The Brevity Problem

I have a problem. I can’t stop overwriting things.

This problem applies to virtually everything I write, but in particular I’m talking about my novels. With the best intentions I set out to write a tidy 100,000 word manuscript, but before I know it, it’s a 190,000 word epic. I can’t help it.

Moreover, I’m not entirely sure why my word count is so high. I don’t write lengthy descriptions of the surroundings every time my main character walks into a new set. I don’t include pages-long odes to the male physical form every time my protagonist’s love interest shows up. I’ve weeded out all those malevolent adverbs, cut back on the sugary adjectives, and my protagonist spends a lot of her time alone, so the dialogue is sparse. I don’t allow her to go off on tangents willy-nilly. As far as I’m concerned, there is very little clutter, and no entire scenes that needn’t be there.


 So what’s going on?

I was recently told that I should divide the book in two, that there is just too much happening for one book. But is my book really a jumble of too many different plot strains, or is it just unconventional for an urban fantasy to be so long, and thus unacceptable? In this day and age, we are all deeply constrained by our genre and we might not even know it. We tend to write what we love to read, so we follow those conventions without even knowing it.

For urban fantasy, there seems to be only really one option lately. A series. Virtually every urban fantasy book becomes a series of five or more books, unless the author or publishers pull the plug. In fact, I’m not sure I have ever read a standalone urban fantasy. Have you?

My book was supposed to be part of a trilogy. This was my first mistake, apparently, because it seems trilogies belong to fantasy or possibly sci-fi. Trying to write an urban fantasy trilogy in this day and age is daring to the point of audacity. This is because trilogies, by nature, are more epic as they have one major overarching story told in three stages, whereas series are often formed of individual stories linked only by the characters and the world they are set in.


As series progress, there are often more loose ends left between each instalment, and they will probably build toward a big finale in the final two or three books.

But the story I want to tell isn’t a series. It isn’t short, separate stories – it is one woman’s journey from good to evil and back again, from loneliness to belonging, from ignorance to knowledge she cannot unlearn. Along the way there are murderers to catch, a revolution, and the Second Coming to deal with, which is why the story breaks down well into three longer books.

So what’s wrong with longer books anyway? Some of my favourite books are in excess of 150,000 words. Three of the Harry Potter books were in excess of 190,000.
The first Book in the A Song of Fire and Ice series, Game of thrones, by George R. R. Martin is 280,000+ words.  Longer books, done well, can consume you in a way that a series of shorter books never will. You can get wonderfully lost in a long book as you immerse yourself in its world and characters.

And isn’t it annoying when a book you find yourself loving ends all too soon? There have been many occasions where I’ve enjoyed a book but felt it was too brief, or found it finished prematurely, the story not really complete, in order to end on a cliff-hanger and entice me to buy the next book.

Brevity can be a bad thing too. It’s in the details that great characters are born and raised, after all. Some writers seem so concerned with a fast pace or the right word count that the plot zips along so breathlessly you barely have time to remember the characters names and before it’s done.

How unsatisfying it is to reach the end of a book and feel it was an opportunity wasted? Good characters, nice ideas, but just not fleshed out enough. Because, after all, when you really love something, you cannot get enough of it. If you love characters or the fictional world they inhabit, you would read an entire book about those characters just doing the laundry, or about a postman’s observations of that world as he goes on his daily rounds.

I think the modern publishing necessity of brevity is linked with the fashion for showing, not telling. Yes, this is a fashion, a trend borne from modernism and cemented in postmodernism I suspect. Telling tends to lead to lengthy exposition, particularly in fantasy, which is why finding novel ways to show the same information often ends up taking fewer words.

There are exceptions, of course. Sometimes writers go to such lengths to show the nature and history of their supernatural creatures, for example, that instead of just including a straight-to-the-point paragraph telling the same information, they end up including entire extra scenes in order to relay it through actions and speech.

Consider the Prologue of The Lord of the Rings, the Fellowship of the Rings. That chapter is so long, it reads like an encyclopaedia entry, and I have to tell you, it was a slog to read. But I’m glad I read it, because it added so much to the story proper. If Tolkien had tried to show all that instead of telling it, he would have had to write another trilogy just to do so.

But I’m not Tolkien. I’m not delusional; I know the limitations of my writing, the strengths and the weaknesses. And I’m not writing fantasy, I’m writing urban fantasy, remember? Part of the appeal of urban fantasy as opposed to traditional fantasy is its accessibility. It isn’t supposed to be so fantastic that it needs so much explanation; it’s supposed to be a least in part ‘urban’, modern, recognisable.

So if I can’t write the epic trilogy I wanted to write, and the story won’t fit into the accepted series format prescribed for urban fantasy, what options are left? I see only one, and for this I incline my head in thanks to Stephenie Meyer for her popular (albeit critically slated) example - the four part saga.

So apparently I’m now writing a four part saga, not a trilogy. Half of me is delighted to have found this happy compromise, but the rest of me is just overwhelmed at the prospect of redrafting and re-planning not one but all three of the original books.

What have I gotten myself into? And why does the word ‘saga’ make me want to cringe?

As always, comments welcome. Follow me @H_Y_Malyk on Twitter

From Buffy to Anita Blake: The Characters Who Inspired My Writing

I’m currently writing urban fantasy about a dysfunctional but powerful woman who must fight demons both literal and figurative in a dystopian future London. I say currently because the epic trilogy is a work in progress, but it’s been progressing for the last decade – which is the entirety of my adult life.

Over the years, my vision of the story I want to tell and the characters who inhabit that world have inevitably been influenced by the fiction I’ve come into contact with. Below I discuss just a few of the most notable examples.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Faith

Chances are you’ve heard of this one. It was a show that captured the imaginations of a generation, combining, for what I believe to be the first time, the high school drama with elements from the horror genre. Who didn’t love the lead character Buffy, a cute and spunky heroine who broke the blonde victim stereotype?

