Unruly Characters

As you might already be aware, I try to write a bit every day. I wake up in the morning and find myself enveloped in the story. I look around and see the characters who then begin to do things. Sometimes unexpected things. Unintentioned things. Exciting things. That’s what makes writing so interesting for me. It’s the not knowing.

When I get almost to the end of a story and realise what’s going to happen, it becomes more of a struggle to write. It’s as if my mind has finished with the project and is no longer interested.

I have been a little bit poorly of late and unable to write. Now I’m recovered and back at it, I find that my characters haven’t had the patience and good grace to hang around and wait for me. Instead, they seem to have carried on regardless and what was a nice linear plot line involving four of them in a voyage of discovery has fallen to bits. I left them all on a perfectly good ship complete with crew, provisions and a clear plan. On my return, I find the ship is gone. I have no idea where it is. One of my characters is sitting on the shore feeling sorry for himself. Two more are wandering around in a jungle when they should be on the ship. These are the least of my problems. My fourth character has disappeared completely.

You might think it would be easy to find her. I’m the writer, after all. The fantasy world I’ve created is a bit short of detail, though. I only know about the places my characters have actually been. She may have gone somewhere new. Or even hopped out of this particular version of reality into a completely different one. She can do things like that. She’s a witch.

OK, I’m currently writing fantasy but my process is the same for my crime thrillers. I’m with the reader all the way. I know what they know. I can speculate, just as they can, and I do this in the same way whether I’m writing or reading someone else’s story.

Another thing I should mention is that my characters appear fully formed. What I mean is they have lived their lives outside the confines of my story and their motivation derives from experiences I have no knowledge of. Usually, I get to understand them better as the story unfolds. That’s what makes them interesting.

Like my witch. After 250,000 words of the story, I’m at last beginning to understand the reasons behind her behaviour right at the beginning. What she did then is only now beginning to make sense.

Are writers supposed to carefully design characters down the the colour of their eyes and the toys they received for their first Christmas? Should they always know what’s going to happen at the end of their story?

Am I the only one who writes without knowing anything?

photo credit: Jrwn Photography Natcha via photopin (license)

Violence

I love a good thriller and thrillers usually involve violence. What I don’t like is the portrayal of violence as the universal answer to any problem. If I read a book or watch a film that uses violence to sort the job out, I feel cheated. I think of it as lazy and unimaginative writing.

Violence creates problems, it doesn’t solve them.

Take a comment I once saw posted on the Glock website. (For those of you who don’t have an interest in handguns, I will explain. Glock make pistols that are the weapon of choice for many law enforcement agencies. British police use them, for example.) A customer asked why the Glock 19 only held fifteen bullets in its magazine. The answer was a good one. If fifteen rounds from a Glock hasn’t solved your problem then maybe you chose the wrong solution.

My complaint is that books and films choose the Glock solution too often when it is inappropriate and unsatisfactory.

Most of us don’t have the option to visit violent retribution on evildoers. As any sane American will testify, nor does having a gun protect you. (Unless someone shoots you and the bullet hits your gun and bounces off, I suppose)

My protagonist in Due Diligence, Jenny Parker, is an ordinary person. She’s just like you and I. Vulnerable. No institution to back her up. She doesn’t have the option to fight fire with fire. That would not only get her arrested. It would be also be pointless and ineffective. She has to find other ways to survive. She has to use her wits.

I find that so much more satisfying to write and to read.

As for the magazine capacity of a Glock 19, I find it hard to stuff more than ten rounds into the magazine before the spring gets too stiff for my thumb.

(I hasten to add that my experience of handguns has been limited to a legal range in the US while conducting research. Sometimes it’s necessary to obtain first hand experience even if you disapprove of what you’re trying out.)

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Nowt on Telly

If you’re like me, you’ve spent a fair amount of time watching things on TV that, in hindsight, seem a complete waste of time. Then you watch the next instalment if only to see if this one’s any better than the last. Perhaps, as I have, you’ve become inexplicably hooked by a couple with more money than sense being filmed looking for a property in the country.

