I saw this yesterday, and desperately wanted to run around telling my friends and family about it. But then I remembered that my friends and family would not see why it was such a big deal. (Probably because it really isn’t a big deal to anyone except me.) But it gave me such a thrill that I had to mention it:
An announcement at About.com that Under the Hill: Dogfighters is out in paperback. Look at me, hanging out in a list of SF/F authors that also includes Mercedes Lackey, Harry Turtledove and L.Frank Baum. I feel like I ought to be twirling in a sea of stars, as per a Japanese anime character.
Got to say, though, that my ‘brand’ is clearly as disorganised and offputting as ever, since according to KZ Snow’s m/m hall of fame, I’m definitely settled in the minds of m/m readers as a writer of historicals. This makes me squee too. How could it not? Look, I get to keep such great company there too. Thank you KZ! 🙂
But it does make me think that my branding life would probably be simpler if I got a new pen-name for the SF/F stuff. That way, people looking for Historicals (who wouldn’t touch fantasy with a bargepole) could continue looking for Alex Beecroft, while people looking for Fantasy (who wouldn’t touch historicals with a bargepole) could look for someone else, and I would avoid confusing and offputting absolutely everyone. And if I told everyone that was what I was doing, those who liked both would be able to find both.
I should have put this in last week’s post, since it’s part of the whole plotting thing, but as usual for me, I don’t have a lot to say about it, so it can slip in here with no problem.
Writers appear to be divided between those who like to make a plan of their plot so that they know what is going to happen next in every scene from the beginning to the end (aka plotters) and those who find that if they know what’s going to happen next at all, they lose all interest in actually writing it. (Aka pantsers from ‘flying by the seat of their pants’.)
My position is that there’s nothing wrong with either method, but that you should experiment with both to find out which one suits you best, and then use that.
I started off as a pantser, which at the time was the only way I knew of to do it. Not knowing what was coming next lead to an awful lot of time spent staring out of the window waiting for inspiration to strike. It also lead to an awful lot of time spent blocked while I had apparently written myself into a corner and simply could not imagine how my characters were going to get out of their perilous situation or tight spot. Eventually the answer would come, but it was disheartening and anxious waiting for it, unable to count on it, thinking that the entire thing might have to end up in the bin.
So, when I heard of the revolutionary idea of figuring out what to write before you actually wrote it, I thought I’d give it a try. The book I heard this from was one of those formidable ‘structure’ books, which lays out how a plot should go as if it was a military exercise, along with charts and graphs of where exactly the pivot points and beats of maximum tension, bullet point lists of character flaws and motivations etc etc. That was way too organised for me.
Interestingly I recently read a book which read as though it had been written in absolute accord with this technical manual. That was Where the Shadows Lie by Michael Ridpath. I found it absolutely competent, interesting enough, and completely soulless, which is tragic when the story’s premise is so fantastic.
Anyway, I think that book proves that you can pay too much attention to the dictates of mechanical plotting. I suspect that most people will find that somewhere between the extremes of ‘make it all up as I go along’ and ‘mapped out to the slightest comma’ there is a happy medium that suits them.
For my part, I like to know what I’m going to be writing next. If we define a ‘scene’ as ‘the minimum amount of writing necessary for you to make one interesting thing happen’, then I plot by scene. The first thing you need to do, to be able to do this, is to figure out about how many words it generally takes you to describe one important happening in your story. It’ll have to be an average, obviously, because sometimes you can do it in two words (“he died,” for example) and sometimes it takes ten thousand.
My average tends to be 2000-2500 words per scene. Knowing that allows me to roughly estimate right from the start how many scenes I’m going to need to fill a book of a specific length. If I’m writing a short 20-25K novella, I need to think up 10 interesting things to happen (aka scenes). If I’m writing a 100K novel, I need to make a list of 40-50 scenes.
I still consider myself to be a fairly mild example of the plotter. I don’t make graphs and character sheets and timelines and floorplans etc as some people do. I just make a list of things that need to happen to get from the beginning to the end. I eventually end up with a plot plan which has no more than a short paragraph describing each scene.
Knowing how many things you have to think up to happen actually helps you think them up, in my experience. And not starting to write until you have an appropriate number of interesting things to write about has for me many additional benefits: I am excited about what I have to write that day, as opposed to unsure that anything will come to me at all. I know how far along in the story I am, so when I’m in the long grind of the middle, I can tick off a scene a day and have the reassurance that I’m a measurable distance closer to the end.
I wouldn’t go back to writing without a plan now – I wouldn’t know where to start or how to continue, at least without wasting at least half of my writing time on each occasion on sitting and thinking stuff up time.
I think that people worry that a plan will shut down their creativity and will shut them into a rigid box with no space for those wonderful moments of inspiration which are the delight of making art. But in my experience that’s not how it goes. I’ll be writing along, sticking to the plan, and then I’ll think “OMG! What if he suddenly decided to retrain as a ninja?”
This will indeed throw a big wrench into my drawing room comedy about a bunch of layabout gentlemen who do nothing but behave like PG Wodehouse’s Drones Club. But if I think it’s an awesome enough idea, and will improve everything out of recognition, there’s absolutely nothing stopping me from altering the plan. And given that the plan is just a list of short paragraphs, there’s not all that much work in changing it completely. Then you just write to the new plan instead. Simple.
But as I said above, if even this is enough to stultify your creative juices, there’s no need to do it at all. As long as you’ve tried both plotting and pantsing, and know for sure which one works for you, there’s no law that says you have to do either.