However, it was the character Faith that intrigued me most. The idea of the slayer gone wrong, the anti-heroine, a figure of good corrupted, not by magic, but by insecurities and temptation, was an irresistible source of inspiration for my writing. From the first episode featuring the rebellious slayer, I never wrote a heroine with a clear conscience again.

The character’s descent into ‘evil’ and subsequent journey to redemption that crossed over into the show’s darker counterpart, Angel, captivated me. To this day, I’m drawn to characters who fall from grace and then struggle to atone.

Gaia Moore

This one is slightly less well known. The Fearless series, by Francine Pascal, is a twenty-plus book Young Adult saga that tells the story of a genetically modified teenage girl who can’t feel fear and has enhanced physical abilities. To help her stay safe, her father trains her in martial arts, but then abandons her.

Throughout the series, Gaia Moore becomes embroiled in in the machinations of her murderous uncle, an American spy, and balances an angst-filled social and love life with vigilantism.


 She is strong, reckless and fierce, but socially awkward, riddled with insecurity and the pervasive loneliness of never quite fitting in. Where Faith was always confident, brazen even, Gaia taught me that heroines could be pensive and unsure of themselves too.

Anita Blake

Anita Blake is, in my opinion, the first heroine of modern ‘urban fantasy’. I discovered the books by Laurel K. Hamilton as a teenager and it felt like my eyes had been opened for the first time.


Anita’s world is brutal and often genuinely disturbing, but she weathers any storm she’s thrown into not with (at least in the early books) any special powers, but with good training, experience, and an unflinching trigger finger. In many ways, she is comparable to Lara Croft of the Tomb Raider games, another inspiring female character.

I also really appreciated Anita’s style as a character (again, mostly the early books). Where most TV shows and books had beautiful, glamorous women in lead roles who wore the latest fashions and styled their hair and makeup just so, Anita had wild hair and wore sneakers and t-shirts.

To this day, I prefer a heroine who wears sensible footwear and doesn’t go out to confront the big bad wearing leather and a crop top. There’s something about a female character who not only kicks ass, but does so in designer heels that makes me…well, jealous.

Parrish Plessis

The Parrish Plessis trilogy by Marianne de Pierres (Nylon Angel, Code Noir, Crash Deluxe) will forever stand as some of my favourite fiction.


If you haven’t read the books, they are a blend of harder sci-fi with fantasy in a dystopian Australia, which makes them a little different from most urban fantasy out there. I’m far from a sci-fi fan, but Pierres’ prose is so sparse, yet so evocative, so unique, so hard-hitting, that the books swept me into her world and didn’t release me until the end of the third book.

On the other side, the main character, Parrish, stayed with me. Ballsy to the extreme, she is not a delicate female, being neither slight of build nor very pretty, but she kicks some serious arse (and she does it with an ‘r’ – yes!!). Some of the concepts in the book blew my mind, and since reading them I have always tried to pack more punch into my prose.

Jill Kismet

In my humble opinion, there are no better written urban fantasy books than the Jill Kismet series by Lilith Saintcrow (Night Shift, Hunter’s Prayer, Redemption Alley, Flesh Circus, Heaven’s Spite, & Angel Town).

I love urban fantasy, but some of it can be a bit fluffy, with superficial Mary Sue characters and prose that relies more on snark than thoughtful language choices. The Jill Kismet books break the mould in terms of how dark and gritty the content and characters are as well as in terms of the writing style.

Saintcrow’s prose is lyrical and mesmerising at times, visceral and devastating at others. The main character wrestles with demons and her conscience throughout the series as she helps the local police department fight supernatural crime.


She's gloriously conflicted with a fairly screwed up past, but she always manages to do the right thing, and in the process finds a partner who stands by her through all the horror and gore. And there is a lot of gore. The stories are so vivid, bleak and compelling that I even forgive her the leather pants.

If I could write a book that comes even close to being as stunning as those featuring Jill Kismet I will consider myself very successful.

What all these characters have in common, apart from being physically strong/powerful, is that they are all a somewhat damaged, disturbed even, constantly straddling that fine line between good and evil, right and wrong, and while they always manage to save the day, they cannot always save themselves.

The darkness within us all excites my muse in a way straight-laced heroes like Superman never will. We all know conflict is the driving force of all fiction, but it is inner conflict, complex and unpleasant though it may be, that makes a good story great.

As always, if you liked what you read, why not leave a comment or follow me on Twitter @H_Y_Malyk

5* Review of Dirt On Ninth Grave by Darynda Jones

The Dirt On Ninth Grave by Darynda Jones (Charley Davidson series #9)

Warning: this book is fucking amazing. Buying it will result in loss of sleep and/or serious distraction from so-called important things like work, school, housework etc.

 I admit I’m a harsh critic; I give five star reviews very sparingly. But this book deserves the uncommon, five stars.

If you like character-led urban fantasy and/or paranormal romance that makes you laugh and makes you cry, then you need to read this book. Of course, as this is the ninth in the series I would recommend starting at the beginning with number one. I should say that the first couple of Charley books were not quite as good, in my opinion, but it wasn’t long before they evolved into something magic.

As with the previous 8 books, the number one reason why I loved this is the characters. I have said it before and I will say it again, there is no more likeable character in all of urban fantasy than Charley Davidson. She is hilarious, humble, compassionate, and the best friend anyone could have. In this book, which had a nostalgic quality to it (more on this later), I found myself wishing to be Charley’s best friend Cookie Kowalski for the umpteenth time.

You hear a lot of reviewers say that the characters in books are so real and believable but I have never cared about the fates of any character cast like the one Jones has crafted. She expertly combines character building asides into the ongoing plots and juggles several familiar characters effortlessly. Her characters are never two dimensional, never clichéd, and you can’t help but love them as much as she clearly does.

This book follows the events that occur when Charley loses her memory after the trauma of having to give away her baby daughter. As it becomes clear that she is not going to regain her memories until at least the end of the book, I found myself a little bit frustrated at first. There was something slightly implausible in the way all the people from her real life had insinuated themselves into her new amnesiac life and in how she kept overlooking their deceptions, but after the initial surprise at the direction Jones had chosen for this book, I got over it.

