Litopia's 1st Anthology

The end began with a whimper, where the Sun had always been at its most fervent: Rome, and in all the cities, regions, and countries clinging to the equatorial line. By the time Alfredo Giancarlo was born, the end was unalterably established and advancing without much fanfare.

It's a good time of year when you are told that a piece of your writing has been accepted into an anthology of work - finally. Phew!

Back in January, Litopia announced it's first anthology, in association (and all hard work carried out by) Nemesis Publishing.

"And?" I hear you say. "And?"

Well, I'm in it. Naturally! My 5,000 word response to visiting Rome for the first (and only) time - so far - which I'd drafted up back in 2008, has been accepted to join the work of other Litopians. The piece is called Dreaming of Flora and emerged from my experience of the heat of Rome and the stone and flora and how, like Christianity across antiquity, one can consume the other.

The first ever anthology of short fiction by Litopians will be published later this year – and all full members have the chance to be involved.

It will be a collection of the finest short fiction that Litopia has to offer, published in print and as an e-book, with the release scheduled for mid-November...

For full details visit Litopia.

I'm really pleased, as I'm sure you'd appreciate that I would be. It is a good day. The anthology is set, at present, to be published by the end of November.

Now Morning from her orient chamber came...

And a happy new year to y'all!

[An ickle Sunrise picture - by me]

Now then, straight to it: if there is one thing I don't do, it's poetry!

If ever there a higher language be
whose obvious subtleties speak
of somethings and nothings
and flowers and loneliness
of war and of famine
of "unrequited love" and joy
then surely that impenetrable verbiage be
po - et - ry

Purposeless? Maybe! You'll have to forgive my own lame attempt - I stopped doing English Language at GCSE - that's poor show for a writer, I know, but my grade C (sigh) was deemed not good enough to attempt A-Level.

Oh this doesn't bode well, I hear you say... this whipper-snapper thinks himself a writer, be!

Well, let's ignore all that.

I don't make new year resolutions - because I don't believe in waiting to start a new year before changing my life - but, I've just been watching/listening to Agent Peter's video feedback to a couple of pitches over at Litopia
- if you didn't know, Litopia now has a pitch room where accepted members can pitch to the agent and receive a video response helping to diagnose where they're falling short (which is absolute bloody gold dust - and a masterclass far superior to any of been to on my course - bar, of course, Jim Crace's prose stripping [you'll have to check through my blog to find the results of that]).

Anyhoo, in one of his crits, Agent Peter recommended that one writer's clunky dialogue needs a bit of poetry to it, to smooth over the clunk. That she needs to get some poetry in her.

So, why not, I thought, do that myself. Tis a new year. I'm sure it's not too much effort to read one poem a day. How difficult can that be? Perhaps I could read more!

And in the process, I might learn something that infuses my own writing with better linguistic ability (than I am currently showing) - Solvejg, I can see you right this minute staving in your monitor with your forehead, screaming: "Why won't this idgit listen to me! How long ago did I say this?"

There's no rush, dear boy!

So, it's the 6th today - having read the first of Keats from the Penguin Classics edition, Imitation of Spenser, which was lovely, woolly and fully adjectivised, I'd better read at least 5 more.

Will this be my only post of the year? Who knows?

The Book Thief - Reviewing Elements

Those of you not part of the Litopia phenomenon, one of our latest brainwaves is to host a book group, so as to discuss varying elements, issues, styles and likes/dislikes). We've been reading Markus Zusak's The Book Thief this month, and having a little discussion on it. I include my thoughts here also (not least to fulfill the criteria of my NAW course - I have been doing stuff really, teacher):

The Book Thief - Opening

I started the Book Thief long before the book club, and got to 100 pages before setting it down and having then to pass it onto another reader (damn library books and patron requests). Of course the reason I set it down were due to the book's lolloping narrative, something that I did not feel had become a problem until about page 50.

The opening in particular, I found very interesting and we immediately get a sense of Death, of our narrator, and the style in which we are going to be presented the narrative throughout the story - there will be no surprises later on with the introduction of bullet points, narrator asides, or the pre-chapter summing up. They're all present right there at the beginning.

It's like Zuzak has gathered his tool box together and set out what he wants to use on the first pages as a reminder to the style he will stick to, throughout.

However, what does change is the narrative style - later chapters flow with large swathes of description, whole paragraphs filled with what's happening. The opening chapters are very bitty.

It has to be difficult to set up Death as a narrator and present us with his foibles and indiosyncracies:

Quote:

First up is something white. Of the blinding kind. Some of you are most likely thinking that white is not really a colour and all of that tired sort of nonsense. Well I'm here to tell you that it is. White is without question a colour, and personally, I don't think you want to argue.

It raises the question: "What is Zuzak doing here?" since the story is supposed to be leading us toward a meeting with Liesel, but instead we're discussing the finer definitions of the colour white. It's unnecessary, and I wonder if Zuzak started off writing in the voice of Death to get a feel for his narration, and then chose to put all the woolly wanderings into the book simply because he'd done all the leg work of writing them!

