Nicola L.C. Talbot's Blog - Posts Tagged "the-private-enemy"

Some years ago I attended a seminar at the Norwich Writers’ Centre given by a literary agent. (Incidentally, if you are a writer living in or near Norwich, there are some great resources available. It is, after all, England’s first UNESCO City of Literature.) This is an excellent way of finding out about the publishing industry. I had previously been to a talk given by a panel of agents and publishers at the University of East Anglia, which was informative, but it was in one of the lecture theatres, and so was more formal. The seminar at the Writers’ Centre was much more like a small group tutorial followed by brief one-to-one discussions with the agent. When we signed up for the seminar, we all had to provide an extract of our work (the first five pages, A4, double-spaced) and the cover letter we intended to send with submissions to agents. In the individual meetings, the agent gave her advice and suggestions on how to improve our pitch.

My extract was from the start of The Private Enemy. I had previously done a diploma course in creative writing, and the first 10,000 words of this novel had formed the majority of my portfolio. I had also been on other writing courses and writing groups so, by this time, the beginning of my novel had been pretty much analysed to death. (The remainder was subsequently critiqued in private lessons with my writing tutor.) The agent only had two comments to make about my extract before moving on to my query letter.

Her first comment was that she didn’t like science fiction. Fair enough. There are some genres that I don’t like, and if I’d been sending in the query letter for real I would’ve selected an agent who accepted SF. (Some of my writing peers who critiqued my work also didn’t like it, so I was well aware that a writer can’t please everyone.) Her second comment was a suggestion to cut out the mention of an open window, since she felt it was an irrelevant detail, and this brings me on to the topic of this post.

When writing a novel, every little detail must count towards something. This is more formally known as conservation of detail. If an item is described, it must have some significance. For example, a Chekhov’s Gun or some implement that’s later used needs to be mentioned so that the reader doesn’t say, “Hey, where did that come from?” In a mystery, clues need to be seeded throughout the novel otherwise the reader will feel cheated. Red herrings are also useful if the writer wants some misdirection. The reader should be able to assume that the characters and the world of the novel are like reality unless otherwise indicated. This means that the writer doesn’t need to tell the reader that all the characters are human and living on Earth. However, the writer does need to mention if the characters are, say, multi-tentacled lifeforms in another galaxy.

It’s boring for readers to trawl through endless pages of description that catalogues every button and stitch of clothes or every leaf and blade of grass in the surroundings. This doesn’t mean that the opposite extreme is good. A total absence of description gives the impression of formless beings floating around in the ether. The reader can assume that the characters are wearing clothes as they walk around the city, but a few details (such as a pinstriped suit or a hoodie and ripped jeans) can help to form an image in the reader’s mind. The reader can assume that the city has roads and buildings, but a few pertinent details can help to form the world of the novel.

To return to the window example, what does an open window add to a story? There could be an unseen character behind it, eavesdropping. It could be used as an unorthodox method of entry. It could cause a draught that blows an important scrap of paper behind a piece of furniture. It could signify a need for ventilation that might not otherwise be taken for granted (for example, to show it’s stifling hot or to reduce smoke or gas inhalation). Alternatively, it could be just an open window. In which case it needs to be cut because it’s a little detail that doesn’t count.

Critiquing is a useful way of detecting these unnecessary details. (In case you’re not familiar with the writing process, book reviews are for the benefit of potential readers for works that have already been or are about to be published. Critiquing is a tool for writers to help improve a work in progress.) Feedback can highlight the need for pruning. The critiquer may simply flag instances, but another more interesting phenomenon may occur. If the critiquer knows that the writer is in the habit of applying conservation of detail, any accidental slips can sometimes be interpreted as significant. When this happens to me, it usually triggers one of two reactions: oops, better cut that or hmm, that’s given me an idea. The latter is like discovering some coins down the back of the sofa, which is rather fun.

