Katherine Pathak's Blog, page 15

The fatal flaw in series two of #TheFall

I was looking forward to the second series of Allan Cubitt’s ‘The Fall’. It is a slow-paced, atmospheric police procedural with a strong female lead character. There were some disturbing scenes in series 1, a couple of which I averted my eyes for, but certainly nothing more graphic or alarming than you would find in ‘Luther’ or ‘Silent Witness’. The criticism levelled at the first series was that it glamourised the serial killer, Paul Spector, played by Jamie Dornan. His crime scenes were artistically laid out and he made sketches of his ideas, almost as if he were creating a mood board for some kind of art installation. This aspect of the drama was unsettling, certainly, but with a new director for this second outing, in the form of Cubitt himself, I hoped that this element would be played down.

Largely, I think this has been achieved. It was obvious in last night’s episode that more was being made of the impact of the crimes on the victims and their families. DSI Stella Gibson makes a point of emphasising that as the killer is doing the opposite, they must attempt to humanise the victims and keep them alive in the press. The tactic being to shake up the killer and encourage him to make a mistake. In fact, Spector does appear to be unravelling. Separated from his family and his beloved daughter, Olivia, he is adrift, apparently trying to square certain aspects of his past whilst, at the same time, covering his tracks.

I have every hope that this series will be superior to the last. However, there is one fatal flaw in the narrative. Because the case was not wrapped up at the end of series one, we are carrying on pretty much where we left off. This is unusual for a crime drama. If a programme returns for a second run, we would expect to get the same core characters but with a whole new case. There is a good reason for this. It is because viewers can’t possibly be expected to remember the details of the first series which aired many months or even a year previously.

In the case of ‘The Fall’, one assumes that Paul Spector was not caught at the end of the first series because of the popularity of the lead actor, Jamie Dornan. It was he would pulled in record viewing figures for BBC2. In a way, I can understand the reluctance of the programme makers to get rid of him. But this decision has left them with an almost insoluble conundrum. They tried to remedy the problem by having the first series available on BBCiplayer to be watched in the weeks leading up to the new one. But surely this is too much to ask of a viewer. I really don’t want to see the whole thing twice. I want to come into the second run and start afresh, which just isn’t possible with ‘The Fall’, which is a shame.

I believe that Cubitt should have been brave enough to end the Spector storyline and begin a new tale. The other characters are strong enough to carry it. He needed to have faith in the viewers to adapt. I’m going to stick with it, but there has to be an end to the search for Spector. If it doesn’t come with this outing, then you can certainly count me out of any more.

In the battle of the Christmas ads, Waitrose wins it for me

 

It’s only early November but the battle amongst the supermarkets for Christmas trade is well and truly on. Surprisingly, it was budget supermarkets Lidl and Aldi who got the ball rolling. There is no subtly or overt attempts at being cute in their marketing strategy, the focus is purely upon the quality of the food and drink that will grace our dining tables over xmas. When it comes to the more mainstream retail stores of John Lewis, Waitrose, Sainsburys and Tesco, the battlefield is somewhat different. The focus here is on creating entertaining talking points that will generate social media activity whilst at the same time delivering an overall message about the brand itself.

Everyone is talking about the penguins. John Lewis always come up with a well produced, heart-rending little vignette that successfully sums up the meaning of Christmas (in it’s most purely commercial sense, of course!). But for me, it is John Lewis’s sister company, Waitrose, who have won the day. Their advert revolves around a shy, slightly different girl, who exists perhaps a little out of her time. There may be some hint that she has certain behavioural issues that make it more difficult for her to join in with and relate to her contemporaries.

But this girl is determined to take part in the Christmas fair. With the help of the assistant at Waitrose, she bakes gingerbread biscuits, carefully forming them into festive shapes. Whilst she is out, the dog destroys her creations and although bitterly disheartened, she begins again, making them even better this time. The girl painstakingly decorates the second batch and sets up her stall at the school. The biscuits are a great success and she actually finds she enjoys the process, slowly coming out of herself.

There is one biscuit left which the girl makes sure that she wraps up and takes into the assistant at Waitrose who helped her out.

I like this advert much better than the penguins, because it has a proper message. It quite clearly sets out Waitrose’s values – slightly old fashioned, good quality ingredients, possibly out of step with their contemporaries but polite, helpful and recognising what is really important in life.

Now, I don’t work for Waitrose and I don’t even shop there very often, but I can still tell that this advert is successful in terms of the way it delivers their ideals on a plate. I also like the message it conveys; it isn’t purely commercial but celebrates perseverance and how communities should strive to include everyone, particularly at Christmas time.

