They say that familiarity breeds contempt. That might be a little harsh, but humans are famous for their ability to see what they expect to see, and when you observe the same thing every day, you stop noticing the little differences.
An acquaintance of mine started a job in a new organisation. A few days after they started, the police started an investigation into a serious incident that had taken place, unnoticed, on the day they started work. They interviewed my friend, who warned them that they were new to the role. The police were delighted; whilst their colleagues struggled to remember anything out of the ordinary, or even exactly which day the event took place, my friend recalled every detail. It was all new and exciting to them and so they remembered even small things. We never did work out if they saw anything useful to the investigation, but the police were very grateful to them.
With that in mind, today's writing exercise is a practise in description.
Take a notebook and travel somewhere new. Perhaps a coffee shop you've never visited before, or a new part of town? Once there take notes. Copious notes. Describe the layout of the area and the decorations. Are there people there? Try and use all your senses: sight, hearing, touch and smell (don't lick anything unless it's socially appropriate or safe to do so). Then delve deeper. How does the place make you feel?
Now, return home and write about a character visiting this place. Place yourself in their shoes. If it is an existing character you already know, how would it make them feel. What would they notice? A parent in a coffee shop might automatically clock where the toilets are and if there is a good selection of juices and snacks suitable for small children. A police officer might notice the two shifty-looking characters in the corner, or feel exasperation toward the woman so absorbed in her mobile phone she's oblivious to her purse poking out of her handbag.
How did you find the exercise? Did you notice things you might not otherwise? As always feel free to comment here or on social media.
If you are a writer with a tip to share, or fancy writing a fictional interview between you and one of your characters, please feel free to email me.


Until next time,
Paul.

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Today's #TuesdayTip is another book review. This time it's the brilliant "The Real CSI. A Forensic Handbook For Crime Writers", by Kate Bendelow.
Bendelow has the unusual distinction of not only being a currently serving forensic scientist with Greater Manchester Police, but she is also the author of two novels featuring CSI Maya Barton. Because of this, the handbook is very much geared towards writers.

I was really impressed with this book. Although it has been around for a few years (2017), it's still going to be pretty much up-to-date for a few more years yet, and of course a lot of things don't change. These sort of books tend to fall into two categories - what I call 'dippy books', where you dip into or out of them using the extensive index to find the specific topic you want to read about, and 'cover to cover' books, where you sit down with a cuppa and read from the beginning to the end.

Unusually this book is both. The first chapter, 'A day in the life of a real CSI' is a chapter to be read in one sitting. As are the next couple, 'Dealing with death' and 'Crime scene preservation'. After then, the book is divided into more broad chapters with lots of subsections, such as Fingerprints, DNA, Footwear, Trace evidence, Fire scenes, Drugs and toxicology, and Firearms. You can either read the whole chapter, or home in on a subsection, such as "issues affecting fingerprint quality".

​The science is well written and detailed and aimed broadly at a general audience. Those who haven't studied science since they were at school may find themselves Googling the odd term that they aren't familiar with or accessing the glossary at the end, but generally speaking it's pretty accessible.
Another advantage that this book has over some in the field, is that Bendelow is still working as a CSI, rather than looking back on a career or observing from afar. This is real boots-on-the-ground stuff and helps dispel the myths as portrayed on TV or in fiction. Obviously, as writers we are more concerned with telling a story than 100% accuracy, but it's always best to learn what the rules are before you decide to break them.

One of the things I like about this book is that the writing is very personable, with plenty of examples of true life cases. Both infamous tales that you may have heard of, and those that Bendelow has encountered personally in her day job. What demonstrates that Bendelow is herself a writer, is that almost every section ends with thoughts about how a writer could use what she has just described or things to be careful of.

Overall, I was very impressed and very much recommend it to both writers and those who just want to know a bit more. And to quote the wonderful Lynda La Plante 'Every crime writer should have a copy of this book on their desk.' Who am I to disagree?

If you are a writer with a tip to share, or fancy writing a fictional interview between you and one of your characters, please feel free to email me.