If you have hours to spare and you don’t mind being sucked into the black hole of TV Tropes, you can read more about the Law of Conservation of Detail over there.

I’ve written about my children’s books in a post about The Foolish Hedgehog and a post about Quack, Quack, Quack. Give My Hat Back! but I haven’t really said much about my adult fiction, so I thought it was about time to write about my published fiction and a pending novel.

I’ve Heard the Mermaid Sing is a short story ebook (approximately 2,500 words) set in 1928¹ about a yegg (thief) from St Louis who’s fleeing to Europe on the RMS Aquitania after a jewellery shop heist turned to murder when an off-duty policeman happened to turn up to get a bracelet repaired at the wrong moment. The story is written in 1920s vernacular, but although I was aiming to reproduce the style of that era some slang doesn’t age well. There was one phrase in particular that I had to cut when my writing friends advised against it as they said it conjured up an inappropriate image, and it wasn’t the image I had intended. As much as I wanted an authentic feel, there’s no escaping the fact that anyone reading it is living in the twenty-first century.

The Private Enemy is my first published novel, although it isn’t the first novel that I wrote. The first draft dates back to the early 1990s (possibly 1992, although I can’t remember exactly) but I completely rewrote it after going on the online creative writing course I’ve previously mentioned and the first 10,000 words formed the majority of my portfolio for my later diploma in creative writing. It’s a crime/thriller story set in a technologically-regressed future where the world has been divided into numbered sectors, each with a governing city called Central City, which is located in roughly the geographical centre of the sector. The back story is that 32 years before the events in the first chapter, a fuel crisis triggered global anarchy that lasted for two years before order was restored. The aim of those restructuring the newly established peace was that by removing national identities wars could be averted, but human nature being what it is this merely papered over deep resentments and corruption. The regression in technology is publicly justified by the fuel limitations and the lobbying of anti-technology groups, but privately the restrictions on technology allows greater control over communications. This isn’t a whodunnit mystery, but a story about one person’s private quest to prove that murder has been committed and ensure that justice is done in an increasingly volatile world. The novel is approximately 136,000 words. The paperback (revised first) edition is 140mm (5.5in) wide by 216mm (8.5in) high with a 32mm (1.3in) spine. The text is 11pt on cream paper. It’s also available as an ebook which, without the hefty print costs, is a lot cheaper.

The Fourth Protectorate is actually the first novel that I wrote, although it has had many titles and undergone many revisions. I wrote the first version in the early 1980s when I was probably around eleven or twelve years old, and it was heavily influenced by science fiction stories I was reading at the time, in particular Doctor Who and the Cybermen. (Before the proliferation of videos, the novelisations were the only way to access those old Dr Who stories, and they had the added advantage of not suffering from low-budget props.) As I grew older, I became more interested in politics, so by the time I went to the University of Essex in my late teens, the science fiction elements of the story had been toned down, with a totalitarian government rather than futuristic machines as the antagonist. I put the story on the back burner and returned to a fantasy story that I had started when I was seventeen. My third novel was The Private Enemy. I wrote a few other stories after that and from time to time switched attention back to the earlier novels, but after I rewrote The Private Enemy, having improved my writing style on the creative writing course, I decided to revisit that first novel and I rewrote it from scratch. It still has a residual science fiction device echoing back to that first draft, and it still has a police state from that second draft, but (I hope) it’s much better written. (It also now has a supernatural element that wasn’t present in the earliest drafts.) The 1980s have been and gone, and the novel is now set in an alternate history from 1984 to 1995 that charts the rise of a Cromwell-style Protectorate in Britain that becomes a dictatorship. Britain in the real 1980s was fairly turbulent, with plenty of strikes and riots, but the alternative 1980s in the story notches this up. How does the Protectorate establish itself? Through a referendum. Hmm. Yes, seriously, I wrote that before the recent referendum was proposed.