 Yes, the book is a bit of a filler, in which not much happens to advance the greater plot and instead actually stalls its progress, but as long as that means we get more Charley books, who cares?

As the book went on and we get to see all the familiar characters through the fresh eyes of amnesiac Charley, it began to feel like a nostalgic return to the earlier books, before the epic gods and demons backstory began to propel the story towards its no-doubt cataclysmic conclusion (hopefully in the far distance future).

After the birth of Charley's daughter, who is prophesied to be the one to end Satan, the days of Charley and Cookie investigating cases with the help of ghosts are numbered. How much longer can Charley continue to live her ‘normal’ life now that she knows she is a god? In this book, we the readers get to revisit the halcyon days when Charley was mostly ignorant of her true nature and powers, and I for one am thankful.

Because it was always in the smaller, human moments that these books excelled. Sure, the fantasy elements are great. Gods, demons, the son of Satan, alien superbeings, ghosts, hellhounds, it’s all there, and it’s thrilling and surprising, but the truly moving aspects of this series have always been the subplots about human darkness and light and the evanescence of human life.

 Jones is a skilled storyteller who manages to weave several smaller plot strains together with the overarching story of Charley trying to regain her memory amidst an interdimensional conflict, every one of them compelling and emotional reading. I was moved to tears repeatedly during this book, but as usual what prevented it all from becoming melancholy was Charley’s quirky, upbeat personality.

As always, the hilarious moments made the darker moments more touching, and left me craving more of the uniquely riveting highs and lows that these books bring. The only question now is, what on earth am I going to do until the next one comes out??

As always, comments welcomed. Follow me on Twitter @H_Y_Malyk.

Why First Scenes Work - The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins is the dystopian young adult fantasy that launched a thousand dystopian young adult fantasy ships. What sets it apart from a lot of similar books is the high standard of writing, which is very mature in tone and never patronising as some YA can be. It pulls no punches in its depiction of a revolution in a brutal alternate world where materialism and corruption rule over justice.

The title tells us this book will be one of jarring conflicts – hunger is not supposed to be a game, but then games are not supposed to be deadly. This story is a powerful one, but heavily conceptual as it asks the reader to imagine a world severely different from our own and one that is, for most of us, too extreme to be conceivable. For this reason, the story had to be told through a first person narrative. We had to see the personal, human impact of this dystopia close up, and who better to show us than Katniss Everdeen?

Essentially, Katniss is the everywoman, someone just normal enough that any teenage girl reading her story can relate to her, who just happens to have the particular skills that get her noticed, and then used to represent a campaign. She is also someone whose life has been warped more than others by the world she lives in. Her father was killed in the mines, which led her to become the provider for her family, a role that forced her to develop the hardiness, resourcefulness and archery skills she needs to survive the Hunger Games.

The first chapter starts with one of the most important ideas of any book: the protagonist’s motivation. Through the horror and madness of the Games and rebellion that follows in the third book, Katniss’s family are her reason. In fact, it is her love for Prim that is the catalyst for her journey since she takes the place of her sister as a tribute.

Collins could have chosen to start the book with the reaping, and worked the backstory in after that. She could have started the book with Katniss already entering the arena, but instead she chose to show Katniss at home first, to establish what it is she has to lose. After all, it is never just Katniss’s life at stake. It is her family, her village, even her entire society that hangs in the balance.

Katniss’s status as the everywoman begins in the first line ‘When I woke up, the other side of the bed was cold’. This sentence is neither particularly unusual nor striking. It could apply to any character, in any fictional world, but it immediately implies a sense of loneliness. The domestic normalcy that follows as she describes her sister and mother is quickly undermined by the sinister and grotesque details used to describe their cat. In these few first paragraphs Collins establishes a life of familial simplicity within a harsh, ugly world where death is never far away, neatly presaging the story to come.

To increase the sense of foreboding, the reaping is mentioned several times before we come to learn what this term means. This is a technique used often by writers to increase their reader’s anticipation and keep the pages turning. As the chapter continues, Collins explains the details of Katniss’s world from the nature and dangers of the districts to the fact that they are ruled from the Capitol with a light descriptive hand, revealing just enough detail to pique the reader’s interest but not so much to bog us down.

As well as introducing the motivations and settings of Katniss’s world, we meet main characters such as Gale and Effie Trinket and find the underlying theme of rebellion in Gale’s quiet suggestions that he and Katniss could run off and live in the woods in defiance of the laws of the land. Katniss states that she would rather get shot in the head than die of hunger, which foreshadows the future political unrest and her role in it.

Interestingly, we don’t meet Peeta in the first chapter. Although we later learn that Katniss and Peeta already know each other, they only become close because of the Games. The Games create their relationship, just as they create their relationship for the games, which is why he is all she has left when everything from home is destroyed or irreparably altered.

The first chapter ends with the reaping – the event that launches the story, the end to Katniss’s status quo. Every story has one, but by including that event in the first scene we have a complete arc from a difficult but loving domestic life to an alien, inhuman event in which people, like crops, are cut down in their prime at the command of an unseen callous ruling force.

 In that first chapter, we meet our heroine, learn enough of her upbringing to sympathise with her and cannot help but admire her for her bravery and self-sacrifice. This is a story all about sacrifice, the sacrifice of lives, and the refusal to sacrifice conscience and humanity to succeed. Ending the chapter on a shock cliff-hanger, Collins compels us to continue reading in order to find out how Katniss Everdeen will survive against the odds.

As writers we should remember that the first chapter of our books must encapsulate the book as a whole and that, ideally, we should treat each chapter as a story in itself with a clear beginning, middle, end, and driving force or antagonist. How do the first and last lines of the first chapter compare or contrast?

 Think about how you can establish what your main character cares about and their motivation in the story, and then sit back and enjoy getting in their way. :)

If you liked what you read, please leave a comment. As always, you can follow me on Twitter @H_Y_Malyk

Let's Talk About Sex, Baby

Sorry, this isn’t porn. Feel free to leave this site now if that’s why you were thinking. I’m talking about sex in books, and why I think there’s a bit too much of it lately.

