As well as writing stories and articles I enjoy travelling, both at home and abroad, the excuse being that it's all research.
Sunday 6 December 2020
A bit of Bling
Friday 20 November 2020
Meet Kitty
Kitty Towers is lively and kind-hearted.
She is 19 years old, she has glorious brown eyes and glossy chestnut curls. She is also the eldest of five sisters and two brothers. So, willing or not, her mother insists she must now go to London for the Season and make a good marriage, one that will enable her sisters to mix in society in their turn.
This
picture shows Kitty at a truly dark moment in her adventure.
When she arrives in London, Kitty considers the Season a waste of her time.
But soon she finds that under the veneer of social visits, balls and walks in
Hyde Park, many social activities mask plots and danger. Even a visit to the
theatre can have sinister undercurrents.
While
her friends flutter from one entertainment to another, Kitty realises that a
dangerous spy is intent on betraying vital secrets, and she bravely attempts to
prevent this treachery, even when it seems it will cost her her heart – and possibly her life.
published by www.joffebooks.com
Wednesday 30 September 2020
Now, about that pair of visitors...
Meet Nell and Sophie, the Outcasts, but don't expect to like them
In my post on The Third Brother, a couple of weeks back, I mentioned that 1818 is the year Joachim is in charge of running the family estate and his burning ambition is to prove he can manage everything perfectly.
What Joachim doesn't expect is the upheaval caused by his mother's visitors - two sisters who bring a coach-load of problems with them. For a start, their actual coach arrives many hours late in Toulouse, where Joachim and his friend Bertrand have come to meet them and escort them on the last part of the journey into the Pyrenees to the family home.
Not only has Joachim lost a day he can ill afford to spare, the two girls immediately make a bad impression. One is a beauty but attention-seeking and a desperate flirt. The other is all buttoned-up, sullen and dressed from head to foot in grey.
At the inn where they stop, Bertrand has already made up his mind about them. He tells Joachim:
‘My
friend, I don’t envy you being saddled with that pair for months. I couldn’t put
up with either of them for a week, even.’ He perched on the windowsill and raked
his fingers through his mop of curly brown hair.
Joachim
poured water into the basin and dipped his head in it. He splashed water over
his neck and shoulders, emerged with a sigh of relief and groped for a towel. ‘Aren’t
you being a bit hasty? Only yesterday you said you were planning to marry one
of them to restore your family fortunes.’
Bertrand stretched, moving his neck from side to side until it creaked. ‘Yes, well, that’s before we’d set eyes on them - and ears. All that shouting in the coach! Now, I assure you, even if they were as rich as Croesus, I’m not interested.'
Sophie [the flirt] goes on to scandalise the whole household within 24 hours of arriving, while Nell remains a grey shadow, locked in her unresponsive gloom. Privately, Joachim thinks it's no wonder their father and his new wife cast these two horrors out. Only now they are going to be an extra problem for his mother and that will really annoy him. And when Joachim's temper is roused, things can get very uncomfortable.
Wednesday 23 September 2020
Do your characters argue with you?
Are you in control of your story?
In The Hobbit, Tolkien observed that "things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are soon told about, and not much to listen to; while things that are uncomfortable, palpitating, and even gruesome, may make a good tale, and take a deal of telling anyway."
In other words, if there is no conflict, there is no story. So the characters can expect to have problems which get ever more difficult, they must face their fears and see their ambitions endlessly thwarted. No wonder they sometimes shut off and refuse to act as the author wishes.
Writers all experience the phenomenon of a character taking over the story and dictating what he or she will do and most certainly will not do. It takes time, a lot of thought and some bargaining between author and characters, to get things moving again. The revised plot rings truer and is more satisfying for all concerned.
So an argument with the characters is a sign that they are ready to walk off the page; and as every writer knows, that is the best thing that can happen in any story.
[ Photo of my workbook for The Rake's Challenge. There are four rakes in that tale,
two of them brothers. ]