Writing - Structure

 There are only three certainties in life, and today's blog is about one of those certainties, which, in fact, is change. If I’ve learned one thing in the last 7 ½ decades, it’s that change is almost constant, and the reason I bring it up today is that this is my first attempt to produce my blog using speech rather than typing away at my laptop.

I must admit I am totally impressed by these people who can sit in front of a microphone and just talk for 20, 30, 40 minutes or even longer. So I thought it was time that I had a go.

The subject of today’s blog really is about story structure and making it readable, accessible for people who like to read at night, but principally for anybody to read again at any time of the day. In the past, some authors have written long, wordy paragraphs and sentences and have been lauded by literary critics for their ability to write in English. When I wanted to start writing books, my aim was to make them as accessible as possible to as many people as possible, and I think I managed to do that by having in mind just a couple of strategies while I was actually writing.

At the moment, I am reading a book by Richard Osman, one of his Thursday Club mysteries. He is a very readable author, and obviously, to me, he seems to spend a lot of time planning and organising what he's going to write and then sticking to that plan, but it does one of two things.

Firstly, Osman writes short chapters. His chapters are probably no more than four or five pages long, and they are tied to specific parts of the story he's writing. For example, in all his Thursday club mysteries, he has chapters entitled ‘Joyce.’ Obviously, Joyce is one of the main characters in the stories. Not all these chapters are named like that, but every now and again, he'll throw one in and will write specifically about that one character and her view of how things are going at that point as a part of the plot. I think that's a sign his organisational style is really tight.

The second aspect is to be aware that, if you want your work to be as accessible as possible, is not to be too wordy. If you want to impress literary critics, then you may choose to write sentences that are long and full of polysyllabic words. On the other hand, if you want to entertain and help people feel relaxed and unstressed by what they’re reading, then you may choose a slightly simpler style, probably more like reading the Daily Mirror than reading the Times.

Richard Osman and many other authors seem to follow this basic strategy, and I think it’s a good idea, particularly if you're a new writer, that you actually consider very carefully who your audience is going to be and what your aim is in writing the book. Are you writing to entertain? Are you writing to impress critics and publishers? That, of course, is entirely up to you, but Richard Osman is a successful author, as is JK Rowling and Ian Rankin. Their styles are quite straightforward and not too verbose.

As a slightly amusing addendum which has nothing to do with what I’ve just produced but does concern most people around the world in these days of political turmoil, is Donald John Trump. As a child, if by some happenstance I broke wind, my mum or dad might say ‘have you just trumped?’ - meaning have I just farted. It seems rather apt that the man causing all kinds of trouble in his own country and all around the world should have adopted the name which means breaking wind.

God bless