Bad writing

Part of being a good author is not being a bad author. Tautologous though this may sound, I think there is a distinction. There are competent but uninspired authors, and there are inspired but flawed authors (some of whom sell extremely well!). Good writing needs both creativity and technical ability, and a lot of that technique is the avoidance of flaws. Some things that I try actively to avoid, and also those that make others' writing at best tiresome and at worse unreadable, as follows:

• Character inconsistency. People acting 'out of character' and doing/saying things which that character would not do/say is the most cardinal of sins. At all times must every character stay within their own bounds (development aside), and at all times must they be believable as people.
• One-dimensional characters. Finding the balance between this and the above is tricky, but shallow characters who have a very limited range of predictable behaviour can be very tedious.
• Continuity errors, anachronisms etc.
• Cliche. Not all university professors wear tweed jackets with leather patches, not all secretaries chew gum incessantly and speak in a nasal Jewish-American accent, not all villains cackle maniacally and rant about power, but lazy writers don't take the trouble to create characters outside these stereotypes. Also, adding miscellaneous physical impairments, bleeding eyes and so forth, does not add depth to a character.
  
• Focus on the world, not the people. This is especially a problem in (bad) sci-fi/fantasy, where one feels that the author has thought a lot about all the cool things in the world they have created, and the people/lifeforms running around inside it are merely there to wield the Sword of Deity Slaying or fly the VPL-0134 Super Starfighter of Doom. Sure, fantastic scenarios can provide very interesting backdrops for good stories, but they should not be the story itself. People are interesting, made-up things aren't.
• Deus Ex Machina. All the tension built up through the plot is diffused in one lazy magic ending.
• Pace. Things that are not interesting but are necessary take far too long to exposit, or things that are interesting are not dwelled on enough.
• Self-parody. Usually the sign of a long-running series running out of steam, this is a sure-fire sign of a shortage of ideas.
  

Ages of Man : III

(this is Edward & George's first scene together).

George was sitting by the window, waiting for the arrival of his grandfather. He wasn't expecting him for another quarter of an hour, but George had nevertheless been staring out of the window for twenty minutes already. His parents were the proud owners of a perfectly functioning doorbell, and he had no reason to believe that his grandfather had any serious lack of skill in its operation, but he still felt the urgent desire to watch his ancestor inaccurately park his estate car and, it was hoped, walk up the garden path to seek admission. He didn't know why he felt such urges, but his mother always kept vigil for at least an hour in advance of any ETA, and it wouldn't do to insult the family solidarity.

Having successfully deposited his enormous car, Edward was beginning to contemplate the tricky doorbell conundrum when the door opened of its own accord, revealing behind it a pasty teenage boy with a runaway fringe who was vainly, and indeed vainly, trying to disguise his obvious nervousness.

"Hello, Grandpa" said he, proffering a hand.

"Hello there, lad!" said Edward, taking it. "You're looking ever so much taller than when I last saw you".

"You're looking ever so much shorter since I last saw you!" replied George, with just enough edge in his voice to discourage any further discussion of the subject; in his experience no-one over the age of twenty had the faintest recollection of the hideous embarrassment inherent in being the object of such a conversation, and he went out of his way to remind them as politely as he could manage. He also didn't like to point out that they'd seen each other some nine months previously at his grandmother's funeral, and any subsequent increase in height was attributable exclusively to the growth of his hair. "Do come in. Good journey over?"

"Bit of traffic on the ring-road, but I'd expected it and left in good time."

"Can I offer you a drink? I have some tea in the pot." George was an excellent host, but very seldom had anyone to practise on.

"No thanks, I'd like to get straight on, got my driving head on now!"

George gave the mildly sycophantic guffaw he had been taught to use in such situations. "Right well I'd better tidy up the kitchen before I leave." It was spotless apart from a steaming teapot, two matching mugs and a plate of biscuits in protractor-perfect formation.

"Your parents about?"

"They're at Pilates."

"Oh well, I'll see them next week I suppose. Is this your luggage?" exclaimed Edward, gesturing at three old-fashioned leather suitcases in the hallway. "Are these your father's tatty old cases? Yes, they have his initials. I thought these got thrown out years ago. No matter, I'll pop them in the car. Are you quite sure you need to take this much stuff?"