If I see one more undercooked rack of lamb on Masterchef I may throw up.

There’s an antidote to the hollow feeling that comes from wasting an evening in front of the box. It might be hard to swallow for the first few attempts but it’s well worth persevering. If you do, a whole new richness will enter your life. Every day will hold the promise of discovery and excitement. Life will feel that much more worthwhile.

There’s a magical effect produced when a TV is switched off. Your attention becomes your property again. You can do with it whatever you wish without it being constantly dragged to the screen.

Then there’s the silence. Opportunity for stillness. Your mind relaxes, free from a constant bombardment of images and sounds.

So what do you do instead? What’s this magical alternative to relaxing in front of the telly?

Read a book.

It’s the best antidote to boredom and that empty feeling of having wasted time.

Ok, I’m an author so I would say that, you might think. There he goes, trying to peddle his books, you might say.

In response, I admit that I’m as affected by TV in all its forms as anyone. I waste vast amounts of precious time slumped on a sofa in a semi-comatose state.

As soon as I pick up a book and start reading, I feel so much better. Reading is a much richer experience than TV can ever be.

I’ll prove it to you, if you have any doubts. Read any book that has been adapted for TV, then watch the program or film. It’s become a cliche that the book is always better than the film but this just isn’t fair. A book is a book and a film is a film. They’re different media. You can do things in books that films, even using the most sophisticated computer generated imagery, can’t possibly display. The greatest actor on the planet can’t hope to communicate feelings with the same intensity that living inside the character’s head can.

Try Lord of the Rings, even if you’ve seen all the films.

Read The Handmaid’s Tale, even if you saw the TV programme.

Read The Shining, then watch the film.

Read anything by Iain Banks, David Mitchell, Haruki Murakami, Neal Stephenson.

Why not try the greatest crime writer in the history of the world, Raymond Chandler? His books have been made into films again and again. The Big Sleep is a particular favourite of mine.

You don’t even have to buy a book. We have a brilliant library service in Lancashire.

If you do want to make a purchase, support an independent book shop.

By the way, there’s a TV adaptation of China Mieville’s The City and the City coming on the BBC. Get the book. Immerse yourself. Then enjoy the program in a very different way.

Stranger then Fiction

Truth is stranger than fiction. This familiar saying is a quote from that master storyteller, Mark Twain. Any writer of fiction, like myself, has to bear this in mind.

Why?

Well, I suppose it’s because too much realism can be difficult for a reader to swallow. Real life tends to be fragmented, things happen that are often completely unrelated. The relative importance of events can be very hard to judge and often remain opaque. Things come and go. Things that seemed to matter one moment fade into complete insignificance.

None of these aspects of reality are conducive to telling a good story. In fiction, it’s essential to have a structure. A beginning, middle and end. There has to be a satisfactory outcome for the reader, something that can’t be guaranteed by a factual account.

You might have observed that books, films and TV programmes based on true events are always heavily dramatised. The complexity of the real has to be simplified and carefully presented in order to tell a story in a way that will hold an audience. Outcomes, especially, are manipulated in order to deliver that essential happy ending.

Here’s an example of what I’m trying to say. Consider this as the plot for a thriller.

The Russians invade Ukraine on a pretext. They arm the local thugs and support them with Russian soldiers who are ‘on holiday’ there. A Russian-supplied ground to air missile system is deployed to shoot down a civilian airliner and kill hundreds of innocent men, women and children. The AA battery is quickly spirited away back to Russia and vigorous denials are issued.

The CIA find satellite evidence of Russian involvement in the atrocity. Secret agents in Russia collect damning information about the incident and also uncover links between the Russian leader and organised crime. More diligent investigative work discovers billions of dollars of offshore funds linked directly to Putin.

