What do great writers like to read? Terry Tyler and David Vinjamuri stop by

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In the sporadic series where I ask bestselling authors about their reading habits and inspiration, I again turn to two very different authors.

David Vinjamuri is the author of bestselling military thrillers Binder and Operator, as well as two books of non-fiction.

It’s hard to categorize Terry Tyler’s writing other than as “contemporary literary fiction” — or maybe, “really good contemporary fiction that you can’t put down until the last page, even if you’re not the type of reader who normally reads contemporary literature about believable characters.” She has published six novels since 2011, including her latest, Full Circle, plus a collection of short stories, Nine Lives. 

Their books are very different, but both David and Terry are talented, professional authors who know how to spin a smooth, gripping tale. I asked them about what they look for when they open a book. 

Name three characteristics of books that you like. What makes you keep reading a book? What are some books that you weren't able to put down until you finished them?

David Vinjamuri: Three characteristics of books I like:

• a great “hook” in the first sentence that surprises or intrigues me
• deep and realistic characters and relationships that don’t smack of wish fulfillment by the author
• brisk pacing — a sense that every scene in the book is integral to the overall plot.

Terry Tyler: I like back-story that’s another story in itself; Jackie Collins does this particularly well. I love to read lots of different characters’ points of view, and novels that keep moving from one dimension of the story to another, like GRR Martin’s A Song Of Ice And Fire series (Game of Thrones).

What keeps me reading I find impossible to put my finger upon; it just depends if it has a particular spark that appeals to me.

Books I can’t put down: Something In Disguise by Elizabeth Jane Howard — even on its umpteenth reading!  A perfect book.  Anything by John Boyne or Phillipa Gregory.  Recently, Life After Life by Kate Atkinson.  I remember reading Jeffrey Archer’s A Matter of Honour in six hours all in one go, about 30 years ago, when I was meant to be going out somewhere and didn’t — many people criticize him, but that book’s plot was outstanding.

Do you consciously try to emulate these books? If so, what form does that take: plot, structure, characters, settings, author's voice or word choice?

Terry Tyler: I would never (not even subconsciously, I hope!) try to emulate someone else’s work. However, one thing I did nick from Susan Howatch was telling a story in the first person by several characters, having one pick up where the last one left off. There are five of her books that take this form — Cashelmara is my favourite. What I like about writing a novel this way is that you can show not only two (or more) sides of a story, but also the different aspects of a personality: how people see someone, and how they really are, inside. Not all my books have this structure, but in the ones that have I enjoy working out the best character to tell each part of the story.

David Vinjamuri: My Michael Herne books are partly an homage to the Matt Helm series written by Donald Hamilton from 1960 to 1993. So there’s some intentional similarity in tone and structure. One of the things I loved about the Helm series was the noir-ish realism. The Herne series is reviewed by a U.S. Army Special Warfare trainer at Fort Bragg for technical accuracy.

Do you try to avoid any of the techniques or conventions followed by your favourite writers?

David Vinjamuri: Herne is not betrayed by his love interest in each of my books as Helm tends to be in Donald Hamilton’s series.

Terry Tyler: No, I don’t think so.  Most writers I read these days don’t write in my genre — I read mostly historical fiction, or thriller-ish books with a male protagonist, or non-fiction.  One thing I do try to avoid, though, which appears in many books, is too much description.  I skip-read it, as it doesn’t make me visualise the place or the people any more than if those words weren’t there.  This is why I rarely describe rooms, for instance.  I think readers conjure up their own pictures.  

What rules of writing do you intentionally break?

David Vinjamuri: I don’t break rules, but I do always think of John Steinbeck when I write.  I ask myself whether there's a way to write something more concisely, economically, efficiently?  Though many well-regarded literary novels spend pages and pages on description, internal dialogue and characterization, I’ve never felt like I have that kind of time in the thriller genre.

