Tag: Creative Writing

Writing a novel in 365 days – 22

Day 22

Today we’re discussing dialogue, and sometimes that’s the hardest part to write.

Making a conversation sound like a normal conversation is sometimes impossible because who can define normal? People speak in many different ways, with different accents, tones, and sometimes completely different words.

My grandchildren are sometimes completely incomprehensible because the modern vernacular is based on writing a text on a cell in which the squiggles used as words sometimes make no sense to me.

I have received messages that

I have not understood, or have on occasion suffered that new blight on our writing, the corrector, and some of my texts, well, people have got upset and I can understand why.

So, it may not be that in the story we are writing, and the characters we have decided to use, that we have an understanding of their language or manner of speaking. If we are using our own manner of speaking, it might not lend credence to the characters we’re looking for.

Or if you’re lucky and know someone who has the vernacular, then it’s good. If not, then our task would be to find and talk to people with that character’s voice. I have often spent lunch or dinner out just to listen to the people around me talking. I’m not interested in the content, though sometimes it can be quite interesting, but just the words and the way they are spoken.

Try it, you will be amazed at just how many different ways there are to speak the same word.

I was.

Writing a novel in 365 days – 22

Day 22

Today we’re discussing dialogue, and sometimes that’s the hardest part to write.

Making a conversation sound like a normal conversation is sometimes impossible because who can define normal? People speak in many different ways, with different accents, tones, and sometimes completely different words.

My grandchildren are sometimes completely incomprehensible because the modern vernacular is based on writing a text on a cell in which the squiggles used as words sometimes make no sense to me.

I have received messages that

I have not understood, or have on occasion suffered that new blight on our writing, the corrector, and some of my texts, well, people have got upset and I can understand why.

So, it may not be that in the story we are writing, and the characters we have decided to use, that we have an understanding of their language or manner of speaking. If we are using our own manner of speaking, it might not lend credence to the characters we’re looking for.

Or if you’re lucky and know someone who has the vernacular, then it’s good. If not, then our task would be to find and talk to people with that character’s voice. I have often spent lunch or dinner out just to listen to the people around me talking. I’m not interested in the content, though sometimes it can be quite interesting, but just the words and the way they are spoken.

Try it, you will be amazed at just how many different ways there are to speak the same word.

I was.

Writing a book in 365 days – 16

Day 16

Today we have a writing exercise – at last.

The theme, nothing like anything that will fit the outline of the story I have in mind, but maybe I can use a little poetic licence.

It is: “I never liked rain, so I moved to the desert. The clouds followed.”

Metaphorically speaking, and not literally the clouds followed, or I would be feeling like Charlie Brown who says it always rains on the unloved, which to him was a daily occurrence.

So…

A friend of mine once said if I did not like the rain, move to the desert. I never quite understood what that meant until I saw my name in the newspaper and a not-too-flattering profile.

Then, when I spoke to him a few days after reading the profile, he said, “You can run but you can’t hide.”

OK, enough with the metaphors.

When pressed he told me that going to another town no matter how remote from the last did not guarantee me anonymity, not when I used my real name, and fabricated the rest. Not too many white lies, but just enough.

Of course, he said, it was the internet, that juggernaut of information, good and bad, that follows us everywhere and destroys a good person and extols a criminal.

I tried to tell everyone that what was written about me was wrong, a distortion of the facts, but it seemed people wanted to believe what they wanted to believe, not what was true. I had done nothing wrong. People had lied to save themselves and when you throw mud, some of it sticks. Even when it’s proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was lies.

And, like all good newspapers, never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

The pity of it was the journalist who wrote the story was someone I cared about, and not without reason decided to do a check on the new guy who moved into town and seemed too good to be true. I realised that was the case the moment she said it.

I also knew that whatever relationship we may have had was over.

It taught me a valuable lesson and one that took nearly six months in a remote cabin in the wilderness to rectify.

I changed my name, changed everything. I had read a dozen different spy novels and followed the guide to changing who I was. Finding a small place in the middle of nowhere that had a graveyard with someone my age who had died in their first year. Started with a birth certificate, and went from there, until I had a whole new identity.

And then, and only then, did I come out of hiding, remembering the cardinal rule, keep to myself, do not entertain having a relationship, and at the top of the list, don’t date a journalist.

…

©  Charles Heath  2025

Writing about writing a book – Day 21

I’m back to writing Bill’s backstory, and how he got mixed up in the war, and a few other details which will play out later on.

