Writing Tips
My
Time Raiders is history told as cliffhanger adventures.
Some of my basic guidelines, which may help you, are:
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Research, research, research and keep going back to the original writings of the real-life archaeologists.
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Adapt. Be true to the spirit and high moments of the history, while changing the original memoirs into a cliffhanger.
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The telling of a cliffhanger is driven by the hero’s obsession, crises,
fearful uncertainties, and by danger, action, adventure, people pushed
to the edge. Biographical and historical information is revealed
through the eyes of somebody caught up in the emotions of dramatic
moment. The settings are not stage backdrops. Places are what my people
see and feel in moments of crisis.
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The readers. Content, structure, themes, vocabulary, sentences are
designed with the readers, aged 10+, always in mind. But style, like
the story, must challenge the readers to go beyond themselves.
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The length. I can’t tell the whole story, so I choose the parts that say it all. That means agonizing selection.
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The beginning. I never start at the beginning, but at an exciting
moment. Rather than explain what’s going on and why, I let the readers
discover things bit by bit, as the people in the story do. (People in
my books get really upset with me if I call them characters. They want
their name used. They aren’t objects. I am permitted to call them
people.) For example, I began Monsters in the Sand with Layard about to be shot by a hidden assassin. Blood of the Incas begins with Hiram trapped on a mile-high cliff during an earthquake.
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Develop potential adventures. Hiram Bingham briefly mentioned a
dangerous panther. I seized upon that idea as a great way to reveal
personalities, history, places and to increase suspense. True panther.
Imagined hunt. In book #2 Monsters in the Sand,
Austen Layard is asked to cure a sick child and if he fails he will be
killed. In Layard's actual memoirs this event is given brief attention
but I found it exciting and it revealed so much of his character that I
expanded that part of the story. It also dramatically set the time
(mid-1800s) and place (Southern Persia).
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Clear, powerful motives, not events, drive the story. Otherwise plot
degenerates into just one damn thing after another. In Blood of the
Incas, we need to know why Hiram Bingham has a passionate obsession
with the past. His grandmother’s gift and the scene in the cave with
the mummy are important to show what drove the hero to endure such
hardships and take so many risks. True motives. Imagined grandmother.
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The ending must be an exciting, credible climax, which ‘closes the
circle’ by resolving the main problem set up in or near the beginning.
- True
discovery. True lives and true lies. Historical fiction and official
historical ‘truth’ may be bias, propaganda, mistakes or lies. But
academic historians and novelists are in the same hunt for truths of
the past. Sometimes different, but complementary truths. My Time
Raiders have imagined characters and situations, but they give us a
glimpse into all kinds of truths about human beings, places and
historical events. Readers are welcome to join the hunt for What Really
Happened.
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Writing is messy. It also messes with the author’s head.
Our minds go at a thousand miles an hour. Or go blank. While writing
one sentence, our brain will free fall through memories, flashes of
ideas, bits of conversation, details of research, sounds outside,
worries about our unmentionable habit, music, thoughts of chocolate ...
I love that mess. It’s my job. I’ve special ways of making sure I get
into a worse mess, then find a way out. There are different messes at
different stages of writing a story.
The First Draft.
This follows months of research and soaking up Hiram Bingham’s
writings, studying maps, checking other versions of the story and so
on.
This is called the Discovery Draft, because I find out what
I do and don’t know, and about what’s working and not working in the
way I write.
It’s best written as fast and furiously as possible. I try to let the
story tell me, without checking spelling or even going back to research
notes. Stop to find the correct latitude or spelling of
Choqqueqquicho
or something like that, and the story dies. Fix it later.
This draft is for me. Nobody else reads this. They can’t. It’s an
embarrassing shambles. Lots of pages disintegrate into lists of
questions I’ll need to answer, but not yet. There are scrawled maps,
scenes begun and not finished, chapters in the wrong order because
while I was writing one, another insisted on being written. Scenes pop
up from another point of view. My people jostle and demand attention.
Some will get in the book. Others won’t and they get really angry. If
they are really lively, they’ll find a place in another book.
To find a way through this maze, I write from within my people. I sit
them down, get eye-contact and demand answers to a few tough questions,
such as: What’s your problem? Can you see a way out? What makes you
keep going? Why should I or the readers care about you?
