My name is Gordon Mackey. I'm an adult-fiction mystery/thriller writer whose imagination creates fictional characters living in a society much like my own. (There may be exceptions, such as in my book "The Offlings" where reality comes and goes.) Between romantic and humorous moments, my imaginary characters meet up with sociopaths, and bad things happen.

I am not an expert on writing novels, but have written and self-published seven of them.

I don't spend hours, days, weeks or years pondering philosophy, the world around me and my place in it. That would muck up my imagination and stop me from writing.

I am not trying to write the "Great Canadian Novel", or win the Pulitzer Prize. If those were my goals, I would be a very frustrated old fart.

Non-fiction technical writing, science fiction and historical fiction all require more extensive research than I am prepared to do. Researching some long-dead drunk politician or event and the circumstances of that era does not appeal to me. I also don't want to explain what a blunderbuss is.

A blunderbuss is a single-shot black-powder rifle, shooting lead or rock balls. It's muzzle is shaped like a funnel, and in the time it takes to re-load with powder, tamp down with wadding, drop in a shot ball and more wadding, the enemy has had time to shoot my protagonist in his head.

What I am is a story-teller, because many of my paintings and drawings, like my writing, tell stories.

So grab a notepad, pull up a seat, and let an old fart give you some knowledge I've picked up along the way.

How do you start a story?

DO NOT create the starting scene first. (It was a dark and stormy night.) I have learned to start my novels with a character doing something. This can happen in the first page:

Bob left the house, walked to his van, opened the back doors and scanned his carpentry tools. His neighbour walked over, "Hey Bob, I'm going to the mailbox for my mail. I can pick up yours too, if you give me your key."

"Thanks, Simon, here's the key. And leave my junk mail in that bin they have."

"Sure thing, Bob, you going someplace?"

"I picked up this little job in Mountview... a guy is building his own house, and he can't set up the roof trusses by himself."

"Hang in there, Bob, they say things are improving. See you in a few."

What did the reader learn in this short episode?

The main character is a male named Bob, lives in a house and drives a van. He is a carpenter struggling to find steady work, and trusts his neighbour Simon to sort his mail.

How do you figure out what happens next in the story?

It's easy to get stuck on 'where does my story go next?'

Continuing on the previous example:

Does Bob put his mail in the van and drive to the work site where there is an accident, or is there a letter begging him to go help out a dying relative?

If there is a work-site accident, Bob maybe in the hospital where he meets a beautiful, single nurse.

Or does Simon's sociopathic brother arrive that evening and they play poker for big money? Or is there a letter from an old flame asking for Bob's help?

All of these could happen if you stagger the time frames, but when you write your story, you don't have to know how this episode ends. You can just let things happen. Once you let go of your characters and just let them act of their own accord, they will very quickly flesh themselves out.

You may realize that Bob wouldn't get drunk while playing poker. So instead, maybe you let the other people in the poker game get drunk and see what happens.

It's your story and you can make your characters do whatever you want them to do.

How do you end your story?

When you're just at the start of writing your story, you don't know, and you don't need to know.

As you write, your characters will develop personalities and their goals will be expressed. Their goals determine the book's ending. You may have to go back and make changes so your story leads to the end. You may have only to change scenes or motivations or details or entire characters to lead your story to a satisfying ending, but that's all part of the process.

You'll figure out how to end your story after your characters show you what their goals are.

Show, don't Tell: Rules for Writing

Let me give you some of my 'RULES' for writing a good story (well not RULES, more like SUGGESTIONS.)

Rule #0: Don't narrate your story!

I abhor novels that are mainly NARRATED. In the last 6 months I have started reading two such books, but I stopped reading them half way through because of an over-present narrator.

An over-present narrator is like my mother reading to me when I was three: "The red teddy bear climbed up the fence, and crawled down the other side. The teddy bear then chased the bunny rabbit."

I don't want someone to tell me what the characters are doing like they're recounting a story to me second-hand. I want to see what the characters are doing for myself.

Rule #1: Let your characters speak for themselves

Let your characters tell me who they are and why they do things, and this requires DIALOGUE.

I love dialogue. Use as much dialogue as you can. You still need supporting narration, particularly when only one character is in a scene. Just keep it brief, like in the following:

You arse hole, you stabbed me in the gut, Paul."

"I hope you die, Eric, you cheating bastard." Paul runs away with the knife, leaving Eric by himself, blood oozing down onto his pants.

Eric staggers across the park, and collapses beneath a big spruce tree.

