Slogging It Out

Well that was gruelling.

No, not a 25k run. Not a forced march over the freezing mountains. I salute you if you have done either of those things though!

No, Part One of Rebellion of Mars has now gone through Second (proper) draft! I had to re-write so much of it, the ‘S’ letter on my keyboard is starting to wear off! If I rub away any more we may start to have problems!

Thank you everyone for bearing with me as I beat myself over the head with this keyboard, because we’re about to launch into Part Two, which is the main trunk of the book. Thankfully, ideas that were planted as seeds in the first draft are now germinating into plants this time around. Threads are coming together to weave the tapestry.

The Part Two of any book is a sizeable block and should be twice as long as the beginning or the end – in a full novel. You can play with this a little for pacing of course, but the ratio should be kept in order to keep things balanced.

So, 23k words down and 50k to now polish up.

It’ll be alright, I’m prepared to sacrifice a few more keys. And synapses. Synapses are important.

Anyway, that’s it Dear Reader and Good Follower – keep blundering over the hills and far away! 🙂

Still here!

I apologise profusely to everyone, I haven’t posted anything in a few days – I got a couple of posts up, but they weren’t great, so I binned them.

Quickly then, my Dear Readers and Good Followers, the time of March, the Ancient Roman Feast days of Martius, have stolen upon us, although I think sometimes it has been a long time coming…or it feels it, maybe because I just want to smash my face in with my keyboard.

My editor will soon be calling for my Children of The Glyph manuscript and I’m leaving it alone. She can have it and make of it what she wills. I’m also struggling with Rebellion of Mars. My God. What a grind it is. I have still not pushed past the first eighty pages of re-write.

So much has to be changed. This is the issue with Point-of-view discipline. Please, please don’t make the mistakes I have – if you’re scanning this and want to start a novel and have no experience whatsoever of writing, get a book about it and read first.

Play with your writing as well though – start small with 500 word snippets, or even less – there’s a whole category out there called Nanofiction and Microfiction. Play with your POV’s, draft small and work your way up to a novella.

Control your novellas, then go up to a novel.

Far be it from me to stop you going all out (because I am all over the place with this stuff – but if I was starting again, I’d at least think harder on it), you might be the one to hit it out of the park (to use a euphemism from across the pond) but do so intelligently, because the world is full of wood-burner stoves that stay lit without anyone chopping logs…

Anyway, that’s it for now, have a good day adventurer! 🙂

Blood, Sweat and Foiled

Just a quick update from me today.

I’m hitting Rebellion of Mars really hard, but getting nowhere fast. It’s pushing the boulder uphill because it has to be re-written almost completely. I’ve changed the character motivations, made things a bit more proactive and have some ideas how to heighten tension, but I’m not sure it’s working, and in the background I can hear Hannah poking me.

You’ve got the potential for a really slick sci-fi novel here…

Hannah Grego, Professional Editor.

And so I’m afraid to F&%^ with things too much. So, another worry to add.

Still having trouble finding work or landing a gig and I’m on the clock. I’ve read in places that you should be able to support yourself for two years to set up your writing career and I’m nearly at the nine months mark now. Things just keep getting in the way.

Anyhoo, am hitting the manuscripts (that’s another “Writey” word, authors call them manuscripts even though I am headbutting a keyboard and filling pixels, but I digress) and we must go forward.

Running out of time? Good. Means you get to work faster.

In the style of Jocko Willink, Former US Navy SEAL

Have a good one! 🙂

Cardboard Cutouts

More Character rambles today folks as I’m in the mood.

When I first worked on Rebellion of Mars (used to be called Librarian Chronicles) but I had to change it as that was the name for a sci-fi rom-com series, I had a protagonist called Sean Egan.

He was dutiful, professional and cared for the men under him, he was flawed by circumstance and held back by principles rather than being any great crack in the glass. He wan’t boring, he was a killer, a leader but overall, he was a reactive Protag (oh, look at that “writey” word! Someone get me a black turtle-neck and a Chaise-Longues!) always responding until the last phase when he hurtles forth. He was an honourable man.

Now, fast forward to Children of the Glyph. Ben Mason, the Protag (twice in one post!) is a merciless murderer – and he is a murderer/borderline war criminal. He is tied to his past and to his troops, like Egan is, but this guy is not a just a rough diamond, this chap is a broken man with vengeance in his hands and the will to use it.

I thought, when I was first constructing Mason that he was just like Egan, so I was forced to make him different. In doing so, I plumbed depths, found what was not just flawed, but what was wrong.

