Dialogue. No tags. No fluff. Just dialogue.

This is a little exercise I gave myself to practice writing dialogue which I feel is a weak area of my writing skill. I put four characters into a room and tried to give each one an individual voice and speech pattern to see if they were recognisable throughout the piece. Please let me know if I’ve achieved my goal or scored an own one.

‘Interview commenced thirteen thirty two on Friday the twelfth October two thousand and twelve. Those present Detective Constable Amy Blake, Detective Inspector James Threlkeld, Peter “Mad Dog” Souness and his solicitor Fiona Glenn.’

‘I hardly think it is fair to use my clients’ nickname in this context Detective Inspector.’

‘Why not? He answers to it. Don’t you Mad Dog?’

‘Fuck you Threlkeld.’

‘Mr Souness, can you account for your whereabouts on Monday the 8^th of October between the hours of seven pm and eleven thirty.’

‘Course I can darlin’. I was round your sisters’ house. She gives the best blow job in all Manchester.’

‘Just answer the fucking question and don’t be a bastard. You know fine well her sister died last month.’
‘Do you always speak with such profanity when conducting interviews Inspector? I can already see members of the jury wrinkling their noses in distaste at your squaddies language.’
‘Hey Mad Dog. Wipe that smirk of your face and answer her question properly.’
‘No. Comment.’
‘In that case Mr Souness can you explain why our Scene of Crime Officers found fourteen thousand pounds in your safe along with jewellery belonging to the deceased.’
‘My client is a rich man who operates several pawn shops. The fact that the he has a lot of money in his safe and beautiful jewellery is testament only to his success as a businessman.’
‘Porn shops is bloody right.’
‘I beg your pardon Inspector?’

‘Oh come on. You’ve been his brief for nearly twenty years now. If you weren’t a lezzer then I’d bet that you’d be his mistress. You know fine well that the pawn shops are nothing more than a front for all the brothels he runs.’

‘And what bearing does this have on Mr Souness’ whereabouts on Monday night.’
‘That is when Mrs Evers was killed.’
‘Who the fuck’s she?’
‘She’s the wife of one the regulars at your Hope Street Sauna. We think she followed her husband there on Monday night. Don’t we Inspector?’
‘Aye we do. So Mad Dog. Where were you on Monday?’
I was at the Castle Ginnell shop having a meeting with the staff. All eight of them will tell you that.’
‘Now that Mr Souness has answered your questions I think you can release him. Obviously he is very sorry to hear about the premature death of Mrs Evers but he bears no responsibility.’
‘Sit down Fifi. We’re not quite finished. On Monday night at nine twenty two, Mad Dog used his mobile to call his head of security Michael Hannigan. They spoke for two minutes. From triangulation of mobile signals, we’ve ascertained Mad Dog was at Hope Street Sauna all night and that Hannigan joined Souness within ten minutes of his call.’
‘Sorry. That meeting must have been on Tuesday. I was having a bit of trouble with my back on Monday and went to get a massage. I called Michael to come over because that girl really straightened my spine and I know he sometimes has a bad back. You gotta take employee welfare serious in this day and age.’
‘That’s very considerate of you Mr Souness. Can you explain why Mrs Evers made six calls to her husband’s mobile from outside Hope Street Sauna when our data shows that he was inside with his phone switched on?’
‘Beats me. Perhaps she was mistaken about the type of massages they give there.’
‘We know exactly what kind of massages they give. We sent in an undercover officer from Bolton. As we speak a team from vice squad are paying a visit. Inspector Threlkeld wanted to be there but preferred to stay and hear what you have to say.’
‘That has no bearing on this case or my client.’
‘Oh contraire. A team of forensic accountants have been investigating Mad Dog since I arrested him this morning. Just before we started this interview they told me that he is the sole owner of Hope Street Sauna.’
‘So fucking what! I own it. That’s got fuck all to do with this Evers bird.’
‘We interviewed Mr Hannigan first and he told us an awful lot didn’t he Guv?’
‘He told us everything.’
‘That bastard. Wait ‘til I get my hands on him.’
‘Wait ‘til I get my hands on him. What do you think a jury would make of that Amy?’
‘I’d say they’d take it as a sign that Mr Souness is guilty. The only question left to ask is whether or not he’s going to confess to the murder of Francine Evers.’
‘Alright. I’ll tell you what happened.’
‘I strongly advise you to say nothing Mr Souness.’
‘C’mon Mad Dog. Spill it.’
‘I didn’t kill her. The husband did. She came in like a mad woman barging through doors and into the private rooms. When she found her man with a Czech bird bouncing on him she freaked and went for him. He pushed her away and she fell and hit her head on the worktop. She was dead by the time I was called through. Me and Hannigan cleaned up and dumped the body. For a fee of course.’