By 50 pages in we've forgotten the discourse on colours, so why bother us? What purpose does it have?

Style

The style is an interesting one, as I mentioned in the previous thread:

Quote:

The opening in particular, I found very interesting and we immediately get a sense of Death, of our narrator, and the style in which we are going to be presented the narrative throughout the story - there will be no surprises later on with the introduction of bullet points, narrator asides, or the pre-chapter summing up. They're all present right there at the beginning.

Each part begins with a breakdown of the following chapters (like Pratchett's Going Postal) except that these aren't entirely the chapter headings. They're more thematic than that:

Mein Kampf (P.133): the way home - a broken woman - a struggler - a juggler - the attributes of summer - an aryan shopkeeper - a snorer - two tricksters - and revenge in the shape of mixed lollies

Some of these are chapter headings, others regard content. But the effect is to give us a sense of rhythm, a brief overview (of what to look forward to - if any of you really relished moving on - wow! a snorer! That'll be interesting!) and potentially, for Zuzak, a way for him to keep track of what happens when and where.

But what purpose do they really serve? Are they just a device for maintaining the style, or something more?

Do we remember them by the end of the chapter, or part? I'd say a definite no. Perhaps, even by page two of a chapter, I'd forgotten what the chapter was called.

Do we pay enough attention to warrant them? Are they cookies meant to keep us reading (in a similar way to Zuzak repeatedly foretelling someone's imminent, or not so, death) - would we not bother continuing without them?

I mean, it's a good -enough- story, but it seemed to lag - like a biography. We know it has to reach the otherside of the war (wouldn't we all be very angry if the book ended halfway through and we closed the last page thinking that for the characters who remained, the war was yet to end), and so, aside from the so-and-so is soon to die (so it goes), The Book Thief doesn't have a particular narrative drive - we just dip in and out!

The Word Shaker was about standing up against the Fascism - in a way it's like standing up the lies and bigotry and the loud-shoutiness of all man-made cults, dogmas and doctrines. Here are two characters prepared to stand against the stupidity of the sheep, because their truth is far stronger than even the loudest of Hitler's screaming rhetoric... but, but...

I understand the story's meaning, just not why the tree died at the end of it, and what that was supposed to mean

Story/Plot

Hitchcock's bomb (not his box, which is, obviously a discussion on McGuffins)...

Take page 505, finally we reach Zucker's death - and this has been foretold many-many pages before it occurs. This gives us a distinct lack of surprise when it does happen - we don't have any invested interest in this particular character, so is Zuzak turning a wasted opportunity on its head and giving us something to expect, to wait for (he does indeed do this a lot).

Hitchcock (as I believe Robert McKee states in his book Story) that if you had two people discussing a situation at a table, perhaps they're dining there, and after a time the table explodes, and they both die, then, short of the shock factor - oh my - and the confusion... what do we go away with?

Not a lot.

Now, what if we have two people at a table, let's say they're dining again, and chatting away, and Hitchcock lets us see that there is a bomb sitting under the table, right where the couple can't see it. And we can see that there is a countdown, and we, the audience, know that the couple don't know about the bomb, and don't know about the countdown, and we do the little maths and realise that they won't escape in time, and that no one is coming to pull them away, then we have a form of dramatic irony.

We are in a greater position of knowledge than the characters - which creates a sense of tension, and spurs us to remain glued to our seat, our fingers on the book, our eyes to the page.

The pay off is that we've seen it coming and long hoped for a reprise, for saviour or deus ex machina - and it hasn't come. In Rudy's case we have come to like Rudy, and join in his adventures (adventures that are in no way diminished by constant reminder of his foreboding death).

The fact is, if I'm cynical, Zuzak would have had no real means to keep his readers reading without this kind of cookie to entice the reader on. The narrative plods, is more biographical of accounts that action/adventure/thriller, and the problem a lot of us have had in sticking through with it is largely, I believe, down to a distinct lack of anything big or attention grabbing.

That's why foretelling Rudy's death and continually reminding us is a bit of a cheat.

Also, it could seem that Zuzak is arguing in some fashion against Shoah (there's no business like Shoah-business) getting all the limelight - "My German ancestors had it bad too, you know!" he seems to say. "We were stuck here, bound by the fervour of our zealots, without a word or opportunity of rising up against it all."

And that is probably the biggest factor in people not feeling fulfilled by the piece at all - it's like setting the original Star Wars trilogy entirely from Lando Calrissian's pov (oh, I've lost the Falcon, oh the Empire are being mean to my friend, and now proposing to leave an Imperial garrison! And now I've got to lose Bespin and go fight too... Sigh)

A far better book that touches upon this level of bigotry, but doubles-back to trully show and deal with the effects is Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner. The protagonist has it largely easy, even when the Taliban get going - and then he flees Afghanistan altogether.