What happened? What made him like that? Why is he doing what he does?

Did you ask that about Egan?

Of course you didn’t. Reader Voyeurism demands this interest. Reader Catharsis demands the depth. The deeper the flaw, the better the redemption, the better it feels – so I’m told.

So, whilst I’m re-writing, it’s time to scuff Egan up a bit, but not too much – the guys are different sides of the same coin. (I have a few thoughts on supporting cast too, but they can wait).

Anyway, that’s my tuppence today, have a good one! 🙂

Love Me, Love You.

Seeing it’s Valentine’s Day, let’s broach the subject of how I personally handle romance.

Before we do that – let me tell you Dear Reader and Good Follower, you’re all very special to me!

If you didn’t reach for a sick bag – well done you 🙂

That served two purposes – firstly, I was sincere – thank you everyone, secondly, romance scenes can get…problematic very quickly. How you handle this is up to you of course, it must fit your genre. If you’re writing erotic fiction, you need it hot and steamy, but if you’re writing about war, you might want to pitch it more to emotion, to evoke the desperate necessity of two people connecting.

Personally, much of my stuff is implied. It’s not difficult to make it like this – most young adults and grown-ups know how it works, person meet significant other, they stare at each other longingly, then there’s nudity and cuddles.

Notice how I said nudity. Even the description is demure, divorcing this moment from something that’s quick and dirty. This is the language I think should be used to consummate the relationship of two parties where the love is meaningful and evocative to your reader.

Alternatively, if you’re after pulse-pounding sexual freedom, you can just get nekkid and bish, bosh, it’s a soapy shower scene. See that difference?

Fit the tone of your human interaction to your scene, plot and character and fit it to your genre.

And for God’s sake, don’t write 5 pages of drivel about how soap runs down the crack of somebody’s…knees (don’t be afraid to subvert expectation, sex sells, to be fair – but it has to be right!)

Have a great day Lovebirds! 🙂

All the World’s a Grave

“Kill them all!”

Ben Mason, Children of The Glyph.

We’ll see how morbid this gets, but bear with me because we’re diving into Character Death.

The function of this story trope is to be evocative, to punch through the hardy soul of you Reader, Dear Reader, after a long and bloody struggle (at least in my work) you will have suffered through ups and downs, setbacks and triumphs and by now hundreds of bodies decorate the stage.

“One death is a tragedy, a million a Statistic.”

Joseph Stalin

We’ve got the idea, death is everywhere – but through some martial skill or sheer bloody-mindedness the Characters have come through it. So how do we draw the reader in? We hit them where it hurts. We change the statistics into someone or something closer. Much closer. We bring it tight in.

As much as you bash your characters you’re going to bruise your reader if you’ve done the hard work of getting your reader to fall in love with your cast. It’s dangerous, because that reader could put that book down right there and then – I know, I’ve done it. So why risk it?

You do it for several reasons – and that is why it is utterly essential that you do it right, because if you do, that reader will pick that book up again. And again.

Closing the curtain on a main character does two things.

Firstly, it tells the reader no-one is safe. This is important because you want the bond of danger to the characters by the reader (you’re manipulating them again, see my post here for more on that), so they have a shared experience and it keeps every challenge fresh.

Secondly it adds verisimilitude. Battles are messy, conflict can be quite lethal, even if it starts as a fist-fight, somebody can pull a knife (escalating tension) and when people get stabbed, it doesn’t always end well.

It can also lead to a sea-change or teach a lesson to the Protagonist (or their buddies if you’ve killed them, but handle that one even more gently) but if they do this, don’t be tempted to resurrect them as it will seem pointless and will turn their heroic/villainous demise into something trivial.

You’re aiming for the feel of Ben Kenobi’s sacrifice in Episode IV, not something out of Dragonball Z.

If the Character Death is a turning point in the novel, try to make it one that you’ve worked hard on, one that you as a writer have a connection to and if it makes you sad to do this and you find it hard – you’re onto the right one.

Invest into your characters both living and dead and your readers will pick that book up again and again and love the book for giving them a deeper experience.

Even if they hate you and threaten you.

“You killed xxxxx you heartless bastard! Well there better be a time machine in the next chapter so you can go back and fix it, or I won’t talk to you again!”

Bob.

So how do you use Character Death? How often? Let me know?

Until next time, have a good day Dear Reader and Good Follower! 🙂

I’m Lying To You.