Short Story or Novel?

As an E-published short story writer and aspiring author myself I sit on both sides of the fence. In an effort to gain some clarity I invited the excellent author David Bishop to share his thoughts on short stories Vs novel length fiction. Here is what he had to say.

Is the story you want to tell one best told in short form or in the long novel form, or perhaps the tweener, a novella? Generally speaking, this decision will be mostly intuitive, but it will also be influenced by what you want to do with it.

I am a novelist of mysteries. I prefer that length because it provides the room to flesh out characters and build plot.  The novel provides the space to salt real clues that point the discerning reader toward the antagonist, while also scattering about a few red herrings designed to have the reader believe someone else is the dastardly villain, perhaps the butler, only to later learn the butler had been the only honorable character in the story.

I write short stories for one of two primary reasons:  I post short stories to the blog page on my website, to illustrate my writing skills with the hope readers will choose to graduate to one of my novels. I also write short stories to train myself to write leaner, that is, to trim off the fat of excess words that fails to advance the story. We have all read fiction where we skip ahead a paragraph or more to advance our reading past whatever element of the story the author has overwritten. Descriptions of people, places, and things need to paint a word picture that allows the reader to see those elements of the story, and to invoke the reader’s senses. At the same time, these descriptions and backstory must be kept short enough to hold the reader’s interest. This principle increases in importance as that person, place or thing decreases in importance. The reader does not need to know about the round white aphids on the full abundant verdant rose leaves, if only the red rose bush is integral to the story.

I set up parameters for short stories before I begin to write, imagining them as training exercises. This forces me to trim off the word-fat as I write and edit. For example, I once wrote a three sentence description of a female director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, and then shortened it thus: she had the look of a librarian and the heart of a cobra. Lean. The readers then interpret, subconsciously perhaps, their take on the look of a librarian and the absence of a caring heart in a cobra.

An example of this lean style can be found in personal blog post. Before beginning that short, The Bijou, I set these parameters: not to exceed 500 words about a woman alone in a closed and boarded up movie theater. My first draft had 610 words, my final edition 499. I cut out nothing, just trimmed the word-fat out of the sentences.

How do I use this “leanness” when writing novels? Novels are long-form fiction and whether a given book totals 60,000 or 90,000 words alone does not say the story missed its mark. However, this length freedom often leads to: twelve words instead of ten in the previous sentence—so what? Two sentences about something that does not advance the story or endear the character to the reader—so what? Too much of that sort of thing causes yawns, and, if it continues, will lead to that novel becoming a wall-banger, just before the reader reaches for an alternative novel. So, I like to write lean, or perhaps I should say leaner. Some fat enhances the flavor, but too much ruins the taste for the all important reader.

To learn more about David Bishop please visit his website or check out his latest novel The Third Coincidence 

The Stories Behind the Stories

This post is about the stories in Eleven the

Hardest Way

and what prompted me to write each one.

Adult Education

I got the whole plot for this one from a writing course I attended. The course was taken by NY Times bestselling author Joseph Finder. The topic of the course was creating tension and after explaining different methods of doing so he set us attendees a challenge we had five minutes to write about a killer picking his victims from a class like the one we were attending. Adult Education was just an expansion of the story I wrote that day.

Annie’s Story

For once I didn’t know where this story was going when I sat down to write it. All I knew was it had to start with shapes materialising from out of the woods at dusk. Halfway through writing Annie’s story I thought of the twist at the end which explained everything.

