Pitcharama Post!

The lovely people at Aussie Owned and Read are hosting a Pitcharama. I’m still building my query up and knocking it down, so I thought this would be good for me on the polishing-and-sense side.

 

Manuscript Title: When the Clock Broke

Author: Alexandrina Brant

Age group: NA

Genre: Fantasy romance

Word count: 82,000

250 word blurb:

When twenty-year-old Aidelle’s fiancé slams the door on their relationship, neither expects the act to seal her in another reality. Nor does Aidelle plan on coming face to face with a girl who claims to be her granddaughter from one possible future.

And yet, in the space of one ‘day’, her present has been frozen out of time. She can’t leave her own home, lest she face a city forever unmoving, and she certainly can’t apologise to her fiancé for throwing a timepiece at him. With her ‘granddaughter’ instructing her in the art of mechanics, Aidelle tries to fix the clock. But time, with all its bumps and eddies, doesn’t play fair.

In the midst of a temporal fissure, Aidelle catches a glimpse of her fiancé. His heart still seeks her, even from a war-torn future where their home is nothing but a bombed ruin. Fingertips touching, they are years apart. As the fissure collapses, Aidelle is more alone than ever.

At the hesitant advice of her granddaughter, Aidelle must risk her life entering the stilled city to mend the time-streams – and fix her heart. If she doesn’t hurry, she’ll be stuck in the half-reality of tea and stormy weather for a non-existent eternity. If she doesn’t rewind time – and, in the process, win back the man she adores – they could both cease to exist.

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Disney villains are the best kind of villains. Go evil parrot!

He’s an arrogant snob, whose only care is himself. His views on women are derogative and his favourite pastime seems to be manipulation.

And yet, chillingly, my villain is becoming the easiest character to write. There was a time when I despised everything he said and did, but now I’m having second thoughts. The cold face of evil is not heartless, but a reflection of love, loss and anger. These are humans we dictate the path of, and humans are malleable, broken shapes; they have felt love and loss so easily.

“Why are you so good at writing, Agatha Christie? You’ve loved, lost. You’ve had your heart broken.” (Doctor Who, the Unicorn and the Wasp)

Perhaps villains are the most multi-faceted of characters. Sure, heroes have their faults, and they go wrong at times, but heroes (as opposed to protagonists, some of whom are anti-heroes, of course) Even when they don’t follow the exact straight and narrow for the sake of their cause, they have an inner mind of goodness – something to conquer at the finale.

The villain has no such thing. I’ve experienced broken people, through real life and the fiction; these people go one of two ways: they lose hope and become catatonic – or they steal hope from others, by way of villainy.

Sometimes villainy is the only way out. That’s what makes a villain fascinating: they have nothing left to lose. And mine is just the same. Everything he has to lose is on the other side of my protagonists – and if he wins, he gains more than if he fails. At least, until the end of the novel.

Woo, Rob James Collier looking moody.

I’ll add that there’s something more which keeps me watching my villain: his voice. (That is, writing tone, as opposed to literal vocal-chord resonation!) Because of his high society (I’m just gonna steal this phrase, thanks, Jae!), war-based opinions, he has three significant idioms:

1)      Never uses request tags, eg. ‘please’. To those younger or lesser than him, he often orders rather than requests.

2)      His use of the future tense is strictly ‘will’ even in first person; ‘shall’ is too soft a dictum.

3)      He uses no contractions, except ‘don’t’ when annoyed. It’s something that has struck the entire family. Naturally, really, if it passes from one generation to another.

As such, the voice and sentence structure of the villain is deeply controlled.

This is something I’m trying with all the characters. As voice is my weakest characterisation and writing tool, I don’t expect myself to craft a different style for each POV, but I hope that this use of tightness will aid my editing.

After all, as is often said: if a sentence works without a certain word, cut the word.

 

What do you like in a villain? Have they ever taken you by surprise and become evil in an ‘understandable’ way? Do you think the sadness in life is a good writing tool?