Everything you have been told is a lie.

No, this isn’t some confession for the ages, some wondrous revelation that I actually am a prince or a famous person pretending to be some down on his luck lounge singer.

No. As great as that would be (really?) today, I wanted to talk about suspension of disbelief.

What is it? It’s colloquially called your bull%$£t filter, bo&%ocks gauge or the point at which you go “huh?” (sounds like a 1990’s pop song – but I digress).

I was challenged recently by another couple of writers in the group I attend, when my use of a paper printout on Mars sparked a conversation – rather heated – about where the paper comes from. Now, I did explain that this paper could be manufactured from the trees of the hydroponics in the North, or the sparse woodlands of the South (My Mars is Terraformed – mostly), but this did not satisfy.

This then prompted a quandary. In another post, I suggested to keep asking questions, why, what etc. I wondered if I’d become word-blind and I suppose I have, but then I got to thinking:

“Well, in that case, where does the fabric come from for clothes? Where does the ink come from for the pens? What about the rubber? What about the glass? Fuel?” And the questions kept rolling in, which is good in one way, but not another.

Come to think of it, the same scene mentions ceiling tiles and a notepad. Nobody asked me where they came from.

It led me to think that the story wasn’t going to hold up, because people would be asking these questions and they would get in the way. I spend all night last night researching materials that could be used instead, (and I found some awesome stuff!) trying to make the minutiae work so the Reader would be immersed and not struggling against nagging doubt.

Then I was reminded of another story by another Aaron (One ‘r’) where he states that:

“Papyrus scrolls are draped over the angles of armour….this paper…is manufactured on board the Crusader by serfs who pass the technique down from generation to generation.”

Aaron Dembski-Bowden, Helsreach, p25.

The Crusader is a spaceship the size of a city that has been in space for ten-thousand years. I looked up how to make papyrus. Guess what? You need plants. Nowhere does Aaron mention this, that they are on board. In fact it can’t be from hydroponics because he states later that the air is recycled.

Where is the paper from? (Hint: It is assumed they are due to a supply chain).

Answer: Who gives a toss?

Reason: We know that technology is in a pseudo-regressive state in the world Aaron has built, so we don’t question why the paper is there. There’s a reason it is.

So then I realised, why should I give a toss? The reader isn’t here for that. They know what paper is, they know how it’s made, there’s an excuse where it came from. This is a book about jet packs and machine guns, who cares about paper? (It is important, but you dig my meaning).

This is it. The Holiest Grail – triggering the suspension of disbelief in the reader. The fine line between keeping them immersed, (Verisimilitude, right?) and drowning in their imagination, the irritating gremlin of reality pushed aside. You’re using lies and invented half-truths about things we know to be real – nobody needs to know how a pen works. It’s boring.

They didn’t ask about the ceiling tiles, or the pad, because to them, it put them in the scene, the writing was good enough they didn’t care, but the paper filled up their bull%$^t meter.

So the trick is to lie. Lie enough for them to swallow it, gloss it over.

Manipulate your reader gently. Don’t hit them with a kipper, wrap them in a warm blanket next to a crackling fire, so they ignore the rain and wind lashing at the leaded glass. They turn the pages and stay in your world, hoping and dreaming and then checking under their bed for the horrors you’ve told them exist.

Just don’t write about reams of paper on a planet that wants to kill you six ways from Sunday, that’s under siege by a malevolent psychic entity who corrupts hearts, minds and technology and for God’s sake don’t info-dump!

So Dear Readers and Good Followers, what lies, damn lies and statistics have you written? Let me know!

Until next time, have a good day. 🙂

In Character

I like my heroes to be legal and law-abiding, well, at least 75 percent of the time.

My mother

Herein is a bit of a ramble on Character.

Next to plot, I think, Characters are the most whimsical, do-what-they-like parts of a book. They can be stroppy, uncooperative, bombastic and chewing the furniture at best. JJ, a pal of mine once asked how I come up with them.

It’s funny, because a lot of folks (depending who you listen to – like Davi- no, Arron, no!) will tell you that Characters drive the story, and how the story plays out is down to the Character’s function – be it Mentor, Love Interest or etc. Also very important is alignment (the D&D crew will know what I mean here, although really it goes back to Three Hearts, Three Lions – thanks Peter!)

It really is a fine balancing act – especially if your audience wants a Protagonist to be Lawful Good at least to 75 Percent, being Lawful Neutral and Lawful Evil for the rest, but this is great, because this is where we introduce the really good stuff: Where the Characters are flawed – but I digress.

