Graeme Rodaughan's Blog: Writing The Metaframe War Series, page 8

Love the Raven

I've got a real crush on one of my characters. The Raven.

A secret agent of the Red Empire inserted as a child into the Order of Thoth, Mirovar force team.

They have grown up within the force team. They love their team mates as family, as well as brothers and sisters in arms.

They have a deep commitment to their Red Empire mission, they feel a sacred duty to see the mission through.

They are a trained killer.

So what will win out - their love for their family, or their commitment to their mission?

The Journey

The end of a year and the beginning of a new one provides a wonderful opportunity to pause and reflect.

What immediately strikes me are the many wonderful people who I have met on goodreads.

I only know you by your written words, but what words they have been.

Without fail, I have found people here to be honest, generous, supportive, fun, cheeky, intelligent, witty, creative, humorous and wonderfully entertaining to be around.

I am really moved by your company, and by your friendship.

I am blessed to know you all.

This year has been an eventful journey and no one gets very far on a journey without help. You have been my help, my fair companions, without you my actions would be empty and without meaning.

Thank you all.

I wish everyone a safe and happy christmas, surrounded by those you love, and I look forward to seeing you all back here, safe and sound in the new year.

Beware the Raven

When your characters get a life of their own it's a double edged sword.

First, it's a really good sign, because they are coming alive, and making their presence felt in the story.

On the flip side, it's a right pain in the proverbial when they say or do something surprising which makes perfect sense for them to say or do and it causes a substantial design rewrite due to the flow on effects.

So there was this discussion by phone between two major characters that have a joint scheme...

‘Which means the leak came from within the Mirovar force team - accept it - it’s the only option left.’

There was a long pause on the line.

[REDACTED] said quietly, ‘Damn, you must be right.’

‘Of course I am,’ [REDACTED] stated matter-of-factly. ‘So do something about it.’

‘Oh, I will,’ [REDACTED] hissed. ‘Don’t you worry about that.’

‘Once you find your spy, keep them alive and in place, we need to find their accomplice, the one who killed my [REDACTED] .’

‘Obviously.’

Of course it makes sense to keep an enemy spy in place once you have discovered them, especially if you have identified that they have a far more important accomplice in the background.

My original plan had the spy in question being caught, charged, and tried - not kept in place as part of a bigger strategy.

So I watched a bit of TV last night (Latest Jason Bourne movie, Person of Interest season 2, Arrow season 5) mulling over the options and came up with a neat solution.

The speaker's smart approach to spycraft above, simply generated a more devious approach by the opposing agent.

Very devious, and almost artistic in their use of leverage on the characters around them.

And the agent's name - The Raven.

Writing The Metaframe War Series

I promised several months ago on one or more threads to talk explicitly about my writing methods for "The Metaframe War" series. It is well past time to keep that promise - so (for better or worse) here it is.

Essence: All meaningful conflict occurs within a relationship.

You have to start somewhere, and it all began with a relationship. Specifically a relationship between a powerful older woman and a younger man (Couger alert?). The essence of the relationship is one of manipulation and abuse where the older woman would manipulate the younger man into completing a task that she herself could not do. The challenge for the young man was to identify what is happening and either avoid being used, or subvert it.

Essence: There must be a larger context in which the conflict occurs.

I toyed with the idea of creating a fantasy world to situate the story in. As a purely practical measure I gave that idea up and chose to situate the story in our modern world plus 5 - 10 years from now, for the simple reason that creating a believable fantasy world from scratch is a substantial piece of work and I didn't have the time to devote to such a task.

Essence: What is the metaphor for Power

The primary source of conflict within the Metaframe War is the pursuit of power by various characters. Power itself is captured in the metaphor of the Metaframe, aka the Divine Engine of Thoth, which allows an adept to literally change the rules of the game (Universe). The Metaframe plays a similar role in my story that the One Ring plays in the LoTRs.

Essence: A tournement structure provides automatic escalation of conflict and stakes.

