Authors have to be honest: one of the greatest delights of writing is feeling like we're actually intelligent. We like to imagine our works being discussed in universities, in journal articles, in the news ... Or at least, I hope that's not just me, otherwise I'll be feeling pretty dumb. Occasionally an author comes up with a sentence that they just want to read over and over - in their head, out loud, in the serious voice, in the casual voice, in the sonorous movie-trailer voice, and so on. Authors love filling their work with sentences like that and then sharing them on Facebook to all their friends:
 "The fire of his anger was a flood that was all-consuming, and the anger spilled out in full force, because he was angry with the greatest of furies."

 All right, perhaps that's an exaggeration. But seriously, it does happen. And before the author knows it, their WIP (Work In Progress, for those who spent years looking at this abbreviation in bewilderment like I did) has climbed to an outrageous length. A book that should have finished by the 90,000 word mark is now 140,000. Something that really only needed 70,000 or 80,000 words is 120,000 or 130,000. The author sends it around to friends and family, and people struggle to read it. And after they've finished, they're not asking for the next one ... which is always a bad sign. The author has a couple of options here: they can completely rewrite the draft, and hope to heaven they do better the second time; or they can edit the heck out of this one, and almost die trying to extract thirty to forty thousand words, syllable by syllable. Ouch. 

Ideally, the author should be able tell, during the writing process, when they are going overboard. Wordiness is simply a form of laziness or egotism. That sounds harsh, but I feel I'm able to say this, as I have struggled with the same crime. And when I have, it's been because I couldn't be bothered thinking of a better way to say what I just said - or it's because I really liked the way I said it. 

 So how can the author prevent wordiness before it's too late? Here are a couple of signs that things are getting out of hand.

 1. It's clever.

Recently, I watched a movie that was really clever. It was about a group of magicians who did the most amazing tricks, stealing money from banks and baffling authorities. There was zero character growth throughout the movie, and the plot, as a result, fell flat. But it was a clever movie. It was really, really clever. And I wouldn't watch it again, and I wouldn't buy it. 

 People don't choose to read or watch a story simply because it's clever. In fact, often 'cleverness' dwarves particular aspects of the story and makes it less enjoyable. Ultimately, your story should be human, and the average person should be able to relate to it. Therefore, if you find yourself writing something like the following, you know you're on the wrong track:

"He sallied out of door in the habiliments that associated him with the corps which protected the mortals belonging to his nation."

 Why not just say:

"He strode outside in his army uniform."

What's so wrong about that? Okay, maybe it sounds simple ... dry. It's still writing though. It doesn't have to be super clever to be writing.

 Incidentally, a book isn't a group of clever sentences that stand on their own. It's a body of art that takes the reader on a journey. If your sentences are all so clever, chances are that it reads more like a book of quotes than a good novel. Think you're clever? Save it for later. Turn a witty sentence into a poem. Create a character who uses such pompous language. But don't clutter up your story by stroking your ego.

 2. That felt like a lot of syllables.

 If you read over a sentence and find yourself having to go back to the beginning to make sense of it, maybe it was too long. If you read it out loud and feel like the syllables are really stacking up, perhaps there's something you should do to condense the meaning. For example, here's part of something I was editing recently:

"While the Lashki seemed desperate for Rafen to side with him – and Rafen still couldn’t think at all why – he wasn’t going to be desperate enough to be going to believe something improbable."

 Lots of small syllables make this sentence a mouthful. I fixed it like this:

"While the Lashki seemed desperate for Rafen to side with him – and Rafen still couldn’t think why – he wasn’t desperate enough to believe something improbable."

 It's much better, and it doesn't feel long and complicated to the reader. 

 There are tricks you learn as a writer. "Going to be" can often be omitted or changed to "would". "Seemed to be" can be substituted with "seemed". "All at once" can become "suddenly" or "instantly". "In order to" is simplified to "to". "That" is often unnecessary. The list is endless. 

