Bookclub Discussion: The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell

After a summer break, Triskele Bookclub is back!
September book under discussion is The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell. If you've read the book, please comment with your thoughts - if not, we may well tempt you!

About the author: Born in 1969, David Mitchell grew up in Worcestershire. After graduating from Kent University, he taught English in Japan, where he wrote his first novel, GHOSTWRITTEN in 1999. His second novel, NUMBER9DREAM, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. His third novel, CLOUD ATLAS, was shortlisted for six awards including the Man Booker Prize, and adapted for film in 2012. It was followed by BLACK SWAN GREEN, shortlisted for the Costa Novel of the Year Award, and THE THOUSAND AUTUMNS OF JACOB DE ZOET, which was a No. 1 Sunday Times bestseller and finally, THE BONE CLOCKS. All three were longlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

The Bone Clocks

One drowsy summer's day in 1984, teenage runaway Holly Sykes encounters a strange woman who offers a small kindness in exchange for 'asylum'. Decades will pass before Holly understands exactly what sort of asylum the woman was seeking . .T

The Bone Clocks follows the twists and turns of Holly's life from a scarred adolescence in Gravesend to old age on Ireland's Atlantic coast as Europe's oil supply dries up - a life not so far out of the ordinary, yet punctuated by flashes of precognition, visits from people who emerge from thin air and brief lapses in the laws of reality. For Holly Sykes - daughter, sister, mother, guardian - is also an unwitting player in a murderous feud played out in the shadows and margins of our world, and may prove to be its decisive weapon.

Metaphysical thriller, meditation on mortality and chronicle of our self-devouring times, this kaleidoscopic novel crackles with the invention and wit that have made David Mitchell one of the most celebrated writers of his generation. Here is fiction at its most spellbinding and memorable best.

Okay, ladies, time for your feedback.

This is a book that takes time to settle in your brain and demands further contemplation. What were your initial thoughts when you came to the end?

JJ: Epic, clever, over-arching, complex and most of all, a Mitchell-fan goody-bag. Some sections worked better than others but each element made for a satisfying whole.
GEH: In a word - shaken. I found the final section of the book moving in a lot of different ways. For a fantasy novel, the author has a real talent for making every word he writes feel utterly believable.
CT: As usual with a David Mitchell book, you feel as if your brain has been delicately turned inside out and your perceptions flipped upside down.

And after ‘thinking time’ – what legacy did it leave?

JJ: The lasting impression is of another well-woven episode in Mitchell’s ‘über-novel’, showcasing his brilliance at voice, spreadsheet mind and sly sense of humour.
GEH: I think the sense of doom and loss I felt at the end of the book lingered. In particular the connection with the storyline and how it felt that the author had looked into his version of the future with startling clarity .... it really made me analyse the book in a way that I don't often do. Also, as a writer, I find increasingly I have to admire Mitchell's style which appears totally effortless - but obviously is not!
CT: Fantasies and dystopias often work best when firmly grounded in recognisable reality. Mitchell creates worlds so believable that we trust him when he pushes us over the edge into the incredible.

The POV and time-frame winds back and forth in a unique style, almost like a collection of short stories that form one whole at the end - what did you learn from the way the author handled structure here?

JJ: Yes, like a series of novellas but with a stronger ‘red-line’ than Cloud Atlas. Each episode has its own voice and strengths with the undertone of the fantasy element. Oddly, when the fantasy came to the fore, I engaged less. As for structure, this connects and combines superbly, distracting the reader from the links by dint of individual, engaging stories.
GEH: I really enjoy these type of multi-layered complex stories, where, because you become engaged with each character, you're so eager to see how the individual plots will merge at the end. There's a talent to character-led, rather than plot-led narratives, which I very much admire. I think we have a real genius at work here. So, in a word - respect!
CT: It’s a classic David Mitchell structure, isn’t it? He weaves a strong rope from different strands, each of which can be seen throughout the narrative, even while one takes the lead. I think the trick in his style of writing is to keep each thread distinct, so they don’t merge, one with the other, and yet to have enough points of contact between them that they bind together. A difficult balancing act!