It’s been ages since I posted an excerpt of anything other than my work in progress, so I thought it might be nice to revisit the book that started it all. This is from Captain’s Surrender, first accepted for publication by Linden Bay Romance in 2007, actually published 2008 with a (frankly fairly horrible) cover and then re-released in 2010 by Samhain with one of my favourite covers ever:
Blurb
Love? Might as well ask for the moon. But a man can dream…
Despite his looks and ambition, Midshipman Joshua Andrews hides urges that, in his world, make him an abomination. Living in fear of exposure, unnecessary risk is something he studiously avoids. Once he sets eyes on the elegant picture of perfection that is Peter Kenyon, though, temptation lures him like the siren call of the sea.
Soon to be promoted to captain, Peter is the darling of the Bermuda garrison, with a string of successes behind him and a suitable bride lined up to share his future. He seems completely out of Joshua’s reach.
Then the two men are forced to serve on a long voyage under a sadistic commander with a mutinous crew. As the tension aboard the vessel heats up, their unexpected friendship intensifies into a passion neither man can rein in.
Intimacy like theirs can only exist in the shadow of the gallows. Both men are determined their “youthful curiosity” must die before it brings disaster down on them. Yet neither man can root it from his heart. Warriors both, they think nothing of risking their lives for their country. In the end they must decide whether love, too, is worth dying for.
Excerpt
Portsmouth Naval Dockyard, 1779.
The bell rang out twice, unbearably sweet. The drums rolled and were silent. As a wind from the sea ruffled the hair of the assembled company, Joshua Andrews looked to one side of the gallows, his eyes unfocused. There was a thunder and rattle as the trapdoor fell open and then, just on the edge of hearing, the snap of a neck and the collective intake of almost five hundred held breaths, as the Nimrods instinctively inhaled to make sure they still could.
“I should say, ‘May God have mercy on his soul.’” Captain Walker did not choose to wait even a moment in respect, but clapped his hat back on directly and bestowed a satisfied look upon his crew. “But I know it would be futile. No mercy awaits a man like that, either in this life or the next.”
Josh tried not to react, but when Walker’s intense gray gaze swept the row of midshipmen, it seemed to pause on him, threatening as a pistol thrust in his face. He made no movement, gave no sign of the panic trying to crawl up his throat, the certainty that Walker knew, and fought down the wholly irrational urge to break and run that would be every bit as bad as a confession.
At length, the gaze passed on to terrify the boys standing gape-mouthed and shaken at Josh’s right. “Particularly not on my ship.” Hat on, the captain moved down the uncovered ranks of his ship’s company, on the alert for movement, for signs of repugnance or weakness, seeming to swim through their fear like a shark. Beside Josh, twelve-year-old Hawkes swayed, face stricken and white, and while Walker’s back was turned, Josh reached out and squeezed the child’s wrist, setting him upright with a little comforting shake that reassured them both.
Josh, twenty years old and acting lieutenant this past year, was the only oldster among the midshipmen. He found himself at times playing the part of elder brother, even father towards them. It was not a position he particularly relished. Taller than his peers by a good foot and a half, his unlucky red hair uncovered and obvious beneath the sun, and clad—ridiculously—like the other boys, he felt conspicuous enough already without the knowledge of another difference, carried like an invisible brand in the soul.
“Take a good look, lads.” Walker’s red face was jovial, his eyes in slits of flesh, gleaming with satisfaction. “Whatever your previous captains hushed up for the good of the service, you will not find the same tolerance here. No secrets on my ship. This man was coxswain’s mate. Now he’s crow bate. Heed the warning.”
He began to walk back, past the company of marines, their scarlet uniforms almost obscenely cheerful in this place of execution, past the ship’s people, past the lieutenants, and back to the midshipmen. Taking his cane from beneath his elbow, he pushed at their faces with it, angling them until, without closing their eyes, it was impossible for them not to watch Henderson’s body jerk and tremble at the end of the rope.
Josh did not wait to be manhandled, but fixed his gaze on his shipmate’s shirt-ties and hoped, prayed, that the flailing of limbs and the agonized expression on his face were the result of involuntary spasm, not the signs of a soul in torment. Fear and shame rose up in him. Shame for Henderson, from whose stockinged feet urine dripped—such a neat man in life, and now so stripped of dignity—and for himself. For this was the fate that awaited him should he ever be caught. This was an outward demonstration of the consequences of his vice, the minimum necessary to appease God, before whom he was an abomination.
At the thought his fear turned into anger. He could have done as Portsmouth’s urchins were doing on the waterfront—picking up clods of refuse from the shore and pelting Henderson’s hanging body with them, shrieking curses. Stupid! It was stupid of the man to have done anything on board, let alone be lured and entrapped by one of Walker’s informants. Surely he had known that Walker was the greatest tyrant ever to stand on a quarterdeck, spending ink and energy and vitriol to “clean up” the service. Surely Henderson had known this, and yet he had still been foolish enough to welcome the advances of a shipmate. What could have possessed him? The famine of shipboard life? A death wish? Poor bastard! Poor, stupid, pathetic bastard.
The wind freshened, and the clouds drew away from the sun. A chilly, autumnal light drenched the pale stones of the dockyard and glittered on the sea. Walker’s fellow captains of the court martial put on their hats and walked away, talking soberly, the taller bent in an uncomfortable “C” towards the shorter.
Walker tucked his cane beneath his arm once more, light sharp on his gold braid and blazing from the diamond buckles of his shoes. He opened his mouth to speak, and the sound of a carriage interrupted him, coming hell for leather down the quayside, its flamboyant driver plying his whip like a young rake.
