Six writing tips from first-time fantasy author, Rosalyn Kelly

Writing your first novel is a massive undertaking.  You may be hyper-focused as I was, prefer to write at a more leisurely pace, or even write small chunks once in a blue moon. Whatever your scenario, I hope this writing advice will prove useful.

First, a bit about me: the first draft of my first novel, Melokai, was written in four months, then it went to my beta reader.  I edited based on her feedback and sent the second draft to two different beta readers. A third draft went to an editor. After his feedback, I edited a fourth draft which went to my mum to proofread.  After tweaking, I had the finished manuscript.  Altogether, it took 12 months.  When the book was with my beta readers and editor, I kept myself busy by writing three novellas and six short stories.  Here then are my six top tips:

• Trust your intuition. If your plot/character/scene/word choice doesn’t feel right, then it probably isn’t. I get a twinge when something isn’t quite on point, and I’ve learnt to act on that and hone in until I fix whatever it is that’s not sitting right.

• Write a scene in real-time. The advice to ‘show, don’t tell’ didn’t resonate with me until it was explained as ‘write in real time’.  Capture in your piece precisely what is happening right now to your character, what he/she sees, hears, smells, senses, tastes, touches, what others in the room are doing, what the room looks like etc. You want a reader to experience an event at exactly the same time as your character, so they feel wholly involved.

• Imagine a scene in as much detail as possible before you type any words. Visualise all the small things.  It is much easier to write a scene once you have it in your mind’s eye.

• Have a beginning, middle and end. I always ask myself before writing, What’s the story? How does it start? What happens in the middle? How does it finish? This helps my words to flow as I know exactly how this scene/chapter/dialogue etc is moving the bigger whole onwards.

• Don’t stress about word choice when writing your first draft. Just get the words down. I find it breaks my flow to pause, dig out a thesaurus to find the correct word for what I’m attempting to convey.  Much better to keep going and then revise on a second draft.  I will either put XXX instead of a word if it doesn’t come to me immediately or put X before another word which I know isn’t quite right but can act as a filler for the time being. Then it is easy to go back and tweak.

• Read your work aloud. Imagine you are giving a reading to an audience of avid literary fans and really put your all into it, doing the voices, adding dramatic pauses and so on. You’ll soon catch words or sentences that are awkward and don’t roll off your tongue.  Anything you stumble over, you should rewrite.

Good luck with your writing!  For more about my work, visit www.rosalynkelly.co.uk

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