It'll be over by Christmas

That's what they said at the time, but they were wrong. I'm beginning to feel the same at this project too. I've read too much about experiences of men during that time, too much raw emotion and carefully hidden experience. I can't just write a few anecdotes and finish. I find I have to draw the characters realistically, have each man in the tale take his own full role and situation. I now know that they all have to die, or at least never see the MC again, and I even know how that has to happen. But I must also make sure that the reader knows these men, trusts these men, so that they can share and understand the grief and shock and sorrow of the MC when it happens.

So the war drags on. Two battles to go before the last one and another scene in reserve before we have the dalliance with Aixlenean girls. Tonight brought an unofficial truce and the handing out of helmets and a rat killing session. I just hope I've not made it so long and boring that people stop reading when the character of the novel changes.

Also, I'm not sure whether I sympathise more with William or Badger in the argument I just transcribed them having. Given where William is heading and Badger's role as mentor I'm hoping that means I have more realistic characters.

Extract follows:

In amongst shared meals and baths the two groups of soldiers became firm friends, parting with the agreement that they would continue the unofficial truce wherever they were stationed next. The Aixlenean unit, from the centre of Aixlene with its guttural accent and rolling farmland, were the first to leave, giving way to a unit from the more mountainous north of the country. They took a while to convince of the intentions of the invaders but, by the fifth and final day, they too had been won over.

“Looks like its Shiremen from the Home Counties coming in here next,” said Badger gruffly to one of the Aixleneans as they shared some salted beef in a shell crater left over from the beginning of the war. “I don’t care about you making a truce with them. Give ‘em Hell, the pompous bastards.”

The tallest Aixlenean, they’d nicknamed him ‘The Bear’, laughed with genuine mirth. “If you meet any of us from the coast, return the favour. I think our men of artillery need some practice here. Give us starlight to signal and we wait an hour.”

“Oh, you are terrific gents.” For the first time William looked on Badger differently, “I shall see to it!”

Despite his confusion, William said nothing. Salted beef was eaten; Aixlenean wine was quaffed and songs were sung before both groups retired, warm and tipsy, to their respective trenches and the evening roll-call. “Enjoy your jaunt, chaps?” asked Sergeant Batemann by way of greeting, “Hope you brought back some of that-”

Redbar cut him off by handing over two full bottles of red wine. “Like we’d forget you, Sarge,” he grinned and then tottered off in the direction of the rest of his section who had pulled sentry duty for the evening. They had all agreed that it simply wouldn’t do to have a surprise inspection find out just how peaceful this sector was.

“Aren’t we all brothers?” asked William of Badger when he was sure he wouldn’t be overheard.

“Us and the Aixleneans?” a hiccough, “Only so far as this bastard war I think. And not everywhere. Anything else would be Socialism.”

“No, I mean Merkavians.” Frowning was beginning to hurt his forehead. “You told them to give our brothers Hell.”

Badger looked at him for a long moment. “Think of it as a way of keeping this sector from getting too much attention. Burst of activity from the Aixlenean side’ll do it all the world of good.” Lighting a cigarette he took a quick drag.

And, in that moment, William hated smoking.

Mutiny!

Yes, I have a full-blown character mutiny here tonight.

I got no writing done last night due to pressures from the day job taking my first world issues by the horns and wandering off on their own to do work like things. My plan to hit 35k was dead in the water, as was a plan to drink some beer for company, which was sad. Instead I watched the daily target hit 31,667 whilst I was still at 30,400. Tonight, the plan was to get William through an attack viewed at a distance to more boredom behind lines where we could find out what each of the characters wants to do when the war is over - here we'd learn that William has no idea and quite likes the war itself for being, well, something to do - and then an actual harrowing experience after which he will have an awkward moment or two with a local girl.

No. Instead the whole of the 15th battalion mutinied on me and joined battle with the enemy in the village. William has killed a man, his first directly, and has now taken part in a genuine hand-to-hand struggle with bayonets. Damn him. Damn the 15th. Just stay put out of range you damnable contemptible buggers!  This is a character novel, not a war novel!

I can't complain. I've hit 35,200.

We're at war

Yep, they've had a battle.  William Caston has annoyed his peers and won a medal for bravery by getting them all in danger and putting his men in the firing line. However, it was early days in the war and so he managed to do it without firing a shot and without taking a casualty.

Of course, the battle itself had to end another way and so we have the 'Slaughter of Innocents' which is not a rip off of the Kindermord von Ypren at all, nooo, as if I would steal the basic narrative of the war from the First World War.  Ahem.  I'm about to rip off the battle of Neuve Chapel, well hidden as the battle of Neeuwekerque (see what I did there?) as well.

