Queue 2

Phil Daniels

Okay, hands up, it's a fair cop guv'nor: I watched EastEnders this evening.
Been thinking long and pericardially about the previous post. Have some tenuous conclusions which need refining, but for now here's an absolutely superb scene from EastEnders. Crumbs, that just sounds so wrong. I might get some character names muddled, and I might just invent some if I get stuck. If you're waiting for Sunday's Omnibus extravaganza, I offer you a spoiler alert, and my sympathy.

Phil Daniels has gotten hold of a stolen security videotape. It's wound to the end. Kind of like a cross between Memento and Quadrophenia. He's astonished to discover that the videotape has captured Patrick's attack - there is poor Patrick lying in his brains and blood. Well, not brains. So Phil Daniels starts to rewind the tape. Events unfold in reverse as we move back in time towards the attack and, presumably, a clear picture of the attacker. Ooh, now that's good suspense.
Meanwhile, Lucy sneaks out the house to go meet her boyfriend. I don't know if we were told that she was off to meet her boyfriend or if I just guessed that. See I was only half-watching and perked up when I saw this scene developing.
Phil Daniels rewinds a little further and Lucy arrives at her rendezvous.
Then we see the attacker. Then we see that Lucy has met with her boyfriend - the attacker!

So we can see that the reveal is left right until the end. Which is a parallel to option TWO in the previous post.
BUT
We also have the suspense in the shape of the rewinding of the tape. Rather like option ONE where the reader is darned sure that the couple are heading into trouble.

So, to get the most out of the car crash/you're having an affair scene, we would keep the reveal to the end, AND ensure that the speeding is given lethal intent from the start. Therefore, it should open with a line that clearly attaches suspense to the speeding without giving away the driver's knowledge of the affair. The new opening might read thus:

Bill ran the red light, tyres screeching as he attacked the bend. It was time to end it all.

The anticipation strand is obvious in both the car crash scene and in the EastEnders scene.
What is perhaps less obvious is the effect of holding the reveal 'til the last possible moment.
You can ponder upon that and I'll return very soon.

Queue

Vasily Perov's Queue to a Reservoir

Ricardo's recent dilemma set the ol' grey cells a-curdling.
Imagine a bastardized take on the car crash scene.
In this scene, we reveal that the male driver knows that his wife - the female passenger - has been having an affair. He drives full pelt into an oncoming truck.

We can order and impart this information in several ways. See which you prefer:

ONE:
The thought of his wife in another man's bed skewered his heart. Who was this lothario who had destroyed his life? When had they met? How many times had they laughed at him behind his back? It mattered not now.
Bill ran the red light, tyres screeching as he attacked the bend.
'Take it steady honey: we don't need to be there 'til six!'
Quickly into fourth, the engine roaring, and then fifth, the landscape rising and blurring; horns sounding in rebuke, perhaps with foresight, soon far behind.
She grasped Bill's sleeve as the bend opened. The truck driver had time enough only to hit the brakes with deathly optimism.

TWO:
Bill ran the red light, tyres screeching as he attacked the bend.
'Take it steady honey: we don't need to be there 'til six!'
Quickly into fourth, the engine roaring, and then fifth, the landscape rising and blurring; horns sounding in rebuke, perhaps with foresight, soon far behind. The thought of his wife in another man's bed skewered his heart. Who was this lothario who had destroyed his life? When had they met? How many times had they laughed at him behind his back? It mattered not now.
She grasped Bill's sleeve as the bend opened. The truck driver had time enough only to hit the brakes with deathly optimism.

THREE:
Bill ran the red light, tyres screeching as he attacked the bend.
'Take it steady honey: we don't need to be there 'til six!'
Quickly into fourth, the engine roaring, and then fifth, the landscape rising and blurring; horns sounding in rebuke, perhaps with foresight, soon far behind.
She grasped Bill's sleeve as the bend opened. The truck driver had time enough only to hit the brakes with deathly optimism.
The thought of his wife in another man's bed skewered his heart. Who was this lothario who had destroyed his life? When had they met? How many times had they laughed at him behind his back? It mattered not now.

I'm for TWO. I like the build up - the danger of the careening vehicle. Something is about to happen. Then the reveal qualifies this build up. And, nestling up against the denouement, a wonderful contrast of emotions is created.

I would suggest that both ONE and THREE fail to make the most of the reveal: ONE places it before the anticipation, thereby nullifying the potential effects of the anticipation (because the mystery is killed - knowledge is already imparted); THREE leaves the reveal too late, thereby dampening the climax.

N.B. Please note that I've condensed this queueing into a very short passage. It's worth imagining how this might play out over a more suitable (and considered) word count.

(Btw, regular maggot farmers will spot my employment of the quick-swapping focus technique which works well when building pace.)

Metaphors

Often, the way we look at something plays a tremendous role in the way we understand it.
(Oh I do love those dualities [that themselves play a tremendous role in fattening the novel].)

So imagine that a simile is a comparison that uses the word like or as.

And imagine that a metaphor is the same thing, just with the omission of the word like or as.

Nice and simple. Not without caveats, perhaps, but certainly a useful perception.

So why use a metaphor?

Well, I have a fondness for anything that assists me in uncovering fresh and delicious language. Beyond that, however, we can see that the metaphor is a fine purveyor of tone, and has a definite place in my idea of the theme-set.

The difference between these two sentences is obvious, and yet the meaning is the same (the sun lights the way through the valley):

'The sun was a demonic eye in the sky that lit the way through the valley.'