I’d also like to bring to attention the Good Sinful Alliance. I’m not sure who ‘runs’ it, but it’s caught my eye, mostly over at Musings From Neville’s Navel. They talk about the ‘goodness’ behind villains.

Happy writing

One Wouldn’t Think of Christie as a Romantic

Yesterday, I watched the recent (2009) TV adaptation ‘Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?’ whilst rewriting my query. I deserved a break from work.

I think we always imagine that Agatha Christie’s novels are all about mystery; indeed, the best ‘cosy’ detective mysteries are those ‘locked room’, minimal suspects mysteries. The need no other substance than to bemuse and befuddle the reader/watcher for a successful piece of entertainment drama.

And, yet, people forget that there’s another side to Christie’s works. Sure, her mysteries are both tight and profound, but they are not cold. Some thrillers can be unromantic – or at least they force lust in the wrong corners; the romance, or the love side, is not full of that homely warmth.

In a way, one could argue that it is out of character for a murder book to hold simmering romance in its pages. But it does.

Yes, that is The Doctor’s daughter…

At least twice, I’ve come across love triangles*. Yes, in Agatha Christie! And they work. They don’t feel so run down as the modern love triangle.

The detective – or ‘snooping companion’, if you would, alongside Miss Marple in ‘Evans’ is Frankie Derwent, who sets out with her childhood friend, Robert ‘Bobby’ Jones, to understand and solve the mystery of the body Robert found on the cliff. As there always is with Christie’s omniscient third, we have a lot of head-hopping, of course on-screen, but it gets the point. Frankie is the type of girl who needs no encouragement to sleuth, but will glare at the next person who tells her to stop. Rather like my Agnetha…but in a nice, delightfully 1950s way. The sexual tension sparks up in arguments. Frankie could just as equally end up with Robert as she could solve the mystery…

yummy organists galore (though he will always be Oliver Woods to me)

Or she could end up with this chap. The pianist/tutor, Roger Bassington. (They both play the piano and have brown hair? Frankie evidently has similar tastes in men as I do!)

But we all know she’s going to end up with Robert because Roger is no good. It’s so cliché that I’m used to spotting these little quirks of character fifteen minutes in. Christie’s handiwork is there even when people won’t expect it. And yet, I was rooting for Roger and Frankie. They had more chemistry (though, of course, that may have been between the actors). Christie plays her game well in luring us to the other side of the romance – the same way she slips red herrings the expanse of her pages. She was sneaky throughout her style.

Beyond that, too, there were the miniature mixtures of romantic goings-on, as there are with the archetypal cosies. You’ve got to have a bit of that sort of drama to increase the motives in one house. “They can’t all have wanted him dead?” Oh, yes, they did.

“He doesn’t notice me.”

“You’re the most noticeable person I’ve met.”

These little tricks have certainly engaged me. Once again…

That’s the pleasure of stories, though. We all get something different out of them, and we all discover different things, just like when writing. And I think it’s better, these little additions.

Not just because I’m a romance fan, and I’d add them myself if I didn’t fall into the cold sweep, but because I think a story should have more elements to it than its main plot-line(s). Like a character, a story should be multi-faceted.

 

 

*Agatha liked to write a female ‘snooping companion’ MC and have her notice and/or catch the eye of at least two men who may or may not be the killers eg. Death in the Clouds, Taken at the Flood are the two obvious ones from the top of my head (and this proves that it’s not simply in the TV adaptations, as I’ve only read Death in the Clouds). The next time I watch a Poirot or Marple, however, I’ll take down if there is some sort of love-polyhedron between the main characters as well as the suspects.

For more of a review of the TV adaptation than a simple use of observation to make my point that I’ve done so here, read the Agatha Christie reader’s review, with which I wholeheartedly agree (they do a whole Marple series in one post, so you have to keep scrolling until you get to ‘Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?’).

