Keeping the Darkness on the Page - a Writer’s Guide to Building Resilience

By Nick Cross

To the uninitiated, writing appears to be a simple process of putting words onto the page. But the fact that I’ve re-written the sentence you’ve just read six times seems to indicate that perhaps it’s not that easy. To write well requires us to make a deep personal connection with the material, and this is where the trouble starts.

Ernest Hemingway famously said:

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”

A trifle melodramatic, you might think, and just imagine the mess it caused to the internal workings of his typewriter! But we understand exactly what he meant. And there’s another use of the word “bleed” that is even more pertinent to the writing experience – the way that our daily experiences, ideas and emotions bleed into our work. Writing is not an activity that respects boundaries, in fact it actively thrives on recycling our happiest and saddest moments, tapping into our deepest fears and exposing our most shameful thoughts.

There's a Ghost in my House

by Addy Farmer

There's a ghost in my house but don't tell the children and especially not the child who's bedroom it seems to haunt. Gather round, reader and I'll tell you. For some reason (don't probe), I was sleeping in the guest room of our fairly big Victorian house. The previous owner had put a brass door knocker in the shape of a fox on the hall side of the door. In the early hours, I woke to hear a tap tap tap on the door. I shifted, waited and it came again. Tap, tap, tap. Not loud, just insistent. Like the sound a fox knocker might make. My guts shrivelled, I stilled myself to stone and willed it to stop. It did not. I crept out of bed on rubbery legs, lungs tight. Reader, I turned that handle ... onto an empty corridor. I breathed again. Maybe it was fanciful but I felt that in opening the door I had done the right thing. Contrary to what my head told me, I obeyed my heart and left the door open. The tapping stopped.

The next day I removed the knocker.

What is it about doors? My second ghost story also involves a doorway and the third one well ... but more of that later. I love a good ghost story but the reality of it scares me. I want to be the kid who goes into the haunted room, who dares to uncover the spooky truth but the reality is that I wouldn't have the courage. So, I do the next best thing and write about ghosts and fear so that I can make my hero do the squirm-making thing I would not do. I want my readers guts to shrivel. 

Well, I have gathered a few stories and some spooky thoughts and observations from our lovely slushpile readers. Even if you don't like them there are plenty of readers who do. Alice Hemming says, "I do not like reading ghost stories at all because anything too scary keeps me awake at night.  Despite this, for the past couple of years in October I have helped Year 6 at my local primary school with their spooky story writing project. They all seem to LOVE writing spooky stories."
So, maybe what follows will inspire the beginnings of a story or illustrate how to frighten yourself or your reader into an early grave. 

1. LET'S BEGIN WITH OUR ACTUAL GHOST ...

Tales of the supernatural have been around for a very very long time, right back to Pliny in fact.

"There was at Athens a large and roomy house, which had a bad name, so that no one could live there. In the dead of the night, a noise — resembling the clashing of iron — was frequently heard, which, if you listened more attentively, sounded like the rattling of chains," disturbances that led to the appearance of a specter "form of an old man, of extremely emaciated and squalid appearance, with a long beard and dishevelled, hair, rattling the chains on his feet and hands.

I'm not saying that I'd like to meet him but chain-rattling, shrivelled old man sounds more like a Halloween spook to me.

only scary if you are a cat or three years old

The ghost can come in as many forms as there are people (or animals) but a bit on the pale and still side.

 "I love ghost stories for the shiver of Otherness they bring - the tap on the door on a wild night when you don't expect anyone to call, the footsteps overhead in the empty house. I think less is more - you need to get the imagination of the reader really going - and I'm sure we all have creepy stories to share. Mine is walking home up an unlit country road at two o clock in the morning one very dark night and passing someone who was standing absolutely stone still in the middle of the road, who neither spoke nor moved as much as an inch as I hurried by." Katherine Langrish

No, I would NOT have stopped to warn that unnaturally still being about the dangers of oncoming traffic either because deep down, you just know about the 'wrongness' of some situations. Creeping realisation is a ghastly stomach-plummeting sensation. It is a, was-that-what-I-thought-it-was moment which lasts and becomes the stuff of re-telling.  

The best ghosts are the ones which are unobvious. 

2. TO THE GHOST HOUSE ...

Just why??

If I were in my right mind, I would go nowhere near this property, let alone think of buying it (It happens). Apart from the clear indication of massive spiders plus a lifetime of DIY, the place is clearly HAUNTED. That the house is stuffed with spectral goings-on, does not so much whisper in your ear as smack you round the head. I prefer a more insidious approach.

