Neil Taylor: 'Often you are too close to your own work to spot the problems'
RELATED COURSES
BY Katie Smart
13th Aug 2024
Neil Taylor studied on our online Writing YA & Children’s Fiction course in 2016. His debut YA novel Anticipation is out now with Neem Tree Press.
We discussed the hot topic of AI, the success of his fellow course mates, and his tips for writing a teenage protagonist.
You studied on our online Writing YA & Children’s Fiction course in 2016. How did studying with us impact your approach to writing?
Hugely. You can read all the advice out there on writing but until you have someone critically appraising your own work I don’t think you can fully appreciate how to apply it.
Often you are too close to your own work to spot the problems. You think you are following the advice, but it takes someone else with a critical writer’s eye to point them out. Catherine Johnson was great at walking the fine line between criticism and encouragement.
Friends and family are great for moral support and encouragement, but I’m afraid they are probably not that great at offering criticism to improve your writing. The expert critique from Catherine, along with the feedback from my fellow classmates, has made me much better at spotting problems with my own writing. I don’t think that is a skill you can learn in a vacuum.
There were many pieces of advice I took from the course, but I think the most valuable was to be more economical with my writing, that often less is more, trust your reader and don’t over-explain, and don’t get carried away with whimsical descriptions.
Many of our students find lifelong writing friends on our courses. Are you still in touch with anyone you met on the course?
Yes, I am still in touch with some of the course members, and it has been encouraging to see their successes. Gillian Purdue writes the Shaw & Darmody crime series with Penguin Ireland, Gianna Pollero’s Monster Donuts trilogy is published by Piccadilly, and Clare Harlow’s brilliant Tidemagic was released in May. Others from the group have also gone on to be published, including Penny Chrimes and Joanne O’Connell.
I think such a high hit rate shows the value of the CBC course.
Your debut YA novel Anticipation follows 17-year-old Riya Sudame after her inheritance of her father’s secret AI algorithm. What inspired you to write an AI thriller?
I guess thrillers are the kind of story I gravitate towards in my own reading. I had a bunch of ideas rattling around my head about how our brains are really just like a set of computer algorithms, and if you know enough about someone you can decode those algorithms. Then I read a piece of research done in 2013 about how AI can predict various social traits just using Facebook likes and from that point the story took shape.
AI is a hot topic when it comes to tech, social media, arts and culture. How did you approach your research of the technology?
I actually wrote the majority of Anticipation before AI caught the public’s attention in such a big way with the advent of ChatGPT in 2022. At the time the media was focused on Social Media, which was kind of the ‘public face’ of AI at the time, but I had a feeling that the more interesting story was what AI was doing behind the scenes. I tried to steer clear of too much technical detail that might bore the reader. I think the interesting questions around AI are more to do with the psychological and ethical questions rather than the technology itself. The technology is moving so quickly that going into deep technical detail is likely to date very quickly. Finally, I tried not to lose sight of the fact that stories are about people, not technology. Time will tell if I got the mix right!
Do you have any tips for writing a teenage protagonist that connects with YA readers?
Strong emotional connections both positive and negative. Dialogue and language are very important and very difficult to get right; you need to make the dialogue sound like a teenager, but without trying to use too many current phrases that teenagers would use. Firstly these tend to date fairly quickly, secondly, this tends to come across as ‘trying too hard to sound like a young person’. I made that mistake early on and found that teenagers do not like to be told they use ‘like’ every other word! Don’t put in too much description and get carried away with poetic phrases that sound nice but don’t add anything to the story – this is something Catherine Johnson was keen to drill into us on the CBC writing course. This is important advice when writing for any age, but particularly for a younger audience. Adult audiences seem a little more tolerant, but YAs do not have the patience to wade through too much description they will just switch off.
I like Elmore Leonard’s advice “Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip”. Paraphrasing, if readers see thick paragraphs of prose they tend to skip to the next piece of dialogue.
What does a typical day of writing look like for you?
During the writing of Anticipation, I was lucky enough to be able to take a career break for a few years. I would get up early, do a bit of exercise, deal with the family melee of breakfast and getting ready for school and work, then do a few chores, then probably start writing about 10am and go through to 3:30 when the kids got home. After spending a bit of time with the kids, I would write through to about 6pm. Often I would do a bit of writing in the evening as well.
I found staying in the house and writing in my little attic office became quite claustrophobic, so I would regularly go off to write in the coffee shops of Durham amongst the students. However, this tends to get quite expensive for an impoverished writer, so I had to limit my coffee shop writing.
I am now back at work in the software industry, so most of my writing is done at the weekend, but I do try to get up early most mornings and do a little bit before the rest of the family wakes up and we start on the mad rush of breakfast and getting ready for school and work.
What novels have you enjoyed reading recently?
I tend to try and read YA books to keep up with what is going on in that space. Some I have particularly enjoyed have been Happy Head – brilliant teen dialogue and narration, A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, and The Loop. However, I have to say my favourite author in the YA space is Derek Landy, the author of the most excellent Skullduggery Pleasant dark fantasy series – his dry wit and snappy dialogue make me smile.
Finally, what’s next for your writing journey?
In the short term I will be trying to promote Anticipation by visiting bookshops and festivals etc. But I also have to try and write a sequel to Anticipation. It is in progress but now I am back at work the challenge will be finding time!
Anticipation is out now!
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