I didn't want to have a single pair of opposing entities, such as the Jedi vs the Sith. I wanted to reflect a genuine multi-polar conflict (which is how I see our current geopolitical environment).

I toyed with the idea of having eight or more distinct organisations vying with each other for possession of the Metaframe artefacts, and as the story progressed, they would win, or get eliminated from the contest. Think Game of Thrones or Highlander.

I settled on three, the Order of Thoth, the Red Empire, and the Vampire Dominion in a stable cold war environment - and then the stability breaks down and the situation becomes very fluid.

The beauty of having three competing groups is that I'm never at a loss for someone to "oppose" someone else.

I established all of the above, working with large sheets of paper, a pencil and brainstorming - let's call that phase "Concept Development."

With the concept in hand, I still didn't have a story - that came next. Still working with large sheets of paper and pencil. I would block out four sections on a sheet as follows.

1. Inciting Incident (-ve)
2. First Reversal (+ve)
3. Second Reversal (-ve)
4. Crisis/Climax/Resolution (+ve)

And then I would work with that, how did the story start, how did it progess, and how did it end. I worked on this for two to three months, multiple iterations, throwing things out until I was happy.

I had iterations where Anton was a US special forces soldier in Afghanistan who's unit gets killed by vampires, but he is saved (against her orders) by Chloe Armitage - and the rest of the story occurs with Anton as a vampire. (of course that story ended up in the waste paper basket...).

I had an iteration where there was a cult of purely female ninjas, but they didn't make it though either. (Although something of their essence flowed into the character of Li Wu.)

There were a lot of options that were considered, tried, found wanting and then discarded.

Eventually I had my four elements defined, and I had a story that I could take forward - let's call that phase "Story Development."

Next step was to structure this into a book along the lines of

ACT 1: Inciting incident to first reversal. I.e. The first act starts badly for the Main Character (MC), but ends on a positive note. (Think Luke Skywalker's Aunt and Uncle are murdered, and then he blows up the death star.)

Act 2: Proceed directly to the second reversal (negative note), do not pass go, do not collect $200. The MC is in the deep proverbial. (Think Luke has his hand cut off by his father and Han Solo is frozen in carbonite.)

Act 3: Proceed to the Crisis/Climax/Resolution (positive note) The MC confronts their Nemesis and either decisively wins through or is defeated. All story arcs get resolved. (Emperor Dead, Darth redeemed. Empire Defeated).

(Note to my readers, please don't think that I have simply given away the ending to my series and that Anton is sure to win and Chloe is sure to lose - life is not that simple. Let me ask you this before we go on. Who won at the end of A Subtle Agency? Who was best placed to pursue their agenda? Was it Chloe or Anton? If you think that they both lost and gained - you would be right. It is my aim to ensure that you do not know until the end what will happen and how the essential conflict between Anton and Chloe is finally resolved.)

So I ended up with three nicely defined and summarised "Acts" for one Novel. I looked at it, rubbed my chin and said, "You know what, there's easily enough material to make three books, let's just tell the story with a trilogy."

I was still working with paper at this point, and I got three large sheets and blocked each sheet in three sections. Each of my initial three Acts had morphed into a book, and each book would have three acts.

Like so,

Book 1: (Act 1 ends +ve, Act 2 ends -ve, Act 3 ends +ve hence Book 1 ends +ve).
Book 2: (Act 4 ends -ve, Act 5 ends +ve, Act 6 ends -ve hence Book 2 ends -ve)
Book 3: (Act 7 ends +ve, Act 8 ends -ve, Act 9 ends +ve hence Book 3 ends +ve, hence story ends +ve).

Ok, So I had a trilogy that was structured like Star Wars (new hope) through to Return of the Jedi, and there is nothing wrong with that, besides which I was telling a very different story, wasn't I? (Hang on a second, they're both Modern Epics where the individual is pitted against a corrupt authority and a rag tag group of rebels defeat a great power...).