Will it make me buy my food at Waitrose over the festive season? Actually, it might, or perhaps just some of it. But certainly as a piece of art, it is spot on and for me this ad beats the glitter, sparkles and penguins hands down.

Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net by Jannoon 028

#TheMissing may just restore my faith in BBC crime dramas

If you made it through that traumatic first episode, then you’re going to be able to enjoy the rest of this brilliantly acted and superbly written series. I approached the second instalment with a mixture of anticipation and dread, but it was much easier to watch. I’d put in the hard yards last week and now I would be rewarded.

I’m not a knee-jerk fan of James Nesbitt. Some of his work I like, some I don’t, but his acting in The Missing is undeniably excellent. His progress from the intial responses of confusion, fear and grief, into a steadily evolving sense of determination and cynicism are very well portrayed. The man has studied French in order to tirelessly examine the reports of his son’s case. He has learnt over the eight years since young Oliver Hughes’ disappearance in a small French town to trust no one except himself. We already feel as if we’ve travelled on that terrible journey along with him.

At this early stage, I sense the series will have its critics. At eight episodes long, there will be those who accuse it of being ‘slow-moving’. Yes, this may be one way of looking at it, but to me, it is building believable characters and allowing us to accept that eight years really have passed between the two time frames in which the narrative is set. The story deserves this period of time in which to properly develop. There are many strands to the investigation and many ways in which the case has affected the lives of those touched by the tragedy. We want to know why Tony’s wife left him and what he and his father-in-law did so long ago that may have caused someone to take revenge upon them.

Let’s face it, I’m already well and truly hooked. I like the way Tony is taking on the role of amateur sleuth with his reliable side-kick, the retired ace French detective. We don’t know yet who we can trust outside of these two characters and I suspect there are a myriad of twists and turns still to come.

At first, I thought ‘The Missing’ would simply be visual and audio torture for parents of the under-tens, but I am coping with it remarkably well. Of course, there are the obvious parallels with the McCann case. But this is fiction, and it is sympathetic and human. There is nothing exploitative about the series. Which is why I believe it may just restore my faith in BBC crime drama. There is no unnecessary gratuitous violence, the tragic story speaks for itself – no unpleasant tricks and shocks to get me back next week, simply an excellent, detailed, spohisticated plot with likeable characters and great acting. More of this please, BBC, and I might be tempted back…

The unwritten rule of WWI art and literature

 

With the 100th anniversary of the end of World War One fast approaching, I have been reflecting on the art and literature associated with this particularly tragic conflict. My paternal Grandfather was a Corporal in The Royal Engineers and fought at Battle of the Somme. As a teenager, I read his letters home from the trenches and his experiences had a profound affect on how I viewed the History of the period. I went on to study History at university and then taught it for over a decade in Secondary schools.

As part of my teaching career, I have addressed the facts of the 1914-18 conflict many times, but it is in the art and literature associated with the era that I have always felt the nearest approximation of the horrors of that war are truly conveyed. My favourite novels dealing with the war are Pat Barker’s Regeneration trilogy, which neither glorifies nor shies away from the darkness experienced by the men who fought on the Western Front. They are also wonderfully written novels that explore the complexities of the emotional and physical effects of the war on both soldiers and civilians.

Whether it is through the poetry of Sassoon and Owen or the paintings of Paul Nash and Stanley Spencer, or even the satire of Blackadder and Horrible Histories, the horrors, banality and, at times, comic realities of the war have been extremely well chronicled. So what is the unwritten rule that governs all the truly great art of World War One?

It is simply that there should be no glorification of conflict and violence. This is because the war of 1914-18 squandered young lives in their hundreds of thousands. There is no glory in dying for your country in this manner. That is what Wilfred Owen taught us in his poem Dulce et Decorum est and I, for one, have never forgotten the lesson.

So it does concern me to witness a new type of writing emerge, one which uses gratuitous violence to explore the impact of World War One. The BBC drama Peaky Blinders I feel falls into this trap. The 1920s gangsters who populate this series have been inured to violence because of their experiences in the trenches, we are led to believe. Yet this violence does not remain an unseen menace within the series, but is played out with unflinching detail in pretty much every episode. To me, this breaches the unspoken understanding amongst writers and artists that WWI should not be used to celebrate man’s inhumanity to man. Instead, it should be used only to guard against other such futile wars happening in the future.