Wibbly-Wobbly… (In Which I lament about Query-Writing and Explain Alternate Universes)

There’s a reason I’ve started with some good ol’ Blink – that quote is so famous it walks on its own feet.

Time; and the fictional use of it. Urg, my query has done nothing but trouble me this week. And that’s saying something, seeing as I just got out of a double (3 hours) exam about Virtues, businesses, and miracles, a whole lot of miracles… At least my intangible rabbit example didn’t fall to waste.

[Basically, AJ Ayer, via Hume's Fork, says that there are three types of language: Analytic - eg. the redundancy or, my favourite, the tautology: "all bachelors are unmarried men." Synthetic - true once verified: "it is sunny outside." *looks through window* Yes, it is - for once! And nonsensical statement, such as poetry and (thus relevant) ethical language. Because there is no way to prove an intangible rabbit is in the room, it becomes a meaningless statement.]

ANYWAY. Main philosophy tangent over.

At the moment, I have half-and-half feelings about queries; ironically, the novel which is less complete (ie. not even fully edited round one yet) is the one whose query has intrigued critiquers more positively. The other one…ah *throws hands in air* It’s difficult to say.

The problem is sense. I know exactly what I mean, but that hardly dictates to my critiques what the plot is. Why, oh why, did I write a New Adult romance set in an alternate world featuring time-travel?? No wonder my contemporary murder mystery gets more encouragement!

The issue also comes under the ‘what is time?’ question that should be an entire category of mine. I am fascinated so much by the non-linearity of temporal sustainment that I could write posts and posts about my opinion.

And yet, that’s one of the reasons I have a novel: so that I don’t have to waste my time and yours going on about my opinions. I can simply craft them within the pages of a book.

But here’s where it gets complicated (for the at-a-blink readers): I don’t disagree with The Doctor – time is wibbly-wobbly, non-linear – but I take this a step further in my novel, with, for one thing, symbolism of life and time inter-connected, but the other, through the literal use of time being alive. It is an entity. And it, one could argue (because I’m not supposed to be writing from time’s perspective!), sees and understands what’s going on. At least, in the penultimate chapter, it acts in such a way that one could argue that it is aware of the various mistakes that have led to said penultimate chapter (gee, that is hard to explain without spoilers).

If I had my way, I’d make it more obvious that time is sentient, but, I have to sacrifice my way for the sake of a better novel.

And then there’s ‘time-streams’, and I up the complexity and the difficulty of making sense of my query! You see, when one sets a novel in an alternate universe, one has already, consciously or not, postulated the existence of different ‘streams’ or layers of time.

sand layers; a little like the colours in Zara’s sand-timer necklace

These layers are bound to interact, even fleetingly. As I have said, through the genetic intuition of Peter, time is a fabric under the pressure of sandpaper. Everything gets worn away.

Actually, I’ll give you a tangible example of that. The Cardiff Rift. It has always existed (in the world of Doctor Who), but there are times when it flares up, breaks – when aggravated by, for instance, Blon Fel Fotch’s use of it to power her planned escape from Earth (Guess who’s been reading her Time-Traveller’s Almanac lately? )

So, that has been postulated - we are living in one universe, alongside another ‘stream’ of time containing, even those infinitesimally small, differences. It’s the universe by each choice idea. They exist almost literally like streams. If one utilises The Doctor’s apt metaphor, one sees a flowing ball of many time-streams, like the layers of the Earth’s own composition.

Now what? Well, if a rift is torn apart by an incident in one time-stream, the closest time-stream will, naturally, be effected. Using the same Earth-layer image, it may be like drilling down through the layers – except it’s disaster, not oil, that springs out. The time-streams may all be individual, but they are streams, after all; they have very thin borders, for time is a precious instrumental.

Here’s where my favourite part of Time as Living comes in. Time breeds; when it understands that fault and unnatural disruption has occurred it tries to correct itself back into the individual, flowing streams by having that time-of-would-could-have-beens – a different colour, as my characters wonder about – become prominent and search for the disruption. However, you have to release the element of the streams (which I have named ‘time-energy’) before they can correct the fault. After all, time doesn’t have arms. Come on, that would be ridiculous!

