I'd better believe it!

No, not the report of a survey which reported that '36% of women prefer to have a tidy house to having sex' - done by a cleaning company, that's clearly biased! - but that I can do hooks, revelations, turning points - whatever is the preferred term for those things to insert in a novel to maintain the reader's interest.

In York, at the Festival of Writing, I heard the term 'reward reader's for their investment' for the first time. Their investment of both money and time, which has to be paid for with my providing them with interesting, entertaining, unputdownable characters.  The best way to do this is to have the above-mentioned hooks etc. scattered judiciously throughout, adding a page-turning element.

Now, I know that my Prediction Fiction serials (Pages tabs above), which are only a hundred words long, more often than not end with a hook;  which more than one commenter has referred to as a 'killer line'.

So why am I struggling so to scatter them throughout a novel?  And have the plot hang together?

Psychic Distance

Probably the best, i.e. most useful/exciting, workshop of the lot at York, for me, was Debi Alper talking about Psychic Distance.

Debi and Emma Darwin spend an entire week on the topic in their six week on-line course 'Self-editing your novel', which runs three or four times a year via the Writer's Workshop, but even the single example she made us attempt was an eye-opener.  And not only for writing, but reading too - I could recognise Psychic  Distance in action in Lesley Glaister's writing, and now know that it is one of the main reasons books totally fail to sparkle.

More information here:
http://emmadarwin.typepad.com/thisitchofwriting/psychic-distance-what-it-is-and-how-to-use-it.html

More useful, by far, than just listening was being told to do an exercise using Psychic  Distance.  We were given ten minutes in which to describe the reaction of a soldier just returned from war as he meets his father for the first time, handing him a photograph:

Steps.  Five of them.  Will I be able to manage them, with half a leg and the other barely functioning?  I’ll look bloody silly if I fall, land on my arse.  

Though it wouldn't be the first time he’d’ve seen my fucking arse either, from what Ma said.  Then I had all my fucking bits too ... but O Christ ... he doesn’t have a fucking clue who I am.

I grope for the photograph, leaning on the concrete wall, half my mind taken up in the looking at him.

Although I do already use it instinctively, it was hard to do, and the follow-up - the ignorant father's response, even harder:

Another wounded soldier.

You can only do so much, and this one so young, no more than twenty, twenty-two perhaps.  The age that ...

No.  Impossible ... even though his eyes are so like Mary’s.  So very much like hers, blue of cornflower.  Too long since they smiled at me.  I was a bloody, bloody fool ...

What?

What’s this? ... A photograph?... Mary ... oh Mary.

York day 3

At home I prefer to eat alone, but mealtimes here have been stimulating and the perfect example of how, if you sit yourself alone at a table, within five minutes you've been joined by three more folk and quickly find yourself discussing, for example, daft names for detectives, going blind and (inevitably) What Agents Say.

'Tension' followed yesterday's 'Pacing' - a bandying about of words such as conflict, claustrophobia, deadline and morality and a warning not to skim the surface of interleaving events.  Then, 'How to write a sentence' with some yet-to-be-properly-perused handouts.  Followed by the art of plotting.

Also some mild encouragement to continue with my second wip, utilising lessons learnt from the first, which, since it is a far less weildy plot might be simpler.   I say 'might' now rather than the 'should' I used yesterday, since I have been thinking for an hour on the balance/interweaving of plots and sub-plots and trying to decide which of the three main characters should become the mainest of them

Inevitably, if you choose all workshops on similar themes there is overlap.  Some are more properly called lectures, the giver of them reading from prompt cards, some (the best) get us working so the lessons they impart are better understood, but the hard work, enthusiasm of these and the behind-the-scenes work of the organisers - as well as the staff at York University itself - could not be faulted.

S.J Bolton, whose work I so much admire, said when her book is finished, before final submission, she takes four or five days to read the whole thing aloud.  I've just tried that with a couple of paragraphs of mine and seen where they stumble (although at times I think a case can be made for internal reading to be different from aloud)  She also talked of the desperation to see her books upon bookshelves, to the extend where it hurts to go into a bookshop.   I don't have that, not that burning passion about anything really, but I DO want to write the best book possible so I will write and re-write and by the time I'm done the desperation might be there.

