Literary Consultancy - The Writing Coach

The Silence of the Archives – A guest post by Pete Langman

February 24, 2020 by Jacqui Lofthouse Filed Under: Authors, Books, Character, Guest post, Inspiration, Literary Consultancy, Reading, The writing coach, The writing life, Writers 1 Comment

Our former client Pete Langman, author of Killing Beauties, met his publisher John Mitchinson of Unbound at our Writing Coach ‘Google Academy’ event

Here he writes about how we transform archival material when writing historical fiction.

If it takes an historian to rediscover an exciting but little-known character’s life, the historical novelist can imagine them a new one. But how does this work, and what are the pitfalls? These questions were brought into sharp relief during the writing of Killing Beauties, a novel that follows the adventures of two female spies, Susan Hyde and Diana Jennings, in 1655/6, when England was a republic under the rule of Oliver Cromwell. These women dealt in information, and the novel begins the delivery of a message that will change their lives.

I was introduced to Susan and Diana by my partner, Dr Nadine Akkerman, as she was researching her (bloody splendid) book Invisible Agents: women and espionage in seventeenth-century Britain. She wasn’t that far into the task before it seemed as if Nadine was operating more as spycatcher than researcher, and it was only in the face of her relentless work that the she-intelligencers slowly gave up their secrets. As Nadine put ever more flesh on their archival bones, we began to realise that they were the perfect protagonists to star in a work of historical fiction. What was so promising about this pair was partially the fact that they were operating in the same circles at the same time, and yet don’t appear to have met, and partially the fact that their lack of excitement about the idea of being caught led to their tracks being pretty well covered over.

These women were slippery characters, and the archives would only give up so much information, making it difficult to work out an absolutely solid and continuous trajectory to their stories. This, of course, is not unusual, however, it’s just how history works. Archives rarely answer every question you put to them.

There are two approaches available to the historical novelist: to fictionalise history or historicise fiction. A fictionalised history is one in which a story is woven around actual events, while historicised fiction is one in which historical detail is inserted into a story. I would say I chose the former, but it would be more accurate to say that the former chose me.

Archives do not tell us everything. There are always gaps. Sometimes you can fill them in by using other sources (though this needs to be approached with care), but sometimes they simply insist on remaining as gaps. The primary site of divergence between the historian and the novelist is in the way they approach these gaps: for the former they are traps; the latter, portals. I could make the gaps work with me rather than against me.

The stories of Susan and Diana were very detailed in certain areas, and utterly obscure in others. Diana practically vanishes until the 1660s following her arrest in 1655, while Susan’s final few days on earth are recorded in a letter that also says her body was spirited away from prison by friends. Edward Hyde, her brother and the author of the History of the Rebellion fails to mention her death at the hands of Parliament. This omission, the reasons for which we can only speculate upon, gave me a great opportunity. I had a solid story of a woman risking all for king and country, and losing. The fact that she then vanishes from the records meant that I could do anything I wanted, within reason.

The opportunity that the archives presents to novelists

Where there is a lack of evidence, the historian must tread carefully, warily avoiding suppositions and remembering not to fall foul of the sin of repeating a ‘perhaps Shakespeare had seen X’ in the form of ‘having seen X, Shakespeare …’. The historian may speculate, but carefully, very, very carefully. Both historian and novelist chart the same territory, but the latter may draw the map that results however they wish.

People in the past appear more reliable, honest, predictable and knowable than we are for one reason – their stories are fixed in the history books. It is in that fixedness that we find the safety of truth. But truth, like the history presented in books, is in large part an illusion.

The stories of Susan and Diana were rich enough in information to show me the way, and yet it was the silence of the archives that allowed me the freedom to play.

Creativity and Leadership – A Guest Post by Trevor Waldock

July 15, 2019 by Jacqui Lofthouse Filed Under: Authors, Books, Guest post, Inspiration, Interviews, Literary Consultancy, Self-publishing, The writing coach, The writing life, Uncategorized, Writers 1 Comment

We are delighted to share this guest post by Trevor Waldock. Trevor is one of the best-known, and best-respected, executive coaches in Europe and has worked at the most senior level in organisations across all sectors. The author of Doing the Right Thing – Getting Fit for Moral Leadership, he is also the founder of Emerging Leaders, a charity, which aims to bring the best of leadership development to the poorest of communities in sub-Saharan Africa.

I have struggled for years with being a writer. Am I a writer? How do I know? How do I judge the answer to that question? I write. Yes. But do I write well and how do I make an honest assessment of myself? I recently published my sixth book on Amazon Kindle Doing The Right Thing, so you could say that makes me a writer. But do the four books published on Amazon Kindle carry the same weight as my books that were published by ‘real’ publishers on real paper? Is Amazon Kindle cheating? I’m sure that every writer has to wrestle with their own demons and these are just a few of mine. One of the great tensions that I have battled to resolve over the past years is the need, the desire, the urge to write, on one side and the fact that I run an international charity on the other side. In my book Jericho & Other Short Stories, I wrote a story called Poets & Engineers. It captured something of this tension. My job often demands me to be an engineer – issues of structure, details, processes, boundaries and delivery – yet by heart, I am a poet.