And, if you don’t hurry…time goes into auto-fix and heals the rift by itself, faults or no. After all, it can’t let all the time-streams bleed into each other. Same as a fuse cuts off power before electrocution through human-earth-wire can occur.

In the end, I could set out the argument that the first three chapters of my novel not only never happen, they don’t even exist. But we won’t go there for now

More pretty sand layers

All in all, this makes for some complicated stuff that I can’t possibly pour into a query. The mere mention of time-streams and a frozen bubble of time is confusing! I have yet to fix a decision why time freezes at the incident when it’s brought into rapid-flux. Was there possibly a Doctor Who episode…? Possibly ‘Father’s Day’. *is happy to watch TV as research* I have an idea, back from the beginning of WHEN THE CLOCK BROKE (yeah, that’s the idea, hence the capitals), but that was very many moons ago, and I have to let it reemerge from my unconscious psyche.

Humph. And my problem is not fixed, so I lament.

I wanted a picture of rivers running side by side to illustrate my idea, but I found none I liked, though I’d advise checking out this site with loads of dazzling waterfall pictures, which somewhat illustrate what I mean about two time-streams existing simultaneously - unfortunately, they are all under copyright, so I can’t put my favourite here.

To finish, I’ll give a quote I have just found whilst clearing out my AS ethics folder. Weirdly, it reflects the meta-ethics essay I chose to write today, which itself focused on whether the word ‘good’ has meaning (and this in itself is the task of the writer to definite the known world of words!). Doubly weirdly, this marks the origin of Zara’s sister’s name:

“There is no good – all definitions are merely examples. What is Lametta?”

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Teens Can Write, Too! blog chain for May is on a topic I know well about: research into writing. As a steampunk writer, I have to delve into research for my alternate universe – but that’s only the tip of it.

“What are some of the coolest/weirdest/funniest/most disturbing things you’ve researched for a story?”

I’m a very physical researcher. I like to try out my ideas. It probably won’t get to the point where I need to punch someone to get the feel of it, but you see what I mean.

I once almost jumped from my bedroom window to our garden wall to calculate success rates – but then I realised that my house is bigger than Agnetha’s. I then went outside with a meter-rule. I’m a visual reader and writer. I need to see to understand.

Sometimes people give me strange looks due to my requests. A lot of the time, my ‘research’ is focused on interaction and gaze, the certain ways people might turn their hands in movement.

In fact, the most recent was literally two weeks ago when I asked a friend if she would lie on the floor and twist until she could read a clock I had drawn on the whiteboard. All that for one line of the first draft of WTCB’s sequel…

original drawings for Zara’s watch, November 2010

So, that’s the character and person watching done. I’m probably on the less strange scale of Googling – most of what I research would probably not worry the majority of people. Sure, you’ll see “the effects of cyanide” and “six-shooter pistol” on my Google history, but those are alongside the typical “flowers with thorns”, “diamond shapes and cuts”. (For the latter, I also took pictures of the diamond museum I went to in Belgium )

And certainly the most macabre of my Google searches was something along the lines of “how long does it take a body to decompose – in water? – in quicklime mortar?” A few days if exposed to large amounts of bacteria, and, indefinitely due to lack of exposure to air, respectively, I’ll have you know.

As much as I do enjoy researching the mysteries of death and – sadism aside – the biological acts of pain, I have a greater interest: that of fictional science. In an alternate universe of the steampunk kind, I have to think long and hard about my science. That’s writing time-travel for you.

I have spent much time reading the Wikipedia pages of, for instance, “aluminium-air batteries” (one I have personally bookmarked to understand how chemical energy works inside electric torches). I studied Physics last year, but that was not enough to fulfil my curiosities brought up by understanding the workings of the forces and, more importantly, quantum particle workings. But these particular little twists of knowledge cannot certainly be ignored in a world where I must have not electricity.