After all Sheila Hancock is writing her first novel at the age of eighty!

Now to absorb all I have learnt.

York day 2

Didn't get back to sleep after 3 a.m. wakening so some of the day was a little blurred at the edges.
But Adele Parks address was so stimulating that I did not suffer for long - as she said herself, a ballsy, go-getting lady who has certainly put the effort in and deserves everything she's achieved.
Then I got waylaid by buying books ... whoops.
But one was by Adam Close, who I belatedly realised was Eve Seymour, who so kindly commented yesterday on my wip and who did an excellent workshop on 'Crime and Pacing' - in an over-WARM room (a rarity).
Second highlight of the day - and sufficient to revive me when I was flagging - was Debi Alper's 'Psychic Distance' - basically the best way to add life to writing and lack of it the reason so many books fall flat.  I'd bought one of her books too ...
And the evening Gala Dinner and much wine and conversation ...
                                                                          ... and so to bed.

York, day 1

Wet, wet and cold - it wasn't meant to be like this - and weird to have folk with unknown faces coming up, addressing me (by an almost unrecognised name, chosen in a hurry) and introducing themselves by unknown names.  As one of the ~50% who have a photo of myself on the WordCloud blog, I've made it too easy.  But friendly, yes indeed.

Both my one-to-ones this afternoon.  Both giving me the same message:  must be either/or.  Romance+crime is not marketable.   Also many, many useful points about too diffuse a start, over-long sentences, unidentified MC.  One was given with a lot more warmth than the other, with sweeteners such as I can write, and I do dialogue well - with humour!  Sweeteners enough to have me awake at 3 a.m. planning how to kill off at least 30% of my darlings so as to improve/rewrite.  For the fourth time.

Festival of Writing at York

Later today I'm heading for York.  My first Festival of Writing.  Pushed into it by a conscience which kept reminding me that my New Year's resolution was, deliberately vaguely, 'do something about finding an agent.'  So, at 2.40 this afternoon I have ten minutes with an agent.  Later, another ten minutes with a 'Book Doctor'  Both have had, since the middle of last month, the first 3000 words of what used to be 'Not Wanted on Voyage', is now 'A Step So Grave' - taken from Robert Louis Stephenson's ‘Virginibus Puerisque’:   'Marriage is a step so grave and decisive that it attracts light-headed, variable men by its very awfulness’

The programme for the weekend is stuffed with workshops, discussions and opportunities to meet other agents, writers and I, who am so used to solitude, will have to adapt to being surrounded by people, a great many of whom are much more adept than I at social communication.   Yet there will be at least as many of the same mind as me, since writing is a solitary occupation. 

I'll maybe be a bit frustrated too, since the follow up novel - working title 'Susannah Elphinstone' since that is the name that came first, but likely 'Longer Shadows Reach' - is going well,  But a break will likely not harm it.

Hopefully I'll be reporting Good Things.

Prediction fiction - serial update

I've updated the two prompt-led serials running since the beginning of the year.  To John Pettinger's tale, 'A change of focus', I've added episodes forty-five to fifty-two, to  'Tao escapes from Rhodes'  episodes thirty-one to forty-seven. [Links in the page bar at the top of this page]

As ever, the words supplied dictate direction, plot and the arrival and departure of  a variety of characters, mostly nefarious, and I am, as ever, immensely grateful to Colleen for the hosting of Prediction Fiction.

Next week's are muckrake, gloss and trappings.   Should be fun.

My space, today

Took this at 06.45 this morning, with the intention of posting it on a new group. 

 Not done that yet, but will.   

Tells it like it is - I write and I read - all the books on view are on my to-be-read pile.

Also tells you I don't do tidy.

Approaching the end ... off the map and a change of gear.

