The organisers of this year's Edinburgh Book Festival asked me to do a workshop on Writing Fantasy on Monday. I arrived at the venue -- a compound of tents and pavilions in Charlotte Square gardens -- a couple of hours early in order to find a quite space to go over my notes. The huge bookshop/cafe on the southern edge of the gardens seemed like a good start. So I grabbed a coffee, planted myself on the first available seat, and turned around to discover I'd picked the only table directly underneath my own books. A sad and embarrassing place to find yourself in. I downed the coffee and hurried away, in case anyone I knew spotted me and thought I was staking out the Alan Campbell section.
Later I'd make a bigger mistake. I'm still new to this.
The staff told me I needed to go the author's yurt -- a small sanctuary under canvas in one corner. I wandered over. Outside, the security guard eyed me suspiciously. "You need a pass to get in here."
Pass? "Erm. Ok... Where do I get a pass?"
"Inside."
"Ah."
A Terry Pratchett moment. Security let me in to the only place I needed a pass to get into, because I didn't have a pass. The author's yurt was snug, carpeted, and strewn with cushions, pleasantly Mongolian. They gave me a pass, although I didn't really need it now. I helped myself to a glass of wine and settled down to review my notes, scribbling on my printed sheets, Melodrama vs Drama, World Building, Magic, making the short bullet points I'd refer to later.
Sean Connery walked in.
An entourage of Book Festival staff and, presumably, Mr Connery's friends accompanied him. I'd like to say we chatted amicably, fellow Scots sharing the only truly Mongolian space in the festival and all, but that would be a complete and total lie. Still, a glance from the man himself was enough to make me feel oddly happy. It's not every day you come face to face to with one of your heroes. I'd have given anything to have exchanged a few words, but I couldn't bring myself to blunder on up to the man. It's bad enough to intrude on someone's privacy, and impossible when it's someone you respect so much.
World Building. Magic... erm. Character Development... James Bond is sitting over there, four feet away. I gave up on the notes. Mr Connery ambled past me again on the way out, and this time we exchanged a nod. I knew who he was. And he knew something about me. He knew I knew who he was. An odd sort of encounter, when you think about it. Suddenly I felt bizarrely cheerful again. Hadn't I just made some sort of connection with a screen legend?
I hung around for while longer, speaking to one of Mr Connery's guests who had remained behind... an intelligent fellow whose name I never did catch. We talked about Marie Curie, Composers, North Berwick restaurants, and Cinema. Whenever the conversation steered too close to writing fantasy, I eased it back towards cinema again, especially those films starring a certain Scot.
The workshop went well: a couple of friendly faces I knew, and eighteen more I didn't. Nobody heckled or threw crumpled bits of paper. Nobody stood up and said, "I've never heard anything so ridiculous in my life, you hack! I want a refund." Several people even thanked me afterwards and told me they'd found it useful, which was vast relief. I'd actually gotten away with it. To be honest, I'd have happily spraffed on about fantasy all afternoon, if they'd have let me, but they needed the tent for something else.
On the way out I got some unexpected news. The girl who had manned the door to prevent attendees from fleeing and demanding refunds explained that I had been scheduled to sign books at 3pm. Of course I couldn't have been there at that time. It was now after half past, and I'd just spent the last ninety minutes in front of twenty people, pretending to know what I was doing. If I'd learned about the signing sooner, I might have pointed out this little glitch to someone. As it was, nothing could be done now.
And if anyone had actually turned up, they weren't likely to be still waiting there now. Were they? So I headed in the direction of the beer tent with Paul Cockburn. But just as we arrived, I thought, sod it, I'd better go and make sure nobody is still waiting. So I left Paul with a few quid to get me a pint and ran over to the signing tent. Nobody around. None of my books evident anywhere. Okay, I was a wee bit disheartened that no one had waited, but what the hell. What was I expecting anyway? I'm not Sean Connery. I went back to the beer tent in an oddly relieved sort of sulk.
Only after I'd finished my drink half an hour later did I discover that I'd been scheduled to appear in the bookshop, and not the signing tent. Bollocks. Paul and I hurried over to the bookshop at once, but by then it was very definitely too late. I grabbed one of the staff. It turned out that people had been waiting. The hardbacks had sold out. But when I hadn't shown, the book buyers got fed up and left. All while I was sitting in the bar next door, completely oblivious.
I am really sorry.
If I'd known, I would have been there.
So if you were one of those people who bought one of my books and waited in vain for me to sign it, please accept my apologies. If you still want me to sign the book, I'll try to sort that out for you. If you're local to Edinburgh maybe I can drive through. Otherwise, I'll send you a bookplate or something.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Deadlines
Book Three is now in the hands of my editors. The working title is eerily similar to one of the suggestions someone made here on this blog, but I have a sneaking suspicion it's not going to be the final title... so I'm keeping schtum until it's agreed.
So now the real work begins. There's much I want to change in this book: ideas and character threads I'd like to expand, but my deadline was very tight. Here's hoping I'll have the time now.