My problems must be better solved by research.

Time, as an entity, is much harder to research. On the other hand, this gives me so much freedom in my explorations. Worm-Hole Theory recently made an appearance, but the good thing is that I don’t necessarily have to correspond to its ideas exactly.

That’s the joy of research: it allows, but does not restrain.

And then there are the pictures: research is not limited to the facts; I have seen the best of inspiration for cogs and clockwork in my image researching. Which I do frequently, I might add.

There are so many more things that I love that I have included in my stories; by that, I mean that the research came first, the stories second. It doesn’t help that I have had dreams of being a character in the 1930s.

To be honest, I have done a lot of research about the 1930s, even in just my viewing habits. I think I could probably tell you enough about 30′s fashion and dress simply from what I have gleaned from, say, Poirot. Of course, Poirot is not the only 1930′s show I have watched/read, but it ranks as the most. Other questions boiled in my mind have been about the theatre in the 30s – A Game of Murder is not called that for nothing.

Knowledge is power: intellectus potentia est. Well, it’s specific terminology, in any case. With an interest in acting in general, it’s quite powerful for me to understand what they used to do with makeup and fake blood, for instance!

Well, that’s what I think. I could go on and on, but really – learning new snippets of knowledge delights me!

 

The rest of the May chain:

5^th – http://theloonyteenwriter.wordpress.com/

6^th – http://deborahrocheleau.wordpress.com/

7^th – http://bloodoverithaca.wordpress.com/

8^th – http://charleyrobson.blogspot.com/

9^th – http://musingsfromnevillesnavel.wordpress.com/

10^th – http://nonconformistwriter.blogspot.com/

11^th – http://dearsaul.wordpress.com/

12^th – http://missalexandrinabrant.wordpress.com/ [you are here]

13^th – http://insideliamsbrain.wordpress.com/

14^th – http://cinderscoria.blogspot.com/

15^th – http://emilyvaneaton.wordpress.com/

16^th – http://www.brookeharrison.com/

17^th – http://thespasticwriter.blogspot.com/

18^th – http://veewhoa.wordpress.com/

19^th – http://www.mandilynn.com/

20^th – http://theteenagewriter.wordpress.com/

21^st – http://avonsbabbles.wordpress.com/

22^nd – http://realityisimaginary.blogspot.com

23^rd – http://miriamjoywrites.wordpress.com/

24^th – http://anomalous93.blogspot.com/

25^th – http://thelittleenginethatcouldnt.wordpress.com/

26^th – http://ktlemonhead.wordpress.com/

27^th – http://dreamerheadquarters.wordpress.com/

28^th – http://paulinaczarnecki.wordpress.com/

29^th – http://www.lilyjenness.blogspot.com/

30th – http://teenscanwritetoo.wordpress.com/ (We’ll announce the topic for next month’s chain)

Character’s Reading List

Of course, reading is a big part of my characters’ lives. I was working on the almanac for my trilogy, and composed a bit about fiction and non-fiction reading in The Continent.

~

Although reading is not a popular leisure activity, it is still being utilised by those men of education, in order to collate and expand their theories. It is thus that the small library in the East wing of Costello Mansion is filled with books on warfare and medicine, for the main part.

The first record of the Costello compilation being opened was at the beginning of the twentieth century, with H Costello storing a few of the books he had written together with those he had acquired from fellow writers in different fields. This also made the fields as varied as opinion was.

Back then, writing was not a career, but a sport, and, as most sports, primarily for men. Only through the twentieth century did writing occur to women – for it was they who eventually had the most leisure time for writing.

However, the genres were not so constrained, and, if one happened to be in the knowledge about a subject (often with the status of Professor), there would likely be need for a book to be written for the sake of students.