Was there one image that stuck with you long after reading the book?

JJ: Yes, one shocking moment in the first section, but can’t do spoilers.
GEH: The whole of the final section and the future implications for man-kind. Sounds pretty serious for a fantasy-type novel but it really did stay with me.
CT: Without giving too much away, the brutal simplicity of Mitchell’s heading-for-disaster vision of the future shook me - all too probable.

Why did Holly Sykes work as the main protagonist?

 JJ: Loyalty is engendered from the start, then we see her through other, jaded eyes, such as Hershey’s and our sympathy remains.
GEH: It is the age old story of a journey, isn't it? Find the right character to accompany the reader on that journey and anything is believable. It was the believability factor that worked for me, the introduction to Holly in a run-of-the-mill lifestyle and landscape which then transformed in front of our eyes.
CT: I think for me it was the process of seeing Holly move from teenager into late age. The fact that it is done as a series of vignettes mean that each stage of her life is distinct and we notice the changes, the way we do with a friend whom we only see at long intervals. It felt as if I had lived her life at high speed. At the end, I did’t want to lose her.

We have a multi-narrated novel here. Which voice stood out most to you and why?
 
JJ: Probably Hugo Lamb. Again, don’t want to spoil, but the rarefied air of privilege and cynical manipulation of others is repulsively fascinating. Crispin Hershey is a little ‘meta’ referential but fabulous fun.
GEH: I was going to say Hugo too! But I keep going back to Holly - and her 'normality' in the face of adversity. So, I'll say Holly Sykes.
CT I fell in love with that opening voice of young Holly. But I found the voice of Holly’s husband, carrying the unseen scars being a war correspondent, deeply affecting. For me, possibly the character I most empathised with.

This is far from a love story – and yet we meet three men who all fall in love with the same character. How did the emotional layers of the story work for you?

JJ: The love story for me was not so much the character interaction, but human beings as a species. In a fundamental sense, this is about how we deal with the duality of immediate gratification and self(ish)-propagation versus long-term care of our planet and people. That was the element that hit me hardest.
GEH: I think the message here was much deeper than that of a traditional love story. There was emotion, true, but in a tortured and brutal manner - not that much in the way of romance and beating hearts. There were more tears than laughter for sure. And I think the introduction of a love interest was a very clever way in making the reader connect with the characters and examine the bigger picture.
CT: I fall back on the gradual maturing of Holly Sykes as being the emotional thread that pulled me through the story.


One quote from the character of Crispin Hershey which really connected with me and felt as if Mitchell were reviewing the novel from within: ‘[the author] is so bent on avoiding cliche that each sentence is as tortured as an American whistleblower.’ What do you think he meant by this?

JJ: I think Amis Senior is chuckling in his grave and Amis Junior is grinding his teeth.
GEH: I did think a lot of Hershey's dialogue sounded like the bitchier side of the author coming through - and I loved that. I felt it was a two-fingered salute to some of the more literary writers who look down on genre fiction - and are so uptight with their own intensity they're almost caricatures. I'm too polite to name names, of course!
CT: Yes, surely a dig at those who forget that the most powerful of concepts can be expressed, beautifully, in the simplest of language.

It’s hard to name a similar novel to THE BONE CLOCKS, but if forced to try which author or book comes close?

JJ: Magical realism such as Louis de Bernières or Gabriel Garcia Marquez with an oddly British dose of Margaret Atwood and Scarlett Thomas.
GEH: I would have to go with Margaret Atwood too. The Handmaid's Tale had this sense of fore-shadowing an idea of a macabre future. Maybe also elements of some of Sarah Waters's novels too, more for style than content. And also, some of the atmospheric ideas reminded me of Stephen King's Dark Tower series. 
CT: In terms of brilliant conceptualisation of an alternative reality – probably Philip K Dick. In terms of scope combined with richness of prose, perhaps Michel Faber or Kate Atkinson.

