Edelweiss; Dark Science, part one: the Bits that didn't make the Book

The Edelweiss bin... a free photo the photographer gave me...

SPOILER ALERT

So I am currently huddled up on my sofa choked with the cold and unable to think straight. I have so many blog posts that I want to get through, but this is about all I feel up to today. I will get back to normal thought processes soon I promise... nobody needs to switch me off and back on again.

Anyway, I wrote Edelweiss so many times that there are all sorts of things I had to cut out from the novel. The end product had so much squashed into it that I wanted to expand that I often get confused over which parts made it and which didn't, and then I need to go back and check. So let's start...

...One of the most minor changes I made was in the names. Stephen Lawrence was originally named Paul Thomas Damas but I stole his last name for another character and re-thought. He just seemed more like a Stephen than a Paul; and definitely a Stephen with a 'PH'. Imagine how different it would have read if Stephen wasn't Stephen? That change still torments me sometimes. Should he have been Paul? I guess now we will never know...

Poor Samuel and Isabel were always going to die. It was set in stone the moment I started writing. I rewrote that first scene so many times I lost count but they always died. Abigail always got lost in the woods and the Shadow Man always paid a visit. I struggled to get the words he says when he first appears correct but finally settled on something suitably creepy. He was always going to be the main bad guy, I just never expected he would be so much fun to write.

A Map of the Islands, by Kirsty Anderson, Illustrator

The next big change was in fleeing for Ronton Bay. The first time around I had them on horseback but I had so many problems getting the timing to line up. If they were on horseback George Dickson would have caught them without argument. I appeased the timeline by having Greer sneak away to catch Stephen in the night only to disguise Abigail as a boy and take refuge in Oran Grime's inn.On the rewrite I considered it would be much easier if they just took a rowing boat. It was a lot less complicated and saved time - but we missed out on Oran Grimes, whose character I adored. You will find his name dotted throughout the series because I couldn't bare to part with him completely.

Anyway, after they reached Ronton took so much working out. I originally had the hunters chase them down only to be massacred by the man with no name. Then I had Echan hunt them back to Catherine to save their lives for later. Poor Illion initially died in the woods - but even then, the assassin placed his sword into his hands after the deed was done. It was Siara witnessing this event that sent her to find Stephen in the first draft. All this changed because I initially wrote Siara as Greer's role then hated her guts. I couldn't give Abigail a co-parent that I hated so I had to invent a new character. Thus Greer was born and Siara got relegated to traitor status...

Asa was always a destination. Where Asa lived changed a fair amount. Porta was convenient because it was right next to Estora and I knew they would have to go there at some point. I also knew I could get away with the 'alpine' feel better in the islands than I would on a continent and keeping them in the islands was a good way to keep Echan and Talphibious on the periphery.

the cover image we settled on

The next part I really wish I hadn't changed was the first time Liandor met the group. In the first draft he successfully saved Abigail's life only for Greer to come bounding from the undergrowth and tear his throat out. Again, Liandor was pretty cool to write and that saved his life. It also prevented a war with the druids which was the opposite of where I wanted to go. Liandor turned into her best friend instead and, in my opinion, the poor wood elf would be better off dead than seeking Abigail as a love interest.

Earlier drafts didn't have blood magic, nor did they have Cobol, who I find exceptional and love to write scenes for. In the first draft the whole group plus Liandor went to Estora by invitation. Lorne didn't exist yet and Aaron was a lot nastier than Marcus was. Abigail always found out the truth in the end and fed him the serum - but it was a lot more convoluted to get there. Besides anything else Amber, Cobol and the others weren't even conceptualised yet and the whole last third of the book was messy and stressful.

 Introducing the use of Blood Magic and the whole "Abigail on the bucket" scene was a happy accident that happened after windows 10 swallowed earlier drafts. It meant that I was able to get her to Estora without anyone else being in danger for at least a few days. Realistically, without Cobol they would have died as soon as they set foot on the island. Cobol gave me an in to get her back out, a little smarter than she was when she went in there.

The last major change I made was in the way the war started. Originally it spilled from the Temple and chased them off the island but that didn't flow well. It meant I was starting something at the end of the book and it was unsettling. Granted you wanted to know what happened next but it wasn't a satisfying ending. Instead, I cut it to Abigail and the all-important healing potions and added Aaron's warning. The reader knows he's serious but naturally she hates his guts by this point... sort of. I do so love the complexity of their relationship.

