This time it's personal!

Very few people have a true understanding of world events. Even when those events are taking place in their own country.

Take a war for instance. When a nation goes to war only a handful of people understand what the war is all about. Politicians, the military, perhaps a few reporters who are sent to cover it.

But the ordinary people never see the whole picture. They rely on the words of others, and those others do not always tell the truth. They tell lies and we call it propaganda. All nations do it. If the ordinary soldiers knew what an unjust war was really all about, they might refuse to fight.

So how do you personalize a major event? How do take something like a war or famine—an occurrence that may involve millions—and have your reader caught up in it?

Turn your heroine into a star

You invent a character who's a "minor player" in the tragedy and you turn her into the star. It's her story, her life, her family, her neighbourhood. The greater tragedy, the war or the famine, is pushed to the background. Certainly you can write about it but the trick is not to make it read like a history lesson.

You can have your characters speak to one another about events. That way, you can give your reader all the information she needs in nice, easy stages:

"Did you hear about His Majesty?" Jean asked.

"No," I said. "What about him?"

"They chopped his head off. In Paris, on the twenty-first of January."

"Mon Dieu!"

"They stripped him of his title first, turned him into plain old 'Citizen Louis'. Then they guillotined him. God knows where all of this is going to lead."

And here's an excerpt from Usher's Island, my novel set in Famine times. Note how I tell the reader what year it is by having somebody read out an eviction notice.

The land agent ignored them and continued to read the eviction notice. Keating hardly heard the English words. His head was spinning and his ankle ached painfully. Evicted!

"If his lordship can give me just a little while longer," he pleaded. "There's the market in Ennis in a fortnight's time—"

"—signed and witnessed on this day, the nineteenth of December, in the Year of Our Lord eighteen hundred and forty-six. God save the Queen!"

"Just two weeks! I beg you in the name of Jesus—"

Another kick to the ankle.

"Blaspheming, black Irish heathen! Think you'self lucky the sergeant 'ere is a godfearing man, otherwise 'e'd 'ave you whipped on account of that foul mouth of yours."

Make your story as personal as possible. When your reader can truly identify with your heroine—feel her pain, share her joy—you'll have done a good job.

How to play your keyboard

I've had a look at some of the free programs available and recommend Kiran Reddy's Typing Tutor. You can download it (4.6 Mb) here. Simply unzip and instal. All free!

A word of warning: It's b-o-r-i-n-g at first. If you've ever learned scales on a piano then you know what I'm talking about. The two exercises are similar. You're teaching your fingers where they should go.

But after a while you begin to amaze yourself. You learn to trust each finger; it will have learned the keys that are "its own". You can put your brain on auto-pilot and your fingers will find the right keys. Magic!

Don't be impatient. You'll think at first: "Why am I bothering with this? I can type faster with two fingers." That's likely true. But very soon your touch-typing speed will have increased. You'll wonder why you didn't start it sooner.

You can even type in the dark! How cool is that? :0)

What touch-typing gives you

Increased Efficiency
Touch-typing is more effective because you look at the output on the screen, not the keyboard.

Less Mental Fatigue
Touch-typing is less demanding on the brain because the brain doesn't have to cope with two issues: locating the keys and focusing on the output.

Less Physical Fatigue
Touch-typing is also less tiring because it distributes the total effort over all your fingers. Touch-typing, because of its natural and fluid finger movements, results in less stress.

Less Wear and Tear
Touch-typing reduces wear and tear on the fingers you're actually using. The work is spread over ten fingers, which reduces the risk of Cumulative Trauma Disorder.

Kiran's Typing Tutor teaches basic touch-typing. You'll learn all the keys, including number keys and commonly used symbols.

But that's not all. As I said last week, touch-typing forges a direct link between your mind and your screen. You no longer have to "hunt and peck" for the right key. Your fingers take care of that.

So you'll be able to concentrate fully on creating. Or playing your keyboard—the way a professional pianist plays.