This will be some of it, in his own words:

…

I think I volunteered for active duty in Vietnam.

It was either that, or I had been volunteered by my prospective father-in-law.  I was serving under his command in an Army Camp for some time, and unbeknownst to me for a time, I had been dating his daughter.

The daughter of a General.  It was like that adage, ‘marrying the boss’s daughter’.  Only this boss was the bastard of all bastards.  When he found out, my life became hell.  As a Corporal, he told me I was far beneath his expectations of the right man for his daughter.  He thought she would be better off with a Colonel.

Then I got my orders.  I was to join the latest batch of nashos on their way to the latest theatre of war.  But before that, Ellen, a woman with a mind of her own, and sometimes daring enough to defy her father, said we should get married, and I being the young fool I did, in a registry office, the day before I left for the war.

I promised to be faithful, as all newly married men did, and that I would come back to her.  We had all heard the stories coming out of Southeast Asia, where the war was not going so well, for us, or the Americans, and that this was a final effort.

When we landed, we were greeted by the men leaving.  They were glad to be going home.  And I chose not to believe some of the stories.  Nothing could be as bad as they painted it.

Could it?

 

I’d been trained for war.  I could handle a weapon, several actually, and I could if I had to kill the enemy.  After all, it was my job.  I was defending Queen and country.

I was a regular soldier, not a nasho.  Not one of the mostly terrified boys who’d hardly reached anything approaching manhood, some all gung-ho, others frightened out of their minds.  As a regular soldier, this was where I was supposed to be.

But being sent to a war to fight, and having to fight, I soon discovered were two very different things.  On the training ground, even training with live ammunition, being shot at, mortared, and chased through the jungles of North Queensland, it was not the same, on the ground in Saigon.

It was relentlessly hot, steamy, raining, and fine.  Or dry and dusty.  But in any of the conditions, it was uncomfortable being hot all the time.  During the day, and during the night.

Then we were sent out to join various units.  Mine was north, where, I wasn’t quite sure, where the motley remains of the group were bolstered by us, new people.  Morale was not good, as we arrived in the torrential rain in an air transport that had seen better days, and notable for two events, the fact we were shot at several times and taking out the first casualty before we arrived, and the near-crash landing when we did.

I soon learned the value of the statement, ‘any landing you walk away from is a good one’.

 …

Yes, seems like a good start to a bad end.  More on this tomorrow while I’m in the mood.

…

© Charles Heath 2016-2024

Writing about writing a book – Day 2

Hang about.  Didn’t I read somewhere you need to plan your novel, create an outline setting the plot points, and flesh out the characters?

I’m sure it didn’t say, sit down and start writing!

Time to find a writing pad, and put my thinking cap on.

I make a list, what’s the story going to be about? Who’s going to be in it, at least at the start?

Like a newspaper story, I need a who, what, when, where, and how.

Right now.

 

I pick up the pen.

 

Character number one:

Computer nerd, ok, that’s a little close to the bone, a computer manager who is trying to be everything at once, and failing.  Still me, but with a twist.  Now, add a little mystery to him, and give him a secret, one that will only be revealed after a specific set of circumstance.  Yes, I like that.

We’ll call him Bill, ex-regular army, a badly injured and repatriated soldier who was sent to fight a war in Vietnam, the result of which had made him, at times, unfit to live with.

He had a wife, which brings us to,

Character number two:

Ellen, Bill’s ex-wife, an army brat and a General’s daughter, and the result of one of those romances that met disapproval for so many reasons.  It worked until Bill came back from the war, and from there it slowly disintegrated.  There are two daughters, both by the time the novel begins, old enough to understand the ramifications of a divorce.

Character number three:

The man who is Bill’s immediate superior, the Services Department manager, a rather officious man who blindly follows orders, a man who takes pleasure in making others feel small and insignificant, and worst of all, takes the credit where none is due.

Oops, too much, that is my old boss.  He’ll know immediately I’m parodying him.  Tone it down, just a little, but more or less that’s him.  Last name Benton.  He will play a small role in the story.

Character number four:

Jennifer, the IT Department’s assistant manager, a woman who arrives in a shroud of mystery, and then, in time, to provide Bill with a shoulder to cry on when he and Ellen finally split, and perhaps something else later on.

More on her later as the story unfolds.

So far so good.

What’s the plot?