OK, so far so good. Let’s put an ending to it:

In a race against time, a plucky CIA agent puts all the information together and then manages to dash to the UN building, through a hail of FSB bullets, and give it to the US Ambassador. A Security Council resolution proposed by Russia is blocked when the revelations are made. Russian allies voice their disapproval and withdraw support. Hundreds of thousands of lives are saved in Syria as the disgraced Russian regime is prevented from continuing to support the vicious Assad regime. A popular uprising in Russia ousts the president and the world becomes a better and more peaceful place.

This is the kind of thing required to make a good story. Of course, it’s fictional. The true outcome is as follows:

FIFA decide to hold the World Cup in Russia.

See what I mean?

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Growth

 

 

Stephen King considers The Shining to be his breakthrough novel. Instead of doing more of the same that had earned him fame and fortune, he consciously decided to make the Shining something more. The way he did it was to concentrate on the character of the father and his upbringing so that the demons that afflicted him later on in the book are as much internal ones as the result of supernatural forces. According to King, being propelled by some external irresistible force provides too much of a comfortable excuse and dilutes the power of the narrative.

I found this insight extremely valuable and it has changed the way in which I view my own writing. My crime fiction books are primarily plot driven. Fast paced, breathless even. I try to pack as much story into each paragraph as I can. There’s nothing wrong with that. As Vonnegut advised, I try to spend my reader’s time as wisely as possible.

Lately, though, I’ve been working with my writing mentor on a project which is more an examination of character and relationships than whirlwind narrative. For me, it has been a completely new way of doing things. I’m a great proponent of the write the whole thing and don’t look back until you’ve finished method. It has served me very well in the past and has the great merit of not having to make any judgements as I go along.

For this novel, and it’s grown to novel proportions already, I’m constantly trying things out because I have the great benefit of someone I trust who can give me an opinion. There’s been a lot of stuff that I’ve submitted which hasn’t gone down at all well. Fortunately, I’ve sufficiently matured as a writer to view negative comments as even more valuable than positive ones. Sometimes I find it hard to agree with them but most of the time I’m able to reflect on the truth behind them and take them on board.

This has resulted in lots of rewrites, many versions of the same scene, drastic plot revisions galore. For example, an early version had the protagonist in a hospital bed paralysed apart from a couple of fingers on one hand which he used to type long accounts of early childhood. This might immediately seem cumbersome and overly melodramatic to you but it took me a while to get that myself.

I don’t know if this will be my breakthrough novel and, quite honestly, it might not even see the light of publication. What matters is that I feel that I’m growing as a writer all the time and that’s important.

photo credit: JoeInSouthernCA Vintage Movie Poster: “The Shining” via photopin (license)

Washy-Wishy

I saw this thing on the BBC website and loved it enough to want to tell you about it. As a writer, I love words and what they can do. I also recognise that years of practice have instilled in me some basic rules that serve me well. A writer’s job is to tell a story and not to advertise the way in which the story’s being told.

If I write a clumsy sentence, or even a single inappropriate word, the reader is immediately pulled out of the situation my protagonist is faced with and back to reality. Do that often and any reader will put down my book in disgust and give up. Having a compelling plot and interesting characters isn’t enough. The story needs to flow in a way that a reader will find comfortable and satisfying.

There are many craft books out there that help a writer to understand what works and what doesn’t. However, there are some extremely powerful rules that are instinctive and rarely expressed.

Take this, for instance:

Adjectives in English absolutely have to be in this order: opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose Noun. So you can have a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife. But if you mess with that word order in the slightest you’ll sound like a maniac. It’s an odd thing that every English speaker uses that list, but almost none of us could write it out.

The Elements of Eloquence by Mark Forsyth

Break this rule and, as the man says, you’ll sound like a maniac. Which will be off-putting to your English wonderful readership. ARRGH! See what he means?

Of course there’s more too it, there always is. I can almost hear the cries of Big Bad Wolf. What about that then? Shouldn’t it be Bad Big Wolf according to the rule, even though that would sound pretty awful?