 Again, it may feel more like you're writing when you've got a lot to say. Save it for later. Use it in a legal contract; use it in an employee handbook; but don't use it in a novel.


 In summary, write as simply as you can. Don't be unnecessarily clever. Don't be unnecessarily long. It shows respect and care for readers if you write in a concise manner - respect, because you're not being condescending or abstruse; and care because you're helping them make the most of their reading time. Save the wordiness for later - if you save it at all.

 In today's fast-moving society, audiences are hard to capture. Publishers and literary agents are very conscious of this, so the demand is that writers be hooking. Which sounds pretty manageable - until we realise that publishers, literary agents, and readers want to be hooked by the first few pages of our books. And then we're going: "Wait, what about my scene setting? My explanation of the history? My explanation of the characters? When am I supposed to do that?"  It is not uncommon for a publisher or literary agent to turn a book down right after looking at the first few pages. They just weren't good enough, and submissions are coming in all the time. There's always something else to catch a publisher's or literary agent's attention. Readers can be exactly the same. They peruse the first few pages of a book in the store and decide then and there that it just wasn't moving fast enough. So how is an author to make the first few pages of the book hooking, without completely bewildering the reader? Here are two simple rules that I have found to work in my own experience.

1. A driving scene.

Have you ever read those books that start off with a slow description of someone's whereabouts or circumstances? What about the books that start simply with a sitting down scene and almost no dialogue or action? I'm afraid you can only get away with it in classic literature. Times have changed, and if you don't have your reader hooked by the first three or four pages, it's often a lost cause.
 When starting a novel, start it with a driving scene - something that instantly triggers the action that is going to carry the story. Gustav Freytag, a German playwright, used to talk about the "inciting moment". Start with an "inciting moment". Does your character desperately want something? Introduce this in the first scene. Does something terrible happen to your character? Introduce it in the first scene. If it feels too soon, you can always tell the back story in an extended flashback and work up to the same scene later in the book. Does your character fall in love? Introduce this in the first scene. Start with dialogue or action. Paint the pictures vividly. Don't just describe vaguely or lazily. "Write like a movie." Would a movie start with a sitting down scene?

2. A driving character.

There is nothing worse than reading a book where the characters feel one dimensional. Don't kid yourself - you can put all the action in the world in your novel, but unless the reader cares about the characters, they are not going to read it. People watch the news all the time, but what happens in the Middle East fails to touch their hearts because they don't care about the people. Unfortunately this is human nature. Make your reader care. Invite them into your character's head, heart, and past. Show them your character's deepest desire, right away. If the reader doesn't ever find out, some character development is lacking. Show them snippets of your character's past. Why is that particular person a killing machine? What made them like that? Why did Anthony enter the army? Why did Sarah give her child away? Explore the character's motive. And once you've explored that, bring it right into the first scene.
 From the very start of the book, the reader should connect with your characters. If they don't, they will not be hooked. You must give just enough of your first-mentioned character's motives, history, and desires for the reader to be engaged. This shouldn't take any more than a paragraph - two, if you're being liberal. But it shouldn't take too long. Just get to the point. Tell the important information. Summarise, like you would summarise your own desires and motivations if you were being interviewed. "Write like a movie." Would a movie director take a long time to show you what the main character desires or believes in? Of course not.

 These are two basic principles that I believe will help an author write an exciting first scene. These principles make all the difference between a book that someone can live without, or a book that compels the reader on. It may even make all the difference between whether you get a writing contract or not.
 

Have you ever considered studying creative writing at university? While I was studying at university, some of the courses I most looked forward to were Creative Processes and Creative Writing. I spent most of my diploma anticipating these, and in both, I was somewhat disappointed. Here's a few reasons why. They're not gospel reasons. They're not set in concrete, and I'm certainly not saying that I am completely correct in my assessment of all creative writing courses in general. However, these are few trends that I have found unhelpful, or even disturbing.

