Novels are not all about the plot

20 July 2025

I first took up writing stories when I lived in a cave, and I scratched words out on a piece of slate.  Things became easier with the discovery of chalk.  Quill and parchment I found messy, so I was glad when paper and ballpoint pens became readily available.

A few years ago, with a convenient keyboard and computer, I decided I might have a crack at writing again, aiming at a whole novel. Now and then I would have a go at the book I wanted to write, and some bits I thought came out well, and some boring.  I drew up a list of hilariously named characters, then lost it.  I would cut out whole chapters and replace them with something brand new I’d dreamt up, but what I was producing read nothing like a novel.

I joined a writing group on Meetup (run by Andrew Nichols) and started sharing the odd bits.  Someone put me onto Scribophile and I shared more.  At last the penny dropped that what I was writing was what I felt like playing around with, for my own enjoyment, but not something anyone else would want to read.

Somehow my unpleasant characters evolved from being only annoying to me to being criminals, and instead of nasty comments I had murders!  I must point out here that I write fiction.

I had discovered the need to write for readers, not just for myself, if I wanted to ever make a book and sell it!

That realisation took long enough, but then I had another road to travel, that I’m still on: how to write in a way that is easy and engaging to read.

After getting some sort of plot, the first bad habit I had to stop was writing such looooooong, rambling sentences.  Use of punctuation other than commas and dashes needed to enter my work.

Then I had to get out of the habit of starting most sentences with subject, verb, like: “He said”, “She stood”, “They went”, and so on.  I learnt how to shuffle things around.

“She smiled at him and said she was going that way too” could be:

“Smiling at him, she said she was going that way too.”

Cunning, huh?

The brilliant horror writer Steven King once wrote, “I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs…”  He went on to point out one on its own can stand out, but too many and the effect isn’t great.

I don’t think he said anything like that referring to examples, so I’m going to continue to pave this blog with them.

Smiling at him brightly, she said happily, “I’m going that same way coincidentally.”

“We could easily both go together,” he replied cheerfully with a grin.

They gladly walked together closely side-by-side until eventually they arrived simultaneously at their destination.

It’s nice to know what kind of mood our characters are in, which is basically happy that they can spend the time together.  But it might be easier to read if a few words were missed out:

Beaming at him, she said, “I’m going that way too.”

“We could go together.”

They walked side-by-side all the way.

I like words, obviously, that’s why I created this website.  But the later version of our mini story gets to the information quicker.

Now you’ll be stunned to spot that I didn’t put a dialogue tag after what the bloke said.  As well as missing out the adverb cheerfully, and the excess words “with a grin” (already implied in the word “cheerfully”), I omitted “he said”, “he replied”, “he responded” and all other variations, because, assuming in the story we know it’s a male she’s talking to (boy, man, talking dog), and there’s nobody else in that bit of the story, we don’t need those extra words.  We can understand them by the context.

Sometimes it’s best not to be a word hoarder, so the readers can find their way through more easily.

But you can add a few to give feeling.  Imagine you’re writing about a man who has to creep up on a bad guy who’s holding a woman hostage.  You could say that he crept up on him “feeling scared”.  Or you might say he crept up on him “with the sound of his heart pounding in his ears and sweat trickling down his back”.  To express feeling you can dip into your word hoard happily.

Similar applies to talking about where someone is.  Consider: “The café was very nice.”  Or: ”The café was full of people chattering and laughing.  It smelt of fresh baked scones and lemon icing.  The wooden tables were polished with no stickiness.  Fresh flowers in a variety of old bottles adorned each one.”

Maybe you feel there’s a book inside you thumping its fists and kicking its feet to get out.  Have a go, it’s great fun.  Play with words and find the tone you want for that particular story.  And if you don’t have a story, you just fancy writing about someone being in a particular situation – perhaps one you’d personally find scary, or you’d love the chance to be there – just go ahead and write it.  You may want to expand on it, describing what happened afterwards, or before, or to someone else in the same situation but feeling different about it.

