Coffee Talks

With Gavin Wilson

With TheOrangutan

Hi, Gavin, thank you for taking the time to get involved with Coffee Community. It's great to hear from authors like yourself and get to know a little bit about what motivates you to write longer works of fiction.

No worries, my pleasure =]

So, to begin, tell us a little bit about yourself as an author on Wattpad. For anyone who hasn't met you before, how would you describe your fiction?

Odd.

Sorry, more than one word? Weird? A little off the wall, and usually short. I started writing short stories as a way of emptying my brain of a lot of odd ideas that had been buzzing around up there for many years, and that might explain a lot about my writing style. But eventually, I ventured into long-form works too and ended up producing Arthurian Adventure, Horror Fanfiction, Science Fiction and some Fantasy too. But I suspect I'm still mostly a short story writer at heart.

In more than one word please XD... Writing for sustained periods is a hurdle that every writer, beginner or experienced, faces from time to time. What powers you through those longer bursts of creativity and keeps you focused?

It's actually quite rare for me to write longer pieces of work these days simply due to lack of time, but when I have done them I've made sure that I've set aside a chunk of time to write, and stick to writing during that time. The internet is a wonderful too, but often it's mostly made of cat videos and other distractions. Remove the distractions, set aside time and go for it. Coffee and music are also useful. Having a deadline seems to help me too, and a rising sense panic that I need to have something done so that I don't disappoint someone tends to make me type faster.

What top tips would you advise for getting a novella or a longer piece of fiction off the starting line? What kind of story developments motivate you to see it through to the end?

Planning tends to help. I know some folks can fly by the seat of their pants through writing a longer piece, but I can't. I tend to write out a rough skeleton storyline, then add the padding as I go. But there's no point writing the story if you're not enjoying it yourself. If you're liking the characters (or hating them), enjoying where the story is going, and it gets you going emotionally then you'll finish it.

Most of the better longform writers I know do a great deal of planning prior to writing a story, and they'll have rooms full of post-it notes, complex spreadsheets, endless bits of paper, stuff stuck together with bits of tape and crazy glue with feathers and visual clues added to them or other things that seem to help them work through the story. Whatever you're using though, make sure it's out of reach of small children, animals, or people likely to tidy up.

It seems all writers have that crazy tape, glue and feather side to them. But at the end of the day How much do you edit on the fly? Or do you prefer to edit after you've finished the initial draft?

If I spot a mistake then I'll fix it, but I try to get the idea out on the page first, then go back and edit. Ultimately everyone finds a method that works best for them, but until you've written for a while it may take you a while to work it out.

Get the idea on paper first, play with it, shape it, then save it. Don't delete things. Hoard the sentences you've written, you never know when you may want to recycle them. But I'd suggest editing is best done at the end.

Knowing that you are a fan of Horror and Science Fiction... and some fantasy, what kind of novella -- be it any style, theme, or genre -- would you like to see emerge from the Open Novella Contest?

I love Science Fiction and Fantasy stuff generally, and the scope within those genres is huge. Slightly odd, dark, or unusual is often stuff I like, but I also love traditional sword and sorcery fantasy and Hard SciFi. As long as a story has compelling characters, a great storyline it can be pretty much anything though.

Lastly, because we're always curious... What was your ever first experience with the power of the written language?

As a child, I suspect the first story I really fell in love with and read over and over again was Robinson Crusoe. It had adventure, struggle, loss, triumph, and disaster, and was a great tale of building yourself up from absolutely nothing despite whatever came at you. That style of a storyline as always resonated with me and I suspect fits very well into my love of all things SciFi and Fantasy and many stories in those genres are the main character hitting rock bottom and getting back on their feet again.

As an adult though various authors hit me square on and made me think. The likes of Arthur C Clarke, Larry Niven, Neil Gaiman, Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett and others showed me that you could have thoughtful, clever stories that could grip you by the imagination and take you on a voyage to places you could never see, yet make you see them. They made me live the lives of hundreds of different people without having to leave the pages of a book, and they taught me about people; the good, the bad, and the ugly. And eventually they inspired me to try and emulate them and take other people on a journey with me. That's a powerful thing, and writing is my favourite superpower.

It's been great hearing from you Gavin, and thank you for sharing your valuable knowledge in storytelling.

Best wishes for your future endeavours from Coffee Community.