Earlier, in July, I sorted out who caused the death and why and how.  Where and what the implications were.
But I have struggled with the writing of it;  have not seen how it can be put down, spelt out, made convincing.
In the end I resorted to writing conversations.  Conversations Baz had, with Susannah and with Luke; with John and Col and Billy.  And with Adam.  Gradually, they are telling me what happened.  Not always straightforwardly: sometimes they lie, deliberately deceive.  Lead me to believe one thing, only to be tripped up when I realise that's not possible.  It's a lot of writing, deleting, and re-writing.  A lot. A ridiculous amount, when I am already guilty (no, I don't think 'guilty' either) of writing without prior thought to a considerable extent.
But, it's my time I'm wasting (and no, I don't believe 'wasting' either) - and anyway, what else would I do?

But it's more than a little disorientating, disconcerting, especially because the man I thought was guilty seems not to be after all.

Losing Faith - and accurately justifying it.

This is one of the eight books I picked up in New York, this from the wonderfully-named 'Mysterious Bookshop'.

A typical example of the title (spine only visible when I selected it) i.e. font plus colour initially attracting my attention, and then the blurb, which began "We are burying her today."

Speed-reading, I omitted the next paragraph and read the first line of the third: "Faith had been dark, disturbing, a Goth" which presumably (because I remember no conscious thought) removed all expectation that it would be at all religious.

Third paragraph of the opening page describes a breakfast which "sizzles and giggles to itself"; egg yolk described as "a malevolent yellow eye watching me from the plate."
And I am hooked.

And continue to be so throughout the book.  My Goodreads review was as follows:  "I did enjoy this. Disconnected. Fractured. Slow to start, hard to see for much of the time where it is heading. Not at all consecutive and the main character un-named and of dubious character, but a thoroughly engaging read. And one I'll read again."

And two novels more by Daniel Blythe are on their way from Amazon (despite the fact that I subsequently discovered he also writes Dr. Who books!!!)
He also kindly sent me the image for the cover since it does not appear on Goodreads

Prospective TV series for wanna-be writers ...

A short clip (twelve minutes) presumably from a pilot, can be seen here 

Delphine, with her very first manuscript, gets an opportunity to show it to Carol Blake, who has taken on just two writers in six years (from at least a dozen submissions a day)

Daily exercise

Oh! the pleasures to be gained from limbering up one's brain with an at-first-sight-impossible cryptic crossword .

New York books ...

My notes for this day say:  Pouring rain so sans umbrellas we head for Times Square - tiny - just a set of junctions;  its impact in the tallness of its surroundings. Colour flashing while we stand in puddles, rain in gutter, shiny drains and gridded, griddled covers of the subway.  Others had umbrellas, all to be avoided and several had shed new-bought skins as nylon litter.

Damply we lunched in a Brewery eating place; the sort of room and ambience we had expected (hoped for) of New York.  Copper vats, lots of wood and wallpaper.   Apricot Summer beer and a pile of chicken crispy-wrapped bits, orange sauce too spicy but the white a well-chosen accompaniment.   And, as always wonderful bread.

In the evening another place of the same ilk.  Serious, large b/w photos above picture rail height.

I'd taken Philip Roth's 'Exit Ghost' to read but from the firs three pages I suspected it would depress me.  Soon after my daughter finished Colum McCann's  Let the Great World Spin 'Let the great world spin' - a tale of a tightrope walker in New York, written in beautiful language.
Equally beautifully written, with nastier characters but an eventually positive sort of ending was Vince Passaro's irresistably-title Violence, Nudity, Adult Content: A Novel
Followed this with another  Colum McCann - This Side Of Brightness  picked up, to my surprise in a local charity shop.  This was more harrowing than enjoyable, yet the writing kept me reading. 
And yesterday, at the Tynemouth Station bookfair, a copy of Jesse Kellerman's The Brutal Art

Musty in here isn't it?

Yes, it's been a while, but I have been away and have not yet got photos, notes in any sort of order, plus lots of catch-up to do.
HOWEVER I was directed to this site which amusingly deals with one of my bêtest noirs: book cover clichés

Tending the plot

On Wednesday morning the plot of my most recent, still-in-progress novel revealed itself to me and although much  of what I wrote on Thinking Ten, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday this week have been attempts to develop a single scene, much of it will doubtless be discarded.
 
