Character Flowers: Zara

Zara rubbed her face. She stood still. But Aidelle noticed her hand sneak up to the handle. “From the idea. From us. We are here and we keep moving. X exists.” The last bore the tone of a suggestion. Zara turned her big eyes onto Aidelle’s, asking for any affirmation of the idea that X was both hope and hope’s goal.

As portrayed in my head by Lucy Hale

Zara is an abstract, a work-in-progress. Not as a character: no, I know all about her – but as a persona.

There’s always been something quite mysterious about Zara beyond her not-supposed-to-exist-ence (!); even as an actual character whose perspective we get a glimpse of at the end of WTCB book 1, she is deliberately evasive of the readers. In addition, she becomes the protagonist of the next two books, which slips her into centre stage with ambiguous meaning.

As she is towards Aidelle. Thus, I put my mind to thinking of a flower that had elements of secrecy and mystery – of a darkness behind, but a possibility in front. I already had a few ideas from this.

To begin with it was colours. As I’m not a flower-expert (learning of new flowers is one of the things I already enjoy from this series), I Googled “small purple flowers”. I think, if Zara had a definite favourite colour, it would be around the colour of purple; she’s not a girl who delights in colours that are light and ‘airy’. The direct fact that she dresses in trousers not only contrasts Aidelle’s feminine side and concern with fashion – of which she would have said trousers are not fashion – but also emphasises the future she holds within her.

“Just because something has potentiality, doesn’t mean it necessarily has actuality. Existence is not a predicate. You may return home, you may not.”

Zara gave her a sceptical look. “I don’t aim for home.”

At times, Zara is savage. Not in the way Aidelle is with raw fury, but with a cruel trickery that she unveils to people occasionally. She is stubborn and willing to work for what she wants. In my hunt for symbolism, I kept my eyes out for flowers that not only looked so, but also had a spikiness within their pasts, too.

Zara is a Purple Pansy. From the French word for ‘thought’, pensée, the Pansy could be said to be a telepathic link between lovers – and what a link indeed is Zara between Aidelle and her fiancé. It is Zara who first alerts Aidelle to her time-trapped situation, and Zara who guides Aidelle, even when her own life is sapped away.

I was happy to find out that, in Italy, the Pansy can be known as ‘flammola’ – little flame. This suits Zara for her youth (she is one of the youngest characters in book 1) and for her sharp of tongue.

“When you came here, Zara, you brought me to life. Your fiery heart will flame on and on and on.” (an actual quote from Aidelle)

I chose to stick with the small purple-coloured head because, visually, it has a sharp demeanour whilst being beautiful. In my opinion, although small in size, the Pansy is not a fragile flower. Just as, though Zara’s upper-middle class roots and flowing black locks means she can quickly attract, she chooses to dampen her desirability by becoming a mechanic.

Too, the pansy often has a bright ‘eye’, a bright centre; this I believe links to the intelligence of both Aidelle and Zara.

Finally, purple symbolises memories – an apt match considering that Zara holds a lot of memories within her, a lot of abstract substance that she alone keeps solid. With Zara’s disappearance goes the family held in her memories.

The beautiful dark red pansy.

Character Flowers: Aidelle

Character as Flowers is a new section I’m doing for fun, where I take a character from my novel(s) and explain which flower best suits them. For When the Clock Broke, I may have the advantage, in that flowers is one of the themes of the novel. For the time-being, I intend to post on Fridays, but that may well change. Thanks go to Jae at Lit and Scribbles who brought up the suggestion.

“Her hair grew in its inflorescence in the fresh light; her beauty had just passed blooming.” ([from memory] early draft of chapter one.)

As depicted in my mind by a young Alex Kingston

Aidelle is visually the most memorable of the characters, with long, earthy curls that frame her face. I wanted a flower to reflect this ‘inflorescence’, even when the above quote no longer stands in the MS. She’s self-conscious about her appearance, notably that nose is crooked and her lips are thin, actually aspects that, in evolutionary psychological terms, would imply she is not healthy and would not have healthy offspring. Of course, it would be silly to believe such things without incorporating more paradigms of science. (Anyway, I’m not trying to make this post a Psychology one!)

