How 'Alien' do we want our Aliens?

There's a wind of change a-blowing through sci-fi at the moment - one that relates in particular to extra-terrestrial life and how it's depicted in fiction.

Science fiction has been around for at least a century, but it wasn't until the 1950s that aliens and UFOs made an impact on the genre. Back then man had yet to land on the moon, poor old Pluto was still a planet and the Milky Way was thought to be The Whole Universe rather than just the astronomical equivalent of a zip-code. So there's no need to beat up ourselves or the sci-fi authors of the time if the depictions of aliens were... a little primitive, to say the least.

Now of course, thanks to space exploration, ever more sophisticated telescopes, satellites and probes and the brain-melting theories and experiments of various NASA boffins, we know so much more. And like the kid who grows up and discovers Santa, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny aren't real, we've all had to adjust our ideas of how proper alien life might have to work in order to actually exist.

(Unless of course you're a conspiracy theorist, in which case carry on believing whatever bullcrap you like and by the way, that tinfoil hat is just so you, dahling..!)

As a result, some sections of the sci-fi community have been railing against the 'standard' alien so beloved of fifty-odd years of popular space fiction, saying that not only is it now known to be nonsensically implausible but a sign of 'lazy and unimaginative writing.' Those who continue to write aliens as little more than humans in neon body-paint with innuendo-inspiring appendages are doing the genre a huge disservice, and they need to stop it, like, now. Get with the (space) program, dudes, and dig deeper for the Weird!

I get that. No honestly, I do. Even in the fairly recent past there have been aliens so badly conceived as to be insulting to a human of average intelligence. Here are just two of the worst examples:

Independence Day - A super-advanced alien race with motherships the size of a suburban town that travel beyond light-speed and are equipped with building-melting lasers have invaded Earth, and even as we speak are merrily destroying key world landmarks they researched on the way (because you don't want to look like a total noob blowing up a McDonalds in Ohio and a Pizza Express in Slough, right?) Oh noes, we're all gonna die! Thank God then, that their inter-galactic fleet of Death Spaceships are still using Microsoft Windows as an operating system, and in their rush to pack enough laser-ammo to LEGO-brick the White House forgot to renew their McAfee subscription! Otherwise that little trojan virus that geeky guy slapped together on his laptop would've been useless for singlehandedly wiping out their entire armada!

Signs - Just imagine for a moment how the Project Planning Meeting might have looked for the uber-powerful, faster-than-lightspeed-spaceship-owning aliens in this particular movie:

ALIEN #1: So... which planet in this little corner of the Milky Way shall we invade and plunder then?
ALIEN #2: Well, how about the one that's over two-thirds covered with a liquid that's pretty much lethal to us?
ALIEN #1: Oooh, sounds like a plan!
ALIEN #3: Um, not wanting to come over all Health and Safety on you guys or anything, but it seems that this lethal liquid is so prevalent that it regularly just falls out of the sky - sometimes for like, days at a time...
ALIEN #2: So..?
ALIEN #3: Well... shouldn't we perhaps consider wearing some sort of protective clothing while we're down there? Y'know, in case that happens?
ALIEN #1: Where are your balls, soldier? If we're gonna go down and invade a planet swirling in stuff that kills us on contact, we're gonna do it butt-naked! 'Cause that's how we roll!

Yes, the above and other examples like them are spectacularly stoopid, and the writers could and should have done better. Yes, now that we have all this new knowledge about how other worlds unlike our own might work, we need to use it to inform our stories about alien races and take them to new levels. Innovate, don't imitate and all that. But at the same time, I feel some of the calls for change could be argued as sacrificing 'authenticity' for story, and we should review each on a case-by-case basis rather than impose new standards across the board. Changes like:

I'm a sexy alien and I know it.
 It's a popular trope - randy alien gets the massive hots for sexy earthling (or sexy alien-of-a-different-planet-to-the-other-alien) and they end up making sweet lurve, sometimes to the point of producing an adorable little hybrid-alien baby to boot. Captain Kirk certainly got close many a time, although fortunately for the Starship Enterprise he also had commitment issues when it came to putting a ring on it.  But could such inter-planetary dalliances ever happen in real life?

Well.... the getting the hots and making sweet lurve part isn't impossible. Humans are certainly kinky little devils who can get all fired up over and doing the most disturbing things (look in any murky corner of the internet for proof of that. On second thoughts, don't. You may be scarred for life.) But, like a union between a human and an animal will not produce a humanimal, the chances of procreation between two different alien races resulting in offspring are close to zero. So hybrid alien babies and plots involving aliens 'spreading their seed' among other alien races (including earthlings) are now considered uncreative as well as unrealistic erotica. (Compared to the other - um, 'realistic' erotica out there? Like, for instance, Dinosaur Porn?)

