Category: On writing

You’ve seen it in the movies, you read about it in books, particularly whodunits and thrillers. The hero needs information. This information is hard to get. It’s on a government computer somewhere.

Our hero goes to a friend or a workmate or a relative who, just coincidentally–or not so coincidentally if the writer has laid the groundwork well—happens to work in the department that can give him the information and says, “Please. I need this.” Sometimes, depending on the movie or the book, it’s a matter of life or death.

So the friend/workmate/relative goes off to get the information for them.

And that’s where my credibility stops and something inside of me starts screaming, “Do you realise what you have just done?”

Nowadays information is better protected than it ever was and in any big company, and in many small ones, there’s an audit trail of who accessed which bit of data and when. Not only that, you can’t look up just anyone’s data. If the friend/workmate/relative goes outside their need to know they start tripping security flags. Someone is going to investigate.

The penalty for accessing data you’re not allowed to is instant dismissal.

Even if the breach is small. Even if it doesn’t hurt anyone.

What can the secondary character say? “But it’s life or death for my friend.”

Most bosses would reply something along the lines of, “He should have gone to the police then. Or come to the boss here and explained the problem.” Which of course, the hero can’t do because a) no-one would believe him, and b) they still wouldn’t give him what he needed to know, which is why the hero got his friend to do it in the first place.

Collateral damage to secondary characters is a fact of fiction.

I accept that.

I don’t know why this particular case bothers me more than most. Maybe it’s because it’s such a thoughtless thing to do and because the consequences for the secondary character can be devastating. Maybe (probably) it’s because I and many of my friends work in environments where data is protected and we have seen first-hand the effects of even minor security lapses.

To me it makes for a selfish hero, so focused on his own problems that he doesn’t consider anyone else. That always makes me like him a little less.

Writing time is scarce in a full working day. I take any time I can, even lunchtime, to write.

I have it down pat now. Pick a not-so-busy time to eat, find a quiet cafe, order food, then pull out the PC and start working. Since I purchased a netbook my writing productivity has increased fourfold.

I am often approached by other people who are interested in buying their own netbook to ask how I feel about mine. I tell them it’s great, and talk about the things that were important to me when I bought it. Could I touch type on it? Were the control, shift and alt keys in the right place? Then they ask the question that’s important to them. How do you access the internet on it?

The fact is, I seldom use the netbook to connect to internet. The screen is too small, access is slow(ish), and I’d rather use the full-size, faster PC at home.

Yet for most people, how and whether their computer connects to the internet is the only question.

Sometimes I feel I am the only person left in the world who doesn’t need internet access 24-7.

I use the internet, of course. I use it for research. I use it for email. But I don’t need it on all the time. In fact, it’s nice to be able to sit down, uninterrupted, and just write.

If you’ve read this blog before you will know that I’m not a big fan of prologues.

A good prologue gives you information that is not part of the main story but that is important to know. It is often set in a different time to that of the main novel, usually earlier, and it generally has a different protagonist. The classic prologue that comes to mind is Tolkien’s explanation of how the one ring to rule them all came about. (I’m thinking the movie version here.)

Another use for a prologue is as part of a series, where it’s a precis of what happened in previous books. I might add that most of my favourite series don’t have prologues and don’t need them.

Unfortunately, many people who write fantasy novels seem to think that their story isn’t a real fantasy if it doesn’t have a prologue, so they put one in, when really what they have written is chapter one of their novel and they should just have started the main story earlier.

Their prologue deals with events that happen to the person who is the main point-of-view character of the novel. These events often happen only days or—or even in one case, minutes—before the story proper. They’re often narrated in a distant, omniscient voice. If you read the prologue at all you just skim it, then you turn over to chapter one and start reading it and bang, you’re right in the middle of the aftermath of what happened in the prologue.

Don’t get me wrong. I like a story that starts in the middle of the action, but even a story that begins with action needs a place where you, the reader, can begin. That’s usually at the start of chapter one.

I believe that you should be able to read a whole book without the prologue and still understand and enjoy it. The prologue should add further information and enrich the story, but it shouldn’t be part of the story. Going back to Lord of the Rings, the story of the making of the ring had nothing and everything to do with the story of how and why Frodo and company set out to destroy the ring. That’s the ideal prologue.

In my latest novel I thought I had written—horrors—a prologue. It was set prior to the main story. It was told from a different point-of-view, and the narrator was first-person while the rest of the story is third-person. What happens in the prologue is the trigger for the whole story. You could read the story without it, but you read it differently because if you read the prologue first you knew what was going on and why things had happened.

So be it. If my story had to have a prologue it had one.

And then just a little over half-way through the story the same first-person narrator pops up again. It wasn’t conscious. More a, “Hey, here I am and I want my turn now,” type of writing. Three-quarters of the way through back he pops in again. This time he joins up with one of the protagonists and travels with them for the rest of the book.