This time, I had strived for over 1000 words a day, which is a lot for me.
In theory, writing a thousand words a day should be a breeze. Ten words a minute is 600 words an hour. So 1000 words shouldn't take much more than an hour and a half.
Unfortunately it doesn't work like that. It's very easy to type 600 words an hour, or even three times that amount. But it isn't so easy to look at a blank screen and pluck those words from thin air, not if they're going to be part of a story. Harder still if they're going to be the final part of a tale that's already a quarter of a million words long and full of separate threads that need to be brought to a conclusion.
The words must create, or form part of, a scene, which needs to advance characters along a storyline, perhaps including entirely made up conversations between different people, each of whom should have an agenda, motivation, beliefs, a personal history, their own particular way of interacting with others and their own way of interpreting the world around them. The words must define these people in a way that moves the plot forward, while tying together those different threads, manoeuvring subplots so that they will meet in the future. And they should incorporate sights, colours, sounds, and smells, in order to let the reader experience the environment as much as possible.
In fantasy, the story is usually set in an unfamiliar world, because part of the joy of reading fantasy is to explore exotic places. But these made up realms must necessarily have enough structure, rules, consistency to make them acceptable to a reader. History, religion, geology, physics, weather, ecology, political structure. I use the word acceptable here rather than plausible. Fantasy is generally implausible, but that's ok if it's consistent enough to be acceptable.
So those thousand words have a lot to do.
Scan Night took me more than three years to write. Iron Angel took about half that time -- it was a complex tale. After I finally finished the proofs of UK and US versions, I was left with about four months to write Book Three.
I scratched my head. Several weeks to think up a story and plan it out roughly, followed by three months of hard work at the keyboard. That would work. If I wrote 1000 words a day, weekends included, I'd have a 90,000 word story. Not exactly the epic scale of fantasy I'd have liked, but I didn't have time to worry about it. Maybe there would be days I'd manage more than 1000 words.
There were days like that. But, sadly, there were days when I didn't reach my target. Snuffly, wrapped in a blanket with the flu days. Taking the car to the garage days. Driving to the nearest town for a big supermarket shop days. And dreaded blank screen days, just staring and staring at an empty page. As the deadline loomed 1000 words a day became 1500, then 2000. At that stage I spend every waking hour at the keyboard. But I typed the final page on the morning of my deadline and then went to sleep for a week. I haven't looked at the story since, because I want to go back to it fresh... when the real work begins.
So now the real work begins. There's much I want to change in this book: ideas and character threads I'd like to expand, but my deadline was very tight. Here's hoping I'll have the time now.
This time, I had strived for over 1000 words a day, which is a lot for me.
In theory, writing a thousand words a day should be a breeze. Ten words a minute is 600 words an hour. So 1000 words shouldn't take much more than an hour and a half.
Unfortunately it doesn't work like that. It's very easy to type 600 words an hour, or even three times that amount. But it isn't so easy to look at a blank screen and pluck those words from thin air, not if they're going to be part of a story. Harder still if they're going to be the final part of a tale that's already a quarter of a million words long and full of separate threads that need to be brought to a conclusion.
The words must create, or form part of, a scene, which needs to advance characters along a storyline, perhaps including entirely made up conversations between different people, each of whom should have an agenda, motivation, beliefs, a personal history, their own particular way of interacting with others and their own way of interpreting the world around them. The words must define these people in a way that moves the plot forward, while tying together those different threads, manoeuvring subplots so that they will meet in the future. And they should incorporate sights, colours, sounds, and smells, in order to let the reader experience the environment as much as possible.
In fantasy, the story is usually set in an unfamiliar world, because part of the joy of reading fantasy is to explore exotic places. But these made up realms must necessarily have enough structure, rules, consistency to make them acceptable to a reader. History, religion, geology, physics, weather, ecology, political structure. I use the word acceptable here rather than plausible. Fantasy is generally implausible, but that's ok if it's consistent enough to be acceptable.
So those thousand words have a lot to do.
Scan Night took me more than three years to write. Iron Angel took about half that time -- it was a complex tale. After I finally finished the proofs of UK and US versions, I was left with about four months to write Book Three.
I scratched my head. Several weeks to think up a story and plan it out roughly, followed by three months of hard work at the keyboard. That would work. If I wrote 1000 words a day, weekends included, I'd have a 90,000 word story. Not exactly the epic scale of fantasy I'd have liked, but I didn't have time to worry about it. Maybe there would be days I'd manage more than 1000 words.
There were days like that. But, sadly, there were days when I didn't reach my target. Snuffly, wrapped in a blanket with the flu days. Taking the car to the garage days. Driving to the nearest town for a big supermarket shop days. And dreaded blank screen days, just staring and staring at an empty page. As the deadline loomed 1000 words a day became 1500, then 2000. At that stage I spend every waking hour at the keyboard. But I typed the final page on the morning of my deadline and then went to sleep for a week. I haven't looked at the story since, because I want to go back to it fresh... when the real work begins.
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