F.R. Jameson's Blog, page 26

Me, thinking about character, in 2017

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I’m a loose plotter.

I tend to have an idea where the story is going, and I plot out the first third and write that, then the second third and write that and so on. Sometimes I vary it by plotting it out in quarters. While I’m tempted that the next novel on my list I’ll wrote in five acts.

When it comes to plotting though, I feel quietly confident. It’s character motivations that give me more stress.

I’m getting better at making sure that the characters aren’t just subordinate to the plot. That they don’t do the things they do just because the plot needs them to do that. These days I’m questioning the character’s motivations constantly to make sure it fits in with their own wants and desires and needs, as well as working towards the plot.

Currently I have two pieces of work with two different editors. One of whom has come back with a series of questions about what I want from this book.

In that particular book, the title character is seen through the love-struck eyes of the narrator, and what I want to make sure that her motivations are clear and understandable even when it’s clear the narrator doesn’t really know her at all. Obviously, I can’t have her say things like “I’m doing this now, because…” but still I want her motivations to be clear to the reader. Filling in that questionnaire had made me think more of her portrayal, but the same is true of all my characters.

I’m going to have to ask myself more questions of my characters.

What are they aiming for here?
What do they want to happen?
What are they telling themselves they want to happen?

I’ll start with those three, but if I truly want three dimensional characters I’m going to need more.

As a writer. what questions do you ask your characters?

While as a reader, where’s the fine line between a character being enigmatic and their actions just not making sense?

 

Fancy a free FRJ short story? There’s one available here.

Doctor Who Reviews (Extra) – Doom Coalition 1

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I really want to listen to Paul McGann’s Eight Doctor in THE TIME WAR.

It’s fresh and new and coming from Big Finish, and I really loved John Hurt’s War Doctor adventures in The Time War and want more of the same. The small problem I have though is that I should probably listen to DOOM COALITION beforehand just so I can get up to speed with where The Eighth Doctor actually is now (I also want to listen to The War Master stories, the new Tenth Doctor releases, some of The Third Doctor stuff too. I have a feeling that my Big Finish reviews are going to lag a long way behind for some time to come).

So here I am at the DOOM COALITION, which despite what’s implied above I am not just listening to out of obligation. When I purchased the whole set six months ago I was incredibly enthused, but then life got in the way and I’m just getting it to now.

And the result of my belated listen? Well, it’s okay.

That’s all. I’m not going to rave, and I’m not going to rant, it’s fine. And undoubtedly the reason I’m prevaricating so much above is that it was just good, without being great ore without being in anyway inspiring.

The first and last stories are to be fair solid yarns. The Doctor tackling a renegade Time Lord called The Eleven, who has eleven different regeneration personalities exhibiting at once. He’s a hell of a strong villain and both are effective, even nightmarish stories.

Unfortunately the two tales in the middle are really just filler, and not particularly entertaining filler at that. The Tardis crew just bouncing to different parts of Earth’s history hunting The 11 and getting involved in the usual scrapes.

Of course another reason I’m maybe not quite on board with this is with DOOM COALITION 2 next, the ending is left open. So we have no real ending and two average entries and there you have encapsulated perfectly why I’m not more enthused.

But I’m not grumpy. I am charging on. River Song is in Doom Coalition 2 and you know what? I’m actually really looking forward to it.

Fancy a free FRJ short story? There’s one available here.

Cabals of Blood by Richard Klu

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This is the rare book I actually dreamt about. A strange other worldly tale unfolding inside my sub-consciousness, wherein a set of cookie-cutter new-build houses were far from pristine inside. The people lured in were captured, devoured, transformed and used as breeding stock by some strange new creature – a mix of insects and plants. I’d been reading CABALS OF BLOOD right before bed, and suddenly I had this Lovecraftian nightmare in my head. Obviously then I have my own Lovecraft tale to write in the future.

As I’ve said numerous times elsewhere, I always prefer my Lovecraft not written by H.P. himself. And Richard Klu more than delivers the goods, given us a collection of tales which spin out a myths while being both accessible and compelling. Klu is proudly and loudly a disciple of Lovecraft, but what I really liked here wasn’t just the Mythos, but it was the way Klu so quickly and seemingly effortlessly created real breathing characters. They were people I felt I knew, from their living situation to their economic substances. Yes, he may be interesting in terrifying beasts from the beyond, but he’s kept in mind the whole time that empathy is the true heart of every story.

Normally I read short story collections like this one at a time and let them percolate, but I’m glad I’ve charged through CABALS OF BLOOD. It meant I was able to note the echoes and that the scares became even more intense as I could see from where they were coming and know how dreadful they were going to be. I also obviously like books which inspire me, and so I have to shoot off now and get my own Lovecraft tale down on paper.

 

Fancy a free FRJ short tale? There’s one available right here.