Miniature sketch of one side of the library

In the time of Percival II and Phillip Costello, a large collection had grown, and, as a result of the small study-convert, the shelves had been built further up the three walls without windows, and the door had been decorated with faux-books to match. It was Percival II and Phillip who passed the most time amongst the books, two coffee tables and armchairs. Octavia Costello had come amongst the books during her later pregnancies for peace and quiet, as other Costello femmes had done in the past. In their sojourn in the Mansion, the wives of the elder Costello brothers did not so much share her interest; Lucy had her nurse-work, and Aimee preferred the leisure of company. On the other hand, Elyse and Cassandra Costello were often noticed darting in and out the room, showing that they shared their grandmother’s genes.

Of course, Percival and his father’s interests had been of the war. They strived for the tattered covers of old doctrines and past experiences, to gain more from what had been. Phillip, on the other hand, had an ulterior request from the tomes: that of entertainment.

He had first crept into the stuffed room as a boy who knew no better; the young man had an exploring mind, as many do. Perhaps that was the moment that philosophy caught Phillip’s eye. He scanned the shelves and discovered Descartes. But it had no been fact the young boy had hunted for.

He was looking for the sources of the stories his mother had once read to him. From where did the pure fiction of sky-creatures and far-away kings come?

Now a library seems an obvious answer, even one not so well adorned as the Costello Mansion’s place. Indeed, Phillip found fiction amongst the pages of circumstantial fact. He had no idea – as none of the Costellos had – that his great-grandfather had an interest in fictional worlds, too.

It was here that Phillip’s love of an old world endowed with luscious romance began. He has spoken of scandal a few times – this is to suggest that he enjoyed the conflict of a social society in his youth; though, he may also still possess the stubborn, Costello nature of enjoying an arrogant bit of trouble.

Examples of specific books in the library:

Teleological Philosophy – V and L Goldacre

The Red-Shift of the Moon (volume II) – Charles Ferroford

An Elementary Guide to War – H Costello

The Latin Primer - B H Kennedy

Fables for the Society Child – various

The Day the Sky-Creatures Soared – Quentin Farwether

A Murder of Letters in Suit – Alexander Bryant

Silk and Brocade – Theresa L’Acrond

~

Poem About Phaethon

That particular phrase caught my eye this week as a search term to get to my blog. I suspect they found my post on translating some of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The weird thing is, when I locked eyes with that search term, I had recently finished writing my own poem about Phaethon, semi-divine son of the Roman god Sol, in English, taking the story I had translated from the Latin and being liberal with it.

After all, I’m no epic writer; my poems can be long, but they are never that long.

So, here is my poem, Phaethon’s Horses (eques Phaethoni):

No prescience could halter his desire blazing bright

To grasp the slippery reins and bring smileless sunlight into night:

Poor Phaethon clutched at his prize, just as at his father’s name –

He cast a hot ambition redder than the roaring day.

It is a curse to be a god, to bear the world of men,

To drive a chariot across the sky, to stop, begin again,

But Sol’s son grew as half a god; he shut himself from fate,

Only natural was it, then: the warning came too late.

Too enchanted he became with manes all flowing with light,

Pyrois, Eous and Aethon – the fourth was Phlegon’s might,

pedibusque repagula pulsant, et pugnabant:

Running feet snatched those chains from the standing hand.

Four horses and a naïve boy, Shining but still a thief,

He stole the chance to fly up high – yet who was stolen? It was he:

Swept amongst the forceful breeze, the eyes of stars retained

Their glory piercing, shining brighter than the godchild’s name,

Fictitious teeth, simple to bear, they gnashed at the passenger;

His breath was frantic mists beneath the scorched air.

Seeing all, those ancient eyes watched the pouring sun glaze Earth,

With its steeds striving free, his peril from their mirth;

Poor Phaethon’s reign had slipped away, his day was drawing closed;

By no fall of tears will his roaming heat be doused.

Our setting sun fell North to South amidst the stellar disarray,

No heavenly quest could catch the chariot in its crooked sway.