Until next time,
All the best,
Paul

Tomorrow sees the release of the ninth full-length entry in the DCI Warren Jones series, Web of Lies. So this week's #TuesdayTip is going to examine the process of writing the quickest novel I have written to date.
Web of Lies wasn't the book I was planning on writing. A couple of years ago, when I signed my latest 3 book contract, I gave my publisher three loose outlines for the next in the series. The first, about an unidentified dead body found in a ditch, became 2021's Out of Sight. The second, a blood-soaked serial killer novel, became 2022's Time To Kill. The third was an idea about homeless victims. The basic premise for each pitch was little more than a couple of paragraphs (regular readers of this blog will know by now that I rarely plan much in advance), although I had sketched out the character arcs for my series regulars.
Like many writers, when I am coming close to the end of the current novel I am writing, my mind starts to wander and I begin to think about the next book. This time, as I was coming to the end of Time To Kill, I started to realise that my proposed third book had too many themes in common with Time To Kill. As I mulled over what to do about that, I happened to be watching a true crime documentary. I can't for the life of me remember which one, but my attention was caught by an interview recording. The set up was unremarkable: a couple of police officers off-screen, a suspect in the obligatory grey tracksuit, and a solicitor, face blurred, diligently taking notes.
And an idea started to form. Nothing to do with the crime for which the man was being accused, rather the set up. And a really interesting 'what if?' scenario.
I did some research, and then reached out to a fellow crime writer, Lesley Jones and her husband Chris, who I had enjoyed the company of at a CWA conference dinner a few years previously. They are experienced solicitors, and so I proposed the central premise of my novel. To nobody's surprise, what I suggested would be legally questionable, ethically dubious and unlikely to happen in real-life. But it was still a good idea. So with their help, I worked my way around the problem and came up with a scenario that would work. I then placed it to one side and carried on working on the book I was supposed to be finishing. But of course, now that the idea had taken hold, other thoughts started to form.
For years, I have fancied writing a missing person novel. The attractions are obvious - from the very start of the novel, there is a ticking clock. Rather than starting with a dead body, which in some ways can be almost routine, the investigative team is immediately thrust into a high-stakes race against time.
By the time I had finished the first complete draft of Time To Kill, I was desperate to start writing my new book. According to the time stamp on working draft version 1.0 for Book 9 (the working title for Web of Lies) the document was created on July the 1st 2021.
One of the things about being a writer under contract is that you always have a couple of books on the go at different stages of development. Time To Kill was far from finished; I had sent copies to my trusty beta readers, Mum, Dad and my then fiancée Cheryl. After a few weeks, their notes came back and I stopped writing Book 9 to incorporate those changes. I then had to go through the manuscript again, looking for places to trim and shorten. Eventually I submitted Time To Kill to my publisher and started writing Book 9 again .
Over the next few months I took time out for a brief holiday and to supervise some building work. The first complete draft of book 9 was finished on the 12th of October. Subtract the time when I was doing other things, and I estimate that initial draft took less than three months. This is less than half the time taken usually.
Why it was so quick, I genuinely have no idea, and if I could bottle whatever it was that caused the words to flow so quickly, I'd be a very happy man!
Maybe it was the weather and the summer months? I wasn't tutoring over that period, which helps, and the weather was warm enough for me to work in the garden. I've found that using my tiny little writing laptop that doesn't even have  email installed helps me maintain focus. In the winter months, I tend to work in my office on my proper laptop. This has a double screen set up, and whilst it is undoubtedly more efficient and easier to work on, perhaps that is off-set by having more distractions? Perhaps I need to exercise more discipline and close my email and put my phone away? Alternately, maybe I should move somewhere that I can work outside all year around?
Or perhaps those are just excuses. Maybe I just bottled a bit of lightning this time and it all came together.
I'll let you know next time…

If you are a writer with a tip to share, or fancy writing a fictional interview between you and one of your characters, please feel free to email me.

Until next time,
Paul.

For this week's #TuesdayTip, I am going to explore the difference between TV and novels.
My wife and I enjoy a good mini-series. The sort of thing that consists of 4 to 6 episodes, each 45-60 minutes long. Sometimes they are adaptations of novels and other times original stories.
Now, before we start, I am a novelist NOT a screenwriter. I have no direct insight into the world of TV making, so these are purely my own uninformed observations.
I Don't Remember That Happening.
A common complaint made of TV adaptations of existing novels is that the TV show differs from the original.
Common variations include:

• Parts of the original novel missing / new material added.
• The casting of actors that don't resemble the character as described (this can be explicit, where they have openly contradicted the description in the book, or more subjective where readers had an impression of what a character was like and found themselves surprised at the casting choice).
• Changing the dialogue.
• Excising/adding/merging characters.
• Changing parts of the plot.
• Re-ordering the plot.
• Changing the ending.