S'okay, primitive humans - my people memorised the Rosetta Stone on the way here.
In the ultimate example of long-distance language courses, most aliens who rock up to Earth can instantly speak whatever the local lingo for the area happens to be, often quite literally like a native, right from First Contact. Sometimes the explanation for this miracle is little more than a vague hand-wave and a 'just because' from the author, and other times they wheel out whatever name they've devised for the old 'universal translator' thingy (i.e. some technological gizmo/super-weird creature-pathogen possessed by the aliens that just magically translates everything everyone ever says to everyone else forever, instantly and in real time.)

You don't need to be a scientist, rocket or otherwise, to know there's no way this could work in real life, simply because the data still has to be collected, and to do that the different alien races need to spend a decent period of time interacting and then extrapolating that data first. Even websites like Google Translate won't help you instantly converse like a local with someone whose language you don't actually speak - and that's before you take into account that alien worlds may have things, ideas and states of being that have no equivalent in context on Earth, and vice versa.

So again, the feeling is growing that universal translators and instantly multi-lingual aliens are a lazy way of getting round the inevitably real-life language barriers. Especially if these aliens don't even use verbal language to communicate in the first place. And why should they? After all, we're the odd ones out in that sense right here on earth (yes we are - sorry Cat Lady, but Tiddles does not understand every word you say and you do not speak Meow.)

Oh hey, you're just like me - but blue, with random tentacles!
I saved this one for last, since it's potentially the biggest can of worms.

If we've learned anything in the last twenty or so years, it's just how crazy-weird and wonderful other planets are - not just in our own solar system but light years away, in the farthest reaches of the Milky Way and beyond. A frozen waterworld moon! Planets where it rains liquid methane! Planets with storms that last hundreds of years! A moon covered in volcanoes and lava lakes!

Obviously, us puny humans would struggle to last five minutes on worlds like these, so it stands to reason that any sentient natives of those worlds aint gonna be using much of our physiology as a blueprint. We are also carbon-based organisms, because there's a lot of that element on earth and carbon bonds well with lots of other elements, enabling complex structures like sentient life to exist. Other planets with crazy chemical make-ups nothing like ours would have to use other elements with similar properties - silicon is the most popular one touted as a next-best - which means they would probably look and even function very differently to us. And why would creatures on a waterworld need legs, or breathe air? Why would creatures who get their energy via photosynthesis (like plants here on earth) have a digestive system - or even mouths?

So the new, up-to-date message from many quarters of the sci-fi market is clear; writers of alien worlds need to start thinking out of the Star Trek costume box for today's ETs. We're a lot less dumb than we used to be about What's Really Out There (well, except maybe the aforementioned conspiracy theorists) and the guy in the rubber suit won't fool us any more - not even in books. We want proper, faithful depictions of scientifically plausible aliens, and we want them now.

But... do we? Really?

Remember when NASA announced they'd found evidence of life on Mars? The whole world did a collective squee and tuned in for more, panting to know what these critters looked like, what they did, could we bring some back to earth someday and breed them to keep as pets? Until the pictures emerged of these pudgy little worm-y things that NASA told us were so small that this view was actually them magnified about a hundred times, and these ones had probably been dead for about a billion years anyway...

At which point the world did a collective 'humph' and stomped off to - I don't know, play Star Wars Battlefront probably ("at least that's got shootable aliens in it!") Big red buzzer for the non-interesting aliens!

And that's the risk fiction writers take when they try to create 'scientifically realistic' aliens. Sure, they might be spot-on, factually accurate recreations of life that could exist on the fantastical planet of their imaginings - but would anyone want to read about a race of sentient snot-balls whose only form of expression is to spit snot-globs and change colour? For 200-plus pages?

No. So we're going to have to boot our imaginary aliens further up the evolutionary ladder - to be, at the very least, on a developmental par with us humans. And luckily, the boffins of the world have been thinking about that too, and devised a wish list of key characteristics such a species would need to possess in order to dominate their environment the way we do:

Sensory organs - all the better to see, hear, touch, taste and smell. The last three can be achieved a number of ways, as is the case on earth, (a snake 'smells' with its tongue and its skin provides the sense of touch, for example) but for seeing and hearing the requirements are more specific. For complex tasks like building stuff, throwing and catching and manipulating tools in general you need stereo vision - that is, at least two eyes next to each other, facing forward. Meanwhile, binaural hearing offers the greatest chance of survival, enabling a creature to not only hear sounds from all around them, but also to pinpoint the direction of that sound. This is why most highly evolved creatures on earth have two ears - one on each side of their head.