Ethereal beasts have lashed at him their tongues dipped ice-bright,

And no more now has Phaethon’s eyes Phaethon’s light.

For his fate brought down the world and cursed cracked rivers dry,

The name of sun will shine no more when Hades’ pit’s raised high –

And what of horses, beating rough their wilderness in sky?

To bring the sun, to take the son, to lift the boy to die.

Not a Post

After the nice fluffiness of last week’s birthday week, I’ve not been having a very fortuitous week this week. After a particularly down day today and getting my last chapter polished for my Critique Partner, I have no energy for the Wednesday post (though, that’s not to say that I don’t have ideas and half-material).

Instead, here is an extract of the Continental Almanac I’m working on for background to the setting of my WTCB trilogy:

1983

Andrew Costello is born.

First successful train journey not ending in engine failure. The first families to travel include the Costello brood, the Villante heirs, and the Montgomery family, mother to whom is heavily-pregnant Anastacia, an Upper with mild skin-tone and gingery hair.

 

1984

Aimee Montgomery is born.

The first feminism rally recorded to allow women equal access to education is interrupted by higher-class ministers. However, the ladies catch the attention of lower-class workers and servants. Percival believes he cannot trust his father’s servants, so fires them and replaces them with a skeleton household of a cook and a butler, Tomas Richards. Richards’ wife occasionally serves as a wet nurse for the children when Octavia hosts.

The train is regarded as a highly-expensive mechanism. It is no longer used for short journeys, but for cross-Continent journeys.

 

1985

Percival Costello announces to ten-year-old Stuart that he will marry a woman chosen by his parents. To the boy, this seems entirely natural.

Octavia finds herself pregnant again. At first, she sets plans to make this her last, but she ‘knows’ the child will not be. During her first trimester, she begins having frightening dreams of the future and a black-haired girl with loose curls. She lies to Percival that the first dream was also the last.

Phillip Costello is born. Octavia adores her youngest, but retreats from society’s eye when the dreams continue, though now infrequent, leaving her weak and uncertain. She stops inviting Costello cousins to dine. When questioned, medical experts claim she has post-partum depression.

Maximillian Folster is born to Kenneth and Genevieve Folster. Their involvement with the servants and middle-class found them in the press. Now, the Folsters have survived, but tentatively.

 

1987

Venetia Costello, sent to a Service Home and already out of the public eye, dies.

Kian Costello steps in to look after the maturing family when Percival is called away to war. However, after making a pass at Octavia, he is banned from the house. Kian and Percival’s once-close friendship begins to deteriorate.

Octavia becomes more wary, and slips on a sharper edge. When Jodrell Masters comes to paint the family, she snaps and sends him away.

Confession Time About a Character!

A while back, I blogged about what I call ‘the Writer Phenomenon’, including where writers subconsciously use ideas of their world around them to shape their stories – it’s that idea that a story is never new.

I have no objection to this. If I found that a reader of my stories was inspired by a character of mine to (consciously or not) replicate them into a story of their own, I would beam.

However, my Writer Phenomenon has come to bite me. I picked up my favourite Jacqueline Wilson book yesterday (read so often it has a crease in the spine), to read through just because I could: Love Lessons. It’s quick and quirky, just as most Wilson books are, with a homeschoolled protagonist not fitting into her first school, but finding friendship in unusual places. And, whilst it’s a tad unrealistic (one page she’s wondering what it’s like to “fall so headily, instantly in love”; two or three chapters later she is able to describe the love interest in romantic, pictorial detail), it, on the other hand, makes perfect sense of that sudden, unrelenting love that takes siege of one.

So far so good. Until I was lying in bed trying to get to sleep and thinking about the characters. That’s when it hit me. I had lifted one of Triangle’s love interests almost straight from the pages. I must have been reading Love Lessons at one point when I began thinking about Triangle. Indeed, I know I was inspired to give Keith a goatee because the man in Wilson’s book did.