Because, I’ve realised, now I know how the second death came about I need to knot the cords of coincidence which connect this second murder with the first.  A staggered sort of sheepshank, a clove and two half hitches, any of which, provided they are sufficiently subtle, will convince the reader of his cleverness in solving all before the end
.
First there is the wife, the mother of the victim’s son:  having made her bed she’s lain in it for seventeen years, but sees her chance for happiness slipping inexorably away.

There’s his brother.  Guilty of a number of things – manipulation and adultery – and holder of a secret he never should have been told.

Less likely, there’s his son, at seventeen like any son, he needs to free himself, and the recent jeering accusation of his peers that he might have inherited his father’s homosexuality makes adolescent shame a good enough reason.

There’s an unseen, unknown, presumed lover, heard arguing with him the night he disappeared, the same night that an adulterous DI had an assignation with his wife.  Was this DI lying when he said he’d only met to end the affair?

There’s a fellow-victim, who shared the first ordeal and is being encouraged to tell all, for the sake of fame and fortune – was murder thought the ideal response to a refusal to cooperate?

And this victim's uncle has perhaps the most to lose should the deemed-essential-at-the-time deception come to light.

The biggest problem of all, of course, is that it is me who has to solve it all before revealing it to the waiting-to-be-entertained reader.

Phew - a plot emerges ...

It started life as 'Susannah Elphinstone' a name which came to me out of the blue.  She and Luke Darbyshere became reacquainted and Baz and Madigan got involved too.
I always hoped it would be a psychological thriller.
And this morning, some fourteen months after I began writing it, I woke at 2.45 this morning with the knowledge of who did it, why, and some good ideas also about how I was going to be able to conceal the knowledge from the reader - is it any wonder I leapt out of bed to scribble it all down?

Initially, I'd written 15000 words before I knew who'd been murdered, and a further 40000 since,  getting to know some of  the newer characters: Stuart and Adam Randall, John and Michael Rendlesham and  Col Washington, along with Baz's Mum and Dad.  But I really did not know who was responsible for the second murder until today.

An invitation to come and play

The bandstand, round and somehow forbidding, but I’m sure I remember pale sun-bleached ecru deckchairs and once, a band.  Trees and a low brick wall between park and road and the other side a concrete path - ochre with orange and white pebbles - between grass and the drop down to the sand.  It was a run-down part of town, midway between two otherwise touching towns, gentility on a third edge, in the guise of a Grand Terrace of houses, forlorn and peeling, which sort of said it all.

Oh! and the octagonal little thatched house in the trees with it's pointed-top door which, no matter how often I asked, never became anything,according to my mother, other that "the place they keep tools in."   (Then it made me think of a charity money-box;  today I'd say it would be perfect for 'cottaging')

It was there I witnessed my first eclipse of the sun, entered a fancy dress competition and was eclipsed by a dark-featured boy dressed as Noddy.  It was there I had the conversation which ended, my mother aghast (it was the Fifties when no-one spoke of what was before their eyes) “You mustn’t ever mention it to her.”

And it was there I embarrassed as much as shamed and irritated my mother by climbing the steps to the slide only to become transfixed with fright at the necessity of sliding down the other side.

A response to an  invitation from Thinking Ten - a place I've too much neglected lately, whch is a shame because as somewhere to limber up, to have ideas come sparkling from unexpected places, it can't be beat.   I will try and go there more often. 

Little acorn of advice enables oak to at least start to grow in the direction of upwards ..

Sometimes you only need one tiny bit of advice to make a huge difference: "start as near the end as possible"* has enabled me to firm up my plot immeasurably :), especially in conjunction with reading Chris Brookmyre.

N.B. I had already done this instinctively, but reading the advice made me note and strengthen it, more assured of its merit.

 * Thank you Emma D, once again! http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00e54eced2e18833014e8ba0ba66970d

All my trials: Scrivener

A recommendation for Scrivener last week - and a list of reasons why - from Emma Darwin's excellent blog.
I tried it once before when I set myself up for Script Frenzy, but both died within days (my fault - too little preparation of either Script or software) but now being aware of the amount of work it took to sort Not wanted on voyage into sensible order, and that the follow-up will be trickier, I thought it worth a second go.