 1. Creativity is taught from university lecturer's perspective or personal experience.

With creativity being such a hard area to define, it certainly makes things more difficult for students if their lecturer to some extent - whether intentionally or unintentionally - imposes his own definition of creativity on them. Creativity should certainly operate by some rules, otherwise it is little more than nonsense. I, personally, would always shy away from any teaching that says creativity can be anything you want it to be. The purpose of writing is to communicate, and if people call being terrible grammatically, spelling things poorly, crafting sentences in a way that is obviously confusing, creative - I beg to disagree. 
However, in my own creative writing course, the lecturer instructed us to write poems that neither spoke directly about our topic nor outlined it. We basically had to write about something without mentioning it at all, and we were not allowed to use personification in our metaphors either. This takes the show-don't-tell principle to an extreme that I would view as unhelpful. Other people who read my poem had no idea what it was about and felt excluded. But the lecturer viewed this as creative - as the only correct way to write poetry.
 I look back at the great poets and note that they seldom followed these rules - at least, not to this extent. Yet, they were still creative. I came away from this part of the course confused, with still less idea of how to write poetry than I had previously.

 2. Creativity, in general, is being taught as a method of self gratification.

 A number of the modern poems that I read both in my course and in books that writing schools have produced have made absolutely zero sense to me. There is no clear communication, and the reader in most cases would probably come away bewildered. While studying literary analysis at university, I was instructed to read the book To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf - an author who is generally upheld as being a fundamental influence on today's literature. This book had some beautiful description in it, but overall, I found it the most introverted and bizarre thing I have ever read. It was clearly some sort of journal of Viriginia Woolf's observations on life, and made almost no sense to me. I was speaking to an almost eighty-year-old woman the other day on the same subject, and she commented that this book was "awful" and "confusing". Is literature really meant to confuse? Should the author be the only one who can understand their own work? I don't think so. I refuse to believe it. God gave humans the ability to communicate, and that is what writing should be primarily used for. Of course you have to write about things you can really feel. That is crucial. But you must make sense; you must communicate rather than isolate. The fact that this kind of literature is being extolled in our universities shows a disturbing trend: writing is now being taught as a kind of journey the author goes on alone - a sort of self-discovery, for one's own gratification. Self-discovery is good, but what you write should have some good impact on humanity. Alienating readers, I believe, is nothing short of a crime.
 I am aware that there can be two opinions on this matter; but this is, overall, what I have found to be true in my own experience. And sometimes I wonder if the reason that modern poetry seldom sells, and is largely appreciated by literary critics, is what I have just outlined above.

 3. All things are permissible in art - or so we're told.

This is perhaps the most worrying thing I noticed while studying creative writing in university. Sex and swearwords were lauded in other people's writing, and sometimes even encouraged in our own. I truly believe that both of these things are a poor excuse for literature. Some of the greatest writers in history got away with merely hinting at these things. Certainly, they exist. But is there any need to make them so explicit? One can write about something without having to drag oneself through the gutter.
 Certainly, sex is something that greatly interests many people. But the Bible makes it pretty clear that this is to be kept between the man and woman involved. It is a gift to be privately enjoyed between a married couple. In recent times, I wrote about a couple that married and conceived a child in the same night. Nevertheless, I never actually wrote the scene of conception. It was hinted at in the morning in very clean dialogue, and the pregnancy was announced later. I personally do not think sex was created for the entertainment of an audience.
 As a Christian, I believe that swearwords are wrong. Also, as writers, we should uphold good standards of language, rather than degrading them. Nevertheless, there are other excellent reasons for not swearing in our own work. For instance, we are told to avoid clichés. What could be more cliché than swearing? Swearwords are also seldom creative - if creativity is to be viewed as thinking outside the box. Swearwords are so frequently used that they are as commonplace as gravel. It severely lowers the quality of writing to include numerous swearwords. I am conscious, however, that in portraying certain characters, we may feel it necessary to include a swearword. In these cases, even though it is not the most powerful literary device, I would say something like:
 "Cutting his finger by mistake, he swore profoundly."