George was proud of his ancient family luggage, and had expected his grandfather to be rather more pleased to see it. Having tidied the kitchen, he picked up his viola case, locked the front door behind him, and went out to the car. He then pretended to have forgotten something, and went back into the house to check that he hadn't left the gas on, even though he hadn't used it all morning. Thus satisfied, he locked the front door again and took his seat in the car, worrying that he hadn't locked the front door but being too proud to turn back a second time. He wondered for a moment why he'd agreed to come on the trip - he wasn't used to being with groups of people he didn't know, and he certainly wasn't used to being with his grandfather without his parents being there.

Ah well, he thought, it will be an adventure.

Ages of Man : thoughts so far

I've got quite a strong idea now of what the two main characters will be like, and I'm finding it fairly easy to write things in their voices. The two pieces I've written are the first contact the reader will have with the characters, so they essentially serve the same purpose as the descriptions I set out earlier (obviously less explicitly). Little set-pieces like the letter, and the minutes (which I think can work as a thread running through the book), are fun, but I'm a little worried about writing long passages of bog-standard descriptive prose. Dialogue is fine - I've done this before for the stage - but descriptive text is something I will have to learn how to do. The whole public school setting is a little cliched, but this is I think justified to introduce the character quickly, and it really won't be dwelled on.

I'm already regretting the working title of Ages of Man, which doesn't really capture where I want to go. I don't think now that it will have much about one person growing up to be like another, which is something that I would like to explore in future, but I don't think this is the right outlet. I haven't a good alternative yet. They say you should think of the title first and write the rest later, because by the time the work is finished you stand no chance of changing the name. This is exactly what happened with Guilds, which at no point did we ever think was the perfect title, but we never came up with anything better, so it stuck.


I don't know yet where the book is going, whether it will be largely character-based humour, or possibly turn into a total farce a la Tom Sharpe. I've also got to figure out where the narrative voice sits, whether it will change to see the world in the same way as the main character in the scene, or whether there will be a fixed viewpoint.

Plenty to think about!

Ages of Man: II

Dear Grandfather,

Thank-you very much again for your kind invitation to join your orchestra for the coming tour. As I said on the telephone, it is very gracious of you and the orchestra to consent to have me play with you. It will be very educational playing with so many experienced players, and I hope to learn a lot by it. It will be jolly nice to spend some time with you as it's been a few years now since the days when you taught me to skim stones on the beach! Perhaps we could find a nice shingly beach somewhere and try again?
Time at school is passing swiftly, though I'm looking forward to coming home for the summer. I was in a play last week; we did A Midsummer Night's Dream along with the local girls' school. I was only one of the Rude Mechanicals, but I got cheers when I tripped up Bottom and hit him over the head with my shovel. He thinks it was all an accident, but I had such a small part that I thought I ought to do something interesting. Daniel Chorley-Phillips told me it was the only funny thing he'd ever seen me do, and he's never nice to anybody. I rather think I have acquired a Reputation. I even got double-helpings of custard all week!
I hope you have heard from Father; he was meant to come to see the play, but he had to cancel. I don't think he's coping very well with all that has happened; he's a tough fellow and I'm sure he'll be alright, but I'm a little worried about him. He seems a little distant on the telephone, which isn't like him.
Anyway, I must sign off, I've got plenty to do this evening.

Looking forward to seeing you soon,

George.

BOOK III: HARRY PINTER AND THE PENSIONER ASHKENAZY

Harry hears news of an evil old man called Ashkenazy who, not content
with terrorising young conductors with a piano (by which to say he has
the piano, not the young conductor (by which to say he does not have the
young conductor - this is a family book)), seeks to hunt them down and
exterminate them.

Higher-E, meanwhile, has a magic artifact which allows her to travel in
time but not, alas, sing in time. She remains one step ahead of
everyone else, which gets tedious after a while.

After some confusing revelations, it turns out that a bad guy had
been handed down through generations of Rowan's family, disguised as
their beloved pet onion. Ashkenazy turns to Harry, black-gloved hand
extended:

"I am your God-father".
"Nooooooooo!" said Harry.

One little, two little, three little Endian?

The date and time are now, roughly, 13:08, 23rd Jun 2008. Seems correct to you?

It makes no sense.

Why do we habitually mix endian-ness? This is a term used to denote whether the most significant digit (in this case the year) is placed on the left, with successively smaller digits on its right, or on the right, with successively smaller digits on its left. You read 1,234 as 'one thousand, two hundred and thirty-four' (big-endian), not as 'four thousand, three hundred and twenty-one' (little endian). (The name, incidentally, comes from Gulliver's Travels, where two rival factions were at war over which end of a boiled egg should be eaten first).