Opposable digits - Aint much civilisation gonna happen without these. This requires at least two twiggy appendages that can move independently of one another while also being able to function together as a unit, where pressure between them can be controlled (enabling gripping and releasing.) This is why apes, monkeys and humans can do complex things with tools, while dogs and manatees just try and eat them.

Highly-evolved socio-communicative skills - No man is an island, so the saying goes - and the same would be true for ambitious aliens. You want to get shizzle done, you need teamwork and an ability to communicate your plans that goes beyond pointy hands and grunts. The reason we can make the wide range of complicated sounds that constitute 'talking' is all to do with the configuration of our tongues, teeth and larnyx, and - get this - our upright standing/walking posture plays a part too. An ability to pass on complicated, non-instinctive information when we're not around to do it personally is also a bonus - which is why us humans invented writing, music and art. But first we needed big brains, and once we'd got one of those it took priority over muscles when it came to feeding our bodies. This is why most of us aren't naturally as huge as an elephant, pumped as a silverback gorilla or as fast as a cheetah; all the fuel that would go into priming the muscles required for those traits gets diverted instead to our massive brains. It also means they'd need to eat actual food to survive - particularly, but not limited to, proteins or something with protein-esque qualities- so no purely photosynthesising life-forms if you want them intelligent, I'm afraid.

So taking all of the above into account, it would seem the ideal alien for interesting and believable fiction would need at least five senses, forward-facing seeing organs next to each other, hearing organs on either side of its head or body, at least two opposable digits, flexible tongues and larynxes, an upright posture, a digestive system that can utilise proteins or an otherworldly equivalent and large brains at the expense of being pretty small, slow-moving and not overly strong.

Wow. That sounds a lot like... us!

You could argue that of course we'd believe that, because humans have proved throughout history that we think we're smashing, the best things ever invented. But even if you're not a scientist, it's hard to argue that the characteristics listed above aren't a massive advantage that mark us out from all the other creatures on our planet. So writers can feel justified in continuing to use them as a starting point in creating their own aliens. And there's still scope for turning up the weird. Why stop at just two eyes, for instance, when you could have three, four or even multiple mini-eyes like a fly? They might need an upright posture - but who says they have to have legs? And when it comes to how they procreate - well, that's between you and your inner therapist, my dears....

So when it comes to creating aliens that won't get the pointy finger of 'outdated cliche' thrust in their face, there's no need to panic; there are plenty of scientific reasons for them to not be so wildly wacky they no longer resemble humans in any way. But there are other reasons too, and they are to do with why we read stories in the first place - about anything, not just aliens. We want to read about shared experiences, to step into another's shoes for a while and walk their path through life, and to do that we need to see how, why and where those characters are like us. We want to laugh, cry, rage, fear, love and hate with them as they lead us through their story.

And it's darn near impossible to do that with a non-talking, quivering blob of goo.

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So what would you add to an alien to level it up from Rubber-suited Guy? What cliche do you think should be taken away? Feel free to put your ideas in the Comments below.

Genre Writing: Whose Rules Are They Anyway?

I'm at that stage in my current work-in-progress Redemption where the big-picture doubts are starting to creep in.

These aren't related to the actual mechanics of the story per se. The plot fits together, the characters do what they're designed to do and the story world is coherent enough that any consistency boo-boos that do appear can be ironed out with very little heartache. No, the doubts I'm referring to are the ones over which I have far less control - the ones my Inner Grinch gets a massive kick out of taunting me with. And his favourite one at the moment goes something along the lines of:

 "No-one will ever read this novel of yours, because it's not 'proper' sci-fi! You're doing it all wrong! The people who like proper sci-fi will hate it, and the people who might like it won't notice it because they won't be sci-fi fans and you've classed it as a sci-fi novel!"

So... am I an ignorant dumbass who mistakenly thinks Redemption is a sci-fi novel when it is in fact not? Well, let's see... it's set some thirty years in the future, in a city under the martial law of a rogue organisation that deposed the elected government following worldwide resource shortages. Almost all of the technology available can only be obtained by the rich and powerful, and anything else is retro junk that clever hackers and tinkerers have recycled and learned to jerry-rig into functionality. And the aforementioned rogue government have an army of super-enhanced soldiers to dispense 'justice' to rebellious citizens. Well, that sounds pretty sci-fi to me. But what does my Grinch mean by 'proper' sci-fi? I believe the clue to this question lies in my previous writing experiences...

You see, Redemption is the first sci-fi novel I've ever completed (even to Draft One stage) - but it's not the first one I've ever tried to write. In the past, I began at least two other sci-fi novels and - being a naive and not-well-versed-in-the-etiquette noob at the time - posted a couple of chapters to writing critique forums to get some feedback. (I have since learned that it's best to have at the very least a completed draft one of the entire novel before I even consider posting chapters for critique.)