The old adage sex sells remains true, but, like violence in the media, we the consumer have become desensitised to it to the point that writers and artists are having to go to more explicit extremes to get the same reaction.

This is true of the content of books as well as in the cover art. After the success of Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L.James, erotic fiction has seen a popularity explosion and this trend has rubbed off on other genres. These days it seems there are more book covers featuring naked male torsos or bare female legs than not. However, Fifty Shades itself has a rather more demure cover, which didn’t seem to negatively impact it’s sales, and proves the point that it isn’t necessary to cover your book in naked flesh to garner readers.

 Of course, part of the purpose of a book cover is to give your potential readers some indication of the content so that the know what they’re in for. More cynically, the purpose of a cover is to get people to judge your book by it and buy it even if they don’t end up liking what’s inside.

Using naked models on the cover is a sure-fire way to get people interested, but in anything but erotica this technique makes me cringe. Is the most important or interesting feature about your book really the chiselled abs of your hero? In some cases, authors are likely selling themselves short by suggesting so. They also risk patronising potential readers by suggesting that readers are only interested in the sexy male love interests.

Personally, I think that only erotica warrants nudity on the cover. In some cases, the content of books is also so explicit that it belongs in erotica. Of course, sex does have a place in fiction, but there is a big difference between sexual realism and gratuitous sexual content.

 Young adult fiction tends to skirt around the issue of sex and is often deliberately unrealistic in its lack of sexual content. If the characters have sex at all, it is usually off page, which is appropriate for the audience. In new adult fiction, there is also a trend for less sex or less explicit sex, and I have heard of people distinguishing new adult from full adult fiction by the level of sexual content, i.e. if it’s about a twenty something and there isn’t much sex or swearing, then it’s new adult not adult.

 This definition is troublesome for me because not too long ago the majority of adult books did not feature explicit sexual content. Those that did had a distinct reason for it (more on this in a minute), and often intended to shock their reader. In recent years, however, it seems the majority of adult books include detailed sex scenes, to the extent that it is virtually demanded by the reader and some writers feel pressured to include more sexual detail in order to sell more copies.

But why is there so much sex in modern fiction? Writers are taught to only include events that further the plot or are essential to character or thematic development. Anything that doesn’t serve a clear purpose in the story should be cut. It is for this reason that sex scenes used to be included only if the sex acts were pertinent to the plot, characters, or themes.

 In a romance, the first time a couple have sex it is often depicted as the cementing of their relationship, thus it can be an important part of the story. If there are tensions in a marriage that are going unsaid, these could manifest in an awkward sexual encounter. A character’s secret sadistic or masochistic side could be uncovered in a sex scene. Rape scenes are clearly integral to the plot and characters involves, and could require more graphic detail to emphasise the violence.

However, apart from in some select cases, it is not usually important to show a high level of detail in sex scenes. Even in romances, why do some writers dedicate four or more pages to a graphic play-by-play when all the reader needed to know was that they had sex and enjoyed it?

 If the same writers spent four pages describing the two characters sitting at a table eating a meal at the end of each day, smiling and exchanging only few words, it would be considered pointless and would be edited out. So why aren’t sex scenes considered pointless clutter, particularly when the feature more than once within the same character’s story in a book?

Overall it seems that, in some cases, sex scenes are used to distract the reader from problems with the plot or characters, filling in gaps or breaking up lulls in the action, or just generally trying to add bonus points to an otherwise bland story. If this is the case, then I for one am not fooled.

If you think I’m being harsh here I have two words for you. Anita Blake. Enough said.

If you liked this post, please leave a comment.
As always, you can find me on Twitter @H_Y_Malyk

In Defense of Bella Swan

Bella Swan, of the Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyer, has been on the receiving end of a lot of negativity. I’m not talking about the Twilight Saga books or movies; I’m talking specifically about the character Bella.

 While many teenage girls relate to her as a normal, average girl who quite literally stumbles into a stunning, threatening world of fantastic creatures and superhuman peril, a lot of others have given her a hard time for being ‘weak’.

People have analysed her relationship with Edward and declared it abusive, and say she just passively accepts the abuse. People have called her shallow, and poured scorn on her for fawning over her beautiful, sparkly man. People have even condemned her to literary purgatory for being clumsy. In this post, I would like to explain why I think that Bella Swan is a worthy heroine.

Is she ‘weak’? Only from a narrow definition of the word. Yes she is physically weaker than Edward and the other vampires, but that is realistic for a human female. Yes she is a klutz, a characteristic which Meyer included, no doubt, to emphasise her human frailty as well as to mirror her social awkwardness and the feelings she expresses of having never quite fit in.

However, being accident-prone is not the same as being weak. Any story about a human falling in love with a vampire will inevitably make contrasts between the fragility of human physicality versus the indestructible immortal physique. Part of the appeal of vampires in fiction is the element of wish fulfilment in their physical features – they are typically powerful and beautiful, representing ideals we can only dream about. Meyer deliberately emphasised Bella’s human condition to make her vampires more appealing.

Bella is not weak because she looks after her dad in a domestic role, either. If doing domestic chores and caring for others is weak, then half the world is weak, and if they weren’t the other half would be a lot hungrier and dirtier.

In fact, by showing Bella in the role of carer, effectively filling the void her mother left when she separated from her father, Meyer demonstrates that Bella is not only independent and capable but responsible and mature as well. She attends school, does reasonably well there, weathers a tumultuous relationship, and looks after her dad – we should admire her, not belittle her for this.

Within her relationship with Edward, it’s true that he exhibits controlling behaviour, which she tolerates. However, it’s Bella who urges Edward to cement it further by being intimate and by turning her into a vampire so that they can be together for eternity. Despite Edward’s feelings against Jacob, Bella does not submit to his preferences and continues to maintain her friendship with Jacob. Bella even shamelessly kisses Jacob in front of Edward in Eclipse – proving that she is hardly the downtrodden victim of Edward’s controlling abuse.