How to resolve such a tension? One way was to write about my work in developing leaders in both the first and third worlds, in The 18 Challenges of Leadership and To Plant A Walnut Tree. While I was writing about aspects of leadership – like my latest book Doing The Right Thing – then I could tell myself that my writing was part of my job. That way I could justify carrying on leading and carrying on writing. But that doesn’t explain my book about travelling around Rwanda with my son 11 years after the Genocide, or my short stories books, or the short book Am I Really Tired? which could be seen as work or maybe not.

The tension came to a head for me in a dream that I had a few years ago. I was trying to get back home and came to the High Street but a police line cordoned it off. As I tried to find out why I could not go down the normal route home, I discovered that someone had died there. A murder or death of some kind. So I had to find a different way home. The scene then cuts to me talking with my dad who was asking me about my writing and I was telling him how much I wanted to write. He was so overwhelmingly supportive and said he would do anything he could to support me financially and that I should just get on and write. (In real life my dad showed zero interest in my writing. I’m not sure I even told him of my aspirations). The dream was one of those shocking dreams that you know you have to listen to. The meaning of the dream, for me, is summed up by a scrap of paper that I wrote soon afterwards, which still sits on my desk. It simply says,

“Write or die”

So I made some tough changes in my daily routines. Firstly I decided that whatever the risks to my leadership role I had to write and so I set aside each morning to write and read things that would fertilise my writing. The next thing I did was talk through my ‘real’ job with a coach. What he helped me see was that I had segregated the idea of leader from that of creativity. It had become an either-or, in my mind. He came up with this idea that my strength was as a creative leader. Creativity can show itself in coming up with ideas, shaping strategy, forming new ideas and… writing about them. Reforming my identity in this way led me back to the definition of leadership that I love most and use across the world.

“Leadership is the ability to create a story that affects the thoughts, feelings and actions of others ” (‘Leading mind’ – Howard Gardner, 2011)

Leaders are authors. They create stories and they can do that with thoughts, with actions, with inventions, with innovations, with imagination and vision and with words.

So, armed with these liberating insights I am trying to be kinder to myself. To embrace the totality of who I am as a writer, rather than segment myself in someway. Writing has become like a thermometer or warning light. When I’m not writing and caught up in the operational realities of leading an organisation (the engineer) then I know that I am out of balance and very soon I will feel the ‘soul death’, as I call it, creeping upon me. So when I see that happening I stop and I write (the poet). This is no theory for me. I write this on the first afternoon of three days vacation that I’ve taken. Taking the vacation was a last minute decision, made only the night before, because I knew I was out of balance. So I stopped and I’m writing and I feel some new blood flowing through my veins today. I write because it’s who I am.

Teaching Writing: Editing vs. Coaching

February 8, 2019 by Jacqui Lofthouse Filed Under: Editing, Guest post, Inspiration, Literary Consultancy, The writing coach, The writing life, Writers Leave a Comment

A Guest Post by writing coach consultant Delia Lloyd.

Delia Lloyd

There’s a scene in one of my all-time favourite films, All that Jazz, that addresses the perennial question about innate talent vs. learned ability. In the scene, the protagonist – a choreographer modelled on the legendary Bob Fosse – confronts a ballerina in his company who’s crying because she knows she’s not as good as the other dancers.

“I can’t make you a great dancer,” Fosse consoles her. “But I can make you a better dancer.”

That’s how I feel when I work with writers.

I don’t know if there’s such a thing as being a “natural talent” in writing. You can definitely see when a writer has a gift – David Foster Wallace, Amos Oz, and my new idol – Anna Burns – all come to mind. But, as we all know, years of half-written sentences and crumpled up drafts – not to mention gallons of self-doubt – lie behind any prose that looks effortless.

For most of us mere mortals, however, writing is mostly about putting your bum in the chair and being willing to write shitty first drafts. So then the question becomes: how do you help people become “better dancers?”

For a long time, I worked with writers primarily as an editor. Someone would give me a draft of a paper and I would fill it with red ink, altering word choice, verb tenses and sentence length. Invariably, I would also recommend that they completely rewrite their introductions so as to hint at the entire shape of things to come. I’m a firm believer that if you get the introduction right, the whole paper writes itself.

These days, I spend more time as a writing coach. My advice still boils down to some combination of exhorting them to work on both style and structure. But the process is quite different. For starters, I don’t “fix” anything. I mark up clients’ drafts to show them where they might improve their writing. Mostly, however, what we do is talk.