Huge corporation plotting to take over the world using computers?  No, that’s been done to death.

Huge corporation, OK, let’s stop blaming the corporate world for everything wrong in the world.  Corporations are not bad people, people are the bad people.  That’s a rip off cliché, from guns don’t kill people, people kill people!  There will be guns, and there will be dead people.

There will be people hiding behind a huge corporation, using a part of their computer network to move billions of illegally gained money around.  That’s better.

Now, having got that, our ‘hero’ has to ‘discover’ this network, and the people behind it.

All we need now is to set the ball rolling, a single event that ‘throws a cat among the pigeons’.

Yes, Bill is on holidays, a welcome relief from the problems of work.  He dreams of what he’s going to do for the next two weeks.  The phone rings.  Benton calling, the world is coming to an end, the network is down.  He’s needed.  A few terse words, but he relents.

Pen in hand I begin to write.

 

© Charles Heath 2016-2019

Writing about writing a book – Day 2

Hang about.  Didn’t I read somewhere you need to plan your novel, create an outline setting the plot points, and flesh out the characters?

I’m sure it didn’t say, sit down and start writing!

Time to find a writing pad, and put my thinking cap on.

I make a list, what’s the story going to be about? Who’s going to be in it, at least at the start?

Like a newspaper story, I need a who, what, when, where, and how.

Right now.

 

I pick up the pen.

 

Character number one:

Computer nerd, ok, that’s a little close to the bone, a computer manager who is trying to be everything at once, and failing.  Still me, but with a twist.  Now, add a little mystery to him, and give him a secret, one that will only be revealed after a specific set of circumstance.  Yes, I like that.

We’ll call him Bill, ex-regular army, a badly injured and repatriated soldier who was sent to fight a war in Vietnam, the result of which had made him, at times, unfit to live with.

He had a wife, which brings us to,

Character number two:

Ellen, Bill’s ex-wife, an army brat and a General’s daughter, and the result of one of those romances that met disapproval for so many reasons.  It worked until Bill came back from the war, and from there it slowly disintegrated.  There are two daughters, both by the time the novel begins, old enough to understand the ramifications of a divorce.

Character number three:

The man who is Bill’s immediate superior, the Services Department manager, a rather officious man who blindly follows orders, a man who takes pleasure in making others feel small and insignificant, and worst of all, takes the credit where none is due.

Oops, too much, that is my old boss.  He’ll know immediately I’m parodying him.  Tone it down, just a little, but more or less that’s him.  Last name Benton.  He will play a small role in the story.

Character number four:

Jennifer, the IT Department’s assistant manager, a woman who arrives in a shroud of mystery, and then, in time, to provide Bill with a shoulder to cry on when he and Ellen finally split, and perhaps something else later on.

More on her later as the story unfolds.

So far so good.

What’s the plot?

Huge corporation plotting to take over the world using computers?  No, that’s been done to death.

Huge corporation, OK, let’s stop blaming the corporate world for everything wrong in the world.  Corporations are not bad people, people are the bad people.  That’s a rip off cliché, from guns don’t kill people, people kill people!  There will be guns, and there will be dead people.

There will be people hiding behind a huge corporation, using a part of their computer network to move billions of illegally gained money around.  That’s better.

Now, having got that, our ‘hero’ has to ‘discover’ this network, and the people behind it.

All we need now is to set the ball rolling, a single event that ‘throws a cat among the pigeons’.

Yes, Bill is on holidays, a welcome relief from the problems of work.  He dreams of what he’s going to do for the next two weeks.  The phone rings.  Benton calling, the world is coming to an end, the network is down.  He’s needed.  A few terse words, but he relents.

Pen in hand I begin to write.

 

© Charles Heath 2016-2019

Short Story Writing: Don’t try this at home – Part 4

This is not meant to be a treatise on short story writing.  Far be it for me to advise anyone on the subject.  I prefer to say how it is that I do it so you can learn all of the pitfalls in one go.

I find inspiration in the most unlikely places.

Shopping malls are great, there is so many things going on, so many different types of people, there’s often enough to fill a journal.

Driving on the roads, you get to see some of the most amazing stunt driving, and it’s not even being filmed, it’s just playing out before your very eyes.

Waiting in hospitals, waiting for doctors, accountants, dentists, friends, hanging around coffee shops, cafes, bistros, restaurants, the list is endless.