A lot of the feedback I got was very useful. Some people even liked what I'd written. But the ones who didn't, really, really didn't - and had two very distinct things in common. Thing One: they all hated the 'emotional stuff' in it, and Thing Two: those reviewers were all men.

I'm not coming over all angry feminist now; those are the plain, simple facts of the matter. Their universal complaint - and one they clearly felt very strongly about judging from their feedback - was that characters having any kind of internal emotional issues alongside the more practical, external conflicts of the story was not what proper science fiction was about. For example: in one of my stories I had a major character who was a scientist that had become a virtual recluse both in his home and work life, following the death of his little girl some five years ago in an accident he blamed himself for. It formed a huge part of his character arc and influenced his actions in relation to the plot - but that, apparently was the problem. As one of those critics put it (this isn't a direct quote, but as close as I can remember to what he said)

'Why put in all this emotional crap about him being tortured about his dead daughter? You're turning what should be a straight science fiction story into bloody chick lit! Stop trying to girlify the genre and you might actually write something genuine sci-fi fans would want to read.'

Now let me assure you, at no point did this scientist character ever pour out his feelings to his friends at a Boys Night In, where they all watched Bro movies and trimmed each other's facial hair. Nor did he record all his emotions in a private diary, along with the calories he'd consumed that day and whether or not he was having a Fat Day. In fact, the character never spoke about it to anyone else at all - the information was revealed to the reader gradually through his own internal dialogue and the odd remark from people who knew him well enough to know the history. So I was (and still am) a little baffled by the 'chick lit' comparison.

But the fact still remains, more than one person had echoed this sentiment - and that makes it a Thing, an ethic that at least some proportion of readers of the sci-fi genre subscribe to. Question is, how established is this ethic? Was I really violating deep-seated genre conventions, upheld by the Masters for generations? And did that really mean I had to completely change my whole writing style, or forever remain unpublishable?

If that's the case then I'm already in trouble, because Redemption is chock-full of characters with various 'emotional issues.' Not to the point of the whole thing reading like a Dear Deirdre problem page, but... well, dammit these characters have got to have some reason for doing the things they do, other than simply 'because, woooh - sci-fi plot!'

Of course every genre has conventions that, by their very nature, are what enable the publishers to define those genres in the first place. You can't put a novel in the Romance genre if the two main characters don't remotely fancy each other, and a Thriller where the only crime committed is Mrs Pendles forgetting to return her library books on time would certainly be considered a violation of the Trades Description Act. Those conventions exist for very good reasons.

But surely, within the more concrete rules of genre, there's some creative wiggle-room? Is it not possible to have a Comedy-Thriller? An Urban Fantasy Romance? Steampunk Vampires? An Emotional Science Fiction story?

Whatever the answer, it's not going to stop me writing Renegades - and writing it my way, the way this story needs to be told, not to fit some pre-defined template of What Sci-Fi Stories Should Look Like. If that renders it 'unpublishable,' or 'something true sci-fi fans would never read' - well, so be it. While I can and will always strive to improve the way I write and how I write it, nothing could ever change the why in everything I write. Because the why is me - it's who I am.

Can we bend the boundaries of genres? We won't find out unless we try. If enough of us are bold, I think we can do it. The publishing world is changing, with more opportunities for experimentation than ever before. The laboratory's open - let's get mixing potions!

Writers vs. Writers Who Write

I've often wondered if there was a certain, defining 'thing' that separates the wannabe writers from the real writers.

In this modern era of self-publishing, e-publishing and reality TV shows making 'stars' of the kind of people you wouldn't normally even want to sit next to on the bus (who then go on to 'write' their autobiographies) it seems like just about everybody in the world these days has 'a book in them,' just screaming to get out in all its chest-bursting-Alien-esque glory.

And the e-publishing revolution that's kicking off now potentially brings that birthing process even closer to reality; all those people who can't get past or don't want to deal with 'The Gatekeepers' (otherwise known as publishers and agents) have another way to crash the party. In some ways this is a good thing; they might turn out to be the greatest party animal ever, the one who should've been invited all along. Or they might just be the one who cries for no reason and throws up everywhere before passing out in the flower bed. Either way, the point is that when it comes to getting your work published, it no longer matters if your name's not down - you can still come in.

So now your nan could publish a book if she wanted to - along with your next-door neighbour, your boss or even that weird kid you knew in school who pulled the legs off spiders and ate them. On the whole though, most of them don't. Even if they talk the talk, the majority of them will not walk the walk - or, if they start to, they end up doing the literary equivalent of giving up about halfway through, nipping into the shop for a Mars bar and calling for a taxi to take them back home.

