Monday Musing: Sequels and Series

A question I have been asked often after I mention that I’m writing a book is what will happen in the sequel. I am in two very distinct minds about this issue as I both love and loath sequels. As we are soon to be in 2014, the sequel to 2013, this seemed like a good time to talk, vaguely and without resolution, about Sequels and Series.

To me there the two things are different. And I don’t particularly like sequels.
By and large a sequel is a copy of an original idea that largely repeats those story beats but choses to subvert existing expectations to keep it interesting. I’m not saying that sequels are bad. I own a whole heap of them. Silence of the Lambs is a very good sequel to Red Dragon, though I confess to still liking RD more. Silence follows largely the same formula as Dragon, but with added Lector.

This is a difficult topic to write about because some of my favourite books are parts of series, yet I would class them as sequels. I don’t think I necessarily agree that because one particular thing becomes popular that it should lead to it being repeated. I have, I think, three of the sequels to Blade Runner, which is a whole heap of weird because it’s part sequel to Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep, largely a sequel to the movie that had little and less to do with the book, and also a sequel to a movie that had its ending changed. Weird. And I don’t think those books were necessary.

This is in opposition to my feelings about Series which tend to have one large story deliberately told over a number of books. George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series is an example of this that I’m enjoying. I like long sprawling narratives that were designed to tie in to each other. The Lord of the Rings is a series not sequels.

I’ve spoken before about enjoying Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London books. These books are definitely sequels, taking the parameters of the original and stamping that template of the subsequent books. The same can be said for Malcolm Price’s Aberystwyth books.

Joe Ambercrombie had a series in the First Law Trilogy and that was followed by a number of sequels set in the same world with overlapping characters. In this instance the first sequel Best Served Cold is my favourite book he has written. (I’m currently reading Red Country.)

Actually, I don’t really know what my point is here. I guess, based on the question as to whether there will be a sequel to my book (there won’t) is that there is interest in creating something that will breed further narratives, people want to visit a world and see it expand. This is both a desire from an audience, a financial consideration of people buying the next book because it’s the next book. I have Aaronovitch’s Broken Homes pre-ordered in paperback. I don’t even know what it’s about. So I’m not passing judgement.

I think maybe it’s odd that there is an assumption or expectation that something cannot exist in and of itself, there it must breed further stories. If there are more stories to tell then this is great and exciting. Yet if it is just cashing in on something that worked, I’m more reluctant to become engaged.

And to blur my already muddy thoughts on the matter, yes, I have an idea for a series of books.

 

I’ve not even scratched the surface of my book collection, and have no idea what I would class Iain M. Banks Culture books as. What are your favourite sequels or series? What next book of a story are you looking forward to? Do you wish there was a sequel to your favourite book – what is that book?

I’d like to hear your thoughts.

– Andrew

 

December Poll Results

Hello Writes Readers,

The vote for the December Short Story closed yesterday and with 75% of the vote I will be writing:

A newt called Eunice lives in Rural England. There is some kind of newt vs human (are they all bad?) sort of dilemma. Eunice encounters several different people from various walks of life. It is impossible to tell a male newt from a female newt until they are young adults.

as the December short story.

I hope to get this and the delayed November story to you by the end of the year.

– Andrew

 

Thursday Thoughts: I’ve Been A Bit Rubbish

Hello there Writes Readers,

You may have noticed that I have been a bit silent on the blog recently, I promise that this was not intentional and I’m going to have to sort of explain my life a bit to get across what’s been going on.

I said from the start that I didn’t want this blog to be about my life and how much toast I have eaten, but my life has changed a lot this year and this goes to explain why I’ve been AWOL this month. I’ve not been well at all this year, spending the first 8 months of it in and out of hospital for tests. Then in the summer I lost my job. Which in some ways was a blessing as it forced me to evaluate my life and priorities. My number one priority for the remainder of 2013 was to look after myself. I started writing They’re Here and I created this blog, both of which have really helped in balancing my life. Since shortly before losing my job I started a course of medication, which helped but in recent months the side effects started to really get to me. Last month my doctor and I decided to see how I would be without medication for a month. Short version is that I’ve felt much better for it, I have a lot more energy and as such have been spending more time out of the house (I also started  a new job) and less time at the computer. So, while I’m being a terrible blogist for not keeping up with my writing and posts, what I’m making up for in feeling happy is very important to me.