But the best source, newspapers, and the more obscure the headline the better, and then just let your imagination run free, like:

Four deaths, four mysteries, all homeless.

This poses a few interesting scenarios, such as, were they homeless or were they made to look like they’re homeless.  Are they connected in any way?

The point is, far from the original story that simply covers four seemingly random murders, a writer can turn this into a thriller very easily.

It could follow a similar headline in another country where three headlines could be found, say, in London, where a man is found dead in an abandoned building, a week after he died, with no obvious signs of how he died.

A woman is killed in what seems from the outset an accident involving two cars, where, after three days, the driver of the second vehicle just simply disappears.

A man is reported missing after not reporting for work when he was supposed to return from a vacation in Germany.

Where an obscure piece says that a man was found at the bottom of a mountain, presumed to have fallen in a climbing accident.

It’s all in the joining of the dots.

 

It’s just another day of the week

I used to like Saturdays, it was the first day of the weekend, and after working Monday through Friday, one could sleep in, have a leisurely breakfast, and then do the shopping.

Then there’s the reality.

Body clocks are dreadful, and never let you sleep in if, in fact, it’s bright daylight shining through the curtains at 5am.  Blackout curtains never seem to quite work.

Shutters are marginally better.

Once awake it is difficult to get back to sleep, so you lie in bed staring at the ceiling or partake in monitoring social media.

I read the latest in the New York Times, online.  Some days I wish I didn’t.

But…

Yes, there’s always a but…

I can, at times, go through the plotline of the latest story in my head, and if it’s boring, it puts me to sleep, and if it’s not, I head to the writing room and start putting it down.

Until notifications start distracting me.

Twitter, Facebook, WordPress, Linked In, Tumblr, and Instagram.

News headlines, the world is ending, or close enough, a car accident is causing traffic delays even though I’m not going out, yet another school shooting massacre in the USA, and my crossword for the day has arrived.

Why can’t the computer make me coffee, and toast and marmalade?

From 6am to 9am shot to hell, not a word on paper, perhaps I should go back to bed.

I remember Saturdays before computers, before social media, before any of those modern distractions.

What is referred to, these days, as the good old days!

 

The cinema of my dreams – It’s a treasure hunt – Episode 83

Here’s the thing…

Every time I close my eyes, I see something different.

I’d like to think the cinema of my dreams is playing a double feature but it’s a bit like a comedy cartoon night on Fox.

But these dreams are nothing to laugh about.

Once again there’s a new installment of an old feature, and we’re back on the treasure hunt.

…

I’m leaving town and not looking back

…

Three days later, after Nadia had disappeared, I was cleared to leave the hospital, almost fully restored.

It had been a strange three days, time enough to consider what happened to Nadia, and in the end, I had to conclude that she needed to get away from everyone and everything.

I wanted to believe she was back in Italy; among people she could trust.  That notion of living a simple life in the vineyard that she proposed was now more appealing than going back to my old life working for the Benderby’s.  There was no doubt in my mind that I would never be going back to that warehouse, or anything else to do with the Benderby’s.

Three days to finally come to the painful conclusion that I had done nothing with my life, and staying in town, it would just be more of the same, only lonelier now that Boggs had gone.  Not even the prospect of seeing Nadia made it any better, not that she was going to stay longer than she had to.

Boggs’s mother finally came to visit me, and, when I saw her, I had the awful feeling she was going to blame me.  Perhaps I had already blamed myself because it was me who took him there, and if I had not, he would still be alive.

Nor did I believe he died in a fall, he was too good a climber for that to happen.  Alex or Vince must have found him and silenced him the only way they knew.  He hadn’t deserved that, but, then, neither had we, but I guess when you try to keep a secret, it was the only way to ensure silence.

I knew the secret, and it was a question of how long I would survive before I was next on the list. Alex would never believe I could keep it to myself, and I had been safe in the hospital, but now I was leaving, it was only a matter of time before he made a move.

That gave me the impetus to make a decision that was in my best interests, to leave and never come back.  That meant leaving my mother too, as hard as it would be, and for reasons she would never understand.

I told her that the day before.

She visited twice a day, and each time I tried to find the courage to tell her of my decision, and each time it was not possible.  She was too happy that I was alive and making plans for the future, coming to the conclusion that life was too short, and putting things off until another day might mean they may never happen.

It was the same conclusion I’d come to, but with different ideas as to what it was I should not put off.