For fans of David Mitchell who haven’t read this book yet – why should they?

JJ: For the voices and characters and the concept. Fans will whoop and go geeky on all the connections, but for a first-timer, this is an extraordinary adventure with an atmosphere of its own.
GEH: I would urge anyone who has never opened a David Mitchell novel to make this the very next book on their reading list. For fans of his, I doubt they need encouragement from me, because this is Mr Mitchell at his very best!
CT: To be led by the hand through a series of fascinating rooms, walking in the shoes of fresh sequence of richly complex characters - what else does one read David Mitchell for?

Creative Spark Week 10 - Sense of Place

One of the most important things to remember about creating a sense of place is that the same location will appear very different depending on whose eyes we are seeing it through.

Parallax

Parallax is a way of describing the shift in viewpoint that is needed when you step into someone else’s head.

A couple walk down the street holding hands.

If that couple are a white man and a white woman, then in most places in the Western world, that walk down the street is an unremarkable act. But what if that couple were a white man and a black woman? Or two men? Depending on the location, their experience of walking down that street could be completely different from the first couple’s.

Even if all three couples pass along the street unmolested, the way they perceive their surrounding will not be the same. What does each couple think as they approach a group of teenagers drinking lager outside a pub? A policeman talking on his radio?

Allow your characters their own biases, grounded in their experiences of the world.
(Here's a great real life example of parallax from a recent edition of the Guardian.)

#bridgesnotbarriers

Exercise 1: Going for a stroll:

Take your character for a walk through a landscape (or a townscape). Is it one that is familiar to them, or alien? How does a lifelong townie cope with a muddy field full of sheep? Or someone from a small village with noise and the traffic of a big city? What does a person notice on a walk they take every day of their life? What scares them? Surprises them? What do they wish they could change?

Mood Music

Even if character and place remain the same, how they perceive their surrounding will depend on their mood.

Exercise 2: What a difference a day makes:

Select a place where your character spends a lot of time (kitchen, office, favourite park). Describe that place as it seems to them at different key moments in their life. How does their office appear on the first day of a new job? Or just after they close the deal of the decade? As they await the arrival of administrators following bankruptcy?

Ref 1: Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward Writing the Other
Ref 2: Rebecca McClanahan: Word Painting


Exercise 3: Application of sensory detail

Take another place more than one of your characters might frequent in your writing. It could be a pub, playground, bedroom. Take your first character, Joe, for example, who spends all his time in his bedroom. Describe that place ensuring you include all five senses. Now take another character, Susan say. She's Joe's mother and is constantly asking him to clean his bedroom. Describe the place from her point of view including all five senses. How do the characters differ and why?

Exercise 4: Sensory interpretation

Look around you. Choose an object. Something innocuous, nothing with a particular meaning. Look up. Right now. What do you see?

Brainstorm associated words: eg, sash, pane, glass, latch, smudge, reflection, sill, open, freedom, prism, light, draught, escape, bluebottle.

Choose an emotion: eg, contentment, frustration, panic, infatuation, boredom, joy, grief, reconciliation, disillusion.

Write 500 words on the object without naming it, selecting the senses which attach that emotion to that object. Don't say why. Leave us curious.


Exercises by Triskele Books.
Images courtesy of Julie Lewis

Creative Spark Week 9 - Emotionally Connect

Making an Emotional Connection with Readers Exercise

By Laurence O’Bryan

Making an emotional connection with readers is critically important whatever type of fiction you are writing. If you don’t, readers can easily stop reading. That’s the last thing we want. Without emotion what we write can become dull. If we add emotion reader engagement pulls the reader forward.

We are all familiar with emotions. They are, typically, what makes us have a great day or a bad one. But how can a writer use emotion to connect with readers?

One of the most basic emotions is desire. If your characters are motivated, if they have desire, if only for a glass of water, then readers will feel more connected to that character. And the more they want something, the more interesting your story becomes, as the reader is left wondering what the character will do to achieve their goal.

