What killed all the vampires?

The most difficult part of both Echo and Clarke to write is not the characterisation, the plot, the dialogue, the background description. It's the sex.

Sex is big in novels at the moment. I'm sure you've noticed. Every time I go into WHSmith there's somebody brazenly standing in front of the huge 50 Shades section. And it's going to get worse as the massive band wagon rolls into town and bookshops have to clear away all the vampire books to make room.

If you've not read Echo (and why not?), you'll know there's sex. Twice. E winces and skips over those parts, the crowd at work read it aloud in the office, fortunately whilst I'm not there although they tell me about it.

There's an unspoken presumption that sex scenes in books are autobiographical. Hand on heart there are no polka dot pants in the house. I've no idea whether EL James did theoretical or practical research. Thnk what you like but remember it's a novel of fiction :-)

As I've said before, Echo was written with the intention that nobody would ever read it, but it was still very hard to write. And it will be even harder with Clarke because I know that it will have an audience, and a fairly merciless one at that. 

Because everybody is too busy taking the piss, it's almost impossible to get any constructive feedback  about those scenes. I read the first too chapters of 50 Shades and they're terrible, so I can only presume that the sex (page 115 onwards, apparently) is truly badly written as well. Is it possible to write a "good" sex scene, or do writers leave their critical facilities at the door as well?

I've never actually questioned why I left those parts in or what they add to the book, I just wrote them. I suppose that I could leave the scene with the closing of the door.

But where would be the fun in that?

I've been expecting you, Mr Bond

What makes a good villain?

I've been beta reading something recently and one of my constructive criticisms was that the characters I perceived to be the bad guys just didn't cut it for me. Their motivation was around climbing the corporate ladder and getting their own back on people who had spited them previously.

Should a villain be evil? Evil isn't that interesting. True evil is sad little men finding themselves in positions of power and murdering millions of people through the application of bureaucracy. Who was the most evil character in Star Wars. It wasn't Darth Vader, it was Grand Moff Tarkin who blew up an entire world. Nor is evil attractive (to those of us that consider ourselves to be sane).  The moors murderers have been in the news a lot this week and nobody can consider them anything other than abhorrent. 

Do we need a villain? Writing courses talk about the antagonist. The person whose sole purpose in the story is to place barriers in the hero's path and potentially be the source of threat. Does the antagonist need to be a villain. In Echo the main antagonist is trying to kill York and those around him, but their motivation is as much about preservation of the Empire rather than personal gain, spite, underlying character flaw or psychopathic tendencies. If you want to judge, then remember that York is responsible for something in the reason of 50,000 deaths on the nineteen ships destroyed by the Nemesis during the war and Echo cheerfully murders her way through the entire book. In Echo 2 I'm starting to work up a couple of antagonist characters but both are honourable, honest, professional people with great integrity. If the book was written from the point of view of the Realm, they would be the heroes and Echo and York would come across as monsters.

In most books an antagonist of some kind is necessary. Until they're dead/ imprisoned / exiled/ rehabilitated then there's no closure. But I've concluded that they don't need to be evil. They do, however, need to have a clear reason for being the bad guy and, if possible, they need to be interesting.

Cats are optional

The joys of the West Yorkshire Road Car Company

Blogs are like buses. You don't blog for ages and then several ideas come at once. Blogging is different to authoring in that, as I've discovered and many other writers will tell you, just putting words on the page will eventually kick the muse into action and then you can delete all the dross. With a blog, it's different. I try to find something to say reasonably frequently so that I can then tweet about it and, at the moment, each blog/ tweet appears to generate one sale.

I should probably post more stuff from E2. Lots has happened in the last few chapters and it was quite exciting to write. The difficulty is that I need to select a bit that will work out of context. And without giving too much of the story away, after all, I'm looking to you lot to buy the next one. The tax man will eventually be looking for me to make a profit, rather than the UK subsidising Cathy Helms and the US revenue.

An unforeseen consequence of the iPad is that the blogger site doesn't seem to handle it particularly well. Hard returns (does anybody remember typewriters?) and  speech marks just seem to be ignored, so the final product is all bunched up without the dramatic spacing I wanted. Never mind, still think the iPad is the best thing since sliced bread for writers on the move.

Next blog will look at giving your book a title. Hopefully see you then. Single to Aireworth Road, please.