Terry Tyler: I haven’t read any “how to write” books, nor indeed an article of that type for ages.  Someone told me a while back that “you can’t have a big chunk of backstory”; if that’s a rule, it’s one of which I take no notice; I write as much as is necessary.  If it seems right to start a sentence with “And” or “But,”  I do it — not too often, though.  I use metaphors and similes if they fit, and the odd cliché if it really serves a purpose, too.  I don’t think I know any of the other “rules,” but I expect I break loads of them. 

With such “how to” articles and books, I know more experienced writers can get a bit sniffy about them, but they’ve served to remind me about many bad habits it would be easy to fall back into: using too many variations on “he said,” for instance, or writing sentences like “bad habits it would be easy to fall back into”!  I don’t know the grammatical term, but I think “it” used like that is very sloppy – when the “it” refers not to an item, but something like “it was raining outside.” Can anyone tell me the name for that?  I hope I’ll always be open to advice and learning more. 

Thank you very much for appearing on my blog, David and Terry.

Terry Tyler has published six contemporary drama novels on Amazon, and a collection of short stories.  She has a writers’ blog on the UK Arts Directory, about books and self-publishing, and a personal one on which she writes about everything else.  She has just finished a longer family saga (publication date to be announced), and hopes to spend the rest of this year on its sequel, and a Christmas novella.  Terry lives in the northeast of England with her husband.

Read a review of her novel, You Wish, published on this blog in June 2012.

The bestselling author of the thrillers, Operator and Binder, David Vinjamuri also writes the “Brand Truth” column online for Forbes, where he covers brands, advertising and publishing. In addition to the thrillers, he is author of Accidental Branding: How Ordinary People Build Extraordinary Brands and Understanding Self-Publishing: 2013. David has appeared on television as a brand expert on the BBC, Fox Business News, Bloomberg TV and MSNBC and has been quoted in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, BusinessWeek, and Investor’s Business Daily. David is Adjunct Instructor of Marketing at New York University and the founder of ThirdWay Brand Trainers, a leading brand marketing training company. 

Fantastic, chatty and readable: Terry Tyler on writing style

How important is writing style for the author and the reader? This week, Terry Tyler, independent author of four (soon to be five) novels that, like most of those I enjoy most, defy genre boundaries.

How would you describe your own writing style?

In some ways this is very difficult to answer, Scott, because I’m so close to it. I can tell you how some readers describe it, ie, chatty and easily readable. A couple of people have said that I write about serious or “heavy” subjects in a light way without trivialising them, which is a compliment I treasure — I’d hate to think I came across as superficial, though I don’t really do overly deep! I suppose I can best describe my style as conversational, even during the narrative parts. Some people find my novels amusing (as opposed to laughable, one hopes!!) — any humour tends to be observational; for instance, in my most recent novel, Dream On, I have a scene where a character is forced to go onto The Jeremy Kyle Show — okay, it comes from years of watching Jeremy Kyle whilst doing the ironing — I’ve never deliberately set out to write a humorous book; sometimes, that can come across as too formulaic, too studied, to be truly funny.

Presumably, Jeremy Kyle, the UK's answer to Jerry Springer.
Image source: Wikipedia

Are there any authors whose style you admire? Do you try to emulate them?

No, I don’t try to emulate anyone (*gets all sniffy* !) — can’t see any point in that! You have to write with your own voice. I admire loads of writers’ styles, in particular Bill Bryson, Dorothy Parker, Kate Atkinson, PJ O’Rourke, Jackie Collins, Evelyn Waugh, Lauren Weisberger, William Boyd — I could go on all day, but they are many and varied, as you can probably see already!

Are there authors whose writing style you dislike?

 Never been able to get on with DH Lawrence, John Grisham, JRR Tolkien or Sebastian Faulks. That Shakespeare bloke, some of his stuff bores me witless, too ... however, I wouldn’t go as far to say that I actually dislike them; they’re just not my cup of tea. The only stuff I actively dislike is the pretentious and the badly written.