And I don’t believe in the so-called Writer’s Block. It’s a weak
excuse. Sure, writing the first words is scary. So is the first
brushstroke of a painting, or the first notes of a performance. But
with writing, we don’t usually know the best beginning until we’ve
finished the entire draft.
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The Second Draft.
I draw diagrams of the structure and make lists of scenes already
written - those to stay and those that might be deleted. Another list is
of extra scenes that maybe should go in to be true to Hiram Bingham’s
book. Get the balance right. What about the pace? Does each chapter end on a cliffhanger?
One other person reads this when it’s finished. My wife, Christine, has
written more than fifty exciting books, is a brilliant editor, the
publisher of
Launch Press, and she finds lots of things I’ll need to
think about and fix.
This second draft gets me further into the mess. While writing it, my
mind jumps back to something to add to a scene, my people have found
their voices by now and shout each other down, new ideas bubble up, and
always my research keeps nagging at me to stay faithful to Hiram and
his discoveries. I fling the mess on the page so that I don’t lose it.
This writing is like surfing the subconscious.
The thing is to finish each scene. Then, later, like an oil painter, go
back and add layers of color, personality, relationships, conversation,
thought, place...
If I’m confused, I ask my people: What do you want, right now? What are you feeling and what are you going to do about it?
If I’m totally lost I ask them: What’s the real conflict here? Where’s
the real danger? How can I make things even harder for you and myself?
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The Third Draft
What sort of book have I got here and what am I going to do with it?
One reality check is my storyboard. (I had to do an outline way back,
when I first worked on the concept for my agent and publisher. But we
all knew that while certain scenes were obligatory, nevertheless, in
the writing, the book would take on a life of its own.) I reduce each chapter to
one sentence. Some writers at this stage, shrink the novel to a short
story, or draw the book onto a whiteboard or huge sheet of paper, or
minimize each scene onto library cards, then shuffle the cards.
Whatever, it’s time to face reality. I force myself to say what the
story is in no more than 8 words. I go back time and again to Bingham’s
account. Have I kept the point of view consistent? What’s the best
place to end? Have I answered enough of the readers’ questions?
I also show it to readers with specialist knowledge. For example,
Blood of the Incas was read by our daughter Jennifer and her husband
Troy, because they’ve done lots of mountain climbing and treks in
jungles. They found mistakes I didn’t know I’d made, for example the
date around which the word backpack became common in the USA. Phew. I
had Hiram Bingham using a rucksack. Big mistake. And I checked details
of Machu Picchu with our son, Sam, who trekked there with his wife,
Allison.
Christine cross-checked the exact species of birds I’d mentioned. She
used websites of international bird-watchers who photograph and record
the songs of birds all over the world. She also found that I’d used the
wrong kind of leech. Leeches ain’t just leeches. There’s all sorts with
up to ten eyes or multiple mouths and some, like disgusting fingers of
gloves filled with blood, dangle from tree branches and drop on your
neck to form a pretty black necklace that sucks. Anyway, I had an
African species in the Peruvian Amazon. Panic. Quick, correct it.
When all this correcting is done, I send the manuscript to my agent,
Jacinta di Mase, who gives her good suggestions about improving the
manuscript before she sends it the publisher.
Professional pride. I revise it again. Then off it goes to the
publisher, who gives it to editors and proof-readers. My first editor
for
Time Raiders was an archaeology graduate.
Writers are actually re-writers.
We take enormous efforts to put ourselves into messes, and find ways out. Then we hide those efforts so the book looks easy.
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The titles of your Time Raiders series (Book #1: Blood of the Incas, Book #2: Monsters in the Sand) are dramatic. What do you consider when choosing a title?
The title makes people want to read the book, so I needed a sense of excitement and mystery. It should also have a real connection to the story. Both these titles are taken from words that appear in the book.
Time Raiders #2: Monsters in the Sand is about Layard, who unearthed the ancient city of Nineveh. How did you manage to cover years of his work within the pages of one novel?
I went for the moments of high drama, the decisive turning points in the story. To find them, I read and re-read Layard’s memoirs and major biographies or comments by other archaeologists, then I made of long list of scenes that should be in the book, and finally reduced that list to the scenes that were absolutely obligatory – the story couldn’t work without them.
What hints do you have for a writer who wants to turn non-fiction historical accounts into novels?
- Be passionate about your subject.
- Look for the big moments in the story and tell them as well as you can.
- Dramatise, dramatise, dramatise. Stories are the flow of emotional moments, not the external events.
