Night fever, night fever....

I think I've broken one of my own rules. Rather than leave everything to the reader's imagination, I've    posted photographs of some of the main characters.

If you're interested in knowing what Cavendish, Acre, Livingston and Gregory look like and you're not already a Facebook friend, have a look at my Facebook page

Facebook.com/echonovels

You probably already know what York looks like as his face graces the cover of E1. I was curious if I could find anything similar so I was delighted that googling shaved head goatee found several pictures of some bloke who looked suitably hard.







Can you tell who it is?

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

Colouring book

When I write, I can see the action in my mind. I picture the camera angles and can hear the explosions or klaxons or whatever. As well as whatever's in focus, I also have a fairly clear idea what the room or compartment or whatever looks like. However , I don't inflict a detailed description on the readers unless it's relevant. I did it in Ch 1 of Echo because I wanted to get across the impression that starships were battered, workaday, grubby tools like the Nostromo rather than the clean and shiny world of Star Trek. As a writer, I want to create the broad outlines and then allow the reader to colour the picture in. Your camera angle may be completely different to mine, and the characters are likely to look completely different in your head to what's in mine. I described Echo as having jaw length, bobbed hair and green eyes. That was it. It wasn't till Cathy Helms did the cover art that she became a brunette (and acquired a trout pout). One of the first readers thought the Bad Girls were 7 feet tall (they're not, but they can be if you want) and, if you were paying attention, you may know that Acre is blond and has her hair plaited into cornrows, Pearce is tall and thin, and I may have told you that Hemingray is small and has a blond bubble perm. However, if you want them to look different, that's fine. Some writers want to transfer the cinematic experience that's in their head into yours without allowing the freedom to interpret it as you see fit. Have a look at this: Jason Bourne eeled his way through the mob. He was assaulted by the bone-juddering, heart attack inducing, soul-shattering blast of music coming from ten-foot-tall speakers set on either end of the enormous dance floor. Above the dancers' heads an aurora boreal is of lights splintered, coalesced, and then shattered against the domed ceiling like an armada of comets and shooting stars. That was taken from one of the posthumous Jason Bourne novels. It's a 100,000 word adventure wrapped in a 200,000 word book. Part of the problem is that Jason himself isn't very interesting. I've read several of the Ludlum and post Ludlum versions and, unlike say James Bond, it's quite difficult to get a handle on the man himself. I enjoyed the three Bourne films with Matthew Damon. Not for their portrayal of Jason Bourne, but for the way they handled crises and action scenes. The realism used in the Bourne films was taken up by the Daniel Craig version of Bond. Violence is brutal and ugly rather than stylised or glamourous. Part of Echo's (genetically engineered) DNA came from the Jason Bourne. Another DNA donor is Jack Reacher. He's a much more interesting character although I've never really warmed to him as a person (if you see what I mean) which is no mean feat in itself. I like the way that we see Reacher's process of deduction and I particularly like the way he previsualised a fight. I forget which book it's in but, at one point he's faced with three men and it described, succinctly but effectively, which one he's going to batter first, how he's going to do it and why he's made those choices. So, Bourne is a boring cardboard cut out and Reacher is an interesting, if slightly unpleasant, character. I'd like to think that Echo is a reasonably interesting and sympathetic character and that's why I've had such positive feedback. It's difficult to judge the value of your own creation. In the next post I'll talk about whether you can have well drawn characters, strong plots and detailed description or whether something has to be compromised to create a book that works. Actually it's just an excuse to talk about Hulk underwear.

A man with a plan

I'm 10,000 words in and i'm feeling much more positive about Clarke (Echo 2). Feedback from E1 was that the relationship between York and Echo was an important part of the content. I've figured out where this is going to go and why (it's going to get a bit rocky). i've also got a sub plot - part of one of the ongoing/ unresolved threads and a few scenes that add a bit of colour and are going to be fun to write, even if they don't move the story on.

I'm not sure how Clarke is going to finish although i've got a few scenes from the climax in my head. i have decided that not all the crew of the citadel will make it. I lost Bruekner in E1 but he was really just a cardboard cut out. This time it's going to be somebody that we've got to know.

Here's a question. I'm going to continue the alternate York  /Echo view point, but i'm wondering if some of the others should get a chapter every now and again. I'd be interested in whether you think that  would work. All comment welcome.