Anyway. I need to wrap myself in a duvet and a housecoat and drink hot lemon and honey. I hope you have enjoyed this little glimpse into how editing changes storylines over time - and into how windows have swallowed more creativity than a good book burning - but that's a subject for another time.

Writing Your Novel: Avoiding Procrastination

procrastination

/prə(ʊ)ˌkrastɪˈneɪʃ(ə)n/

noun

noun: procrastination; plural noun: procrastinations

                                             the action of delaying or postponing something.

"your first tip is to avoid procrastination"

So none of you probably need the dictionary definition but by happy coincidence your first tip is to stop procrastinating. Today I wanted to tell you the story about how I used to be a procrastinator, until the Universe intervened and kicked my ass into submission. 

Procrastination doesn't just apply to the writing your novel part - it's about the whole process.

I wrote my first novel (that's Edelweiss; Dark Science, part one) by hand and mostly sitting in the
bathroom of my University dorm. It was the only place in the building you could smoke without the warden catching you and I didn't have a laptop back then. Just to give you some idea of the timescale I went to Uni back in 2008 and I didn't publish until 2016. That's not to say I was sitting on my hands the whole time, but it ought to give you an impression of how long it took me to build my confidence up enough to even send the damn thing away.

The thing is, you see, that I wrote it easily enough. I wrote it over and over again because I lost pages.The procrastination didn't kick in until it was written. What did I do with it next? In the end it lived in a drawer for a few years while I dealt with some weird life stuff. I forgot about it for a while, then I remembered and bought a new laptop to type it up on.

The new laptop was brilliant. I went through every piece of paper I had ever written and typed it onto digital format. Up until then I had always been a pen and paper writer. I'm going to go ahead and say that this was a major turning point for me. With a laptop over a desktop you can just punch notes in that you never lose - and I've lost a lot of work in my time.

Anyway, I had finished typing Edelweiss up and saved it on to disk, gone through my bucket of notes and got most of it done. I couldn't decide what to do next so I powered on and wrote Valerian as well. I worked my way through the third novel while I was there - all of this without actually doing anything with the novel. Then Windows 10 happened in 2015(?) and I used a temporary profile one night to work in. The next morning all my work was gone. Absolutely all of it. Every poem, every story, every note - and the manuscripts.

I tried everything. I reverted my settings, I had my techy cousin look at it, I called Windows... it didn't matter and I never got it back. At 30 years old and with all the work I had ever written destroyed I had two options: give up or start again. Now let's be clear about this, I felt like someone had died. I was absolutely gutted. Many of those notes that I typed I had thrown the originals for away and loads of it was just lost forever. To this day I still think about the loss of some of those pieces. Old scripts from University, shorts from when I was still learning the trade... stuff that was more valuable for the memories than the actual content.Argh. Give up and go home or start again. Judging by the fact you are reading this now you can probably imagine what I chose.

I started writing again, I rewrote the whole damn thing. This time I wrote the intro and sent it to a bunch of literary agents whose names I had looked up online. I didn't manage to secure one, although some really positive feedback came through from one agent who had read it, really liked it and couldn't get behind it because it was too dark. After it was completed, edited and formatted to the best of my ability (which, at the time, wasn't much. It's better now, I promise) and decided to self publish through Amazon.

During that time period I wrote like a demon. I decided to self publish after sending short stories out and having a few published by other people. I figured that if other people thought my work was good enough that they could make money from it - then why wasn't I? OK so it's not much money but the alternative was literally sitting in a drawer gathering dust for nearly ten years... so what did I have to lose?

Self-Publishing is Losing the Stigma

There are thousand other authors out there with the same story as me. Not only that, but publishing contracts are getting worse and worse. I have witnessed people advertise for ghostwriters for fifty dollars... I have seen 'contracts' for books valued at $500. I have seen people pay half a cent a word for literary genius and I can promise you - publishers are not all they are cracked up to be. The rates some of them want you to work for equate to pennies per hour.

Basically what I am saying is give it a go. Send your manuscript out to the big fish and see if they

bite, If you don't you'll never know. This whole business is a sea of rejection but the important thing to remember is that your work won't fit everywhere. It's not going to be right for some people no matter how good it is. So there isn't any point in letting the rejection get to you. Keep sending, keep submitting, keep writing. You will be successful as long as you don't give up. If the big fish don't want it then self publish and start working on the next one.