In the first book, despite Edward admitting to being a monster, Bella openly says she doesn’t care. In the face of such a strange, predatory creature the vast majority of men and women would sensibly be afraid. But Bella is not sensible – she is wilful and stubborn. She knows what she wants and she relentlessly pursues it, almost to the point of recklessness. She insist on being with Edward despite his protests that he is dangerous and she’s making a mistake, on carrying her unborn baby to term in spite of the risks to her body, and on becoming a vampire in spite of the risks to her mind and soul. 

It could be argued that Bella’s only true weakness is loving Edward. Falling for a vampire is never a very good idea, but Meyer carefully avoids her seeming like too much of a masochist by making the vampires ‘vegetarian’. The point is supposed to be that she loves him despite what he is, not because of it – that others are attracted to him for superficial reasons but that Bella can see beyond them.

She is a heterosexual teenage girl - she is allowed to appreciate Edward’s physical features (and in doing so theoretically inspires the same feelings in the reader, since it is a first person narrative). Some have asked, if not for the way he looks, why does she love him? They say they can’t see anything between them except PG rated lust. But you could ask the same question of a lot of real life relationships and never come up with an answer. People have loved each other for no decipherable reason since the dawn of time.

In New Moon, I wholly sympathised with Bella’s reaction to Edward leaving. As a confident adult reading it, a young girl falling apart and sinking into a deep depression over a boy seems silly, but Bella is not a confident adult and neither is the intended audience of the books. Teenagers are typically less self-assured, more self-conscious, and more fraught with insecurities than adults.

As someone who suffered with depression for most of my adolescence, I could relate to how Bella felt she wasn’t good enough for him and how she felt in his absence. So her behaviour wasn’t aspirational, but is it weak to grieve the absence of someone we love? Bella’s strength is in how she doesn’t let it defeat her. After all, no one drags her out to spend time with Jacob. She eventually goes willingly, coping the only way she can (some take prescription meds, some turn to drink, Bella becomes an adrenaline junkie – each to their own.)

Ultimately, Bella marries Edward and becomes a mother. It might not be a popular life path these days but the choices she makes are not to be scoffed at.

In the end, she gets everything she wanted through her own perseverance and unflinching resolve in the face of incredible danger. Against the odds, she not only survives, but thrives.



Why First Scenes Work - Harry Potter

For this post, continuing my exploration of first scenes, I am going to analyse the first chapter of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K.Rowling. This book needs no introduction and I will presume that anyone reading this blog is familiar with the plot/characters of the Harry Potter books (If you aren’t, and have recently arrived on this planet from another galaxy, then I apologise for the assumption.)

The first chapter of the book, entitled The Boy Who Lived, is really a prologue. The story proper is of eleven year old Harry as he starts his journey into the wizarding world. Chapter one is set ten years earlier, and functions as an explanatory backstory for Harry and the world he inhabits.

The books are third person but almost exclusively from Harry’s perspective. this first chapter strays from that norm in that it is from Mr Dursley’s perspective. Yes, it would have been difficult to have the scene from a one year old’s perspective, but if Rowling had wanted a scene from Harry’s perspective she could have chosen to write him either having a dream about the events or thinking back to his upbringing with his aunt and uncle.

However, the fact is that Harry is unaware of his true nature and the truth of his parents’ deaths at the beginning of the story, and as we know it is vital that an author introduces the unique qualities of their fictional world in the first scene.

For the Harry Potter books, the most resonant idea is that of a secret world of wizards within our own mundane society. Harry is just like us, the reader, until he is lucky enough to be pulled into this secret world. Mr Dursley is also, in a way, just like us, in that he is not lucky enough to be a part of the wizarding world, only an onlooker. It is for this reason that Mr Dursley is a perfect choice to introduce the story.

We as readers know nothing of the wizard world as we open the first page, but within a couple of paragraphs we become aware of a division between magical people and ‘normal’ people. The Dursleys clearly do not approve of the other people but they are described in unflattering terms in order that the reader immediately dislikes them and therefore becomes intrigued about the cloaked people they so disapprove of. By immediately establishing unpleasant characters who are prejudiced against wizards, Rowling instils in the reader sympathy for those wizards before we have so much as met one.

After the first few paragraphs, the scene goes on to neatly, through well-chosen detail and dialogue, reveal the existence of wizards able to transmogrify and appear from thin air, trained owls, magical objects, and flying motorbikes. This is at clear juxtaposition to the normality of the first half of the scene, but Mr Dursley’s observations of strange happenings lead up to it well enough that it doesn’t jar the reader.

At this point, the viewpoint changes from Mr Dursley’s, the banal everyman, to a more distant omniscient perspective. We see Dumbledore and professor McGonagall but we are not given insight into their thoughts. By keeping the reader at a distance as if looking in on this strange rendezvous on privet drive, we feel a sense of wonder and mystery and Dumbledore becomes instantly a figure of respect and awe.

Since Dumbledore remains a mysterious figure throughout the series until the later books when his true motives are revealed, it is fitting that we see him only externally in this first scene. The distance between the reader and the unfolding scene with its escalating drama also inevitably makes us wish that we were a part of this world.

Rowling tantalises us with a vivid glimpse of the magical possibilities of the wizard world in this scene in order to encourage us to read on. It is not until chapter four that we meet Hagrid and get up close with the wizarding world again. If she had begun the story with a supposedly normal Harry slowly becoming aware of his specialness, the reader would only learn of the magic of Rowling’s world as he does. Instead Rowling chose to give us advanced insight which, I believe, makes Hagrid’s revelations that Harry is a wizard in chapter four believable.  Harry’s world is, after all, rather fantastic even for children with vivid imaginations. By establishing the magic of his world as ‘fact’ beyond Harry’s own experiences and the word of a man who seems, frankly, a bit mad (sorry, Hagrid), she ensures her story is convincing and credible.

Finally, what Rowling does so masterfully in the first scene and indeed throughout the book is make Harry Potter the subject of rumour and gossip. Everyone is talking about him, which not only impresses his importance on the reader but creates a buzz about him before we even meet him. It is a technique writers often use with villains (indeed Rowling does it with Voldemort) – having other characters discuss a villain before his appearance to create a sense of ominous menace as the villain’s reputation literally precedes him.

