Category Archives: Blog

Blog Chain: All the Things You Are

Thanks to Chris Beckett – Arthur C Clarke aware winning author of Dark Eden and too many excellent short stories – I’m a link in a chain. The idea is that writers answer four questions on their blog and then nominate one or two other writers to do the same thing. You can see Chris’s answers here.

And here are mine:

What am I working on?

I’m just completing Cosmompolitan Predators! for Aethernet Magazine, after which I’ll begin Dream Paris, the followup to Dream London. I’m also working on a series of stories set in the Recursion universe, the first of which will be appearing in print soon. And lastly, Penrose 3 continues its slow progress towards completion

How does my work differ from others in its genre?

How does it differ? I must admit, I’m more fascinated by the similarities. What is it about a genre that means you can take two very different works like, for example, the Foundation Trilogy and The Handmaid’s Tale and say that yes, these are both SF (even if one of the authors may claim otherwise… ).

As for differences? I don’t write heroes, I tend not to write competent people. I’ve always been struck by a line in a Pulp song “Do you want to see how common people fail?”. Golden age SF featured competent scientists and engineers solving problems. Those were great stories, but the protagonists never struck me as being particularly authentic or representative.

There are problems to be solved in my stories, there is (I hope) fascinating technology, but the protagonists don’t understand how things work, there are no easy answers. I don’t write about sewer operators saving the Earth, I write about how groups of people make a difference, sometimes better, sometimes worse.

Why do I write what I do?

Because that’s the way my mind works. I get ideas all the time and I write them down to be used later, but every so often one idea collides with another and I suddenly get really excited and I just have to begin writing.

How much of the path of a book is made up, and how much is fixed by my experience and personality? I feel as if I’m creating when I write, but often when I rewrite I think of a good idea and I include it, only to find a few pages later that I’d already done that on the first draft.

I think that a lot of writing is just improvising around a well established series of chords. To take a Jazz metaphor, we’re all just blowing to “All The Things You Are”.

How does my writing process work?

Basically, I write something every day. I write down ideas, I write down scenes, I write down conversations I’ve overheard on the tram and then I keep redrafting. I’m always writing in time snatched between other responsibilities, but I still need to book in longer stretches when I can draw things together undisturbed.

If you’re interested, there’s lots more on my writing process here on my blog.

And so that’s me done. Here are the next links in the chain, two excellent but very different writers at two very different stages in their careers:

Philip Palmer is a screenwriter, radio dramatist, novelist and producer. His screen credits include THE MANY LIVES OF ALBERT WALKER and THE BILL. For radio his plays include THE KING’S COINER, BLAME, and THE FAERIE QUEENE. As a writer of SF novels he is responsible for considerable galactic carnage; his five published books are DEBATABLE SPACE, RED CLAW, VERSION 43, HELLSHIP and ARTEMIS. Philip is the founder of Afan Films.

He has a part time role as a lecturer at the London Film School, on the MA Screenwriting course.

Fletcher Moss was an Alderman of Manchester who upon his death over a century ago, bequeathed a beautiful botanical gardens to the people of the city; a noble and generous gesture. This Fletcher Moss has significantly less to recommend him – he’s an Assistant Headteacher at a school in Greater Manchester who needed a pseudonym for the writing he fits in between lesson planning, marking and rattling around the M60 in his second-hand Citroen. The Poison Boy (2013) is his debut novel. The Night Wardens (2015, fingers crossed…) is on the way

Why I Write

I can tell when someone I’m teaching is going to be a programmer, I can tell it by the way they lose themselves when they stare at the screen. They’re not thinking of the syntax, they’re lost in the problem.

It’s like playing the piano. When I’m doing that, that’s all I’m doing. I should say, when I’m doing that well, that’s all I’m doing. I’m not reading a series of notes, I’m not trying to remember what the next chord is, I’m simply playing music.

And that’s what it’s like when a story is going well. Everything just flows, I’m listening in to a group of characters and writing down what they’re saying. I’m not making it up, I’m just writing down what it has to be.

That’s why I write. It’s not so I can read reviews of my books, or to blog about how hard those deadlines are, or to boast about my position on Amazon. I write because when I’m writing that’s what I’m doing.

Creativity 1: Groupthink

On a number of occasions, usually when I’ve been at work, I’ve been part of a group asked to think up a new slogan or tagline.

I’m never exactly sure what people mean when they talk about creativity, but I’ve never known these mindmelding exercises result in it.

First, someone comes up with a slogan, let’s say “Tony Ballantyne Blogs Better”. Then someone else comes up with another, let’s say “Tony Ballantyne Tells it Like it Is!”

So there we have it, two slogans, perhaps not the best ever, but at least they work. Then the group will take sides and argue for their favourite slogan, and it will look as if things are going nowhere…

And then the same thing always happens. Someone will look up with an inspired expression and, in excited tones, will announce they have solved the problem.

“I’ve got it!” they will say, “Why don’t we put the two things together? Why don’t we say Tony Ballantyne Blogs Better to Tell it Like it Is!”