So I completed the definition of the nine acts. I had quite a bit of material by then and the basis of what seemed to be a pretty good story, and working with pencil and paper was becoming cumbersome - I needed a tool with which to take my story forward to the next stage.

I got Scrivener

This tool was and remains perfect for what I'm doing. I transferred my paper scribblings into the tool and my story rapidly took shape.

For each of my nine acts I created and defined 7, 9 or 11 chapters each with a solid paragraph of text describing what happened in each chapter.

I started to define my characters in detail, and other objects such as the Metaframe, Vampirism, and the Ramp became fully defined.

So now I had 3 books, 9 acts, and about 80 chapters and I'm looking at it and I realised that there was too much story to fit into that format so I cut books 1 and 2 apart and added in two new books.

So now I had 5 books, 15 acts, and about 145 chapters, all defined. Let's call that phase "Preliminary Design," and it took about 6 months to complete

I then started designing the individual scenes for all the chapters in Book 1, the last three chapters in Book 4 (the original 2nd Reversal) and the final chapter of book 5 (the original crisis/climax/resolution). Let's call that phase "Detailed Design (not completed)" Which took another 6 months.

So with all the scenes in Book 1 defined, all I needed to do was actually write them. I wrote the first act of book 1, came in at approx 84,000 words, 202 pages, that took about 7 months working about 15 hours per week.

I looked at it, and decided it was big enough to publish in it's own right. Act one is "A Subtle Agency."

Act 2 is "A Traitor's War."

The Metaframe war series will run to 15 actual books. A Subtle Agency will be the shortest of the books, all the rest will likely exceed 100,000 words.

I'm doing the scene definition of the future books as I go, so that I always have a couple of books ready to write at any point in time.

If you have any questions about my techniques, feel free to ask.

First Chapter of A Traitor's War is available

Preview the first chapter On Goodreads here

Link to the book (placeholder) here: After the desperate battle on the Boston docks, Anton Slayne finds refuge amongst the vampire hunters of the Order of Thoth.

Anton discovers that the Order of Thoth harbors a traitor who could get his new friends killed. While a secret alliance between the Red Empire and vampire General, Chloe Armitage, threatens to do the same.

With threats both within and without - will Anton be able to stay alive long enough to save his friends, or will his circling enemies destroy everyone he loves?

Warning #1: Contains spoilers if you haven't read A Subtle Agency - do not read this chapter.

Warning #2: Reading this chapter could increase your heart rate, and your blood pressure.

(Useful note, there is an expand button on the top right corner of GR's online viewer.)

The full book is due for release in Q2 2017.

Super Chuffed

I'm super chuffed, totally stoked and still on a high over a review of A Subtle Agency that I got yesterday.

If Matthew Reilly and Greig Beck had a baby and then gave that baby to Steve Alten to raise, that baby would be this book. Basically, a supernatural-techno-action piece that faithfully follows in the footsteps of the aforementioned authors, but has a little way to go before it catches up.

I'm a fan of Matthew Reilly and he is an influence on my own writing - and I was compared with him in this review, plus Greig Beck and Steve Alten.

I'm sitting here writing this with a big grin on my face.

The reviewer also generously offered some constructive feedback which is always useful and very much welcomed.

Stoked.

Lies, Schemes, Spies and Betrayals

In Scrivener, the tool I use to write my books, a chapter is a folder.

When my work is in progress, all chapters have meaningful names - when I publish they become "Chapter n" etc.

Chapter 5 of A Traitor's War is titled 'Lies, Schemes, Spies and Betrayals" for very good reason.

All my chapters have a "Chapter Quote" to provide a little context for what is about to come, or what has just happened.

Here is the Chapter quote for Lies, Schemes, Spies and Betrayals.