Her self-consciousness is likely inflamed by her relationship with Phillip, which has thrown her into the social spotlight amongst the other debutants and higher-classed women who consider themselves more worthy – both in money and beauty – to marry Phillip.

Anyway, this has left Aidelle incredibly volatile, thus this is what I began looking for in a flower. Not a weak flower, no, but a changeable one or a deceptive, soft but sharp one.

“An inflorescence is a group or cluster of flowers arranged on a stem that is composed of a main branch or a complicated arrangement of branches.” (Wikipedia)

Aidelle is complicated – in life, in love, in her temperament. She is the fire to Phillip’s cool. One might argue that she is stroppy. She often goes with her heart, not her head, causing her to make impulsive decisions that lead to tears. This only added to my view that I wanted a flower with deep personality and a set of physical thorns to match.

If you mess with this flower, you get spiked!

Aidelle is an Orchid. If we’re being specific: a rich, dark hued orchid or a crown of thorns one. The flower is sharp to pick up, but beautiful in a non-traditional way.

There are many answers to my working question ‘what is the meaning of the orchid?’. Especially in WTCB, meanings are important to me – linguistically, I find them fascinating; from a spiritual view that everything has a place, I enjoy understanding the way the flowers are seen. Browsing in my research, I was particularly pleased by ProFlowers.com, which said of orchids:

“Orchids are a long-lasting and particularly elegant type of flower. Their graceful appearance draws immediate attention, and their reputation as an exotic and unusual flower evokes a sense of refinement and innocence…Today, the meanings of orchids are generally regarded as symbolic of rare and delicate beauty.”

I could pick many single words out of that paragraph: elegant, rare, refinement, reputation…

Ironically, ProFlowers goes on to say that Orchids have, historically, been used to symbolise the combination of three traits: wealth, love, and beauty. The certain socioeconomic conflicts that arise throughout When the Clock Broke. Phillip’s inner turmoil is to choose between his fiancée or his inheritance; the various love-affairs of the book(s) throw each character out of kilter because of how well love does to alter the psyche; and, as I mentioned earlier, Aidelle’s own personal self-depreciation because of her unusual features.

Finally, it’s worth mentioning that Orchids are the second most popular houseplant (until recently, I actually had one in my own living room). This little, seemingly-irrelevant fact comes into wonderful play when one considers that Aidelle visits her marital house for the first time in chapter one and spends the rest of the novel there.

She is a houseplant.

Interviewed by Deborah R

I was interviewed by Deborah Rocheleau about reaching my goal of completing the first draft of Triangle. As you may well know, this happened about a month ago in the Easter break. However, the interview was only put onto the web a few days ago.

The summary-thing:

Andrea has never believed in love at first sight. Yet, on the eve of her thirtieth birthday, she feels it’s time to settle down, just as she bumps into local bank employee, Keith. He’s dull, but he evidently likes her, and Andrea lets him pursue her to the point of moving in with him when she finds herself homeless.

But when a stranger with a familiar name turns up on her new doorstep, Andrea gets a taste of everything she had before called a trick of the mind. He’s not perfect, but neither is Andrea. And, in spite of her better judgement against the coincidences that link this man to her, she finds herself desperately helping him.

Here are some highlights:

DR: You set a specific word-count goal to reach for your romance novel. How did you choose that end point? Did this number intimidate you, or were you confident you could reach it?

Me: Well, it was more like a later-moment idea. I didn’t sit down and think “I want to make this novel over 100K”. In fact, it was only about the middle of last year that I realised I could actually finish the novel. I kept adding to it. And kept adding… It occurred to me that I could set a goal and make it more interesting. This also meant that I could allow my chapters to be more in-depth.

DR: One important thing when setting a goal is giving yourself a deadline. Have you found a deadline motivates or detracts from your writing?

Me: *Laughs* Yes, motivates. I like saying “I wrote this when I was a teenager” (even if the certain ‘this’ is shorthand for ‘first draft’), so setting my 18th birthday as a deadline was a real motivator.