Lucy's Viking story

My brother Hagar and I charge through the village, with the rest of our crew following behind. I carry an axe, Hagar carries a mallet so we can both wipe out anyone who gets in our way. We wear helmets and grip shields to defend ourselves if we get into trouble with anyone.

It's a bright early morning and the village is busy with men, women and children who are all now staring at us with confusion and fear. The village has some small stone houses and small wooden huts for the poorer. There are fields all around which most of them share to grow vegetables and crops.

Hagar and I charge over to a prosperous looking house and break open the door that is bolted. Looking behind I see that the other 43 of us have headed for the monastery, ignoring the other houses.

"Stupid fools!" I mutter, shaking my head. We had the same problem last time. "Hagar, search downstairs. I'll search upstairs."

I climb the stairs to find a terrified looking woman sitting on a chair and staring at me. I can see panic glistening in her eyes as she clutches a baby to her chest.

"Ná gortaithe mo le do hoil!" She croaks. But I don't understand her. She is speaking Irish.

I choose to ignore her and I start to search the room for treasures. I can feel her eyes watching me on the back of my head. I find a necklace behind a log of wood. The woman trembles with fear when I pick it up. I don't find anything else so I make my way downstairs to find Hagar admiring a box of jewels he has found.

"Stop!"

I turn around to see the woman with her child making her way down the stairs. She gestures to the box and her child and speaks Irish.

"Riachtanas liom airgead!"

"What do you think she is saying?" Hagar asks.

"I think she's telling us she has no money for her child and the treasures we are stealing will get her money!" I tell him.

"Well we don't care about you!" Hagar snaps at the woman and shoves her into the wall.

"We could use her as a slave," I suggest.

"We don't want to be having to look after her baby as well. Come on, Gudrun. Let's see what's in those houses over there." Hagar calls over to me, pointing over to the houses opposite us.

He runs into one and I run into the neighbouring house, to meet a very angry looking couple glaring at me. I see behind them my friend Sif, who is knocked out on the floor, his head bleeding.

The woman has stolen Sif's sword and shield and is trying to stab me but I'm shielding it off. The man is holding a log of wood and throws that at me.

I swing my axe at the man but miss. I try to run away from it but it lands on my toe. I scream in pain and swear at them.

I don't bother trying to fight back because the man and woman, who have seen what wood can do to me when you use it as a weapon, are both throwing logs of wood at me.

I hobble away so they can't get me, over to Hagar.

"I can't run properly!" I tell him while he shakes his head in disgust. I see the man and the woman running away.

"You still have to fight! No excuses, remember?"

I remember. I made up that rule.

"I know. I'm just saying."

I follow after the man and woman before they can get away. But they can run faster than me. I know not to shout at them as that'll just let them know where I am.

They sit down, panting, up against a wall, whispering to each other. I creep up slowly against the other side of the wall, unable to stop my own panting. The man looks up to see me, the Viking they tried to kill, holding his axe above him.

"Rith!" He yells at the woman and they run away to save their heads being chopped off.

I stamp my feet, cursing and snarling at them. I throw the axe at them but my aim is poor and I miss. I sit down to get my breath back.

When I've calmed down, I hobble away and smell smoke in the air.

"It must be the bell-tower being burnt down," I mutter to myself.

I know that we will all be leaving soon, so I head over to the sea where we have our ship. I see that the smoke is coming from that direction. I don't see any houses down there but I must have missed it as the bell-tower is far behind me. It'll take me about 5 minutes to walk down there with my sore foot.

I see some of the crew running towards the ship, juggling their treasures along with their weapons that are soaked with blood, dripping onto the grass and onto their capes, while I shamefully hobble along, holding nothing with my shield and I suddenly realise that I've forgotten my axe and my treasure.

I decide not to bother going back; I can easily make another as that wasn't that good, anyway. I know my wife will be disappointed with me as I usually bring her back lovely gifts. My excuse? I hurt my toe and two Irish folk were about to kill me.