It took until the day before my discharge and made easier with her news of a proposal from Benderby.  Both had been cool to the idea of taking their relationship to the next level, but now it seemed he had a change of heart.

My devious mind found another reason, and it was not because he cared about her.  It was more to do with silencing me, and her, putting us under his ‘protection’.  It told me he knew about his son’s involvement, and it would be interesting to see what he did about Alex.  My guess: nothing.

And was it wrong of me to hope Nadia would drive a stake into Alex’s heart?

She had just finished telling me about the second piece of news, my promotion, being in charge of the warehouse, rather than just being a clerk, a job I suspected normal people would have to wait years to attain.  It cemented my suspicions of his motive.

“That’s Alex’s domain,” I said.  “What’s he going to do?  The last thing I need is him being resentful.”

“He’s going to be your stepbrother, Sam, and we’re hoping the two of you will play nice.”

“Did Alex get the memo?”

“It doesn’t sound to me like he will be the problem “

It was a recipe for disaster.  And surprising that she should take Benderby’s side.  My mother seemed to have forgotten all those years of angst at school, and the fact Alex was little better than a bully.  I guess, after the years of struggling after my father left us, she had to look out for herself. 

It was my cue.

“You don’t have to worry about me anymore.  I can look after myself.”

“I have no doubt you can.  But you have to get along with others, Sam.”

“I will.  But it won’t be here.  When they finally let me go, I’m leaving town.  There are just too many bad memories here now.”

I thought, while she was still wrapped up in the romance with Benderby, she’d just nod and move on.

Wrong.

She was genuinely upset with my decision.  “Are you leaving with that dreadful girl?”

“She is not a dreadful girl.  If that’s what Benderby is saying, he’s wrong.  I got to know her, those days in the cave when hope was fading.  That’s where you find the real person.  But, no, I’m not.  I don’t know where she is.  I’m disappointed, but not surprised.  By the way, Alex treated her very badly when she was his girlfriend, and back in school.”

“She would say that being a Cossatino.”

“And I’m sure the Benderby’s have nothing nice to say about them.  Irrespective of the Benderby’s and the Cossatino’s hatred for each other, they are more the reason to leave rather than stay.  But, more importantly, when time was running out in that cave, I realized all the things I hadn’t done, and why.   I’ve wasted opportunities and years of my life and lost a very good friend, who, if I’m to be judged one day, let down terribly.  That alone makes it impossible to stay here.”

“There’s a lot of good you can do here, Sam.  And all of the Boggs spent too much of their time going after that non-existent pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.  You can’t feel sorry for them, father and son alike.”

Given what I knew, her admission was probably parroting the same sentiments as everyone else, and it was a fruitless search only in the fact that the treasure had been removed.  I had no doubt it had been there once and moved, or discovered many years before.  Boggs’s father had found the resting place and would have found the treasure.  Ormiston had too.  But would I tell anyone the truth, probably not?

But when I should have let it go, I didn’t.  “There’s so much you don’t know, that no one knows and probably never will.  You are entitled to your own opinion, I’m entitled to mine, and we’ll agree to disagree.  All the more reason to leave, because all it’s going to do is upset me every time someone mentions Boggs or the treasure.”

She stood.  I could see her ‘I don’t want to hear this’ face, and knew she’d long stopped listening to me.  As far as she was concerned, I would come around in the end.  There was no point arguing, I was just going to leave and worry about the consequences later.

…

© Charles Heath 2020-2022

A photograph from the inspirational bin – 58

What story does it inspire?

…

…

As we all know from folklore, there’s a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

But…

Here’s the thing – you cannot get to the end of the rainbow.

I know, I’ve tried. A few years back in New Zealand, we were coming down the mountain road and at the turn, that’s where the rainbow ended. It was quite clear, there, before us, but by the time we reached it, a few seconds later, it was gone.

So, what do rainbows represent?

The technical reality is that it is just light refracting on raindrops. Boring, huh?

How about something more positive, that it is a symbol of hope.

In Greek and Roman mythology, Iris the goddess of the rainbow was one of the messengers of the gods.

In other mythology, a leprechaun buries a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

However…

If we are going to consider the possibilities of using a rainbow in a story, whether it is the catalyst for an event, either good or bad, since I prefer the glass-half-full version, let’s just say our protagonist, at a very low point after some devastating news, just happens t look out and see a rainbow.

What happens after that is up to your imagination…