Doing the Tango with Brucie

I'm getting ahead of myself. Although I've just finished chapter 8, I'm starting to think about the end of the process. Book 1 only became "Echo" quite some time after it was finished. Echo herself only become Echo a day or two before hand. Prior to that she'd been called Chorus, after the narrator in some of Shakespeare's plays. At some point over tea one night,  I was persuaded that it wasn't a great name and I changed the names of the three constructs around. Surprisingly I've thought of her as Echo rather than sticking with the name she'd had for the previous twelve months in my head. A day or two later I decided to name the book after my main protagonist.

Throughout the writing the working title of book 1 was Scenario Five.

'Five basic scenarios.’ She ticked them off on her fingers and I noticed that the tip of one was missing. ‘Guard, Hot insertion, Cold insertion, Pursuit and, number Five, everybody’s favourite, Lost contact. Whenever we find whatever it is we’re looking for there are inevitably dark corridors full of traps, xenomorphs, madmen. Danger and destruction.’

At that point the story was basically about the investigation into the loss of contact with a research station. However, as is their want, York's crew get themselves mixed up into a conspiracy that coulddisrobe stability of the Empire itself.

So, whilst book 2 is meant to be about the search for the lost Visionary Ship, the Arthur C Clarke, one of the five ships that carried humans from Old Erth to their new homes, who knows where the story is actually going to go, and I'd be a fool to try and predict it.

It's a bit too soon to start thinking about a title then, isn't it? The working title is "Clarke", but I've taken a fancy to "Outcast". I'm definitely going for a one word title as a theme through the series and currently Outcast is the word for book 2.

I have some concerns. First, that I'll end up tailoring the story around the title rather than the other way round. The other is that I came up with the title after hearing Hey Ya on the radio several times over the course of a couple of days. Not a good reason.

I'm also itching to start work on the cover. I love the work Cathy Helms did for Echo and I've no idea whether she's got any more pictures of Trout Pout and Slap Head or whether we'll have to go with something else as the part that we take through the series. I like themes and it would be good to have something that appears in all, in one form or another.

Of course, I could just write faster so that I can do the title and cover sooner rather than later. But, as a writer, it's as much about the journey as it is the end product. Oh no, I sound like I'm on Strictly (Dancing with the stars for you Yanks). I better stop there before I commit to giving 110%.

You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off

Chapter eight is in the bag. 5016 words and, unlike some of the early chapters, I really enjoyed writing this one. Actually the last three or four chapters were good fun, with lots of death and blood and destruction. One of the casualties of chapter 6 was the plan. I'd written five or six bullet points describing what happens for each of the chapters 6 to 15. I don't know why I'm surprised but, just like in Echo, the story went its own way when I started wondering what the characters would do in this situation and the answer was not actually what I intended. Again This isn't always a bad thing. Having got themselves in a difficult situation I spent ages trying to figure out how to get them out of it. I needn't have bothered. By the end of chapter 6 York's crew are different starships and in mortal danger. Ok smartarses, what now. Fortunately they're a resourceful lot and they worked out a plan. York's crew like to have a plan. By the end of chapter 8 they're well on the way to sorting themselves out. Those of you that are writers will be nodding along to my comments. The rest of you will probably think I'm nuts To continue. That was too easy I thought. Actually it wasn't easy and lots of people died (don't worry, they're not real people) but I decided to intervene (interfere) so I've just created a cliffhanger for the end of chapter 8 that sees Echo trapped outside a spaceship with her oxygen supply leaking from her damaged suit and they're under attack. Will she survive? Of course she will, I've got another sixteen chapters to write. I'm making no promises that she'll survive to the end of the book though.

John McCain wouldn't approve

I love gadgets. Some people are surprised to find that I'm not an early adopter of techie stuff, but once I've got it, I usually embrace it. I've had my iPad for about a month - I waited until it was a 3rd generation before i took the plunge, but it's like it's nailed to my hand. One of the reasons I went for a iPad 3 was that it has a voice recognition function. It works well, although it does cope better with a Scots accent than it does with my flat vowels. It's a very cool thing, however it hasn't got the use that I expected it to. Partly it's that I tend to write in the evening whilst not really watching the telly. Mostly it's because I can type faster than I can dictate. That's not quite true. I obviously type slower than I can speak, but that slight delay allows me to think through what I want to put down in a few words time. I read about writers who still write longhand, or insist on using some vintage Olivetti. I can understand that now. Dictating leads to lots of pauses and umms as I try to keep up with myself and, most importantly, the result isn't as grammatically or dramatically satisfying. Sometimes speed isn't everything. I recently watched a Programme on Quest about the development of the submachinegun. Some ex special forces type tried out all the key SMGs developed over the last seventy years. Rather than the Thompson, which had a high rate of fire, he preferred the 'grease gun'. Cheaper and less elegant, but the reason for his choice was that it had a lower rate of fire. If you watch the Die Hard series, it's all about the quantity of lead, but the real soldier preferred the better control and accuracy that it achieved. The Bad Girls clearly favour spraying about large quantities of depleted uranium rounds but Echo's weapon of choice only has eight rounds in the chamber and she has to conserve them, preferring selective and accurate fire over the room broom approach. It's still a cool button though. I'll just have to find a better way to use it.