Iron shod wheels slid to a stop in fountains of sparks. The Nimrods pretended not to notice as the footman got down and turned the gilded handle of the door. Josh allowed himself to smile as, from the corner of his eye, he saw Walker’s complaisance shatter, his brow darken at this affront to his personal piece of theater. All around Josh there was a cautious craning of necks and shifting of positions to see the newcomer, and he had to hiss out of the corner of his mouth to Midshipman Anderson to stop the boy incurring the captain’s wrath by actually stepping forward.
Josh found that if he shifted his weight just so, he could watch the unfolding of steps, the brightly polished black shoe and gentleman’s leg in a silk stocking descending. There were white breeches and now the skirts of the coat, a deep indigo no less gorgeous for being worn by every officer. There were mariner’s cuffs, shiny brass buttons displaying the fouled anchor outlined in heavy gold braid. When fully emerged, the prodigy was revealed as nothing more than another lieutenant of His Majesty’s Navy, a parcel of orders clutched to his breast.
Josh should have been disappointed. This was surely the man sent to fill the Nimrod’s vacant berth, reducing Josh from “acting lieutenant” back down to middie with the rest of them. He should be wrestling with resentment, hating the sight of the man. But for some reason he could not quite manage it.
Saluting, the stranger introduced himself. He was very tall and slender, his face all angles and bones, with clear, sea green eyes into which the illumination of the autumn sun seemed to pour. Or perhaps it was the clarity of his spirit that shone out as he smiled depreciatingly at Walker’s purple wrath.
“Captain Walker? My apologies! The axle cracked outside Kidderminster, and on the road through Weston we were waylaid by highwaymen. My watch said five to the hour as we entered the yard, so I had them crack on as fast as they could. I hope I am not late?”
Automatically, Walker checked his timepiece. His mouth thinned into a stroke of wire as he held out a mute hand for the orders. Not allowing himself to wilt beneath the glare, the young man handed them over, straightened his shoulders and stood impassively while Captain Walker checked them.
“Not late, Mr. Kenyon,” said Walker, at length, with a cold fury that made the young man’s smile fall away and his expression harden. “But you are a damned abominable coxcomb, arriving in this manner. You have missed your profession, sir—the navy does not exist as a backdrop for your theatricals. What do you mean by it?”
Around Josh a sense of thankfulness rose off the crew. The heavy gaze of officialdom had been shifted from their backs. Henderson still trembled, swaying pendulum-like on his gibbet, but the trembling of the living eased and there broke out, here and there, the reluctant smiles of those who are glad this was happening to someone else.
Josh was overwhelmed by a sensation he had never felt before. Lt. Kenyon had bowed his head to study the cobbles by Walker’s feet, and Josh found himself fascinated by the elegant curve of his neck and by the refined white hands lying in the small of his back. He was captivated, too, by Kenyon’s shoulders—narrow but lithe—and his black brows and lashes, so startling under the white wig.
Josh badly wanted to do something to encourage the man to move again, so lightly he had descended from the carriage. How would he walk? How would he hold himself if he were to dance? He looked as though he should dance. Hell—with the fine poise of him, he looked as though he should fly; unfurl a great pair of white-feathered wings like the Archangel Michael and fly.
“I meant nothing, sir, but desired be here at my appointed time. As you see, the hospital would not release Lt. Ollerton. There have been complications. And as I must be in Bermuda as soon as is humanly possible, it seemed good to all that I should take his place.” The green eyes swept up, not at all abashed, but honestly concerned. “Were you not informed?”
“God’s blood, man! Do you question me? Will I have to bring you to a proper subordination, Mr. Kenyon? I should have thought the object lesson behind me would induce you to remember your place.”
Though he had not known there was such a person all of five minutes ago, something twisted in Josh’s throat at the thought of Kenyon on the gallows. What was bitter with Henderson, beside whom he had worked for three years, would be sheer blasphemy in the case of this stranger. But why? Why would he almost rather feel the rope about his own neck? How was that possible? What… What was the matter with him? He didn’t even know the man!
Confused and a little frightened by the strength of this…whatever it was, Josh looked away, then back, and by chance, he caught Kenyon’s gaze as it swept the rows of silent men, looking for support or advice. Kenyon was older than him, certainly, his face settled into adult lines, but his eyes…oh. Oh, they were like a pool of fresh water in the desert. Josh had not known before how thirsty he was, how he yearned for that cool, for that refreshment. His mouth fell open; he took a half step forward. Kenyon smiled an uncertain, polite smile, which filled his chest with sunlight, and his lips had twitched in answer, involuntary, when Walker laughed.
It was a cynical, sudden bark of laughter, as humorous as the report of a pistol, and it shocked through Josh in much the same way. The fragile moment of joy disappeared under terror. He knows nothing! He has no proof! I was just smiling! Mother of God, what came over me? What was I thinking?
He looked back at the corpse, as if for council. Its protruding eyes seemed to mock him, as if to say, “Do you still think me so stupid now?” He breathed in shakily, appalled. Was this what Henderson had felt for the informer? This tie of the soul, this abandonment of all caution, as though nothing else existed in the world but the two of them?
Josh had been at sea since he was thirteen, had not mixed in the most refined company, and did not believe in love at first sight. More than that, he had never heard that sodomites were capable of love. Since childhood, he had heard that he was a beast, driven by perverted appetites, not a rational being whose heart could be moved by beauty or lifted by a smile. He was not worthy to love this fine young officer, not even to admire him from afar.
But—Mary and Joseph—suppose it was love! How fitting to fall in love in the shadow of the gallows. Watching Henderson finally settle into stillness on the end of his rope, he tried to resist the urge to look back at Lt. Kenyon as he might have tried to resist the urge to breathe. When he gave up, allowed himself a stealthy glance, he found that Walker was watching him, with the gleam of triumph in his eye.