We talk through their arguments to clarify what they are trying to say. I try to show them that even if they feel confused, they actually know what they wish to say. They just need to move what’s in their heads onto the page.

Sometimes, we do exercises together to practice various aspects of good writing. We look at how to experiment with “strong starts,” how to identify one’s audience and meet its needs, and how to use mind maps to organise key points and supporting evidence.

Other times, we simply talk about why they feel under-confident in their writing. They tell me about a boss who told them that they weren’t any good at writing, so they should just avoid it. Or about a thesis adviser who abandoned them, interested only in seeing the final product, not guiding them through the process.

For me, editing and coaching both constitute helping professions. The primary difference is that with coaching, you get more insight into the whole person who sits behind the written word. And you don’t so much “do something” to their writing as empower them to do it themselves.

I’m not sure if I am producing any prima ballerinas. But I certainly enjoy helping the writers I work with become better dancers.

‘Isn’t it terrible about Chechnya’: Jane Austen – the wartime writer

January 11, 2018 by Jacqui Lofthouse Filed Under: Authors, Books, Inspiration, Literary Consultancy, Reading, The writing life, Writers 5 Comments

A Guest Post on Jane Austen by former writing coach client Caroline Doherty de Novoa

Caroline’s book ‘Cocktails with Miss Austen’

At Jane Austen’s house, you certainly get what you came for. A tiny wooden writing desk… a view onto a rose garden… a quill. A dainty tea set… books with gold-lettered spines and peacocks emblazoned on the front… embroidery. A turquoise and gold ring… bonnets… dresses. A gold-handled, thirty-inch sword from the liberator of South America… letters… a pair of… Hang on, back up a minute. A gold-handled, thirty-inch sword? From who, again?

Wandering through the narrow rooms and creaking corridors of Jane’s home in Chawton, Hampshire—weaving between a coach group of retired American ladies on tour, a gaggle of bookish twenty-somethings on the tamest bachelorette weekend in history, and several Chinese tourists dressed in full regency outfits—one phrase was churning over and over in my mind, something a writing tutor once said to me.

‘It’s all rather domestic, isn’t it?’

That had been his reaction to a plot I’d come up with during an ideas generation exercise in class. He’d said “domestic” with clear disdain and then scrunched up his nose, like a baby eating a lemon for the first time, to really drive home his point.

At parties, when new acquaintances find out I’m a writer, they often ask what kind of books I write. There are five books on my shelf with my name on the cover—two novels and three anthologies with other writers. So you’d think, by now, I’d know how to answer the question. But I still get nervous, and I often start to mumble.

I usually wave my hand dismissively and say something like ‘just, you know, women’s commercial fiction, that’s all.’

For some, this isn’t really an answer, and they probe further. ‘Women’s fiction, what’s that? What are the books about?’

Caroline Doherty de Novoa

So I try again. ‘The first novel’s a love story, but it’s also about grief. The main characters both lost their mothers at a young age and they’ve dealt with it differently. It asks the question of how much we need to confront the past before we can move on from it. And the second is about motherhood—why some women don’t want kids and others want them so desperately they’ll go to any lengths to have them, and how much that decision affects your identity.’

Usually, at this stage, the person who has asked me about my work nods politely and changes the subject.

It’s all rather domestic, I think. Who can blame them for not wanting to hear more?

I am a writer at a time when the world is seeing one of the greatest migrations of people fleeing conflict since World War Two, when climate change is threatening our planet and millions go hungry every day. In recent years, girls have been systemically kidnapped in Nigeria and shot on their way to school in Pakistan. Women still make up only one fifth of the US House of Congress. I grew up in Northern Ireland and I’ve lived in Colombia, two countries that aren’t strangers to conflict. I studied political science at university. My dissertation was a feminist critique of the criminal justice system.

So why did I spend the past three years of my life writing a book with motherhood as its central theme? It’s all rather domestic, isn’t it? Shouldn’t I have been writing about something bigger, more serious, more political with a capital P?

When I sit down to write, I sometimes feel like one of the modern derivatives of a Jane Austen character… Bridget Jones. In the first film, as she gets ready for a party, Bridget reminds herself to “circulate, oozing intelligence” and to start conversations with sentences like “Isn’t it terrible about Chechnya.”

But, thing is, whilst I care about Chechnya—right now, I care very much about the abhorrent persecution of the LGBT community there—I’ve never been drawn to write fiction about Chechnya or any “big issues” like that.

I wonder if Jane ever felt the same way.

So back to that sword. It was my hawk-eyed husband who noticed its provenance first. He’s Colombian, and so it came as a surprise to see the name of Simón Bolívar—El Libertador, the man who helped secure Colombia’s independence from Spain—on the wall in Jane Austen’s Hampshire home.