You may end up with a whole story.  Or you may not want to.  They are your words.  Enjoy them.

If you want to put anything on this site for others to read, then feel free to do so.  If they’re frightfully rude or incite violence, I’ll cut those bits out, but generally speaking it’s fun to share words.  Send them to info@judymcdowellwords.co.uk

Moaning Words

It’s Sunday 13 July 2025, and I think it’s time for some BLOGGY WORDS, because I cannot upload my fourth book as a paperback, no matter how hard I try.  And I’ve been working at it most of the weekend.

So many things present themselves as the answer to why it’s not working, and I keep trying to change them, and it keeps saying the cover’s been uploaded correctly, and the inside has been uploaded okay, but I have to then preview the book.  Sometimes it shows the cover, just reaching the outer limits of the template, with an Error alert at the side saying it should be something point something inches this way and that.  I have a choice to click to see if the site can correct it, which I remember it did on my first encounter with this bit.  But no, it’s not helping this weekend.

So I copy the sizes it’s demanding and put them in the box in the cover making site, and it refuses to change the dimensions.  Sometimes it says it’s done it, but when I try to upload it, the only file is the same old size I originally set it for.

Other times I don’t even get to see the cover; it goes straight onto a preview of the manuscript.  Sometimes it looks like it fits, and the only thing I don’t like is that the text seems to insist on justifying itself in the centre vertically on the page, which looks a bit odd at the end of the chapter if there’s only a line or two, and it doesn’t show the page numbers.  Nothing will put these things right, but I can live with that.  At least I’m getting better and getting rid of spelling mistakes!

But somewhere I have to click to say I accept the quality of what I see.  But where is the button?  I click on save and continue.  I know that when I tried that before, it told me to preview, and I assumed it somehow knew I hadn’t been able to see the cover.  But even when I’ve viewed both, save and continue was not allowed, because I had not accepted my preview…  Which of course I had.

This is the third book I’ve done, first making an eBook, then continuing to make a paperback.  I have done it before.  It is possible.  But not to me today.

Do other people have this sort of problem?

Another computery thing that bugs me is that I used to do my grocery shopping (excuse me using one of Trump’s favourite words there) with Sainsbury’s.  I’d paid for a year’s ‘free’ delivery in advance, but then I started getting messages that they couldn’t get the money from my bank account.  I’d check the account, and there was always enough money in it, but it just would not go.  Then it would go, then it wouldn’t.  In the end it became impossible.

I tried Tesco, but I needed more accurate delivery times.  I tried Morrisons, getting free delivery with my Prime membership, and then Co-op the same way, but the choice of items was just too few.  So I had to go to the more expensive Ocado.  They are efficient, have always managed to get the money out of my bank, and they put things in bags (returnable).  Great, just that bit more expensive, which is not so good for an aspiring but not yet successful writer!

And then there was the milkman.  Some time ago I decided I’d go back to having milk delivered in nice returnable glass bottles.  The environment is very important to me.  But after time I started receiving milk that wasn’t usable, even when I bought a special box, with handle, to put the bottles in to keep them cool.  So I stopped for a while.  Later I thought I’d try milk deliveries again and had no problems.  Until I started getting messages that the company hadn’t been able to collect the money from my bank.  I’d check my account and ask them to try again; and sometimes the money would go through, sometimes it wouldn’t.  The latter got too frequent, and I never knew if I’d receive my nice fresh milk in its environmentally friendly glass bottles, so I had to give up again.

I have a feeling there was something else, apart from a company swapping me to its sister company, saying it couldn’t take my payment.  But they were trying to take it before it was due, and I found I’d suddenly become subscribed to this other thing that was effectively the same, and they could take the money.  Oh well, I could live with that too.  I wonder if that makes any sense to you.  It scarcely does to me.

But I think there was something else.

So the other day I swapped banks!  I’d kept putting it off because I knew it meant proving who I was, and there are no branches to go into even if I could.  But eventually I sat at the table and concentrated hard.  It was so straightforward I was shocked.  Now, if it really does pay what I need it to, then I shall be thanking NatWest from the bottom of my heart.  But I have to wait another eight days to find out.

