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

 

Monday Musing: The Real World

Hello,

Welcome to the accidentally Tuesday Monday Musing.

I’ve been thinking about reality, and the reality of fiction. What makes a world real to a reader? It’s something that I’m constantly thinking about in my writing at the moment, and have been thinking about other works of fiction and the worlds that they created.

I’ve recently finished reading Flashman’s Lady, which like the rest of the series deftly mixes historical fact with fiction. George MacDonald Fraser researched fact and built his fiction around it. It’s a staggering feat to me. I utterly believe the world he is writing. It’s a beautifully believable world. If you’ve not read any of the Flashman Papers I heartily recommend them.

I’m currently reading Storm Front by Jim Butcher because I’m on a bit of an Urban Magic kick at the moment, having recently enjoyed Ben Aaronovitch’s River of London series. Storm Front is set in a modern-day Chicago and layers on levels of fantasy, mythology and magic. Which is what got me thinking about this topic, as I realised I totally bought his world, but can’t pinpoint the moment that I did.

Fictional worlds like Middle Earth, Westeros and The Discworld all feel like real places, brilliantly realised on the page. The Time Traveler’s Wife works around nonsense science that you believe as being a problem Henry suffers from.

In film, the world of Star Wars originally caught imagination because it presented its world as lived in and used, we were seeing the parts of the world that people like us would live in, we were seeing our lives mirrored in this galaxy far, far away. (which is why I think the prequels feel so cold to those of us that grew up with the original trilogy. Suddenly we’re in palaces and government buildings. Nothing is really as relatable to us in those films).

I’ve recently finished playing Bioshock Inifinte and my god there was a world that I believed I was in. From the opening level that allows you to explore the floating world of Columbia at your own pace before all the fighting starts allows you to feel at home and familiar with it. This is expanded later when you are joined by Elizabeth who has never seen the world before, her fascination with the world and it’s citizens is constantly refreshing and continuously brings you into LOOKING at the world, not just pass through it.

I love all these world, and so many more. As I create a version of the world we are familiar with I keep having to ask myself does that make sense? Will a reader understand the technology, am I being too vague, too specific, am I skewing things just enough to get the desired effect?

I believe that the key to this is to set out the rules of the world, that certain things exist or can happen and why, and stick to it. There’s nothing worse than a fiction that presents rules and then bends/breaks them for a quick payoff that feels hollow or undeserved. I’m reminded of a designer of panic rooms discussing David Fincher’s film Panic Room, stating that what he was grateful for was the world of panic rooms was established as being unbreakable, that no one could force their way into the room, and that this was maintained as an absolute in the film.

Rules are not always made to be broken.

I feel that my test-readers have been given a mini quiz when they are done reading. I desperately want my world to feel real, lived in, complete and for it to make sense. I hope it does, so far I nothing seems to have really caused any discomfort to my gallant guinea pigs.

Creating a believable new reality is the power of the fiction writer.

– Andrew

Monday Musings: Inspiration

Hello,

Here’s a delightfully intangible thing: Inspiration.

What is it? Where does it come from? How can we harness it? How can we generate it?

I had planned to write a very sweeping statement about what my inspiration is, and I was thinking through my previous writing to confirm the statement. However, as I thought back I realised that this wasn’t the case at all. I feel a little like I’ve been lying to people. I had to think more, where DID my inspiration come from? I had planned to say that ideas come to me in a very visual way, often a single striking image that over time becomes a story. Even though this isn’t true in every case, it is where I will start.

It is common that I will get an image of something and work my way backward from there. One such image was of a yellow and red sunset sky, silhouetted against which was a flock of birds that transformed into a formation of military aircraft across the image. For the longest time I didn’t know what that story was, but I was interested in the imagery of it. In time it became a story about a lone survivor of a battle, wounded and going delirious who befriends a young French girl who is playing the in woods. They were not able to communicate with each other but after all the fighting the soldier has witness she was a vision of an innocent future yet possible.

Sometimes I get a particular phrase stuck in my head. My novel stemmed from the phrase “They’re here” and worked forward from there originally as a very straight horror, but it changed over time to be less about who they were and more about how it all effected the central character, Evin. After a considerable period of rumination and false starts I realised that it was a story about Evin asking herself the question we all face at some point in our life: “Who am I?”

Other times ideas grow out of a sense of wanting to look at something from a different angle. I have spoken often (outside this blog) about my apathy toward the Zombie genre. I can count on one hand the works about Zombies that actually interest me, and they tend to be the ones that actually have very little to do with Zombies (TellTale Games video game of The Walking Dead was not only not about Zombies, it was also one of the best pieces of written entertainment in 2012). As I sat listlessly watching another retread of Zombie tropes I wondered how a Zombie would feel about the representation of Zombies in the media. I thought of him being offended by it. This idea grew to be a short film I made a couple of years ago called Dates of the Undead:

I’m the first to admit that translating those kernels of inspiration into salty idea-popcorn goodness is not something I’m very quick at. Those ideas tend to stick in my head and ruminate for a long time before I feel ready to put them on paper. I have got better and have picked up some good writing exercises over the years that have helped. There’s a great one for laying out structure/story/themes/characters that I used recently to start the book and last week for the short story. I thought it might be interesting to share the process of writing the short story, so after it has been published tomorrow I will talk about the process of taking the idea from suggestion to story and I will post this on Thursday.

I think my two favourite writing exercises are to write a monologue for a character stating who they are and what it is they want, and how they are going to achieve it. This will work for all your characters, you will find that with each character you will instinctively give them voices, and their desires and how they intend to achieve them will reveal a lot about who they are. It also means, at least to me, that when I start writing that I already know them, yes they will still surprise in the writing process, but the starting off point is less daunting.