I think the novel is changing - we have a war novel now. I hope I can get through the whole thing before the month is up, I don't really want to write a war novel because I don't know enough to make it authentic. Still, I do hope to have my MC have a dalliance with a nice young Aixlenean lady and face tanks, did I mention tanks? I think I did. Then he can go home and start his politicisation.

On the plus side, despite writing war, I have yet to be surprised by any horrible stuff that William has done or had to write any scenes involving harrowing death and destruction. I suppose the latter will come later.

My novel is, like, really despressing.

We're in the army now

I've got to the war. And my novel has changed already. Just written the longest contiguous bit of prose in it so far, at just shy of 2k words, and the character of it is definitely different. I'm at that horrible point where I know I need to do some things but I want to get to the next bit of action instead. However, in order to make the action make sense I first need to lay the groundwork for it, or the action will make little sense and I know that I won't go and do that any time soon if I skip it.

In other news, William has survived the first, long range, contact with the enemy and now has a small section. I am in danger of using the bit from "Eyes Open" that resides on this blog at some point, but that will have to be changed quite a lot in order to make any sense in the context of William's life. Am I now sounding like an autistic man?  I think that perhaps I am.  I blame William.

It always gets to me that the war as depicted in Hitler: the Rise of Evil and the war I know from other sources, like Lyn MacDonald, John Keegan et al are two different things. Furthermore, the way that the First World War works in Hitler flies in the face of the way it works in the adaptations of All Quiet on the Western Front too, suggesting that the German experience of it was very different to what we see in the former. I get the impression that the people that made Hitler were not really focused on the war. Being a student of it myself, and borrowing from it rather liberally for the setting for William's rise to dictator, I think I may end up over-doing it.

Still, after I have the 50,000 I can edit it later, right?

On the other hand, I am now back on track at 26,900 words at the time of writing. I may do some more tonight, but I'm having a beer and feeling tired, so I'm not banking on it.

Back on the sauce

Better night writing tonight, achieved by cheating and being too dog-tired to do anything connected to the day job. After the day I've had there I would usually just have a night vegetating in front of the telly, so it was nice to have Nano force me to do something more productive.

So, tonight I cheated by skipping past the part where my MC changes to become a little more, well, minimal and went straight to the Aixlenean war, allowing me to put in some tired training camp tropes and some scenes I remember from the 1930s adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front and Hitler: the Rise of Evil where the company gets shelled arriving at the front - though I didn't quite get that far. I also added a character name that I've had before but found him to be a lot different than the other times I've deployed him.

Anyway, headlines: just shy of 24,000 words and no music tonight.  Much experimentation, if it can be called that, with dialogue driven scenes that have minimal descriptive elements. Not sure of if they work but so going to keep trying.

Ouch

1,466 words, and they were hard.

Day job has drained me.  And I took a night off it.  So there's more to do in the week on the evenings, when I would write.  I needed 5k tonight.  Or more.

Jeremy and William are split up.  Aixlene has had a revolution.  War is coming.  I write in short sentences.

Total is just over 20k.

Evil?

So, tonight, I have found myself writing a kissing scene and a rescue from a burning building with a playlist that rattled between Angel by Massive Attack and Fire by the Crazy World of Arthur Brown.  I have also found myself deciding that my main character is not a person I would particularly like to meet in real life.  I fear he holds up a mirror to humanity that I do not find terribly flattering but, at the same time, I worry that his mirror is more accurate than I would like.

Basically, well, after that conversation I wrote last I began to wonder about him.  I already knew that he was going to rescue his love interest from a burning building and that his own ineptitude in romantic affairs coupled with the near death experience of his paramour would lead them to cheat on him.  I knew that.  I also knew that, in order to make the relationship believeable, there would need to be something physical beyond hands around shoulders and hints in dialogue.  What I was most certainly not prepared for was what happened.

The kissing scene held a predatory passion that I did not know the character possessed and the fire rescue carried the discovery, and the deliberate leaving for dead, of a young girl trapped in a room.  The latter one leaves me with the most qualms.  I don't like it very much, though William was perfectly happy to ignore it afterwards, and even though I wrote it... well, it doesn't feel very much like me.  I think I'm channelling Billy-boy, and it's not an experience I relish!

On a happier note, the plague has passed the household, the children are sleeping better and so I have time to write again.  Hurrah.  3,468 words today and a pizza.  That's worth celebrating.