Incredible stretchy pants

Is it possible to create something that combines all four aspects of character, plot, action and detail? I suspect we all set out to do all four but, somewhere down the line, we start to major on one or two of these at the expense of the others. Probably not on purpose, but we focus on the bits that interest us most. I started this train of thought just after going to see the Avengers movie. Visually impressive, if a little intense. Plot? Not really. Action, most certainly. Characterisation? Well they tried. Captain America was uptight and upright. Bruce Banner and the Iron Man guy were meant to be geeky and the Black Widow was meant to be a hard edged spy and assassin (no, there's none of her DNA in Echo). So, a good idea but,actually, they were all completely out-acted by the Hulk, who was a cartoon and had the best line in the whole film. And the most remarkable trousers. I know I'm a writer rather than a film director but, as I've said before, I'm just writing down details of the film that's playing in my head. I'm curious to know if other writers are the same. So, trying to be objective, can I manage all four of those things? No Character - I have two main characters who I think are reasonably interesting and feedback, particularly about Echo, has been reasonably positive. The others are mostly cardboard cut outs although I'm trying to make a few of them three dimensional so that you'll care about the one(s)who die. Plot - well there's a few large holes in the plot of Echo. Some of them are there on purpose as I've been intending to fill them in E2, or possibly in E3. The broad outline is in my head and I actually wrote it down in some detail when writing Echo although stuff changed as I wrote, when I had to follow the characters rather than forcing them to obey the plan. My intentions for E2 have changed recently. I'm on chapter 6 and, by now, we should have moved into Vargrr space and we should be well on our way to finding the Clarke. But the crew of the citadel are trapped on the cruiser Admiral Stobo and trying to fight their way out. The plot of E2 was set in motion in Echo and I think it will be a simpler story that the first, although I do have a few loose ends to sort out and so it may become more complex. Action - there was action in Echo, but I'm starting to see that E2 is probably going to have more action than E1. Echo was mostly about the relationship between two people. E2 details the breakdown of that relationship (temporary or permanent, I'm not saying -partly because I haven't decided). Detail - as I've said before, I think my job is to create a framework and for the reader to create their own film. I think i'll be majoring on action and characterisation. But I've been wrong before. It's an exciting ride. But enough about me, what does the reader want from me when they boot up their Kindle?And do they want the same thing every time? With books, I'm ALWAYS looking for the same thing. Reasonable plot but strong characterisation (and minimal description). I was about to say that films are different but I think I'd be wrong. I went to see the Avengers movie not because of the film but because I wanted to have some Dad and boys time. We bought fizzy and sweeties and had a laugh at the jokes (the boys seemed to be pretty indifferent to Gwyneth Paltrow, but then they're 13 and haven't quite got girls yet) Star Wars, my all time favourite film is still visually stunning and all the more impressive considering the limited technology but, if I was going to be objective, could have been so much more. It's easy to forget how dark a film it is. Luke's uncle and aunt are reduced to smoking skeletons, Obi Wan chops off somebody's arm in a bar fight, a whole planet is destroyed and Han Solo fired first. But that level of menace isn't sustained, Luke is transformed into ace pilot and Han into a good guy. I hear the original version was panned by audiences and only drastic editing saved it from being scrapped. Partly I wonder whether a director's cut would be a good thing or whether Biggs Darklighter, a major character who was completely cut from the final version, is better as a pub trivia question. Look at what happened when George Lucas finally got the technology to create the film he really wanted. Did he beef up the characters or add meaty plot? No, he just coloured it in. Enough on star wars. Alien. Plot. Not really. Detail- dark, greasy, grim. Characters? Ripley develops well but the others are basically just there to make up numbers. Action- absolutely, and the scariest film I've seen I'd argue that nobody does everything well and great things have been created by focussing on one or two parts rather than trying to do the lot. Overanalysing is probably not a good thing. Will it make my book better? Probably not. Will it make it less fun? It might. Despite it being an old question, I did spend part of the Avengers thinking about how come the Hulk, who was massively too big for Bruce Banner's jeans wasn't naked but, when he turned back, Bruce Banner, who fit the jeans, was.