It’s an impressive piece of craftsmanship, with a finely carved hawk and cannon for a handle. It’s just a shame Jane never got to see it. Bolívar presented the sword to her brother, Charles John Austen, in March 1827, ten years after Jane’s death. Even so, it’s an interesting reminder of what others were doing, and what was happening in the world, whilst Jane sat at her desk writing.

Jane was born the same year the American War of Independence broke out. When Jane was eighteen, her cousin Eliza’s husband was guillotined during the French revolution. Her brothers, Francis and Charles, fought in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, both of which raged throughout most of Jane’s adult life, keeping them away from the family for long periods.

Virginia Woolf, writing about Austen and her contemporary, Walter Scott, noted that “neither of them in all their novels mentioned the Napoleonic wars.” Woolf goes on to claim that this shows “their model, their vision of human life, was not disturbed or agitated or changed by war. Nor were they themselves… Wars were then remote…”

Winston Churchill seemed to have the same opinion. Of Jane’s characters he remarked, “What calm lives they had… No worries about the French Revolution, or the crushing struggles of the Napoleonic wars.”

I personally don’t believe for a second Jane lived such a tranquil life or that she was oblivious to the suffering and dangers faced by those off at war. I am sure she spent plenty of tense afternoons in the drawing room with the other ladies of the house trying to occupy themselves with reading and embroidery and tea—all the while silently watching the door, wondering if the men they loved would ever return.

It’s true, as Woolf notes, Austen never heard the cannon’s roar for herself. But there are references to the military and military men throughout Austen’s novels. Of course, Austen never takes us to the battlefield in her writing. Instead, her stories are played out in the rooms and gardens of country houses, on a stage that is all rather domestic.

And yet her stories endure. It is these stories of everyday human emotion and social interaction that the British, including Woolf and Churchill, returned to during the chaos of the First and Second World Wars. It is these domestic stories that millions still turn to today.

After we left Jane Austen’s home, we walked up the country lane to Chawton House, the “Great House” where Jane socialised with her brother Edward and his friends. I imagined Jane making that same short journey following a day of writing. And I imagined her walking along the lane, steeling herself for the inevitable question, ‘So what are you writing about?’

Perhaps in such moments she prepared herself for the party in the same way Bridget did, by having an intelligent comment with which to quickly change the subject. Perhaps something like: ‘Isn’t it terrible about France?’

Caroline Doherty de Novoa is the author of the novels The Belfast Girl and Dancing with Statues and the essay collections Was Gabo an Irishman? Tales from Gabriel García Márquez’s Colombia and Cocktails with Miss Austen – Conversations on the world’s most beloved author.

Non-fiction and its possibilities: a guest post by Glynis Kozma

November 7, 2016 by Jacqui Lofthouse Filed Under: Authors, Books, Confidence, Inspiration, Literary Consultancy, Marketing, Markets for your work, Motivation, Publishing, The writing life, Writers Leave a Comment

Writing non-fiction can be every bit as creative as writing fiction and equally as satisfying. Our perceptions on non-fiction may be narrow and perhaps need challenging in order to be aware of how there are possibilities for our own creativity. Non-fiction includes everything from the instructional ‘how to’ guides – whether that’s cookery, gardening, restoring antiques, the latest diet – to social and political history, art, biographies, travel and professional textbooks.

Glynis Kozma, journalist and coach

You may think that non-fiction doesn’t allow your voice to be heard in the same way as fiction, but I’d like to invite you to reconsider this. The cookery books of Elizabeth David with their conversational tone, descriptions of the locations and culture drawing on all the senses, revolutionised cookery books in the 1950s, showing how a book of recipes could be so much more than an inventory of ingredients and how to combine them. Now, no one buys a cookery book just to follow a recipe: we’re buying into history, travel, personal memories and photographs to flick through; somewhere along the way there’s a recipe we will try.

How can one develop as a non-fiction writer?

What comes across in the best non-fiction writing is a strong sense of the writer’s passion and perhaps their expertise. You can have the passion but may need to develop your expertise. Or you may have the expertise and experience, but need to develop your ‘voice’ to engage your readers. I often suggest exercises to clients such as visiting old haunts to evoke memories :I find that this kind of sensory exercise really helps to deepen non-fiction work and to make it more personal. You may already have your ‘specialist subject’ which needs only a little research or your writing may be at an embryonic stage where you have an idea which requires research and much planning. Are you an expert, or could you become an expert? Have you the seed of an idea, associated with your own experiences which you could grow by talking to others, travelling, or researching?