My doctor is pleased with how I’m getting on, and while I feel the best I have felt all year, I’m still far from feeling perfectly well. There is a fog of illness that I feel on the cusp of all the time and I am very conscious that I need to take care of myself.

I’m not stopping the blog, and I hope you will be happy to continue to read what I’m writing. The December short story vote is up (https://ardavidsonwrites.wordpress.com/2013/12/19/short-story-voting-december/), so please go and vote for one of those very Newt-centric stories.  The voting will be up until Boxing Day and I aim to have the November and December stories up by the end of the year.

So that’s me. Happy but absent. I think there’ll be a post on Monday and then that might be it for 2013 until I post the short stories.

I hope that you have a wonderful Christmas and a happy New Year.

– Andrew

Short Story Voting: December

The results of the poll will be hidden after voting. The result will be announced on 26th December 2013. Votes received after that date will not be counted.

December Short Story Submission

Welcome to December’s Interactive Short Story submission post.

I’ve been a little busy and will hopefully publish November’s short story by the end of this week, I hope you are looking forward to it.
But time waits for no writer, and it is time for a new story and I need your short story ideas!

What I Need From You

• Character(s) – Protagonist, Antagonist, love interest, etc. Anyone you feel is important. (names optional)
• Setting – Where does the story take place?
• What happens – eg. Orange moves into the Fruit Bowl.
• Inciting incident – what changes? eg. Orange is a bit old and starts to go mouldy, the rest of the fruit in the Fruit Bowl try to work out a plan to get Orange out.
  
• A small detail – something you want me to work in to the story. (optional)

You don’t have to include all of those details, though the more detail the better. If there’s something you want to add that you feel is important please do. Try and think of something that would, how shall we say, make it tricky for me. I dare you.

Try and put your idea into a short sentence or two, remembering that these submissions will go to vote, keep it snappy.

Submissions will go to reader vote on December 14th 2013 and will be open until midday on December 21st 2013.

I will write your idea as a short story for publishing on this blog.

Thank you for submitting an idea. Without you this blog won’t work.
I look forward to reading your ideas.

– Andrew

Rules

• Please do not use existing works in your submission.
• Only submissions made in the comment section of this post will be counted, submissions made anywhere else will not be included.
• I have final say on which 5 story ideas go to the vote, apologies if yours is not chosen.
• Submissions made after 10.00pm GTM on Friday 13th December will not be eligible for voting.
• By submitting a short story suggestion you waive all rights to that story. The copyright to the completed short story will be mine exclusively. By submitting a suggestion you are agreeing to this.

Monday Musing: Doctor Who and the Zygons

Hello,

A bit of a different Musing today. This is not a critical analysis of the Doctor Who special on Saturday 23rd, but explores one element of it in relation to storytelling. There will be spoilers if you’ve not seen the episode.

At the end of the episode whilst talking about it with a friend she asked me what had happened with the Zygon subplot story. Here’s the thing: thematically it’s completely resolved as part of the larger story. Literally it is completely ignored. I’m not sure which side of the fence I am on about it.

Thematically the story of the Zygons attempting to take over Earth and UNIT Lady’s choice to destroy them all to stop that from happening is the mirror of The War Doctor’s choice to sacrifice all of Gallifrey to destroy the Daleks. It’s basic, but effective, storytelling. As a result The Doctor, who is rarely willing to allow such decisions to be made again steps in and forces a situation whereby the problem is averted by making the Humans and Zygons forget if they are one or the other. Jump to all the Doctor’s realising there is another option to save Gallifrey that will make it appear to have been destroyed but totes not really. At this point, we follow the Doctors as they set about saving Gallifrey. The only hint we have of the Human/Zygon situation is when Cute Scarf Glasses (I’m sure she had a character name) and the Zygon work out which is which but keep it a secret. The implication being that peace would be better than destroying themselves. Following the thematic thread you can assume that the Human/Zygon thing was similarly resolved and everyone was happy.

