Andrew Cartmel's Blog, page 44

Music to Write Thrillers By

I like writing with music playing. In fact, it's a big help, in setting the mood, keeping up the pace, and generally inspiring me.

The exception is singing. If someone is singing in English, or any language I can understand (ie English), then the words of the song can interfere with the words I'm trying to write.

Film scores are particularly useful for writing (though I listen to a lot of jazz and some rock and classical, too).

If I want write, for example, a suspenseful vignette or a big action sequence, I can choose music appropriate to that mood. And it gets me going.

Recently I've been writing spy thrillers. Operation Herod was a considerable e-publishing success and my publishers promptly asked for a sequel.

When I sat down to write it, I needed music to fuel me. And I chose John Powell's excellent scores for the first two Bourne movies.

These worked really well. They remind me of Lalo Schifrin, but more contemporary. They have an electronic and World music edge which is very interesting.

Above all, they have a propulsive, driving beat which is a real boon when you're pushing relentlessly to beat a deadline.

Anyway, largely t hanks to John Powell and his magnificent music, I completed the sequel and delivered it a couple of weeks ago. My publishers love it.

And now they want another one...

This is great, because I'm enjoying developing the characters and I'm bubbling with plot ideas.

The only problem is, those Bourne scores are wearing a little thin. I don't want to play them so much that the music I love becomes the music I wince at.

So I need some more options. Obviously I can get Bourne Ultimatum, another John Powell. Or try James Newton Howard's excellent Bourne Legacy (and maybe his score for Salt, anoth er spy thriller).

But I was wondering if anybody out there has any suggestions? A tweet on this subject gave rise to some interesting and useful possibilities, including early Mike Oldfield.

Do let me know what you think.

I'm off to read some James Bond.

The Great Ghost Light Tweet Challenge

When I was script-editing Doctor Who I had the privilege of working on some memorable stories.

None perhaps more memorable than the mighty Ghost Light.

A brilliant, quirky, oddball script by the brilliant, quirky, oddball Marc Platt, Ghost Light also has the distinction of having possibly baffled more viewers and fans than any other story.

This always baffled me.

From the inside looking out, Ghost Light always seemed pretty transparent and straightforward.

But numerous discussions and puzzled pleas for clarification over the years have convinced me that there's a genuine issue here.

I, in my turn, have been puzzled as to why.

Ultimately, I've isolated three possible reasons. Two general and one very specific.

Firstly, Ghost Light has a relatively complex backstory. I didn't particularly think so at the time, but I've come to realise it must be a little more ornate than most.

Secondly, I suppose we didn't explicitly spell out every detail of this backstory in the course of the drama. If we had, it would have bogged things down with exposition.

And then there's the matter of Control...

Control is one of the characters, splendidly played by Sharon Duce.

It was only when I went to a convention in Los Angeles that I realised that Control was one of the primary sources of confusion and bewilderment.

The problem was her name.

People thought because she was called Control, she must somehow be in control. That she was the chief, the boss, the captain...

No, no, no, I cry, retroactively over all these years.

She isn't a 'control' in that sense at all.

She is the control in a scientific experiment — the component that remains unchanged so that it can be compared with the component which is subject to change.

Anyway, I've resigned myself to patiently explaining Ghost Light to an endless parade of mystified supplicants and I've gradually honed the explanation down with practise.

But the advent of Twitter recently led to a challenge to summarise the plot in 140 character or less.

Here you go:

Space explorers study alien life by evolving to imitate dominant species. Land in Victorian England. Go slightly nuts. Complications ensue.

That's 139.

You're welcome to submit your own versions.

No swearing, please.

Only I get to do that.

The Great Ghostlight Tweet Challenge

When I was script-editing Doctor Who I had the privilege of working on some memorable stories.

None perhaps more memorable than the mighty Ghostlight.

A brilliant, quirky, oddball script by the brilliant, quirky, oddball Marc Platt, Ghostlight also has the distinction of having possibly baffled more viewers and fans than any other story.

This always baffled me.

From the inside looking out, Ghostlight always seemed pretty transparent and straightforward.

But numerous discussions and puzzled pleas for clarification over the years have convinced me that there's a genuine issue here.