Glynis’s previous clients

Cast Life by Natalie Trice

One former student’s book has taken her into areas she never imagined: founding a charity and sitting on the same panels as consultant surgeons. Natalie Trice wrote Cast Life – a parent’s guide to DDH (developmental dysplasia hips) – in 2015. When Natalie first enrolled as a student she wanted to write about the perils for parents at the school gate – fitting in, socialising and so on. I gently suggested this wasn’t that original but there were also potential issues around confidentiality. Given that Natalie was aiming for a self-help book for parents, she decided to focus on her son Lucas’ journey with DDH and her own lack of support in the UK for the condition. Natalie’s book covers diagnosis, treatment and recovery from a parent’s perspective. Initially, Natalie was uncertain about whether her book would have a wide enough appeal, because the condition is relatively rare. But counteracting this was the dearth of information for parents. A proposal was written and, after a few rejections, the book was accepted by a publisher, without having to work through an agent. Natalie is now receiving positive feedback from readers in Australia and the US, she has established the charity Spica Warrior.org where Paralympic swimmer Gemma Almond, born with the condition, is now the charity’s patron. Natalie is now an advisory member of the International Hip Dysplasia Institute, appearing at conferences alongside medical experts, and on television. From the tiny seed of an idea – which was not her first choice when writing non-fiction- Natalie has become the UK parenting expert on DDH.

Another student, Harriet Angel, had no such doubts about her subject. As an established Pilates and running instructor, she knew her book had to be Pilates for Runners. I helped Harriet with her chapter headings and summaries, ensuring that they included enough detail so a prospective publisher would be able to appreciate her expertise. We also had to work on the tone and style because this was a book that had to be easily accessible to readers who wanted to avoid or deal with a running injury, without necessarily reading it from cover to cover. There was also the issue of photographs or illustrations to accompany the text. Harriet was fortunate enough through her contacts and her business to be able to provide a publisher with testimonials from people in the field of sport; their names were included in the proposal. Having helped her to choose a publisher who might be interested, the proposal was sent and we waited for news. Within a matter of weeks a publishing offer had come from Bloomsbury and Harriet’s second book (under wraps at the moment) is in the pipeline too.

What makes writing non-fiction different?

The beauty of non-fiction is that unlike fiction you won’t always need an agent to land a publishing deal. There are publishing houses which will accept a detailed proposal and a couple of chapters and many non-fiction writers have had success with exactly those.

The vital requirements are confidence in your idea and one that has potential for sales unless you intend to self publish. If your readers can feel your enthusiasm, your genuine connection to the topic and your depth of knowledge, they will engage with your writing. It’s important that you look at existing, competing titles as part of your research before committing to topic, because you don’t want to produce something too similar. But at the same time, there are many books on the same topics but which have a slightly different angle. A good starting point is to think of perhaps three subjects that interest you then create a rough draft of the contents of your book, as short chapter headings. If you struggle with finding enough to say, that subject may not be your best idea, but there will be one that excites you. Dive in, have confidence and see where it takes you. Why not try it?

Glynis Kozma is a consultant for The Writing Coach. She is the author of two non-fiction books for parents – Secondary School and Leaving Home – and a freelance journalist who writes for The Times, Guardian, Daily Telegraph and Independent – as well as a wide range of consumer magazines. Glynis is a fully qualified coach and a member of the Association for Coaching. You can contact her here.

An interview with playwright Stephen Brown

November 27, 2015 by Jacqui Lofthouse Filed Under: Inspiration, Interviews, Literary Consultancy, playwriting, Writers Leave a Comment

I’m delighted to welcome playwright Stephen Brown to The Writing Coach team as a mentor for playwrights. Stephen is now available as a consultant through The Writing Coach. Stephen was my own tutor in playwriting, so it gives me particular pleasure to welcome him. I interviewed Stephen about his approach to playwriting and mentoring and do hope you enjoy the interview.

Stephen Brown is a playwright, dramaturg and creative writing tutor. His adaptation of Rory Stewart’s bestselling memoir Occupational Hazards will have a major London production in 2016. He is currently working on a commission for the National Theatre.

Jacqui Lofthouse interviews Stephen Brown

Jacqui: Stephen, can you tell me what led you to playwriting as a career?

Stephen: I could scroll back and say I started writing plays when I was a teenage boy, about 16 or 17 years old. I’d always been writing short stories and poetry. But I loved the theatre and something happened to me aged 16 or 17 in a way I’ve only much later understood. I was really drawn to the particular writing challenge of writing a play. I think that’s to do with there not being, in a play, unlike in a novel or a short story, a single voice – and what I like about the play is this 360 degree fractured world in which different voices clash and fight for their interests, their wants and – yes – just that essence of the dramatic of these different viewpoints and worlds colliding. In retrospect, that’s what drew me to playwriting: a love of dramatic conflict.

