The Word

The Bird is the word.

That's 7/7.

You win, Ceri.

That is all.


*Note: Grammar in posts will be fixed in due time. I didn't proofread anything for this little challenge.

Visualising a Character

I'm not a fantastic drawer, I'll admit that, which is why I'm a writer and not an artist. But you don't need to be a great artist to be able to draw your own characters. What would possess you to do that? Your characters are best painted with words after the reader will have their own image in their head with some variance. What I find myself doing is just using a visual key to ask myself 'is this what I want?' mainly when it comes to fashion sense, which is probably something I lack, I'll happily wear a cowboy hat, a band t-shirt and a kilt - perhaps I'm a hard rocking cowboy from the highlands. "Yeeeeehaww lets ride into that moshpit laddie!" But I have carefully considered what my characters are wearing because what a person wears can say a lot about a person, not only that as I am using an alternative reality where society has taken a different course of history I have to actually decide on how fashion has evolved. The two big trades are from the east, most importantly, China and you have imports from the Americas, because of the Scandinavian presence in the Americas fashions have combined to create the 'Vindlandish Tunic'. From China one of the major exports is silk. The North can have some very cold climates fur is still worn as it provides warmth, I think it's too early for the society to start thinking about animal rights and to be fair, humans in the society don't exactly have rights either. I've added small pieces of fashion accessories too, such as a silk neck scarf and sash.

 Somebody who makes that slight extra effort to get dressed suggests that they're somebody who cares about their appearance and wants to make a positive impression. It could be simply a case of somebody undoing their hair from a ponytail to show a full body of hair or simply throwing on a t-shirt and pair of jeans. Somebody can have stains on their clothes from where they've not been washed, why haven't they been washed? Why has this person worn the same get up for days - throw in other senses, why do they smell of sweat - is it coming from their clothes, have they been running or haven't they washed? The latter would perhaps be combined with other smells maybe, greasy hair would be a good sign.

But here is a description I have used for Asaros:

 

My eyes have sagged, heck my hair hasn’t even seen a brush for a long time, judging from its greasy shine it is probably in need of a wash.  There are sweat marks under my pits; although my dress is peach they are noticeable. I grab a tunic from the floor and throw it on, the one tassels around the shoulders and on the hem, I can tell it’s the old Vindlandish tunic somebody bought me, but I cannot for the life of me remember who.   

It's not going to be my final description, but through it she is realising how much of a mess she is, although the reader doesn't necessarily need to be 'told' that her hair needs a wash as they'd know from seeing its greasy shine, but these are judgments Asaros is making for herself, she is judging her own appearance, yet only making enough of an effort to cover it up rather than to seek any 'real' improvement. You can probably start to make a few assumptions about her, or at least I hope.

Alternate Reality

When it comes to fantasy or science fiction often or not new worlds are created and you can be creative with how you work with reality - science fiction can offer amazing technologies that would be impossible today or in the case of fantasy, magic, with each there's the danger of using 'magic' or 'technology' to fix any plot holes, but you put a clamp on your own realities, you could argue it's an enhanced reality so its still limited by physics of some kind. I've had people sit down and analyze a piece of fantasy and say 'well, why didn't he just use magic?' and I think, 'because their system or magic either: doesn't allow it or because he's not skilled enough', for example, "why don't they just use magic to revive Dumbledore?" and the palm immediately reaches the face. I am kind of reminded of the anime and manga of 'Fullmetal Alchemist' here, two young boys with the power of alchemy try to raise their dead mum but it goes horribly wrong as a human transmutation is not simple and there is a price to pay for attempting one. It's not all a click of the fingers, a wish and a bit of faerie dust (even then, faerie dust can't do everything) and everything is okay, if a piece of fantasy were to do that, or a piece of science fiction allows anything to be possible with the power of SCIENCE! then it wouldn't make for a very interesting or believable plot.