Dramas like Peaky Blinders make me worry that 100 years is too long; that we have forgotten the message  those wonderful artists worked so hard to convey. I sincerely hope not. Sometimes, rule breaking just isn’t appropriate or clever.

War has traditionally generated great art, but the great stuff doesn’t set out to glorify, celebrate or use violence for entertainment. If the 100th anniversary of this war to end all wars teaches us writers anything, it should teach us that.

 

 

Is a good novel all about how it makes the reader feel?

When reading a self-help book about writing professionally for Kindle, I came across an interesting piece of advice. The author pointed out that whatever the genre, fiction or non-fiction, what was crucial to a book’s success, was the way it made people feel.

Now, this might seem obvious. Nobody would want to absorb themselves in a piece of work that made them feel bad, would they? Surely it was just a truism and didn’t need to be said.

But the more I thought about it, the more complex the concept appeared to be. I’m certain the advice is correct, but the difficulties arise when we try to analyse the nature of the feelings that we as writers may wish to provoke.

As human beings, we are a complicated bunch. Some of us enjoy being exhilarated or even terrified by a book. Whereas others seek escapism and comfort. With this in mind, it is worth considering the genre in which you are writing. For me, this is crime fiction, and even within this category I don’t believe that all readers are looking for the same thing out of the books they consume.

In my case, I enjoy a puzzle. I gain great satisfaction from a clever and well spun plot. If there are holes in the storyline then it absolutely spoils it as far as I am concerned. I simply can’t overlook the mistake. I like tension and suspense, but not horror or graphically detailed violence. I prefer this aspect to be left to the imagination. Too much violence and I no longer feel good, the experience is ruined. Sometimes, it is the characters that make me feel good. I come to know them and what makes them tick. I want to share their highs and lows and am desperate to discover what happens to them next, whether I like them or not.

I know the self-help book author was trying to be constructive with his advice, but in reality, he has introduced an insoluble conundrum for me. You cannot hope as a writer to deliberately evoke a certain set of emotions from a reader. Where on earth would you start? The only thing we can do is to write the stories that make us feel good. If a book doesn’t enrich the author’s life in some way then frankly, why should we inflict it on others? Our novel may make us cry bitterly with grief in places, but by the end of it you should be able to create a sense of hope and optimism.

I’ve read plenty of novels that left me feeling bad; whether it was disgust, anger or inadequacy, it amounted to a negative experience, which reading should never be. So the advice was sound, but I may just spend the rest of my writing career trying to work out what to do with it.

5 things I should really start doing now I’m 40

Yes, it’s a bit of a milestone. But let’s face it, turning forty isn’t what it used to be. Us fortysomethings still like to think we’re pretty sprightly and youthful. Many of us have small children, babes-in-arms or and are only just stepping onto the property ladder or getting hitched – all of those activities that are typically associated with proper adultdom.

So now I’m finally there, here are a few things I feel I should probably tackle:

1. Writing a book. Hoorah, I’ve done that one (five times!) and was almost certainly spurred on by the approach of the big four 0. Sometimes, it helps to give yourself a timescale for achieving your writing goals, otherwise the big ‘idea’ that has been circling in your head for all these years never gets fleshed out into a full blown novel or short-story. Whether it’s 40, 50 or 25, give yourself a target and stick to it.

2. Make sure I’m in the right job. this is really connected to no.1. The age of forty creeps up on you fairly swiftly and sometimes the career that you entered after university/school/college wasn’t necessarily the one you envisaged yourself in for the long-term. I’m not trying to encourage a mid-life crisis here, but this might be a good opportunity to re-evaluate the day job. Don’t do anything hasty, but it could be time to take an evening course/online qualification in the career you always really wanted.If you don’t like it after all, you can feel more happy and contented in the path you did choose.

3. This may sound corny, but it’s definitely the right moment to spend more time with/appreciate my family. Time is something that at this stage in our lives is seriously at a premium, but actually, small acts of kindness really make a huge difference here. Many of us find it extremely difficult to express our gratitude and love. Usually because we’re too busy/tired/grumpy/resentful of being constantly put-upon. Try to take a breather and make a positive approach to someone you really do appreciate the support of. This may actually lessen your overall burdens, it will certainly make you feel better about yourself.

4. This is a bit of a girlie one, but I’m going to stop worrying about my weight. This is a concern which plagues women (and many men) from teenage onwards. When I look at photographs of myself over the years I am very hardpressed to notice a great deal of difference in my general size and appearance, yet I’ve wasted an awful lot of pointless energy thinking about it. So as long as I am in the realms of the healthy, from now on, who cares!!

