I think I've got tyhat "world-in-the-head" thing sorted, and in the process, I've learned a valuable lesson.
I've already mentioned that the book's set in 1943ish, in WWII. Much of the action takes place in and around New Guinea, so it's just been a matter of getting names right.
But here's the lesson... don't over-do it. I think it would be easy to get completely obsessed with making it perfect, and while I don't underestimate the importance of getting it right, immersing ones self in the minutae is a distraction from the real job, which is to write a story.
I guess it's a fine line. I remember being forced to read Hemmingway at school. Now there's a writer obsessed with minutae. Ernest spends pages describing tiny detail, and I recall wishing he'd just bloody well get on with the story. Critics hail Hemmingway as a great writer... an immortal to be studied and dissected. I thought he was ponderous but who am I to criticise.
One thing is certain. I'm no Hemmingway, and you can take that any way you like.
Anyway. On with the task.
I now have my world, and if I follow the formula, I'm supposed to create real characters to populate it. There's the brave Coast Watcher. The tough army nurse. The respectful Japanese freighter captain and a whole supporting cast who may or may not make it from neuron to keyboard.
They need work, those characters, and I'm starting to think it's a chicken and egg problem... you can't have characters without context (which is the story), and you can't have a story without characters.
Or maybe I just need to start writing after all.
Friday, May 16, 2008
Friday, May 2, 2008
This Is Harder Than I Thought
I'm a bit of a perfectionist. I didn't realise it until a few years ago, but on balance of evidence, the mantle sits ok with me.
Being a prefectionist is a double edged sword. On one hand, a perfectionist generally believes that if you're going to do something, then do it right. On the other though, doing it right can often take a great deal of work, and there's a danger that a perfectionist will choose, either consciously or subsconsciously, to do nothing rather than do something that isn't perfect.
I REALLY want to get this right. I've seen a few friends devote years of their lives to writing... one writing fiction, as yet unpublished, and one writing a sort of docudrama based on a very well known event. I've seen and heard their pain as they struggle with the balance between prefection, completion and acceptance.
The latter will be a best seller, I'm sure, because it's a superbly researched book about the Tay Bridge disaster that reads like a novel. I've read Robin's draft, and it's a gripping yarn so beautifully written you think you know everyone on that train.
That's what I want for my book, but first, to make the story work, I need to create the world in which the story is set. That world has to live entirely inside my head and, because I am a perfectionist, it needs to be perfect and seemless in every respect.
Fuck. That's REALLY REALLY hard.
I have a piece on our company website about research a few years back. Scientists made a group of ferrets watch The Matrix, and monitored their brain activity. The conclusion they reached has profound implications for my current endeavour, because what they found is that the brain constructs a model of the real world, and maintains that model at all times. The researchers reasoned that it is more efficient to maintain and adjust a model than it is to build one from scratch each time you wake up in the morning (though some mornings, it feels like that's exactly what my brain is doing, because I really don't function for the first hour of my day).
Now I have to create a second model, because my world doesn't include the world in which my book will be set. It's not the big things that get you, it the little things. For instance, what were things called? Think about it... the names of some things change over time. When did they stop calling self propelled vehicles 'horseless carriages' and start calling them 'cars'? When did they stop calling work trousers made out of light canvas 'blue denims' and start calling them 'jeans'?
These are important, because if things are placed out of their period, readers notice.
And my observation says the world I create must be familiar enough that readers are comfortable walking around in it. I've already mentioned Terry Pratchett's "Discworld" series. Terry is a master of creating the familiar with a very different twist. The people in his world are pretty much the same people as in our world. They have the same wry sense of humour, and they even use some of the same gadgets. The difference is, our world is driven by Technology, but the Discworld is driven by Magic. If you're not familiar with Pratchett's work, I suggest you order the first book, The Colour Of Magic and devour it immediately.
One of my favourite books is "The Walled Orchard" by Tom Holt. It's set in ancient Greece at the time of the Athenian invasion of Sicily. It's brilliant... very witty, extremely dry, and somehow familiar, even though Athens of 400BC was a very unfamiliar place.
That familiarity allows those stories to work. So it must be with my book. My reader has to feel comfortable spending time there, walking around with my characters and sharing the adventure.
It's forming, but I wish that model would form in my head a little faster so I can get on with creating the story within it.
Being a prefectionist is a double edged sword. On one hand, a perfectionist generally believes that if you're going to do something, then do it right. On the other though, doing it right can often take a great deal of work, and there's a danger that a perfectionist will choose, either consciously or subsconsciously, to do nothing rather than do something that isn't perfect.
I REALLY want to get this right. I've seen a few friends devote years of their lives to writing... one writing fiction, as yet unpublished, and one writing a sort of docudrama based on a very well known event. I've seen and heard their pain as they struggle with the balance between prefection, completion and acceptance.
The latter will be a best seller, I'm sure, because it's a superbly researched book about the Tay Bridge disaster that reads like a novel. I've read Robin's draft, and it's a gripping yarn so beautifully written you think you know everyone on that train.
