Authonomy 3

AUTHONOMY, Harper Collins' new writers' website, is out of beta!

You can look at it (and join) here.

Update: apparently, I may be being premature (thanks, Alan). If you can't get access to the site, then I am. My apologies.

All I can say is, it's not the butler. Probably...

I'm writing a whodunit* at the moment, and I'm not sure I'm the best person to do this, because when I read mysteries and thrillers I'm easily confused. I'm also a bad guesser of who the villain will turn out to be. Credulous, and readily misled.

But the beauty of writing a novel is that, unlike a trapeze artist doing a triple somersault to the catcher, the author does not have to get it right first time. One can nip back and insert a telling yet subtle clue. One can move scenes around until they are in the most effective order. The characters get more complex and wilful as the story progresses, which helps.

I have made my heroine and first person narrator, Caz, bright, but a little naive; and like me, she does not spot the baddie until too late.

*I can't even decide whether there is one or two 'n's in 'whodunit'.

Authonomy chart is here!

Authonomy (Harper Collins' new website for tyro writers) is still in beta, but today, to huge excitement, the charts appeared on the site.

My first novel, Torbrek...and the Dragon Variation is at number one on the chart!

Now I know I had a big advantage by being one of the first members on the site, when we all rushed round reading each other's books, and I've also been active, which makes your books noticed. But I'm still as pleased as Punch and Judy.

(I'm also number one commenter - I was at two; it's a rolling chart - which means, I think, that I backed more successful books than anyone else. I don't yet fully understand the system).

The best way to be boring is to leave nothing out...

Voltaire said that, and how right he is. Writing a novel is all about selection; once you've got an idea for characters and a plot, then crucial decisions about how you tell the story have to be made. And the decision that crops up the most is what to put in, and what to leave out.

I am paranoid about not boring my readers (even though, as my books are unpublished, there are so few of them. But one must plan ahead...) If I write a scene without zing, I will re-write it until it sparkles, or delete it. And I have to trust my judgment, because although I have had excellent and helpful advice on Youwriteon and Authonomy, I have also had contradictory advice, and advice that struck me as wrong.

I am the only person, in the end, who can decide what goes in my books.

My friend Alan Hutcheson wrote:

Why write a novel? Because reading really good ones is inspirational and we want to get deeper into that magic. The magic that leaves out the boring parts and takes us to a world where it is all exciting. Maybe scary, maybe funny, maybe disgusting and maybe frightfully rousing (read that however you like). But no boring parts.Great to read, even better to create.

That's why we write novels. It gives us a chance to leave out the boring stuff.

By the way, I hope I will be able to write exciting news shortly about Authonomy, Harper Collin's new website for unpublished authors.

And Catch a Falling Star is up to 24,120 words, and counting...

Three cheers for the internet!

I'm writing my third book, and it occurred to me how amazingly easy computers make this process. Not just Word, which I love in spite of its little ways, but how simple research has become.

Almost anything you need to know about is right there at your fingertips. No more trekking to the library to find, if it's open, that it doesn't have the book you require, or that another borrower has taken it out.

Things I have researched recently with a few clicks of the mouse:

• Penalties for being an accessory after the fact (actually obstructing justice and harbouring a fugitive)


• Rock star excess


• Brit Art


• The poste restante service, here and in France


• Hix Oyster and Chop House


• Rock star earnings


• 50 Best Guy Movies, and the female equivalent


• parking options in Notting Hill


• hic sunt dracones

...and that's just this week...

Bound

'With a tremendous bound Jack was free!'

When I started writing, I would sit down with an idea for a scene in my head, not knowing quite where to begin; so I used to start at a bit where I knew what to put, and go on from there. I quickly learned that I didn't need to go back and put in an establishing paragraph or two; that the place the action started was the place to begin. You don't need to show the couple walking into the tea shop, sitting down and ordering, when the important bit is what they say over tea.

Similarly, once the object of the scene is accomplished, cut it off right there. Holly Lisle offers good advice on this here.

Mary Renault, one of my favourite authors, discovered the technique for herself, and called it Bound. To quote from David Sweetman's flawed biography, 'she meant the use of the cinematic cut, the ability to jump ahead, to précis talk and action where necessary. [Before this] she had no one to explain such things to her and all she could do was plod on, watching the novel swell, unaware of how to remedy matters.'