5. Flossing. This is a silly one, I know, but my dentist has been telling me to floss for about twenty years and I’ve never really understood what the fuss is all about. As soon as I turned forty, I started to do it. Not quite sure why, but I suddenly thought that perhaps it was about time and might just keep my gnashers operational for a few more decades.

There are most likely dozens more things I should be doing now I’m a proper adult, but these will do for now.

Bed is for books, not the telly.

Watching property programmes is a guilty pleasure for my daughter and me. We particularly enjoy the BBC stalwart, ‘Escape to the Country’. Presenter Jules Hudson is a favourite of ours, we like his country gent manners and the way he deals with the most picky and grasping couples with an effortless and disarming charm. But what we are most interested in is having a nosy around the houses of others. It’s endlessly fascinating for us. I find it also gives me a great insight into current lifestyle trends, which then helps to inform my writing (that’s my excuse anyway).

What always strikes me on these programmes, is that whenever the couple is taken into the ‘Master Suite’, be it in a modern property or a quirky little thatched cottage, more often then not, the room’s dominant feature is a huge flat screen television, taking pride of place in the centre of one wall. It never fails to surprise me, and to jar somewhat. For me, bedrooms are for dim lighting, a bedside table full of paperbacks and, just possibly – in the bathroom perhaps, a small transistor radio.

Old fashioned? Of course. But I simply can’t see how television fits in. Do you lie in bed and watch it? Surely that would wake the kids? It might be switched on in the morning whilst you perform your pre-breakfast ablutions, but again, this is something for the kitchen maybe and personally, I prefer the radio at this time of the day anyhow, as you can carry on with other tasks without missing anything.

You may think these observations are intellectual elitism or snobbery. I can assure you they are not. I love my T.V and I’m certainly not snobbish about the programmes I watch. But the telly is for living rooms, or snugs. Places with sofas and coffee tables upon which the Radio Times can be rested. Then, when it’s time for bed, as you tromp up the stairs with a glass of water in your hand, you enter a whole other domain; the place where you can escape into the pages of a great book. It is a totally different experience and one which lulls you into the conditions necessary for sleep (unless you are gripped by a particularly good page-turner of course). I would not wish to lose this important division between day and night. The blurring of the boundaries would unsettle me. Telly is entertainment that comes at you with bangs and flashes and bursts of stirring music. Books are a quiet, even silent pleasure, where all you can hear are the nocturnal noises outside your bedroom window, the odd jet plane passing over high above, as you make the transition into a world which comprises solely of your own thoughts and dreams.

Better than the telly any day, I’d say.

How small publishers and independents should prepare for Christmas

Apologies for mentioning Christmas. Yes, I do know it is only mid September and I hate those christmasy adverts that start being broadcast from October onwards as much as the next person. However, as I am now a small retailer, having been up and running for over a year, I know that Christmas is a crucial selling time and I need to be prepared for it.

First and foremost, I am a writer and an editor. Fine. That declaration is out of the way. But, I design and publish my own books so it is essential that I adopt a pretty good business head too. The busiest season for ebook downloads is just drawing to a close and some independent author/publishers may have felt the sting of lower paperback and hardback sales as a result. Don’t worry. This is a perfectly natural pattern and will only become more pronounced as the ebook market continues to grow, as it inevitably will. This phenomenon is a good thing for independents. We are blissfully free of pen-pushing middle-men and can keep our ebook prices down accordingly.

All this being said, we authors do love our print books. I don’t feel as if I’ve really written a book until I’ve held the physical copy in my hands. But never fear, the run up to Christmas will see a resurgence in print book sales and we need to be ready to take it on.

If your books only appear in ebook form then I would recommend looking into producing hard copies for the festive season. Consumers are buying for gifts- so they need a solid product to wrap and put under the tree! Createspace is always a great option here and the end product – with the correct design and input on your part – is absolutely terrific. Their books are produced to an extremely high standard and have the obvious benefits of being P.O.D.

For me, I will be spending the next couple of weeks ensuring that my print books are in tip top order for the Christmas rush. I will check the formatting and the covers to make sure they are absolutely perfect. I may even consider producing a new set of covers especially to appeal to Christmas buyers. Boxed sets may be another idea, where this is possible.

Indies be aware that now you are proper retailers, the Christmas season has to be taken deadly seriously. Get your product polished up and ready and price it to sell. A new book release in the weeks before Christmas also makes commercial sense, but you need to leave long enough after going live for the word to get out and for people to order and receive your book well before the 25th December, otherwise it will defeat the point!

