Welcome to Books, Life and Everything today, where C J Carver is letting us in on things she keeps in mind when writing. I love hearing from authors about their writing and it is great to be able to welcome her today as part of the celebrations for her novel, Know Me Now.
Five things I keep in mind while I’m writing
Over the years my writing has become instinctive, but only due to working my socks off and learning my trade. When I first started out I really had to think about what I was doing, and below are five things I made sure I kept in mind when I was writing, anything to make sure I wasn’t boring the reader! My goal was, and always will be, to produce a cracking and unputdownable read that isn’t just thought provoking, but thrilling.
Tension
Is there a question on every page? Are my characters on edge? On a quest of some sort? If not, why not? From the opening page, the story has to hold a reader’s attention 100% and keep that attention until the very last sentence. I try and make sure my characters are always actively doing something, and not having events happen to them. For example, when Dan Forrester in my new novel Know Me Now discovers his father didn’t die of a heart-attack and that he was murdered, he sets to find out why, pushing the story forward at a terrific rate.
Show don’t tell
As a new writer, I was told this again and again. Exposition kills a story stone-dead. However, a writer still needs to impart information, it’s just how we choose to do it that makes the difference between a page-turner and something less exciting. Dialogue is a really useful way of imparting information especially if two characters are having an argument or a fight.
Don’t make things easy
If my character wants to find something out and uses the phone, it’s useful to have the person they’re ringing unavailable so that later they ring back at a really awkward time, creating immediate tension. I try not to hand things on a plate to my characters, but make them really work for things.
Are the obstacles getting bigger as the story progresses?
From making things awkward on the phone (see 3!) to characters having disagreements with one another, each event should increase in emotional tension for the reader. I can’t have a huge chase scene in the middle of the book if that is more exciting than the shootout at the end. It’s all about building the story to its climax.
Cliff-hangers
Having a cliff-hanger at the end of each chapter (from tiny to huge) now comes naturally to me, but when I first started writing, I really had to concentrate on creating a question or some kind of thruster that would make the reader turn the page. It’s about depriving the reader of something he or she needs to know, not for ever, but just for a couple of pages . . . then they get their reward when that question is answered. But not the big one, though, which isn’t revealed until the very last page.
©CJ Carver 2017
Thanks so much, it's fantastic to hear from you- let's find out more about Know Me Now...
A SUICIDE. A MURDER. A CONSPIRACY.
DIGGING UP THE PAST CAN BE DEADLY . . .
A thirteen-year-old boy commits suicide.
A sixty-five-year old man dies of a heart attack.
Dan Forrester, ex-MI5 officer, is connected to them both.
And when he discovers that his godson and his father have been
murdered, he teams up with his old friend, DC Lucy Davies, to find
answers.
But as the pair investigate, they unravel a dark and
violent mystery stretching decades into the past and uncover a terrible
secret.
A secret someone will do anything to keep buried . . .
About the Author (taken from her Website)
"I have always loved stories, and as a child I read voraciously, as did
my family. When I invited a school friend to stay during the summer
holidays, she later admitted to finding us very peculiar because we read
our books over breakfast. No conversation, just the rustling of pages
and the crunch of our Cornflakes. ”
CJ Carver is a half-English, half-kiwi, author living just outside
Bath. She lived in Australia for ten years before taking up
long-distance rally driving – she has driven London to Saigon, London to
Cape Town, and completed 14,500 miles on the Inca Trail.
Since then she has written nine critically acclaimed novels that have
been published in the UK, USA and translated into several languages.
CJ’s first novel Blood Junction won the CWA Debut Dagger and was short listed for the USA Barry Award for Best Crime Fiction Novel of the Year. Spare Me the Truth, the first in the Forrester and Davies series, was shortlisted for the 2017 Ngaio Marsh Best Crime Novel Award.
CJ is a co-founder and one of the first judges for the Women’s World Car of The Year Award.
CJ loves hearing from her fans. Drop her a line at cj@cjcarver.com
You can follow Charlotte here: Website | Twitter | Facebook
Thanks to Emily Burns and C J Carver for a copy of the book and a place on the tour.
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