So he’s not a prologue any more. I’m not sure what he is yet.

One thing I do know is that he has a totally different voice to the main character. If you pick up my story and start reading it based on that non-prologue you may not like it when you get to chapter two, because it’s a totally different story.

I haven’t quite worked out how to deal with that yet. Or whether I even need to.

A note, four years on, because many people still visit this page.

Most of the links below are broken. This is an old post, and the links I blogged about here don’t exist any more, so I’m not going to fix them.

Microsoft still offers a screenplay temple. I don’t know what it’s like, but you can get to it in Word and searching for “screenplay” in the online templates field to find it.

Unfortunately, the BBC doesn’t offer the Script Smart Gold template any more. That’s a pity, as it was excellent.

Script Frenzy

This is slightly outside my normal posts about writing novels, but I am a big supporter of NaNoWriMo, even though some years I am too busy to actually participate. I like the way it kick-starts my writing habits and makes me get down there and just write. Those WriMos amongst us will know that they also do a companion challenge called Script Frenzy, which runs through April. Write a 100 page script in 30 days. I have never participated in Script Frenzy (yet), but one day I would like to.

I was reading the Script Frenzy forums last night—anything but write more on my novel, and yes, I am procrastinating—in particular the What software do you use thread. For most people on Windows it comes down to Celtx or Final Draft. Celtx looks pretty good and from what I can see on the forum it’s free, or reasonably priced at least. Final Draft is a commercial product and costs around US$250.

If I was starting from scratch and just writing for Script Frenzy, I’d probably go for Celtx. If I wanted to write scripts for a living I’d go for Final Draft. But me, I’m a Word gal, and I write everything in Word, even scripts.

So what templates can you use in Word?

Screenplay templates that I know about for Word include:

• Microsoft provides two downloadable screenplay templates. If you have Word 2000 or XP (or even Word 97) you can use the Microsoft screenplay template. If you have Word 2007 you can use the Word 2007 Screenplay with styles and hotkeys provided by Douglas Ryan VanBenthuysen.
• The BBC’s Script Smart, which was originally created for Word 97, and then they updated it for Word 2000 and Word for the Mac and called it Script Smart Gold.

I have been using Word 2007 for a while now, and that’s what I want to concentrate on here. Screenplay templates for Word 2007.

Last month one of the agents at the Wylie-Merrick Literary Agency posted a thoughtful insight into the future of young adult novels.

Have you noticed … that the books propping up the industry (Twilight, Harry Potter, etc.) are YA crossovers? Not only do young readers read them, but adults do as well. Editors are now desperate to find … books they can market initially as YA that will attract the adult audience. Given that the last five years have brought about a trend toward more mature YA with older protagonists, what does that say?

Good-bye YA? by Wylie-Merrick Literary Agency

The author goes on to say that young adult literature hasn’t been around all that long. I would agree with that. I was born on the tail-end of the Baby Boomers and when I was a child the age group for children’s books went up to 9-14 and then you moved straight on to adult books.

According to the lecturer in children’s writing at Sherylyn’s writing classes, young adult books now go up to around 26 years of age.

Sherylyn says I often write young adult novels. Roland in Shared Memories, for example, is 19 years of age. Tanner in Mathi’s Story—the novel I am currently working on—is 16. The writing style is suited to young people as well. Our writing ends up with a reading grade of 6 or 7.

And yet … the other protagonists in both Shared Memories and Mathi’s Story are older. Kym, the other point-of-view character in Shared Memories, is the head of the local army. Jee Lim and Yashua, in Mathi’s Story, are both adults.

People have also commented on how suitable Not So Simple After All is for its young adult audience. The point-of-view characters in the story are a retired mercenary and a renowned sorcerer. Do they fit the young adult demographic?

All of these stories were written for an adult audience, not for a young adult audience.

Many would agree that young adults themselves find tagging a book as ‘young adult’ an automatic turn-off, and that if they know a book is a young adult novel they will not read it. I From my own experience I have found that the main group who purchase young adult books are my own peers—either for themselves to read, or as gifts for young adults.

If editors are seeking more and more crossover books that appeal to adults as well as young adults, then the logical conclusion is that the young adult novel is doomed, because if there is no dividing line then surely the novel is just a novel and, by default, an adult novel anyway.

I don’t think the young adult novel is doomed, but I do wonder if the trend is publishing is swinging back the other way.

We used to include a tag line in our queries for Not So Simple After All:

For those who like their traditional fantasy tinged with light-hearted fun.

It never got us anywhere, and early on we realised that mentioning the word ‘tradtional’ in our fantasy query was akin to a kiss of death. Nobody wanted ‘traditional’ fantasy. Traditional fantasy was Tolkien and Eddings and Jordan. Traditional fantasy was epic fantasy. Medieval worlds with sword and sworcery, where the fate of a kingdom is at stake, if not the fate of the whole world.