The video is useful, as is the tutorial, but the best thing is that the 30 day trial is for thirty days, i.e. if you have a day when you don't use it, it doesn't count, you don't have to use it within that time.

One day spent wrestling, back and forth between tutorial and a section of my wip left me scratchy and exhausted, but I think it will, in the long run, be useful, although it needs to be remembered it is an organizational tool rather than a writing tool.

Inhibitions

They erected a barricade between themselves, all the while each blaming the other for it, each knowing that really they were the one responsible.  ‘If only he ...’, ‘If only she ...’ and so on and so forth, neither able, or willing to say what they really meant, really, truly wanted.

Upbringing, of course, parental ‘advice’, heavy handed, red-faced, oblique, couched in such formal twisty words, with averted eyes, that it was almost meaningless.

Peer pressure another thing that made them tongue-tied. 

How could she really be sure that what Jacky said was the best way really was, when she was such a ... well, not really someone you wanted to be copying, taking advice from.   Especially when it was couched in such a sly manner, eyes sliding to older friends, who sniggered as if they knew she was lying while you had no way of telling, because of your ignorance.
He ... well he’d claimed to have, already.   Not to her, (don’t be so effing stupid!)  but to the others.   Wasn’t sure that they’d believed him.   Part hadn’t wanted to, part had.   But he suspected they could tell it had been cobbled together from magazines and the film he’d found at the bottom of his parents’ wardrobe.

[This a Thinking Ten piece from a week or so ago. ]

How do they DO that?

I’ve just read three books in succession

Picked not quite at random, but certainly without deliberate intent to prove this thing.

Book A had a heroine called Lacey.

Book B had a man called Lacey and a heroine caller Lennie and Book C contains a minor villain character also called Lennie

It isn’t always names;  it’s quite often random references to, for example, a straw basket called a skep, which occur in consecutively read books, but I am certain that such a link  connects from one book to the next, every time.

 

Something to hang on to.

Howard Jacobson, at this week's Hay festival: "The author has an obligation to please the reader, but the reader has an obligation to be intelligent."

Shock horror! - Rock'n'roll Britannia

Picked up a link to this programme on FB early this morning and watched before 7 a.m. grinning like an idiot and wallowing in nostalgia.
It doesn't look very shocking these days, but I remember my father leapng up from the Sunday dinner table, hurtling himself across the room to turn the radio off, part-way through 'Forces Favourites' after Billy Fury so temptingly sang "I want to be your lover".

Dressing to tease?

A letter in yesterday's Daily Telegraph* referred to the cover of the paperback edition of Harlan Coben's Stay Close, saying it had 'absolutely no connection with the story'.  Coincidentally, I had earlier that morning, reviewed G J Moffat's Blindside on Goodreads, beginning with the question 'What the hell does the cover (plane crashed into a loch) have to do with the story?'

Such carelessness is not  universal:  in December 2011, the Daily Telegraph interviewed Suzanne Dean, who explained in some detail how the cover of Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending came about, and many, many books have what are obviously well-thought out covers.  Additionally, I remain fascinated by the ability of publishers to correctly lure me to he type of books I like.
 
So why do some so  totally disregard content?  Fail, at times to even bother with a photograph of the relevant location?  It's not rocket science and any book that has made it thus far deserves better; any reader not to have his intelligence insulted.

Harlan Coben is published by Orion, G J Moffat by Headline, a division of Hachette - neither of them unknown.

*from Keith Edwards, of Tattershall, Lincolnshire

Silver linings

The broken crankshaft of the Hamnavoe - the Scrabster-Stromness ferry to Orkney - was a nuisance by which we lost a day's time there, but we were able to travel on the boat from Aberdeen to Kirkwall instead.  
The return journey allowed me to take some early morning photographs of the entry to Aberdeen's harbour and make notes about the experience of sleeping aboard - all useful background information for 'Not wanted on voyage'

Acknowledgement

I always felt the long list of acknowledgements for assistance in the writing of a novel, increasingly  prevalent it seems, was just a tiny bit pathetic - after all, if they were proper writers surely they could  do it all themselves?