The steady world fell out from beneath his feet. For such a long time he had been sure of his self-restraint, certain that whatever the captain suspected, he could prove nothing. Now Walker was watching him, with the pleasure of a fisherman who has finally discovered the right bait.
Since I’m working so hard at the writing that it’s beginning to feel like a real job – and it’s a job that involves being at the keyboard for the majority of the day – I’ve started ending the day by disengaging from the computer altogether and going to sit on the sofa. But I can’t just sit on the sofa and watch TV.
In the old days, I’d sit on the sofa with the TV on and read a book. But reading books has also begun to feel like work. It’s all words all the time. So I need something different just to have a time away from it all.
Previously, I have embroidered (crewel work), made tablet weave and nalbinding socks:
I’ve woven plain weave cloth on a small loom. I’ve tried three times to learn how to knit, and forgotten what I learned immediately after. I could probably make some embroidered cushion covers – probably of fannish stuff drawn in an Anglo-Saxon manuscript style – but I always enjoy learning something new. So this time, I thought I might try crochet, which is enough like nalbinding that I might be able to remember how to do it, but enough like knitting that you can actually make big things out of it.
Is there anyone out there knowledgeable in the ways of crochet, who could point me in the direction of a good, clear, inexpensive guide to how to start?
If I can get to the point of making scarves and blankets, that will be all I desire from a hobby designed mainly to provide the extra bit of relaxation/mental stimulation that TV alone won’t give.
So, I have done my tax return, which was not a particularly interesting thing to do. But getting my royalties spreadsheet all up to date was very interesting, since it shows that my gut feeling of how I was doing is actually not an accurate reflection of reality at all.
When you’re a new author, everyone’s excited to see you, and to you it seems as if you’re achieving wonderful things and getting buzz and being recognised – and this feels like success (because it is, of course.) But then you become an old warhorse, and nobody seems terribly interested in the fact that you’re still writing, and if you’re like me you think “oh, well, I hit my peak and now I’m on the decline. Everybody hates me, there’s no point in going on, soon I’ll have to pay people to read my stuff… etc etc.” (Melodrama is built in.)
But fortunately the figures say otherwise – I’m doing better this year than last, and last year than the year before that. I would still make more money stacking shelves at the supermarket, but measurable progress is being made. Reassuring stuff!
In honour of the anti-fan letter I got last night, suggesting that I could not possibly write believable male characters because I was (gasp) a girl, I am doing the only thing my gender allows and am channeling my anger into pink unicorns:
And in a brain explodey twist to this story, it turns out that the pink unicorn was drawn by a man.
Oh no, (clutches pearls) what will become of our gender paradigms now?
Mostly today my work in progress was finding all my royalty statements and filling in my spreadsheet in order to be ready to do my self-assessment tax form tomorrow. Which was useful and even interesting work, but not the sort of thing that lends itself to an entertaining quote.
However, I did also do ten pages of editing on The Glass Floor, and solved the knotty problem of why there was only one magic charm available, and why – in that case – it wasn’t immediately given to the sultan. Poor old Zayd has found himself now officially without magic talent of any kind, but hey, he’s still the archmage. That has to count for something, right?
I’m coming into the final straits as far as the edits go, which means that the hardest bit is still in front of me. I wrote the final battles at double speed and as a result they don’t necessarily make much sense. Also the whole business with Frank’s father being coincidentally present is too coincidental, and will have to come out in favour of some stuff with magic mirrors and newspapers.
I was pleased to find that it passed the Bechdel test, though:
~*~*~*~
Off the side of the right hand aisle a series of carved oak partitions had been set up, marking chapels dedicated to individual saints and martyrs. They ducked into the smallest, where an all but extinguished candle gave out a dim storm light in its amethyst lantern, and a silver-mounted icon of Saint Parascheva watched them out of solemn painted eyes.
Ecaterina cast the veil back over her face. Mirela knelt beside her, and in the process of lowering herself she turned from girl to old lady, wrapped in black shawls, concealed beneath a heavy headscarf and a shape that proclaimed her of no interest to anybody. “I envy your gift,” Ecaterina said softly. “To pass unseen. I had to choose between peacock and gargoyle, and never truly wanted either.”
“Always the same on the inside, though, isn’t it? Who you are.”
Mirela exchanged a glance with the flat saint. The stuttering light made her eyes seem to stir. If Ecaterina looked at her long enough, it was as though her face bulged out of the frame, became rounded and real. She was listening, though she didn’t speak.
“About the monsters,” Mirela whispered. “My lord is taking them away. I thought you’d like to know that. We have wagons and everything arriving. I hear the idea is to jam them in, tight as in slave ships, in the bottom of the carts and cover them up with supplies. Then when the army gets down to the coast, they’ll sneak aboard ship and we’ll take them with us. So you’ll be all right, back here. They’ll all have gone to war, like the boyars.”
Ecaterina was ashamed of herself, because the first thing she thought was that the gypsy was lying. But lies ought to at least be more plausible than the truth, or how could they ever be believed? “How? How could he control them enough to do that? How could he get them to cooperate?”
Nightmares flickered into her thoughts like the death-throes of the candle. She saw again the look that had passed between Vacarescu and the strigoi in the white silk – the old man who had taken Stefan from his family, and walked beside him as a surrogate father.
A priest looked in through the pierced work carving of the wall. “Well,” Mirela clucked in mingled disapproval and amusement, just like an old lady sharing scandalous gossip. He shook his head, tolerantly, light running like quicksilver over his pectoral cross – the only part of his outfit that wasn’t black. All the colour had been sucked from Bukorest, it seemed. How appropriate.