It would look perfectly normal except that one single thing, perhaps an angle between door and ceiling, would be wrong. One of my old homes. And the ghost there is my former self, or someone I left behind without realising it. Cliff McNish

You may live in such a house and you try and explain it to yourself as the creakings and grumblings of an old house or maybe the gurglings of the unfixed pipes or merely the sun failing to reach the shifting shadows which crouch in certain corners of certain rooms but still they just won't go away. Then they get worse until you have to accept the realisation that your house is a place for the dead and not for the living. Sometimes your worst fear is only confirmed once you have moved ...

I felt uneasy from the start, but dismissed this as I being strange (after living 17 years in the same house) and there being no street lights, so very dark. Odd things happen, like the radio in the kitchen turning itself on in the middle of the night on several occasions, until I turned it off at the plug every night. Things moved while I was out and I heard footsteps upstairs when no one was there. When my daughter - 22 at the time - came back from a year in New Zealand, she spend one night in the guest bedroom then said she wanted to sleep in the other smaller room. After a couple of weeks she confessed she felt there was something in the guest room she had moved out of. She said it was a man and described a lot about him. I knew there had only been one person who lived in the house before us and from what I knew the description could have been him. I asked my next door neighbour about him - without reference to anything about thinking he was still there. Everything my daughter had said matched, a lot of things that had happened tied up to his behaviour too, such as he spent most of his time sitting in the kitchen listening to the radio. Bekki Hill

Shudder. Yes, you lived with the dead for a while.

Of course, it doesn't have to be a house. It could be anywhere - an airport, a theatre, a pub or a hospital ...

"I grew up with a grandmother who told the best ghost stories, all of them supposedly true. That sense of things just out of sight and unexplained has always fascinated me and it was inevitable that the supernatural would crop up in my writing. One story my grandmother told me was about a time when she worked as a nurse in a small private hospital in Ireland, many years ago. She had become friendly with a dying woman and often sat with her when her shift was over. One day, when she was on the night shift, she came in to work and walked up through the quiet building to the ward where the dying patient had a small private room. As she reached the landing, she heard the woman calling her name and she hurried to see what the matter was. She found the room empty, and one of the other nurses told her that the woman had died several hours earlier, calling out for her. Whether or not you believe in ghosts, though, a good spooky tale is the perfect reading matter for a winter night by the fire. One of the best supernatural stories I've read in a long time is Dark Matter by Michelle Paver - the perfect blend of icy darkness and subtle threat!" Pat Walsh

It could be a place. Rosemary Sutcliffe in her ancient Roman Britain tale of adventure, The Eagle of the Ninth wrote one of the most chilling supernatural paragraphs of place. When Esca and Marcus enter the ancient temple ...

"The black darkness seemed to press against his eyes, against his whole body, and with the darkness, the atmosphere of the place ... it was horribly personal. For thousands of years this place had been the centre of dark worship... Marcus felt that at any moment he would hear it breathe, slowly and stealthily, like a waiting animal." Rosemary Sutcliffe

This a wild, ancient and threatening kind of supernatural. It is a haunted space based on fear of the unknown, on basic human instinct, in fact. It is an atmosphere conjured up by a common belief in a powerful, guardian spirit. But we're grown up now, aren't we? We're above all that ignorant, illogical nonsense? My head says, yes, of course but such stories still have the power to make my little heart beat faster.

3. THE RIGHT TIME. 

The obvious time for all those ghoulies and ghosties is at night, in the deep dark, possibly midnight. It works for me.

The dark brings on all those primeval fears of the unseen, the unknown. The final dark that comes with death.

"The first one (ghost), that I remember, was when I was about 10 or 11 and staying at a friend’s house. The house was built round the turn of the last century and was quite a rambling place. I got up in the middle of the night to go to the loo, and on returning to the bedroom, saw an old man coming up the staircase. I knew immediately he wasn’t “real” but I didn’t think he was going to harm me, but he was pretty frightening – small and hunched over and seemed quite bad-tempered – so I hot-footed it back to bed!" Nicky Schmidt

Yet the daylight can bring more subtle and surprising fear. One of the best short stories I've read was called 'The Clock', I forget the author (don't hate me). It was set on a hot Summer's day and a young person had been given the seemingly innocuous job of fetching a clock from a particular bedroom for his Aunt. It all came together - the increasingly stifling heat, the blinding light, the just-emptied rooms, lingering creaks, the swollen wood of the windows he tried to escape from and the loud ticking of the unwound clock. I was so relieved that the hapless protagonist, clearly given the task by a scared relative, escaped. I shared his horror and relief as he looked back at the sunny face of the house. How had that been so terrifying? Probably because it shouldn't have been and is the nearest sensation to my second story for you, set in Summer and involving a doorway...