It became something that I got paid for about a dozen years ago. I didn’t set out to have a playwriting ‘career’, I set out to write and try to get paid for that and have had some success – although the playwriting world is not awash with money. I didn’t think ‘let’s have a career’, I thought ‘let’s write what I want to write, let’s work with people I want to work with, let’s bring my vision to the stage, let’s try to get these things produced and write them as best I can’. And then I’m lucky that various theatres and production companies have really wanted to work with me and pay me to do that.

Jacqui: I’m interested in what you say about the fact that you chose playwriting over prose. We’ve worked together and I’m primarily a novelist. Do you find that people who have written fiction and then come to playwriting have any particular challenges?

Stephen: Not necessarily. There are some notable authors who have had success as playwrights, like Michael Frayn or Mikhail Bulgakov who wrote The Master and Margarita but also wrote some terrific plays – and you can see in the work of some novelists, that they have a strong dramatic sense, like Dickens for example who was obsessed by the theatre and became a one man theatre show traveling round Britain and America as well performing semi-dramatised extracts from his novels. It depends what kind of novelist you are. If you’re a novelist for whom punchy, exciting dialogue scenes come relatively easily, you’ll find the leap easier than one whose strengths are more to do with the continuity of an individual authorial voice for example. The two forms are very distinct.

The nature of a play is really different – the degree of the difference surprises people. In a play, you’re watching people’s behaviour in worlds, essentially externally, and you’re seeing a piece of live performance, actual bodies on stage in front of you interacting. It is so different from the much longer form of the novel, which is like a private voice whispering in your ear, which is creating something in your imagination. As a writer writing a play, you’re writing a set of instructions for another group of artists, for them to go away and explore those and out of them create the final work of art, the performance. It’s such a different beast. I’ve generally found the students I’ve worked with who have written novels… some of them are the best students I’ve worked with, so it’s not like I think ‘oh, novelists, they’re going to have difficulty.’ But it IS a different world. Henry James was obsessed with the theatre and desperately wanted to be a playwright but made a total hash of it… it can be a tricky transition for some people.

Jacqui: I’ve worked with you on your course at The Rose Theatre and you are now also available as a mentor to playwrights via The Writing Coach. But can you outline your approach, in relation to how you help beginners to first get something down on the page?

Stephen: Confidence is key. Something I say to all my students is that writing is partly just about the management of fear. Creativity is about the management of fear. Creativity brings up in us its shadow side which all the fearful negative carping voices saying ‘you can’t do that, you’re not good enough, somebody’s already done it before.’

I seek to create a safe and creative space where the basic rule of conversation and how we receive each others’ work is that we say ‘yes’ to the points that people are bringing forward and the work they are offering and perhaps add something more or bring something out or add a suggestion for the next stage of development. I do exercises that are about unleashing creativity in structured ways, getting people to write quickly. In the first lesson I talk about the word ‘playwright’ – the first part relates to playfulness, the unleashing of the imagination, the second part, the word ‘wright’ suggests craft or craftsperson, so it’s not just creating a positive environment and splurging and learning to trust that the unconscious will reach a hand-up from the murky depths and offer something interesting. But we also work through the technical and structural ideas and ‘rules’ of what is a scene and what is dramatic conflict and how do we develop characters and how do we put subtext into dialogue etc. Part of the challenge for all writers is to hold in balance our technical understanding of what a play is with our dreamworld, our imagination, which we need to unleash when we sit down at our desks and allow ourselves to write.

Jacqui: That makes a lot of sense. In relation to that technical side, for example, dramatic conflict – can you elaborate on that and how it relates to writing scenes? Does it become more instinctive the more you write?

Stephen: I do think it becomes more instinctive. I also think that if you just set two people talking, very often something like dramatic conflict will begin to emerge. I start talking about it in the very first lesson. We look at the beginning of two plays, a Greek Tragedy and a more contemporary comedy and look at how the same thing is going on – what emerges from that is that drama is this thing that happens when people with different wants come into collision with each other and through how they behave and what they say, they push and pull to negotiate, trade, seduce, persuade, threaten – all those things that people do in order to get people to get what they want. It might be getting you to lend me a thousand quid or do more for the care of my mother.

In the Greek tragedy, Antigone effectively says ‘will you help me bury the body of our brother, break the law of the city and help me?’ I put it in stark terms like that, that’s a simple version. In plays as they develop, it becomes very complicated: you can have more than one conflict happening at once, more than two people in a scene, some of the conflict happening in subtext. In a love scene for example, what exactly is at stake in that conflict won’t be the same in a seduction scene or a break-up scene. What’s at stake in that conflict won’t be said, but the central point is that in drama, people are on different vectors coming into collision. They need something from each other. The stakes are always high. There’s no low stakes drama. Drama is about pressure, those moments when we’re on the back foot , when we are forced to make difficult decisions, when we realise that actually ‘oh, I don’t know which way to go.’ Another fundamental experience of watching drama is dramatic internal conflict, watching characters wavering and wrestling with their inner decision making process – like Macbeth – ‘do I murder the king?’