> 05:45:12 Init Transcript Program……….
> 05:45:12 Init Source Anonymization……….
> 05:45:12 Init Traceless Call……….
> 05:45:13 Call……….1……….2……….3……….4……….5……….6
> 05:45:19 Init Redial
> 05:45:20 Call……….1
> 05:45:21 Call Connect [Sergeant Detective Luke Watts][LW]
> 05:45:22 [LW] “What? Who is this?”
> 05:45:25 [ANON] “An informant.”
> 05:45:27 [LW] “I have to inform you that it is an offense to make a false report.”
> 05:45:32 [ANON] “You need to hear this.”
> 05:45:34 [LW] “Hear what?”
> 05:45:39 [ANON] “A ring of serial killers have been murdering the homeless in Boston for the last two months.”
> 05:45:39 [PAUSE]
> 05:45:42 [LW] “You can back this up?”
> 05:45:44 [ANON] “Check out the basement at [REDACTED].”
> 05:45:49 [LW] “[REDACTED]?”
> 05:45:53 [ANON] “Yes.”
> 05:45:55 [LW] “Who are you?”
> 05:45:57 End Call……….
> 05:45:58 Move Transcript to ../../../Investigations/ChloeArmitage/[datestamp]/Transcripts……….
> 05:45:58 Set Privacy For Generals Eyes Only [FGEO] [General Clayton Maze]
> 05:45:58 Init Erase……….
> 05:45:58 End Transcript Program……….

- Content from a partially declassified Panopticon transcript.

Effing Shite! Gratuitous Eye Candy

I'm a natural visual thinker, and it's reflected in my writing style. I reach for visual imagery the way that we all use our dominant hand - it's just natural to do so.

Visual imagery is a strength for me, but because it's a natural preference, like being right handed, it can become an unconscious preference that gets in the way of my best writing.

I had the privilege of having the first three chapters of A Traitor's War read by a very sharp and insightful beta reader over the weekend. They came back with a slew of issues to correct.

Which is a fantastic result.

There was one issue that stood out amongst the rest, and it boiled down to this.

I had a character doing something which was being driven by "this looks good, this is a bit of eye candy." rather than anything else related to the character or the narrative. My beta reader made the point that the activity allows for "this thing, that thing, and another thing" to occur - i.e. a whole can of giant wriggling worms named "Repercussions" was dumped all over my book, and my series...

Here's the eye candy in question... (with the repercussion issue in bold)

Looking through the full-length penthouse windows at the sunlit city of Manhattan, a relaxed smile curved the corners of her mouth. The windows filtered out the ultraviolet spectrum, and she could safely stand in front of them, bathing in the natural light of the sun.

She felt the sunlight on her face, smiling broadly she let her ivory silk kimono-style bathrobe fall open and slide from her shoulders. She raised her hands high, arched her back and pirouetted like a ballerina in slow motion. The sunlight gleamed on her fair, flawless skin, caressing the curves of her body, she closed her eyes, luxuriating in its warmth.

Her mind hovered between the sensual experience of filtered sunlight on her skin and the problems at hand. She slowly turned again, her body in sync with her mind, relaxed, alert, focused.

So I have a major female vampire character (guess who) who longs to be able to walk in sunlight once more as stated in A Subtle Agency...

She glanced to the side, looking through the dark transparent armor of the canopy at the hard luminous ball of the sun descending toward the horizon. It was moments like this, from behind heavy shielding, that she could look at it without fear of crumbling to dust.

Chloe stared at the sun, suddenly shivering with a deep, heartfelt longing.

One day I will bathe in your rays again and the world will tremble before me.

The solution for A Traitor's War - to hold the rest of the scene steady and just change the activity and ground it directly back to the characters core motivations. No longer is it sensual relaxation, but a "heartfelt longing." A shift from superficial motivation to deep motivation.

Suddenly, the scene is 100% more powerful and I've been able to remove a whole lot of complications around the specific availability of UV radiation as a weapon against vampires.

And that's a great result.

But, more importantly, my beta reader's insight into the issue, highlighted for me an awareness about my own writing style and my natural preference for visual narrative.