It's just upstairs - it won't take you a moment ...

It was summer and I was spending a couple of days at my grandmother's rambling old house. She asked me to go to the sewing room and retrieve a lampshade she was working on. I went up the main stairs and along the sunlit corridor, took the dog-leg creaking staircase up to the attic, up, up. There was only a doorway and the sunlit sloping-ceilinged sewing room beyond. On the tiny landing, there to my left, was a small square window over looking the garden. I glanced down and the lawn was empty but I became aware that someone else was beside me looking out. I froze. My breathing shallowed. I heard nothing, I saw nothing but I KNEW that there was something very, very close.

I forced myself through the doorway and grabbed any old lampshade from that well-lit, well used room and ran passed the window and down the stairs. I never went up to the attic again and my grandmother moved soon afterwards.

4. GHOSTLY PURPOSE.

I think you need to give your ghost a reason to live; that it to say, a purpose in coming back. Many short stories are about the given notion that a place or a house is haunted and it is all about how your protagonist comes to stumble into the way of the ghost. Then the flesh on the bones of the story is how he or she reacts to it. Longer stories need to have reasons for why the ghost haunts. In fact, the ghost's story may well be resolved along with any issues the protagonist may have.

"I do come back to ghosts. I think it's because they are such driven characters. After all, they must be desperate for something if they've stayed behind. That makes them instantly intriguing, even when you have no idea who they are yet." Cliff McNish

I sometimes feel so sad for ghosts. They are the ones left behind and they don't like it. They are creatures of such powerful longings; lost love, snatched life, unresolved family doings. All these yearnings are sustained by powerful emotions like anger or jealousy or love. By staying behind it seems that ghosts have lost their more rounded emotions and are left trapped in a loop of FEELING and an inability to deal with it. Like, Lindsey Barraclough's, Long Lankin, the monster at the heart of the story has a sad history. It has twisted to become a consuming thirst for revenge. In this case our hero must discover his weakness and defeat him.

"No one but the dead can love life so much. It's wasted on the living." Cliff McNish

5. TELL THE TRUTH.

Some 'true' stories become the best written ghost stories.

"Take the curious case of Hinton Ampner. The abbreviated version goes something like this: in 1771, a woman named Mary Ricketts became so exhausted from a parade of inexplicable terrors that she packed her bags and quit her home. Apparitions of a man and a woman had appeared day and night, sometimes looking in through windows, sometimes bending over beds. That she felt her children were in danger is one of the many reasons why this is almost certainly the “lost” true ghost story that was supposedly related to Henry James by the Archbishop of Canterbury, EW Benson, one winter evening in 1895, thereby becoming the germ of the story that developed into The Turn of the Screw."

The academic, M.R. James invented a genre of his own, the antiquarian ghost story. In these, the protagonist is an elderly scholar who discovers some ancient artefact which brings down its wrath upon him. His stories are very much based on how he led his own academic life and his readings. One of my favourites is, 'Oh Whistle and I'll Come To You, My Lad.'

Behind you!

Another favourite is, The Treasure of Abbot Thomas. It is the story of a scholar who tells a rector the tale of how, while searching an abbey library, he found clues leading him to the hidden treasure of a disgraced abbot. All the way through I want to shake the protagonist by the shoulders and tell him to, "put it back before it's too late!" 

But of course, he does not listen, they never listen ...

There are so many wonderful ghost stories out there. If you don't have any true tales of your own then here's a list of of great ghost stories to start you off. I love a good list.

• Dark Matter - Michele Paver
• The Candle Man - Catherine Fisher
• The Crowfield Demon trilogy - Pat Walsh
• Lockwood and Co. the Screaming Staircase - Jonathan Stroud
• Minty - Christine Banach
• Bad Blood - Rhiannon Lassiter
• Long Lankin - Lindsey Barraclough
• Troll Fell - Katherine Langrish
• Tyme's End - B.R Collins
• Ghost Chamber - Celia Rees
• The Shadow Garden - Andrew Matthews
• Breathe - Cliff McNish
• Shine - Candy Gourlay

I would love to hear more ...