Dogs in Fiction

My latest book is my first without dragons, but it has a dog, a mongrel called Dog. He looks like the dog in the photo on the left.

A reviewer on Youwriteon said he hoped Dog would be involved in the rest of the book, and that got me thinking about fictional dogs. Jilly Cooper said that if your novel was getting sluggish, kill off the dog. Could one bear to, though?

I made a non-comprehensive list of fictional dogs:

1. My favourite, Snowy, Tintin's dog. Beautifully drawn; Hergé could draw anything except horses. The scene where Snowy gets tipsy and is told off by Tintin is unforgettable.

2. In Mortal Engines, Katherine's pet wolf, also called Dog. I love wolves. The reader knows things are going very badly when poor Dog is shot dead towards the end of the book.

3. An unpublished (as yet) dog, The General in Alan Hutcheson's The Baer Boys. A lovable long-haired dachshund with lots of personality, The General is based on Alan's real-life dog, Odie.

4. Timmy the dog, George's dog in The Famous Five adventures. Loyal, brave and fond of ice-cream, he's the dog every child wants.

5. Most improbable dog; Nana, a prim Newfoundland dog, who was nanny to the children in JM Barrie's play, Peter Pan.

Have I missed any good dogs? I must have. Let me know.

Catch a Falling Star in at No. 1 on YWO!

I posted the first 9,000 words of my new novel, Catch a Falling Star, on Youwriteon on 3rd July 2008. Yesterday it received its fifth review, making it eligible for the charts. I was delighted to find today that it has gone straight in at number one!

Lorraine, herself no slouch at getting into the Top Ten (she's there as I write) concluded her review of my extract;

'I sometimes say I would read on, this is one of those rare moments when I’m really pissed that I can’t. Had this been a book instead of an extract I would now be curled up on the sofa, ignoring the world, because I want to find out what happens next. If the rest of the book is of the same standard I wouldn’t be able to put it down.'

The book is a mystery/thriller, told in the first person. Now I just have to write the rest of it...

How to write a novel..

...with the most efficiency?

I guess there are many different ways to write a novel. This is only my third that I'm currently working on, so I don't know whether I've hit on the best method for me, or not; but I have noticed a pattern emerging.

What I do is, work out what the main characters are like, in quite a bit of detail; I know their childhood pets, first boyfriend/girlfriend, if they drink tea or coffee for breakfast, which bits of their appearance they dislike etc., and also what the book is about; the themes and outline of the plot. I make pages of notes on the characters, and jot down random ideas. I know the end of the novel, and write the key scene that occurs at or near the end.

Then I start writing. I usually know two or three scenes that I will write, and by the time I've written them I've thought up the next few. Like a walk through a dark wood with a torch. I make up other characters as I go along, and let them play off against each other. It's scary, because how do I know I won't run out of ideas?

I've tried writing scene titles on cards, doing time lines, and attempting to map out the whole structure of the book before I begin, but for me these methods didn't work. If I have a scene in my head, I need to write it down quickly before it fades, not put it to one side because my outline isn't finished yet.

How do you do it?

Why a novel is a bit like a glove collection...

Writing a novel has something in common with my daughter's collection of single gloves.

She finds them lost in the street, brings them home, washes them and pins them on her notice board wherever they seem to fit in among the others.

And a writer, in the throes of a novel, does much the same while out and about; spots things that will add to his novel, pounces on them, brings them home and in they go.

(The sequinned shoe? No, I don't know what it's doing there. Inexplicable and unexpected. But then, it's not a bad thing for a novel to have something inexplicable and unexpected in it, either).

A book called...not sure yet

My third novel...

I wrote the first page of my third novel today, and no, I'm not going to tell you what it's about. I don't want to talk about it in detail until it's well under way, for fear of dissipating my creative energy.

I can say it's a different genre from Torbrek...and the Dragon Variation and Trav Zander. It will, I hope, benefit from all I have learned from writing those two novels.