There will be local fayres and shopping evenings that you could get involved in too. Pop up shops in businesses and pubs/restaurants are becoming increasingly popular, so that busy workers can get a chance to purchase some unique gifts during their lunch hour. You will need a supply of books in preparation for this. Signed copies make superb gifts and if you can slip a well designed and striking business card between the pages then your customers may well go on line to order more in future.

There are plenty of opportunities out there to reach your readers during this quarter of the year so don’t miss out on it. Be prepared, and you will definitely see a boost in sales.

Will the growth of self-publishing allow the ‘ordinary’ voice to be heard?

Whilst completing the research for my first novel, ‘Aoife’s Chariot’, I read an amazing book called ‘No Mean City’ by A.McArthur and H. Kingsley Long. The book itself is very famous, not least for providing the most memorable line in the theme song for the Glaswegian crime drama, ‘Taggart’. It was first published in 1935 and is a near autobiographical novel about the savage life of a young man growing up in the notorious Gorbals area of Glasgow. McArthur, we assume, was that very same young man, ill-educated and subsumed into the all-encompassing culture of poverty and gang-violence.

Yet McArthur was able to tell his story. With the help of Kingsley Long, a journalist and writer, his experiences made it to publication. Even with the book’s heavy use of colloquial language and harsh scenes of violence and degradation, the book became an international bestseller, with over 500,000 copies sold.

But this is not the norm. Occasionally, from a particularly gifted or driven individual, we get the chance to hear a truly ‘ordinary’ voice – by this I mean those people in society with no access to the educational privileges which the majority of us take for granted. Television and the internet have done a great deal to break down this barrier and allow the ‘ordinary’ voice to be expressed. However, the publishing world has long been reluctant to open their doors to this section of society, largely because the folk I am referring to do not have access to the tools necessary to make themselves heard within this world of electronic manuscripts and literary agents. What publisher these days would take a chance on a person like McArthur? I really can’t see it happening. Yet what a fantastic tale he had to tell.

After finishing my pile of summer reading, I reflected upon what I had read. It surprised me to note how many of the novels I’d chosen were set in the cosy middle-class world of the professional classes. My books are no different! My lead characters are similarly well educated and middle-class. Perhaps this is inevitable, as they reflect my own comfortable background growing up in the affluence of the south east of England, in a home in which books and education were given the highest priority.

Despite the limitations of my own life experience, I am aware that there are other ways of looking at things and that our cosy existence should be shaken up every so often, particularly in the novels we read. Charles Dickens and Elizabeth Gaskell did this through their writings over a century ago and it’s about time we revisited the concept.

I am hopeful that as the metropolitan elite’s grip on the controls of what we see on the shelves of our bookshops begins to weaken, we will get to hear a far wider range of voices and that the worlds this will open up for us in the future, will be very far from ordinary.

Dilemma: when does a novel need a family tree?

I am in the editing phase of my fifth novel. It is the stage at which my editorial team are reading through the early drafts and giving me their initial corrections. But with this book, I find myself faced with a new dilemma. My series of books are mystery thrillers and often revolve around family secrets and past lives becoming gradually unravelled throughout the novel.

Yet I have received feedback from some of my readers (not the majority) that they would like a family tree at the start of the book. Now, I like to respond to the requirements of my readership and I have taken this suggestion very seriously. In fact, I’ve spent the last two days producing family trees for the first few pages of this new book. However, upon reflection, I am feeling reluctant about adding it. As far as my books are concerned, they tend to revolve around the unfolding of hidden truths. If I lay out all the details at the very start, it will actually detract from people’s enjoyment of the tale. Worse than that, it might give away elements of the plot. My editors all seem to agree.

Sometimes, we have to accept that the whole story won’t be revealed to us until the very end, by which time all will become crystal clear. Patience and perhaps the occasional need to flick back to an earlier section of the book for clarification are required. But this will be more than repaid by a genuine shock and thrill at the conclusion.

If I make the mistake of promising a future surprise to my nine year old daughter, she cannot rest until she knows what it is. I try hard to persuade her how much better the experience will be if she has no idea of what is coming. Sadly, it is often without success, although, I’m hoping this is a trait she will eventually grow out of!

I think I have already decided. The book will remain as it is. I must resist the urge to spoil the natural evolution of the plot. We, as readers, may be occasionally unsure of where the road is taking us, but we should have confidence that the author is leading us in the right direction. All writers want their readers to enjoy the journey, as well as reaching the final destination. Sometimes, less is definitely more.