"I was writing the opening to BREATHE when, without me realising it, the winter light had faded outside, leaving the house dark. I left my study and went to turn the light on in the corridor. At the same moment I heard a really strange noise downstairs. It was very unsettling, like a word being uttered but not quite. I've never been able to explain it, or why it was so unnerving. It's my M.R. James moment." Cliff McNish

The ghost story is possibly the oldest form of story. It fascinates and repels. It delivers a frisson which makes you thankful for the life you have and slightly fearful of what is to come ...

SCBWI stalwart and no mean writer of ghost stories, Gill Hutchison, sums it up well when she says, 

" ... they tap into all of that eerie stuff that we know we don’t know, however hard science and/or religion try to explain and rationalise. The louder you laugh it off, the more you’re tempted to check -behind you. The fine line between what we consider to be unnatural and what just might be supernatural is in a different place for all of us." 

I love reading ghost stories because a good ghost story builds feelings of fear that imperceptibly creep up on you, drawing you in and leaving you checking the dark corners of your house even after you finish the last page. Bekki Hill

Okay. My final ghost story is a photograph. It was taken by my sister-in-law at Otterden Place in Kent. This is where my husband's grandparents died and were buried. It was only when she showed us the photograph that we noticed the presence of something that had not been there when the photograph was taken. It is seemingly a veiled woman with the distinctly linen feel of a Jamesian spirit. 

On the other hand it could just be a glitch in the camera  ...

Many thanks to all those wonderful contributors. I have just twitched the curtain with this blog, lifting the veil is another matter ...

The Devil is in the Detail: Writing Villains

Candy Gourlay chats with author Cliff McNish, whose new book My Friend Twigs is out now.


CANDY: Hey Slushpile people, meet author Cliff McNish. Back in 2013, Cliff talked to us about Deepening Character - it was one of our most popular blog posts of that year. Lucky us, he's agreed to come back to talk to us some more. Cliff, you're known mainly for your creepy teen fantasies and ghost stories but recently, you've written two tender and funny animal stories for 8-12 year-olds. Why the change?

CLIFF: Actually, it all started when my wife passed away three years ago. We’d been together for twenty-two years, and I couldn’t find any peace of mind. I’d been commissioned by my published, Orion, to write another ghost story, and I just felt weighed down by it. I kept trudging on, but day after day I wrote less and less until finally ... I just stopped. I didn’t want to be in this dark place. I had enough darkness going on in my life.

CANDY: What did you do?



CLIFF: For about two months I was just numb, writing nothing, doing nothing. Or at least I can’t remember what I did. The first sign that anything was changing was when I started to get these strange little funny ideas in my head – imagine a rabbit who lost his nose, or a polar bear that got tired of fish. Picture book territory, I guess. I didn't know where this stuff was coming from. But it wouldn’t go away. I kept pushing it back, but sillier and sillier ideas continued coming into my head.

CANDY: Which leads us to your current extraordinary authorial character change.



CLIFF: Yes. My wife, Ciara, had forever been asking me to write a warm story. 'How about one involving dogs stuck in a rescue home,' she’d said many times. 'You know, something heartfelt and funny. You can do that, can't you?'

Since we'd spent over two years fostering rescue dogs I had plenty of stories to use, though I never took the suggestion seriously. Other people wrote those sort of poignant, funny stories much better than me, didn't they?

But now the idea returned. And once I remembered it was her idea the characters took on an instant, vivid life. I could see Ralph, Bessie, Mitch and Fred barking away. I knew exactly what their stories were.

CANDY: I loved Going Home ... it's a real about face to write a book for seven to 12 year olds after your last scary thriller, The Hunting Ground, which has an age warning on the back. And now, you've done it again for the same age group as Going Home, with a mad cockatoo and a girl. What made you write an animal story about a bird?

CLIFF: I was trawling the internet when I came by chance across film of a pet moluccan cockatoo screeching non-stop. Moluccans are huge birds, and so noisy that I wondered how anyone could stand them.

And then I wondered what would happen if a girl ended up having to look after such a bird? What would their friendship be like? And, if that friendship became deep enough, what if her father decided he couldn’t live with the bird any longer? How strongly would she fight for him?

Moluccan cockatoos are fascinating creatures, actually. They’re not suited as pets at all, but many of the ones that get shackled that way end up with characteristics more human than those of cats and dogs. They can dance, for a start. They sing and talk. And, unlike dogs and cats, they live almost as long as us. Even their hearts beat at the same slow steady rate as a human heart. With their endless noisiness, their constant chatter, to me Moluccan cockatoos seem very human indeed. So it was fun to write a warm-hearted and hopefully funny story with a bird at its heart.

