Writing: fun, but hair-tuggingly frustrating

Let me just confess to a pastime slightly more socially acceptable than dogging (though less social, it is true) and slightly less impressive than, say, making ice-sculptures or baking an impressive curry.

I like writing. Yes, I do. I do I do I do. I love it when a story takes off, when I'm not just running but positively flying with it, when the characters come alive, when the plot is exciting with each new chapter that unfolds.

Mind you, it's bloody hard to get going with it.

I can't remember when I started writing, and that's partly down to a poor memory of my own personal goings-on and partly because it was just so darned long ago. By the time I went to university, nine years ago, I'd churned out tons of stories and had had a bash at a few (horrifically bad and blessedly unfinished) novels. (Fantasy novels, by the way, like the one I'm currently writing.) Since then, I've actually managed to finish four novels and I'm now rigorously and vigorously involved in the penning of a fifth. And that's on top of trying to find the right last few thousand words to write to round off my doctoral thesis. Oh, and there are several hundred poems, too.

This is not a boast, though I am proud of what I've written - even the bad stuff, in a strange way, much as a parent can't help but unconditionally love an unruly child, I 'xpect. But I sometimes wonder if I've learned much in the process of writing the 2 million or so words I must've written over the last ten(-ish) years.

Well, let's see now. One of the things I have gradually been learning is that I'm not Aristotelian in my approach - that is, I don't place plot above character. Quite the reverse. Sorry, Aris. But then, what's wrong with that? Who cares that some bloke's got to get a magic sword and save the world with it if the bloke in question's such a boring arse? Who gives a flying toss whether the strong silent hero gets it on with the strong, anything-but-silent heroine when they're both so ludicrously cardboard cut-out that they make John Major appear a promising prospect for a fictional protagonist? (Actually, old John probably could carry a novel, given his fondness for - er, curry.) I think characterisation is the most important thing in a book - and so it's characters that I seek to build up, making them flawed, alive, interesting, distinctive, appealing... And all this, I've learnt, is bloody hard.

However, I'm happy to carry on trying to learn. What makes it worth the pursuit is all the great literature - and all the good, popular-but-not-great literature - that has gone before, showing how powerful a story can be once you have the right characters. Even the poorer offerings in the Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes oeuvre - the novels, and many of the later stories - are perfectly readable because we love the character so much, so he's with us for life. The same with the best fantasy: David Gemmell's heroic creations keep us reading because he makes them living, breathing people, and we want to see how they cope with whatever their author throws their way to deal with. Druss the Legend would be interesting emptying his swing-bin, not that I ever expected that scenario to crop up in one of the books, you understand.

Working on my PhD thesis, as I have been doing so alongside working on this new novel for the last few weeks, has showed me this once again: the best stories I'm looking at are those with characters we get a real feel for, and whom we may not particularly admire or want to emulate, but who strike us as well drawn and believable. That's why I've loved writing about Oliver Onions' ghost story 'The Beckoning Fair One' so much - because the protagonist, Paul Oleron, is such a weak, sensitive, pathetic, selfish, hopeful, ambitious, doomed sort of chap. And that is the key to the story (which I heartily recommend). That was one reason why I never got beyond the first Harry Potter book; though I am often (and, I believe, sincerely) reassured by people around me that the books get better as the series progresses, that first book failed in what for me is rule number one: making me like the characters. I don't mean 'like' here in the sense of 'approve of the moral philosophy of' or 'wish to go down the pub with', but merely 'identify with'. And I didn't identify. Sorry, any Potter fans reading this.

The other thing I've been trying to sort out is prose style. I don't want to fall into the trap of telling a story badly, which may sound a naive thing to say, but what I really mean is avoiding all those bad habits popular writers often exhibit. Much as I love old Robert E. Howard, his characters were forever expostulating and rebutting, Conan was always snorting and exhorting and shouting and bellowing. I refer to the thorny issue of the use of 'said' or its synonyms in the relating of dialogue, e.g.

'"I hate you," she said.'

Or, '"I hate you," she protested vehemently.'

Which of those do you prefer? To be honest, I'm trying to avoid both wherever possible. How about this? 'She folded her arms and looked at him. "I hate you."' That way the reader knows who's saying those words, 'I hate you', and we are also shown what this character is doing as she says them. It may be a cliche, but 'show, don't tell' really is a marvellous piece of advice for writers of fiction, I think. Some may hate this method and prefer the simple 'said' rule, while others may be gifted enough to create characters whose dialogue is so distinctive that a reader just knows who's speaking when a line of dialogue appears... But that way lies the all-too-tempting trap of giving your characters annoying mannerisms (everyone goes around saying 'my boy' or 'sonny Jim' or 'lass' or 'pet' in every single line of dialogue they utter).

I'm also avoiding planning at all costs. I've done it both ways. I've tried planning a novel out in minute detail before writing it, but for me that kills the story; once I've done the plan I've told the story and know what's going to happen, so why bother to fill in the gaps? But I prefer the other approach: as Gemmell once said, create a character you find interesting and worth following, then just stick him on a horse and ride him out of a forest. (Or her.) Then it's up to you to make what you want to happen, happen. I'm definitely a horse novelist rather than a planner. I need to have the same sense of not knowing what the hell's going to happen on the next page as the reader.

Of course, I've also been reading a fair bit. Since I'm writing a fantasy novel, I should really be reading lots of fantasy; but aside from one series I'm dipping into at the moment, I've largely stopped reading fantasy at the moment. I've read many of the greats - Gemmell, Robert Jordan, Terry Pratchett, Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, Tolkien, Moorcock, Howard - but right now I'm trying to take Michael Moorcock's advice and try to hoover up some inspiration from elsewhere - plays, ghost stories, horror fiction, poetry. Time will tell whether it's working or not. Mind you, that has got me thinking about the issue of reading. In the last few years I've marked rather a lot of undergraduate essays and the one thing that's struck me in 80% of cases they haven't picked up the mannerisms of writing literary criticism. No matter how many times I exhort them to pick up Christopher Ricks or William Empson or Nicholas Royle - close, insightful critics who also write very entertaining prose - I get the feeling my advice is falling on deaf ears. Maybe I'm wrong. That's not to say that what they write is bad; often, far from it. But just that you need to develop a feel for the style of writing before you can write it well yourself. Rant, rant, rant. Sorry.

In short, that's what I'm up to at the moment. I've been going on a bit, and I've been putting off the writing of the novel itself (oh, irony of ironies!), not to mention important thesis work, which will largely occupy me for the coming two weeks. But I still want to try to get the first draft of this novel done by the end of the month. Anyone else who's had similar experiences of writing, I'd love to hear from you. Or if you've had completely contrary experiences to the ones expressed here, then I'd also love to hear from you. Comments welcome as ever...