- Live the story through your characters, not see it a photos in an album.
- Be true to the personalities and achievements of your characters.
- Create the setting through action, not as loads of information. The story is always more important than background information.
What are some of the pitfalls to watch out for?
- Losing the point of view, that is, the vivid experiences of the characters because you are too busy organising the plot.
- Forcing the characters to say what you’ve decided they should say, rather than letting them come alive as themselves.
- Slabs of narrative, when dialogue would work more convincingly.
- False suspense, when another gun is aimed or another rock is falling, another special effects explosion. Boring.
- Real suspense comes from terrible uncertainties. The people in the story (and therefore the readers) don’t know what’s going to happen next and don’t know what to do.
Why write something that involves so much research?
- The subject grabs, obsesses you.
- Because research is the fun part. You don’t have to do the hard work of writing, yet.
- Curiosity. Writers are curious about everything. As Austen Layard said, ‘There’s so much more to discover.’
- And as a writer you want to get it correct. Imagine the embarrassment of publishing dreadful mistakes.
How do young people react to stories set in other times and places?
They love the chance to enter another reality and walk around in the fantastic lives of other people.
In one way, historical fiction is ‘escapist,’ because the fun and excitement of the stories take us out of our present world. The shock is to discover ourselves and our world behind the mask of the past.
Do you follow actual events precisely?
I must stick to ‘history’ or lose credibility. As well, there are serious problems in ‘revising’ or falsifying history to make it propaganda.
Of course, all history is biased, no matter how hard we try to get the facts right. That is human nature. We can’t help being influenced by our own feelings and culture in the ways we describe events. Some historians argue that all history is lies because the evidence is ambiguous or deliberately falsified or fragmentary.
Usually we don’t know the facts of events precisely or completely. Eyewitnesses to an accident all give different interpretations. ‘Truth’ is a slippery bar of soap in the historical bathtub.
Given the limits of ‘historical accuracy,’ as a story teller-historian, my job is to inquire into the events rather like a detective, and then tell them in a way that interests readers.
There are warring tribes in Monsters in the Sand. What techniques did you use to avoid the novel being one fight after another and to make readers care?
We experience all those conflicts through the eyes of Austen Layard. Because he is fiercely committed to helping his friends who are under attack or defending his ‘monsters’ from robbers, the battles are more ‘inward’ rather than ‘external.’ My job is to make the readers care about Austen Layard so that he is like a friend who is in danger. That identification makes the fights matter to us.
What is the secret of connecting modern young readers to events and people that happened decades or centuries ago?
One of the secrets is to cunningly hide the path the readers follow into the story and, perhaps without knowing it, they are sharing the story, they are creating as they read, and in doing that they are imaginatively discovering themselves.
(Interview questions by Christine Harris)
Have you ever wondered:
- What is the difference between a biography, memoir and family history?
- Why do so many people want to write their own story or that of their family?
- Where do you begin?
- How should the writer proceed if he/she uncovers a family scandal or wants to write about something that could cause bad feeling in the family?
- How can a dry boring list be turned into something that is lively and interesting to read?
- Should the writer let family members read the manuscript before publication?
- What if the writer runs out of steam or loses their way?
- When the book is finished, what then?
Read the answers on Writers-Bitz Blog.
Questions to ask about your memoirs
- The story. What is your memoir all about and what’s it really all about? Finding the overarching story and sub-plots in the mass of research. Deciding on your mix of ‘fact’ and ‘fiction.’
- The market. Who are your readers and why will they keep turning the pages? Ways of making your story appeal to your market.
- Viewpoint. Who is telling the story and why? Mixing alternative points of view.
- Evidence. How much of your story is ‘true’? Clarifying and organising your material. Dealing with too much evidence, lack of evidence, conflicting evidence, bias, lies, faulty memories and perils of personal politics.
- Characters. Why should I care about the people in your book? Bringing compelling people to life?
- Setting. How can you improve this so that other times and places become real and fascinating for the readers.
- Structure. Which parts of the story need shifting, deleting, or developing in more depth? What are your best beginnings and endings?
- Drafting. How will your next draft differ from this one? The aims and methods of first, second and third drafts.
- Style. What are your strengths and weaknesses? Developing a personal editing checklist.
- Publication. What’s the best way to sell your book? Approaches to publishers. Planning self-publication. Promotion and distribution. Legalities.
Fact and Fiction in 'Monsters in the Sand' 