Authonomy 2

The beta version of Authonomy is flourishing; nearly a thousand members, almost a quarter of whom have loaded books, or extracts of books. Some of the novels are very good indeed; so good I'm not sure why they're not in print already. Which got me thinking about how Harper Collins are going to use the site once it's fully up and running. Because there are two possibilities.

1. They can treat it like an online slush pile, with the better stuff conveniently shuffled to the top, and then use their normal methods of selection. Or,

2. They can use it as a way of finding slightly different novels from what they would otherwise choose; take a chance on books the site members love, but that an agent, with his specialized knowledge, would reject on various grounds.

I'd like them to go with 2, but think it unlikely. Which may turn out to be a missed opportunity. I read a fascinating article in the Bookseller by Alison Flood, Tops and Flops at the LBF. It's about how some of the books that got the most hyped London Book Fair deals have actually sold thus far. A few examples;

'The biggest début thriller deal of the year'; sales to date: 3,281 copies. Simon & Schuster secured the two books with a 'very high six-figure pre-emptive offer'.

Harper Collins paid seven figures for world English rights, excluding Canada, for a new novel set on a Canadian military base in the 1960s. Sales to date: 14,436

Orion bought Kate Mosse’s ‘Barbara Erskine-ish’ novel Labyrinth in a deal rumoured to total seven figures. Sales to date: 1,076,509

The point being that agents and publishers do not always get it right. One thinks of the first print run of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone - 500.

Sometimes the public knows best. After all, it's the public who buy books. Or not.

Heroes and Villains

The characters in my fiction almost always come from within my mind; they represent disparate aspects of my personality, and I think this is quite normal for a writer. How else can you know how they think and feel?

My friend Alan Hutcheson agrees, and says even his cold ruthless killer Leslie in Boomerang has some Alan in him.

The result is that I like all of my characters, even the horrible ones; I know their redeeming features and why they are the way they are and do what they do. And I think this is what makes the reader engage with fictional people.

I dislike white and black characters. Superman - boringly virtuous. Voldemort - boringly evil. Bring on the rich and subtle shades of grey; Alan Breck Stewart - a fascinatingly flawed goodie. William Elliot - an intelligent and witty baddie. Give me heroes who trip over while rushing to the heroine's aid, and villains that impressionable teenage girls will secretly want to redeem.

Don't tell me what to think. Let me decide that Fanny Price, though the heroine, is a pain, and Henry Crawford is better off without her.

Much more fun.

Bathing in the Middle Ages

Yes, washing was popular then, and I bet London smelled better, too...

I remember Michael Palin remarking that they'd got it wrong when making Monty Python and the Holy Grail - they'd blacked out people's teeth, assuming that in the absence of dentists, teeth would rot and fall out. Of course, without sugar, medieval teeth were in better shape than our own, as can be seen in surviving skeletons of that period.

Another misconception is that no one washed in the Middle Ages. In fact, bath houses were popular, and some castles had running hot and cold water, and a full time bathman.

One of the most charming rooms in the twelfth century part of Leeds Castle is the Queen's Bathroom, with its draped barrel-shaped bathtub, with a tent-like canopy to keep off the draughts and afford a little privacy. Hot water, with herbs and flower petals, and a maid to hand you a towel - real luxury.

He uttered a vile oath...

...but should I tell the reader what it was?

Swearing comes from early forms of word magic - the entirely correct idea that words have power. How far should you go with swear words in a book teenagers may read?

There's a scene in Torbrek...and the Dragon Variation where Tor, out hunting on her own, finds a boy apparently unconscious in the forest. She runs to help, and is crouched over him when his eyes open and look past her. He is a decoy. 'Oh no!' she cries, spinning round to confront five men come to get her.

My daughter read this and said, 'She wouldn't say oh no.'

Minty is eighteen, the same age as Tor, and I take her opinion seriously. 'What would she say, then?'

'Shit.'

'Ah.' I left it for a couple of months, then there was an interesting discussion on the Youwriteon forum about swearing in historical and fantasy novels. I decided I should be more creative. What about, for general abuse and disparagement;

Go shag a dragon
He thinks he's the dragon's bollocks

Oh, pick the scales off a dragon!