Like most fantasy readers I love traditional fantasy, but I’m also over it. That may sound contradictory but you have to give me something special to make me read it now. A different story or some truly special characters. And I’m not talking boy wizards here. I’m talking characters like Robin Hobb’s Fitz and Fool, or even her latest heroine, Thymara.

I spent today checking out the latest batch of manuscripts in my online critique group. Almost without exception, all the fantasy novels were urban fantasy. There was nothing so old hat as vampires or werewolves—although there was one zombie—but the stories were set in our world, with iPods and mobile phones and the internet. The protagonists drove cars or caught planes when they wanted to go places.

The circle has completely turned.

I don’t know how long this trend will last. Many urban fantasy lovers who grew up reading about vampires and werewolves are starting to feel about them the way I feel about traditional fantasy. Yes, they love them, but they are so over them too.

I wonder how long it will be before traditional fantasy returns, in some form or another.

And yes, we still intend to sell Not So Simple After All, only we’re realistic enough to realise it probably won’t be in the next year or two.

Over on Nathan Bransford’s blog he posed the question do you own your characters or do your characters own you? He says:

I … find it curious to hear authors so completely in thrall to their worlds and characters, and I start wondering, “Wait a second, who’s in charge here?”

Nathan Bransford – Do You Own Your Characters or Do Your Characters Own You?

The commenters on the post could be divided into two camps. One camp is authors who seem to write their story based around plot, while the other (larger) camp writes character-based stories. Plot-based authors definitely control what their characters do and keep them on track if they stray. Character-based authors give their characters some degree of control.

As many of the commenters to the post said, if a character refuses to follow the storyline it is often a sign that something is wrong with the story.

I am very much a character-based person myself. Story always come second to character, particularly in the first draft. My characters do and say things I could never have envisaged when I start of the story.

It’s nice to know that so many people out there work the same way.

In a previous article, Developing the science fiction reading skillset, I talked about an article written by Jo Walton over at Tor.com. The article was on SF reading protocols and how science fiction readers develop a skillset to read science fiction.

In the same article Jo also covered the opposite of this. The mindset (or skillset if you like) that literary readers bring to their reading. The expectation that if it’s written it must have some form of metaphor associated with it.

Sherylyn, my writing partner, is part-way through a writing course. Last year she completed a subject called Myths and Symbols. One thing her lecturer kept telling the class was that ‘all stories have hidden symbolism’. I disagreed with this because I know that when I write—and I think Sherylyn would probably say the same about her writing—I am definitely not trying for symbols. I am telling a story, and it’s not usually a story fraught with symbolism, it’s a story about a person or persons and what happens to them. But … according to the lecturer, symbology is always there, even if you, the author, don’t know that you are writing it in.

While I agree that themes do creep into some stories—and sometimes this is deliberate, sometimes it’s subconscious—I do not, consciously or sub-consciously, lace my stories with the type of symbolism the lecturer was talking about. If my main character wears a red dress it does not mean she is a slut or a sinful woman, which is one of the commonly accepted symbologies associated with a red dress. Nor does it automatically mean she that she is strong and fiery, another commonly accepted symbol. If I say, in my book that she liked the colour, or that she wore it because her (now-deceased) husband said it suited her then that’s why she’s wearing it.

Jo has some good points to make about how literary readers expect a story to have symbolism and metaphors; that they go looking for them, even when they are not there.

Over at Tor.com Jo Walton has an interesting article on SF reading protocols and how regular readers of science fiction know how to read without getting hung up on the detail that’s not important. She uses the example of Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War, and how you don’t need to know what a tachyon drive is to enjoy the novel, you just need to know that it allows you to travel faster than light and what impact that has for the story.

One of the things that I find when non-SF readers read any of our stories is that they always want more detail. They always want to know more back story.

I used to think that maybe we do jump into a story too quickly sometimes. In Not So Simple After All (aka Potion), for example, we start the story when our adventurers start their journey together, not when they first meet their prospective boss. We had quite a few people say they would like to see how the characters are offered the job and how they decide to take the work. We tried to write earlier chapters showing Blade bored and unhappy at his school for fighters and River coming to the school to offer him the job, but it was boring and didn’t add anything to the story except that the reader had to read at least two more chapters before they got into the story proper. So we cut them again.

I think now that what these people—many of them non-regular SFF readers—really wanted was for us to make a world that they understood at the start, rather than have that world unfold for them as they read.

I have always been a reader who is happy to learn things as the book goes on. Myself, I call it a willing suspension of disbelief. Provided the author is telling a good tale and has empathetic characters I’m happy to go along with his/her story and let the facts settle in throughout the story. I don’t need to understand everything straight away.

Jo Walton calls this the SF reading skillset.