 

DR: Who helped you the most to complete your goal?

 

Me: In particular, a friend’s cousin, Lillie, amused me with her comments, some very literary, some simply – “grr, Keith, how could you do this?” – personal attacks on characters. Reader reaction makes writing so much more fun!

 

To read the full interview, just go to Deborah’s blog.

A Little More About Time

The ‘Teens Can Write, Too!’ blog chain this month will be about writerly research, and whilst you won’t be hearing from me for another two weeks, it got me thinking. Not about the specifics of my research, but about the lack of attention I give it.

I guess this is simply because, for When the Clock Broke, researching physics and time is something that is not out of my way. I would have researched those things anyway.

“She rotated the miniature clock in her hands, pink nails tapping any diminutive cog or screw she found of interest.” (chapter 24)

I happened to be editing WTCB yesterday and, though I explicitly have a clock broken open and investigated, there were certain details I’d kept from the neglected first draft. For instance, in the above. Cogs: fine. All clocks have cogs. But screws? Research was needed online. Or – in very worst case scenario – I could crack open my own, personal carriage clock to pick out its innards.

But I wasn’t going to do that. Surprisingly, though, there aren’t that many images of dismantled carriage clocks on Google.

And that’s when (for the second time), I came across this beauty.

Yes, it’s a carriage clock. It’s huge. Oh, and it costs £500,000.

I tell you what, though, I was more amused by the little the article on dailymail.com said.

Any fan of science fiction knows that time is a complicated thing.

But rarely do you get the chance to put something that could easily have been sprung from the innards of the Tardis on your mantelpiece.

Yup. Time is a complicated thing!

Beyond the sci-fi, it runs out so quickly, and the seconds are fine sand.

As shown, though, time can be ornate. Living time is a theme (and, ultimately, plot-device) of WTCB, and each clock encountered offers something different. Aidelle’s carriage clock is elegant but fragile and a little odd, like herself. The clock in her bedroom, forever not working, is set with diamonds; perhaps this subconsciously suggests the merging of upper-class with a middle-class home. Each Costello brother was given a neat pocket-watch, half-palm sized, for their eighteenth; the fact that only some of them have their pocketwatches remaining is key to the theme.

And, of course, Zara’s special wristwatch  is the most living of them all (until I debate with myself otherwise!).

I could argue that even the timepiece in the Costello’s entrance hall has a life. Its regal and doesn’t stop for anyone.

“The slight second hand of the ornate clock above them juddered, caressing ivory numbers every five seconds. It was very precise time. The hour was ten, and the minute was exactly a quarter to the next hour: eleven of the marmoreal board. The date looked as though it was stamped below, but was, in fact, part of a marble flip-chart that rotated with the rising sun; and the boys read the date displayed as the 28th of August.” (chapter 25)

The sad thing is that even I take the use of time in my novel for granted. Yes, I have come to scuffle with it during editing sometimes – to increase pace and add continuity I had to make the whole novel set over the events of only a twelve-hour. Nevertheless, I do come to appreciate it. The Costello hallway clock may only appear once, but without its time, the brothers would not really be able to head to the conclusion of the story.

In this way, though some clocks matter and some are trivial, all clocks matter.

Art Feature, Floor-Length Elegance, and Random Things

This picture has been catching my eye since I saw it on DeviantART when it was featured a month ago. ‘Arrival in Utopia’ by ~Lipatov.

They declared it as ‘dieselpunk’, but I can see the idea of the train station and such fitting in so well with the worldbuilding of When the Clock Broke. Of course, I also enjoy the 1930s feel of the piece, though I couldn’t imagine Aidelle stepping off a train. For one thing, she has no need to; for the other, it would not be culturally fortuitous for Aidelle to be caught in a skirt of that length; like the 1900s, the women are more expected to wear floor-length elegance (and, yes, trousers are allowed, but not popular).

like so. Thanks, Google

Also: my word of the week is EMBELLISH, meaning to add to, verbally, or physically beautify. It comes from the Latin adjective ‘bellus -a -um’ (pretty) and ‘em’ as a prefix signalling increase, though it went through French on the way to English (thanks, Dictionary.com!).

