)
• “Having passionately kissed pretty Mary in the dining room, handsome John held her hand.” (here, that passionate kiss takes centre stage.)
• “Having held her hand in the dining room, handsome John passionately kissed pretty Mary.” (here, that hand holding seems most important.)
• “Pretty Mary was passionately kissed by handsome John, who held her hand in the dining room.” (pretty Mary is the key character here.)
• “John, who was handsome, passionately kissed pretty Mary and held her hand in the dining room.” (John’s looks get extra emphasis.)
• and so on

In my opinion, it can make boring reading if one sentence after another follows the subject, verb, object format.  Much more interesting to throw in prepositional clauses, adverb clauses, adjective clauses, and participial phrases (using a verb ending in ing, for example).