How important is your writing style to you? Are you happy with your style, or are there aspects of it you try to change during rewriting or editing?

 I’d never try to change my style; how I write is how I write. I just try to improve it all the time. When I’m rewriting/editing, I’m constantly looking for ways to phrase a sentence more tightly, more succinctly, or more vividly. Obviously there are words and phrases I overuse, for which alternatives have to be found, but I think everyone has those! I’d love to be able to write a historical novel, but I don’t think the way I write would work with such a genre. Anyway, I don’t think I’ve got the patience for the year’s research that might be necessary for writing a good one!

How can readers identify your writing style? Are there particular words or kinds of words that you tend to favour? Sentence structures? Or is it more in the story, the pacing or the characters?

Again, it’s hard to say! But I do tend towards short punchy sentences to make impact, at times, and will, occasionally, begin a sentence with an “and,” a “but” or an “or” if it feels right — so shoot me! I use something that I’ve recently discovered is called “free indirect speech,” which is when the narrative consists of the thoughts of the character, without actually writing “he thought” this and that. It’s just something I’ve always done; I didn’t realise it had a name until I read it on the blog of someone who is doing an MA in creative writing! Most of my books are written in this fashion; I change from one POV to another all the way through them.

As far as the story goes, I write about real people in real situations. All my books are very current, dealing with themes and circumstances that affect so many people today, such as divorce, infidelity, alcohol and drug abuse, diet obsession, tragic accidents, unrequited love, situations one can get into via befriending people on social networking sites, Internet dating, TV talent shows, women who want to “have it all” — you name it!

The feedback I get from most readers of my books is that my characters are like people they know. I’ve read words to this effect in many, many of my reviews, and for that I am eternally grateful. As for kinds of words — I don’t write in flowery language; I think I write in quite a spare fashion. I tend to skip-read long descriptive passages, so I don’t include them in my own work. The dialogue is always appropriate to the person who is speaking, without overdoing it — for instance, in Dream On and its sequel Full Circle I have a Geordie [north-east English — SB] character, and I have to make sure that he doesn’t say “Why aye” and “Howay” too often. I’m allergic to clichés in dialogue, and work hard to make sure that my characters talk realistically — even if it means their language is a bit ripe at times, or that they say things that are not grammatically correct!

Do you think writing with a female protagonist and POV, as opposed to a male POV, changes the style, in terms of word choice, sentence structure or other language elements?

Oh yes, of course, because women think differently from men. I think the mistake some writers make is writing the POV of their character of the opposite sex in the way they would like them to think, not how they actually do think. Have you ever read any Jeffrey Archer? His female characters are completely cardboard! But then, all people think differently, regardless of their sex, don’t they? It’s all about keeping in character when you’re writing that particular person, and not making them say or do something just because it moves the plot to the required place.

How important do you think writing style is to an author's commercial success?

I’d like to say that individual writing style is terrifically important to such, but I suspect that, sadly, this is not true; some books that are imitations of well-known authors sell very well. For instance, I sometimes think that all a writer has to do is stick a cartoon of a girl in high heels on the front cover, along with a cupcake or two and some pink swirly writing, and it doesn’t matter if the style is derivative, it’ll still sell to the huge army of avid chick-lit readers! Then there’s the ever growing erotica market — I suspect the fans of this genre are more interested in the particular area of eroticism with which the book deals than the writing style!

But style as a whole, rather than just individual? Yes, that makes a difference. You see a lot of people tweeting their books thus: “If you like John Grisham (or Sophie Kinsella/Nick Hornby/A N Other Famous Author) you’ll love.... etc etc.” Obviously the comparison with the style of an established author is seen as a way of acquiring new readers. Hey, I’m as guilty of this sort of thing the next person — I don’t compare myself to well-known writers, but if others do I will quote them in a tweet! Aside from anything else, it gives an idea of what the prospective reader might be letting him/herself in for, doesn’t it?