I, in my turn, have been puzzled as to why.

Ultimately, I've isolated three possible reasons. Two general and one very specific.

Firstly, Ghostlight has a relatively complex backstory. I didn't particularly think so at the time, but I've come to realise it must be a little more ornate than most.

Secondly, I suppose we didn't explicitly spell out every detail of this backstory in the course of the drama. If we had, it would have bogged things down with exposition.

And then there's the matter of Control...

Control is one of the characters, splendidly played by Sharon Duce.

It was only when I went to a convention in Los Angeles that I realised that Control was one of the primary sources of confusion and bewilderment.

The problem was her name.

People thought because she was called Control, she must somehow be in control. That she was the chief, the boss, the captain...

No, no, no, I cry, retroactively over all these years.

She isn't a 'control' in that sense at all.

She is the control in a scientific experiment — the component that remains unchanged so that it can be compared with the component which is subject to change.

Anyway, I've resigned myself to patiently explaining Ghostlight to an endless parade of mystified supplicants and I've gradually honed the explanation down with practise.

But the advent of Twitter recently led to a challenge to summarise the plot in 140 character or less.

Here you go:

Space explorers study alien life by evolving to imitate dominant species. Land in Victorian England. Go slightly nuts. Complications ensue.

That's 139.

You're welcome to submit your own versions.

No swearing, please.

Only I get to do that.

360: Why Titles are Crucial

I have this habit of sometimes going to a movie I know absolutely nothing about, just because the time of the showing happens to fit with my movements on the day.

This has thrown up some superb bits of cinema which otherwise I might have ignored.

For example, I will go to a movie I would have otherwise shunned, because of an unattractive title.

In the case of 360, I was hardly even sure that was the title. Was it perhaps a misprint of the show times?

Anyway, I schlepped along, and once again I was rewarded for taking a punt. I loved 360. Beautiful and very striking photography. Impressive editing. Great cast. And, best of all, an engaging story with well rounded characters.

Because I knew nothing about it the movie, I had no idea who had written or directed it. But I was impressed and wanted to know.

Well, they're an impressive team.

Screenwriter Peter Morgan's credit's include The Queen, The Last King of Scotland and The Other Boleyn Girl. The director was Fernando Meirelles who had helmed (as they say in Tinseltown) City of God and The Constant Gardener.

I say I knew nothing about 360 before I went to see it. That's not quite true. I did know one thing.

It was a truly dreadful title, which would inspire people to avoid the movie like the plague.

Numbers don't make great titles for films. Sure, there was Seven. But that was, at least, spelled as a word. We could see that it was a title.

Perhaps they considered this for 360. If so, I image the discussion fell apart at the point where they couldn't decide if these numerals should be rendered as 'Three Hundred and Sixty' or 'Three Sixty'.

Or maybe they thought they could cash in on the success of Frank Miller's 300. Bad call.

I don't really know what the thought process was behind naming this film.

I just know it consigned a memorable and well made film to oblivion.

The Importance of Being (Well) Covered

During my checkered career I've played piano in a New Orleans whorehouse and driven a truck full of nitroglycerin across the ravaged roads of South America.

Okay, that's not true. And in fact the second one is a movie.

But I did once work as a website producer at the BBC.

And one of the things I learned there was how to use small images. The home page of our website featured pictures which were about the size of a postage stamp.

It was immediately apparent to me that complex, detailed images weren't going to cut it. They didn't have any impact, tended to look weak, blurred and cluttered — and sometimes you couldn't even see what they were.

No, I realised what was re quired in this context were strong, simple compositions. When you're working on that scale, graphic simplicity is everything. The style of picture I most often opted for was a head shot. There's a reason faces work well on postage stamps.

I've always taken a very keen interest in the covers of my books. That hasn't stopped most of them, with the notable exception of Miss Freedom, being total dogs. Not coincidentally, Miss Freedom was the first time I had artistic control over the cover design.

So when I joined forces with the British e-book publisher Endeavour Press to publish my spy novel Operation Herod, I was delighted that they wanted to consult me about the cover. I was doubly delighted when they said it was crucial that the design worked well at a really small size — because on Amazon, particularly in the bestseller lists, you're dealing with tiny images.

We were back to postage stamps.