Big-endian and little-endian make an equal amount of sense - either is an arbitrary choice. Mixed endian-ness, however, makes no sense. No-one these days would say 'one thousand, two hundred, four-and-thirty', because that would be reading the digits out of order. Yet we are happy to do this with dates! Hour:minute:second, day/month/year is small:smaller:smallest, big/bigger/biggest (The US system even more so - 07/11/08 is the 11th July, so the numbers are ordered: bigger/big/biggest!). I, for one, would write the current time as 2008/06/23 13:16:23, which maintains a consistent endian-ness throughout. This blogging software, alas, does not support this option (neither does Microsoft Excel!), even though it is one of only two possible formats which makes logical sense (the other being 23:16:13 07/11/08, which few people would use!).

The same concept applies to domain names, which start little endian (news.bbc.co.uk) up to the first slash, when they magically become big-endian (/sport1/hi/cricket/default.stm). Tim Berners-Lee himself says that he wishes he'd made web-addresses consistently big-endian (e.g. uk.co.bbc.news/sport/) .

It is too late now...

Ages of Man : I

(note: this is experimental writing on my part, and I reserve the right to change things arbitrarily, and to jump around the plot as suits. This is a first attempt at an opening section.)

Item 3: To receive the Tour Manager's report

Mr Coote stood to deliver his report on the forthcoming tour of the South Coast. The coach is booked within the budget set. Accomodation has been booked for all four legs of the tour, but in some cases the orchestra will be split between several bed and breakfasts as it is too large to fit in one, and that single members would have to share a twin room. Mr Kent pointed out he could think of a few people he would like to share with, to which Mr Coote responded that sharers would be put together on the grounds of their sex. Mr Kent said that this was exactly what he had in mind to which Mrs Sharpe replied that there was no need for that sort of language. Mr Coote continued, saying that he had liased with his counterpart in the choir. They are having trouble raising interest for the tour, but still expect to go ahead. Mr Sharpe then asked Mr Kent how he was getting on with filling the gaps in the orchestra for the tour Mr Kent replied to state that he had sorted out his viol tendencies, but had a distinct pain in the brass. Mrs Sharpe reminded Mr Kent that there was no need for that sort of language. It was generally agreed that the tour was shaping up nicely, and the chair asked for his thanks to the organisational team's efforts to be recorded.

Edward heard the post land heavily on the mat, and knew without looking what had arrived. Hurriedly opening a thick envelope, he pulled out the minutes from last week's orchestra committee meeting. Poring over them, his breakfast getting cold, his gleeful expression was interrupted only by the occasional tut at the spelling of Mrs Sharpe, the reluctant minutes secretary. He picked up the telephone and punched in a number from memory.

"Ah, Mrs Sharpe. Edward Kent here. Yes. I hate to bother you with more of that cursed committee business, but I just got the minutes from the last meeting and have a few comments. Oh don't worry, it's no trouble at all. No, really. You know I don't like to nitpick, but you have some spelling errors under item 3 - accommodation has two 'm's, and liaise takes two 'i's - one either side of the 'a', like two thorns straddling a rose. No, "a rose", not "arose". You missed some punctuation as w--, oh, I'll bring them in for the next meeting. Quite. Funny this, me telling you about your language after you telling me off for mine! All in good fun, you know, just trying to brighten up another boring old meeting. You know if you ever need any help I'm on the end of a telephone. No, I'm not saying that you need help, but I'm here all the same. It's no trouble. See you on Thursday. Bye."

BOOK II: HARRY PINTER AND THE CHAMBER-MUSIC OF SECRETS

(note: I wrote these some time ago, but am posting them now to help fill out the blog in its early stages. )

We rejoin Harry in his second year as a music student, in which time he has learnt how to conduct in 4 in a slowly-decreasing tempo that was too slow to start with. He is now learning the rules of Orquichtra, a favourite sport for musicians. Oliver Offenbach is explaining the rules.

"Each team has ninety-two players and one conductor. The players do a variety of very difficult things you needn't worry about, each of which scores one point. The conductor does something very easy indeed, and gets awarded one hundred million points" said Oliver.
"Doesn't that render the other players a bit pointless?" said Harry.
"Typical conductor!" tutted Oliver.
"This could be the start of a beautiful friendship" said Harry.

Dumdedum exposes the plot:

"You were struck as a fetus by the baton of Baron VoleKiller. He wrote a book of chamber music for the serpent, a renaissance instrument. It is much too difficult for a twelve-year-old, but you must conduct it." said Dumdedum.
"Aren't serpents brass instruments? Surely they listen to no conductor?!" said Harry.
"Only you and the Baron are able to talk to serpent-players." said Dumdedum.

