Lose your blinkers

Here's a great creative writing tip that we as publishers have passed on to many of our authors. It's about recording detail and it doesn't matter whether you're writing a novel that you're hoping to get published, or self publishing a business book or an encyclopedia of Bulgarian beetroot jokes.

Most of us claim to be observant, but are we? Can you accurately describe the house across the street without looking? Try it now! How about the woman who works in the local Co-op? The route you follow to visit a loved one? Our brains automatically ignore anything that isn't immediately relevant so we become blind to the all-important details. I was shocked the other day when I couldn't remember the colour of my daughter's rabbit, and she's had it for nearly ten years. I look at the rabbit every day but I don't see it properly because I don't like it.

Don't take the world for granted. Look at things you wouldn't normally look at and see them in a new light. Notice the candle burning through the dirty window across the street, the scuffed and long-forgotten wedding ring embedded in the fat, purple finger of the woman in the shop, the graffiti that says 'love sucks' that you pass on the way to your loved one. There are stories everywhere if only you'll look. Your job as a writer is to look for the detail that brings your own story to light. Learning to see the little things will give your work depth as well as fresh ideas, interesting locations and vibrant characters.

Buy a notebook, a small one that will fit in your pocket or your handbag. When you see a detail that resonates with your work jot it down. Write down snatches of conversation, interesting news reports, random interchanges. Draw pictures of a car that one of your characters might own or clothes in shop windows that would make the perfect outfit for one of your characters. Make notes everywhere you go; be the annoying sod who's so busy scribbling that you bump into the Big Issue bloke. Your notebook will become a scrapbook of apparent trifles that might just be vital. Scraps can bring your work to life.

There's a limit of course. It's good to be a detective but don't overplay your part. The average reader doesn't give a toss how many bricks make up your neighbour's wall, or how many times the lady in the wine shop hiccups before she gets your scotch into a bag, or the type of asphalt on your loved one's drive (unless, of course, your loved one is buried in it). You want just the details that will give colour to your characters and their world.