So how do you come up with Characters? This is a small insight into MY process at least.

We need genre first. What kind of world are we looking at? What kind of typical person lives there? Who/what is extraordinary? Now, what is the story about? What is the morality of this universe? These are all malleable, but remember Reader Expectation (covered elsewhere on my Blog).

Questions, questions, questions. Don’t confuse this with your Inner Editor, this is your compass. Your Editor fixes what’s wrong, your Compass tells you which direction is right.

What you’re doing is making a primordial soup. You’re waiting for your subconscious mind to start to hammer this into shape and you’re waiting for the strongest suggestion, someone or something that pushes forth, from the birthing pool.

Then you get a Name and it starts.

Where do you come up with these names?

Polly

The ideas come to me, (sometimes even using logic!) but unless I want a Character that is exactly like someone I know (and therefore pre-generated), it is the Character that tells me who he or she is. They tell me what they look like, how they speak, their handedness, everything.

Robert E Howard once wrote that when he was penning Conan, it was if the man himself was there, over his shoulder. Meeting my Characters is a bit more like speed interviewing. This is important, because in my opinion, the Protagonist should never be you. They should be made from you to allow your Reader a Vicarious Journey.

So how about it, Dear Reader and Good Follower? How do you approach Characters?

Let me know. 🙂

Chop and Swap Shop

Firstly, hello to all my Dear Readers and Good Followers! We’ve had a few more and I welcome you to the madhouse!

Secondly, I have engaged an Editor, pending clearance of fees for her to start taking a look at stuff for me. Unfortunately, this will now not happen until late March, or early April. Sometimes, it just is how it is.

This is fine, because my other IP’s need attention. Rebellion of Mars (ROM – no, not the Computer thing..!) has been a spectre in the mist and needs me to deal with it. Interestingly, ROM was written over a year ago (in current format) and I thought it was my best writing then.

How very wrong I was.

Looking at it now, I can see the problems. I read it and wonder how I ever put Hannah through it. She earned every penny of her editing fee and every test reader I sent it to – I apologise!

But…I now know I learned from it.

I’ve spent most of the morning butchering the abomination that ROM became, chopping it up into chapters for easy management. The hard work of putting my learning into practice starts soon. To say I’m not looking forward to it is an understatement, but it is what it is.

Courses can teach theory and that is useful, but it is the putting of pen to ink that makes it happen, as good or bad as it is, one word after the other until it is done.

Then we start again!

“You wrote something terrible? Good. You got a chance to make it better.”

Thought for the day (Jocko Willink Style)

On that happy note, have a good day! 🙂

High and Dry

“You’re much better than you think you are.”

Peter, Editor.

I’m not going to lie. The past 48 hours have been a bit of a roller-coaster. My go-to Editor is swamped with work and can’t free up any time for me, so that’s going nowhere and I advised my Locum Editor I wasn’t going forward yet, but I still needed to line something up.

I was high and dry.

Further, Ken, my cover designer came up with three very moody cover tests/proofs, but after feedback from my own test reading crew, opinions are mixed. The notion that the proofs nailed the horror aspect wasn’t in doubt but there was some suggestions made that the sci-fi angle was missing a few tricks.

I was ready to smash my Goddamned head against the wall and quit. I hadn’t slept and the bad news just kept rolling in, setback after setback, everything going wrong until even my family and friends were screaming angry.

My dear friend Polly kicked me up the arse and took me out to the Writers’ Club I previously mentioned – it’s confession time, I did go back. Who knew?

I was scheduled to read an extract from Children of The Glyph, but I didn’t want to. The Yellow Sock Monster was lurking, just give up, it said and I grumbled into my fiery non-alcoholic ginger beer.

My turn came and I tried to do accents. I was terrible, but I got through it and I got feedback.

They liked it.

Each of the group found a turn of phrase they loved, and thought overall it was good. I got criticism, which was fair. The nits picked were tiny and few.

I spoke to Peter, the founder of the group and thanked him for his comments and to the group as a whole for being kind.

“Kind? We weren’t kind. We were honest.”

“If that’s what your honesty is like, I’m very grateful.”

He clapped me on the shoulder, (the second time that evening) and said:

“Rubbish. You’re much better than you think you are.”

To be fair, Polly has been saying this for months, bless her 😉

Oh, and I’ve conned another Editor (not Peter) into talking to me.

On a High and Dry 🙂