I guess it was just logical that he had dark, curly hair, too. And brown eyes “the colour of field-mud”, according to my protagonist.

But, as I thought about it last night, I realised something that I hadn’t bargained for. Keith. That is, the name. At first, it sounds strange that I didn’t recognise that my protagonist shared his name, too, but Wilson’s character uses the nickname Rax, from his surname ‘Raxberry’, and this is what the protagonist calls him for most of the book.

This is my confession: I may well have stolen her character and inserted him into my novel.

Of course, it’s not that simple. My Keith is, effectively, the bad guy, not sweet like young Rax – he has a sharp temper and does not forgive easily without dwelling on things he cannot change. In one section of the first draft, he becomes obsessive…

I don’t think my Keith would have found Wilson’s Keith very good company. He would remind him of his rival too much. They don’t share the same interests or fashion sense; they are heaps different in motive and personality. They just happen to share a first name and a dark goatee.

Still, my subconscious was a little cruel in being so exact, and it leaves me with the dilemma of whether to alter a character I have had formed in my conscious mind for over three years. Of course they are not the same person – and I continue to protest that – but the similarities are currently causing me annoyance. Hmm, I’ll keep thinking on the matter.

Sometimes I’m just too good.

Until next time. Alex.

Poirot and the Pretend Mystery

I like to have a murder mystery on the background when I’m writing a first draft, as it provides enough of a distraction for me to ignore some of my inner editor. On Friday, it was the return (amongst a Murder, She Wrote – another weakness of mine) of The Tragedy at Marsden Manor, another of those old series including Philip Jackson as Japp and Hugh Fraser as Hastings.

I liked its introduction, the introduction in which Poirot is transported to a foreign village for a very superficial reason, but ends up being tightly involved in another deadly game.

Mr. Norton runs a hotel and writes mysteries under the name ‘Clarissa’. When he gets stumped on one plot, he asks Poirot to come – and solve the fictitious mystery for him!

And that, Mr. Norton, is why you either write the ending first (a habit I have fallen into) or choose your murderer right from the beginning.

Anyway, it was this little diversion that reminded me (and fondly, I add) of A Game of Murder. I ought to edit that story soon, otherwise it will spend its time rotting in my brain! As the title suggests, A Game begins focused on the fictitious mystery the protagonist’s mistress organises for her own childish amusement.

Things spiral out of control in, as usual, her choice of companions for the afternoon, who all have their own secrets and motives for coming.

Whilst the whole idea of the game of murder is a main plot-device in spurring on the real mystery elements, this is not always the case, as shown by a couple of TV mysteries.

More often it’s only a prelude – or a link to the real mystery that is or will go on. I, personally, like this certain use of foreshadow, even when it does not touch on the real mystery. On the other hand, this…faintly tangible connection does puzzle me. If you are going to include a plot-device that quite mirrors your story, why not carry it through and link it so much more deeply?

Two Poirots? Not likely…

I guess I’m plugging my own story here by backing up my point with an example from A Game! For instance, the false game coops all the suspects together; it provides the opportunity for three separate thieves to carry out their plans, and eventually leads to a revelation of external police affairs, too.

Then again, I’m a big fan of linking and foreshadow. I bet you can tell that!

I don’t mind that lack of connection, though. The Poirot was effective with the comedy role of Mr. Norton. I think what we mystery writers enjoy is the chance to poke fun at our own genre. It’s not in thriller writing, but in the cosy, suspects-in-a-room mystery writing that likes to perpetuate itself with jocund imitations. Christie herself created the murder mystery writers in imitation of herself – and how she was never herself a big fan of her creation Poirot!

That way, the mystery writer cracks subtly away their own fourth-wall-structure: mysteries within mysteries.

The board-game cover. Appropriate, eh? I wish the British version cover was as wickedly delicious as this.

Have you ever read mysteries within mysteries, however facetious? What do you think? Apart from a sort of breaking the fourth wall, does it add to a piece of writing, or merely distract from it?