“He brought the strigoii with him from Valcea. The white one and the lady. They listen to him, maybe a little. Though God knows for how long, now there’s only one of him and hundreds of them.”
Ecaterina took far too long to understand this news. Her father admired the man, had told her of his awkward reception to the prince’s court. The reason he’d given for not being seen in town before. ‘I have been containing a plague.’
The White Death had come to Bukorest, but days after he arrived in it.
Her teeth were chattering. She had to raise both hands and dig in her thumbs beneath the jaw to keep them silent, though the shudder worked through her wrists and arms and into her shoulders. The emotion she felt was still almost too big to put a name to, too big to be contained within herself – she felt it like a wall of fire around her ten paces deep. The altar was inside it, and the green-faced saint, and the sense of something teetering, teetering, about to fall.
Her father liked him. Had welcomed him without reservation, brought him into their house. She had liked him. He was the only one left who still treated her as he had before her glamour slipped – the only one who saw her as she was and was not repelled.
And why should he be repelled by anything human if his household was made up of monsters?
How smoothly he had lied when she asked about the old man, led her to believe he was an unpleasant surprise he found waiting for him when he moved in. She should have known the timing was far too coincidental for that. She should have known when he hacked her brother’s head off in front of her that he had no human sensibility in him.
But for him, Stefan would still be alive. The strigoi, oh yes, she could hope and plan for it to be destroyed, but it could not help its nature. It had little choice but to be what it was. But Vacarescu had chosen to expose her family to its notice – to expose all Bukorest to its curse.
Had Stefan done something to him, to be so targetted? No! Absurd. Stefan was the kindest child who ever lived. It was worse than that. Vacarescu had killed him and not even meant to. Simply did not care enough to make it stop.
The sphere of fire had reached its largest point – almost out to the street. Now it slowed, turned and rushed back together into a fireball centered in her gut. Every part of her felt incandescent like the sun with rage, powerful, unstoppable. I will kill him for this. I will have vengeance. For my brother and for every other mourner in the city today, I will have justice.
~*~*~*~
Which, when you have three heroes and two heroines turns out to be harder than you’d think.
Blimey, I can’t pick just one. Also I’ve forgotten which books I read at which age. Does it mean ‘book you read in your childhood,’ or ‘children’s book’? I remember absolutely loving The Odyssey in junior school, so that can be it for ‘book you read in childhood’, and of course I loved The Hobbit – so that can be for ‘children’s book you read in childhood.’
2. What are you reading right now?
The Phoenix and the Carpet, (on the e-reader) courtesy of Amazon’s free reads. Classic children’s books don’t seem to suffer from the slow, pompous author’s voice that I associate with Classics for adults. Plus it’s got a phoenix and a magic carpet in it, both of which are good things on their own.
Caravan to Vaccares by Alistair Maclean, (the bathroom book – 50p from a charity shop, so I don’t need to worry if I drop it in the bath.) His voice is almost too lively for his subject matter. It’s all “ooh, and now he’s been knifed and fallen over a rockface, what fun!” and indeed it is.
The Weekend Novelist Writes a Mystery by Robert J Ray and Jack Remick, (the next to the sofa book, for reading in the evenings). I haven’t actually got very far with this, despite the fact that I would like to write a proper mystery some day. It may be too boring for the (actually all I really want to do is go to bed) time-period in which I’m trying to read it.
The Earl and his Butler in Constantinople by Nigel and Caroline Webb. (The research book.) Such a disappointment! I thought it would have all sorts of things to tell me about 18th Century Constantinople, but it turns out to mainly be about Kincade’s inability to manage his debts, and how often he invited the Swedish ambassador around for dinner.
3. What books do you have on request at the library?
Nothing! My local library has been a washout whenever it’s come to trying to find useful books, so I’ve given up asking.
4. Bad book habit?
I’m now much more likely to abandon a book half way through the second chapter than I am to finish it.
5. What do you currently have checked out at the library?
Nothing, see above.
6. Do you have an e-reader?
Yes, I have a Kobo glow, which I got for Christmas. I am infinitely pleased with it. It has hundreds of books on there already and I haven’t yet exhausted the main memory. (After I do, I can put more on the SD card.) The battery life is about 3 weeks, even with heavy use and with the light on. And the light means I can read during dark car journeys or in bed without having to disturb other sleepers/hog the cigarette lighter. Also it has a snazzy leather cover with the Union flag on it.
7. Do you prefer to read one book at a time, or several at once?
Several, if none of them is really engaging me. If one of them is gripping, I will abandon the others and just read that one ’til the end.
8. Have your reading habits changed since starting a blog?
I read less, because I have less time to read – I’m busy reading other people’s blogs on the internet instead.
9. Least favourite book you read this year (so far)?
The Black Horseman by Richard D Parker – managed to be both dull and skeevy.
10. Favorite book you’ve read this year?
The Secret Garden – another Amazon freebie re-read. This year has not been a good one so far, given that we’re all unemployed, so a book which is pretty much the embodiment of hope was just what I needed.
11. How often do you read out of your comfort zone?
I generally don’t try to read books that sound like I wouldn’t like them, if that’s what this means. If a book is in a genre or has a setting I haven’t read before and the blurb makes it sound interesting, then I’ll read it and pay no attention to the fact that I don’t normally read that genre. But I won’t go looking for stuff that sounds like something I wouldn’t enjoy.