But what is the difference between the people that are really, truly writers at heart - and the ones who just like the idea of being a writer every now and then, when the mood feels right? Is there a difference - I mean, a real difference, like a variation at DNA-level or something? Until some scientist somewhere actually finds it, there's no way of knowing for sure. But I think this article on the i09 site shines a little light on the debate.

It showcases an 'open letter to J.J. Abrams' video, made by one Prescott Harvey who was previously a production assistant on Abram's Mission Impossible III movie. The renowned director has just landed the job of directing George Lucas'/Disney's next Star Wars movie, and Harvey's video basically offers four golden rules on exactly how Abrams should go about the whole thing to make it great.

(I could of course take a minute to laugh myself silly at the breathtaking chutzpah of an ex-production assistant issuing a set of  How To Make A Movie Properly Instructions to a highly experienced and successful director of blockbuster movies. Okay then, I'll admit it - I did.)

And then I read all the comments below the article, from other Star Wars superfans. Loads of comments, all debating the finer points of The Rules as laid out in Harvey's videos; whether they were right or wrong, what other rules should've been added, what they would tell J.J. Abrams to do if they had the chance...

Again, I couldn't help marvelling at the - well, okay, I'll stick to the nice word 'chutzpah*' - of all these hordes of Star Wars fanboys (and girls) essentially telling a famous and highly successful director "do this movie this way, asshole - and try not to mess it up or we'll have your balls on a silver platter." I think I'm probably right in assuming that a fair number of them aren't famous and highly successful directors themselves, yeah?

If I hired a builder to do some work on my house, I'd probably tell him what it was I wanted him to build (well, that would certainly help...) and make sure we were both on the same page regarding what it would look like when it was finished.

What I wouldn't do is give him a giant list of Must Haves, like what cement he should use to stick the bricks together, the best and most efficient way to do all the wiring and where he should go to get all his building supplies to obtain the best quality for the right price. Why? Two reasons:

1 - Because I'm not a builder, and I have no experience or training to be one. He is and has, because that's his job.

2 - If I was a builder, with the aforementioned experience and training, I wouldn't have hired him to do the job. I'd have done it myself.

And I think that, in a nutshell, is the 'thing' that separates the real writers from the ones that are only in love with the idea of being a writer.

Real writers write real, actual stuff, not essays on how other writers aren't doing it the way The Public wants. They don't waste precious time telling the world how they would've written the Harry Potter books, or what Stephen King should do if he wants to make his novels more cerebral; they see a gap, they hunker down and fill it themselves.

I'm not saying there isn't a place for those who tell others how to write rather than do it themselves; some do it for a living and do it very well. I just think it's a good idea to determine which category you really belong in - if only to rid yourself of a lot of unnecessary pain and struggle in the long run. If you are a real, writing writer you can free yourself from the tyranny of keeping one eye on what everyone else is writing and just write what you want to read - because if that's what's in your heart, being compared to what's already out there isn't important.

Alternatively, if you're the back-seat driver writer, who prefers to analyse what others have written and suggest ways to fix it... well, recognising that means the pressure's finally off you completing that novel/screenplay you've been slogging at for years (and years and years...) just so you can hang out with the writing writers. Don't worry - it doesn't mean you'll get disowned, or that your membership to the writing club automatically expires; if nothing else, you could have a fine career as a beta reader, and they're like gold dust in the writing world. You'll just need to accept that, while other writers will be happy to listen to and respect your opinions about their work, they may still prefer to ultimately do things their way in the end. And if they do, it doesn't necessarily make them an idiot/arrogant/stubborn.

So, for the purpose of discovering which of the two flavours you are, I offer the following litmus test:

Imagine you've been given a glimpse into the future - and discovered that everything you write will sink without trace. Even if you do get anything published you will make no money from it and remain a complete unknown - even if you self-publish it. Forever. Everything you write. Knowing all of this to be true, an absolute certainty - do you still keep writing the stuff anyway?

If you answered 'yes' - you're a real, writing writer. Pull up a chair and get cosy.

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*Best definition of 'chutzpah' I ever heard, courtesy of comedy actress Maureen Lipman: little boy pees through the letterbox of a house and then knocks on the door to ask the occupants how far it went.

Fifty Shades of Fifty Shades (Or The E.L. James Effect)

Has there been a book in modern times that's caused quite the furore of the Fifty Shades trilogy?

It caused controversy for obvious reasons - mostly for being full of the sort of sexual shenanigans that would make Samantha Whatserface from Sex & The City come over all Sandra Dee. On the one hand, it gave legions of frustrated suburban women all over the world a kick in the mojo so powerful that their husbands and boyfriends wore either permanent grins or expressions of cross-eyed terror. On the other, it was denounced by many women's' groups (and even BDSM groups) as being degrading and reinforcing dangerous sexist stereotypes.