Right, back to chapter three

The best laid plans

'Bet it's a Scenario Five.' Muttered one of the troops
I wondered if York would explain the comment, but he just held my gaze, waiting for instructions. Although i'd had marines on my shoulder a couple of times, this wasn't a term i'd come across and i had to ask. I turned to the woman. Her hair was short and i could see gaps where the scars ran across the skin. There were similar fine lines visible between the tight cornrows braided into the hair of the woman that had given up her seat for me. Some sort of surgery, but different from that we all underwent as children to insert our implants. She was older than me; ten years, possibly more from the lines around her eyes. I looked into her eyes. This woman killed, often. Not that unusual for a soldier but there was  something in her eyes that said she did it without a hint of remorse and she was completely untouched by it. It was like looking into a mirror. Marine units were trained killers motivated by Hoo!Yah! and shared indoctrination. Born killers and psychopaths were difficult to control and were usually weeded out early on in basic training. Whatever she was, it wasn't a marine.
'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.'

Before i started out, i wrote a plan for the book, with each chapter set out in some detail. It was a story about an investigator who was sent to find out what happened to a remote research station that had broken off contact. The working title was Scenario Five.

The problem was that the plan ran to fifteen chapters and around fifty thousand words. Half a book. I didn't have a clue what was going to happen in the second half, but NaNoWriMo was about to start and the keyboard was calling.

This is where i discovered that books actually write themselves and that the characters are in control. I'd worked up my two main characters through a number of short pieces and had a side of A4 for each with a biography, description and details on their characters. I knew them inside out. So, all i had to do was ask; in this situation, what would they do? And then write it down.

At times i was surprised. What was intended to be a brief stop at a shipyard to repair damage to the ship ended up being four chapters of violence and mayhem and the occasional pithy comment from one of the marines. It wasn't planned, but i enjoyed it tremendously and it added fifteen thousand words to the count :-)

Around this time i learned not to be frightened of the blank page in the planning book. NaNoWriMo (google it before November) teaches writers that the best way to overcome the difficulties we face is just to write. It's all about quantity rather than quality and everything else can be sorted out in draft two.

The whole back end of the book was written on the hoof. Mostly envisaged in the shower in the morning and then typed up and embellished in the evening. I read that Douglas Adams was typing new versions of the script for Hitchhiker right up to the moment that it was recorded (and possibly further changes to the ending after recording had started), so you don't have to have it all planned out months in advance. Many of the bits i had planned out are completely different now to what they were on the notepad as, when i tested them against the criteria of what would... they just didn't work.

I'd like to think that the final chapters of the book don't look under-rehearsed. I think there are some good scenes and one of my favourite lines.

'Shoot the bitch.' Shouted Cavendish, happily. None of the pain killers i used had that effect.


It's probably better in context.

From Thornaby on Tees to Whitby

Where to start? So you've got all these ideas whizzing about in your head and perhaps you've had a few abortive attempts to write the perfect novel. How do you actually turn your ideas into the real thing.

For me it was an Open University online creative writing course. Over three months a group of twenty people worked through a set of creative challenges, each one a little bit more complex than the last. We started with 100 word scenes and worked out way up to a 1500 word short story.

I had a great time and i learned loads. One of the biggest things was understanding what i liked about the books i read. i like novels with a small number of well drawn characters (i can't cope with too many major characters; i just get confused). I love the early Jack Reacher novels by Lee Child but, as the series progressed, i was less enamoured and i realised that, with each new book, i wasn't really learning much about the character. i kept going, and was rewarded for that when i read 61 hours, which told me a little bit about Reacher's back story and introduced a new, enigmatic, character - Reacher's replacement -  who may play a large part in future stories.

As part of the course, i wrote a piece that created a character. I didn't know much about her - not even her name, but thought it would be interesting to follow the character through the rest of the course and see what i could do with her. In the next few exercises another character developed. He had a name - Gabriel York - and a job; a Captain in the Imperial Navy

By the end of the course i'd developed a slight obsession with these two and really wanted to know what was going to happen to them. Suddenly i was a writer and 100,000 words later i had an answer to my question.

The next entry will be the first story i wrote about my main character.