On a side note, if you’re at all interested, I voted to remain last week. While I’m disappointed with the result, we need to move on or we may, like those sci-fi stories where attempts are made to change some past event, make a bad thing worse, but I hope that, at the very least, people will learn from it. However, recent events have taught me that I was wrong to think that just because my novel is set in an alternative history from 1984 to 1995 it can’t be affected by current events, so I’ve decided that I really ought to crack on and get it finished before life overtakes it. It’s currently around 133,000 words, so it will probably be around the same size as The Private Enemy. It’s going through the final tuning stages at the moment. Are there any plot holes? Does the topology of the world in the story make sense? (That is, if characters go from A to B, does their route make sense? A few rough sketches can help here.) Are any scenes too dialect heavy or too wordy? These things usually require an impartial reading by someone experienced in the art of creative writing. How much more work needs to be done will depend on the feedback. The final task is proof-reading to pick up any spelling mistakes or typos that have been missed in earlier readings.

¹I notice the blurb incorrectly has the year down as 1929. I will try to get that fixed.

The Private Enemy is set predominantly in Norfolk, mostly in and around the city of Norwich and in a fictional rural Fenland neighbourhood in the west of Norfolk. The story may be set in the future but, much like today, the people living there aren’t homogeneous. They vary according to their upbringing, social status, employment and surroundings. Norfolk inhabitants are so often unfairly stereotyped in the media as ignorant, Mummerset-speaking, inbred rustics that I thought it might be useful to give a brief overview of the real Norfolk and how the fictional Norfolk of the novel differs from it. (There may be mild spoilers below in terms of the back story, but most of it’s already in the book blurb.)

Norfolk is a largely rural county, and its culture has been influenced by its geography (amongst other things). Situated in the east of England, with the North Sea to the east, north, and north-west, it’s not really a place that travellers pass through on route to somewhere else. In the past, it was even more isolated before the Fens in the west were drained (although that was done a long time ago). The transport links have improved in recent years with a more frequent intercity train service and the duelling of the A11. On the other hand, the rural public transportation within the county has declined.

However, despite its apparent isolation, Norfolk’s culture and language have been shaped by incomers over the centuries: Romans, Angles, Saxons, Danes and Normans have all left their mark. Later, and more peacefully, came the Strangers — refugees from the Low Countries. (The word ‘stranger’ originally meant not a native of that place, but the Strangers in Norfolk has come to mean those particular immigrants.) Their influence can be seen in Norfolk architecture, the language, names and even symbols, such as the canary.

The modern strangers are from further afield, such as Eastern Europe, but there are also incomers from other parts of the UK, include those retiring here, those who fell in love with the county when visiting it on holiday, and those who came here for work placements. (My husband falls into that last category. We moved here in the mid 1990s having both studied at the University of Essex where we met.)

Norfolk is a lovely county with deep roots, but the seeming idyll masks homelessness and poverty. The future Norfolk of The Private Enemy has this same mixture, but in addition it has urban gangsters openly engaging in territorial disputes (which thankfully the real Norfolk doesn’t have).

This deviation from reality is due to events in the back story. Thirty-two years before the start of the novel (at some point in our near future), a fuel crisis triggered global anarchy that lasted two years. Peace was restored and the concept of nationality was abolished. The purported reason for this is that nationalism can cause conflict. Instead the world is divided into numbered sectors with a new capital city (to avoid any associations with the past) in the middle of each region. Sector 1 is the overall administrative centre and is the effective global ruling body.

In reality, far from creating the continually advertised ‘one world united in peace and prosperity’, the sectors (which mostly correspond to the old boundaries) are more fractured than before. Since the story is set mostly in Norfolk, with a few scenes in the capital city for this sector (Sector 55), the focus is on the fractures in this particular region.

The enmity between the rural and urban areas is a result of city raiders invading farmland during the anarchy. The passage of time hasn’t softened the long-held grudges of those who had to defend their homes and families against attack. Within the urban areas, rival gangs emerged during the anarchy to compete for resources, and they still hold sway through corruption and force of arms. So the fictional future Norwich is divided up into neighbourhoods controlled by gangsters and the so-called ‘Neutral Territory’, controlled by financiers and politicians, which acts as a buffer zone.