12. What is your reading comfort zone?
I like Fantasy of all sorts (high, historical, contemporary, magic realism etc), and (fairly cozy) mysteries. It is odd that I ended up writing Romance and Historicals, because I don’t actually read either.
13. Can you read on the bus?
I can read anywhere at all, providing (if I don’t have my hands free) there’s some mechanism for keeping the text in sight and turning the pages.
14. Favorite place to read?
On the sofa in front of the TV (if with company) or in bed (if alone.)
15. What is your policy on book lending?
I’m all for it.
16. Do you ever dog-ear books?
I used to, when I was young. It was the way I was taught to mark my page. These days I can’t understand why it took me so long to see it as a filthy habit, and I don’t.
17. Do you ever write in the margins of your books?
Again – a childhood habit that I outgrew.
18. Not even with text books?
Nope. I have a separate notebook which I write in instead.
19. What is your favourite language to read in?
I can only read English.
20. What makes you love a book?
I wish I knew, because then I would do it myself 🙂 It’s a combination of likeable characters doing interesting things in a fascinating world, with a good combination of action and food for thought, at a speed I find exciting but not rushed, in a style of language that I find engaging and which sometimes makes fireworks go off in my head.
21. What will inspire you to recommend a book?
If I love it, and someone I know is looking for a new book to read, I’ll suggest it. Otherwise books, like clothes, are generally such a matter of personal taste I’m not sure you can choose them for other people.
22. Favorite genre?
Fantasy.
23. Genre you rarely read (but wish you did)?
Hm, if I wished to read a genre, I would read it. It’s not like the genre police are out there stopping me.
24. Favourite biography?
I’m sure I must have read some biographies in my time. The only one I remember reading was that of Oscar Wilde, so it had better be that one.
25. Have you ever read a self-help book?
Oh, all the time! I need a self-help book to help me give up self-help books. They’re all a load of semi-mystical guff, but I can’t help constantly thinking ‘maybe this one will actually deliver the goods’ and reading the next one.
Having said that, I don’t know if pop-psychology is the same thing, but I would recommend The Highly Sensitive Person which did actually help me go from “what the hell is wrong with me?” to “oh, OK, maybe I’m meant to be that way.”
26. Favourite cookbook?
You what? Do I look like someone who cooks? I am from the ‘open tins, throw in pan, stir’ school of cookery. Life’s too short to spend in the kitchen.
OK – Mrs. Beaton’s, because it’s got everything you need to know in there, for those rare occasions where you really do need to know them.
27. Most inspirational book you’ve read this year (fiction or non-fiction)? The Secret Garden – see above.
28. Favorite reading snack?
A cup of coffee and a chocolate biscuit. These days I am not allowed a chocolate biscuit, so it’s a cup of coffee and frozen raspberries in zero fat yoghurt.
29. Name a case in which hype ruined your reading experience.
I did read Captain Correlli’s Mandolin because everyone was talking about it, and I didn’t like it, but I don’t think that counts as ‘ruined by hype.’
Actually hype may have stopped me reading The DaVinci Code, but on the other hand it’s not really a book I would have picked up on my own anyway – so no harm done. The same goes for 50 Shades of Grey. If I really wanted to read it, I’d read it.
30. How often do you agree with critics about a book?
I’m a very hard reader to please, so I generally don’t like things as much as the glowing reviews would seem to warrant.
31. How do you feel about giving bad/negative reviews?
I think it’s my duty to say what I really thought about a book. If that’s ‘oh, God, this is a piece of crap’ that’s what I’ll say.
32. If you could read in a foreign language, which language would you chose?
Right now, Romanian, but that’s because I’m on a Romanian kick all around at the moment. This may die off the way my Age of Sail kick died off, so possibly over all Latin might be better.
33. Most intimidating book you’ve ever read?
Is there such a thing as an intimidating book? Actually, now I come to think about it, Foucalt’s Pendulum was a bit offputting at first with its stream of consciousness narrative and all those secret societies, but it was worth slogging through the first few chapters to get into the stream of it. I’m not sure I would call it intimidating, though, unless ‘intimidating’ means ‘a bit of a struggle to start with.’
34. Most intimidating book you’re too nervous to begin?
There are no intimidating books. There are either books I want to read, or books I don’t want to read. I don’t understand where this intimidation is coming from.
35. Favorite Poet?
I don’t really have one. I enjoyed Christopher Logue’s War Music, and I liked Seamus Heaney’s Beowulf, but I’m very narrative focussed and if there isn’t a story I don’t really want to read it.
36. How many books do you usually have checked out of the library at any given time?
Three or four, if I can find that many.
37. How often have you returned books to the library unread?
Rarely. Only if I tried them and didn’t like them.
38. Favorite fictional character?
Again, how can you expect me only to have one? Though I suppose Therem Harth rem ir Estraven from The Left Hand of Darkness is the first name that comes to mind. A gender-neutral, subtle idealist of a politician capable of acts of universe shaping bravery? You don’t get more heroic than that.
39. Favourite fictional villain?
In novels I find villains a bit unsubtle – I prefer antagonists. In comics, however, where unsubtle is the name of the game, I do love a magnificent bastard. It’s always a delight to watch Marvel!Loki repeatedly destroy the universe, using little more than persuasiveness and cynical charm.
40. Books I’m most likely to bring on vacation?
Lots of heavy research books, which I will not read. Then I will end up buying something lightweight, like a cozy mystery in the local bookshop.
41. The longest I’ve gone without reading.
I’m always reading something, even if it’s only fanfiction.
42. Name a book that you could/would not finish.
The Book of Deacon which was the one that inspired me to write both my rant about ‘rather’ and my rant about fire. I know it’s fantasy, that doesn’t mean you can expect me not to notice you don’t know how fire works – unless you first redefine it as being part of your worldbuilding.