Jacqui: That question ‘what’s at stake?’ is something that has really stayed with me, even as a novelist and when I read manuscripts for clients. I had a sense of it, but it was a strong thing for me, to think ‘what is at stake here?’ If there’s no dramatic tension, the scenes fall flat – in a novel it’s easier to ‘get away with it’ effectively…

Stephen: Yes, novels are different and there are lots of parts of novels that are not in a simple sense dramatic scenes. I’ve just re-read Moby-Dick and there’s such richness of language – and it gives you a picture of this entire extraordinary world in the 19th century, but there are also some really strong dramatic scenes, scenes of conflict between Ahab and Starbuck where they really are wrestling with what to do – or there’s a scene where Starbuck thinks about murdering Ahab to save the crew and it’s very much like the scene in Hamlet where Hamlet is considering murdering Claudius when he’s praying, and he has this extraordinary doubt, this uncertainty. But that I think is one of the injunctions – it takes a minute to learn and a lifetime to master: always be dramatic. Understanding what that means, but you know, beware the bit where people are just giving people information. There are always forces at play within a dramatic scene, forces of tension.

Jacqui: I wanted to focus now on the individual attention you give to people in terms of what you offer to people that you mentor. Tell me about your approach to feedback.

Stephen: I tend to give pretty extensive feedback, as you know. I usually read through what a mentee sends in a couple of times, I’ll do some local notes, picking up on particular issues in a particular line, on a particular page. But really I’m looking to enter into where you’re at in the creative process. I will identify at the beginning of the feedback what is working well so far and then I will enter into some detail under a number of main headings where I think you have things you need to resolve and I’m definitely somebody who, giving feedback – I’m less about saying ‘that’s not working’ and more about firing at you five suggestions about how you might develop it. And none of those suggestions may be the right one but my hunch is that generally by thinking through those five, you will lead yourself to whatever is the right answer for you – to enable you to make those choices and discoveries.

I try to give the kind of feedback that I’ve found most useful as a writer. One of the things about professional writing is that professional writers still need feedback, seek out feedback, find their good readers, themselves have mentors… We all need from time to time those good readers who reflect back to us the things that we perhaps know a lot of the time…’hmm, that’s not quite right, but I just can’t see beyond it’ – and you can send it to somebody else and they offer you new possibilities. My feedback is detailed, extensive, creative and positive. So it’s definitely the feedback of a fellow writer. I’m trying to push you too, I will quite happily say ‘well, maybe the character will do this’ – which is not me trying to do your work for you, but to jog you in different directions and explore ways out of whatever is blocking you at the moment or whatever the next stage of development is.

Jacqui: I also wanted to ask you whether there were particular traps that people often fall into – or notes that you often give.

Stephen: Yes, there are quite a few. Having said it’s a central challenge to always be dramatic – I often say ‘Is there enough conflict? Enough of people seeking thing?’ The note against inertia! And what is perhaps, on the scale of the whole story or whole play, the corollary of that is, ‘is there enough happening, is the script moving forwards?’ I often find myself saying ‘choose a protagonist’ – quite a few people perfectly reasonably start off not quite knowing who the protagonist is and they may change their mind about that.

People get themselves tied up in knots with exposition, feeling as if they need to lay out things about the characters and the world, get them established – yet you can just plunge an audience into the action without any explanation and they will really enjoy running a little to catch up. Obviously you can go too far with that – and we miss the dramatic force because we don’t understand it. But usually it’s in the other direction. Drama is a compressed form, time limited, partly just by the endurance of the human buttocks . That’s one of our great controlling factors. When people are sitting there, they need the piece to move forwards. A novel is 10-15 hours of peoples’ lives, often in half hour bits. In theatre, compression is key.

Those are common notes that I find myself giving, but there’s a pretty big range of notes. Writers I work with come with a really wide range of issues, people struggling to get their story moving, struggling to shape a scene, struggling with dialogue. I find myself giving notes right across the whole subject area.

Jacqui: To finish, I don’t know if you’re able to reveal what’s next for you in your own work as a playwright?

Stephen: Yes, I can say some things. I have a play which is based on a true story by a guy called Rory Stewart which is a memoir based on his story as a young British diplomat being dropped into a province in Southern Iraq, aged 30, in the chaos post the invasion of 2003. It’s about him being dropped into a very chaotic and uncertain political situation, in a city where there are gangs of criminals stealing all the copper electricity wires and things like that. It’s about someone trying to create the beginnings of a democracy and trying to get the lights working. I say it’s like the West Wing with Kalashnikovs and that’s going to be at the Hampstead Theatre – probably late 2016/early 2017. I have a couple of other projects, one I can’t say anything about in development at the Bristol Old Vic and another script I’m handing back into the National, commissioned by them, and we’ll see what they make of that. So yes, a number of different things going on.