In Harry’s case, Rowling’s descriptions of wizards everywhere speaking Harry’s name became somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophecy. It wasn’t long before even muggles everywhere were speaking his name, was it?

So what can we take away from this, apart from that Rowling is a master storyteller? When you are writing your first scene, consider perspective. This is particularly useful is you novel is in third person, but be careful to ensure you still find a way to mention/include your main character even if the scene isn’t from their perspective.

 If you want the reader to view your protagonist in a certain light, why not have the first scene written from the perspective of another character/characters who already see them in that light? Or from malicious characters’ perspectives who view the protagonist in an obviously biased light?

 As always, if you like you can follow me on Twitter @H_Y_Malyk

Darkness v Light

So I want to talk about the issue of darkness, or bleakness, in writing and the balance of light and shade of tone/content in a novel.

As an urban fantasy fan I have noticed that recent urban fantasy is tending more toward ‘lightness’, as in the books are about healthy, well-adjusted people, usually young attractive women, who manage to overcome hordes of demons/vampires/hybrids/shapeshifters/any other supernatural baddie whilst still looking good and pursuing the hot guy. At the end of the day, despite being somehow haunted/hunted by these life-changing supernatural events, they go back to their day job to crack jokes with their best buddy.

There is nothing wrong with this. I love reading books where people laugh in the face of adversity and find their happy ending. However sometimes, just occasionally, I crave something grittier. Grit is not reserved only for crime dramas and espionage thrillers. There are, of course, examples of gritty, darker urban fantasy. Two series come to mind, the first being the early Anita Blake books, the second being the Jill kismet series by Lilith Saintcrow. Both of these series feature a strong female lead who manages to hold onto her day job despite escalating supernatural hijinks and peril, but the tone is distinctively darker. The ending is rarely happy. Romances aren’t fairy tales and relationships are complex and difficult.

However, there is such a thing as too dark. Go too dark, end in tragedy and have your characters decide there’s no point in it all anyway, and you risk just depressing your readers. On the other hand if you go too light without being deliberately funny you end up with a holiday read that is forgotten quicker than it’s read. So how do you find a balance? 

You would think that a world populated by monsters and magic would lend itself to a dark, bleak story, but we can’t forget that urban fantasy is, at least in part, a reaction to the otherness of traditional fantasy – and most people, fortunately, can’t relate as well to much darkness. Urban fantasy is all about bringing the fantastic to the everyday, and often that means literally combining magic and monsters with characters who live and behave not unlike their authors. So we find a lot of urban fantasy books feature female characters who live alone but for a cat, but rarely is this a cause of concern for them. Rarely do we find these lonely characters suffering from mental illness, for example, despite the reality that loneliness and depression go hand in hand.

For my urban fantasy, I originally gave the protagonist an upbeat sidekick and had her making humorous quips on every other page, but as one draft became another I found I wanted to take her to a darker place. She is a woman with an obsession, having spent her life in pursuit of revenge, and I felt that in order to justify the decisions she makes in the book I would have to write her as more conflicted and disturbed. After all, is it realistic for a character who has suffered tragedy in childhood and spent the rest of her life obsessing about vengeance to be well-adjusted and healthy? I don’t think so.

Often in urban fantasy books characters are put through the most appalling ordeals. They are beaten, tortured, violated, almost sacrificed to the Devil on an altar, and yet, after perhaps a spell in hospital, they appear again at the start of the next book bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. This is perhaps necessary to the continuation of the series, since if a character were to be deeply psychologically scarred at the end of each book, the heroine would soon end up being sectioned or would become just as bad as the bad guys.

This idea is one that appealed to me. The issue of compromised morality is one that both Anita Blake and Jill Kismet were forced to face as they repeatedly made difficult decisions to defeat their enemies. Sure, in some stories the heroine is fortunate enough to be able to kill the villain simply by handing them a mirror, but in more realistic, darker stories, often the villain is not defeated before volumes of blood have been shed. At what point does the woman who kills the monsters become a monster herself? How far can I push that idea before the main character becomes unlikeable? Nowhere have I seen this issue so well explored as in the books and TV series Dexter, where the protagonist is a serial killer but we root for him anyway.

In fact, Dexter was one of my biggest inspirations to make my main character, and therefore my novel, darker. Several years after first watching that show, I now have a final draft of my novel in which my heroine is damaged, fragile, and lonely, and that makes her a real threat in the story, because when pushed to the limits of sanity, she is capable of anything.

Have you ever changed how dark your writing or characters are? Maybe you found it was all getting a bit too dark and had to take steps to lighten things up, Shakespeare style. Have you ever read a book and wished it would lighten up, or groaned at an sickly happy ending?

As always, comments encouraged, all feedback welcome. Follow me @H_Y_Malyk

Excerpt from Vexed To Nightmare

As promised, here is the excerpt from the final draft of Vexed to Nightmare, my dark urban fantasy novel, due out later this year.