Desire is the basic emotion which keeps us involved in a story. If your main character wants something bad enough, you are, according to the logic of story, obliged to put obstacles in their way too. Why? Because obstacles create conflict and difficulties. And conflict will inspire an emotional response in your reader and keep them turning the pages.

In The Istanbul Puzzle, my mystery novel released by Harper Collins worldwide in 2012, my main character, Sean Ryan, wants to find out what happened to a good friend, who has been murdered. He feels responsible. This mixes both desire and danger into the story early on.

Some other ways to build an emotion connection with the reader are:

* Creating embarrassment for a character. By making the reader feel that embarrassment you will build a connection with them.

* Having a character abused in some way. Natural sympathy will be evoked if you do something terrible to a character we have come to know.

* Placing opposing characters in the same situation. There’s a natural tension when opposing characters meet. Your readers will feel it if the opposing characters views have been shown to them. 

* Fear creates tension in the reader too. If we know the murderer is coming up the stairs, and the woman is having a shower, we fear the outcome.

* Anticipation. If you foreshadow, occasionally, without explaining exactly what is going to happen, readers will anticipate something happening. I use a very occasional piece of foreshadowing to heighten tension.

* Surprise readers. Readers will enjoy your writing if something surprising happens. They won’t have any idea what is going to happen next. I try to make my stories as surprising as possible with something unexpected happening regularly.

* Excitement is a powerful writing tool. You can move the plot fast, anticipate, and spell out what might happen, and then keep the reader waiting. All the above methods combined will produce excitement in your reader.

One of the hardest parts for a writer is in creating authentic emotional scenes.

The ability to understand how it feels to be in an emotional situation and to express that feeling in a genuine and new way, without resorting to cliche or to simply naming how characters feels, is vital to creating truly engaging emotional writing.

People look for writing that truly explains how it feels to be in each situation. And they can tell if you haven’t represented the reality in a way that’s believable.

I wish you well with this. This is one of the hardest challenges of becoming a good writer in the 21st or any century.

Images courtesy of Julie Lewis

Laurence O'Bryan
My latest novel in the puzzle series, The Nuremberg Puzzle, is available now. Find out more at http://www.lpobryan.com 

The puzzle series has been translated into 10 languages and published in over 20 countries by Harper Collins. 

I also promote other writers through our site: BooksGoSocial.com.

Creative Spark Week 8 - Flirting with Subtext

By Jason Donald

When writing prose, you should aim to have tension in every single scene. The more tension you build, the more engaging it becomes for the reader. But how, you may ask, do you place tension in every scene?

One very effective method is to use subtext. Subtext is whatever is going on beneath the surface of a scene in a story. For example, a husband and wife may be discussing who will take the kids to school, they are both being extremely polite to each other, however the reader gets the sense they are on the verge of divorce. What the characters are saying is on the surface, while their feelings are below the surface. Their feelings are the subtext. This difference between what characters say and feel is what creates the tension in the scene and the reader is engaged because they have to figure out what is really going on. So, creating a subtext creates tension, which creates a better scene.

Creating subtext is a two-fold process. So let’s begin by writing the ‘surface level’ of a scene.


First Exercise:

1) Choose two characters. Name them.

2) Imagine the characters are in the kitchen sharing a task. For example: washing the dishes together, making cocktails, preparing food, clearing up after a party.

3) Imagine what they would say to each other and write a short scene.

NOTE: Focus on the dialogue. Deliberately try to keep the dialogue very banal and straightforward. For example: “Is there any more ice?” or “Wait a minute, I’ll need to put these glasses in the dishwasher.”

As you re-read your scene, you may be worried that it feels flat. And you would be right! A good rule of thumb for spotting flat, unengaging writing might be this: If a scene is about what a scene is about, then you’re in trouble!