CANDY: And here, my dears, is the cover of Cliff's new book: My Friend Twigs. Ready ... steady ... AWWWWWWWW!

Last time Cliff visited the Slushpile, he gave us some great ideas on how to create a really powerful hero or heroine. But what about the VILLAINS?

Cliff’s fiction is full of memorable ones, and I wanted to pick his brains about how to create one. After all that warm-heartedness, here's what he offered me.

Enemies, opponents, antagonists, villains. Whatever you like to call them, we love to hate them! Try to imagine your favourite books or films without the evil guys. How about Harry Potter without Voldemort or Draco Malfoy?

Or Lord of the Rings without Sauron and the orcs? Where wouldTwilight be without the James Coven? Or the Baudelaire children without Count Olaf?



Readers adore enemies in stories because it’s a secret pleasure to explore the darker side of our imaginations. But the reason we DEMAND them is because the nasty things they do to our heroes and heroines help us to love them so much more.

A good villain makes you sympathise with the hero so completely that the reader becomes desperate for them to succeed. Below are 18 top tips on creating great enemies in your own stories.

TIP 1 - Make your villain cause pain and suffering to characters we either like or who are innocent or defenceless.

This is the easiest and most effective way to make your reader hate a character. The more sadistic/merciless they are, the more we despise them. Voldemort attacks the defenceless Harry Potter when he’s just a tiny baby, instantly achieving villain status. Darth Vader destroys an ENTIRE PLANET.



As world-leading novelist Stephen King says: ‘To create a great opponent, make them hunger for other people’s suffering. That way they become the embodiment of pure evil.’

Tip 2 – Make them strongly want something the reader will hate them for.

In the Lion King, Scar wants to be head of the Pride. In Stormbreaker Herod Sayle can’t wait to kill as many school children in England as possible. In Lord of the Rings Sauron wants to enslave the world. We automatically detest him for it.

Tip 3 - Give the enemy control over your hero’s life.

Miss Trunchbull in Matilda locks kids away in the vicious ‘chokey’. Put your own villain in charge where no one can stop them.

Tip 4 - Make them appear more powerful than your hero.

Harry Potter is just a school boy wizard, but Voldemort is a master of the dark arts. The reader becomes consumed with fear for the hero.

Tip 5 – Ensure they break promises.

In Stormbreaker, Nadia Vole pretends she’s going to free Alex – then dumps him into a tank with a giant jellyfish. ‘When a character breaks a promise or betrays a trust, the audience takes that betrayal personally,’ says Orson Scott Card, award winning SF writer. ‘The villain has achieved true villain status, and readers will be longing for their downfall.’

Tip 6 - Make them a coward.

Malfoy’s always hiding behind Crabbe and Goyle or the influence of his family name. A hero never does that.

Tip 7 - Make them stuck up and condescending towards others.

We hate characters who think they are superior to us, people who sneer or treat powerful, influential, rich people better than the poor and powerless.

Tip 8 - Make them boast.

A hero remains modest. When things go right for villains they take all the credit whether they deserve it or not.

From Kids With Children

Tip 9 - Keep them humourless.

A heroine retains a sense of humour. When things go wrong for opponents, have them whine. Or, if they do joke, always make it at someone else’s expense.

Tip 10 - Have them blame everyone but themselves.

When things go wrong, villains always accuse and criticize others. Ensure yours do the same.

Tip 11 – Emphasise their vanity.

We automatically dislike anyone who brags about their looks, strength, deeds or the amount of money they have. Think of Moriarty.

Tip 12 - Make them cheats and liars.

Heroes are honest. Villains can’t be trusted.

Tip 13 - Give them no regard for other people’s feelings.

A hero is self-sacrificing and considers other people. Villains don’t care what happens to anyone else. They only help themselves. Think of the contempt the James clan in Twilight have for all humans.

Tip 14 - Make them petty instead of noble.

When Harry meets Ron on the train to Hogwarts he shares his food with him – he’s generous and warm-hearted. But what does Malfoy do? Cracks jokes about Ron’s poverty and talks about his ‘useless’ family. We despise him for it.

Tip 15 - Make them ugly OR exceptionally handsome.

We tend to distrust both. Think of the lovely but cruel step-mother in Snow White. Or Gaston in Beauty and the Beast.

From Disney via Giphy

Tip 16 - Villains rarely doubt themselves.

