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| Bateman's breakthrough |
Mr Colin Bateman writes humorous
crime fiction. If you have a funny bone in your body then he will tickle it
within pages, leaving you to clean up a mess of dead villains and destroyed
relationships with a smile on your face. That style of writing is what led me
to attend Mr Bateman's weekend workshop on writing a bestseller.
First things first and let's
establish the credentials of the mononymous Bateman: author of 23 novels, two
of which are bestsellers by the 100,000+ paper copies sales definition
(Divorcing Jack and Mystery Man); screen-writer of several films and TV series;
most importantly, a very funny and modest man who is generous with his
knowledge and experience. He describes himself as a mid-list author with an
occasional bestseller. I describe him as a pain in the self-publishing arse
because any attempt to put Barnes books on a shop shelf is swamped by a raft of
Bateman titles.
Now to put the workshop in context.
Sixteen people in a hotel conference room next to the marina in Bangor, County
Down, Northern Ireland.
We were a mixture of beginners, burgeoning crime writers and Bateman groupies
(me, obviously). Tea, coffee, scones, draught beer and weather to take the
paint off a supertanker. Our hopes and fears ranged from how to expertly
develop a plot for a crime thriller to touching the Bateman coat tails in hope
of skills transfer by osmosis (me again). The learning was spread over two 9
'til 5 days of full-on discourse, discussion and group exercises.
We covered all the writing basics -
research, planning, genre, plot, settings, characters, narrative voice,
dialogue, self-editing and taboos (I can't mention those).