Procrastination is a terrible thing. Don't let it eat your work, don't let it put you down and certainly don't give in to it. The Indie Author industry is huge and growing, and there are some of us who believe it is the new way of writing. Jump in with both feet and move on to the next novel...take it from someone who learned the hard way.

Writing a Novel: Character Building (not in the fun way)

This week I want to talk a bit more about character because it seems like a natural next step from the planning blog I wrote last week. Planning can be broken down into all sorts of little stages to stop you losing the will to live before you have even set pen to paper; but for our purposes let's try and organise it a little....

...So you know you want to write a book. You either have a character you already love or you have a rough plot and no idea how to tell the story. This blog will be aimed at the latter group - the plot thinkers - but there might be some take-aways for us character types too.

Characters are Difficult

They're difficult because it is in their nature... because one way or another, a character is always in need of some new adventure to propel them along. Let's face it, nobody wants to read about Bilbo Baggins not going to find the rings and staying at home to have tea and second breakfast, instead. So the character and plot are inexorably linked. If your character isn't right (and trust me on this) you will end up with a totally different story from what you began with. They can have a mind all of their very own... but that's OK, they're supposed to.

Keeping it Real

OK, character pointer number one is to start with a personality. Don't think about names or descriptions just yet. Think about the type of person you would need to be in order to carry out the overarching plot. That's the personality you want. Everything else you add is just chocolate sprinkles.

So if you have a bus full of schoolkids that need saving the alcoholic bus driver might not pull it together in time; but the former firefighter on his way out of town might. There is another little trick that most stories use to build empathy with the main character: they are told that they are the only one who can save the bus full of kids/the earth/the Universe and they refuse the call. Either through self doubt or simply to make them more endearing to us. This is a natural part of 'the hero's journey' and I will go into more detail on that in a later blog.

At the moment let's consider that the character we are trying to develop - be it male, female, alien or talking horse - needs to be real. It doesn't matter if you have dropped them into a fantastical universe or if they themselves are supreme magical beings - they need to have thoughts, feelings, emotions and back-stories just like every other real person you ever met in your life. If they are not real (at least to you) then they aren't worth writing about... and that's the sad truth.

Increasing Levels of Realness

There are loads of little ways to make your characters more real. Just loads. How do you learn about them? Go and sit in a cafe somewhere busy, buy a coffee and watch. A train station is best, or an airport. People rushing tend to reveal all sorts of little personality traits about themselves. Just people watch and see what you notice. Some drag children behind them while others laugh and giggle with their kids. Some fumble and spill their shopping bags, are never organised or trip over themselves. Some have been sleeping on the train and rub their eyes, others hurry to smoke. At the end of your trip to the cafe you should have a whole page full of little personality traits that you can use for your own future reference.

One little tip on personality traits... consistency is important. Don't forget to include a trait because plot has picked up. Keep them going throughout and make them believable.

Another trick is to write a whole short story in itself all about your character. You might never include any of this information in the book but it helps you establish what their motivations are. For example, a character who had formerly lost a child might be reluctant to adopt a child or have a child thrust into their care, which could create friction in a story set around orphaned children. Knowing little facts about your character's background helps you to explain how they react to your plot points, and also helps you develop those reactions in the first place!

Once you have a well rounded, fully developed character on the page before you a name will come. Don't start with a name and shape a character... that's not how we name people in real life, is it?

One Last Thing...

... Not that I condone stealing but a pro author is basically a pro thief. That's not to say we go around ripping off one another's work (at least not deliberately, at least I hope not...) but rather that if there is an interesting personality quirk in your possession we will steal it. We will steal the fact that you constantly push your glasses up your nose and we might even steal the fact that you have had them re-shaped twice now but it's done no good. We will steal your history, your back story, your tales of woe and tales of joy. It's what we do, it's why we were once known as 'bards' and it's what you need to do to create successful, believable and real characters.

So go out there and pinch mannerisms, steal personality's and immortalise the many weird and wonderful quirks that human beings have. Copy your friend's thought patterns, or steal your partners ability to start a fight in an empty room - thieve it all and revel in it... because all of it will go towards creating the best character you ever wrote.

Just remember to change the names. People don't take kindly when you start killing them off...

Writing a Novel: Planning

Writing a novel is easy (said nobody. Ever.). You sit at the computer and you tear your hair out for about a year - but let's face it, anything up to a lifetime - until you have battered out your masterpiece. It sounds easy in theory and that's why every month, at least one person approaches me and starts a conversation with "I've been meaning to write this book..."