The key being that he still has a link to that place, has unbridled guilt, and must return to right a wrong, an in so doing endanger his life.

General Thoughts

A couple of thoughts on the Book Thief

# P.148 (A tell as a marker that leads us into a show):

Soon, her sedated condition transformed to harassment, and self-loathing. She began to rebuke herself.

'You said nothing.' Her head shook vigorously, amongst the hurried footsteps. 'Not a goodbye. Not a thank you. Not a that's the most beautiful sight I've ever seen. Nothing!' Certainly, she was a book thief, but that didn't mean she should have no manners at all. It didn't mean she couldn't be polite.

# P.157 (phraseology to match mood and subject):

'Johann Hermann,' she said. 'Who is that?'

The woman looked beside her, somewhere next to the girl's knees.

Liesel apologised. 'I'm sorry. I shouldn't be asking such things...' She let the sentence die its own death.'

The woman's face did not alter, yet somehow she managed to speak. 'He is nothing now in this world,' she explained. 'He was my...'

# P.175 (as above):

The road was icy as it was, but Rudy put on the extra coat, barely able to contain a grin. It ran across his face like a skid.

# P.329 (Death's Diary - here we're sidelined in the story to join Death):

What's the point of this sojourn? To tell us more stuff that Liesel or anyone in Molching would otherwise know. Death allows Zuzak to frame the narrative in the wider story of Nazi Germany and all the evil that happened. It's a bit of a cheat, and like his little asides (the tells), it's a bit distracting, but it does have purpose.

Also, it's interesting how he leads back into the story (P.332), linking us in with the wider picture:

Unknowingly, she awaits a great many things that I alluded to just a minute ago, but she also waits for you.

She's carrying some snow down to a basement, of all places.

Handfuls of frosty water can make almost anyone smile, but it cannot make them forget.

Here she comes.

# P.333 - Backtracking / flashback:

We start in the present (of the story) developing Liesel's present situation and physicality, and then scoot backwards:

Opinions varied, but Rosa Hubermann claimed that the seeds were sown at Christmas the previous year. The twenty-fourth of December had been hungry and cold...

# P.437 - Juicy descriptions:

A wooden hand swiped at the splinters of his fringe, and he made several attempts to speak.

Vote for the Podcast

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http://www.podcastalley.com/one_vote2.php?pod_id=47355

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Charts are prepared monthly, so please vote regularly!

Podwatch Review the Litopia Podcast

The first major review of LITOPIA AFTER DARK has appeared on Podwatch... and it's a HIT!

You could be forgiven for thinking a podcast hosted by literati would be stuffy and outdated, but that does not begin to describe those involved in Liopia. Rather, the show is accessible to any reader or writer with an interest in the area, and the discussions are interesting, entertaining and contemporary. When I speak passionately to someone about how great podcasts are, Litopia is precisely the sort of thing I would use as an example. The subject matter is too narrow for most TV or radio, but for their target audience this podcast will be a godsend.

Over the past 2 years, podcasting has gone from a handful of enthusiasts talking about technology, to a thriving community of content creators — both independant and mainstream.

There are now thousands of podcasts to choose from, which sounds great until you try to find a favourite. I believe it is the future of broadcasting, but there is a lot of dirt to dig through before finding a gem. This is where Podwatch comes in — every week I will do the hunting for you, and will provide comprehensive reviews on the best and worst of podcasting.

- Podwatch

As a regular panelist I'm so pleased with this development. It's a real sign that Peter Cox continues to be the defacto Word-pusher on the web. Certainly it is a brilliant outcome since Podwatch only reviews the top podcasts in their genre, and the Litopia podcast is being compared to shows that attract hundreds of thousands of listeners - The Best on the web.

9.5/10 Overall If you are a writer, or simply someone interested in literary culture, Liopia should be a permanent subscription in your podcatcher. Cox is likable and does a great job at covering all the news you will need to stay in the know.

You can read the full review here.

Or, you can listen to Podwatch's Tom's podcast on Litopia here.

Stop starting

A recent post on Litopia covered a specific problem in creating a join from a developing situation/observation to a memory. This is something Solvejg has touched upon over on the MaggotFarm, with regard to considering what he can use to spark a memory link (not that I can find the post right now).

Having fleshed out a join the user decided to come up with a different approach, citing that someone had pointed out she does too much stop starting - moving from dialogue to backstory and then back to the dialogue. Her excerpt on its own linked a smile from one character to that of the narrator's husband. Working it out a little made the excerpt very effective - it's something I've not tried myself yet, but, reading Cornelia Funke's Inkheart has shown this up too (funny coincidence since I've been waiting for Inkheart's arrival for three months and it should pop up now when someone asks the very same question I found myself asking as I read the first chapter).


While I think this is a great way (as with all things - in bitesize chunks) to move the action, info drop, develop and relate to character, I was thinking to myself that perhaps Funke was relying upon it a little too much (taking me away from the action - though I can see how much worse my own writing must read now).

