Your stories have been flowing and we’re looking for more. The competition is being sponsored by Powers Whiskey and the theme is Celebrating What Truly Matters. Send us a 450-word story, and you could win €10,000 and the chance to be published in an anthology. This week, author Claire Kilroy gives her advice to would-be writers
In the beginning, I just write anything. Anything at all that enters my head: down it goes on paper. The early days are not the time to police yourself or to practise quality control. These are the clutching-at-straws days, and it is my experience that if you clutch at enough straws, the straws will begin to form shapes in your mind’s eye.
You’ll find you are able to build something with them. It follows that for much of the writing process, the piece you are working on may feel like a house of straw, but do not be dismayed because one day, I don’t quite know how – by the mysterious alchemy of the human imagination, I suppose – your house of straw will turn into a bricks and mortar structure, and the people in the house, your characters, will come alive.
So keep clutching at those straws.
I find it is tempting – and indeed natural – to make a character say or do something for the sole purpose of getting yourself to the next stage in the plot. Whereas this is perfectly acceptable when first-drafting (to my mind, any stratagem whatsoever is perfectly acceptable when first-drafting; the means justify the ends) it is never acceptable in a final draft.
However, the catch is that since you wrote the bloody thing, you may not immediately be able to detect the points at which your characters are behaving in a manner that is, well, out of character. Therefore, during the editing process you must ruthlessly examine all actions and responses, and so on, and interrogate them for authenticity.
If the actions don’t ring true, your plot will seem forced. And that’s because it has been forced.
Verbs tend to receive less love than their more flamboyant colleagues, the nouns and adjectives, but the verb is the workhorse of the sentence.
Many writers read their work aloud to gauge how it sounds by ear. This is not something I generally do, possibly because I use male narrators and so my own voice never sounds right. However, I often find myself getting up from my desk to act out any action or gesture depicted in the prose, the better to enable myself to describe it. (For this reason, I am never to be found working on my novels in the nearest cafe).
I devote much time during the editing process striving to pinpoint the verb best equipped to nail the action I am seeking to evoke. As a writer, you must at all times bear in mind that there is no visual stimulus on the page. Your job is to hit upon the words which will detonate an image in the reader’s imagination and thus bring to life a scene. You need to make your reader see what is happening, and verbs are your friend in this regard.
And lastly, the best advice I can give is to simply shut up and do it.
A writer writes.
Claire Kilroy’s fourth novel, The Devil I Know, will be published by Faber and Faber in August.
See last year's winning stories in Celebrating What Truly Matters Vol 1, available to buy through the Irish Hospice Foundation or Powers at thankyouproject.ieor tel: 01-679 3188
Terms and conditions
For your chance to win €10,000, submit your short story (400-450 words) to irishtimes.com/powersYour story should reflect the theme "Celebrating what truly matters". Postal entries will not be accepted. For full terms and conditions, see irishtimes.com/powers. Closing date is 11.59pm on April 17th, 2012.