I have their blood on my hands.
It’s always the same. Every year, on the anniversary, I do not visit their graves and lay flowers. I do not return to the house we used to call our home, because it stopped being ours the day he took me and it stopped being a home the day I burned it to the ground.
They have probably built a new house there, filled with a new family making new memories. I wouldn’t know. I never went back.
Instead I spend this day trying not to self-destruct. Or perhaps you could say that I am trying to do exactly that, and failing. Because failing is what I do best, isn’t it? After nineteen years, I still have no answers to the questions that I carry with me, like stones sewn into my clothing, drawing me deeper into the dark waters of the unknown with every passing year.
I promised them, the day I came back, that I would find our truth and our vengeance, but almost two decades later, here I am. Still clutching at that bastard of buoys, hope. Hope that next year will be different. Next year I’ll find the vampire who destroyed us. Next year I’ll put an end to this, and I might finally be able to breathe.
That is how the anniversary feels, like a weight on my chest. It’s always there but on this particular day of the year its burden increases tenfold. Or maybe I just become too weak to bear its weight, just for twenty four small hours.
If I fold beneath it for just one day of the year, it’s ok, isn’t it? It’s not like there is anyone to see me fall. So fall I do, and sometimes it’s so quiet, no one hears. Sometimes, it’s a spectacular show, like the year I escaped the confines of the Academy and gave arson a go.
Since I graduated and moved to new London, I’ve learned to sublimate the energy into a different kind of violence.
This year, I tried to find a sparring partner at the agency complex, but no one would come near me. They aren’t as stupid as they look and my story is common knowledge. Everyone knows about the girl who was abducted as a child. The orphan who can’t remember what her abductor did to her. For a long time, I was the grain that fed the rumour mill, until I started breaking teeth in the smiles aimed down on me.
Now I don’t even need to threaten anyone. People, for the most part, just stay as far away from me as possible. Today that meant, in the absence of a co-worker to beat the shit out of, I had to look beyond the Complex limits.
It didn’t take too long. In New London, among the shiny people, the fangs are well concealed behind perfect needle-stung lips, but in the Old city, there are mouldering corners where the immortal skulk in predatory packs. Old London has a ravaged face but the worst of its depravity still hide between the lines. Human police have no hope. Even the agency doesn’t attempt to intercept every illegal blood exchange.
When I arrived, even in broad daylight, there were at least ten humans lying with their clients atop them, tick-like fixed to their throats, sweaty old paper money clutched in their limp, pallid hands.
It didn’t take long. I have never been beaten in hand to hand combat, and I have a way with blades.
On the other side, I know what I did was illegal. Exchanging blood for money is too, but that doesn’t give me the right to kill the vampires willing to pay that bit extra for their next meal straight from the vein instead of from a bottle. The fact that as a soljinn, I am literally born to hunt them is irrelevant. The law is the law. As an agent for the ASM, it’s supposed to be my job to uphold it.
Seeing the stark, languid faces of the blood whores after I gutted their clients, I’m not sure if what I did was wrong. I’m not sure about much anymore.
On the way back to the bunker I call home, no one notices me. In my hooded sleeveless robe, sweatshirt and gloves, my long blue hair is covered, my hands are hidden, and the blades are safely tucked back into their sheaths beneath.
It isn’t until I lock the door within and press my back to it that I feel it. The aftertaste of the rush. It feels like nineteen years of pain and a mouthful of battery acid. Trembling, I vomit copiously into the toilet until I’m empty. Afterwards, when I take off my gloves and wash my hands, the water runs red for a long time. Even with the leather, it always gets inside.
It’s not for me. I’ve told myself a thousand times. It’s for them, for the parents he took from me. I made a promise the day he gave me back to my people, unharmed, but not unchanged. I won’t give up searching for the truth, no matter what the cost.
But as I struggle to meet my own eyes in the shattered remains of the mirror, I have to wonder, what if I never find him? Next year will be the twentieth anniversary. Twenty years, and no answers. How much longer can I go on like this?

First Scene Strife

For my second blog entry I want to discuss the problematic first scene/chapter in a novel. In my debut novel, 'Vexed to Nightmare', I have re-written/edited the first scene at least a dozen times. I have finally reached a point at which I am moderately satisfied with it, but it has been a long road.

For most of us writers, the first scene is probably the first we write. We have our story outline in mind, we have our characters' thoughts jostling alongside our own in our minds, and the first scene just pours out, as natural as can be, the spring from which the river soon flows. It isn't until we have written the end that we return to that first scene to see if it still works. And usually it doesn't.

First there is the probability that somewhere along the way the themes, ideas and tone of the novel shifted slightly from what we initially planned, meaning the first scene no longer quite fits.

Second there is the greater probability that we inadvertently filled the first scene with rather more information than the reader actually needs.

Both of these problems mean that the first scene needs at least a strong edit, at most a total rewrite. I have heard that some writers cut out the first two scenes completely, starting the story instead from the third scene and filtering in any essential info from those cut scenes into the later novel body. Such is the pointless clutter of the first scene in some cases.

However even if you are able to do this and still have a story beginning that makes sense and doesn't confuse/overwhelm the reader, you still then need to consider the third scene, now the first, as a FIRST scene.

What do I mean by this? Well a first scene, be it a whole chapter, a prologue, or a passage within a chapter, must of course do many things. The quantity of things the first scene is supposed to do is precisely the reason writing it is so daunting. We all know that if the first scene isn't right, we risk losing our readers or the agent who holds the future of our published career in his or her hands.

A first scene should grab and hold the reader's attention, which is far easier said than done. It should also introduce the main character/s, establish the direction of the plot and convey any major themes/concepts. It should set the tone of the book and the writing style as well as give an idea of the kind of settings of the book (e.g. a city or a small village). In other words, the first scene is almost a summary of the entire book minus the plot twists, which must absorb and rivet the reader whilst TELLING as little as possible.

When put that way, is it any wonder writing that first scene is so difficult? Despite all this, however, I find I enjoy writing the first scene as much as I enjoy writing the final climactic scenes. As  impossible as perfection is to achieve, there is a pure kind of joy to presenting my beloved characters for the 'first' time again. For those few paragraphs or pages I can almost imagine myself as the reader discovering the story for the first time, and with that comes the old excitement again.

 As thrilling as it is to write the big finales, the true magic of being a writer is in the imagining of our own worlds, in the act of creating stories and characters from the primordial ooze of our minds. When we first put those ideas to paper (or word file), we breathe life into our creation. And that is wonderful.

However I do not think that a reader experiences the first scene in the same way. A reader will usually read the first scene of a new book so quickly and offhandedly that all those salient details you the writer so devotedly and masterfully wove into the pages are at best unconsciously absorbed, at worse entirely overlooked. A reader, in my opinion, when reading a new book by a new author, will be more likely to notice things they don't like rather than things they do like.

So we come to the old dilemma. Do we write for ourselves or do we write for the imagined reader? The sad fact is that if you ever want people to buy your books, self published or traditionally published or otherwise distributed, you will have to consider the reader.

