Prehistoric stuff part 2

I still don't have a title for any of this, much less an idea where it is going. I think that someone has to die and then we have a murder mystery style plot going on, but I really have no idea. Also, I don't really want him to be the main character if I can help it. Him going off and doing a murder mystery plot would be... well, a bit patriarchal, no?

Again some stats for you, courtesy of 750words.com:

Rating: PG-13 - sexual content and violence (still not seeing the violence)

Feeling mostly affectionate and concerned mostly about religion (but only just)

Mindset: Extrovert - Positive - Certain - Feeling

Time: Past; Primary Sense: Touch; Us and them: Them

Prehistoric Detective Novel?

I have long toyed with the idea of setting a story in Prehistory, but I am no Jean Auel and I have never even read the series. Equally, my knowledge of Prehistory is small and slim. That doesn't diminish my urge to do it, just make it harder as I lack the time to research and the inclination to really go for it. As I haven't touched my NaNo project since February (and then didn't really do much of use having left it since December) I figured I'd try something that had nothing attached to it.

What follows, then, is a quick exercise to try and get going. Before I share it I shall place the analysis (courtesy of 750words.com, where you should also be going) and then a line break so that it doesn't clutter up the blog any.

Rating: PG-13 for sexual content and violence (not sure about violence)

Feeling mostly affectionate and concerned mostly about religion

Mindset: Extrovert (75%) - Positive - Certain - Thinking

Time Orientation: the Past; Primary Sense: Touch; Us and Them: Them

Time: 28 minutes at 46 words per minute

Fade to Grey

Back to form this evening. Something I knocked up... ooh, must be back in 2005. However, it has the potential to go somewhere at some point if I ever want to write sci-fi action. Thus, I plant it here:

There were about five of them in the coffee shop: all quite clearly ready for business. A female holding a cup of double espresso sat by the entrance to the establishment, to stop me bolting I supposed, and there was a thick-set man by the bar nursing a muffin. The others were slightly less obvious, though it was always difficult to disguise the raw power they had brought with them and commanded at their fingertips. In truth I was quite honoured by all of the attention I was getting, it meant that they considered me at least noteworthy to send out the Interdiction like this.

I stood, mopping my hands with a napkin though there was really no need, and sauntered toward the toilets at the back of the building. They knew as well as I did that there would be a window in one of the stalls, but my game plan rested on the fact that they would not realise I had spotted every single one of them already. I did not have to wait long and no sooner was I safely obscured from view than I felt the breathing on my neck and stopped.

“I wouldn't, if I were you.”

It was the man I had seen near the back corner, keeping his eye on the whole proceedings, this was probably the field commander, his voice carried with it a tone that was used to being obeyed. Everybody had to learn sometime.

“You’re wrong, you know,” I protested as loudly as I could manage without drawing undue attention, “I’m not the one you’re looking for.”

“Heard it all before, the next thing you’ll be claiming is that we’ve made a mistake and how this must all be the result of a misunderstanding.”

He was right of course, and the reason was quite simple. They had made a terrible mistake and there had been a misunderstanding. Something told me that my explanation would neither be welcomed nor even consciously noted, the truth was simply not enough in this case. “Fine.”

“Do we have to read you your rights or will you save us that little pandering?”

“To be honest I’m just flattered there’s so many of you. Five? Plus one in the toilets? I am truly flattered it would take five heavily armed members of the Interdiction to bring down what you consider to be a simple thief.” Reasoning with them had broken down before it had properly begun.

A jolt in my back, I had the man rattled at least. “Your type are always flattered by the strangest things. Still, if that’s the way you want it then I must inform you of your rights under section 4 paragraph 7a of the Codex. You have a right-”

Despite the rough way in which I was being handled and my lack of sympathy at the best of times with those who would employ brute force where subtlety would be better suited to the situation I felt that it was only fair I offered them a warning, a chance to back off and leave me be this time. “If you must persist in this mockery of official business then I am afraid that I shall be forced to retaliate to protect myself and my interests. I hereby serve you fair warning that failure to let me be to continue my interests will result in my no longer being responsible for my actions.”