Using dialogue lets your characters tell their own stories. Keep the narrator locked in the back room as much as possible. I opened the back room door and let the narrator out for the following, which is nearly all narration:

James was told his dad died years before. That was a lie. When James met Babs, a lady who knew his dad was alive, he was excited.

Later, when talking with Fran, a friend, he told her about the possibility of meeting his dad after many years.

At first, Fran was excited for him, but when James said it was Babs who told him, Fran's smile vanished and she said, "Oh, her!"

Those two quoted words tell the reader that Fran does not like Babs. Dialogue could have replaced 90% of the narration in the above paragraph, making it more interesting.

Rule #2: Let your characters 'think' for themselves

Instead of a narrator telling the reader what the characters are thinking and feeling, let the characters 'think' for themselves. For example, I put character's thoughts "in quotation marks and in italics":

Tommy sat on a bench outside the bus depot. A lady left the depot. Tommy thought, "Damn, that gal has the body I'd love to feel all over. Those boobs. I wonder if she'd make love in those high heels? I'd like to slip that glittery turquoise dress off over her head and toss it to the floor beside my bed."

The lady walked past, paused, turned back to him and asked, "Tommy? Tommy Woods?"

"Holy crap, she knows me. Who is she? From high school? What's her name? Is it Marilyn?" "Marilyn, is that you?"

"Yes, Tommy. Long time no see."

Also, by putting my character's thoughts "in quotation marks and in italics" and doing this consistently, I can have a character think without saying 'he thought' after every line.

Rule #3: Put important information into the world of the story

You can also tell your characters (and your readers) important information by putting the information into the story. For example, you can use a television to tell characters important information:

"Alan, UFOs don't exist. Stories that say they do, are horseshit!"

"You're full of horseshit, Mike, because they do exist! Even the airforce has seen alien objects flying..." Mike grabs the TV remote and turns up the volume to maximum. "... at lightspeed. Why'd you turn that up so loud?"

"So I don't have to listen to your conspiracy theories, that's why."

"Well, to hell with you, idiot." Alan spins on his heel, leaves the house and slams the door shut behind him. He jumps into his white car and speeds off.

Mike gives a sigh, says, "I need a drink. A stiff one."

He pours himself a whiskey, sits down, breathes deeply then sips his whiskey. The television blares, "We interrupt this program to announce that Forty-third Street is closed in all directions near Gable Street. A white car ran a red light, was T-boned by a gravel truck, and the car burst into flames. We will bring you more details as we get them. Now back to our original programming."

Note that a narrator was not required to make the announcement. The reader can put two and two together. Radio broadcasts, police-band scanners and building inter-coms can all serve this purpose.

Rule #4: Let your characters talk to themselves

Dialogue is hard to do when there is only one character present, so you can have your character talk out loud to a pet dog, or a raven flying overhead.

Your fictional character can reveal his feelings talking to a bird or animal, or even talking to a tree. I did that once in a recent novel, and it worked. (Note: the tree did not speak back or shake it's branches.)

Rule #5: Let bad things happen to your good characters

You need conflict in your story, or it won't be very interesting.

In real life, sometimes bad things happen to good people. To make your story compelling, you need to let bad things happen to good characters.

Early in your story, have something bad happen to a good person, so the reader doesn't assume the good character will come out on top every time. Keep your characters (and your audience) guessing.

Rule #6: Ensure you set up important plot points

In my new novel, an old locket is found by one of the characters. When opened, there is a tuft of hair held in place by a slice of mica. This was a detail that was important to solving the mystery at the end of the story, but then I realized that the character (and the audience) would know what mica is or why it's important.

I had to go back forty pages and have a character find a piece of mica, ask what it was, and have it explained that it was a translucent rock that formed in thin layers. So later, when the old locket was found and opened, it seemed natural that mica served as the locket's "glass".

Thankfully, writing on a computer lets you go back and make changes easily, so don't be afraid to go back and add important details earlier in the story if you need to.

Rule #7: The Most Important Rule of Writing

Sit down, start writing, have fun!

Readers can tell when a writer doesn't like writing their stories. If you don't want to write your story, why should they want to read your story?

Don't worry so much about figuring out the details of your story before you start writing. Instead, let your characters tell their own stories. Let your them interact with each other, either romantically, with humour, or with violence and bad language. As you write them, your characters will develop their own goals that leads your story towards the end.

If you don't like the way the story is going, you can always change it later. Your characters are your characters, and you can have them do whatever you want them to. Just remember to have fun!

The End

That's it. Cheers to all you who made it to the end, and have fun writing!