In Twilight hero Edward is constantly worried that he cannot trust himself with Bella. That makes him more human. In Hercules, Hades is only looking out for Number One. Himself. Villains just pursue their own interests and don’t question themselves or care who they step on.

Tip 17 - Build up the suspense by not revealing the villain too soon.

Sauron in Lord of the Rings is just a vast eye – and all the more alarming because we never really know what he looks or sounds like. To create real fear, keep you reader guessing for as long as possible. In Toy Story 3, cuddly Lotso Huggin Bear turns out to be a megalomaniac.

Tip 18 – Have people talk about your enemy fearfully.

The importance of this final tip is often neglected, but not by great storytellers. Characters are so afraid of Voldemort that they won’t even say his name. Sauron hardly appears in Lord of the Rings, but when you read the novel you always feel his presence. The reason is that even tough warriors like Aragorn never stop talking about him apprehensively. When great and brave characters like Aragorn and Gandalf regard Sauron as immensely dangerous, readers automatically get nervous. Have your own strongest characters do the same. Use them to stoke up the fear of your enemy. It works beautifully.



These tips come from workshops that Cliff performs at school visits. If you are interested in Cliff's Villains Factsheet, you can contact him on his website and he'll be happy to send you one. Notes from the Slushpile thanks you for this brilliant guest post, Cliff!

Deepening Character: a conversation with Cliff McNish, author of dark teen fiction

Cliff 'I'm crap at technology' McNish

By Candy Gourlay

Whenever I meet up with YA author Cliff McNish to talk about craft, he always comes up with amazing wisdom about deepening character. Two weeks ago, my favourite Cliff novel Breathe was listed on the Librarian's Top 100 (alongside Daphne De Maurier, AA Milne, CS Lewis and yes, Neil Gaiman). I thought this was as good a time as any to draw Cliff out of his technology averse shell (If I sound a bit stroppy, I am - the man doesn't know how to sell himself) ... and FORCE him to share his wisdom on deepening character.If you haven't read his books, they're dark, twisted and sometimes creepy - unlike their charming and not at all creepy creator.

Candy: Hi Cliff!  I was chuffed to see Breathe on the librarians' Top 100 Books list! I loved that book and always thought it deserved far more notice than it got. How did you feel when you saw it there?

Cliff: I was a bit shocked and happily surprised. Breathe came out in 2006, which is already quite some time ago. Nice it's still recalled fondly and to be above Winnie the Pooh. Alphabetically above, but hey ...

Candy: You began your writing career with high fantasy with the Doomspell Trilogy then the Silver Sequence. By contrast to the vast worlds, Breathe is rather more intimate, a ghost story. Was it a turning point in your writing journey?

Cliff: The truth is that Breathe did not feel like a turning point at the time, merely a continuation of fantastical elements on a smaller scale.

But of course it is a chamber piece, not the galaxy, or the whole world changing this time, but a house, and only its four walls to hide inside. In the first draft that led to a lot of repetition; my learning curve as a writer, if I achieved anything, was to adapt to vary the novel by employing story shifts and character depths rather than relying on the set pieces and colour palette I had for the Doomspell trilogy and Silver sequence. I wanted physical constraint, but I had to handle character more adroitly to keep the story flowing.

Candy: Whenever we meet to talk shop you often talk about taking every opportunity to deepen character. What do you mean by deepening character and how would someone know when it's been achieved?

Cliff: By character deepening I mean anything that helps us to identify more deeply and personally with a character in a story- anything that brings them away from cliche, into real life, and helps to differentiate them from other characters and make us really identify with them.

By character deepening I mean anything that helps us to identify more deeply and personally with a character - anything that brings them away from cliche, into real life

We tend to do that when they show classic values: courage under pressure, humour when the situation is dark, taking responsibility when it is easier to back out. When they behave, in other words, the way we expect adults to when they are given real choices.

Candy: There are some who would argue that younger fiction does not require such attention to character. What would you say to that?

Cliff: Children's stories need characters that show deep characteristics just as much as adults' books. So when I look at my own and other writers' manuscripts I'm always asking how I make those choice moments as powerful as I can. It's easy to miss opportunities - and deepening a character normally has a much bigger payoff than a plot twist.





Candy: How about a list of tips ... we like that on the Slushpile.


Cliff: Okay, here are some hints and tips on deepening of characters we really want our readers to love.

Heap huge problems on them right from the start.