Me, thinking about antiheroes, in 2017

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I’ve been thinking a lot about character this week.

Most particularly, how bad a person you can make your protagonist.

The protagonist of my new novella (which should be published at the end of January) is a bad man. In the opening chapter of the novella he does something particularly nasty just for kicks. And my worry this week has been, how much is too much? Where’s the line where far enough becomes too far?

This is the story I started writing in 2002, before rewriting in 2008, before reworking for a final time now. That 2002 date is important though as back then I was watching a lot of episodes of THE SOPRANOS, and there is definitely some Tony Soprano DNA in my character. Albeit he’s a more parochial, small time, British version.

I should be able to take a step back then and think that since THE SOPRANOS was really successful, then if I can just catch a bit of that it will work. But then I don’t have the charm and charisma of James Gandolfini to play this character, he’s going to have to stand and fall on however well I can write him. And I am during my best to write him daring and roguish with a sort of thuggish charm, but my concern is will it be enough?

Will it be enough to keep readers with him even after what he does in the first chapter?

(I know I’m being deliberately and annoyingly vague here, as the novella is not quite finished – but suffice to say that what happens is between two adults. Two consenting adults, at least at the beginning.)

He has to do what he does from both a plot and thematic point of view, and to soft-pedal it would be to cheapen it somewhat, so I’m more than tempted to leave it as it is. But I have to get the balance right between having him do what he does, and yet making him a compulsive enough character that readers will stay with him despite what he’s done.

What do you think?

If you know already it’s a crime story, that the protagonist is an anti-hero, are you going to stick with him even as he does something horrible, but true to character, in the opening chapter?

Any thoughts, please do let me know.

 

Fancy a free FRJ short story? There’s one available here.

Only Ever Yours by Louise O’Neill

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In the future – after the inevitable calamity – women are no longer born, they are bred. Bred to be aesthetically pleasing to the male gaze and as compliant as possible. They are raised together in a school, learning to be approved versions of the ‘perfect’ woman, and when they turn seventeen, they are chosen to be either companions (wives), concubines or chastities (essentially nuns who will raise the next generation of perfect girls). There is no free will, the girls exist entirely to please men and there can be no breaking of these rigid and concrete rules.

Holding a mirror up to rape culture and sexism in our society, this is an angry, passionate book, which engrosses, provokes and disturbs in equal measure. A dystopian science-fiction which points a sharp and accusing finger at Western culture, so much so that one virtually finds a truism on every page. I loved it. Even as it smacked me in the side of the head to think, because it smacked me in the side of the head to get me to think. Rarely have I encountered a novel which I knew, well before I turned the final page, would live so long in my thoughts, dreams and nightmares.

 

Fancy a free FRJ short story? There’s one available right here.

Me, Feeling Poorly, in 2017

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Forgive me.

I did intend a longer piece this weekend, but I only slept about three hours and I’m full of cold and I don’t really have the wit and wherewithal to write a longer post.

A shame as I had various things I want to talk about.

Next week though, I promise you….

Sarah by Teri Polen

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In the day or so since I finished reading SARAH, I’ve been trying to figure out what it does right so as to utterly grip me. After all, this is a YA novel about the ghost of a teenage girl, and the other teenagers who encounter her. Written baldly like that, most people are going to feel that it’s something they’ve seen before/read before. (Teenage girl ghosts seem to be two a penny, why aren’t there more 1890’s escape-artist ghosts?) But Polen takes something that’s in danger of tipping into hackneyed cliché, and creates a book which builds up slowly until its genuinely edge of the seat stuff.

So how does she do this? Part of it is that in the character of Sarah, our titular ghost, Polen has created a spirit – who in the first part at least – is genuinely amorphous. You’re never quite sure where you are with her and so even without overly sinister goings on, the reader is already put that little bit on edge. And that leads into the second element which really makes this book stand out, Polen is a superb writer of suspense. She understands how and when to raise the tension, to maintain it and twist the nerves that little bit more. Even the ending, which in other hands might be a rote trip to predictability, Polen still finds discordant keys to play even as us readers turn to the last page.

Just one note, the narrative does end but there’s a coming next time hint, which is normally something with the capacity to really irritate me. This one though is so clever and deliciously evil that it’s more than whet my appetite for more.

 

Fancy a free FRJ short story? There’s one available right here.

Gifts from a Dead Race by Nik Morton

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A varied and interesting collection of sci-fi/horror tales, with the accent undoubtedly leaning towards the scary. On my Goodreads page, I reviewed each of the stories as I came to it, but since that would look cumbersome on this big expanse of a blog post, I’m just instead picking out my top five.

It’s a cracking collection! Obviously not every tale hits home, but the ones that do really smack the centre of the target.