Harry finds a few serpents, and opens the score. He starts to beat a 4-4 time in which every beat is a slightly different length, and blames the resulting mess on the players not watching him properly. He is savagely attacked by the D.C. Al Cobra hidden on the last page, but vanquishes it by realising that "Baron VoleKiller" is simply an obvious anagram of his enemy's real name: "Ron Aieolllrv Baker".

"Ron Baker! How could I miss such an obvious anagram? Gosh, his everyday name rearranges to an amazing super-villain alias, with title and everything!" said Higher-E, resolving whole chapters of tension with one hackneyed plot device.
"Snot" said Rowan, feeling he should contribute something.

Is this a pun?

If forced at gunpoint to name a favourite book, I would choose Jingo, by Terry Pratchett. Its many merits I will not extol here, but will instead speculate on a throwaway line near the end:

"Veni, vici ... Vetinari".

Vetinari is the name of a character who has been around for some twenty books prior to this, and spent the duration of the book attempting to prevent a war (and succeeding). Knowing TP's propensity for punnery, especially in (sometimes approximate) Latin (cf. Feet of Clay), I find it hard to believe that he lazily stuck one of his characters' names on the end of a well-known phrase without considering what it means. I am far from an expert in Latin, so looking into this involved electronic translation tools, with all the attendant problems. Using the downloaded tool QuickLatin I punched in the offending phrase. There is apparently no exact translation, but the only close match is vetare, which is "To prevent" (deriving from veto), making the phrase approximately "I came, I conquered to prevent".

Accepting the speculation inherent in using such a tool, and my own incompetence in the language, this is a very compelling translation - it is precisely what the Vetinari character did in the book. It follows that TP probably thought of the pun first, and then wrote a book purely to have the perfect opportunity to use it. If this is true, then the crowning glory comes earlier in the book, where he riffs on the subject of General Tacticus' use of the phrase "Veni Vidi Vici", stating that he must have thought of this pithy phrase first and then looked for somewhere to go and conquer so that he could use it. If TP has indeed written a (marvellous) book around a three-word pun, and told us that was what he did, then I am hopelessly lost in admiration.

I can't find anywhere on the web that attempts to translate this phrase, and if anyone reading this is more competent to comment then I would be delighted to hear from you.

Ages of Man : Background

Of the ideas I'm currently toying with, one of the more promising is a story (I think a novel rather than a stage performance of some kind) about a middle-aged man nearing retirement - Edward - and his teenaged grandson - George. Edward is a fairly recent widower after forty years of marriage to his first sweetheart, and both he and his grandson are stumbling for the first time into the arena of romance, and form an unexpected bond through their shared experiences. The setting for the action is the tour of an amateur orchestra of which they are both members, which affords ample opportunity to poke gentle observational fun at the English middle class, and at amateur musicians. The working title derives from a Titian painting Three Ages of Man, which depicts the same person as a baby, a man in his prime, and an old man contemplating death (link). In this instance, it is not the same person, but three (the father playing a supporting role) who share a strong family resemblance but have their own distinct characteristics. (Anyone who has met the men in my paternal family will not doubt where I draw this from...)

Edward is sixty-four, and is approaching retirement from a moderately successful career as a civil engineer. He believes himself to be smartly dressed at all times, but his clothes are too threadbare these days for this to be true. His wife died a year ago, and he now feels ready to find someone else; he wants someone bright and energetic, in contrast to his brooding wife. He is terrified of dying alone. He is generally cheerful and friendly, and superficially well-liked, but people tend not to want to get to know him well. He bumbles. He plays bassoon, and has been an enthusiastic member of the orchestra since its foundation in 1980; he is no better a player now than then. He makes jokes about the committee being boring and pointless, but is its keenest and most diligent member.

George is seventeen, and in his final year at an all-boys school and looking forward to university. He is a little awkward and inexperienced socially, but is surprisingly perceptive, and in many ways sees the world far more clearly than does his grandfather. He has a tendency towards cynicism, and is considered by his peers to be an "old man" already. He has few friends, but those he has he adores and shares everything with. Most of his clothes were bought by his mother, who keeps him firmly under her wing. He was brought into the orchestra to make up the numbers for the tour, and plays viola rather better than he lets himself believe.