Flat, surface level dialogue is called writing ‘on the nose’. This is when characters say exactly what they mean. This may be fine when a character says, “Pass the salt.” But when it comes to more complex emotional issues, people in the real world rarely say exactly what’s on their mind. In fact, people almost never explicitly talk about their problems. Instead, they misdirect, threaten or negotiate to avoid dealing with the issue head on.

This is especially true when comes to expressing sexual desire. Flirtation is all about the subtext: you want to drop heavy hints without explicitly describing your desire. The same is true of a relationship breaking up. Most arguments are triggered by surface level things like hanging up the bathroom towels, while the real issues of anger, betrayal, disappointment or emotional projection are not explicitly addressed.

Now, let’s add the second layer to the scene you wrote: the subtext.

Second Exercise:

1) Take the two characters from the scene you wrote in the First Exercise and decide what kind of sexual energy exists between them. Make notes about what is going on within each character. For example:

- A and B are in love with each other and are hoping to kiss for the first time

- A has a crush on B and is trying to find out if the feeling is mutual

- A and B were once lovers but they now despise each other.

2) Without changing the dialogue, re-write the scene from the First Exercise while suggesting the sexual energy between the characters.

NOTE: Focus on the character’s movements and on how they say their lines of dialogue. Explore ways to reveal the character’s inner worlds without naming any emotions. Make the readers feel what the characters are going through.

3) Don’t worry if scene sounds like an innuendo laden scene from a ‘Carry On…’ film! It’s all subtext. Play with the scene. Have fun! Re-write it again, keeping the same dialogue, but this time make the characters hate each other.


Jason Donald was born in Scotland and grew up in South Africa. He studied English Literature and Philosophy at St. Andrews University and is a graduate of the Glasgow University Creative Writing MA. His debut novel, Choke Chain, (Jonathan Cape) was shortlisted for the Authors Club Best First Novel Award and the Saltire First Book Award. His second novel, Dalila, (Jonathan Cape/Vintage) will be available from Jan 2017. He lives in Switzerland.


All images courtesy of Julie Lewis

Creative Spark Week 7 - Polish Your Prose

Polish Your Prose by Tightening Descriptions Exercise
by Jessica Bell

Too much description and you risk boring your reader. Too little description and your reader has no environment in which to visualize your characters. But it really is a fine line, and depends so much on personal taste.
Being a poet as well as a novelist, I adore description. And I have to admit, I go overboard sometimes. But my “description binges” are always calculated. And more often than not, I cut them down to at least half the original length. There are two ways you can do this. I suggest you implement both for variety of pace.

1. Identify which parts of your book are purely “decorative” and/or have little or no relevance to your setting and plot and evaluate how important they are to you. You don’t need to get rid of them all. Just find a balance you’re comfortable with. Trust your instincts. And I say don’t take that “kill your darlings” stuff too seriously. If everyone killed all their darlings, they’d have no family left.

2. Extract a big chunk of description and break it down into rational stand-alone segments or sentences. Then incorporate them into some action.

Look at SEGMENT No.1 below, for instance. Here we have an example of action, an example of description, and an example of the same piece of action and description combined:

SEGMENT No.1
Action:
“I can’t believe Selma’s gone.” John runs his fingertips along the fence before opening the gate.

Isolated segment of description:
Rusty wire fencing borders the abandoned paddock. The gate is squeaky. It always has been. Selma claimed it kept her alert to trespassers and refused to oil the hinges.

Description segment added to action: 

“I can’t believe she’s gone.” John runs his fingertips along the rusty wire fencing that borders the abandoned paddock. He opens the gate. It squeaks like it always has. He’s reminded of Selma’s refusal to oil the hinges. She said it kept her alert to trespassers.

The final example does several things. There is action. There is back story and character info on Selma and there is description.

In the grand scheme of things, the changes you choose to make are your choices. So if you want lots of description, and believe it deserves to be there, so be it. But, I urge you, please don’t go on and on for pages about the beauty of Mother Nature in spring. Your readers will just stop reading if the action is interrupted for more than a page. Some say that the limit is two paragraphs, but if, like me, you’re a literary author, I think you can get away with one page. At the very most. And I’m talking a book page, not a manuscript page, and that should add up to, on average, about 250 words.