Attacking a Nation

This story came about from a throwaway comment my wife made. It was such an innocuous comment which when ran through my twisted mind, gave me the chance to write about a large scale terrorist attack. Without giving anything away the line is used near the end of the story and allowed me a dig at a very famous person many think of as a fool.

Bobby’s Bar

This was a private investigator piece which I wrote as a closed room whodunit? I’d never written a piece in that style before and it’s only looking back at it that I realise that is exactly what it is.

Crimes of Cashing

I’ve always admired the way that Simon Kernick put the ordinary man in an extraordinary situation within the confines of his own home before creating a chase novel. This was my own effort at writing in that style.

Honeymoon Hassle

When casting for ideas I thought back to an experience my wife and I had on honeymoon. From there I wrote up the story using our middle names for the characters. To clear things up it was ME who paid the guy beforehand not her. The rest is all true including the last line.

Kansas Kindred Killer

I had the crime for this story planned for a few weeks before writing it and when I did finally write it I made sure that all the characters were horrified and affected by the crime. I then wrote it up as a whodunit with a neat little twist at the end.

Lonely Nights

This is basically the fruit of a writing exercise I gave myself. I wanted to write a piece in which there was very little action but one hell of a lot of suggested threat and menace. I specifically chose to have one character and no dialogue as I wanted the threat to be dismissible as the character’s imagination by both the reader and Susie herself.

Shooting Stars

This story was originally a joke I read online. The joke was dismantled and restructured to provide an ironic twist. I first used the story as a piece of micro fiction and then fleshed it out fully to give it more legs. I enjoyed the tale so much I have a sequel written as a draft.

There Goes the Bride

I wrote this for a competition but missed the deadline. One of the competition rules stated that the story must be set in a specific location so I chose my hometown of Gretna Green which gave a perfectly busy tourist destination which allowed the story to have so many imponderables. I wanted to write not only a whodunit but a whydunit. Once again the twist at the end is the explanation.

Under the Cover of the Streets

I wanted to write a dark piece about inner city peril and I had also had an idea for a neat surveillance gadget (perhaps a patent would be a prudent course of action). From there I fleshed it out and added a little twist at the end just as a change.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about the inspiration behind the stories as much as I enjoyed writing the tales.

Eleven the Hardest Way can be downloaded from Amazon by clicking here.

Plan of Action

Here is the grand plan to which I'm aspiring for my writing. Any suggestions would be gratefully received.

1. Get the first draft of my novel finished so I can put it down and then go back to edit it. The working title is "The Ironmonger's Error"
2. Spend a month writing short stories and flash fiction pieces which I intend to submit to some of the excellent blogsites and writing competions. I will also be offering pieces to sites where I have not yet been featured in an effort to increase my circle of readers. There will also be another collection of brand new material realeased from the stories I write in this period.
3. Do the necessary edits and corrections to The Ironmonger's Error and then send it to some beta readers.  If you would like to help with this just let me know and i'll happily sign you up.
4. Write a Harry Charters novella or short story telling his back story. I plan to do this using a second person POV so it could be an epic fail or a glowing success.
5. Do the edits and changes suggested by the beta readers and then try to get an agent.
6. Start on the follow up to The Ironmonger's Error and also write a short story starring each of the six main police characters.

I will of course allow myself to be distracted by everyday life, football and beer like every other writier out there. Any agents and publishers who offer me a several figure book deal can also expect the tearing up of this plan forthwith (lawyer speak for right away)

I'll also be writing pieces where requested and doing interviews, guest posts etc. If anyone would like a piece for an anthology I am always happy to help if I can and especially so if it is a charity anthology.

Update on Progress

I have just opened this blog and it will get better with time and experience, so please forgive any faults until I get my aching head around things.

With regards to my writing I have re-named 11 The Hard Way slightly and have edited it afresh along with Harry Charters Chronicles. I'm just awaiting the covers now and then they'll be live on Amazon as soon as possible.

There's links to where my scribbling can be found online over there -->

More to follow soon.