I find the possibilities afforded by letting these two loose on womankind to be fascinating, and I think they will give plenty of opportunity both for comedy and poignancy. I love looking at situations from people's different points of view, and I think these two will give plenty of scope for that. Dickens was a master at painting vivid portraits of ordinary people, invariably reminding the reader of someone they had met themselves; I admire this greatly and try hard for all my characters (and there is opportunity for them to meet plenty of minor characters) to be "real" in this way. Terry Pratchett, when asked if there are any real people in his books, responds "I hope so", which for me sums this up wonderfully.

I hope to make a first attempt at a scene from this in the near future.

BOOK I: HARRY PINTER AND THE KIDNEY STONE

THE HARRY PINTER SAGA
A seven-part saga in seven parts, by OK? Rowling-in-it.

BOOK I: HARRY PINTER AND THE KIDNEY STONE

Harry Pinter was just an ordinary fetus, until he was struck by the baton of a famous conductor, and was imbued with special musical powers. He first knew of this when, on his eleventh birthday, a letter invited him to Warthogs School of Sacred Music (motto 'Celli et Coeli').

Arriving at his new school, brandishing his new conducting baton, he meets another newcomer, a violinist:

"Hi, I'm Harry", said Harry.
"Harold Pinter? You're very famous. I'm Gary. Do you want to be in my gang?" said Gary to Harry.
"No thanks, your hair is greasy, so you are self-evidently a bad guy" said Harry to Gary.
"You smell" said Gary to Harry.
Harry said: "This could be the start of a beautiful friendship", said Harry to Gary. This was said by Harry to Gary, in case there was any remaining doubt as to the protagonists of this conversation. Gary went off to count his collection of vintage G-strings, and Harry met two more youngsters.

"Hello, I'm Higher-E, a soprano. My purpose is to make up for your incompetence so the plot will still work" said Higher-E.
"Hello, I'm Rowan, a bass trombonist. I make bogey jokes" said Rowan.
"This could be the start of a beautiful friendship", said Harry.

There followed a solemn academic ceremony involving an ancient hat (a notion preposterous to anyone not from Edinburgh University). This magic bonnet sang a crap song and sorted the newcomers into houses, which were named after their founders: Nobby Nobilmente (the house for noble people), Bacchus Backstabbicus (for the untrustworthy), Anna Anonymosa (for people not interesting to the story) and Connie Christie Christmas Crossword Contrivicus (for those with unlikely alliterative names). Our heroes retire to Nobilmente common room, which, despite being home to 200 people, is invariably empty, and spin unlikely tales about their harmony professor, whom they suspect of having greasy hair.

Harry is summoned to the office of Dumdedum, the headmaster of the musical school.

"Harry, I want to have a word with you: Grimblebundleswup" said Dumdedum, displaying a delighfully eccentric streak which will be long forgotten by book 3.
"This could be the start of a beautiful friendship", said Harry, who was developing an irritating habit of repeating himself.
"Fearing its theft, I have hidden my precious kidney stone behind a series of lethal traps so fiendishly ingenious that even an eleven-year-old can get past them unscathed." said Dumdedum.

Unable to resist the obvious invitation, Harry triumphantly rescues the kidney stone and gives it straight back to Dumdedum, thus achieving nothing.

In the beginning was the word

...and the word was 'stagnation'. This is what is happening to my mind, and to my creativity. My work as a software engineer is challenging and, to an extent, interesting, but one thing it certainly isn't is stimulating. Large portions of my mind, which I have gone to some considerable length to cultivate, are running to seed. I don't like this. This blog is an attempt to reinvigorate various otherwise-dormant parts of my mind.

Primary among these is creativity. I wrote the libretto for a successful musical comedy Guilds at the 2008 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, which took 9 months of hard work and eventually opened some six years after its inception (this blog takes its name from within this show) and proved to be a truly memorable and cherished event for all ~40 people involved. Since then my creative output has consisted of little more than a few limericks. This blog is an attempt to start writing again; I have a number of ideas and half-ideas kicking around for my next major writing project (which may be anything from a novel to an opera libretto), all of which need further exploration; I will use this blog to explore these ideas in small pieces, in whatever form occurs. If you're really lucky, I may also write other short essays on whatever subject takes my fancy. I am, by nature, a polymath (or 'jack-of-all-trades' if you prefer a more pejorative term) with a wide range of interests, and intend to spout words on any subject which captures my fancy.

I don't seriously expect that a lot of people will read this blog. I hope they do, and I hope they find it as stimulating to read as I hope it will be to write, but ultimately, I write this blog because I need to write something, and that is that. This post is the dullest I intend to write...