At first he started and I could imagine him shaking his head. This was clearly not what his combat oriented brain had told him would come next. I suppose I could understand that, they had the advantage of numbers, power and weaponry, there was little that I could do. Added to that, they would have read my profile before and would have been aware that I was unlikely to use force to resolve issues. In the event he began to laugh softly. He was a fool, a weapon jockey sent on an errand for someone else who was unwilling or unable to get their own hands dirty, I had expected no better. “As I was saying, you have a right to-”

Now I confess that my dander was up and that I was angry, to have a fair warning laughed at after all that I had been through was a little too much. Without warning I found myself growling and moving at speed. This took the commander behind me by surprise and he moved far too slowly to block the fist that suddenly appeared in his vision.

I connected. Blood sprayed from the impact, a square blow to the nose. A second blow caught him in the stomach, neatly crushing a kidney and dropping him to the floor. I did not have long now. The toilets were simply not an option.

One of them was moving, people were beginning to realise that something was going on. A staff member was moving to the telephone, no doubt to call in the pitiful excuses for law enforcement officials they had here. I grabbed the top of a table and up-ended it, stopping an attack from one of them to my side. The rest were fumbling to pull weapons.

The woman was close by now, launching herself into a two footed kick designed to take me unawares, the speed was incredible but time slowed as I turned and calmly took hold of her shins. That done I spun as if throwing a hammer and sent her head first into the cooling unit above the counter. Pandemonium had broken loose and at least one of the Interdiction had pulled a gun. They were shouting something but with the roaring in my ears from the effort I could not make out what they were saying. It didn’t matter, a shout in their direction burst their eardrums and prevented them being a factor any more.

Two more between me and the door, though the plate glass windows had shattered due to the shout so how I left was entirely up to preference. Most of the customers were cowering on the floor, a few were crawling toward the exit, who could blame them?

The first gunshots were wide, they were learning, and moved with agonising slowness to aim themselves at my head. Wood splintered and plastic shattered as the projectiles cut their way through the air. Shockwaves pulsed and fire spat from the muzzle, singing some of the fittings closest to the shooter. I threw myself backward and fired a plate in their direction. Pottery smashing and the firing stopped. Direct hit.

I rolled and stood quickly, projectiles impacting where I was a moment before as I made a dash to the door. My peripheral vision registered the final member of the team emerging from the corridor to the toilets, the commander was gradually regaining his composure and no doubt cursing the fact that he had come in too close and without immediate back up. Like I said, weapon jockeys.

It was all too late.

Mood Music

One thing I find very helpful when writing, and I'm sure I've mentioned it before, is music. Maybe it's just the way my mind works but I find it easier to immerse myself in something when I have a soundtrack. It's the same in films, but mainly effective when I get to set the tracks to events in books. It's why Iron Sky was somewhat jarring in places (and why I still haven't bought the otherwise excellent soundtrack) and why I enjoyed Fifth Element so much (and did buy the soundtrack, on a whim).

To this end I have two such soundtracks to share with you.

I think I've already said that my latest bout of contiguous writing, Nothing to Fear, was written to the Pet Shop Boys, for the most part, and structured around the track listing of their Fundamental album. That was because the album was very good for creating a particular kind of political narrative suffused with various love stories, all of them vaguely bittersweet, and that was a good background for what I wanted to do. I got as far as track 4 in terms of plot, partly due to the extended nature of the war that started, and found myself bringing in extra tracks to help various scenes and ideas.

However, these were not writing tracks. They were very specific and helped me do a job. Free writing, the kind I don't have much time for these days, is best done to proper immersive music. I have +Nina Mideast Journal, who is lovely, to thank for introducing me to Wait for her, a poem set to music, that fits the bill for what I'm talking about. But she also recently reminded me of the wonderful Ludovico Einaudi whose Una Mattina and Divenire are just divine and work so well to help the flow of words onto the page.

So, the first soundtrack to share is Divenire, which is just beautiful, and always gives me images that are similarly stunning and uplifting. Except maybe Ascolta, which is just raw emotion and sadness - I still love it of course, but it is a different scene that stems from the playing of the emotions.

