{"id":174,"date":"2014-06-03T08:21:13","date_gmt":"2014-06-03T08:21:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thomasemson.com\/?p=174"},"modified":"2014-06-03T08:22:47","modified_gmt":"2014-06-03T08:22:47","slug":"the-writing-process-blog-tour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thomasemson.com\/?p=174","title":{"rendered":"The Writing Process Blog Tour"},"content":{"rendered":"

So Danny Rhodes<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/strong>, author of the excellent Fan, asked me to contribute to the Writing Process Blog Tour. I don’t know much about it, but writer after writer answer the same four questions. Here are the questions. Here are my answers…<\/p>\n

What am I currently working on?
\n<\/b>I\u2019ve just finished, and dispatched to my agent, a fantasy\/sci-fi\/dystopian thriller for the so-called YA audience. I\u2019m about to start writing a detective novel.<\/p>\n

How does my work differ from others of its genre?
\n<\/b>I\u2019ve mostly written horror, but they\u2019re fast-moving and action-packed. Horror appears to me to be traditionally quite sluggish. Some horror writers spend an age piling on the adjectives and adverbs, thinking up different words for \u2018dark\u2019. I try to keep the story moving, very, very quickly. I don\u2019t waste time on long, descriptive passages telling the reader how menacing a house looks. I get the characters inside the house and show<\/em> them how menacing it is.<\/p>\n

Why do I write what I do?
\n<\/b>I wrote horror initially because I loved the genre as a youngster. But I also like action thrillers and fast-paced stories. I combined horror stories and the thriller framework. Really pacy stories. Gory, full of violence, very grown-up. I really enjoyed TV serials when I was growing up. They used to show stuff like Flash Gordon with Buster Crabbe. It was old, very old, but I loved the cliff-hangers at the end of each episode. I attempt that with my stories. I want to be on the edge of my seat when I read a book. I try to do that when I write my own, too. I think, to be succinct, I write what I write because I like reading it.<\/p>\n

How does my writing process work?
\n<\/b>I had an eight-book contract, and tied myself to writing two books a year. In order to do that, I had to be disciplined. So I developed this specific routine, which I use to this day. I set myself targets. I work out how long I have to write a book. Say six months. It\u2019ll be an 80,000 word book, at least. I set myself a target of 8,000 words a week. Weekly targets are more achievable than daily ones. If I write 8,000 words a week, and working from a vague outline, I\u2019ll have the first draft finished in 10 weeks. When I\u2019m writing the first draft, I don\u2019t stop to correct anything, I just write and write. After that\u2019s done, I take a week off. Then I go back and do a pass of the first draft, cleaning things up. And I keep doing this until I have a decent manuscript. I\u2019ve written about my routine in a book called How To Write A Novel In 6 Months<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/span>.<\/p>\n

… so there it is; hope you enjoyed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So Danny Rhodes, author of the excellent Fan, asked me to contribute to the Writing Process Blog Tour. I don’t know much about it, but writer after writer answer the same four questions. Here are the questions. Here are my answers… What am I currently working on? I\u2019ve just finished, and dispatched to my agent, … <\/p>\n

Read More “The Writing Process Blog Tour”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[25,21,26,22,24,10,20,23,19,18],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thomasemson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thomasemson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thomasemson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thomasemson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thomasemson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=174"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/thomasemson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":176,"href":"http:\/\/thomasemson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174\/revisions\/176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thomasemson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thomasemson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thomasemson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}