There will be a pause and then nearly everyone will nod and declare what a good idea it is. The only two people who won’t agree will be the ones who came up with the original slogans.

Combining the two slogans is not a good idea.

Firstly, the slogan is now too long.

Secondly, it now contains two ideas – one too many.

Now, I quite agree that creativity can sometimes arise through the process of combining two or more seemingly disparate ideas. But I would also argue that joining together two sentences without any thought for what they mean may result in something new, but that’s not the same as being creative.

Six Tips on Submitting a Story

  • If you don’t submit a story, it will never be accepted
  • Read the submission guidelines
  • The editor is always right. If they found your story boring, unconvincing or unoriginal, then that’s their opinion.
  • If you want to know what the editor finds interesting, convincing and original, then read the stuff they choose to publish. If you don’t like it, then you’re submitting to the wrong market.
  • Everyone hates having their work rejected. Every writer has their work rejected. Successful writers are the ones who learn from past rejections and keep submitting.
  • The best thing to soften the pain of a rejection is to be working on your next story

See Also

Six Tips on Beating Writer’s Block

  1. Go for a walk
  2. This is the age of the word processor, you don’t have to write your story in a linear fashion. Write a later section, one that interests you.
  3. Always have two or three things on the go at once of different lengths. If you don’t feel like working on the novel, have a go at the short story. Don’t feel like fiction? Work on non-fiction
  4. Stop trying to get it right. Just follow a character and see where s/he goes. You don’t have to use everything you write.
  5. Change things around. What if a character was the opposite sex? What if they were younger/older?
  6. Still can’t write? Then take a break. If you’re not enjoying writing your story, then it’s unlikely that anyone’s going to enjoy reading it.

See Also

Concatenation: If Only…

If you haven’t visited the rather excellent Concatenation website before, you might want to take a look: http://www.concatenation.org/

There’s lots of very interesting stuff on there, including… er … me…

New up we have our usual Christmas treat, an extra one of the Nature multidisciplinary science journal, one-page ‘Futures’ short stories that we consider among the best of the 51 published by Nature the previous year. This time it is a Tony Ballantyne short. Tony is the only author to have more than one ‘Futures’ story selected by us each year. In fact this is now the third story we have of his over the years and that should tell you something about his writing. (His novels are nifty too.) For the link to the story see below… ‘Most recently added’.

Six Tips on Showing not Telling

  1. Remember, the reader isn’t stupid; you don’t have to explain everything. They’ll probably understand what you’re getting at.
  2. Describe effects, not causes: she shivered not she was cold
  3. Unless you happen to be a Victorian novelist, there’s no need to describe everything in a scene.
  4. Writing about how characters react is often better than simply stating. The smell of the eggs made him feel sick is better than He didn’t like eggs
  5. If you don’t know the meaning of pragmatics, Google it. Now use that when writing conversations.
  6. Finally, don’t tie yourself in knots. Sometimes it’s okay just to tell.

See Also

Six tips for Writing Character

  1. Giving a character a colourful hat or a stammer does not make them into a character. It may fix them in the reader’s mind, which can be a good thing, but it won’t give them a character
  2. Don’t be arbitrary. Some people construct characters by putting together a list of contradictions. You end up with a character that is original, but it won’t seem authentic.
  3. Don’t fall into the trap of trying to capture every passing character in detail. Focus on what’s interesting.
  4. Some people accuse others of the faults they see in themselves. Do your characters do that?
  5. Characters come alive in their interactions with other characters. Does one character irritate another, annoy them, make them laugh, make them jealous… ?
  6. Even better: what do your characters think of each other? How do your characters talk about other characters currently off page?

See Also

Connoisseurs

Everyone’s a connoisseur nowadays. Patisserie, whiskey, cheese: all the little pleasures in life are seen not be enough, they need to be ranked and properly appreciated. You can’t just enjoy a bar of chocolate any more; it has to be 85% cacao and handmade by a master chocolatier.

When she was about 3, some friends of mine saw my daughter eat a piece of 85% cacao chocolate (they didn’t see her spit it out afterwards) and were impressed by this, for some reason. I’m not exactly sure why. If anyone had asked me I would have said I was prouder of the fact that I’d managed to train her to use a knife and fork at the table to eat most of what was given to her. I’d have been more impressed with myself if I’d managed to develop her palate to the point where she’d eat cabbage without complaining.

Being a connoisseur is the new gluttony. CS Lewis wrote about something similar in The Screwtape Letters. Being a connoisseur means rejecting perfectly good pleasures in pursuit of something better.

Worse, though, being a connoisseur means being blown about by the vagaries of fashion. What is regarded as good whiskey today was seen as being second rate 50 years ago. Being a connoisseur isn’t about recognising what’s good and bad – there’s good SF and bad SF, and I hope I write the good stuff – but it’s about identifying the smallest possible subset of the good and rejecting the rest.

Marketing people love this, it allows them to distinguish between brands. Shops love it, it means they can charge higher prices. We’re fools to fall for it.

Sometimes good enough is good enough. We’re snobs to think otherwise.