Jacqui: That sounds very exciting. I look forward to seeing the play at the National and more beyond that. Thank you Stephen.

Stephen is available through The Writing Coach as a mentor for writers. Please contact us directly if you are interested in working with Stephen as your mentor.

Memoir writing and memory: fact versus truth

September 21, 2015 by Jacqui Lofthouse Filed Under: Authors, Inspiration, Literary Consultancy, Memoir, Motivation, Writers Leave a Comment

Guest Post on memoir writing from new Writing Coach consultant Jon Magidsohn

I once heard an interview with musician Melissa Etheridge, who discovered, while listening to the lyrics of a song she’d written and recorded several years earlier, ‘Oh … that’s what I meant by that line.’ I understood immediately, because I’d experienced such moments while writing, when the words just come without forethought or editing. You know they’re the right words but you don’t always know why until, perhaps much later, the truth is revealed to you when you have gained some distance and perspective from that instinctive point of creation.

Ideally, as a writer, you’ll discover your truth before you publish. But this adventure of discovery is what I enjoy most about writing memoir. The search for the truth – your truth – is what memoir writing is all about.

To quote the best definition of memoir I’ve found: memoir is the story of your memory. It’s not meant to be a photograph or a legal document or even a reliable representation of your memory. Just the story. Because memory, despite our intimate relationship with it, is really only our best guess at the past.

By its very nature, crafting memoir is a creative writing exercise. Our memory – the memoirist’s prime resource – is imperfect and unreliable. It is open to interpretation and influence; it is prone to misdirection and distraction. And that’s the whole point. Making sense of these inconsistencies are what sets good memoir aside from stolid, facts-based writing.

Because truth is not fact.

So how do you get to the truth? Can a writer trust in a source that is so temperamental? The memoirist must preside like a judge over fragments of evidence and bias, dismissing the trivial and fine-tuning the significant details. The memoirist is required to be story-teller, poet, analyst and observer, absorbing the story and cosying up with the good bits.

Jon Magidsohn

Eventually, hopefully, you will not only have told your story, you’ll have shown what your story means to you. Therein lies one of the keys to writing memoir. You as the crafter of the memoir are given the privilege of creating a lasting testament to your memory because, regardless of whether it is widely read or not, you’ll have explored, discovered and shared why you wrote the story in the first place.

This can be contentious if others are involved. Your story may not always match another’s, even if you were both there. There may be more than one truth. But those who wish to contradict an author’s memory may do so by writing their own memoir.

Critics of memoirs suggest that part of the problem with the genre is the contemplative, too-personal navel-gazing that tends to make the narrator sound piteous and therefore untrustworthy. This attitude is both inexplicable and altogether missing the point. There is a difference between indulgence and introspection.

If you write on the right side of that fine line you’ll have found the poetry in your memory and the path to your truth.

* * *

Jon Magidsohn, originally from Toronto, Canada, has been featured in The Guardian, The Bangalore Mirror, Brevity, Hippocampus, Full Grown People, Chicago Literati and has written about fatherhood for dadzclub.com, the Good Men Project and Today’s Parent magazine. He has an MA in Creative Nonfiction from City University, London. His memoir, Immortal Highway, will be released in October, 2015.

If you’d like to work on your memoir with Jon, do contact The Writing Coach here.

Looking for a Literary Consultant? Our new team is here.

February 4, 2015 by Jacqui Lofthouse Filed Under: Authors, Confidence, Literary Consultancy, Motivation, The writing coach Leave a Comment

If you are looking for a literary consultant, I know you’ll be delighted to read about my new team of literary consultants, here at The Writing Coach. The demand for my Literary Consultancy service has grown and I have now formed a team of brilliant mentors and consultants to work with me, to help you create books that will capture the attention of agents and publishers.

: Gillian Stern

: Louise Voss

: Sara Starbuck

: Stephanie Zia

: Emma Darwin

: Dr. Sharon Zink

ANY CHARACTER HERE

I am so proud of the mentors and literary consultants on the Writing Coach team. These experienced consultants are all personally known to me and will give close attention to your manuscript. Two further consultants, Caroline Green and Sara Bailey will also be joining us soon.

If you are considering literary consultancy with us, know that I ensure that your work is seen by a mentor/coach/editor who is exactly right for you. All mentors are either published novelists, professional editors or university lecturers and all have broad experience of working with developing writers on their projects. Your work receives nurturing, individual attention, with a focus on positive, constructive but honest feedback.

To find out more about how Literary Consultancy works at The Writing coach, click here and click here to meet the team.

Between us, we have helped many writers to success. I would love to make yours the next story that we celebrate here.