Humbled, I now know different.   A complete stranger, met only through the good offices of the 'whole MS read-swapping' group at WriteWords, not only read the whole of my second draft of 'Not wanted on Voyage', she also made sixty-one comments.   Some were a treat, noting phrases she particularly liked (and henceforth I will always include them in any critique I do), some were small but vital (like pointing out I'd written 'Madigan' when I'd meant 'Mirabel') and several were "too much show, not enough tell".

Having dealt with the minor points I am now tackling these larger ones and already I can see that I am making vast improvements.  Yes - I am making them, it is still my book, but I might not have done so had it not been for her pointing them out, and so I will gladly include her name among other acknowledgements.

And I am very slightly less trepidatious knowing this will be the novel I shall, in September, be handing first to a 'book-doctor' and then pitching to an agent at the York Festival of Writing.

Just marking the day

Today would have been my Dad's ninetieth birthday - in this 'three generations' photo he is younger than I am now.








It is also the anniversary of Effie Traves' birthday - in Timaru, New Zealand in 1891- and of her death, in childbirth in a hospital in Ymir, British Columbia.  She married my father's mother's brother, and a few years ago, in New Zealand we met up with a nephew of hers, who gave me copies of letters and photos.

Excarnation

Excarnation - the removal of flesh from the bones, a word known to me from reading John Hedges 'Tomb of the Eagles' wherein he describes burial practices in Neolithic Orkney.  It is my intention to do the same for 'Not wanted on voyage' since without exception the comments of four most excellent readers on WriteWords said, in a variety of ways, 'too, too wordy!' 

In one way it pains me to deprive the reader of the detail of how Ian and Lydia met, how Davy rescued Fay and Zoë's deceived her mother, especially when I have already wiped out how Natasha got pregnant, what happened at the blood donor session and just what a nasty piece of work Gareth's daughter is.   In another way, especially with the months of 'Prediction' practice I've had at fitting a tale into one hundred words - and making it interesting! - I actively welcome the challenge (and précis was something I always was good at.)
  
I envisage the finished product as being not entirely skeletal - but have no idea how long it will take.   Nor whether I'll have got sick of the whole thing by then.

Reiprocal writing help

On  20th March I posted about beta readers, wondering how they were to be found.  On 22nd March I joined the WriteWords site and a few days later, the 'Whole MS read/swapping' group.  There I posted one, then fourteen, chapters of my problematical 'Not wanted on voyage'.

In just three weeks I have had four folk read and comment on it, with honesty, insight and courtesy, which was way beyond my expectations (the reading, not the courtesy etc).
So I thank Gaius, Arboreal Sal, AlanH and Astrea whose comments have been exactly what I needed to know what is still required to knock this into a shape which others might want to read.  ('Prune' in a word - the length of my sentences, yet again causing problems; Astrea's "I don't think style should overwhelm meaning" being especially pertinent)   Can't say it'll be easy but am sure it'll be worthwhile.

It is, of course, absolutely necessary to reciprocate, to also read and comment on others' work, otherise the group fails to function, but that is no hardship when I consider the pleasure I get from that.  Also, there are myriad other groups, you don'r have to have an MS, but this I CAN and do recommend.

On location

Initial purpose of the trip was to revisit old haunts, where we did our courting (for that was what it was referred to as, in those days) but I immediately latched on to the additional prospect of some location research for novels.






'Making good' includes a couple of funerals, taking place in a graveyard described from memory.  The reality was, unsurprisngly, smaller, but also less sloping and further from the consequently hidden view of church and house that once belonged to Henry VIII, so the conversation between Sean and Bridie is inaccurate and has, in fact, to be fiction.  Of course.




'Longest shadows reach' is less problematical since much of the action, which takes place in 2011 - and one of the major inspirations - is a house which was demolished in the 1960s, so I will have far fewer qualms about sending Luke Darbyshere to stay in a pub which I had forgotten but whose location is perfect.  It too, is about to be demolished.