'The sun was a shepherd of love that lit the way through the valley.'

Word of warning though: Metaphors are tools and, like all tools, they have a time and a place. Okay, that warning was aimed at my dear friend ricardo.

I'm hitting a handful of niggles that have pervaded chapters two, three and four for too long.

Midway through chapter two, a scene change (indicated by an asterisk sandwiched between line breaks) has caused universal confusion. I doubt it would make any difference if I added one hundred asterisks.

No longer in the lighthouse, P&B are ballooning across the sky.

I chose to introduce the word 'balloons' six sentences in. I guess I thought that the reader would be cool with the close-up dialogue and interaction between P&B before I pulled the camera back.

Seems I was mistaken. (Still not entirely convinced though.)

Anyhoo, I'm not going to argue with consistent feedback so it was time to address the niggle.

I needed to bridge the gap. Mention lighthouse (which is where the reader's head still is despite the asterisks), push it far away, and then mention balloons. A smooth transition from there to here; from then to now.

And how to liven up such a dull but necessary info dump, whilst immediately setting the tone for the scene?

You guessed it! Monsieur Metaphor.

I began with the clouds - with the rain storm. I saw the lighthouse vanishing behind the clouds through omniscient third-person eyes.

My thoughts tumbled over the ideas of seedy neon lights, and of drowning, both first-level consciousness ideas and not to be used! In moments such as these, I tend to ramble through the thesaurus, veering off in exciting new directions.

It was the combination of the words nettled (which means angry) and choked that nudged my thoughts to stormclouds as feral garden. (In particular, I was keen to use nettled as it works on loads of levels: it refers to the anger of the storm; it encourages one to imagine stinging nettles and the probable corresponding unpleasant experiences; it phonetically mimics the word netted, used shortly after to describe the canvas of the balloons; it dynamically shifts from the dark comfort of Penpa's manicured indoor gardens to the wild and scary outside world. The tone is safely established and momentum is maintained).

Note that I have still opted to save the details for later. The mere mention of the word ballooning (without any assignation) is enough to inform the reader that P&B are ballooning. Furthermore, by swapping the noun balloon for the verb ballooning, I found that the flow still works if ballooning precedes lighthouse.

The wind was favourable for ballooning and the lighthouse had far-since been tangled in nettled thickets of cloud as Penpa navigated across the sky ...

I daresay that I'm still not completely happy with this solution, but I'm hoping it'll caulk the hole for now. Hmmm ... how about substituting tangled with strangled? The tone would darken further. Hmmm ...

The Fat Novel

Marcel Duchamp's Portrait of Chess Players.

Had a great day off with my son yesterday.
I showed him how to play chess and how to create music by layering preset riffs and drum patterns in a simple piece of sequencing software.

See if you can guess which chess piece gave him the most headaches ...

... It was the pawns. They can move one space forwards, except on their opening move when they can move two spaces forwards, and they take diagonally. (I'm saving en passant for later.)
I think he found the distinction between moving and taking difficult to grasp; after all, you need to move the piece to take another. Probably I'm just a lousy teacher.
After an introductory game, I decided to take things back a step.
I gave him various pieces, say a queen and two rooks, and gave myself just a king. I figured he'd get to grips with the movements and the concept of diminishing board space, and maybe thinking one or two moves ahead.
I discovered that he would not put my king in check: rather, he would creep closer to my king with one piece, ignoring his other pieces, and then scuttle away again the moment I threatened his piece with my lonesome king.
Anyhoo, he found the game 'too hard' which is his way of saying 'Hey dad, I'm not getting any instant and continuous gratification from this.'
So we turned to the music software and I showed him how to play through the presets and then how to select them and layer them up. I had him pick a drum pattern and then a bass pattern, and then some keyboard riffs, and we created 30 seconds of rather funky, if not eclectic, music.
Then I let him loose by himself.
He selected every sample that amused him (notably the 'I'm hot and sweaty' vocal sample played a pivotal role in his creation). And, rather than layering the tracks, he worked linearly so that the first track ended and the second began, and so forth, and soon he had four minutes of rather barren and rhythmless sounds.

All of this put me in mind of one of the most common of publisher/agent comments. I understand that many pubs and agents select novels that survive more than a single read. Every successive read reveals more hidden treats.
If my son's chess game or musical noodlings were novels, they would be single read material because they are linear. I kind of see them as long and thin.
Whereas one of my aims has always to be to create a novel that is fat (the length is pretty much moot: I read all the time that debut novelists should endeavour to come in at between 70 and 100 thousand words - these figures tend to vary marginally depending on where you look. It's a printing costs thing. Either way, I'm not really bothered because all of my energy is devoted to writing well and writing captivatingly).
A fat novel. A wide novel. Rather like the novel equivalent of Nacho Libre: You won't really get it the first time around - you'll just get a weird glow - but you'll want to watch it again and again, and with each successive viewing, the response changes and you think 'Cool! I get something different every time. I might just go watch it again.'
Okay, not a great example.
I'll have to give the concept of the fat novel some proper, considered thought.
My first thought, however, is that the reader gains knowledge over the course of the novel. If he were to re-read the novel, he would have a different knowledge. Furthermore, the author can secrete information that requires that the reader not only have a basic grasp of this knowledge, but has understood its deeper meaning or ramifications.
More thoughts will doubtlessly plop forth anon.