43. What distracts you easily when you’re reading?
The book not being very good. If the book is good enough, I can read through a road crash.
44. Favorite film adaptation of a novel?
Les Miserables is actually very good, though I still prefer the musical out of all the options.
45. Most disappointing film adaptation?
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. It was so literal it made all the things which had seemed magical in the book suddenly seem mundane. It actually disenchanted the entire book series for me.
46. The most money I’ve ever spent in the bookstore at one time?
I used to buy everyone books as Christmas presents, when I lived close to Dillons in London. I think that came to £150 or so, and that was 20 years ago.
47. How often do you skim a book before reading it?
I don’t. When I’m choosing a book in the shop, I judge by title, which makes me want to read the blurb or not. If I read the blurb and like it, then I open it to a page in the middle (because in my experience authors tend to try hard on the beginning and then lapse into their true style a couple of chapters in.) If I like what I read in the middle, enough to tell I enjoy the writer’s style, then I buy it.
48. What would cause you to stop reading a book half-way through?
Bad characters, writing style I just couldn’t bear any more, realizing that nothing interesting was going to happen. The death in some pointless way of the only character I like. Realizing I despise everything the author believes in, or he despises me. All sorts of things!
49. Do you like to keep your books organized?
I would like to, but I never seem to have enough time. They got shoved up on the shelves as fast as possible when we moved here, and I haven’t yet got around to grouping them by author.
50. Do you prefer to keep books or give them away once you’ve read them?
Keep – I will want to read them again two or three times at least.
51. Are there any books you’ve been avoiding?
The Earl and his Butler in Constantinople. It’s such a disappointment and it’s boring. I feel I ought to finish it, in case there’s some sort of irreplaceable gem in the bit I haven’t read, but it is a terrible chore.
52.Name a book that made you angry.
The Golden Compass. If you’re going to attack my religion, you really ought to find out what it’s about first.
53.A book you didn’t expect to like but did?
Pride and Prejudice I was lead to expect a typical romance with a typical overbearing alpha jerk of a hero, and actually got a drawing-room comedy with a principled hero who only needed a bit of gentle guidance to get him on the right track. 54. A book that you expected to like but didn’t? Tehanu by Ursula LeGuin. I don’t know what happened to LeGuin, she took to second-wave feminism like a religion, and suddenly all her stories were about gender-essentialism and how women and men were separate species who could barely relate to each other.
I loved the Earthsea trilogy, and I was so excited to find there was another book in that series after so long, but instead of making a place for women in that brilliant world, she chose to deconstruct the entire thing. Possibly she has since reconstructed it in a way that (she thinks) includes women’s special talents too, but that still shuts me out of having access to the ones that she thinks are just for men. How could the author of Left Hand of Darkness pull this damn cis-gender crap on me?
Arrggh! But I’m not bitter… 😉 (Actually, I’m not. Her self-actualisation is none of my business, even though it means I’m warier of reading her books now.)
A lot of people have said a lot of things about plot, and I find it difficult to say anything different. But, as ever, I’m going to attempt it anyway.
Many of the how to write books I’ve read define plot as conflict. The character wants something, something is stopping him achieving that, there is conflict between him and the antagonist (be that another character or some more abstract force) and plot is what happens in an attempt to get that conflict resolved.
I tend to think this is all very well for certain sorts of stories but doesn’t apply to all stories. I would say that the essential thing you need to keep in mind in order to generate a plot is that something interesting ought to be happening.
In the old days, I plotted by chapter. I would write a numbered list of however many chapters I thought would make a good book, (usually around 25) and I would try to think of something interesting to happen in each chapter.
The Witch’s Boy, for example opens when Oswy – who has (offscreen) been sold as a slave to the local lord – meets his new master for the first time, thinks he’s about to be cut up for spell-components and tries to escape. I don’t know whether I would call this a conflict or not, because what Oswy doesn’t know is that he’s in no danger from the lord (no conflict there) and the guards can’t really be arsed to keep a watch on him, because he’s got a tracking spell on him which will bring him home anyway. He thinks he’s cunningly outwitting the lord and his guards, but really there’s no contest.
So I don’t know – it’s not conflict, but I hope it is something interesting.
And then of course, the ball is rolling. Once something has happened in the first chapter, it starts to make new things happen as a result. Either he gets away – in which case he’s alone in the wilderness as a runaway slave, and all kinds of bad things might happen – or he gets caught and sent back – in which case we find out what the lord and his henchmen really intend to do with him. (And we, the writer, have to decide what that is.)
Basically, plot is a series of interesting happenings, each one caused by the one before it, and causing the one after it.
Once one character is set on a sequence of interesting events, you can make the book longer and more interesting by adding a couple more characters. Each of these need to have something interesting happen to them. Then, once it starts happening, it needs to continue to be interesting until the character can begin to control the plot thread and wrestle it into a satisfying conclusion.
If you have more than one character in operation at once, each with their own series of events, all the plot threads need to influence each other. Character A’s flight from false accusation brings the police into Character B’s shady antiques business, and as a result, Character B hides his stolen diamond in the ghastly vase Character C has just bought. Then, later in the novel, C drops the vase when B tries to tackle him to the floor. C resists, and B falls in front of a train – and later A finds the diamond on the train tracks when he’s trying to shelter there in his state of penniless ruin.
Conventional wisdom is that your characters should not be passive. They should not be acted on by circumstances, but should be the ones who drive their own story. As always, I think this is mostly true, but I have caveats.