 As much as you may love your seven paragraph long exposition of the social history of your wizard race, you must consider why you love it. You love it because it is your fictional history, and because it is part of the complex world you have been imagining for many months and years. A new reader does not have that established love of your story yet, so lengthy back-stories and explanations will likely be boring in the first scenes.

The aim of the book is, of course, to make your reader fall as much in love with your story as you are. Your first scene is only that first meeting of two strangers who go on the fall in love. There should be attraction, appeal, the promise of excitement, and hopefully nothing too off-putting.

So when writing your first scene make sure it is attractive to your reader. You already know your work is their type. They have it in their hands for a reason. The last thing you want to do is disappoint their expectations. To avoid that, you must anticipate their expectations, and exceed or subvert them.

 If your book is an urban fantasy about vampires, as mine is, the reader will likely already know this when reading the first page. So carefully consider how you present your core ideas, characters, themes in that first scene. Whatever is unique or different about your world/characters/concepts MUST be demonstrated or at least hinted at in the first scene.

Having said all this I'm sure there are many successful novels that don't follow the rules of the first scene, but not following the rules is a risk a new author should take with extreme caution.

Once you're sure you have crammed in all that needs to be in that first scene, then comes the fine editing. Whilst all spelling and punctuation must of course be accurate, don't be tempted to alter grammar and language choices to such an extent that style is compromised.

 I have read many first scenes that have obviously been so over edited that it reads as self-conscious. This is why it is a good idea to at least write the first scene first then make your revisions later, rather than to skip it entirely until the novel is finished. The first scene doesn't have to be too neat and concise or encompass everything the book has to offer. It just has to make leave the reader wanting more.

And there's an understatement if ever I wrote one.

For my next blog entry I will include an extract from the first scene of my upcoming novel, 'Vexed to Nightmare'.

I also intend to examine the first scene issue further with a series of posts analysing the first scenes of well known novels.

As always, you can follow me @H_Y_Malyk on Twitter

Out of My Mind

So I've decided to give this blogging thing a go. I know millions of people have been doing it for years, but as a self-confessed hermit who only joined Twitter last year and doesn't even have a facebook account, this is a big step into the outside (or digital) world for me!

For my first blog I wanted to share my experiences as a writer until now. Brace yourselves for an edge of your seat, action packed adventure...or a slow, meandering non-event as the case may be. For all the success stories out there and writers who seem to churn out new material every month, I'm sure there are just as many stop-starters like me whose writing has remained in the closet and who dream of one day being among the published glitterati.

I started writing at the age of ten after being inspired by that great literary canon, the Sweet Valley series by Francine Pascal. Rarified my tastes in fiction is not, nor ever been, but something about a candy sweet twins high school story got my creative juices flowing. I started writing what was essentially fanfiction in a spare exercise book at school and before I knew it I had filled it. So I began on the next book.

 What I wrote was sheer nonsense, derivative and awful, but creating something had filled me with a sense of purpose I had previously lacked. I was a shy, awkward and unpopular child with only one friend at the time, and what I found in writing was not only an escape from the frustrations and disappointments of reality, but also a sense of self worth. I had a secret hobby, and no matter how people treated me, no one could touch that.

By the time I was eighteen, I had finished a novel of 90,000 words. Never being confident and having shared my writing with few people, I gingerly sent my manuscript to publishers and awaited their response.

Of course, I didn't succeed, because what I had written was total crap. With few life experiences and little knowledge of the writing craft beyond what I had absorbed from regular reading, I had crafted a sloppy, shallow parody of my favourite fiction. I'm grateful that the novel wasn't immortalised by the publishing industry, but the rejection did affect my writing.

So began the ten year journey that lead me here. I started learning my craft, studying texts on writing techniques as well as reading fiction with a more critical eye. At university I took creative writing classes, and I began redesigning my original novel. But I never finished it.

Years went by, my tastes in fiction evolved, my life took me from a small Hertfordshire town to Birmingham, from a student to a wife to a mother, and all the while I kept those characters in my head. They evolved with me, the themes at the core of the story remaining the same while all details of the fantasy world it was set in shifted and mutated.


 When I started writing that book, always intended as the first of a trilogy, I called the genre fantasy horror, modelled on tv series like Buffy and Angel. There was no such thing as urban fantasy then.

Now the market is flooded with this nifty genre that inhabits the spaces between fantasy, horror, action and  adventure. And last year, I finished my novel. Again.

Naively, I believed I could send it to agents unedited and planned to edit it within a couple of days if the agents had any interest. I failed to consider one thing, however, and that is word count. My novel totalled 190,000 words, and it wasn't until after I sent my queries to agents that I researched standard word lengths and realised that my novel was almost double the usual length for first time authors.

Aggrieved as this fact made me, indeed my queries were met with unified rejection, and I can only hope that the reason was the length of my novel. Of course, maybe the book is still just a load of crap. But it's the word count problem I cling to, so I vowed to edit the manuscript down to 110,000 words and try again.

This was last autumn. Predictably, despite hoping word count was the only issue, the rejection still hit me harder than I wanted to admit. I felt defeated, sure I would never be traditionally published, and began investigating the self publishing industry.

In indie publishing, I think I may have found my salvation. I have always kept my writing to myself, not having anyone to share it with let alone a proper 'beta reader'. But the thought of my writing never being read always bothered me, and with self publishing it seemed I had found an answer.

So I took a leap of faith and joined Twitter. I became part of the online writer community, or so I like to think. But there was one thing missing: An actual book.

Fast forward a few months and I am trying again to cut down that book, edit it into shape, and get it out there. Because I think I might have a story some people might like to read. And that's as confident as I can be on the matter for now.

So my message to anyone reading this is one of perseverance: If becoming an author if your dream, then never give up. It's bloody hard, and it can be overwhelming, but you are not alone.


Don't let all those prolific authors daunt you. There are just as many quiet writers with their secret stories, and that's ok. For me, it's time to try to get the stories out of my head and into the world.

If you liked this post, why not follow me on Twitter @H_Y_Malyk