So, first off, here's the link to the excerpt. It's in a printable format, but just open it in a new tab or window.

Let's breeze over the opening paragraph though it's a masterclass in itself, evoking atmosphere, telling us the protagonist will be alive in many years to come, setting it off almost fairytale like with this "look back on things" view:

Rain fell that night, a fine, whispering rain. Many years later, Meggie had only to close her eyes and she could still hear it, like tiny fingers tapping on the windowpane. A dog barked somewhere in the darkness, and however often she tossed and turned Meggie couldn't get to sleep.

The shift in time almost doesn't work for me - it is slightly distracting and pulls us immediately out of the time of the book - but it is effective.

Anyhoo, throughout the text we are developing the story and our understanding and attachment to the two main characters, Meggie and her father, Mo. However, here is a perfect example of just what the Litopians were discussing:

Meggie frowned. "Please, Mo! Come and look."

He didn't believe her, but he went anyway. Meggie tugged him along the corridor so impatiently that he stubbed his toe on a pile of books, which was hardly surprising. Stacks of books were piled high all over the house— not just arranged in neat rows on bookshelves, the way other people kept them, oh no! The books in Mo and Meggie's house were stacked under tables, on chairs, in the corners of the rooms. There were books in the kitchen and books in the lavatory. Books on the TV set and in the closet, small piles of books, tall piles of books, books thick and thin, books old and new. They welcomed Meggie down to breakfast with invitingly opened pages; they kept boredom at bay when the weather was bad. And sometimes you fell over them.

"He's just standing there!" whispered Meggie, leading Mo into her room.

Right in the middle of intrigue - WALLOP - we get a chunk of information shoved down our throats. I don't deny that both characters love reading and that we need to appreciate this earlier than later as it is pretty much our description of their home, but what an info dump, especially when all we're interested in is who is standing outside and what they want. Just read that paragraph again - it takes us way out of the current situation - intriguing that Funke gets away with it, isn't it?

The key is not to do it too much - like the use of adjectives. So, let's look at a slightly different use of this tool (from a few paragraphs earlier):

Suddenly, he turned his head, and Meggie felt as if he were looking straight into her eyes. She shot off the bed so fast the open book fell to the floor, and she ran barefoot out into the dark corridor. This was the end of May, but it was chilly in the old house.

There was still a light on in Mo's room. He often stayed up reading late into the night. Meggie had inherited her love of books from her father. When she took refuge from a bad dream with him, nothing could lull her to sleep better than Mo's calm breathing beside her and the sound of the pages turning. Nothing chased nightmares away faster than the rustle of printed paper. But the figure outside the house was no dream.

Here we have a brilliant segue from Meggie's room to Mo's, giving us not just knowledge of his keenness for reading, but that he allows Meggie into his bed when she suffers from nightmares and that she is calmed by him.

And just as importantly, Funke has linked the paragraph back to the preceding - realigning and reminding us of the potential danger.

Litopia After Dark Podcast

LITOPIA AFTER DARK this week takes a fascinating direction as we discuss one of the biggest and most important questions facing writers and publishers today - how will books be sold in the future? Also, The Litopia Effect - how our discussions are influencing the world of literature as yet another story of fake memoirs hits the headlines. Plus we are all, literally, stereotypes… Jacqueline Wilson says… and writers - mad, bad and dangerous in power?

To discuss these topics in depth are Donna Ballman, Beverly Gray, Dave Bartram and Richard Howse. Our special guest this week is columnist, power-blogger about all things literary and Managing Editor of The Book Depository, Mark Thwaite (with interjections from Lola and Marnie).

Of course, you’ve missed the opportunity to comment as we broadcast live on Ustream (8pm GMT Friday) but there’s always next week.

Links mentioned in the show :

• Fraudulent memoirs

The Boston Globe article about Misha Defonseca.

• Harry Potter Unites the World

Article in The Times Online

• Jacqueline Wilson disapproves of herself

Alison Pearson comments in The Daily Mail.

• The Future of Bookselling

We chat with Mark Thwaite, Managing Editor of The Book Depository, which aims to make all books available to all through republishing and digitising of content and is the fastest growing book distributor in Europe. He is also the founder of the online literary journal Ready Steady Book.

Litopia After Dark - Mummy Stole My Fingers

Another week, another podcast ;)

Recorded live and uncensored, LITOPIA AFTER DARK is a wide-ranging look at what’s new, hot or not in the worlds of writing, publishing, media and culture. Again, we can be found live on UStream at 8pm (GMT) on Friday evenings and there’s an opportunity watch the Podcast being made and make comments during the program. In this week’s packed show we will be discussing Literary Prizes. AL Kennedy has just been awarded the (British) Costa Prize and yet the book is a bleak read, not universally appealing. We discuss whether the literary prize system is fatally flawed from the outset. Also - Misery Lit, the relatively new best-sellers of the publishing industry. What are the appeal of these harrowing, shocking memoirs? And why do people love them? The panel discuss the dangers of life story accounts spiraling out of control and the race to be the most unpleasant yet. This week’s guests are Dave Bartram, Beverley Gray, Richard Howse, Donna Ballman and Eve Harvey.