So I suppose my answer is yes, writing style is important to commercial success. Ideally, the writers with a style all of their own will break out and become the most successful. Ideally; but then we don’t live in an ideal world, do we?

Thank you so much for inviting me to appear on your blog, Scott! I hope this interview has been of interest to you and your readers.

Thank you, Terry, for a delightful and inspiring interview!

Terry Tyler lives in the north of England with her husband. She has four novels on Amazon, of the contemporary women's fiction variety, though she is happy to say that men read them too! Her fifth, Full Circle, will be published within the next two months, all going well. She is about to start work on her sixth, which will be explore the subject of stalking, from both the victim and the stalker's point of view, a subject she has touched upon in previous novels.

Terry's books:

You Wish

Amazon UK

Amazon USA
Amazon Canada

Nobody's Fault

Amazon UK
Amazon USA
Amazon Canada

The Other Side

Amazon UK

Amazon USA
Amazon Canada

Dream On

Amazon UK
Amazon USA
Amazon Canada

Independent book review: You Wish

You Wish, by Terry Tyler

Published 2011

I admit it, I am probably not the target audience that Terry Tyler had in mind when she wrote You Wish. I’m the wrong sex. But I still liked it.

You Wish could be categorized as “urban paranormal fantasy.” Set in the southern part of the UK and spanning a period from the 80s to 2010, You Wish is about Ruth, a woman who scrapes out a living as a psychic advisor at county fairs and other events, and some of the people she comes into contact with.As a girl, Ruth finds a magical wishing stone: supposedly, if you touch it and make a wish, the wishes come true. Ruth is deeply conflicted: on one level, she laughs off such a possibility; on another, she’s afraid of the power of an object to grant wishes and keeps the stone hidden most of her life.

However, one day her young daughter sets up a little display at her parents’ psychic display at a local fair; for a charitable donation, anyone can make a wish on the stone. Three people wish on the stone. One, Petra, wishes she could fall in love like all her friends do; Sarah wishes she could lose weight to achieve her lifelong goal of wearing Size Zero clothes; and a childless couple wishes they could conceive a baby.The story traces how events conspire to realize these wishes—and the horrifying, yet easily foreseeable effects on the characters’ lives.

Independent author
Terry Tyler

What I liked

Tyler skillfully weaves the separate stories of the characters together, even bringing some of them back together near the end. She also brings tells Ruth’s back-story well, showing how the young Ruth acquired the wishing stone and the emotional roller-coaster a school-age girl goes through. I have to admit, I’ve seldom had much patience for the drama of the average teenage girl in fiction, but Tyler really knows how to make her reader see through Ruth’s eyes. In a few chapters, Tyler also shows very believably exactly what Ruth is afraid of the stone’s power.

Another thing I really liked is the realism of the story. All the characters were three-dimensional; no one was just an evocation of Tyler’s favourite TV show characters. And the marginal lives of the modern psychics, pathetically selling paintings and psychic readings at fairs and conventions to supplement their social assistance cheques, skimping to raise two children while finding money for dope, shows me that Tyler is not only a skilled observer and reporter of life around her. She doesn’t buy the romantic line that psychics and marginal artists sell. She also shares (I think) my own understanding of “magic.”

Weaknesses

There were very few things about this book to criticize. Sure, there were occasional typos and awkward sentences, but I defy you to find me any book without a few. (Stieg Larsson fans, give up now.)


There were some long information dumps, about the back-stories of Petra (the girl who wished to fall in love) and, to a lesser extent, Sarah. Tyler wrote several passages about Petra’s pursuit of her true love as if she were summing it up for a book report. Many critics have told me to “show, not tell” in my own writing, and for the most part, I think they’re right.

Summary

Overall, however, this is an excellent story, skillfully told. Congratulations to Terry Tyler for proving, yet again, the independent authors are producing excellent books.

4*