Not all characters will be the kind of people who have a burning desire for something and immediately set out to achieve that desire. I think it’s entirely OK to start off with a character who is acted upon, and turn them active as you go along. They can be catapulted into the story by outside circumstances, but at some point they do need to decide to take charge of their life and start trying to affect the world, rather than allowing it to always affect them.
For example, take two books about boys who go to wizard school. Ged of the Earthsea books is an active character – he always wanted to be the greatest mage who ever lived, and pretty much from infancy he is striving hard to get to that goal. (Only to be humbled later on when he all but destroys himself through his pride and ambition.) But Harry Potter starts off as a passive character, who has no real desires or drive until he gets his Hogwarts letter. Even then, things tend to happen to him for a large part of the book before he decides it’s up to him to do anything about them.
If your character has no pressing desires to start out with, don’t worry too much. It’s OK to start with the world forcing interesting things on them. They’re bought by a sorcerer, who’s decided he needs an apprentice. They accidentally witness a murder and the murderer decides to hunt them down to silence them. They are thrown out of a plane and mysteriously end up in another world. A dinosaur breaks down their front door and they’re too busy trying to survive to (a) sit around being passive or (b) wonder where it came from.
How your character reacts to this first interesting thing depends very much on their personality, so if they are a particularly lumpen and inactive sort of person, they may react to the dinosaur incident by running across the street, phoning the police, making a cup of tea while the authorities deal with the animal and then going back to their life as an insurance salesman with a shrug and a ‘well, none of my business’. This would be a valid reaction in real life, but in a story it runs the risk of (a) being quite dull and (b) bringing the story to an end.
You have a lot of book to fill, so naturally the thing to do is to choose whichever reaction (out of a choice of ‘what would a character like this do’) which will lead to the most fascinating thing possible happening next. If your character is the kind of person who honestly wouldn’t ever do anything interesting, then he may not make a good hero. Consider giving the job of protagonist to someone else and making him a phlegmatic sidekick. He might be quite amusing in that role.
The way your character reacts to this first interesting incident both illustrates what kind of personality he has and creates the next interesting situation. He shoots the dinosaur with the gun for which he doesn’t have a gun licence, and when he gets back from reporting it to the police, the body is gone, replaced by the body of a middle aged woman with a tattoo over her eye. Now the police think he’s a murderer… what does he do next to clear his name?
Or he flings a steak from the fridge into his car, traps the dinosaur, and runs the car off the end of the pier (you’d better go back and make sure he lives at the seaside) only to have the car eaten by an ichthyosaurus. At which point he decides there’s something fishy going on, and because he’s that sort of person he becomes determined to figure out what it is.
The art of plotting is the art of making sure something interesting happens next. You need to combine this with the art of structure, which we discussed before, and make sure that things actually get more interesting as they go along, that sometimes (particularly around the mid point of the novel) they get surprising as well as just interesting, and by the end they have passed ‘interesting’ altogether and evolved into ‘nailbiting’, ‘catastrophic’, ‘awesome’ and then (to use Tolkien’s word) Eucatastrophic at the end. (Well, unless you want an unhappy ending.)
As a rule of thumb, if you start the book with dinosaurs trying to eat someone, you’d better end it with dinosaurs trying to eat everyone, or – at the very least – dinosaurs trying to eat everyone the main character ever cared about, and probably the Queen/President too. If you start with a worrying ooze of ectoplasm down the wall, and you finish with the builders putting a damp course in and the problem going away, it will be a short and somewhat non-existent plot. (Unless you then do a Scooby-Doo and discover the builders put the ectoplasm there in the first place so they could frighten the character out of his house and use the basement to tunnel across and rob the local bank.)
Nowadays, instead of plotting by chapter, which tended to mean writing 4000 words on each interesting thing, I plot by scene – which means about 2000 words on each interesting thing, leading to there being two interesting things happening in each chapter. Ideally this means I have doubled the fascination of every chapter. But the principle of the thing is the same.
Make interesting things happen – that’s all you really need to know about plot.
I do enjoy a good bargain, and having an e-reader has introduced me to the delight that is free books. You go on Amazon, put ‘free books in the kindle book store’ into the search box and get inundated by stuff to read.
Ever wanted to read Les Miserables, but not quite enough to pay for it? You can get it free here.
I’m sure everyone’s already read all the Sherlock Holmes stories, but how nice to be able to have them in one volume to go in your pocket.
I thought Stress Proof Your Life sounded like a good idea, but within the first five pages it had made me feel even more stressed by telling me to ‘think what you’ll look like in five years time if you don’t do any exercise.’ Eeep! I don’t need any self-help books to make me feel more of a failure. So I can’t really recommend this one.
But I spent most of Saturday morning reading The Secret Garden anew – one of those books I remembered enjoying in childhood which I haven’t read since – and discovering that it’s probably more magical now than it was when I read it first.
There doesn’t seem to be any free m/m romance, and I don’t read m/f romance (with the exception of Jane Austen). So I also downloaded a load of mysteries and SF/F by authors unknown to me. I’ve started The Soulkeepers which is a really nicely written fantasy with a Chinese hero and an Indian heroine, but … is it me or are all fantasies these days set in American high schools? Maybe it’s just that I’ve had a run of them recently, but I feel as though I can’t bear another one even if this one is a so-far highly superior version of the form.
Heh – look at me complaining about a good book I got to read for free. It’s just that there are so many books out there, it encourages a reader (this reader, anyway) to be ridiculously picky.
The Boat of Small Mysteries - A cozy mystery aboard a narrowboat, in which a murder and a disappearance keep our aroace detective from fully relaxing into the idyll of country life.