Litopia After Dark - Arts Council Funding

Another Friday... another Litopia Afterdark Podcast. And this week, my first this year, we included a live uStream so you could watch and listen live as it was recorded. A very trippy experience, especially when I popped over to another live podcast that included a conversation with the keyboardist from Maroon 5.

Anyhoo, this week, we turn our attention to a trifecta of cuts from the British Council, the Arts Council and Public Lending Right. We consider whether print-on-demand coupled with self-publishing is really an option for authors, and look at some of the ground rules for success in writing for the children’s market.

Check out the player on the right, plug in those headphones and start listening.

Litopia After Dark - 2 Podcasts - Living Dangerously! & Is Story Dead?

Recorded live and uncensored, LITOPIA AFTER DARK is a wide-ranging weekly look at what’s new, hot or not in the worlds of writing, publishing, media and culture.

Is Story Dead?

For the last show of 2007 we’re doing something a little different. This week, VARIETY reports that more and more films are abandoning the classical 3-act structure in favour of nonlinear story construction. So the main question we’re going to address tonight is all about the future of story itself. Andrew Gillman, who will be familiar to many listeners of our earlier podcasts, is currently directing another series for BBC3 starring Rob Brydon. We asked Andrew and his producer, Alex Kavallierou, to give us their thoughts and some context on this most fundamental issue for all writers. Our panellists are Donna Ballman, Dave Bartram, Beverly Gray and Richard Howse.


Living Dangerously

This week on the podcast: If you look at the bestseller charts on both sides of the Atlantic, it’s not hard to predict what you’re going to see. In the UK, 15 of the top 20 hardback non-fiction books are television spin-offs. Stateside, this week’s hardcover fiction list is equally humdrum - you’d be forgiven for thinking that we’d all been swallowed up in a time warp and gone back to the 1980s. So - has "safe" publishing finally taken over? We also tackle buzz marketing, the ten most manly writers ever, and the definitive American woman of our time. This episode’s guests are Donna Ballman, Dave Bartram, Beverly Gray, Richard Howse and Lynn Price.

For more information or to listen to the podcast, head on over to Litopia's Podcast page, or simply listen to the link on the right.

Litopia After Dark - Podcast 2

The second LITOPIA AFTER DARK podcast was recorded last night - another round of live and uncensored discussion on the world of publishing.

Topics:

• Publishers in the Community - Social Networking
  
• JK Rowling and the Lexicon Litigation
  
• Pullman's Propaganda
  
• Current Reads and Recommendations

This week's guest speaker was Brian Clegg - a Cambridge polymath, says his Redhammer page. For those of you who love Science - here's his blog.

For more information or to listen to the podcast, head on over to Litopia's Podcast page.

Litopia on Facebook

To commemorate the launch of the Litopia After Dark Podcast, we now have a Facebook Group, bringing together writers and readers across the world. So, come along, join up, and start listening.

- http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=7537786594

Litopia After Dark Podcast 1

Recorded live and uncensored, LITOPIA AFTER DARK is a wide-ranging look at what’s new, hot or not in the worlds of writing, publishing, media and culture.

I was involved in this, the first in a new series of writer/publishing discussions, on Friday night and I must say that it was good fun, and as a tester session worked very well using Skype. It's a brilliant medium for discussions of this kind and hopefully you'll find it an enjoyable listen (just ignore the idiot that keeps saying "you know")

Topics:

• The Amazon Kindle
• Tom Cruise's new unauthorised biography
• Bloomsbury's Redundancies
• Current Reads and Recommendations

For more information or to listen to the podcast, head on over to Litopia's Podcast page.

Litopia Podcast 8 - My Discussion on Beats

The 8th Podcast is up, and the second in my series of 10 minute sessions on Writers Tips. This second one: Beats.

You can listen to it on iTunes, or subscribe to it from here

As it says on the tin:

Litopia’s Donna Ballman interviews the man who has been called the master of contemporary mystery writing - James W Hall is author of bestselling 15 novels and is professor of literature and writing at Florida International University. We also interview one of the most powerful figures in British Children’s publishing, Sarah Davies, as she prepares to move to America to start a children’s literary agency. And have a writer’s master-class from Litopia’s Richard Howse on the subject of the Beat.

Paid Companion - Solvey's Question Breakdown

Question 1) What pov did you use?
First person, present.

Question 2) Describe your protag with three basic characteristics (e.g. male, late 50's, hates sponsored swimming events).
Male, mid-thirties, searching for reconciliation

Question 3) What is your protag's name?
Unknown, and I guess... irrelevant

Question 4) How many secondary characters did you use?
Three - Father, Mother, and the Gull

Question 5) What was your opening line? Why?
He eyes me from the yard, his chest gleaming white against the scudding clouds.