So now, I can look at my own work and ask the following useful question, "Is this visual action character driven, and inline with the narrative, OR, have I just inserted effing "Eye Candy" because it looks good?"

And that's the most valuable result of all.

FREE Kindle Promotion - 07-09 NOV 2016

Hi All,

I will be running a free promotion on Kindle.

A Subtle Agency will be free for Kindle download from Monday the 7th of November to Wednesday the 9th of November 2016.

Beginning Midnight Pacific USA time.

The main Amazon link is here

From there you can easily navigate to your home market if you are outside the US.

In a universe where reality can be re-programmed, any wish can be satisfied or any nightmare realised.

Set in a near future Boston & New York; in a world that looks a lot like ours, vampires rule from the shadows, but they are not unopposed.

Standing against them are two ancient secret societies. The Order of Thoth and the Red Empire, united in their opposition to the vampires and bitterly divided by their different values.

A young Anton Smith, a Boston university student in his freshman year, and star Hockey player comes to the attention of the 2nd most powerful vampire in the world, General Chloe Armitage and she has a visionary plan for the future in which she needs Anton to play a critical part.

Anton's world and everything that he thought he knew is shattered, he is thrown onto the streets of Boston and must quickly adapt to survive. But will he learn what he needs to know quickly enough to make a difference or will he become a knight in an ambitious vampire's chess game where the future of humanity is at stake.

Recent reviews from GR readers are here.

BOOM! I loved this indie vampire action movie and gave it all the stars! Yes, technically, it's a book but as there were more bullets than words spoken I'm calling it an ACTION MOVIE.

and

Like Brian Lumley’s “Necroscope” series, “Metaframe” is a spy thriller with vampires. Here, the vampires’ agents employ state-of-the-art tracking devices, civil information-gathering, electronic forgery, and a small army of state-authorized operatives to track down our hero, Anton Smith.

and

Wow, what a wild ride! After Anton Slayne is forced to watch an unspeakable execution, he manages to escape and is forced into hiding in order to thwart those who seek to use him for their own means. In exile, he meets Gang Wu and his daughter Li, who prepare him to battle inhumanely powerful enemies. The mystery is, why is everyone after Slayne anyway?

Worth having a look at.

Cheers Graeme

A Traitor's War - Progress so far

When I started writing A Traitor's War back in June 2016, I set myself the following improvement goals.

1. Improve the flow of dialogue - using techniques such as reading each scene out loud.

2. Improve the sensory experience of the scene location by adding carefully positioned statements.

3. Improve gesture, body language, and tone for dialogue.

4. Improve character depth and nuance - ensure consistency.

5. Take care to avoid logic errors and loopholes.

What I experienced with writing A Subtle Agency was that the setup (Ch 1 & 2) was the hardest and most error prone part of the book to write. The body (Ch 3 & 4) was easier, and the resolution (Ch 5, 6 & 7) was easiest to write, and given the feedback from readers and reviewers, they mostly experienced it the same way.

A quick shout out to Iain, Tim, Lena, Perry and Alex, your insightful feedback has been truly invaluable to my progress as a writer.

With A Traitor's War, I'm having the same experience again, but from a position of conscious expectation of difficulty writing the setup, so I am catering for it.

The thing about setups is that the author is creating character arcs and narrative threads that will come to a neat conclusion by the end of the book, and when your conflicts are based on intelligent, powerful, scheming, manipulative, lying characters it's a piece of work to hold all those elements neatly in play without creating work for the reader.

I have spent the last 2 months writing chapter 3, and then heavily revising and reviewing the setup (Ch 1,2 & 3) with the above 5 goals in mind.

I can honestly say that the setup for A Traitor's War is coming together beautifully and is a notch above A Subtle Agency.

The only downside, is that the time spent polishing the setup has blown my original schedule - so I am officially pushing the release date for A Traitor's War to Q2 2017.

Stats: 3 Chapters, 46 scenes, 42K+ words complete - moving on to Chapter 4 and the main body of A Traitor's War.