Other random things:
Jae was kind enough to interview me for her April Featured Blogs segment. I talk about everything from Recurring Characters to Lewis Carroll.

I’m working with Deborah R for a post on her blog about reaching my goals in finishing Triangle, so I’ll link to that when it’s done.

Extract: Freidrich the Uncle

A little deviation today: an extract from my new work-in-progress…

She kicked a stone across the pathway and grumbled. First Professor Leigh, and now the Costellos. Couldn’t she be given a break for even a second to throw her thoughts into order? At most, she could use this hour.

The stone bounced down three dips before a shadow robbed Zara of the last light under which she observed the road. Zara looked up, about to spout some remark of polite distaste to the man in her way.

Thank goodness she had bitten her tongue for a minute! Tall and lanky with a dash of grey on the tips of his dark hair, the figure casting the shadow in the gas-light folded his arms over his brown suit, an attaché case dangling from his fingers.

“Uncle Freidrich! What are you…?”

“Good nighttime, Zara.”

Oh, lordy, he was using that tone again. What did he want?

Instead, she asked, “What are you doing here?”

“And what are you?” he retorted. “I daresay these streets are not a place for young women to be after dark.”

It took a lot of effort on Zara’s part to stop her snorting. As if Freidrich cared!

She scooped a fallen lock out of her eyes. “I needed some fresh air. Are the rest of the family here?”

“I alone came ahead – for business.” Freidrich unfolded his arms, displaying the case with pride.

“Excuse me,” Zara said. Five minutes of conversation was more than enough time spent alone with Freidrich. Zara hoped his fiancée knew what she was getting herself into.

Simultaneously, they both stepped to the left. Zara leant to the right and Freidrich did the same. She scowled. As she stepped back to the left, he went to cross her path, and their feet caught. Freidrich tumbled, a curse falling from his prim lips.

That was more like it. “Not so much your father’s son now, eh? I remember the ‘graces’ of Aimee. Your mother had no more class than my grandmother did – and yet they were treated so differently. How was that fair?”

Freidrich snarled and he lunged at her wrist. Trapped within his grasp – even if it was simply to pull himself up – Zara shrieked. Only when Freidrich was looking down upon her again did they both realise that the case had fallen open, bright sheets of writing paper covering the curb.

He snarled again, releasing Zara so that he could gather the papers back into his arms. One had drifted across Zara’s foot. She lifted it.

“Frei –” But, even in the poor light, words had caught Zara’s eye and, in turn, her throat. ‘Proposition for social reform’ gleamed in Freidrich’s own hand. She skim read some of the text – enough, indeed, to cause that hot taste of disgust to rise up in her throat.

“Freidrich. What is this? You want to rid The Continent of the middle and lower classes?”

His case was back in his hands; his eyebrows were raised.

“That will mean less of the mixed ones,” he said with much deliberation. She knew he was deciding the best way to get the paper from her. Zara brought it closer to her chest. “When Uncle Phillip dies –”

“Don’t talk about my grandfather like that!” she cried. “How can you even say ‘dismiss the middle class’? It would mean the end of me, of my education. You want to destroy your own family?”

It was horrific. Zara stared at Freidrich for as long as she could, noting that his eyes locked onto hers as long as she kept them. She twisted the paper in her hands until it was a slip – small enough to hide in her coat pocket.

But the motion of her hands had finally caught Freidrich’s attention.

“Here! Give me that document.”

She narrowed her eyes. “I won’t let your superciliousness destroy us.”

It was tucked alongside her inkpen and her key to the time-manipulator. Taking a deep breath, Zara uncoiled her fingers from her pocket.

And she ran.

Eliminating Scene-Hogs

(and the pratfalls of NaNo)

Attack of the characters…

When I wrote the first draft of my ‘main’ novel, half of it was for NaNo. I guess I wasn’t thinking/concentrating.