But the phenomenon of particular interest to writerly types like me was that it divided the world into two distinct camps regarding the quality of the prose. I'm paraphrasing here of course, but the general gist was that it was either a) spectacularly horny in a way no other book could ever make the reader horny, or b) atrociously written, woefully unrealistic and read like the work of a Emo Teen With Issues.

Now let me make my position clear here. I have no beef whatsoever with Ms. E.L. James; regardless of how much of any of the above is true or not, the plain fact is she gave a gazillion trillion people exactly what they wanted from a novel. She got something very, very right, and that's one, solid-gold fact you can't argue with.

What DID wind me up, however, was the angle the media chose to take with the story behind the books - and in particular the way Ms. James and her meteoric success was portrayed. She was touted as the 'shy housewife and mum,' who'd written what was essentially a piece of fanfiction that 'borrowed' heavily from Stephanie Meyer's Twilight novels. It was the very first novel she'd ever written in her life, so - being such a 'shy and prudish housewife' who just happened to have a taste for writing porn - she thought "Hey, what the heck, I'll self-publish it." And then - boom! Instant fame and fortune.

Except of course it's not entirely true, is it? When you picture a 'shy housewife and mum' do you picture someone in an executive position in a television production company? Nope, me neither. But that's what E.L. James was before she stormed into a novelist career. Obviously she would still have been a housewife and mum at the same time - so technically the media weren't lying there. The 'shy' part is pretty much open to interpretation as well. Does someone who's worked their way up to an executive position in a television company and then gone about self-publishing their debut novel - which is, incidentally, all about a BDSM relationship - strike you as the 'shy and prudish' type? Perhaps she said she didn't like dancing in nightclubs in some interview somewhere; that's one kind of 'shy' - albeit not that relevant to the image the media shoved down our throats..

It's all about dressing up the fairytale though, isn't it? Changing the slant on the mundane facts just a teeny bit makes the whole story a little more heart-warming; after all, the public are suckers for a good old-fashioned rags-to-riches story.

All well and good; I like a bit of the old Horatio Alger-ism as much as the next person. But turning someone who is clearly a very astute and business-savvy woman into some sort of literary Cinderella bothers me. I mean, what message does that send out? That writing a novel is easy-peasy, something that anyone who's ever loved a sci-fi or fantasy series can knock out on a fanfiction website and become the biggest-selling author on the planet. All you have to do is take something that's already been done, tweak it here and there, change the names and - voila! Jump on that bandwagon and count the money, baby!

The proof that this message was heard can be seen in any bookstore in the western world. Entire bookshelves are now needed to stock what could quite justifiably be called 'the Fifty Shades Rip-Off' genre. Some pay only the 'subtlest' of homages to the novel that spawned them (Sylvia Day's 'Bared To You' - which proudly screams "If you liked Fifty Shades of Grey' you'll love this!" on the front cover) while others were far less... um, 'covert.' (Seriously - 'Fifty Shades of Green?' That's not even trying!)

All of which just reinforces the idea that becoming a successful novelist is a simple as picking a winning formula and then banging out your own, slightly-adulterated version of it - crank 'em out like strings of sausages from that money-making sausage template. Sure, the chances are pretty high that most of the imitations are cataclysmically rubbish. But they're still sitting on the shelves in bookshops; some publishing company somewhere believed in them enough to take on the people that penned them. Rather than, say, novelists who've been writing for years and honed their skills accordingly... but, unfortunately for them, in genres that aren't the current flavour-of-the-moment...

No, this isn't a sour-grapes rant. It can't be; for starters, Whilst I've had some minor successes in other writing fields, The Renegades is the first novel I've ever got to Completed Draft One stage, so I can't even legitimately call myself a novelist yet. It's just worry, that's all. This is a virus that originated from outside the world of writing, but is now threatening to cross-breed and infect us too.

You've only got to look at programmes like Britain's Got Talent, when some excruciatingly un-talented individual does something godawful in an attempt to 'entertain' and looks utterly shocked and outraged when they're told they're terrible. And then marches offstage, snorting that the judges are idiots and they'll prove them wrong in the end, when they finally get the recognition they deserve and become the superstar they're just born to be..! And they believe it - they believe every word of their own hype. Why? Because they saw Susan Boyle do it. And Paul Potts do it. They saw them step onto that stage, with their bad hairdos and wonky teeth, and blow the world away, in the space of a three-minute audition. Because that's all it took - three minutes...