This was originally:
He eyes me from the yard, his dull grey-white plumage setting him out as the brightest object on the shifting horizon.

And then:
He eyes me from the yard, his white chest gleaming against the black underbelly of the clouds.

As you can see, it's always been about the Gull (funny, that's the name of the piece - to give the sense that the Gull shadows everything in the tale from above). It therefore seemed best to jump straight into the situation and move around that, either backwards or forwards in time. I just had to make the sentence work properly. I originally wanted to give time and place immediately but there was too much going on - "shifting horizon" is moved to the second sentence - opting on the second pass to off-set the white of the gull against the black of the clouds, but scudding works so much better, doesn't it?

Anyhoo, note how I've really pulled back on the description of the gull - everyone knows a bird has plummage, that they have grey feathers upon wings and back... but what's important is that first image, that the gull is white (chest) against the dark clouds. Everything else is unnecessary filler - brevity!

Question 6) How many names did you invent (e.g. place names, character names, shop names, etc.)?
None. I didn't even make up a name for the boat - how odd, me thinks. Actually, the only naming I do use is in relation to the shipping forecast designation areas - Plymouth, Fitzroy and Biscay.

Question 7) How many similes did you use?
Similes: 5
... the way a child keeps momentum on a swing... looks as if he’s master of all the sea... like the ferocious jaws of a shark... like a landing parachute... he dines like a captain, feasting on the finest crabmeat

Question 8) Did you use devices of sound (e.g. alliteration, assonance, consonance, onomatopoeia)?
The most alliterate line is:
But the sea has a cold heart, and though she may tranquilise the most turgid of tempests...

But the story makes very specific use of sailing and fishing terms, be they in describing the protagonist's face:
Father’s lineage has bestowed me with his waxy, chiselled features, a sailor’s skin rigged to withstand the constant saltwash

his hurried work:
... my body braced against the open-air cabin as I cast the last clove hitch between the port railing and my stash of pot traps... knock down the sails, secure all trappings and lay ahull...

Or in the anthropomorphic personification of the sea and her anger:
... listening to the sea’s rush along the keel... the glint of long black teeth gathered on either side. One after another they crashed over the gunwales like the ferocious jaws of a shark... as the sea began to circle, hissing and scolding me with her salty spit and slapping the hull with her angry fins.

Question 9) What primary/secondary theme/s did you use?
The primary theme is in the companionship between man and Gull, and the symbiotic relationship this specific two share - the partnership of man and nature.

Secondary to that and underlying the whole thing is the protagonist's relationship with his fisherman father and the life he's spurned in favour of a wife and a land bound life. Ultimately we have the return, but for what reason? I leave that up to the reader for the time being... I've said too much

Question 10) Which of these did you intentionally use?: violence, sex, profanity, death, birth, hatred, love.
The violence of the sea, death of a parent, and the attempted reconciliation between hatred and love a child has for a parent.

Litopia Podcast 6

The 6th Podcast is up, and the first in my series of 10 minute sessions on Writers Tips. This first one: Describing Characters.

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Deep Theory on the Dark Machine

Thanks to Juan for these quizzies. I thought I'd share the answers here as well as on Litopia because I believe that it's always good to look deeper into the machinations of your story world to fight off possible problems and plot holes that may occur either in the plot or as a paradox in the world itself:

This is a really interesting idea with lots of possibilities but I have a couple of questions, especially since it seems to be a TV series rather than a novel:

It was originally an idea for a novel - I adapted it to save time and actually get on writing the idea as opposed to coming up with a new idea.

-Is the day of his accident one day that he is reliving over and over (cf Groundhog Day) or is it one day stretched into a series (producer's question right there)

Actually him reliving that day only makes up the first two episodes of the 8 episode first series. After that he is forced to move into new territory and the minds of other coma victims - his deja vu/future visions will then stop

-Is this consciousness a shared memory or is it a parallel reality? (i.e. what is it that the coma victims are actually sharing? thoughts or virtual actions)

Best to think of it as a parallel reality. They are sharing virtual actions.

-How does he see the future as deja vu? (Because he's already lived in it or because he's clairvoyant? In the latter case, it's not really deja vu)

He's already lived the day so what he believes are flashes of the future are in fact just moments of the original day. Which allows me to first use them to give him information before it should arrive and then to contrast between his old life and his new one when he starts making different choices.

-The responsibility hook is a good one, makes for good drama, but I'm at a loss to see how it can be shown if he is reliving a day. Is he doing things differently? And if the others (i.e. his wife or Mark) are doing things the same way, how can they respond to his change? Or if it's a stretching of the day of the accident with Edward 'inventing' a new reality along with the other coma victims, how can we see the wife's reactions as anything other than Edward's inventions?

