Author Archives: Tony Ballantyne

Writer and Tech blogger

They Can’t Die!

 I overheard a conversation recently about the TV program Endeavour. Someone was complaining that the show had reached a point where the lead character was in danger.

“And we knew he wouldn’t die,” they complained, “because this show was a prequel. We know that Endeavour lives, he was seen as an older man in the TV show Morse.”

I’ve heard this sort of thing before, and it’s wrong. It misses the point. It’s not how stories work.

No one expects James Bond to die. No one ever expected Charlie Brown to ever kick the football. And surely no one expected Voldemort to be triumphant…

In most stories, the reader knows that the hero isn’t going to be killed, but that doesn’t matter. A journey is no less entertaining for knowing what the destination is going to be. Not every trip has to be a mystery tour.

There’s something almost reassuring in this, in following a story where you know what’s going to happen. This is what children in particular find pleasing in fairy stories and nursery tales, the repetition in the tale as Goldilocks tries the chairs, the porridge and then the beds and each time it’s the last choice that’s just right

A writer follows a curve and takes the reader with them. Some writers complain that people don’t want true innovation, that their stories are rejected because they’re too original. They may be right. But as I’ve written on this blog in the past, that’s the way the market works and the market is always right.

But there’s something else, too. Knowing when to repeat, knowing when to follow the conventions, that’s part of a writer’s craft. It makes peeling off into unknown territory so much more satisfying…

The Perfect Scene

Here’s one of my favourite passages in modern literature. In it, Sue Townsend describes Adrian Mole spending Sunday at his Grandma’s house. I suspect that many other people my age will recognise the scene from their own childhood. Nothing else I’ve read captures a sense of time and place so well.

Many writers have a temptation to throw unusual words or extravagant sentences at their ideas. This passage show that real genius is capable of simplicity:

Archers omnibus. Egg, bacon, fried bread, the People.

Roast beef, roast potatoes, mashed potatoes, cabbage, carrots, peas, Yorkshire pudding, gravy.

Apple crumble, custard, cup of tea, extra strong mints, News of the World.

Tinned salmon sandwiches, mandarin oranges and jelly, sultana cake, cup of tea.

Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years by Sue Townsend

Sue Townsend

If anyone ever tells you that women aren’t as funny as men, say two words in reply: Sue Townsend.

Sue Townsend wrote the funniest book I’ve ever read: The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, aged 13 3/4. I read it at just the right time of my life – aged around 15 or 16, when I was just a year or so older than Adrian Mole when he wrote his first diaries. When asked why she had written about a teenage boy and not a girl, Sue Townsend replied that she believed boys and girls were pretty much the same at that time of their life. She certainly described my childhood (and I sometimes fear she is describing part of my adulthood, too.)

Like many excellent writers, Sue Townsend knew that the best writing is often the simplest. One of her most inspired passages is to be found in The Wilderness Years, where she simply describes the food that Adrian eats one Sunday afternoon round his Grandma’s house. It’s nothing more than a list, but it sums up my childhood perfectly, sitting in front of the coke fire at my Grandmother’s house, reading the Sunday People and then watching something like Bullseye on the television.

Sue Townsend died on Thursday evening, aged 68. She left behind one of the most consistently funny and moving series of books ever written, books filled with a well realised air of righteous indignation about them. Sue Townsend was on the side of the forgotten people, the failures, the Adrian Moles of this world.

She will be missed.

Six Tips on Writing First Drafts

  • A first draft is about getting it written, not about getting it right. Don’t spend too much time on it
  • Think of an artist painting a picture – they get the basic outlines and then fill in the details later. That’s what a first draft should be – broad daubs of paint
  • Stories have a habit of hitting a wall as you write them. Don’t sit there sweating about how your hero will escape from the pit: just get on with writing the next part. A solution will occur to you eventually. It always does.
  • Don’t lose touch with your subconscious. If you can’t think of the right word, or phrase, or character, or description… miss it out! You can always add it in later.
  • Stephen King recommends finishing a first draft in a season (spring, summer…). Okay, that might not be possible for a part time writer, but even so, get it done as quickly as possible
  • Many writers find the first draft the painful part. The real pleasure of writing begins when you can take your time licking that first draft into shape…

See Also

The Region of Jennifer

My short story, The Region of Jennifer, appears in the June 2014 issue of Analog

This is the first of a series of stories I’ve been working on set in the Recursion universe. The action takes place 8 years after the events in Divergence and deals with some of the questions raised by the Big Share Out that occurred at the end of Divergence.

I’ve had the idea for this series for some time, from around the time I finished writing Divergence, in fact, however I found myself distracted by Robots and Dream Worlds in the meantime.

But I was missing writing Hard SF, and I had reached the point where I just couldn’t not get the ideas down on the page, and The Region of Jennifer was the first result.