Spend it now, pay later

The first in the collection is an entertaining grisly satire on the financial crisis and debt bubble, wherein a young woman offers her limbs as collateral for a loan. Obviously, there is no way this is going to end well, but I like the way Morton handles the fatalism in a crisp, no nonsense manner, which really makes the gruesomeness of it hit home.

On A Shout

One of those great examples of a short story I just wish was longer. There’s so much crammed in there, so much beautifully evoked, that even though it has a perfect economy of scale as a short story, I’d have happily read the same material novel length. I don’t want to give much away, but essentially it’s survivor guilt in a nuclear war and it’s brilliant!

Man’s Best Friend

That Alfred Hitchcock maxim of suspense not being the bomb exploding, but instead seeing the bomb and knowing it might explode, is in full play here. Dogs start to randomly attack their owners and passers-by. Our protagonist is also a canine lover, with his own beloved Alsatian, and the tale is one of waiting and waiting for what must surely be a grisly conclusion.

The Rostron Ultimatum

An astronaut messages back from The Moon demanding The President’s resignation, which is frankly one hell of a set up for an entertaining story. The President of the story is a hard-core evangelical Christian, but reading it I couldn’t help imagining the current occupant of the White House and what would ensue if he was the main character.

Within minutes of the demand there would be a tweet about low ratings for Moon broadcasts, he’d swiftly suggest that Crooked Hilary had done worse than he had ever done, blame the media for maligning him and the batshit craziness would just pile on from there. Something for Morton to think about, in fact, if he’s tempted to write a 2017 version.

A Gigantic Leap 

Nik ends on the best story in the collection. Yes, it’s alien bacteria premise might seem a little derivative, but the Soviet setting makes a refreshing change – particularly as it’s not railing against the system, just two people getting on with their lives. It’s an incredibly tense piece, but one that leans more to hope than tragedy. And hope is always a good way to end a big, impressive collection like this.

 

Fancy a FRJ short tale? There’s one available free right here.

Me, Planning, in 2017

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If all goes well, I’ll publish seven times next year!

My publishing schedule, as I envisage it at the moment, will be as follows:

January – Novella, already written, awaiting edit.
March – Novel, already written, awaiting edit.
June – Three novellas, in the process of writing.
Sept – Novella, needs to be written
Oct – Novel, needs to be rewritten by me and edited.

That’s seven publications. Seven works of fiction which all need a lot of work done on them, Some to the point they have to be built from the ground up.

I’ll be honest, I sometimes think that I’m taking on too much. That I can’t do all this while working a full time job and raising a young child. But there’s another part of me which is relishing the prospect. As much as I chafe against it (as it’s a tendency that tends to make me want everything just so) I am someone who likes to plans. I appreciate when everything ahead of me is planned out. I’m generally not one to stop and smell the roses,  unless I’ve scheduled time to do so. But now I have half a dozen plans circling in my head, over-lapping, running into each other – and I’ve got to be honest, I’m liking the thought of it. I’m enjoying the challenge of getting all these things out there, of making them the best I can.

“But what about marketing and promotion, Mr Jameson?” you ask (as obviously I expect you to be formal). “What are you going to do about marketing and promotion and making sure these books are actually read? It’s hardly like you’re an expert, is it?”

That’s a fair question and for the moment I’m reading all I can, finding out all I can, and next year will be a case of learning on the job. October will be the release of my big epic novel, the first of a trilogy, and I hope to have a clearer idea of what I’m doing – and what works for me – by then.

So learning marketing is another plan to build into my existing set of plans, to lay on top of them. I’m not as confident on the marketing front as I am on the writing, as such it’s more daunting. However, I’m learning is to relish the planning, but also relish the challenges.

 

Fancy some free FRJ short fiction? There’s some available here.

Kitty Peck and The Child of Ill Fortune by Kitty Peck

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Well, bloomin’ ‘ell, I’ve only made my way back to Victorian England to catch up with the Limehouse Linnet herself, that bricky of a gal, Kitty Peck. Her first adventure, you might well remember, was right bang up to the elephant. A real treat it was, a tale of skulduggery and crime at the heart of the Empire. Although a long way down from the Empress’s cotton socks. The star of the piece was of course Kitty, glamorous derring-do songstress who found herself caught up in a right palaver.

Well, this time around – you could have knocked me sideways with a feather – but the opening bit of this tale is more like one of them classy character pieces. Y’know, like old Dickens used to write – orphans an’ all. We follow Kitty and her friend Lucca on a fancypants tour to Paris and – a different pace it might be – but it really is most interesting. It isn’t long before the mystery begins though, and it’s a full fifteen puzzle too. Right head-scratching stuff it is at times, but carried along with danger, adventure and even a bit of penny dreadful horror. Once again Kitty proves herself to be the jamiest bits of jam, and the most perfect company. I’m already looking forward to the next time she crosses my path. What will she be up to then? I can barely bloomin’ imagine!

 

Fancy some free FRJ fiction? There’s a short story available here.