Oh, yes, I’ve remembered.  I haven’t received a penny in royalties despite selling 17 books.  I know it’s only a few books, and a matter of pence per book, but no monthly payments have arrived in my bank account, and it’s been over a month.  So, will I get paid in my new account?

If you’re desperate to find out what happens and I just forget to tell you, please feel free to remind me.  All this sort of stress (and there’s much more you really don’t want to hear about) has rendered my memory pretty pathetic.  In fact, I could write a whole book about all the things I forget to do, but I’d never remember to even get started, let alone what the things were.

Words Have Consequences

5 July 2025

Consider: Donald Trump says he’s going to slap tariffs on imports from most of the countries in the world, and the stock markets go into freefall.  Yup, those words had consequences alright.

Imagine walking up to a complete stranger in the street and saying, “You stink and you’re really ugly.”  This is most likely to cause upset in the complete stranger, very likely to cause anger, and may well result in your getting thumped, or being shouted at in an unpleasant manner.  Of course, the complete stranger in the street could have spent some time cultivating a look of ugliness and a strong unpleasant odour; in which case they may have felt recognised, validated even.  Somehow your words will have had an effect.

If a parent constantly tells their child they don’t want to hear what they have to say because they’re worthless, the child is likely to grow up with issues, and keep a therapist very busy for years.

Imagine, though, that child being a very rich one.  The parents’ words may end up buying a counsellor a nice house, staff to clean it and cook their meals, wonderful holidays.  Words have consequences, but not always what we expect!

Then there’s situations like: the driver in a car says, “Left here?”  And the passenger says, “Right.”  Confusing.

In England and Wales in 2015-16 people were going around saying if the UK left the EU we’d save £350million per week which could go towards the NHS instead.  They even wrote it on the side of a big red bus.  They said all sorts of other garbage about the EU, and lied about the sovereignty that we still had, and people who didn’t bother think or learn more about it fell for it.  Consequently England, Scotland and Wales had to leave the EU, even though Scotland voted not to.  In theory Northern Ireland left, despite being dead against it.  But after 4-5 years of fretting about it and arguing, it actually happened.  But NI got left in the Single Market and Customs Union for all practical intents and purposes.  And anyone born in NI (or had a parent born in NI) is entitled to an Irish passport.  But not us in poor old GB.  Our economy has suffered a great deal, and many of us have suffered in other ways – but that’s too much to write here.

Lies have costly consequences.

Going back in time a tad, in 1170, Henry II of England said something like: “Will no one rid me of thus turbulent/troublesome/meddlesome priest?”  He was referring to Thomas Becket.  As a consequence, four knights travelled from Normandy to Canterbury and killed.  Oh dear.

Henry VIII of England suddenly came over all pious and told the Pope he couldn’t be truly married to his wife, Catherine of Aragon, in the eyes of God, because she had previously been married to Henry’s brother Arthur, who’d died.  Of course, he was fibbing and just wanted shot of Catherine so he could marry Anne Boleyn, but Catholics weren’t allowed to divorce.

Anyway, he got away with it and turned England Protestant.  As a consequence many people died over who should or should not be monarch, and generally because people fight and kill over religion.  I’m sure “the Irish situation” would have been a lot different if it weren’t for the religious divide.

The consequence of some words is laughter!

“Don’t worry about the world coming to an end today. It is already tomorrow in Australia.”
– Charles M. Schulz

“Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive.”
– Elbert Hubbard

“People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day.”
– A. A. Milne

“Rice is great when you’re hungry and you want 2000 of something.”
– Mitch Hedberg

“Life is hard. After all, it kills you.”
– Katharine Hepburn

“Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you are a mile away from them and you have their shoes.”
– Jack Handey

And my two current favourites:

“If you’re too open-minded; your brains will fall out.”
– Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Wo

“A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.”
– Steve Martin

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