I've reached the hill that you walk down to reach the sea where we've docked our ship. I hear some shouts about a fire but that must be the crew talking about a fire they've set. To my horror I see that our ship has been set on fire!

I shout about it, warning everyone behind me.

I ask, "How did this happen?" but no one seems to know. I see the man and the woman near and I know who set our ship on fire.

The Vikings are Coming!

Create your own exciting story from early Irish history.

The year is AD 750 and you're a girl living in a small coastal community. It's no more than a townland: a collection of small houses, with barns and sheds for grain and livestock.

There's a church as well. It's small but has a striking feature: a round tower. You and the other villagers call it the "bell-tower", because that is what it is. It could be compared to the minaret attached to a mosque, except in this case it's the tolling of the bell that calls the people to prayer.

The round tower has a second purpose. It's used as a lookout post. These are dangerous times for the people who live on or near the northeastern coasts of Ireland. The Vikings can attack without warning.

Pirates of the Irish Sea

The word "Viking" probably began life as a verb meaning piracy – just as you'd tell your mates "I'm going hiking" you could probably say in those times "I'm going viking", meaning "I'm going off to plunder and pillage."

"Wik" or "vik" is an old Norse word with the same root as our "wicker". It likely meant a rough hut built of osiers or wickerwork. A Wikinger, or Viking, would have been somebody living in a camp consisting of that type of crude hut.

The Vikings were more than pirates, however. They were great traders, who journeyed as far south as the Mediterranean, and as far west as the coast of America. Eventually they would settle in Ireland and build cities such as Waterford, Dublin and Carlingford.

But in AD 750, the year in which your story is set, they were a menace, and a serious danger to those living on or near the coast.

The story from the Irish point of view

The protagonist – the heroine of your tale – is a girl of your own age. She lives in a small community on or near the coast of County Louth (although it wouldn't be called that in AD 750).

Shortly after dawn on a summer's morning she's alerted to the approach of a Viking ship: somebody calls out a warning from the round tower and rings the bell.

Your heroine must somehow elude the Vikings. If she's caught she risks being sold into slavery, as do the children. The men risk death. They arm themselves and prepare to engage the Norse marauders.

In this, the first part of your story, your heroine succeeds in escaping. But something happens to plunge her into danger. This is how your first part ends. The tension is nail-biting.

The story from the Viking point of view

This is your chance to do several things. First, you can describe the Irish coastline and village as seen by somebody arriving for the first time.

Next, show the landing from the point of view of one of the Vikings. He's a pirate and warrior but all the same is nervous. None of the ship's crew knows what's in store for them when they land. There may even be a huge force awaiting them. They can take nothing for granted in this strange, foreign country.

You Viking is a real person, with hopes and fears. Give him a real personality. Show how he interacts with his comrades. Perhaps they are fifty in number, perhaps fewer.

He will eventually meet you heroine. What's going to happen?

Relationships: the hardest part of writing

Anybody can write an action story. It's simply a matter of describing one situation after another:

The rain had come on by the time she reached her car. She climbed in and backed out of the driveway – almost running over the neighbour's cat in the process. Three minutes later she was on the main road and heading west, her wiper blades thumping. Her phone rang. She groaned; it was in her handbag and she couldn't reach it; she'd have to stop. She pulled over onto the hard shoulder. It was Jack.

You can rewrite the above using slightly different words. You can add detail (she can't find her car-keys, the engine won't start first time, etc). You can describe the rain, the traffic on the road, all sorts of detail. You can use short or long sentences. You can tell us how our heroine is feeling, what she's thinking. It's easy to do.

But it's difficult to write about emotions, especially when they're part of a relationship.

Sara Lenzen's short story is a well-crafted study of a mother-daughter relationship. Almost from the start we know that the daughter disapproves of her mother. The mother plays mindless computer games; she defaces a book for no good reason.

We also suspect that the daughter is embarrassed by her mother's deformity: the stump.