A similar piece to this is to write a dialogue between two characters, if they are the protagonist and the antagonist it will help. Think of yourself as a counsellor for the characters. Let the protagonist state what they want and the antagonist state how they can’t have it. Again, it will be revealing and help find who the characters are. Give them weaknesses that will hinder their ability to get what they want. Not necessarily physical weaknesses, it could be impatience or a short temper.

Finally, where can you find inspiration? I did a writing course a few years ago and was told to choose a story from a newspaper, and write a scene based upon it. I’d found a small story about a couple on holiday who had been tied up and robbed. It was a horrible story and I don’t know why I picked it. Every part of the article made me sick and angry, the couple were threatened with assault and at times separated from each other. I wrote two pages of just utter rubbish, it was full of cliché and didn’t go anywhere or mean anything. It was a struggle to write and I only finished it the night before the next class. Out of those two pages, of all those words, the only thing that sparked any interest in me was five words: “Why do you love her?”

I became desperately intrigued by this. Why would someone take people hostage and demand an explanation of love? What would the answer be? If the people were physically separated from each other would their answers be the same? What if they weren’t the same? What if they didn’t know that? The story became about lies and truth. Lies we tell ourselves, truths we hide, accepting or rejection those ideals. It was a cat and mouse of what do people say and what do they mean.

Out of that article of misery, of two pages of horrible writing, came five words that inspired something much bigger and better.

I guess the point is that inspiration comes from anywhere, the trick is to be able to recognise it and harness it. To take whatever it is and work at it, use any tool available to you to create something from it. Sometimes that it won’t work, sometimes it’s not meant to work. But sometimes something better will come from that failure.

– Andrew

 

Monday Musings: The End

Hello,

For my first Monday Musing I thought I would start with the question most frequently asked of me: “Do you have an ending?”

Endings are regarded as the most important part of a narrative experience. You can afford to start weak if your ending is strong. The ideal would be to have a strong start, a great middle and a fantastic end. I loved Joe Abercrombie’s Best Served Cold because I was instantly hooked from the opening chapter. It’s his best writing and his best characters.

A story simply can’t afford a limp ending that readers feel cheated by. I’ve just finished reading Kate Mosse’s Citadel which I thought had a deeply satisfying ending. Emotional, truthful and, importantly, right for the characters. Conversely I threw David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas to the floor when I finished it. I loved the individual elements but felt no sense of completion at the end.

Those are my opinions on the aforementioned books, you may share them or not.

With my story I actually started with the ending and tracked back from there. The inception of the story goes back about four or five years and has changed a lot over that time. I eventually found an interesting hook for the story and it has grown into what it is now. That’s not to say that the ending I started with will be the ending that the book will have. I’ve been toying with variations of it recently. I’m not locking myself into anything at this point.

I have told some of my closest friends what this ending is and their reactions have varied so far, I think it depends on their personality. Don’t read too much into this next statement, but I like a certain amount of ambiguity in my work. I think it was the director Adrian Lyne when talking about his film adaptation of Lolita who said that he wanted the audience to figure out for themselves how they felt about the characters and what happened, rather than being told what to think. I’m paraphrasing there. My point is that I like to create a story and draw attention to the plot, characters and themes and then go: “And you decide what that means.”

Excuse my horrific self promotion here as I use a short film I made 10 years ago for demonstration purposes. I feel we said everything that we wanted to in the story, explored and re-explored the central theme and left it at a point where the audience has to think how they choose to interpret what has happened and where the character goes next.

There tends to be a 50/50 split between people rationalizing the events and those that want to see something else. I argue that both are correct and both possibilities are accounted for in the film.

Upon explaining the ending of my book, many people nod sagely and say “Yes that makes sense.” Others agree that the ending works but are concerned that there may not be the clarity that they want. I think that is the key to any ending. I can be as vague about the specifics as I like but if people don’t feel that the threads of the narrative are adequately tied up it will feel like a cheat. So, again, I’m sort of catering to different groups.

This isn’t to say that it works with every story. Some stories need to be tied with a bow and pronounced complete. I will write those stories for sure. That’s just not this book. That’s not who this character is.

It’s hard to talk specifically about what the ending is because I don’t want to spoil it, I haven’t told you what the story is about yet (that’s coming very soon), and where the main character ends up may not be where I think she is supposed to find herself. I have explained my intentions of how I will wrap up the story to people and hope that I will be able to deliver. It’s certainly the right ending for the character and what happens to her.

I think what I’m keen to achieve is that I want the ending to be talked about, to be debated, I want people to have different interpretations of the events (all of which, and more will be correct), but for the finale of the character’s journey, of her experiences, of who she is at the end to be satisfying and rewarding.

– Andrew

 

Structure For The Blog

Hello Blog-fans,

I probably won’t use that term again. It makes me feel unwell just looking at it.
Moving on…

I have been thinking more about what my plans for the blog are. You may have noticed that the banner at the top has changed slightly, I’m trying to give the blog more of an identity and structure. I sometimes have ideas for things to blog about, in the same way that I often think of things to tweet about. I don’t want this blog to become an expanded twitter page (if you look at my tweets to the right, you will be grateful for that). I want a way to compile those ideas into the blog in less of a scattergun approach.

I have decided for now that the structure of the blog will be: On Mondays I will blog about things that I have been thinking about regarding writing, so this is where the blog about music would be found, or the piece about clichés. On Thursday I will blog more generally. I’m being deliberately vague regarding that at the moment as it may change over time and can fit a few ideas I have regarding the publishing of the short stories.

So there you have it Blog-fans (last time, I promise!). For the time being, until I come up with a better plan, this will be the way the blog will work around the dates of the short story.

– Andrew