I think one of the difficulties I've been having is to have this alternative reality and to connect the reader, I want the reader to feel a part of this world, to feel some level of familiarity with it as they need to relate with the characters and their situation without using the real world to do it. How do you drive something close to home when you've place it so far away. But I suppose what people don't understand is that fantasy and science fiction deal very heavily with the human condition but in vast and imaginative ways you might say in cases it's a hyperbole. They deal with things that can be very close to us, at least, for my that can be a great hook. It's more than 'lets go defeat the shadow lord', because a 'shadow lord' is so much of a cliche that everybody's defeated one, in fact, there was a shadow lord tearing up my village the other day, oh those shadow lords get around! It's about a lot more than that. You might turn to the video game world and see a world of diversity between video games that do have a shadow lord as a bad guy, for example: Nier, Final Fantasy XI and Fable III. Nier is very much about the love between a concerned father and his sick child, Final Fantasy XI is about war and conquest and Fable III is about making hard decisions for the better of the people and learning that Real Estate is the answer to everything! I think if you are taking a cliche you can try to be original with them, but even then not every reads something because it's original, new or innovating, but because it's familiar - Mills and Boon's business thrives on this and as much as it pains me to read a Mills and Boon book (thank you for the lovely Mills and Boon books you got me for my birthday last year Ceri) it is very successful.

One of the things I am trying to do is represent how indoctrination is a bad thing for any society, I think by being in a fictional reality with a fictional religion within a fictional society it allows enough distance to remove prior judgment, I am hoping somebody isn't going to read it and feel it misrepresents their beliefs or the beliefs of others or even saying anything about the direction of our own governments either, but rather a certain mindset which can exist in any culture, society or belief system. In that way I feel the ability to create a world is beneficial, but in know-way is it going to magic anything, although in draft one of The Delusion Wing kind of does happen as parts of the plot happen because they're convenient.

Challenging Yourself

A challenge is always healthy, it keeps you in shape and I think for something to be a challenge you need to step out of your own comfort zone and it's not always that easy and some challenges can end in failure, but it's always good to push yourself. I think it's too easy to be comfortable in your own writing style and it was something I was pressed to do last year. Typically my writing tends to end on a depressing note and things tend to be on the low note quite frequently, my challenge was to write on a high note, have something happy. What happened? I wrote about a father trying to spark a relationship with his son after a history of abuse, I guess the 'high note' is that there's a relationship on the way to repair. Then further attempts were just too facetious and it ended on working on a piece of fluff, but the twist was that the lover was severely ill and I was trying to play on the power of love (sticking with someone, it ends on joy and happiness) it was actually pretty crap, but I guess I feel for a character to appreciate the 'good' they got then they've got to work for it as work makes it all the sweeter, but perhaps I should avoid using extremes.

But look at your own writing style, look for what's common and see what you can do to change that - if you mainly writing in the third person, write in the first person and if you primarily write in one genre, write in another, perhaps one you've never even read, you never know, you might find you like it.

An interesting challenge is called 'Write Or Die', set yourself a target for a number of words and time to write them in. 'Write of Die' will punish you for not writing, you can change different settings to suit you, but my favourite punishment is 'Kamikaze Mode', where if you stop writing after a period of time it will start deleting words so it keeps you on your feet and have you thinking creatively. Combine this with NaNoWriMo, you're going to get good progress on writing,

Plotting Plot

Plot is one of the few things that drives me insane! Why? Because I can never be happy with. Its got to make the story interesting, it has got to be dynamic, its got to move the reader and it has to be consistent! Looking at what I've written there's so much complexity in what I want to achieve it's hard to think of the plot on a single line, there is diversity in the sub plot. Mapping out plot diagrams can be a good way to think about what's going on and mine are layered. You've got the plot on its surface, what physically happens, 'X does Y and moves onto Z', then you've got the purpose of different characters, for example the 'skeletal man' in The Delusion Wing and plotting him out on a diagram has allowed me to get a much better picture on what he should be doing - if he wants to convince Asaros to change her behaviour, as frightening as he's suppose to be, I don't think his first stage would be fear. Now I can look on a piece of paper and see how he reacts to each plot change and how much he plays with reality. I can look specifically at Asaros' emotions and look precisely how she develops as a character and say line it up with the death god and see how they correlate and make changes based on that.