From a story point of view, the story is left hanging. The Zygon story wasn’t just a frame that the main story was set around it was both the launch point of the main story and vital to its resolution. It was also dramatically interesting in of itself with many characters and situations set up, many resolved or explained, the early phone call for instance. Yet suddenly it is completely dropped in favour of the A story and not returned to. We don’t find out what happened to UNIT Lady or Cute Scarf Glasses (I should probably IMDb this), or how that story was resolved. We’re left to assume that it all worked out fine.

So which is the better option? Our stronger emotional investment is with the Doctors and the Zygon B story is a facet of that story, but can we be satisfied if a story is started, taken to a stalemate situation and then abandoned? The economies of time on television are maybe to blame here.

I’ve said before that I’m quite happy with ideas or narratives being taken to a point before leaving it to an audience to decide for themselves elements of the story (how they feel about it/what it meant/etc), but I’m not sure that I like a story or story element having no resolution at all. Yes, it could be something they will return to in the future, but within the construct of the episode it isn’t addressed at all.

I think it’s an interesting story choice, and something I’ve been thinking about over the weekend.

If you saw the episode what are your thoughts?
If you didn’t watch it, I’m sorry for this Doctor Who based blog.

– Andrew

Thursday Thoughts: Back on Track

 

Hello Blog-babes,

Today is a little blog about the state of my novel and a problem that I doubt is unique to me.

I’ve actually been struggling to write recently. My struggle hasn’t been in terms of putting words on metaphorical paper, it has been in an acceptance that the words are the right ones. Or even good ones.

For two weeks I have been writing small sections of prose. Where I had once managed to average about 5,000 words a day I was suddenly having to drag myself to reach 1,000. Each day I would read back over the previous day’s efforts and rip it out and try it again. It was torturous, slow and demoralising. It wasn’t that I didn’t know what I was writing, but I was falling into that trap of writing without saying anything. Actions would come and go with ne’er a purpose between them. It’s frustrating reading your own work and realising that you are not reaching the potential you know is there.

Aside from the story/character exercises I’ve previously blogged about – which did help! – one other invaluable tool to the writer is: discussion. If something is knotted up and you know that no matter how you try you can’t work around it… talk to someone. We have an amazing capacity, when we really need to, of making ourselves understood to other people. By trying to explain the beats and narrative of what you are trying to write to someone else, if they are not understanding it you will find yourself instinctively rephrasing your point for clarity, this continues until the other person understands. You are refining and streamlining your problem to its clearest form so that it makes sense to another, and importantly also to yourself. If you’ve got a good friend who is willing to be talked at, sit them down with a nice cup of tea and have at it.

I did this last week, set out what Evin is going through, what actions I’m writing and thematically what the section is about. And lo, I set about writing again and the words are flowing clearly and the action is moving purposefully forward.

Let your inner editor come out for a while when you both need space to breath, it will help.

I’ve also been exploring options for presenting the short stories I publish on this blog in a form that allows for them to be read on e-book/smart phone/tablet devices as an alternative to you only being able to read them on the blog itself. I had a play with Apple’s iAuthor, but I’m not sure if it’s the tool for me. I’m not sure if I’ll get anything finished before the next story is published, but hopefully soon after. And there’s one other thing that I have planned. But more on that at a later date.

– Andrew

(Also, Blog-babes?! Oh dear, that won’t do. I gotta think up a good collective term for you fine folks)

 

Monday Musing: No Offence Intended

Hello,

I intended to blog about something else today, maybe I’ll come back to that in a later posting, for now I want to talk about something that came up yesterday. I’ve talked about how a small select group of people have read the opening 100-odd pages of my novel They’re Here. The people are all of different temperaments, out-looks and interests, allowing me to get feedback from them on different aspects of the story, find common likes, dislikes, or even something I hadn’t noticed.

I had a lengthy discussion with a friend yesterday about the story and what’s going on, where it’s heading, the political aspect of the world and who Evin is as a character. I also talked in moderate depth about what my plans are for the remainder of the book. One thing came up in this conversation that I hadn’t intended: my friend was offended by a part of the story.

To deliberately offend was not my intention and on a personal level I did not attach the same reaction to the event as my friend, yet when he told me how he had perceived it I felt bad because I hadn’t had the forethought to look at my work through the eyes of someone who sees the world differently to me.