Musicals are another good thing to write to for me, because they have to do so much with the voice to express emotion with the lyrics. They are actors, yes, but they are forced to rely on the song to get across their thoughts and must show as well as narrate. This means that the combination of instrument and voice can really crank up the emotions if done well - a double act by singer and composer from the beginning. Even brilliant musicals can be botched and awful lyrics saved by the cast.

My second soundtrack is Closer to Heaven by, you guessed it, the Pet Shop Boys. At the moment the stand out tracks are Closer to Heaven (reprise I) and Positive Role Model, neither of which appear to be on youtube and therefore I can't share them directly. But I do urge you, dear visitor, to seek them out and listen. While the gay love story is not to everyone's taste it is a love story. I'm not gay but I can recognise the power of the lyrics and the emotions contained within them well enough - that crosses boundaries in a way that sometimes I can't quite get. For instance, I love Chess the musical but I can never quite buy the love triangle between Florence, the Russian and Svetlana - they sing well, with emotion, but I never 'get' the love. They are, of course, straight, so I should recognise it from my own life experience. But it is nowhere near as powerful as the love in Closer to Heaven.

I think I may have strayed on a tangent here...

Opening words and centenaries

I've been reading a lot about how to start novels lately, it's a habit of mine, and how to introduce characters quickly and in such a way as to draw in the reader. And, I'm sorry to say, much of what I read is uninspiring. I don't mean to say that this should not be the aim of authors or that anyone who writes should not emulate those that are successful, but I worry that there has been a dumbing down of what we mean by this.

Swiftly put: I'm not at all convinced that some of the examples I've been reading do any of the jobs that people who quote them say they do. None of the 'great' openings by mainstream authors that I have read seem to do it terribly well, in fact, they instead seem to plumb for the long opening that leaves it until, say, the third or fourth page to draw the reader in. What do I mean? I mean authors that are famous enough to trade on their name tend to skimp on this art, because it's bloody hard to do, and these authors are the ones that get used by newbie writers and wannabe authors to explain what they mean. It does both sides something of a disservice.

My other thought, for my time is tight, is that the First World War nears a centenary and this will mean a sudden influx of books, films and plays about that area of history. My own novel may well be badly timed in this regard as there will be bigger names making plays at publishing for the next five years and many many unpublished authors also trying to get noticed with 'novel' takes on the First World War novel. Given that's what my own novel has become I'm not certain that it would get noticed at all.

On war



A girl plays with a doll in Rhiems, 1917

All the photos in this post are contemporary. None have been colourised. They were taken in colour between 1915 and 1917.

So it turns out that my NaNo effort is mainly focussed on the war that I created for William to grow up in. When I originally concieved of it I had intended that war to play a relatively minor role in the plot. It was there, as in Hitler: the Rise of Evil to provide a backdrop to some minor characterisation and to provide a defeat for the country that William hails from. More to the point, I'm not a fan of novels about war.

No, wait, scratch that.

German soldiers in the ruins of a village in the Somme, 1916

Novels about war inevitably do one of two things, in general, they either romanticise the war involved (The Last Ace by Henry Ziebel, I'm looking at you; anything by Harold Coyle or Tom Clancy, you are as much at fault) or they harp on too much about the human nature of the soldiers involved to actually get to grips with their stories (the latter books of the Sharpe series by Bernard Cornwell, for example; or anything by Larry Bond). All of them look at men at war. All of them are men.

That said, I have read some other books that do a better job. One Spring in Picardy was such a book, as was The Middle Parts of Fortune. Both of these are First World War novels, the latter was written by someone who served in the First World War and the former by a man whose father served and whose uncles all served too. Basically, they knew their stuff. I get the impression that the other authors don't.

