Discovery

I stumbled across this while on a quick visit to Elvaston Castle - it's a folly, inspired (I think) by one of the Harrington family's 19th century trips to the Middle East.  They're restoring it at the moment, and even without glass in it's oval stone windows (behind the scaffolding), it looks beautiful - can't wait to get inside and see the eastern-influenced decoration.

The thing is, I've been to Elvaston Castle more than a few times, and I've never seen it before - shows you there's always something new to learn.  After that free lesson from the world around me, I took another look at Elvaston Castle itself with new eyes, and got another brilliant idea for my YA novel, Coalface- remind me to tell you about that after the rewrites.

So if you're looking for inspiration, get away from your normal environment, and see what's out there - let me know what you find.

Waves

So I'm stood there, in a wetsuit.  I try and avoid the bodyboarders who fly past me, wait for a friendly looking wave, then turn around as it wells up against me.  I can feel it's power surge past me and over me, and I move!

About a metre.

The enthusiasm of 'You've got to try it!' had carried me all the way down to a beach in Cornwall, via a wetsuit and bodyboard shop, and plonked me in the water.  Now what?

Getting out was not an option.  I'd come here to do this, and if I came back and had to tell people I bobbed in the water like a plastic bottle, so be it.  There's a bunch of other people out on the water, and many of them are zipping past me like bullets.  But not all of them.  So it's not just me who's having trouble being at one with the waves.  And they're not getting out either.

So I stick with it.  And the more I see the people around me between drenches and mouthfuls of seawater (lovely seawater by the way, very clean), the more I realise the ones who moved like dolphins before are also the ones who are bobbing around like a plastic bottle now, and vice versa.
We're all doing the same thing - sticking with it, getting it wrong, because it's worth the effort when you get it right.  Because getting it wrong is a part of understanding how to get it right.

I cracked it on the third day, and rode my first wave.  And stopped worrying about getting it wrong.
I've spent the rest of this week working on the first draft of my YA novel, Coalface - without worrying about what's right and wrong anymore - because in a first draft, writing it wrong is always better than not writing.  My surf baptism has also inspired me to go back into the water for a couple of other stories that I thought I couldn't do any more with; and after a bit of bobbing about, I can see some good waves coming my way.

Tricks

I've been tricked by a writer twice this week, and it's been brilliant to experience.  The first was an episode of House MD (not telling which one or what happened - spoilers and all that), where the twist in the tale turned up at just the right time, and I didn't see it coming.  The second time was while I was reading Megan Taylor's brilliant novel 'The Dawning' while I was waiting for an appointment - again, I didn't see it coming.

The stories don't have much in common, even the formats are different.  And when I read the twist, I immediately understood why it was there - no left-field deus ex machina stuff, it made complete sense why the characters were where they were.
 
So why was I tricked?  Because the characters drew me in to the story so much, I stopped trying to work out what was going to happen next, and started to live the story alongside the characters.  For someone who can't help but second guess the direction of a story from the opening credits (bad habit, keep it to myself - no point in telling the folks around the boat sinks), it's been a good lesson in how to tell a story well enough to stop you thinking about what lies beyond the current scene.

I'm hoping the readers of Hidden Daughter get the same feeling as the life of single-mother-time-travelling-thief Penny unfolds; time will tell.

Telling

Show don’t tell, show don’t tell, show don’t tell.


Every time I write, I work hard to do the former and not the latter; it’s more satisfying for the reader to work out the clues that lead them to discover that X has an unresolved past with Y, than it is for someone to say it (Mike Myers made ‘telling’ rather than showing a character in itself, which is why some parts of my first drafts were a ‘bit too Basil Exposition’- but hey, it’s a first draft – better to see Basil than a blank page).  It's harder work, but important work; when I read or hear dialogue which tells rather than shows, at best it takes me out of the story; at worst, I start rewriting in my head while the story's still progressing (bad habit, but at least I don’t say what I’m rewriting anymore- usually).

It wasn’t always this way – exposition prologues have been around for as long as people have stood in front of crowds and told stories, told to the audience before a single player has crossed the stage.  As audiences became more savvy and sophisticated, they fell out of fashion, leaving us to discover what happens at the same time as the characters, or perhaps a little ahead if the writer leaves us a trail to follow.  Which is why I’m so impressed with The Shadow Line on BBC2. 

Hugo Blick’s script brilliantly shows rather than tells – the story of a drug baron’s murder simultaneously investigated by the police, and the criminal fraternity around him.  The characters are complex and engaging,  and imagery is superb (the juxtapositon between Detective Jonah Gabriel’s brand new, high-spec Audi and smuggler Joseph Bede’s older, scruffier model of the same car says buckets about how both sides feel they have to portray themselves without saying a word).

So far, so great – but the thing that impressed me the most is the opening sequence where two uniformed officers discover the victim.  The story could have competently started with the news of the murder reported in a phone call to smuggler Joseph Bede, and the arrival of Detective Gabriel at the crime scene; but Blick has brilliantly fused the ancient tradition of prologue with noir filmaking, and a multi-layered storyline – and I know it’s good because I wished I’d thought of it.


Can’t wait until the next episode.  If I’ve enthused enough to make you want to see the first part, get it on BBC iPlayer while you can: http://www.bbc.co.uk/i/b0110msr/