Except it didn't, of course. Both Paul Potts and Susan Boyle sung for years before their auditions. But telly doesn't show that part - only the three minutes that launched them to superstardom. And now, with this insistence of the media of applying the same, rose-tinted wash to the likes of E.L. James, there's a danger of the same thing happening in the writing world. The quality of published works will suffer for it (while the vanity publishers will make a killing.) Writers with genuine talent but without the abundance of self-confidence required to 'self-publish and be damned' may become disheartened and simply give up on the idea of ever being published altogether.

Veterans of the Performing Arts may laugh bitterly and say 'that's life, kiddo - welcome to the real world.' And I suppose no-one knows that better than them. But that doesn't make it any less sad to me.

If I never get anywhere with my novel-writing, I'd rather it was because I'm simply not quite good enough to make it, or the things I need to write about aren't interesting to anyone but me. Not because I just can't bring myself to sell my soul and crank out touch-up-and-tweak copies of whatever's selling at the time.

Even In A Pretend World, You Need A Map

I've been having a bit of trouble finding my way around lately.

My sense of direction is pretty rubbish at the best of times, but nothing brings out my navigational doofus tendencies like trying to get to various places in a building I've never actually, physically been inside. Partly because said building is located three thousand miles away, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. And partly because it only exists in my head.

You guessed it - I'm talking about a location in my Renegades novel. A large underground base hidden in the side of a quarry, to be precise.

In its real-life geographical location in New York state where the novel is set it doesn't actually exist, but some specific infrastructure is really there so that, at some point in the future, it plausibly could. (Yep, I did the research for it - God bless the internet!) So even though I've placed it in a real-world environment, the base itself is pure fantasy - mine to carve out of that hillside however I like.

So if it's just a pretend place, I don't need to know exactly where everything in it is in relation to everything else, do I? I mean, it's my secret base; I invented it, so I can tell the readers whatever I want about it, right?

Well... it turns out that no, I can't. Or, to put it more accurately, I can't tell them whatever I want about it whenever it suits me. If I say there's a gymnasium just down from the dining area in Chapter One, then that's where it always has to be - forever, for the entire life of the story. And I can't just blithely assume that, should I make a geographical slip-up at some point, 'no-one will notice a little detail like that.' Because that's like assuming everyone else possesses navigational skills as dire as mine (and that's a hell of a lot of people I'd be insulting.)

To put it bluntly, fans of science fiction novels are smart cookies who aren't easy to fool; some of these people have actually taught themselves to speak Klingon, for crying out loud. They're gonna pick up on every little detail - even those that seem trivial and insignificant to those of us with smaller brain capacity - and if it's wrong, it will jerk them out of the story and that's a bad thing.

I have a fairly flexible imagination, which enables me to create these places in the first place; unfortunately flexible imaginations tend to come with an equally flexible memory. This results in a brain that enjoys creating things on the fly so much, it rarely mentally files anything away so that it'll be the same every time. But, for the purpose of building a believable story, my world has to be the same every time; it can't change from scene to scene. The only way to ensure constancy then is to set it in stone from the start; design and plan it, the same way an architect designs and plans a real-life building.

So, after several hours of: searching through the text of the entire novel for all mentions of the various rooms in my base, cutting out, fiddling with and glueing bits of squared paper, and then faffing about trying to make Microsoft Excel work like a floor-plan-drawing tool (I'm pleased to report that it can, and the results look surprisingly good) I have now made myself a thoroughly detailed map of my fantasy underground location. I could even tell you where the toilets are - if you really wanted to know.

Boring? Yeah, sometimes. Headache-inducing? Oh, heck yeah! But unnecessarily nit-picky? Not on your life. Because now, not only will the map ensure my characters will always be able to take the right route to reach the places they want to get to - but I can make my descriptions of them more interesting. More real, because now I'm properly 'with' them, following them around like a little spy. I'll know, for example, that they can smell disinfectant as they're walking down a particular corridor, because my map tells me they're passing the medical room. And when you're mentally walking through the same environment as your characters, it makes it so much easier to get inside their heads and know what they're feeling and thinking.

Tolkien famously drew detailed maps of Middle-Earth and wrote vast, sprawling back-histories for all the races inhabiting his mythical lands. J.K Rowling did a lot of the same for her Harry Potter series. I can see now that their reasons for doing so went much deeper than mere nerdish pleasure in creating little extra nuggets of trivia for their fantasy worlds. I guess if I'm going to learn a valuable lesson from anyone, it might as well be from two of the greatest storytellers of them all.

Happy New Year, everybody! Let's make this the year that we Get Stuff Done!

Pesky Life... You're Getting In The Way Of My Fantasy World!

Soooo... how long is it since I last blogged?

No, don't go and actually look, please, I'll just be embarrassed... Yes, that question was hypothetical. I know it's been a while, and there are many reasons for this.