But, thanks to the collaborative spirit at Endeavour (thanks, Matt) and our talented designer Vikki, we were able to come up with a cover which looked good full sized and that still had impact when it was miniaturised, as if by a mad scientist with some kind of book-reducing beam machine.

It turns out guns work just as well as faces. Although I wouldn't push this as a broader philosophical observation.

So, with this excellent — strong and simple — cover I watched my book rise from number 20,000 in the Amazon general fiction lists to number 5.

I wouldn't say the cover was the sole or primary reason for this. But it sure as hell helped.

And what struck me most of all, as I looked around at the other books in the bestseller lists, my neighbours, is how few of them had learned this simple, basic lesson.

Take a look at the Amazon top 20. Many of those covers look fine full size. But the hefty majority of them look like the proverbial dog's breakfast (okay, I'm a cat person) when reduced to thumbnail size.

Just so it won't look like I'm indiscriminately dissing the competition, I would like to single out two other titles and congratulate them for knowing what they are doing. I've included images here. They both look excellent, big or small.

Now, I'm not a fan of this kind of chick-lit imagery, but the Jennifer Skully Cottonmouth cover is perfect for it's purpose, and every time I scanned the Amazon lists I admired how well it worked. And all around it, by way of ironic contrast, were covers by people who didn't know what they were doing — smears of colour, jumbles of shapes.

But the one I really like is the Rebecca Forster. Terrific piece of work. It's really effective. Great idea...

Using a face!

You can support good design by buying these books and ones like them.

Rupert Hood — Estate Agent or Secret Agent?

When I sat down to write a spy thriller — the 21st Century equivalent of a James Bond adventure, I first did some careful planning. Very unlike me, but I wanted this book to be something special.

You see, there are two crucial elements in plotting any 007-style adventure (I'll tell you about them in another post). But before you even get to that, you first need something crucial.

Your character.

I don't know when I arrived at my most important inspiration. But I do know it was vital to everything that followed, and it was really what liberated me and allowed me to write the book — and enjoy the process.

You see, James Bond is a glamorous, deadly-efficient spy. A fighting machine. A lady killer. Cold blooded, sleek and efficient.

But he is who he is. He may go undercover, or assume false identities for the duration of a mission. But he doesn't lead a double life.

Unlike, say, Superman.

Poor Superman is stuck with masquerading a Clark Kent. People think he is a nebbish. He has to swallow his anger and stay in character.

I don't think I was consciously aware of the Superman/Clark Kent parallel until much later.

But I knew I'd struck gold. I suddenly had a character who could travel the world battling with evil on its own terms, a resourceful action hero who might undergo the most hair-raising of adventures and emerge triumphant.

But then, when it's all over, he has to return to his cover identity. Working at an estate agents in Putney. Doing the 9 to 5 grind. Slaving in an office. Enduring the rush hour.

I found this enormously liberating. I could write a high octane espionage thriller while simultaneously tapping into the common experience we all have, of a terribly mundane world.

A world where you eat lunch at your desk and reflect on how much you dislike the person who works on the other side of the cubicle from you.

It gave me a world I could write about. It also provided a great opportunity for reader empathy.

Rupert Hood — estate agent or secret agent?

Both, of course.

Farewell My Lovely... Pilcrow

What is a pilcrow? It's a paragraph marker. It tells you where a paragraph ends. Or b egins. Depending on your point of view. It looks like this.¶ They are a nice way of breaking up blocks of text without making the text look ragged.

The idea is that they allow the reader's eye to find where the paragraph breaks are, while preserving the integrity of the block of text.

They're useful for liner notes on LPs, CD booklets, that sort of thing. Short sections of text which are part of a graphic layout.

They allow the text to be treated as a single design element.

You wouldn't want to read an entire book where pilcrows are used — though early books were indeed printed that way. To me they seemed perfect for the small blocks of text used in a blog.

However, I've been advised to stop using them (by a trusted friend) because they make the blog less readable.

Well, since I did a big publicity push for my new novel (see my blog entry for Operation Herod), the last thing I wanted was a less-readable blog.

So now it's farewell little pilcrow. I'll miss you. Sob. Choke.