When we first meet Harry Potter, J.K.Rowling has already dumped a whole world of problems on him: his parents are dead, he lives on hand-me-downs, the Dursleys are nasty to him, he has a disfiguring scar – oh, and Lord Voldemort, the darkest and most powerful wizard in the world, is trying to kill him! Always, always, get sympathy for your hero/heroine by giving them really big problems to deal with from the outset. The bigger the problems, the better. Plunge them into terrible trouble. If you do that the reader will start desperately wanting them to get out of that trouble as well.

Keep building up the pressure!

In Stormbreaker, Alex Rider starts off by losing his last living relative and almost being killed in a car dumpster yard. But Anthony Horowitz skilfully builds the pressure from that point. He throws at Alex garrotting bikers, poisonous jellyfish and professional killers. By the end of the novel the combined forces of Herod Sayle enterprises are all trying to destroy him. Even if you’re writing comedy, never relent the pressure for long. Ideally each pressure event in your story should be bigger than the last as well, until at the end your hero/heroine is alone, facing the worst possible pressure, against enemies that have never looked more powerful.

Give them a noble desire.

All great heroines and heroes at some point give up something they want personally for the greater good. In Twilight Edward dearly wants to taste Bella’s blood. Instead he chooses to deny himself and protect her with his own life.

In the final battle scene of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone Voldemort offers to bring Harry Potter’s parents back if he’ll join him. When Harry (already half dead at this point) says no, sacrificing his most personal desire, and instead stands and fights because it is the right thing to do, he achieves true hero status.

Provide at least one very powerful enemy to confront.

Where would Roald Dahl’s Matilda be without Miss Trunchbull?

Or Bella and Edward without the James Clan? Great villains help us to identify much more strongly with heroes.

Give them a sense of humour.

We’re prepared to forgive even villains a great deal if they make us laugh. It works doubly so for our heroes. Keep them seeing the amusing side no matter what happens. Plus, when they can still smile under pressure, it shows their inner strength.

Make them doubt themselves.

Real heroes and heroines aren’t sure they can cope. Their self-doubt makes them more human, more believable. It also makes it harder for them to overcome their problems, so the triumph when they do so is even greater. In Twilight Edward doubts he can restrain himself from drinking Bella’s blood. In The Story of Tracy Beaker Tracy can’t even admit to herself that she’s struggling. She cries all the time, but pretends the cause is just hay fever.

The greatest heroes are very human indeed – and that’s why we love it when they succeed.

Give them a dark side.

Harry Potter speaks parceltongue, linking him to Voldemort.

In Twilight, Edward is a real vampire with an intense desire to drink human blood. Tracy Beaker has so many behavioural problems that she’s constantly messing up her chances of happiness. We love our heroes to be struggling with powerful issues of their own – when they are their own worst enemies!

Have them help the defenceless and the weak.

Real heroes constantly place themselves in danger to help others. In The Hunger Games Katniss Everdeen volunteers to enter the games to save her little sister.

In Lord of the Rings every single member of the Fellowship repeatedly puts his own life in danger to protect Frodo, the ringbearer.

Make them brave enough to overcome their worst fear.

We love characters who are physically brave. But far more important than that is that at some point your hero or heroine has to be brave enough to confront their worst fear and overcome it. Tracy Beaker’s greatest fear is that her mum will never come back for her at the children’s home. In the end she accepts that her mum doesn’t care enough about her to ever return.

It’s amazingly brave of Tracy to admit that to herself. After waiting so long, it’s the bravest possible thing she could possibly do. What’s your hero/heroine’s worst fear? What’s the hardest thing for them to do?

Keep them modest.

Sam Gamgee in Lord of the Rings just wants to go back home to Hobbiton and lead the quiet life of a gardener.

He never boasts, just quietly does the right thing. Keep your hero humble. As part of this, make sure they always have a deep regard for other people’s feelings, especially those people who are usually ignored. We love this in a character.

Give them a talent.

Harry Potter is superb at using magic, especially the dark arts. In The Hunger Games Katniss Everdeen’s gifts for foraging and hunting are what keep her alive.

Even apparently normal Bella in Twilight discovers she has the unique talent of being able to prevent vampires using their powers. We truly love our heroes/heroines to be unusually good at something.

Ensure they grow as characters.

By daring to confront Voldemort, Harry Potter becomes much stronger than the schoolboy who was scared to confront the Dursleys at the beginning of book 1. By the end of The Secret Garden Mary Leonard has brought happiness back to a family and is no longer the selfish, spiteful girl she was at the start.