We wonder whether the daughter is showing her true feelings when she shouts: "You stupid cripple! You make me sick!" Or is she simply showing her frustration? It's a terribly hurtful thing to say.

But that changes when the daughter discovers the missing painting's whereabouts. Her mother tells her why she hid it.

"I'm sorry. I don't want you to go," she says. "I thought you wouldn't leave without it."

"Oh," I say quietly.

... and presently:

"Okay, I won't go," I say and rest my head on her shoulder.

All this is easier than it looks. The writer has managed to convey emotion without actually describing how the characters feel. It's effective because it touches the heart-strings. We become involved with the characters.

We all need to be loved

Every single one of your characters has human feelings. Even a character who appears to be a thoroughly bad person.

We all have our wants and needs. Our most important need is to be loved, for others to care about us.

Your writing will be powerful when you write about emotions. You do this in a number of ways. For example you can describe how somebody is feeling:

He gazed down at his fallen comrade, tears welling up in his eyes. They'd been through so much together. He knew he could not leave his friend to his fate. If he did, he'd regret it for the rest of his days, and curse himself for all time.

You could also imply great emotion, without actually putting it into so many words:

I took her hand in mine and squeezed it gently. She didn't respond at first, but then she tore her hand from mine, laughed happily, and skipped like a child back the way we'd come.

And finally, dialogue. This is perhaps the best way of conveying emotion, when your characters tell one another how they feel:

"Why are you always picking on me, Dad?" Liam said angrily. "Why are you always interfering?"

"I mean well. I don't want you making the same mistakes that I did."

Liam looked into his father's eyes. He could read sorrow there – and something else that he hadn't seen before.

"You mean you care?" he asked.

"Of course I care, son! If I didn't care then I'd let you go ahead and make a fool of yourself."

If you feel a lump in your throat when you read what you've written then you can be sure you're on the right track. If you're touched by your writing then chances are your reader will be moved as well.

So you want to play God?

Welcome to creative writing.

That's what they call it anyway. Fiction, stuff you make up, stuff you create.

But do you really, genuinely create when you sit down to write a story? Are you bringing something new into the world, something that has never been seen before?

Well, yes. On one level you are. Your story is unique. Those words, that plot, those characters. They've never appeared together in quite the same way before.

You remembered stories (or true events) you heard about, read about, saw on TV or in movies. And you wrote something similar. Not the same, but similar.

Your characters? Where did they come from? Not out of thin air. Very likely they resemble people you know. Or people you came across in other fiction.

And yet... all you've done is taken words invented by other people and rearranged them.

The building blocks of creation

There are only 26 letters in the English alphabet. Yet everybody from Shakespeare to JK Rowling wrote very different works using only those 26 letters.

There are at least a quarter of a million words in the English language. And new words are being added all the time.

It's an even stranger situation with music. There are only 7 notes in the musical scale. Do re mi fa so la te ... and back to do. Yet with those seven notes, composers have written millions of songs – all different. No two songs are identical.

Gracenote's media database contains over 100 million songs. And that's only those that have been recorded. Even as you read this, there are people all over the world sitting strumming guitars and tinkling pianos, composing songs that may never be heard.

And they're all using those same SEVEN NOTES.

Creating something new

A wise old saying goes: "There's nothing new under the sun."

True or false? Well, it depends.

Is it possible to create something new under the sun? Can you create a piece of writing that's different from anything else that has been written?

Of course you can. Today you probably spoke a sentence that was unique. You used a combination of words that appeared in human speech for the very first time.

You saw today how you can make an image work for your writing. You know what they say: "A picture is worth a thousand words."

Rubbish! A picture can inspire you to create ten times that number. Maybe even a complete novel.

Never, ever sit down to write facing a blank wall. Look at images, look at people.

Change your images regularly. Hang up maps. Let them inspire you into dreaming about foreign places. Or stills from movies: Robin Hood, Pirates of the Caribbean, Prince of Persia. They'll transport you to historical times.

When you have images to inspire you, there'll always be something to write about.