There are also ideological divides. The ‘Anti-Technology League’ want curbs on technology, claiming that the unsustainable energy demands required by high levels of technology caused the anarchy. Other groups want technological growth (or regrowth). The Anti-Techs seem to get their way some of the time, but Sector 1 are rather selective as to which demands they apparently submit to. Computers are banned, except for government departments (since they’re needed for administrative purposes). This means no Internet, emails or other forms of global electronic communication. Most mobile phone masts were destroyed during the anarchy and haven’t been replaced. This just leaves landlines for instant communication. There are no televisions, but there are cinemas. Radios are back to being analogue, which means they’re subject to static (and if that static happens to interrupt news items, only the paranoid would consider that censorship). And just to show that the Anti-Techs aren’t an all-powerful lobby group, Sector 1 has refused to ban electronic billboards used for product advertising (interspersed with little messages from your friendly politicians).

The Anti-Tech’s message that our modern gadget-filled world caused the anarchy has fuelled nostalgia, and the mismatched retro fashions reflect the desired idylls. This is further back in time for the rural areas than for the city, and the labour-saving devices, such as washing machines, that still exist are used but kept out of sight and not discussed in polite conversation (more a case of keeping back with the Joneses rather than keeping up with them).

The most prominent gangster in future Norwich is Jack Preston. The anarchy broke out when he was eleven years old. A fan of film noirs from the 1930s and 1940s, his adoption of a gangster style image from that era was essentially a coping mechanism, but he becomes so powerful and influential that others copy him, and he now drives the fashion in this region. (Other regions fallback on other styles. The reduced global communications means that sectors start to diverge.)

The next most prominent gangster, and Jack’s rival, is Big Stan O’Brien. He doesn’t want to be seen to be copying Jack, so he taps into his Sector 53 ancestry and adopts a Godfather-like figure, but since this mash-up is from Jack’s preferred era, he’s still effectively mimicking Jack.

So how do people talk in future Norfolk? Much like today, there are a variety of accents. The native Broad Norfolk is still in use, but social status is also a factor. As in real life, there are some professionals who grew up with Broad Norfolk but softened it as they moved up the promotional ladder (for example, this is the case with Detective Inspector Charles Hadley). There are also professionals who don’t soften their accents (Detective Sergeant Sarah Fenning) as they view it as part of their identity. In the city there are those who have a Norwich accent, and then there are those who are trying to copy Jack or Stan’s affectations. There are also incomers with their own accents.

That’s the world of The Private Enemy, but the difficulty came in deciding how to represent these various accents. Writing guides frown on the use of funetik, and they have a point. It can be quite incomprehensible. The first 10,000 words of this novel formed the major part of my portfolio for my diploma in creative writing. The work has also been critiqued on other courses and writing groups, and at various times I’ve used various approaches, including following the much advocated advice to use dictionary spelling and allow the word choice and cadence to establish the voice. After all, if I’m spending all that time studying the art of creative writing, I ought to follow the laws laid down by the experts.

I dutifully corrected all the spelling and sent my first chapter round to my latest group. The result?

Is [Broad Norfolk character] American?

How did that happen? I’d used Norfolk syntax, so why did it sound American? (This wasn’t Jack’s hard-boiled affectation.)

Earlier, I mentioned immigrants to Norfolk, but I didn’t mention the emigrants. When you saw the word Norfolk in this blog’s title, did you immediately think of Norfolk, England (famous for its admiral) or Norfolk, Virginia (famous for its naval base)?