The brilliant Mr Forsyth explains:

Reduplication in linguistics is when you repeat a word, sometimes with an altered consonant (lovey-dovey, fuddy-duddy, nitty-gritty), and sometimes with an altered vowel: bish-bash-bosh, ding-dang-dong. If there are three words then the order has to go I, A, O. If there are two words then the first is I and the second is either A or O. Mish-mash, chit-chat, dilly-dally, shilly-shally, tip top, hip-hop, flip-flop, tic tac, sing song, ding dong, King Kong, ping pong.

So linguistic reduplication is so important that it outranks the adjective sequence.

We don’t have to learn any of this, it’s all natural. Which makes it so powerful because my readers don’t spot that I’m breaking any rules, they only know that it sounds wrong and they don’t like it. So they stop reading. And I don’t want that.

No more washy-wishy prose for me, I’m getting Mr Forsyth’s book. 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Elements-Eloquence-Perfect-English-Phrase/dp/1785781723/

Accountants

Sometimes I get asked why my protagonist, Jenny Parker, is an accountant when most thrillers are written about members of the police force or private detectives. My answer is simple. The Proceeds of Crime Act 2002.

This legislation has changed the whole dynamic of criminal activity. Previously, the job of a criminal was to rake in as much cash as possible while avoiding the police and the taxman. After 2002, the business became a whole lot more complex. No longer were the bruiser, the enforcer and the hitman the arch-criminal’s most important ally. A new regime evolved in the criminal fraternity. The accountant came to the fore. Without one, organised crime syndicates were lost. Having huge piles of cash became a liability rather than an asset. Converting ill-gotten gains into legitimate money that could actually be spent was the new priority.

I also believe that any plot that can be resolved using violence leaves a lot to be desired. Who’s got the biggest muscles or largest calibre weapon doesn’t do it for me. Jenny has to survive in a world of danger with only her wits and determination. Nor does she have the safety net of an institution like the police force.

So that’s why Jenny is an accountant.

There’s a fourth Jenny Parker novel, Exit Strategy, that is scheduled to be published in December 2016. Although I say it myself, it’s the best one yet. I invite you to catch up with the others while you’re waiting.

I enjoyed reading this particular review of Due Diligence because it reflects the way that the money laundering regulations affect every one of us.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

 Absorbing Read, 5 Jun. 2013

By

Anderida

Verified Purchase(What is this?)

This review is from: Due Diligence (Jenny Parker Book 1) (Kindle Edition)

I couldn’t put this down. So glad I wasn’t reading this on a bus or train because at times I was near to crying in frustration at the cruel fates suffered by the protagonist Jenny. I could easily empathise with the “Kick me when I’m down” life she is experiencing. May say more about me than the book! Minor, occasional suspension of belief (see other reviews) is a small price to pay for a thoroughly absorbing novel, which after all is a work of fiction to entertain, not a treatise on money laundering.

(Have you tried to open a bank account recently? I couldn’t open an account to pay in a cheque from the Inland Revenue because it was in my old married name after I had reverted to my maiden name following my divorce. I’d tried paying it in to an existing bank account but they returned it saying I had told them I was the only resident in my property when actually there were two people – yep, me -married name, and me -maiden name. Caught by the money laundering rules for £1500 from the tax man! You couldn’t make this up.)

Anyway, this novel is entertaining, absorbing, gets your sense of injustice working overtime and is just a very good read.

photo credit: Bank of England Fan of £50 notes via photopin (license)

Being Precious

If the world were perfect, this is what I’d look out upon from my writing desk.

In reality, it’s more like this:

Waiting for things to become perfect before I write would mean waiting forever. The myth of that perfect time and place being out there is one that we writers often delude ourselves with. I know, because I do it all the time. In reality its just another way of putting off getting down to work. Because writing is hard work and none of us like hard work, do we?