(I'm going to go on using you on my music blog, though! He said defiantly.) And here's a last blast of them: ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶

Operation Herod: "Mr Bond, I would like you to meet Dr Strangelove..."

I've always wanted to write something in the tradition of the great sixties spy thrillers.

Think the 007 movies or Peter O'Donnel's wonderful Modesty Blaise stories.

Adam Hall's Quiller adventures, or Len Deighton's Ipcress File and its sequels...

Indeed, I wanted Operation Herod's cover to evoke Raymond Hawkey's stylish milestones for Deighton.

(Kudos also to our lovely designer Vikki.)

What story lurks beneath this cover?

Well, let me ask you this:

What makes for a memorable Bond movie?

A wise man once said, the two most important elements are the villain — who was it going to be this time? A Goldfinger? Or maybe a Blofeld? —

And the big action set-piece at the end:

Perhaps we feel like a helicopter assault on a mountain fortress today?

So I set about dreaming up a villain (or, in this case a villainess). And a big blast of high octane action to pay off the story.

And, since I'd admired the Modesty Blaise thrillers as much as Bond, I also set about planning some O'Donnell-style narrative surprises.

Plus, me being me, I needed a spark of satire.

Think Dr Strangelove or the original, brilliant Richard Condon version of The Manchurian Candidate. It's a thriller, but it's funny as well as scary. And a little bit mind-blowing.

Now, thanks to Endeavour Press, here it is.

(Available soon from all good global marketing corporations named after South American rivers.)

Update: now available from Amazon here.

The Way Home: Pelecanos Strikes Again

Having read The Sweet Forever (see the entry for April 1st) I was delighted to stumble on another crime novel by George Pelecanos. It is a recent piece of work, published in 2008, whereas The Sweet Forever dates from some ten years earlier.¶ Once again it deals with the consequences of stumbling on a substantial cache of money belonging to some very unpleasant people. Beyond that, though, The Way Home could hardly be more different than its predecessor. ¶ Its depiction of incarceration is remarkable, enlightening, and refreshingly free of cliche. And I loved the scene where the old guard nicknamed Shawshank calls to task the troubled-teen-fiction novelist who has come to condescendingly lecture to the inmates; he shows up the guy's work as a meretricious string of clichés. ¶ Once again the story is set in Washington DC, a locale which Pelecanos deftly and vividly brings to life. Chandler had Los Angeles, George V. Higgins had Boston. Pel ecanos has Washington. It's a highly accomplished novel. ¶ Whereas The Sweet Forever had a ragged, badass vibe, The Way Home possesses a smooth cool precision. It also features some magnificently drawn bad guys. ¶ In the ten years between the two books, Pelecanos has clearly advanced as a writer — which is to take nothing away from The Sweet Forever, which I loved. And, like the earlier book, The Way Home moves grippingly towards a hellish and brutal climax. I couldn't put it down. ¶ My only grouse? Of course, there has to be one: the boring, generic crime novel cover art on the UK edition. This was a let down after the terrific graphics which adorned my copy of The Sweet Forever. ¶ Anyway, I'm now actively looking for anything Pelecanos has written, and I advice you to do the same. ¶ (The splendid portrait of Pelecanos is by April Saul / Getty Images and accompanies an interview with Pelecanos in the Los Angeles Times. Click on the image to go to it.)