I won’t go into what the thing was because in the scheme of the story my changing it is meaningless. The event itself is meaningless, yet I had created an offensive action to my friend. I have changed the section and added some other elements based on our conversation that I think maintain the essence of the scenes but remove the troubling element.

This got me thinking about the notion of offence as a concept and action. As I say, my intention is not to offend and am pleased to have corrected the issue. I don’t think that my work challenges things, but I think it important for any artist to challenge ways of thinking (again, not my intention with the scene which is why it has changed), to examine the world, particularly the status quo, and say: is this right? Is this the correct way we should look at the world?

I think the problem always arrises when it’s not done with thought to others, or with the deliberate intent to hurt others. No two people think alike, this person is one of my very closest friends and our opinions on many things differ, yet this does not affect our friendship. To set out with the express desire to go against what people think to be confrontational for the sake of upsetting people rings through as false art to me. Yes, challenge, inspire people to question what they perceive to know, believe or understand. It helps people grow. To question our society, our values, our behaviour is important to human growth. But I do not believe in attack for the sake of controversy.

As an example, one of my favourite books (that I’ve longed to make into a movie for over a decade) is a novel by Bo Fowler called Scepticism Inc. it is a particularly difficult book to find now as it is out of print. It is a very challenging book and I understand the elements of it that some many take issue, or even offence to, yet I believe the guiding thought behind the book is to question what you are told and decide for yourself what you believe.

The book is narrated by a shopping trolley that believes in God because he was programmed to do so. He has always believed in God. The trolley’s journey in the book is to discover whether or not be chooses to believe in God. This is set against the story of Edgar Malroy who does not believe in God. Edgar opens a chain of betting shops, metaphysical betting shops to be exact, where religious people come and bet that their God is the one True God. As such a thing is unprovable there is never any payout (Edgar uses the wealth for humanitarian work).

Again, I bring this up because I can see why people could take offence to it, to the book’s exploration of organised religions and the meaning of faith. What I thought was important in the book, and why I don’t think that it is a deliberate attack on religion or God or belief is that Edgar is largely the only voice in the book for atheism, the narrator, Edgar’s love Sophia, and everyone who bets at the metaphysical betting shops has an absolute and un-mocked belief in God. The view of one character in the book is not the whole truth of the story.

The writer states at the end in a note that the theme of the book is: People matter more than The Truth.

We grow up with our beliefs, opinions, actions, all dictated to us by our surroundings. Some people go through life never questioning what others around them tell them they believe to be true. We must all, at some stage in our lives, look at who we are and question whether or not that is genuinely what we think or if it’s the thoughts of others imposed upon us. I don’t think we have the right to make anyone believe what we believe. No one is wrong. How they choose to express that is when there are problems. Look at that story of Prussian Blue for a real world example of this in the mainstream.

I am grateful to my friend for voicing his opinion, and I have changed my novel accordingly to make it not be weighed by something I didn’t intend. I’m not fool enough to think there won’t be people who wouldn’t like my book, but I hope this would be because it’s not a story or style that interests them and not because I thoughtlessly upset them.

Let me know your thoughts in this issue in the comments.

– Andrew

 

Thursday Thoughts: November Disappointment

Hello,

Bit of a disappointing month as there have been no submissions to the interactive short story aspect of the blog. In lieu of this I will write up a short story based on the example I used in the suggestion post on the 1st. Which was:

[character x] and [character y] find a sack full of money and a severed finger. When they return home with the money they receive a phone call telling them that they must double the finances in the sack within a week or face the same fate as the owner of the severed finger.

If anyone has any comments or feedback they’d like to give about the process of the short story submission and how I could improve it to generate some interest in the monthly event I would be grateful to hear it.

Hopefully things will pick up in December. If you’ve enjoyed this blog so far please follow, share, reblog, repost, like and tweet this to your friends.

Have a wonderful day.

– Andrew

 

 

Last Chance For November Submissions

Hello WordPress friends,

Tomorrow is the 14th which means, if so called “calendars” are to be believed, today is the last day to make suggestions for November’s short story.

Your suggestion can be anything: serious, funny, romantic, sad, abstract, whatever you feel like to be honest. Please check https://ardavidsonwrites.wordpress.com/2013/11/01/november-short-story-submission/ for details.

Share this post and help me get some suggestions for my November story. I can’t do this without you.

– Andrew