I mean, it’s fair to say that I didn’t set out with the thoughts “I want to make this marketable, easy to edit and in a set person that doesn’t deviate.”

I was thinking more about the novel I had chosen to abandon so I could try my hand at NaNo.

I’ve been reading up on everything to do with multi-protagonist novels because it has finally hit me in the face – my novel is multi-protagonist. By proxy. After all, the story unfolds in two different ‘timestreams’.

As I say, that wasn’t my original intention. My original intention was to tell an awesome, clever story about time-travel and love never giving up and philosophy. It just happened to turn into multi-protagonist when I worked out that open third is much more difficult to write than close third. And more of the book was in close third. I couldn’t say how much of a majority, though.

Some books do well with random perspectives; I’m trying to eliminate that from my own. Yes: I’m getting rid of characters who decided that the scene was there for the taking – even, in one instant, with the protagonist being part of the action (in this particular scene, young me decided to write in general open third)!

So, I’m taking these scene-thieves and – almost – throwing them into the background whilst the protagonist takes the floor. Or, I suppose, I could make these characters more dominant – if that’s what makes more sense.

But, writers, I wouldn’t recommend this. I simply consider it because it leaves more open for the sequels and because I have scenes that I’m not ready to give up yet…beautiful, random scenes (xD!)

It may be bad enough having two or three recurrent perspectives… Not that this is about juggling them. I feel capable to ‘juggle’ them because, as I said, that’s what the novel requires.

And it’s not really about the characters, but about the story they are living.

What about you? Have you ever written a first draft to find it littered with perspectives that shouldn’t be there?

 

(PS. I have a lot of random ideas for random posts this week, so bear with if it’s not quite the usual stuff. So many random things running through my head again!)

Costello World-Building

I was doing a little bit of background writing to cement the literary value of each Costello brother in my mind, and I thought I’d share the introductory paragraph of world-building.

~

It’s clear that if one is born with Costello genes, one is destined for more than civilian normality.

But what does this mean?

In the word of The Continent, the Costello family are untitled barony, with a history of war; that is, their alumni and ancestry have aided The Continent for many centuries against the greatest enemies of the Second Continent, even working so far as to have their own Costello Platoon, in which serves every brother and the best fighters from the Big College.

It is this, hence, that they attract great media attention – especially every Costello son born, on whose head a high courting price is laid at birth; to share in the Costello bloodline is a great honour for any maiden.

However, each generation’s Matriarch and Patriarch are aware of this. It is a gruelling regime one must go through to qualify for the marriage selection from which each male chooses when he is ready to be wed. In the current, twenty-first century, the two preliminary criteria are class and beauty. Any woman who applies but falls short to the eye of Costello parents in either category does not make it into selection. Thus, to be Mrs. Costello is one of the highly-prized statuses of our time. Few other families of status apply such heavy rule to courtship and copulation.

It is, in final, the son’s choice, but this has never stopped Costello selection being so rigorous. It follows that there are going to be rouge sons who find themselves out of favour with the large presses and Society Pages, be this due to their choice of wife or due to their acts in society. One must keep, of course, a quiet eye in careful situations, lest the Costello name be dragged down.

As the stress of the Second Continent’s new technology augments on the brothers of tradition, and the class platonic plates shift above rumours of a social revolution, it is no surprise that the twenty-first century has torn rifts between the new and the old generations of Costellos.

Editing and Exams

(Both of which are looming for me)

I think ‘word economise’ is the best piece of editing advice I’ve read/been given. It may be more general than some other pieces of advice, such as “remove all ‘could’, ‘just’ and ‘seemed’ phrases”, but editing – and even writing first or subsequent drafts – with the phrase ‘word economise’ in my head is useful. This is because it allows me to think small – and thinking small leads to less elaborate turns of phrase.

It is particularly useful for me as someone who tends to make a phrase-mountain out of a molehill. I readily admit (nowadays) that my writing can be too florid and I should get into the habit of saying a point in three words, not five.