So, as well as cutting your description to the level you feel comfortable with, and peppering it throughout the action, how else do you think you can go about polishing it?

Don’t overuse adjectives and use more strong verbs. The key word here is “overuse.” I’m not saying never use adjectives. I’m just saying your writing will be stronger with moderate usage.

Take a look at SEGMENT No.2 below. Here we have a weak example of description, with lots of adjectives, and a strong example of description using a moderate amount of adjectives and strong verbs.

SEGMENT No.2
Weak example:
The darkness of the thick grey low-hanging clouds made the massive decorative rocks in our backyard look like animated gravestone-giants.


Strong example:
The thick clouds hung low and shadowed our backyard. The decorative rocks doubled in size and morphed into gravestone-giants.

Can you see how the strong verbs in the second example help to eliminate the need for all the adjectives in the first one?

Now it’s your turn.

Combine the following texts so that the description is peppered throughout the dialogue and it uses less adjectives and more strong verbs.

Patti Smith begins a Jimi Hendrix cover on clarinet. A tragic mellow vibrato goes through Lykabettus Theatre like a sad wilting willow. The crowd is quiet and still. The guitarist’s jazz scales moves the clarinet’s tune like warm approaching rain. The rhythm guitar sounds like a heartbeat, and the pounding makes the crowd become a big loud mess of chaos. Patti puts the clarinet down, comes over to the microphone and sings in her deep, gruff, aching voice, If you can just / get your / mind together … The slow four/four beat of the guitar and Patti’s voice is like quaking earth. It moves through my legs, body, arms, making my throat tight. Synchronic drums, bass and distorted guitar move alongside the rhythm on the beat, creating an eruption of sundry emotion within me that makes cold and awestruck tears fall down my cheeks.

“Have you ever seen Patti Smith live before?” I said.

“Nah. This is my first time. I’m not entirely impressed yet,” he said.

“What? How can you not be impressed? She’s an icon; a genius.”

“Yeah, but, you know. I guess I’m just not as into it as you.”

“You should just close your eyes and listen. Can you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“That. Shh ... Feel it.”


Need more self-editing advice? Why don’t you check out Jessica Bell’s editing guide: Polish Your Fiction: A Quick & Easy Self-Editing Guide.

Jessica Bell is an Australian award-winning author, writing and publishing coach, and graphic designer who lives in Athens, Greece. In addition to her novels and poetry collections, and her bestselling Writing in a Nutshell series, she has published a variety of works online and in literary journals, including Writer’s Digest.
In addition to the above, she is the Co-Founder and Publisher of Vine Leaves Literary Journal & Press, a singer/songwriter/guitarist, a voice-over actor, and a freelance editor and writer for English Language Teaching publishers worldwide such as MacMillan Education and Education First. She is also the coordinator of the Writing Day Workshops which take place throughout the United States on a regular basis.
Before all this she was just a young woman with a “useless” Bachelor of Arts degree and a waitressing job.

All images courtesy of Julie Lewis

Creative Spark Week 6 - Voice and Character

Voice and Character Exercise
By Lindsey Grant

Voice in fiction writing can refer to either the author’s voice, which is the style of writing that makes a work distinctively yours; or the narrator’s voice, which is the way in which a novel’s main character thinks, talks, or writes (in epistolary form) throughout the novel. This exercise will focus primarily on the latter, though you may learn a bit about your own writing style as you discover your character’s voice.

As the components of your novel come together, you will find that POV, character, and voice are all very closely related pieces of the puzzle. Before you start working on character voice, you'll need to identify from the perspective from which the main character or characters tell their story. Is this a first person narrative, in which the character will be guiding us through his or her own thoughts and experiences? If you are instead writing in the third person, do we as the reader have access to the character’s inner monologue? Or is the third person perspective limited only to what an outsider can observe of the events that are unfolding around your characters? (Even if you’re not convinced of your POV choice yet, writing through a couple different scenarios using dialogue, inner monologue, description, or the epistolary form can help you not just figure out your character’s voice, but also the POV you feel most comfortable writing from.)