Yes... is all I can answer here. No wait: I had to split up this initial story into two episodes, and I've only written the first one, but I've asked myself all those questions. He starts off following the original patterns of the day, but he starts forseeing what will happen and begins shortcutting events - realising that despite his awareness of the future he can't change the outcome. The other characters seem to respond or default to their original reactions, and there's little that Ed can do to change that (he keeps getting drawn into the same arguments). Until that is, the new world (shared consciousness of coma minds) brings into play new characters that Ed's not met before. He should remember them, but doesn't - which puts him in danger. And as for his wife's reactions - yes - Edward's inventions of other people's reactions comes to the fore in later episodes when he believes he constructs versions of his wife and best friend in his mind.

-Does the Dark Machine co-opt the coma victims at the point of their accidents and, if so, is Alisha in Edward's reality (supposedly created by the Dark Machine) or reality-reality (where Edward is I suppose in a coma)?

These questions get harder... The Dark Machine is really another entity - The God Conscious to which all souls return when they die. Alisha is the only known soul to have gone in and return in her original form, but with adopted powers and access. The first series only takes place within the shared coma-worlds, and this works something like with the use of doorways to move between worlds. Anyone in a coma may move between any of the coma worlds. Does that make sense?

I liken it to the state of REM sleep - my original novel concept had coma victims sharing that coma reality (the subconscious) and REM sleepers entering that reality for a brief time.

- Apart from the Matrix overtones that it would be nice to see fall away a little(almost a whole subgenre these days in itself I would imagine), there are some great possibilities for the blending of near-death consciousness with ongoing life.

One grand question is what happens to a person's coma-world when they either a) die, or b) wake up?

The coma-world (as we discover at the end of episode 1 destroys itself. Any other coma-victim still in that coma-world when it dies will die too.

But the "which reality" question is vital.

Why I hadn't thought of the Matrix link, I don't know. It's a sub-conscious level of the mind, the primal, I guess.

- There needs to be a logic we can base our feelings on. If Edward is manipulating all the responses to his 'new self' and we intuitively know this, then how can we respond emotionally to the action?

He only controls that original day and the responses of his family and friends - we see it all go wrong, because he can't change the outcome, but then that is left by the wayside as we move into the second act of the series

- The place where he 'meets' Alisha and helps his friend with the double-cross probably needs to be sufficiently outside of his control (or that of the Dark Machine) to make us follow him. Flitting between two realities could be a way to do this, but then how does his wife get to interact with him in the coma and not be a figment of his new 'consciousness'?

Really she is just a figment that Ed doesn't realise. The majority of what goes on in the first two episodes are figments, and only the five new characters who arrive and who exert changes to the outcomes realise this. Afterwards, when Ed thinks his wife and friend are dead, only he can see them - but it comes down to the power of Ed's mind. Episode 7 has him return to his original life (albeit still in a coma).Possibly you have answers to these questions that didn't fit into 150 words, but they do jump out of the premise as is.That's what I loved about the initial idea - it can go anywhere. The original concept had interactions between Ed and his wife when she was in REM sleep, and she could take those interactions back to the real world to try and help Ed out by changing real world situations and deal with other coma victims. Also I had a World War 2 type framework, where Ed goes up against a German Count who put himself in a coma during the war as part of the Nazi's occult investigations. But of course... his body died years ago, so how is his soul/mind still present in the coma worlds?

Litopia Podcast 4

So, my interview with Salley Vickers made it into Litopia's 4th Podcast - Willow. She was a nice lady, and I'm very gracious to her for allowing me to interview her over her sarnies only minutes between arriving and having to give her full talk, which is available either on My Website, or at Bracknell Forest's Website... you decide.

Anyhoo, you can access the Podcast (all 4 of them thus far - and you don't have to be a member of Litopia) by navigating to here.

Next time though, I must make sure we don't sit in the kitchen. Moto thinks it sounds like a Chinese kitchen! As whiney as the background voices are, they're only Librarians - surely much more dangerous with a cleaver than any Chinese Chef!