Opinions vary on whether a particular TV adaption is better or worse than the source material, or just a different way to enjoy the story. Typically it's subjective and a matter of opinion. The only comment I'm prepared to make on this thorny topic is that Amazon Studios' Harry Bosch and Jack Reacher adaptations are in my opinion excellent. They aren't slavish retellings of the original novels. They aren't better or worse than the books. Instead they are their own version and I can enjoy both the books and the TV series alongside each other without feeling it necessary to compare and contrast.
Speaking to friends that have had books adapted for TV, the author rarely gets much of a say. Some big-name authors such as Michael Connelly may get to help executive produce the series, but most authors don't.
Some authors actually adapt the book themselves. But again, you will usually find differences.
The reason is quite simple: TV and books are very different forms of media. TV productions are constrained by budget, time available to broadcast the story, availability of suitable actors and what can be practically shown on screen. Furthermore, there is a need to split a TV series into discrete episodes, each roughly the same length and each with a cliff hanger. Although novels have turning points and cliff hangers that serve as natural breakpoints, where a reader can put the book down but is keen to return, they are rarely conveniently spread out. I notice that some streaming services have experimented with different lengths for each episode, so that the story's telling isn't dictated by the need for an ad break or the length of a TV slot, but I think it'll be a long time before that becomes the norm, if ever.
There are also other, less tangible differences. For example what about inner monologues or character's thoughts? The Jack Reacher shown in Amazon's Reacher series is rather more chatty than the one portrayed in Lee Child's original novels. He has to be, because Reacher in the novels rarely speaks out loud. Instead we get a running commentary of his thought processes. That's easy on the page; for the small screen, we need either a voice-over or another character that he can speak with. What about conversations via phone messages? Some TV shows do this really well, others make a bit of a mess of it, with viewers struggling to read the messages on screen, and thus missing important information.
Another difficulty faced by TV series, is that it is sometimes easier to hide something on the page than on the screen. I recently read a book where a whole chapter appears to be told from the perspective of a particular type of person. The big twist at the end of that chapter (and it is a stroke of genius) is that it is actually being told by a completely different type of person. I can't see any way of filming that without giving away that twist within the first two seconds of the camera panning across. If it is ever made for the screen, that scene will have to be rewritten or cut (fortunately, there's enough in the rest of that book to make it worth filming anyway).
That's Not How I Would Have Done It.
One of the things about being a writer is that you often find yourself analysing another writer's choices. I can't stress enough that it is rarely about thinking, "I could have done that better". Rather it is about the direction that your own imagination went at a crucial point in the story, and how it differed from the author's. In fact, sometimes it's the exact opposite to feeling superior. I've lost count of the number of times I've read or watched something and thought "Damn, that's good! I'd never have come up with that in a million years".
When watching TV, I often have that feeling and I realise that it's probably because I am thinking as a novelist. If I was writing the story, I would have my character go and do X or think Y. But then, when I think about it, I realise that the decision made by the screenwriter is far better suited to the screen than my idea, which would work better on the page.
Don't Diss The Screen.
Looking back over the previous two sections, I am uncomfortably aware that what I have written fuels those who smugly proclaim "of course books are always better than TV". I've never been happy with that argument. TV and novels are both complementary and discrete forms of entertainment and you can't make such a sweeping statement.
So to redress the balance, here are some of the advantages that TV has over novels.

• Description. A good novelist can fire the imagination with beautiful descriptions of a scene, a landscape or a character. They can conjure up images in the reader's mind. But they need to do so concisely to keep the pace brisk and they can't keep returning to that description without becoming repetitive or slowing things down. Furthermore, a surprising number of people have a condition called aphantasia - an inability to visualise images in their mind's eye. TV on the other hand is a visual medium. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and it's undoubtedly true. A skilled cinematographer can convey a whole scene with a single sweep of the camera, freeing up the screenwriter to get on with telling the story.
• Sound. Again, TV is also an aural medium. Dialogue is more than just words, and whilst a good novelist can describe the nuances of speech it can be difficult to convey the subtle undercurrents. In the second episode of season three of Star Trek: Picard, there is a huge revelation (I'm not going to spoil it). The entire scene is communicated with nothing more than the changing expressions on the actors' faces. The viewer experiences the same dawning revelation as the character. It is a sublime piece of TV. In a novel, the revelation would have to be explicitly stated on the page. It could be done of course, but I feel it would have been a poor second best.
• Atmosphere. A good writer can conjure atmosphere. But again, a skilled cinematographer and sound designer can convey in just a couple of seconds what a novelist might need two paragraphs for. Well-chosen music can manipulate the viewer's emotions, and isn't that manipulation what it's all about?
• Background. By this I mean what's happening behind a character, perhaps something they are unaware of. In a book, we need to tell the reader everything that happens. We are often told as writers 'show don't tell'. TV can often have an advantage here. Imagine a scene in a restaurant, where two characters are having a private conversation. That conversation is overheard by someone at the next table and then used against them. In a book, the writer has to figure out how to tell us that happened. There are a dozen ways to do this of course, but they require an explicit acknowledgment of what took place. In TV, the characters can finish their conversation and the camera can zoom out and reveal the eavesdropper with a cunning look on their face. Obviously there are situations where a novelist has the upper hand, as they can delay revealing that there was a third person there until later in the book. This is another example of where the two media can have different strengths and weaknesses when telling a story, and how the same story may need to be told differently on the screen and page.

What do you think about the screen versus the page? Can you think of any examples where the same story is told differently, yet both are as good as one another?
As always, feel free to comment here or on social media.
If you are a writer with a tip to share, or fancy writing a fictional interview between you and one of your characters, please feel free to email me.
Until next time,
Paul.