Costa Rican word-mountain…

So, anyway, it turns out that I also do this in my essays. For Philosophy, that’s not so much of a problem; the humanities are creative and allow flexibility. However, for Psychology, structure is needed. Rigid, unflorid, statement-and-evidence type sentences.

Once again, I have great overlap between my writing work and my school work, even when they clash and throw each of my schedules off kilter. (There are never enough hours in a week!)

Here, for Psychology, I’ve been told that not only can I cut away the nice sentence structures, for instance replacing ‘such as’ with its shorthand version ‘eg’, I should make my sentence as concise as possible. Oh joy. Short sentences.

The annoying thing is, I can tell that these good words of editing (despite sometimes being against my natural written flow) are coming into my subconscious and leaving with their mark pressed upon my mind. I may not yet have transferred all the skills to the essays, but they are coming through in my novel. Longer sentences, read aloud, are being chopped, changed and converted into shorter sentences.

I’m working on the second half now, and, though finding this half the more difficult, there is some ease in it being the tenser half where short sentences are coming in very handy.

In this way, editing is coming back and forth, from school to my novel, and from the workings of my novel to the crafting of my school essays.

And then I will be the happy squirrel with the nut… (Yeah, these picture-links are pretty intangible…)

Work-In-Progress Fun Facts

I’ve reached a slump in my editing process and so have been distracting myself (*cough* procrastinating *cough*) by assembling the final chapters of the first draft of A Tale of Moscow Mysteries (OMM). It has been reminding me just how much I love the 16-yr-old protagonist: Agnetha King.

Work-in-progress fun facts

“I’m surprised I didn’t spot it beforehand. Look at me, I’m falling prey to that disease which grips most detectives at some point. I’m becoming thick.”

1. In my original OMM character list, written as I travelled across Costa Rica in the summer of 2011, Agnetha is described simply by ‘likes puzzles, hates cheese’. I knew her so much back then that I felt no need to give her any more information!

Agnetha King…maybe.

2. Of course, Agnetha is a recurring character. But she’s not the only one (luckily). Supporting character, Caroline, once an ambiguous on-off antagonist, is the one to call Agnetha back into action.

Too, Alicia makes a reappearance, if only for the last two chapters and the epilogue.

Agnetha fights Vladimir, sketch

3. I thought I might end up with 20 chapters, the identical number to the first book – albeit with double the amount of words in each chapter – but, alas, the final pieces cause a surplus of one or two more chapters.

4. Favourite character? I was compiling a list of my favourite self-created characters and, unsurprisingly, Agnetha came in second for the ladies. However, I can’t allow her to top this list.

Favourite supporting character? I’ve been spending a lot of time with Richard Thomason in these last chapters as he becomes crucial to Agnetha’s sense of the mysteries. Although I thought him unassuming at first, his revelations have shown me a softer side to his character that I love.

Agnetha and Richard break into Tretyakov Gallery. Black and white concept drawing:

The colour version can be found: here

5.Favourite scene? I have a fondness for Agnetha fighting with the inspectors on her cases, and I also have favourite scenes during times of her snarkiness. Suffice to say, I have a lot of favourites scenes. Here, however, Agnetha manages to reconcile with Inspector Simnova for a while when she finds herself in a tight hiding spot: 

~

“Miss King…we have priority to walk through the tourists. Unharmed. There’s no use hiding when they’re going to be coming and going for a while. Besides, you’ve no reason to hide.”

But in that instant, as I prepared to step out into the group, chance thrust me one reason.

With a substantially loud gasp, I retreated into the hiding space. The Inspector shot me his glare again, peeking out through the door to assess the situation I had just seen. His eyebrows, in true fashion, rose higher.

“Miss King,” he said, staring at me from his tall post, “am I to believe that your mother doesn’t know that you are here?” For it was she who had just wandered in via another tourist group, eager to see the Hall and clear her head. “How old are you, might I ask?”

“I’m old enough to be here on my own without permission,” I growled, closing my eyes as I turned my face away and waited for the reprimands to come.

In the silence that followed, Inspector Simnova clutched my shoulders and turned my body to face him. I opened my eyes. There followed an impressed look from the detective.

~