WRITING FEATURES V. WRITING STORIES

Walking v. galloping and weaving v. unravelling

I was looking at the timeline of the publication of my books. I wrote the first five Sprite Sisters books in 30 months. The stories were each around 55,000 words – so 275,000 words in total. That was fast going. The most words I wrote in any one week were 6,000, followed by 4,000 and another 4,000 – 14,000 words in three days. I couldn’t think at all for a few days after that.

As a journalist, I was used to working to deadlines, but I’d never written more than 2500 words for a feature when I began writing The Circle of Power in May 2007. I had three months to work out and write that first story for Piccadilly Press. The other four Sprite titles I published with them followed at a similar gallop.

Then things slowed down. It took me a year to write the sixth Sprite title, The Boy With Hawk-like Eyes. It was partly because I was tired and partly because I didn’t have a publisher behind me, giving me an unmoveable deadline. It took me around nine months to write the seventh title, Magic at Drysdale’s School.

My point is that that sometimes your writing will gallop along and sometimes you need to take things gently.

Then there’s the difference between writing features (wearing my journalist hat) and writing stories (wearing my author’s hat). I find the two processes are entirely different.

With a feature, you do the interview, you do the research and you have a sense of the shape of the article before you begin. You know the length required. You know the angle and the tone the magazine is after because that’s what they’ve commissioned. As you write, you have things to draw on – quotes to insert, facts to note. Because your research is around you, the piece exists before you actually write it. You, the journalist, shape it and give it form. As you write, you draw in the elements together. Writing a feature is almost like weaving, as you pull together different strands and build new layers.

For me, writing a story is a completely different process because it exists only in my head. Having got my outline idea, I work out the general shape of the story and break it down into three parts – beginning, middle and end – then chapters. In that, the process is something the same, but where writing a feature is like weaving, creative writing is allowing something to unravel.

A story is something you have to follow. Despite knowing the concept and having an overall shape, I don’t know what will happen until the image or words drops into my mind – till I hear the characters speak them. That doesn’t happen until I get to precisely that part of the story – it’s one step at a time. Hence allowing the story to unfold.

If the part you are writing doesn’t come to you, there is nothing to write – so you can’t gallop. That’s where experience helps, as you know then to slow down and walk your idea.

And it will come – just in its own time.

Magic at Drysdale’s School, the 7^th Sprite Sisters story,

is available now as an e-book and will be published

as a print-on-demand paperback on 21^st June 2013

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