The Problem of the Boggy Middle

I am writing the first draft of a novel and it is mince.

I write from a plan, much as I walk from a map and, like a walk, a story has many different options for getting from A to B.

This is a map of a walk I did the other day. It’s also one of the favourite walks of my protagonist, DCI Jude Satterthwaite, who likes a quick stroll to clear his head.

Jude, in solving a crime, knows the beginning and the end, as do I. It begins with a crime and it ends with an arrest. So it is with a walk. It begins at the car park and it ends at your destination, in this case, Blea Water. 

Unfortunately, things aren’t always so simple. You will see that this map has all sorts of possibilities — a positive spider’s web of wonderment. But when you get to the ground, your options are rather more limited. Because, bluntly, a lot of these routes that are marked on the map are utterly invisible on the ground, and the ones that are there have a nasty tendency to peter out in the middle of nowhere. 

In my walk, as in my writing, I have to make sudden sideways jumps to accommodate them. (Don’t worry. In draft 2 I’ll go back and sort them out.) In the meantime, at least I have two options. I'll pick one.

 But the big problem, dear reader, is marked in green. 

It’s a bog. And to get from A to B, from the crime to the arrest, from the beginning to the end, we have go through it. There is no way round. High road, low road. You end in the bog.

This is where I am right now. 

In a draft of — say — 75,000 words the first third is easy, and the last is easy. The middle third, known to writers as the saggy, or as I now call it, boggy, middle, is where all the things you need to do to get from A to B get shovelled in to a big heap, a random selection scenes. Get to the end of it. Sort it out later. 

I’m at 34,000 words right now, and I’m not so much heading through mud as jumping from tussock to tussock and hoping the next one I land on will bear my weight. It’s an energy-sapping experience but, I tell myself, it’ll be worth it. And when I finally finish it, I hope my readers enjoy the view. 

Oh, Amazon...

I feel I should take a view on the current issue that’s bothering a lot of indie (and non-indie) authors at the moment — the Great Amazon Review Robbery. In its latest crackdown on fake reviews, Amazon has taken to removing swathes of those that it deems to be in breach of its terms and conditions, and in so doing has taken out every review ever written by a large number of book bloggers or prolific reviewers.

I have some sympathy with Amazon on this, but do think they’re going about it the wrong way. The problem is not authors reading and reviewing one another’s books, asking their friends to review a book “if you enjoyed it” or sending copies to book bloggers in return for an honest review. These practices have been going on for as long as indie publishing has been around. They’re the only way that self-published authors, who don’t have PR departments to send their books to the major Sunday review supplements and wouldn’t be listened to if they did, can get their profile raised high enough for anyone to notice them. (Because Amazon loves reviews.)

There are so many things going on here that I can’t really grasp them, and in truth no-one knows what’s going on with Amazon. It seems to me that reviews which were previously deemed acceptable no longer are, which is bad enough in itself. What’s worse is that bloggers with years of reviews behind them are losing the lot.

Quite why people are losing reviews is a weird one. One of the criteria seems to be that “too many good reviews” aren’t deemed acceptable — but many reviewers, myself included, don’t give bad reviews. In my case, there are two reasons for this. The first is because I generally only choose books I think I’m going to enjoy reading. The second is that I don’t review books I don’t enjoy because I don’t want to give a bad review. Both of those, in my view, are perfectly legitimate.

I hope the brou-ha-ha over Reviewgate will give Amazon pause, and they’ll stop and think about the implications of it. As an author I’m not someone who obsesses about reviews. I don’t count them or keep track of them, but when I checked last week I did notice that my overall review rating had dropped with no new reviews added, implying that some of my reviews have dropped off. Since then (I did take a note at that point) I’ve lost three reviews on Amazon UK and my paltry total has dwindled further.

I read a lot and I don’t review a lot. Where I do make the effort, it’s because I enjoyed a book and a review will help an indie author (the JKRs of this world don’t need my reviews: they have enough). But these seems to be the reviews that Amazon is targeting — 4* or 5* reviews by authors of other authors.

I hope Amazon sorts this out, sooner rather than later, and focuses its efforts on the people who are scamming it out of serious amounts of money, but I’m not holding my breath. I the meantime, I’ll continue to review good books by indie authors, who I may or not know, but on my blog.

Loving Miss Moonshine

I’m sad to report that my Kindle has passed away. I’ve never been at the forefront of technology but I was early on the bandwagon with e-readers, so it was one of the first generation, with all its faults and foibles. I could forgive its clunky keyboard for the freedom it gave me to read, the ease of reading in bright light and the capability to make the type larger, which must have staved off my need for reading glasses by at least five years. 

The last book I read was a goodie. Short stories, no less, by a group of northern romance authors, some of who I know personally — something which was enough of a guarantee of quality. Miss Moonshine's Emporium of Happy Endings (subtitle: A feel-good collection of heartwarming stories) was just what I needed to help me wind down on holiday. 

The underlying premise is the mysterious and eccentric Miss Moonshine, who keeps a shop full of bric-a-brac in a Yorkshire town. Each story focuses on a different character and in each, Miss Moonshine’s intervention leads to a happy ending. All the authors know exactly what their readers are after and all of them write beautifully. Each individual tale was a joy. 

I should say that, while I loved the concept, I’d have liked a little more variation in the stories. A lot of them felt a little bit samey — girl down on her luck buys or is given something from Miss Moonshine’s shop and the happy ending ensues. The first two stories are historical — one Regency, one suffragette — but the remainder are all contemporary, which I felt left it slightly unbalanced. And it would have been good to have found a little variation in content, too. The last story makes reference to happy endings other than romance, such as a criminal being brought to justice, and one or two of those might have made the whole thing more, rather than very slightly less, than the sum of its parts. 

But that’s me being pernickety. As I’ve said before, they’re all beautifully written and some of them made me laugh out loud. Miss Moonshine runs as a constant through the book — not easily done in a group effort — and I’d love to see more from her. 

My conclusion? If that was the last book my Kindle had to offer me, it will have died happy. 

Buy Miss Moonshine here

Disclaimer:

I am not a book blogger, so I don’t have a review policy, but here’s full disclosure.

I have a lot of author friends and reviews help them. I read and enjoy their books. I support fellow authors and in future I will try and review more books. I’ll post on my blog rather than elsewhere. 

I review when the mood takes me. I won’t leave a bad review, but if I haven’t reviewed a book it doesn’t mean I don’t like it. I buy every book I review.

Happy reading! And if you would like to help fellow authors, feel free to share my reviews.