 There will be many who disagree with me on this issue.

In conclusion, these are three reasons why I believe creative writing courses may not be so helpful for aspiring authors. I could have listed other things too. For instance, writing creatively is often something that is best self-taught, peer-reviewed, and practised over and over, experience being the biggest qualifier in the writing world. If you read excellent literature and study it on your own, you can still write well. However, these are three of the biggest things that I think are worth considering before enrolling in a creative writing course.

 It's amazing how much people around us can impact what we think is possible - what we think we can or cannot do. What do you do when what feels like everyone tells you that you would be better off spending your time another way? Here is my own personal story and struggle.

I wanted to be an author ever since I was about five or six years old. Not long after I could write my name, I decided I wanted to write books. I decided this because I thought I had good ideas, and I knew my imagination was very active. But as I grew older, I discovered more and more that it is expected that authors have some natural talent with words. You have to be good at writing to be an author, and if you're not, maybe you should be channelling your abilities elsewhere - right?

 There are a few people that really encouraged me to keep writing when I was very young - between eleven and fourteen - but overall, the response was that I was not good enough, and probably never would be.The unspoken message was that I was wasting my time, and would be better off to stop now and try something more realistic. I have to be honest - that hit me really hard. In some senses, I'm still trying to decide if that advice was bad or not! Luckily(?), I'm of the obsessive nature anyway, so I continued writing most of the way through my teen years, experimenting with book formats and poetry. It was when I came close to finishing to school that I became really frightened. What was I to do with my life? I had a huge idea for a seven book series that had been churning around in my brain literally since I was ten, or earlier. I felt like if I didn't write it now, I would eventually lose my enthusiasm and courage, and it would vanish. I would be giving away one of the best opportunities of my life.
 
 But I had to do something to earn money. I knew if I studied for three years, it was going to take up the bulk of my writing time, because I'm a perfectionist. It would be almost impossible for me to research options for submitting my book(s) to a publisher and keep up with the writing and editing and study. Besides,I would be building up a debt I had to pay off. I looked into creative writing courses, but decided against these for reasons that maybe I'll put in a blog post later. In the meantime, I read and read and read. Everything from Plutarch to Homer to Ovid, to Shakespeare to Lovelace to Coleridge, to Keats to Austen to Bronte to Dickens. My favorite authors became Rowling, Thomas Hardy, and Katherine Mansfield. I started working from a bigger pool of words and imagery, and that really helped me.

 In the end, I went with my gut. I wasn't hurting anyone by doing what I really desired, in my heart of hearts, to do. But I wasn't going to make a living either if I wasn't careful. I had other passions besides writing - though my love of writing dwarfed them all by far. I loved music, which has always helped me create stories. For me, it's just another way of telling a story. So I worked hard in that area and got the basic qualifications to teach piano and singing - something I've done for almost three years now. God really blessed me in my choice; it was a wonderful occupation, and saved me plenty of time for writing. I was successful in starting up a music teaching business, and I could live off it happily.

 And then I kept sending my work out to literary agents and publishers during that time. After over a decade of wanting to be a published author, I signed a publishing contract a week or so before my twenty-first birthday. It felt insanely good.

 I tell this story because I think writing a story is the simplest and best way of teaching and encouraging others. I want to insist that a lot is possible through hard work. When everyone (or what feels like everyone) tells you that you shouldn't be writing, always remember that if you work hard and do it out of the right motives - in a God-honoring way - there's no reason why you shouldn't. Writing is not a natural talent, as people see natural talents in general. I firmly believe that. It's a human thing, to want to tell a story; but it takes work to write well. Five-year-olds do not come out as laureates in their first year of school. Let this encourage you: everyone starts somewhere.