...and from my friend Cat;

Skirt clinger

Go lay a dragon egg

He's the northern end of a south-bound donkey

You pile of dragon dung

His ladder doesn't reach the top

I have to say, I decided my daughter was right. For the moment at any rate, Tor's dismayed reaction is what Minty's would be.

Authonomy

I was lucky enough to be one of the first seven pre-beta testers of the new website for unpublished writers, Authonomy (the link won't let you into the site yet, as it's still beta).

You are able to load anything over 10,000 words of your book(s) - unlike most members, I've loaded all of mine, in case anyone gets carried away and wants to read the whole thing. You also load cover art, a pitch to make others want to read your book, and an image to represent you.

Each member has a virtual bookshelf he/she can load with up to five books from the site. I'm swapping mine around as I read new extracts. And you can leave a comment on other people's books.

It's all rather fun.

Titles...

Those of you who regularly scan my blog for the tiniest activity on my part (I hardly like to say it, but perhaps you should get out more) will have noticed that I have changed the name of the novel formerly known as Rising Fire. I've also tinkered with the covers.

I'm not saying that Torbrek...and the Dragon Variation will be the final title. But that's what it is for now. Thank you Norm, whose suggestion it was.

I'd write a little about titles, but am reluctant to quote the excellent examples I've come across of unpublished novels' titles, as I think that while one's novel is most unlikely to be stolen, an amazing title is actually quite likely to be pinched by the unscrupulous.

Raymond Chandler used to list any good titles that occurred to him in case they came in handy. Sensible man. Wish I'd done that.

No! No! It is NOT weird and wonderful!

Gripped by the dead hand of the cliché...

I am guilty of writing ‘she woke with a start’ in a first draft. ‘She melted into his arms’ really does say it all (this doesn't mean it's a good idea to use the phrase in a novel, though).

But what about clichés that are used with no thought at all? ‘Sea change’ frequently has me yelling at the radio, ‘the sea has nothing to do with it!’ The original Shakespearean metaphor in The Tempest has a point, as THE CHANGE HAPPENED UNDERWATER! But a political party changing a policy has nothing whatever to do with the sea!!!

And as for weird and wonderful, bright and breezy, chop and change, born and bred, each and every, first and foremost, fast and furious, facts and figures, fame and fortune, kith and kin (what's kith?) hale and hearty, part and parcel, prim and proper, rack and ruin, rules and regulations, safe and sound, tried and tested, trials and tribulations, vim and vigour...

All I can say is, AVOID.

Road Rage and Ramparts Rage

My fantasy novels are set in an alternative Middle Ages, so I research the actual period for background detail. I'm currently reading The Medieval Castle by Philip Warner, who has a lively writing style and a first-hand knowledge of battle, having fought all through WWII.
He describes the feeling of superiority engendered by looking down, from a castle or a horse, on the enemy. Castle defenders would jeer at and goad the besiegers. Emotions ran so high that when castles fell, the victors often 'massacred the garrison with ill-tempered thoroughness'.
Also, "it has been said that this blend of arrogance, quick temper, risk-taking and irrationality is a thing of the past."
I knew what he was going to say next. Here it is:
"Curiously enough, the automobile has created its own species of knights. Lulled into a false sense of security by the armour around him, flattered by the speed which he controls with a touch of the foot, arrogant towards those with inferior mounts or with no mounts at all, the modern motorist will display chivalry towards an attractive woman, pay grudging deference to the owner of a vehicle which is clearly superior, but otherwise behave with stupid over-competitive hostility to every other road-user.

The clearest conviction of the modern motorist is that every other driver is in the wrong; he is driving too fast, too slowly, too timidly or too aggressively. Even the carnage of the multiple accident leaves him relatively unmoved; the massacre of a few peasants had much the same effect on a feudal baron's emotions."

Pedants' Corner

To lay and to lie...

A lot of people have problems with when to use lay and when to use lie. I know that lay is transitive, i.e. you lay something, an egg or a table, but lie is intransitive, i.e. you lie on the bed.

But I blush to confess, I only realized recently they are two entirely different verbs, that happen to share 'lay' as the present tense of to lay, and the past tense of to lie. For more details, see here.

It's left me wondering what else I don't know...