The Reckoning - Solvey's Question Breakdown

Question 1) What pov did you use?
Third person limited omniscent. We stick with our protagonist, learning that which he already knows through his thoughts and the dialogue, and learning alongside him what it is he's dealing with. I wanted to keep this in his head, so that the reader is trapped inside him when we reach the climax - I didn't want the reader to learn anything that he doesn't know/find out.
Question 2) Describe your protag with three basic characteristics (e.g. male, late 50's, hates sponsored swimming events).
Male, late 50's, loves wealth but not celebrity.
Question 3) What is your protag's name?
We never learn it. I refer to him as He throughout, though, through the text we could associate him to the name Dives; Mr Dives.
Question 4) How many secondary characters did you use?
Two. His agent, whom we only know of as the voice on the other end of the phone, and the Capuan Venus, His Aphrodite; the marble statue he fell in love with and abandoned.
Question 5) What was your opening line? Why?
"He heaved the door closed, diminishing the throes of the party behind two inches of carved oak." - I wanted, right from the beginning to evoke a sense of grandness (which begins here; the door is made from oak, large and rather heavy) - obviously I don't have many words to devote to describing the look and feel of the room because of word limitations and my want to stick to the descriptions of the darkness, there're celebrations going on that our protagonist wants to be away from, and of course by 'heaving' the door closed, I am foreshadowing later weakness. I don't evoke character until the second line (which, I suppose, could have come attached to the first): "'Leeches'."
Question 6) How many names did you invent (e.g. place names, character names, shop names, etc.)?
None. No places are mentioned - just as with the previous competition. My work always seems to sit in a very tightly focused world, nothing on a grand scale, single, simple locations - as this is, the writing room. And the real people aren't named.
Question 7) How many similes did you use?
Similes: 10
... A circular room appeared before him like a developing photograph... as if the caller was trying to cross the rift between this sanctum and the rumbling revelry... party that beat like a headache... heavy and solid like shackles of steel... the shadows began to shift about him like oil on a tide... filling his lungs to the brim like a swimmer caught in a riptide... slipped from her slender legs like spun silk... moved slowly, deliberately, like a goddess... as if guiding creases from silken sheets... lips were as cold as stone.
Metaphors: 6
... dampening the throes of the party... when he’d composed at his desk... lifting rousing, singular moments from eternity’s bosom and lacing them into poetic verses upon the page... their talons knitted into Dive’s soul... adrift upon his vision... wheezed at the night-stream...

Now, that's a different flip from the last competition piece I did. Similies have trebled, and metaphors have dropped by a third.

Question 8) Did you use devices of sound (e.g. alliteration, assonance, consonance, onomatopoeia)?
There are a few interchangeable moments of alliteration, assoance and consonance.
Question 9) What primary/secondary theme/s did you use?
The primary theme is retribution for betrayal. Just as in the parable, Dives betrays Lazarus by not helping him and thusly, Lazarus goes to Heaven, and Dives to Hell. I wanted my protagonist "Dives" to have betrayed his muse, personified by Aphrodite's statue - the Venus of Capua (a different version of the Venus de Milo).

The secondary theme is wasted talent through narcissm and avarice. The muse has provided Dives with skills and abilities to create, manipulate and write, but it is clear from the text that he forsook that long ago, forsaking also his muse and buying into ghost writers to maintain his riches with no effort - clearly he's treated them badly, but we never learn how (it should be enough in the manner in which he talks to his agent, and his first words: "Leeches," about the party goers). And if you were a muse, wouldn't you be pissed off that you'd wasted all your effort and someone like him?

The third theme is unrequited love. Dives once shared with his muse, this room, their writing, their shallow love of their own images. Through him, his muse speaks on the page, but when he promised himself he'd give it all up, sign on some ghost writers and make money without effort, he chose to give her up completely, leaving her alone and loveless.
Question 10) Which of these did you intentionally use?: violence, sex, profanity, death, birth, hatred, love.
Death and love are clearly intentioned. Sex is intimated through the Venus' touching of herself. Technically she is ressurected, or reborn - the only link to the title (from the other, more well known parable of Lazarus), which I like to think relates the protagonist, Dives, to Jesus. He has power over the muse, power to create (his last words are: 'Every conquerer creates a muse') and so, just as Jesus arrived at Lazarus' tomb to reawaken him, so too does Dives return to his muse's tomb, and reawaken's her... only that power has become corrupted by the years, and his role as Jesus to her Lazarus is ironic. Of course this links immediately back to theme number one, and make the Capuan Venus, the muse, both Lazarus's. She is the one betrayed and the one ressurrected.
Extra words of note:
I have used two partial quotes at the end of the piece.
Dives says, "Every conqueror creates a muse", taken from Edmund Waller: “Illustrious acts high raptures do infuse, And every conqueror creates a muse.” Dives is reasserting his authority over her and yet, the Venus replies, "Cheat your landlord if you can and must, but do not try to short-change the muse. It cannot be done", taken from William S. Burroughs: "So cheat your landlord if you can and must, but do not try to shortchange the Muse. It cannot be done. You can't fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal." She knows that her will be done.

Of course this may all be read from not such a supernatural point of view. Dives is suffering weakness, shortness of breath, he's drunk, and then tightness and pains in his chest. Clearly he's having a heartattack, and is hallucinating. It is the good portion of his soul making him pay in these last minutes for the life he's led. From that viewpoint, the story is about guilt that we are never as good as the people we wish we were.

Micro Fiction

My fellow students are gearing up for their own assortment of professional development planning - most prominent of which is an idea revolving around 300 word Micro Fiction. I've just, I think, got to grips with writing 1,500 word short stories (just over the length of Flash Fiction), which was a mighty struggle that's taken the best part of a year to suss... but Micro Fiction!

If I want to be a part of this, and of course I do, I want to share with the other students, I want to be a part of a collective project - feel like one of the gang... feel, accepted - then, I need to rejig my thoughts another level.

First off, this link provides many links to other sites that may be of pertinent use: http://microfiction.rumble.sy2.com/articles.html

http://www.pifmagazine.com/SID/313/