Remember, the scenarios provided for the writing prompts below don’t need to be included in your novel; instead, they are meant to be instructive in revealing how your character interacts with others, thinks about the world, and communicates his or her thoughts. If you already have an idea or ideas about scenes you’d like to write into your novel, use one or some of those instead!

If you're writing your novel in the first person, choose a scenario below or make up your own in which your main character has a conversation with a secondary character.

If you’re writing from the third person omniscient perspective, write your character’s inner monologue on a subject below, or one of your choosing.

If you’re writing from the third person limited POV, describe a scene based solely on the events unfolding—that which can be observed—using a provided topic or one of your own. (Hint: This is where you will start to feel your own authorial voice taking over.)

Or, no matter what POV you’ve chosen, try writing a letter penned by your character about one of the provided topics, or one of your own.

Possible topics:

• The death of a childhood pet
• Asking for a loan
• Catching a loved one in a lie
• Meeting a past or current idol
• Encountering an ex

Once you’ve completed your scene or scenes, look back at the way your character expresses him or herself, including the types of words he or she uses, the tone of his or her communication, and—if you’re able to distance yourself enough from your own character—the way his or her talking/writing/thinking makes you as the reader feel.

As you answer the questions below, you may find you need to revisit this exercise again to feel confident enough in your character’s voice to move forward.

1. Can you sum up your character’s voice in a sentence or two?

(eg: My main character talks a lot, without pausing, and often interrupts others, all in an effort to cover up his own nervousness and insecurities.)

2. Is your character’s voice consistent with the plot and tone of your novel?

(eg: Not really. My character thinks abstractly, veering into poetic ruminations on the world around him, but the action of the story is meant to be taut with suspense and fast-paced.)

3. Does your character’s voice lend itself to the POV you’ve chosen to write your novel from?

(eg: Yes. I didn’t want to write the book from a first person POV, but the inclusion of the letter-writing device allows the reader to glimpse the inner thoughts of my character from the character’s perspective. Best of both worlds!)


Lindsey Grant is the co-author of Ready, Set, Novel! A Writer's Workbook and author of the memoir Sleeps with Dogs: Tales of a Pet Nanny at the End of Her Leash. You can learn more about her and her work at sleepswithdogsbook.com.


 All images courtesy of Julie Lewis

Big 5 Mentorship Competition Shortlist Announced!

 

Triskele Books and Words With Jam are happy to announce the six shortlisted entries of our Big 5 Mentorship Competition –– from manuscript to publication –– worth over £5000!

Pleased with the multitude and quality of the entries, three members of the Triskele team read each and every one before finally coming to a joint decision.

We enjoyed reading through the variety of genres: everything from children’s to young adult, crime thrillers, sci-fi-fantasy, historical and literary fiction.

Only a few failed to adhere to the rules, such as no synopsis, no first chapter, which, unfortunately, disqualified these entries. So just a gentle reminder, it’s vital to read the competition rules before submitting.

The winners have been contacted and  invited to send the first 10 pages of their manuscript before September 1st to our independent judge, Sheila Bugler who will select one winner to be announced on Friday 4 November 2016.

Thank you to all who entered, ensuring our competition was a huge success. From the shortlist, I just know we’re going to have so much fun working on a great book to bring it up to publishing standard!

So, without further ado, here are the six shortlisted winners, in no particular order:

A Whisper of Snow in the Mountains by Janet Wright

Crocodile Tears by Dianne Stadhams 

White Stock by Gill Thompson

Original Sins by Linda Duncan McLaughlin

Half a Small Kitchen by Su Lynch

The Sky is a Blue Bowl by Sophie Wellstood 

Look out for more details soon!