For example 
Plot: Asaros commits her crime
Asaros: Fueled by anger, but scared on the inside, she fear's what's ahead
Skeletal Man: Up to him to use her fear to convince her that she was wrong

A separate sheet I've got is called 'questions', this is to consider what questions I would like the reader to be asking, for example:
Why does Asaros think her crime will achieve anything? Why is this demon-like thing patronising her? Then I can see where these questions might be answered, I'm not even sure the 'Why is this demon-like thing patronising her?' question will be answered in book one now that I've split up the plot. After the major plot turn (which is now the end of book 1) there is a lot for Asaros to learn and she is on a journey of discovery, Asaros understanding her condition, it could perhaps be one of the major themes in book 2 as the major theme in book 1 is 'corruption', which has a nice spider gram...written using different coloured pens (not to make them pretty, it's just I prefer variance in colour for visual cues). I think book 1 would be able to stand on its own without the rest of the story, which is good in the sense that it doesn't feel incomplete, but I have been debating with myself whether the ending would stand as an ending on its own leaving the readers to use their imagination or to carry on. Perhaps it is too early to be thinking about those things.

Feeling Emotion

One of the things that gets me about writing is that I've got to sit inside of my character's head and try to understand how they feel to in some ways to try to feel the way they do. Any character you write will have a piece of you in there and when you start looking into it a character's current emotional state might mirror some part of your psyche. Asaros in some ways reflects a part of me, the part of me who is tired of watching bigoted people screw people over, see people at the top preaching ugliness hiding behind this wall of 'respectability' because it's not their word, it's the word of a higher being and many religious people I know will agree with me when I say this, "that's bullshit". The difference, however, is that she's living it and it'd be wrong of me to say I understand how she feels as I lead a much, much more comfortable lifestyle, which of course makes Asaros a difficult character to write. I have been writing some of Asaros' emotional moments as of late and given all the shit that has been thrown at her and all she's witnessed she's going to have moments where she just breaks down, after all, she's only human, even though she considers herself to be the strong martyr type.

In my original draft Asaros was this young, naive yet strong leader type taking on a revolution without much weakness, but she also wasn't that human. The considerations I had were: given her situation, will she be all that strong? She'd want to be and she'd try to be. She wants to get back at those who have her people living in fear but also those who have taken everything from her. I think actually, she'd have quite a level of vulnerability underneath her shell right from chapter 1. The other consideration is that will she really be able to lead a revolution? I think she'd like to, but she lacks the ability and the qualities and certainly after chapter 1 she doubts herself. Of course mistakes are made in order to learn, who knows? Asaros is a lot stronger when she's around the people she cares for, so there's always potential for her to change.

The Lucky Number 7

Today I have to write seven blog posts, why? Because I need to stop being facetious, I told this blogger and dear friend that 1 blog post isn't enough and of course it goes the other way and now I, like her, am cursed to write 7 blog posts today. And it's 16:45 and I've got to start cooking dinner in 45 minutes. The clock is ticking. What will I write about? I'm not quite sure, but this blog post counts as one. Remember, challenging yourself as a writer is always a good thing, it keeps you on your toes.

Blog Post Number 2: Feeling Emotion 
Blog Post Number 3: Plotting Plot
Blog Post Number 4: Challenging Yourself
Blog Post Number 5: Alternate Reality
Blog Post Number 6: Visualising A Character
Blog Post Number 7: The Word

Er...Hello

Where was that update I promised? Somewhere in the aether. I've left my little blog out of the loop and I'm back to give it some more love, not the kind of love that ends in restraining orders either.

Final notes on the Cambridge Wordfest and a few notes to do with points of inspiration. The entire 3 day weekend was an enjoyment, on the Saturday I went to the crime fiction workshop, and whilst I am not a crime writer, I found some very interesting takes on plot structure. It also inspired me to brainstorm the main theme of The Delusion Wing and I think the notes I've made are good enough for me to keep focus when editing rather than letting subplots go astray. Too many themes going at once would make the piece seem jumbled up and perhaps confuse readers. And yes, Ian McEwan was fully booked, however, I went along to the talk on Wiki Leaks from two The Guardian journalists who worked very closely with the story, who were also there to promote their book and they head interesting stories to tell, which offer an insight to difficulties and ethics of journalism, as well as the risks and how Internet publishing like WikiLeaks makes publishing data that would have most journalists facing legal trouble easy as it's a lot harder to hold somebody who's identity is anonymous to account. It is perhaps worth picking up their book.