Watch this space, there are more stories in the Fair Exchange series to come…

Nobody Really Knows

Earlier this week I was listening to a radio program about the discovery of waves of gravitational energy that confirmed inflation just after the big bang. The presenter was inviting listeners to ring in and ask questions of a scientist, the scientist was doing a rather good job of explaining things clearly.

I thought it rather heartening that those taking part in the discussion were taking this opportunity to try and understand what was going on.

I should have known better. A caller rang in and announced that it was all very well hearing the scientist speak, but nobody really knows how the universe started. For all their talk, for all their experiments, those scientists didn’t really know what had happened.

I suppose that’s true. Nobody really knows anything. But that’s not very helpful.

Nobody really knows anything. It’s the really that’s the loaded word. I don’t really know what’s happening when my back is turned, I don’t really know what other people think of me, I don’t really know that I’m not part of some Truman Show style hoax and everyone is watching me on television.

But what’s the point of that sort of thinking? If I accept it, I might as well accept that I’ll never know anything.

Many people like to say no one really knows. It excuses them having to think. It has the added effect of pulling your hard won experience and knowledge down to their level. It makes their ignorance the equal of your ignorance.

I don’t see why I should accept that.

Did anyone else read Danny Dunn?

I’ve just finished answering a set of questions about writing SF, the results of which will appear in a magazine article. One of the questions asked was What’s the first SF you remember reading?

I couldn’t give a definitive answer but there are two series that stand out in my mind from my childhood. The  first is the Space series of children’s SF anthologies, edited by Richard Davis in the 1970’s and early ’80s, the second is the Danny Dunn series by Jay Williams and Raymond Abrashkin.

Did anyone else read those books? I haven’t read them for years, probably not since I became a teenager, and I’m not sure I would want to read one again.  It might spoil the memories.

But I loved the books at the time. Danny Dunn liked science and maths, so did the adults around him. His mother was housekeeper to Professor Bullfinch, a man who encouraged Danny’s love of science and taught him new things.  The science was pretty authentic (or so I remember) and I used to devour it.  The professor invented some of the objects which started Danny off on adventures.

For me, the best thing about the stories was that Danny Dunn (and his friends Irene and Joe) would win through by using their intelligence.  The resolution wasn’t achieved by guns, or superpowers, or magic, it was always achieved by thinking, by learning new facts and applying them. I wouldn’t say the books got me interested in studying Maths, but it definitely made me realise just how cool maths and science were. And if you’re laughing at this last sentence, then understand this, it showed me that there were other people who found those subjects cool.

I wonder what happened to Danny Dunn?

He’s probably a grandfather by now. I’d like to think that his kids are working at CERN or somewhere like that. I hope they didn’t end up working in quantum finance.

Danny Dunn, boy accountant. It doesn’t bear thinking about.

Six Tips on Narrative Voice

  • Writing in the First Person is harder than it looks: the narrator defines the sort of story you write. Compare the way the intelligent Katiniss Everdeen tells her story in The Hunger Games with that of the much less aware Riddley Walker in the novel of the same name.
  • There are very few stories written in the Second Person, something which makes those few attempted stand out and say something. Unfortunately, the thing they are usually saying is that the writer has just been on a course.  Best avoided.
  • Stories written in the Third Person offer the most flexibility, and are the best choice for the beginner writer. Of these…
  • The Third Person subjective is the easiest: here you can describe individual characters’ thoughts and emotions from the inside.
  • Third Person objective is harder: here you describe the characters from the outside, you’re not privy to their thoughts – rather like watching a film.
  • Third Person omniscient is the easiest but seems very old fashioned and lacking in skill. Most importantly, Editors don’t like it!

See Also

Thoughts on Cosmopolitan Predators!

Aethernet Magazine Issue #12 was published on Saturday, and with it the last episode of Cosmopolitan Predators!

What was the experience of writing a piece of serial fiction like? I’ve already already posted on this blog about writing serial fiction as well as the experience of working to deadlines. The various writers who contributed to Aethernet Magazine have also written about their experiences. I think it’s fair to say that none of us expected writing serial fiction to be quite so different, nor so difficult. But was it worth it?

Definitely! Writing serial fiction was enjoyable, exhilarating and frustrating. Every writer should always be pushing themselves, be trying something new, doing whatever it takes to keep improving. To borrow an excellent piece of advice from the musical world, “never put down your instrument until you’ve done something new with it.”

I’m now working on Dream Paris, the follow up to Dream London. I’ve set myself a target of 10 000 words a month (a bit more than the typical 7 – 8 000 words of each episode of Cosmopolitan Predators!) and I intend to deliver a complete episode to my first reader, Barbara Ballantyne, on the first of each month. Okay, I won’t be under quite the same constraints as when writing Cosmopolitan Predators! as I will have the luxury of going back and changing things. Will Dream Paris be a better book for being written this way? Well, I’m very pleased with how things are going so far, but then the final say on the book is not really up to me. For the moment though, I’m trying something new, and that’s what I love to do…