Consider instead that the real reason they haven't written it yet is because it's Goddamned difficult. And, to be honest, it's understandable that not everyone goes through with it. It's one of those dreams that sounds great in theory until it comes to doing the actual work... Anyway, as usual I am getting sidetracked.

I put together this little blog because when I first started novel writing/short story writing I had no idea what do with formatting, no idea how to edit and no idea what was expected of me... well all you lucky people have me so you won't be as lost.

Back to Basics: Novel Planning

OK So forget punctuation, grammar and sentence structure for now. Kill it in the fire. At the moment what we want to look at is overall structure - as if you are starting from complete scratch.

Character V's Plot

This is an ages old argument in the script writing business. What drives your story? Character or plot? The answer is that it doesn't actually matter that much except to you. By appreciating what kind of writer you are you can better learn to play to your own strengths. Personally I am one of those weirdos who writes short's based on plot and novels based on character. I feel that a solid plot can carry a short better than a full length piece and vice versa - but t doesn't need to be that way for you.

You might have an idea for a brilliant character whose skin you want to move inside and whose personality you want to steal. In this case you are a charact3er writer. Start with your imagined friend and envision them in different situations until such times as you hit across an idea that you love. Next develop a beginning, middle and an end of your story then start writing. As a character writer you must not change your characters to fit your plot - and you have to be wary of this as you work.

If you are a plot writer then break the story down into as many sections as possible. Start with a beginning, a middle and an end and break the story down into plot points that you want to reach at particular times. Once you have the story pinned down develop some nice rounded characters to fit in...Always make your characters super interesting and believable. If you are a plot writer then keep constant check on if your characters are real or not.

Spider Diagrams

Make no mistake: Spider Diagrams are the aspiring author's best friend. Write your first plot point in a bubble and surround it with other bubbles that might go alongside it. It works with character too and is a great development tool. You might write your characters name and pick a load of traits they have, then pick a few bad habits, a few good habits, cherished childhood memories - you get the idea.

What If..? 

This is one I learned at University. You start with a vague notion and then you keep asking yourself what if? even if it doesn't make sense. This is a great method for blitzing through ideas when you are stuck linking one plot point to another. For example....

"What if I wrote about a blue man living on Mars; what if that blue man had a space puppy named Dooobaloo? What if the dog bit him one day and, because it is a space puppy, now he is somehow pregnant? What if he shoots the puppy because he is so upset? What if that leaves him all alone in space and without anybody... doesn't that reflect the overarching premise of humanity?"

You follow?

Charting it out...

This is a great trick for when you have to make up a story in an afternoon with no prompting. It is also my favourite trick for building new plots for shorts. You take a sheet of A4 and you separate it into columns .Next, you give each column a title. I might use "Character", "Antagonist" (that's 'bad guy'), "Situation", "Revelation", "Outcome". Similarly if I need more details I will add more columns. Anyway, next go down each column and fill in up to ten different answers for each heading.

Ergo under "Character" I have 5 rows and they look like this:

1970's party girl
London Policeman
Chef de Partie
Suicidal Salesman
Drunkard Bar Owner

And then we move on to the next rows:

Character                                      Antagonist                           Situation

1970's party girl                          Angry clown                          High-end Restaurant
London Policeman                     embarrassing Uncle               summer school
Chef de Partie                             Big Ben                                 Earthquake
Suicidal Salesman                      that nice guy from work        Train Crash
Drunkard Bar Owner                  Santa Claus                            Stranded on a Desert Island

And now all you need to do is mix and match the rows... so we could have a suicidal salesman who is being hounded by Santa Claus while trying to sell the latest high trend kids toy to young children at Summer school... OK, they don't always make sense, but it's fun, fast and gets you out of a fix.

Format

Always format before you start writing. When it comes to short stories follow the Shunn format like everyone else does or your manuscript won't be read. When it comes to your book take a new page for every new chapter, file -> new page-> first page style for the first few pages you don't want to be numbered and pick what size you want your book to be to set the page size. 6" x 9" is normal nowadays.

And that's about all from me today, back to the daily grind of article writing. I hope I have managed to help at least one of you on your story telling journey. Good luck out there, it's tough... but it's totally worth it when you can look someone in the eye and say "Me? I'm a writer."...