One of the earliest Englishmen to settle in the Virginia colony was Adam Thoroughgood from King’s Lynn, Norfolk (England). The early settlers undoubtedly brought their native accents with them, but over the generations the pronunciation of the sundered groups diverged as new immigrants from other areas arrived and the natural evolution of language occurred. However, despite this change, there are still a few elements common to Broad Norfolk and some parts of America that aren’t so common in the rest of the UK. For example, in Broad Norfolk ‘wholly’ is used in the sense of ‘very’, ‘yard’ can mean garden, and a person might address their friend as ‘ole partner’. So, while there are some very distinctive words and phrases in Broad Norfolk, there are a few cases that can superficially appear American if the pronunciation isn’t clarified.

Another bit of feedback from the group came in the form of corrections in a returned copy where the initial h’s from words in the dialogue were crossed out and replaced with apostrophes. Other dialects may drop their aitches but Norfolk doesn’t drop haitches. In addition, some of the dialect’s idiosyncrasies can look like typographical errors, such as the regularisation of the third person singular present tense (‘she do’, ‘he say’, ‘that look like rain’).

The problem with this creative writing rule is that it relies on the reader being familiar with the accent. Broad Norfolk is a little-known dialect that’s frequently misrepresented. There are so many times that I see this rule presented with some example dialogue followed by a statement that the reader will naturally hear such-and-such well-known accent when reading it.

The other advice to writers is to avoid dialects altogether and always use standard English, but the concept of standard English is a fallacy as English is a pluricentric language. (I’ve seen enough edit wars over the years to verify this.) There are standards within regions but even these can be disputed. Alice may believe that her public school accent is standard English and think that Bob sounds awfully common. Bob may believe his estuary accent is standard and think that Alice sounds a bit posh.

I could’ve saved myself a lot of headaches if I’d stuck with one specific textbook English for all the characters. Not only was the Broad Norfolk causing me problems, but also the hybrid accents for characters like Jack and Stan. However the drawback with standardizing the way everyone talks is that it suggests a lack of diversity, but the whole point of the setting was its fractured nature.

Incidentally, in case there’s any misunderstanding, I’m not a linguistic expert nor can I speak Broad Norfolk. My experience is limited to living in Norfolk for over twenty years and listening to people airing their views on the local radio, nattering on the bus, conversing with cashiers or checkout assistants, or chatting with friends and neighbours. (Any resident of Norfolk who claims that the dialect is extinct must be living in some kind of élite enclave.) I therefore decided to solicit the advice of Norfolk dialect expert Keith Skipper, which was just as well as it turned out that I’d unwittingly picked up some long-defunct words from an old book written by a late Norfolk author.

In the end, I decided on a small amount of spelling deviations. The feedback so far has included:

Didn’t like the dialect.

Really didn’t like the dialect.

Didn’t have a problem with the dialect.

Liked the dialect.

Would’ve liked more guide to the pronunciation.

Would’ve liked footnotes.

Haven’t got round to reading the story yet but really enjoyed reading the glossary of Norfolk terms at the back.

Which just goes to show that readers (like people in general) are diverse, and there’s no one-size-fits-all solution.

Incidentally, the second edition of The Private Enemy is due out on 30th September 2017. The font is smaller (10pt instead of 11pt) and the layout is more compact. This has reduced the page count and overall size and weight, which means a reduction in print and postage costs and this will be reflected in a reduction in the retail price. The revised first edition will continue to be available until the end of September. More news on the new edition to follow in the next month or so.

Following on from my previous post about Norfolk, I’ve set up a GoodReads giveaway for the second edition of The Private Enemy from 18 Aug to 11 Sep, 2017. This giveaway is only open to entrants from the United Kingdom to reduce postage costs, but I hope to run another at a later date that’s more widely available.

For those of you who missed my interview on Keith Skipper’s monthly mardle on Radio Norfolk’s Matthew Gudgin’s Teatime Show, there’s still a little time left to catch up on BBC iPlayer. (It’s available up to four weeks after the broadcast date.) I was on during the last hour of the three hour episode New money for “research school” (from around time frame 02:07:30).