Quality Crime Fiction — The Sweet Forever by George Pelecanos

To be truthful, I picked up this novel simply because I liked the cover art. A crime thriller with an LP on the front is right up my street. But then I filed the book away on a shelf and only picked it up again recently because I needed something to read on public transport, and it would fit in my jacket pocket. Little did I know. Now I wish I'd picked it up years ago. It's superb. ¶ Pelecanos's writing brings to mind the great WR Burnett. In fact, it brings to mind Chester Himes rewritten by WR Burnett. It has the intense, vivid low lifes and street culture of Himes. But it's also a well organised and convincingly authentic thriller, like Burnett wrote. In other words, fantastic stuff. ¶ Its apocalyptic climax also calls to mind James Ellroy's LA Confidential, at least in the screen adaptation by Curtis Hanson and Brian Helgeland. ¶ Set in Washington in the late 1980s, it turns out that The Sweet Forever is the third book in a sequence called the DC Quartet. I'm now going to be checking out the other titles in the series. Indeed, anything else written by Pelecanos has now got my full attention. ¶ The Sweet Forever begins with Eddie Golden, something of a loser of an appliance installer, lucking into a bag of drugs money. If you can call that luck. Eddie isn't really avaricious. He just wants to impress his girlfriend Donna. But the people Eddie has ripped off (and they definitely see it as being ripped off) are very nasty indeed. And you soon have a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach that bad things are going to happen. And they turn out to be worse than you could imagine. ¶ One of the virtues of Pelecanos is his great, often faultless, dialogue. He has a wonderful ear. No wonder he was snapped up to write scripts for The Wire (and The Pacific). But his ability as a novelist is beyond question. He writes tight, evocative prose. And he can certainly make you wince. ¶ In the early sections of The Sweet Forever I was rather at sea, though. There's this issue about names. Pelecanos has a lot of characters, and he throws them at you all at once. I found there were too many people with too many names. Sometimes he'd refer to a character by his first name, sometimes by the last name. ¶ I was once reading a novel by Robert Ferrigno, another terrific American crime novelist. I reached the violent climax of the book and suddenly froze. I had to flip back 50 pages to work out who the hell he was talking about. It turned out that a character who'd been referred to by their surname for virtually the entire novel was suddenly being called by their first name (or vice versa). Needless to say, the slam bang ending was somewhat compromised. Clear, memorable and unambiguous naming of characters matters. ¶ Back to Pelecanos and The Sweet Forever. I don't want to make a major beef about this, but for this reader there were some confusingly similar names. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury I give you Anthony Taylor and Alan Rogers. And Marcus Clay and Clarence Tate. My brain, at least, tended to short circuit on these. And there were not enough nicknames or simple memory hooks. Anthony Taylor begins promisingly as the Kid in the Raiders Jacket and for my money should have remained as such. ¶ Ironically these problems pretty much vanish in screenwriting – the eye can immediately recognise the characters, the mind can sort them out, and the audience can get on with enjoying the story. Still more ironically, the same problem rear up even more seriously in the screenplay itself, where it's absolutely crucial for the reader (often a bored script executive) to remember who everybody is, and not be confused. Vivid names and designations are crucial. The Kid in the Raiders Jacket would stay that in a script. ¶ Pelecanos is big on sport, basketball in particular which adds a layer of authenticity to the story. Although it left this reader cold, it helps to define the time and place and characters. ¶ Speaking of sport, Pelecanos also occasionally passes around the viewpoint of his characters like a basketball. Initially this was jarring to me. I like to stick with one character's point of view, and if a change is necessary I like it to start with a new chapter. Not instantly knowing whose viewpoint is telling the story can lead to rapid dissipation of reader empathy. But as I grew familiar with Pelecanos's characters and was gripped by his story (and boy, is it gripping) any such concerns fell away. This book is a n engrossing read. ¶ As with the sport, there is a lot of talk about the popular music of the period. Just about the only recording artist among these that I could stomach is Prince. But that isn't the point. Discussion of the music scene brings the period to life, even if we can't stand the songs, fashions or haircuts any more. ¶ The Sweet Forever is compelling and readable and completely delivers the goods. Near the end, as the shit hits the fan and the drug killings start, it suddenly introduces a host of new characters. I gather these are Pelecanos regulars from his other books. Readers familiar with them won't have any problems. But for a novice like me, the abrupt appearance of important new characters who are crucial to the climax is jarring. ¶ A classic example of this is Peter Driscoll's The Wilby Conspiracy, a terrific thriller set in Apartheid South Africa concerning a cache of diamonds. It's a memorable, well written action novel and I recommend it most highly. But on page 225 (of 256) a major new character is introduced and plays an important part in the climax. No screenwriter would be allowed to get away with that. ¶ But even the late introduction of Nick Stefanos (about whom Pelecanos has written a series of novels) and Vietnam vet Adamson can't slow down or diminish the explosive climax of The Sweet Forever. Stunning. ¶ The great cover art, which set the whole ball rolling for me, is credited simply to Keenan. I am going to confidently assert this is Jamie Keenan. With my fingers firmly crossed.