I used to think that I couldn’t possibly write anything meaningful until I was older. The age at which I would suddenly blossom into the next Vonnegut or Banks was always unspecified. My best option was to wait until I got there and then start writing otherwise what I wrote was bound to be rubbish.

I was, of course, deluding myself. Don’t make the same mistake. Nor should you ever feel that life has passed you by and that starting now will be too late. These are only excuses for not writing so don’t be taken in.

We are writers. We have to write in order to live our lives the way we are meant to. It doesn’t matter one jot whether we are critically acclaimed or even read and enjoyed. These are bonuses that few of us are blessed with. What matters is that feeling we get when we’ve written something.

Off you go. Get writing. Don’t let me distract you.

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Phlogiston

In 1703 a scientist called Stahl put forward a theory that combustion involved a substance called phlogiston.  Wood, for example, was  a combination of ash and phlogiston. When it burnt the phlogiston was released and the ash left behind. Metals could be made by taking a metal compound and adding phlogiston. Soot, or carbon, was almost pure phlogiston, which explains why heating it with a metal oxide yields the pure metal.

Phlogiston remained the dominant theory of combustion until the 1780s when Lavoisier demonstrated the existence of oxygen.

Why am I telling you this?

Well, phlogiston is a stupid theory when viewed from a position of ‘superior’ knowledge. Yet it was accepted as scientific truth for decades. What I’m wondering is how many of the things that scientists hold dear today are equally insane. Most of them, probably.

Yet, almost every idea is met with the rebuttal that it hasn’t been scientifically proven. Like phlogiston.

Get my drift?

I’m currently researching the life and work of Richard Feynman, an intellect on a par with the likes of Einstein, for my SF novel, Voyager. Feynman makes the point that science can only ever demonstrate what is wrong and can never be relied on if it decides that something is right. Even if observations and experimentation confirm a theory (or a guess, as he prefers) future refinement may easily demonstrate that it’s wrong. Like Phlogiston.

So, when they tell you that Homeopathy or energetic healing or Tai Chi or Yoga or healthy eating haven’t been scientifically proved to be beneficial then breath a sigh of relief. Make your own personal observations. Make up your own mind. Remind yourself of science’s limitations and track record.

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Plodding Along

Sometimes its all you can do, plod along. Rapid progress is always nice but rarely achievable. Doing big things in one fell swoop is generally impossible and is very daunting. Like writing a story. Whether its a novel or a short story there’s little prospect of doing everything required at one sitting.

So, best not to try.

Many times I’ve heard the refrain ‘I’ll write my book when I’m [insert here a set of conditions that might never happen].’ Nobody has the time to write. There’s always something that needs doing. That’s why a writing habit is so important. Writing every day, even if it’s only a few words, is the best gift you can give yourself.

The arithmetic involved is compelling. I can write about a thousand words in an hour. So, if I wrote for twenty minutes a day I would have 121,000 words a year. A fat fantasy novel or two skinny crime thrillers! Twenty minutes a day!

I’m sorry to bang on about this but if you can’t grant yourself twenty minutes to do what makes you feel good then you’re not having a good day.

So I’m telling you to write every day.

I’m also suggesting that if you don’t manage to write then don’t feel bad about it. Be kind to yourself. But remember that writing is actually being kinder to yourself than forgiving yourself for not writing.

Then there’s another thing. Write for yourself. Don’t worry about readers in general or a reader in particular. In my experience, if you don’t have fun writing it then nobody is ever going to have fun reading it. Equally, if your guts aren’t churning with emotion as you put down the words chances are that it will leave most readers cold.

The publishing bit has been dealt with in numerous previous posts (as has this advice). Don’t worry about markets or genres or what you think might grab the eye of a literary agent. By the time you’ve competed your story, the market will have changed anyway.

Do seek help in improving your writing. Join a writers group, find someone to mentor you, don’t take any notice of the effusive praise lavished on your work by your friends and family.

Plod.

That’s my heartfelt advice.

It works for me.

 

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