What makes me rant so? Simply put - I am a student of the First World War. It occurs to me that what I know of Hitler's experience in the First World War does not gel well with representations that I have seen on screen. Equally, the experiences in All Quiet on the Western Front and the various adaptations do not always fit with what I know from other sources. I remember reading Tony Ashworth's book on trench culture and the letters in books like War of Words and Somme and being completely bowled over by what people said at the time. Lyn MacDonald's excellent series of interviews, though heavily tainted by her own views and the established ideas of AJP Taylor, were magnificent for me as they contextualised a war primarily from the view of those that fought in it.

German soldiers in a well-revetted trench, 1915

As a consequence I have rejected both the poets' views and those of the historians who seek to generalise it or to find in it some exposition of human frailty and the futility of the war. I view the First World War as an aberration, but it was not futile. It cannot be futile. To say so would be to dismiss all those who took part and ignore the effects of what they did. Indeed, when I read All Quiet on the Home Front I discovered yet another angle on the stories from the time.


Rations in a French communication trench, 1917

All of this has clearly been brewing for much longer than I thought. Which was why, when the time came, I ended up writing over 40k words on the First World War analogue in my story. Because the record needed to be set straight. Because such a conflict deserved more than to be a vehicle for the rise of one character. Because wars are what they are and they need their own space to be fully appreciated for what they are. I did not want my novel to become a war novel. I have no direct experience of any such thing, nor can I piggy-back on anyone I know who does have experience. But, oddly, I could draw on my own experiences to write it.

This is strange, and I suppose connected to 'writing what you know', because I know nothing of war, but I am an outsider. I know little of relationships (my own experiences are quite limited) but much of awkwardness. I know nothing of fearing for one's life but much of adapting fear to fit the circumstances one finds oneself in.  I hope, therefore, that I am less of a Clancy and more of a MacDonald or even a Faulks (though his Birdsong was more a piece of erotica disguised as a novel about tunnelling in the First World War).

Which is why, when the time comes, my novel must be published under a female name. I want the novel to bring the war to life in the same way as these colour images do and to do so in a way that surprises people. So, no, I shan't be publishing under a male name to get readers. My concept is served best by publishing as a female.

Novelling

I have a confession to make.

I have never actually finished any writing of any length. I have countless short stories that I have finished but they were written between the ages of about ten and twenty. They are not the most edifying of things. After I finished my degree, well, I haven't really been in a place where writing short stories would work.  In that, well, those stories were... bad.

So, in 2006, after much fruitless furtling about trying to write an actual first draft of anything, I tried my hand at NaNo.  I wrote 85,000 words plus about 21,000 words that I deemed unfit to be in the final project. But it was not a novel. It was unfinished and I had no real idea where I was going with it all. Anastasia may or may not have had imaginary friends and may or may not have had her memories altered by some shadowy government agency (or not) for some reason. My plotting remained as amorphous as that. 8,000 words were devoted, in one instance, to her waking up routine.

In 2007 I tried again, but got about 12,000 words in before the lack of plot killed me and the lack of characters became a major issue. 2008 was two projects, both very boring with no plot and no real attempts at characterisation. In 2009 I actually wrote something that had been fulminating since 2007 and got about 26,000 words done. However, despite having a much more vibrant setting than I was used to and some actual real characters I still had no plot for them to live. As a consequence it remains totally unfinished because I have no clue what's supposed to happen there (that is, what I fill that vibrant setting with). In 2010 I tried the same setting. Again the lack of plot killed it at around 18,000 words. In 2011 real life prevented any writing at all for most of the year as I struggled with my day-job and the day-job won.

Now, this year is different. No, I haven't finished the novel at all. However, I know where it is going. I have a character and a plot that live and a setting, though not as vibrant and real as the one from 2009, that will stand the story I want to tell there. And I do want to tell that story. I am maybe half way through that story, I don't know (the war that takes up so much of this year's project was planned to be a short three or four vignettes, so about 4,000 words, and is currently about 38,000 words), but I feel happier with this than any of the rest of my projects.

Why the wall of text? I told my mother that I "won NaNo" and, after explaining it to her (again), she replied "Well, you never finish anything, do you?" Thanks, Mum. My father was interested until I explained that there was no judging and then sort of let it drop.

I have a reputation, you see. :)