From the Light Opera Works production 

By confronting their worst fears and their enemies they’ve become someone we can deeply admire, someone the reader wants to be themselves. If you do the same with the characters in your own stories readers will love you for it.


Candy: Well ... that's an AMAZING list. No excuses for cardboard characters now, everyone. Cliff, If you had a chance to go back and edit any of the books on your long backlist, what would you do?

Cliff: If I had a chance to alter anything in my backlist it might be to rewrite the three novels of my Silver Sequence. I think that these are probably my most original fiction, but I made a mistake in aiming such an unusual plotline and such bizarre characters at my Doomspell readers, aged primarily 8-12.

At the time I only had experience in writing for that age group, so I naturally wrote for them and I thoughi (very naively) that because the Doomspell series was successful I could test them with something much more original.

In hindsight, I should have made my characters teenagers - they're a lot more flexible as readers, and like having conventions challenged more. The 8-12s are still discovering conventional literature, and, when it comes to fantasy, are much more comfortable with the tropes of magic, witches, wizards, ogres etc.

In hindsight, I should have made my characters teenagers - they're a lot more flexible as readers, and like having conventions challenged more.

The Silver Sequence was a hybrid of SF, fantasy and a touch of horror. In adult fiction, this branch is called 'Weird SF' and a number of great writers are mining it (including China Mieville), but it's tough to get younger kids to buy it without watering it down so much you might as well not bother. So I feel that was a missed opportunity.

To be honest, every time a book is less successful than others you always end up navel-gazing and second-guessing why, and sometimes you never know (Savannah Grey is another favourite of mine that sold very moderately), but self-doubt tends in my experience to lead to good things.

It slows output right down (bad) but forces you to think carefully about your craft and change hopefully for the better (good!).

In my experience very successful authors often reach a stage where they start to churn out one book after another fast, and they sell well enough to encourage that. Plus if you write fast it FEELS good, but that can be very deceptive. Most of their novels end up being weaker than the ones they laboured over, and are soon forgotten except by their immediate fans. The key is to write an extraordinary novel. There's no point aiming for anything else. In the end no one will care whether you write one novel or twenty - but if that one novel is amazing it will be remembered. The others simply won't.

In the end no one will care whether you write one novel or twenty - but if that one novel is amazing it will be remembered. The others simply won't.

Candy: The key is to write an extraordinary novel ... the key is to write an extraordinary novel ... the key ... oh wait, gotta finish the interview. So, what are you working on at the moment and why?


Cliff: I have just finished a new novel called GOING HOME. It's a total departure for me - a heartfelt comedy about four dogs stuck in a rescue center. Will they ever get out? A novel for 8-12s (my original age-group), it was first suggested by my wife many years ago, and when she passed away it felt very natural to write it. It's unleashed a much warmer thread in my mind and writing, which I hope to continue for a while. Doesn't mean I won;t write darker stuff any more, though... I'm just saving it up to unleash in one cold gust.

Candy: It's so inspiring to hear from someone with your pedigree and experience in young fiction. Can we end with a look into your crystal ball ... where do you think the children's book world might be headed after the digital revolution has settled down?

Cliff: I think children's fiction will be hearty and healthy long after the digital revolution has changed the media and the way people read books. Why?

One, because people will always want superior-quality stories. Everyone tells stories all day long, but professional writers are paid to do so because they are in some ways more skilled than others at telling them. That's our raison d'etre.

But two: children's fiction (and teen) has now been established as a thriving living force in fiction at a level undreamed of two decades ago.The very best writers are now devoting their lives to it, not just specialist children's writers. l don't see any reason why that will change.

The very best writers are now devoting their lives to children's fiction, not just specialist children's writers. l don't see any reason why that will change. 

Writers may get paid a little less but they've always been paid little. And readers themselves via fanzines, their own stories/online blogging etc, may take up some of the space currently occupied by professional storytelling, but who is to say that their writing isn't extraordinary in an entirely new way?

Professional writers won't lose out ultimately in any case because all of this onlineiness is just increasing the interest and attention on STORY itself and its importance. There are more stories than ever. And fires feed more flames.

We shouldn't be afraid of power being taken out of our hands. Aren't we supposed to be the ones with bold imaginations encouraging children to stretch theirs and imagine other possible lives and futures?

Candy: Cowabunga! Thanks for visiting us on the Slushpile, Cliff - congrats again on Breathe getting listed by the librarians ... and see, the Internet doesn't hurt ... much!