That's what I want for my book, but first, to make the story work, I need to create the world in which the story is set. That world has to live entirely inside my head and, because I am a perfectionist, it needs to be perfect and seemless in every respect.
Fuck. That's REALLY REALLY hard.
I have a piece on our company website about research a few years back. Scientists made a group of ferrets watch The Matrix, and monitored their brain activity. The conclusion they reached has profound implications for my current endeavour, because what they found is that the brain constructs a model of the real world, and maintains that model at all times. The researchers reasoned that it is more efficient to maintain and adjust a model than it is to build one from scratch each time you wake up in the morning (though some mornings, it feels like that's exactly what my brain is doing, because I really don't function for the first hour of my day).
Now I have to create a second model, because my world doesn't include the world in which my book will be set. It's not the big things that get you, it the little things. For instance, what were things called? Think about it... the names of some things change over time. When did they stop calling self propelled vehicles 'horseless carriages' and start calling them 'cars'? When did they stop calling work trousers made out of light canvas 'blue denims' and start calling them 'jeans'?
These are important, because if things are placed out of their period, readers notice.
And my observation says the world I create must be familiar enough that readers are comfortable walking around in it. I've already mentioned Terry Pratchett's "Discworld" series. Terry is a master of creating the familiar with a very different twist. The people in his world are pretty much the same people as in our world. They have the same wry sense of humour, and they even use some of the same gadgets. The difference is, our world is driven by Technology, but the Discworld is driven by Magic. If you're not familiar with Pratchett's work, I suggest you order the first book, The Colour Of Magic and devour it immediately.
One of my favourite books is "The Walled Orchard" by Tom Holt. It's set in ancient Greece at the time of the Athenian invasion of Sicily. It's brilliant... very witty, extremely dry, and somehow familiar, even though Athens of 400BC was a very unfamiliar place.
That familiarity allows those stories to work. So it must be with my book. My reader has to feel comfortable spending time there, walking around with my characters and sharing the adventure.
It's forming, but I wish that model would form in my head a little faster so I can get on with creating the story within it.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Daunting
Chester The Bear's decided he can write a book. It's something he's never done before, and frankly, the task is more than a little daunting.
It's one thing to have a great idea, but translating that idea into something worth reading takes planning, organisation, and attention to detail that may well be beyond the available talent.
So where does one start?
Observation tells me that the mistake most first timers make is that they just start writing. That might work in Finding Forrester, but this is the real world, and the result will lack structure, direction or cohesion.
Therefore, I think I need a system, and this is where the internet comes into its own. A quick Google search took me to Randy Ingermanson's advancedfictionwriting.com, where he introduces aspiring writers to "The Snowflake Method". It sounds reasonable, so I'm going to give it a try. Start with a single sentence that encapsulates the entire book. Fifteen words. The story, scenes, characters and catastrophes are planned out from that sentence by morphing just one step at a time. Don't write until you know what it is you're writing.
I've also found Shruti Chandra Gupta's "The Literary Zone", which seems to contain more useful advice, especially about things like creating what he calls a "breathing story world". When I think about books that I've really enjoyed, they all contain a coherent, plausible and contiguous world. Even Terry Pratchett's brilliant Discworld series is coherent... whacky, upside down, incredulous and magical, but still coherent. Once you're in Discworld, the story's environment takes on a comfortable predictability, and that's what makes Pratchett's characters so believable and his stories so enjoyable.
So that's where I've started. Snowflake... build a believable world... plan... write it later. I especially like the bit about writing it later. We'll see how far it gets me.
It's one thing to have a great idea, but translating that idea into something worth reading takes planning, organisation, and attention to detail that may well be beyond the available talent.
So where does one start?
Observation tells me that the mistake most first timers make is that they just start writing. That might work in Finding Forrester, but this is the real world, and the result will lack structure, direction or cohesion.
Therefore, I think I need a system, and this is where the internet comes into its own. A quick Google search took me to Randy Ingermanson's advancedfictionwriting.com, where he introduces aspiring writers to "The Snowflake Method". It sounds reasonable, so I'm going to give it a try. Start with a single sentence that encapsulates the entire book. Fifteen words. The story, scenes, characters and catastrophes are planned out from that sentence by morphing just one step at a time. Don't write until you know what it is you're writing.
I've also found Shruti Chandra Gupta's "The Literary Zone", which seems to contain more useful advice, especially about things like creating what he calls a "breathing story world". When I think about books that I've really enjoyed, they all contain a coherent, plausible and contiguous world. Even Terry Pratchett's brilliant Discworld series is coherent... whacky, upside down, incredulous and magical, but still coherent. Once you're in Discworld, the story's environment takes on a comfortable predictability, and that's what makes Pratchett's characters so believable and his stories so enjoyable.
So that's where I've started. Snowflake... build a believable world... plan... write it later. I especially like the bit about writing it later. We'll see how far it gets me.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