With Cambridge Wordfest there's the seminar where they bring new authors into to talk about their newly published books. The books in question are: City of Bohane by Kevin Barry,  The Book of Lies by Mary Horlock and The Echo Chamber by Luke Williams. Each author read extracts and each piece sounded well written complete with interesting characters and strong plots to follow. City of Bohane is a piece of dystopia set in Ireland in the future in the streets of the City of Bohane following a gang. The Book of Lies is a murder story lead by a character who seems rather proud of the fact she killed someone and the author clearly has a good sense of humour, whilst it is tackling deep character issues she certainly uses her wit. The Echo Chamber focuses on the dying of the British Empire in Nigeria, but through the eyes, or should I say 'ears' of a character who's capable of hearing things other people can't. I bought copies of The City of Bohane as dystopia is right up my alley and The Book of Lies, both are signed copies.

With City of Bohane, it is encouraging to see that publishers will take on pieces of dystopia and that there might be a market for what I am writing. After the talk I started talking to people in the bar to find myself amongst MA Creative Writing students and an agent and it was interesting to meet a local agent who accepts new authors and I got to ask a few questions. At the book signing there was one table with PD James and the other with the debut writers, their events actually clashed too, I would love to have watched PD Jame's talk, but I had to make a choice. PD James looked a little lonely when I went to talk to the new writers, I would have bought one of her books and asked her to sign it and try to start a conversation, ask her a few questions about her experience as a successful writer and complement her on The Children of Men, it's an excellent piece of dystopia in my opinion, but felt kind of awkward having picked the debut writers' event over hers. "Hello PD James, I love the Children of Men and as a person who is writing dystopia it's actually quite inspiring", "So did you enjoy the talk?", "Er...I was in the other room". Plus I hate to sound over complimentary, as though I'm trying to suck up to someone, but some people you just have to call awesome, see the last part of this blog post.

Anyway as I was mostly hanging around the Cambridge Union building for the Sunday I actually felt kind of out of place. You have me, Derby University graduate, long untidy hair, cargo shorts, band t-shirt and hands in my pockets amongst folks who are better dressed, Cambridge University lecturers, MA students and what I suppose what you could call the 'literary crowd' if coining the term had much meaning, but I'm a social bloke, I am passionate and I refuse to not be myself, so I made an effort even if I didn't necessarily make a good impression and I think I probably came off as quite nervous to some folk. One guy sat with me and had a drink who just passed his MA and seemed familiar with most of the folk around. He was nice bloke, but somewhat controversial, at least one of the first things he said to me, "there's plenty of people in the world who deserve to be killed" and he then talked about the exploitation of larger businesses and the ethics of our society, whilst I see his sentiments, that if some people didn't exist then they wouldn't be able to cause others to suffer, but murder is a little extreme. We also talked about writing and philosophy, so it wasn't entirely awkward and we found common ground. Afterwards I went to a presentation on language from Robert  McCrum and Henry Hitchings, writers of The Language Wars and Globish, they talked about language change and what is coined 'Globish', which is English as the world's language and how its use world-wide has affected our language today. I've read books on language before, such as Melvyn Bragg's 'The Adventure of English' and Stephen Oppenheimer's 'The Origins of The British', as well as having David Crystal's Encyclopedia on language, which I refer to regularly. In the same presentation, there was the lecturer from Cambridge University's Anglo Saxon, Norse and Celtic department to introduce them, their MA course has been something I've been tempted by, particularly my obsession with the Norse, hence I spoke to her after the event. For me to do a course like that, I'm looking years down the line and if I'm in a sensible position to do it. But it's interesting to learn more about what options are out there nonetheless.


Anyway, that was one weekend of inspiration. Where was my other inspiration. I went to a gig in London to see a band called Kamelot who were supported by Evergrey and Amaranthe. That's the same Evergrey who wrote the album, The Inner Circle, the main piece of music that has inspired The Delusion Wing as discussed in this post. They even played the song I linked. Kamelot's usual singer, Kahn, was ill and was replaced with Fabio, the lead singer of Rhapsody of Fire and he did an amazing job, it was different, but he was special in his own way. I loved it. At the end I met Tom Englund, Evergrey's lead singer and shook the man's hand and had to tell him that he was amazing and a legend. I wanted a picture of him and I did ask, but decided meeting the guy was enough and didn't need to be a desperate fan in need of some token. It's great to be able to meet such interesting people as well as meet people who offer you that bit extra inspiration.

 Thank you,
Little Norse Prince