Reason number one is discovering that, for Draft Two of The Renegades, I have to actually write a whole new chapter that fills in a lot of stuff currently missing from Draft One. Which means even when I've finished Draft Two, that chapter will still be a Draft One and suck more than the rest of the book, so I'll have to go back and do the whole stew-and-review process again for just that chapter. Assuming I don't find other moments in the story where I have to add in extra chapters of course... and they in turn don't mess up some structure/facts in any of the other Draft Two chapters...

And there I was thinking pregnancy and childbirth was a long and complicated process (although it has to be said my novel-writing process also seems to involve sitting down a lot and eating weird stuff.)

All of which is a rather weedy way of saying that it aint been flowing easily. Writer's Block? Well, I'm not sure if I should succumb to that kind of thinking (see here for my thoughts on that) so in order to not do precisely that I've been doing other kinds of writing instead, to stop my brain getting flabby and bored. But not a lot of Renegades writing, it has to be said. And because this blog is mainly about the progress made with Renegades, not a lot of blogging here either. (I am doing my ashamed face right now actually.)

Reason number two is a bit more universal; it's that thing called 'life.' That blimmin' thing that gets in the way of so many creative endeavours, because most of the time it just isn't as interesting. (Unless of course you are a fabulously wealthy and maybe even a bit famous person, in which case you could probably buy yourself things that would take the edge off the humdrum. But I'm not, so in my case that doesn't apply.) Christmas, for one thing. I realise I'm massively generalising here, but when you are a man, Christmas generally doesn't appear on your mental radar until... oooh, I don't know - maybe December? It certainly doesn't warrant much practical attention until you realise you've heard Wizzard's 'I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day' at least five times in various public places in the last two hours or so. But for the average woman - most especially one with kids - Christmas starts way earlier than that. Planning for it is on a par with organising a war. Presents, food, who's going to who's house on which day, costumes for the school play.... it's okay, I won't go on, because I can hear you all yawning from here. But it eats chunks out of potential writing time, there's no getting away from it.

So there you have it; two potential excuses to choose from for my recent tardiness on Renegade writing. But that's in the past now, I'm glad to say. I'm turning the corner, crossing that bridge now I've come to it (and hopefully not burning it as well) and The Renegades is BACK ON. Hurrah!

So I suppose I'd better get back to it then. As Dory from 'Finding Nemo' says - "Just keep swim-ming, swim-ming, swim-ming..."

Draft Two - Time To Get Real...

Well, my Date With Draft One of my novel The Renegades hit last Saturday, and I've spent the last seven days reading over it in preparation for the Draft Two process. And I have discovered two things:

1 - I'm not as bad a writer as I thought I was!
2 - I'm also not as good a writer as I thought I was.

It's a strange thing, to reach both conclusions at the same time, but then this isn't maths we're dealing with here, where every question only has one right answer (which probably also explains why I'm hopeless at maths. I'm a rubbish conformist.)

I suppose the best way to explain it is to say that the bits of Draft One that were good were... well, actually good, like a real, proper writer wrote them. While the bits that were bad... well, apart from the fact that I found myself guilty of some of the very things I'd been picking at in the writing of other authors, I also found myself at one point thinking "Jeez, this is note 163 - and I haven't even got three-quarters through the book yet!" (And my numbered notes are just the ones detailing changes too big to write as a one-liner on the manuscript... )

So I've learned something new from this exercise - something that, had I been taught it in a writing class or told it by an experienced author, I probably wouldn't have believed it. It's something I've had to learn the hard way - by actually going through the process for real.

Before now, I always thought Draft One was where I'd be doing the bulk of the donkey work. That the long, hard slog of actually getting the story down, from beginning to end, for the very first time, would be the most time-consuming part of the whole project. Everything after that would just be tweaking and polishing all the stuff I've already got down - editing what already exists. That won't take nearly as long to do - it'll be much quicker and easier than Draft One was. Wouldn't it?

I can see now how wrong that idea is. The real, sleeves-up graft is only just beginning.

Draft Two is not just a matter of dusting off Draft One and making it better; it's about upping the game considerably. It's about putting in all the parts of the story that are still missing (and my god, there's a lot more of that than I thought there'd be.) It's about finding and correcting every single plot, character and world mistake (and it pains me to confess there are a lot more of those than I thought there'd be too.) But most of all, it's about making every single part of the whole book better - even the bits that are already pretty good. It's not just an editing exercise - almost every chapter will have to be pretty much completely rewritten.

And that's what I've learned; Draft One is not, as I'd previously thought, the block of marble from which you carve and polish your literary David - it is merely the wireframe on which the whole thing is built. That means it won't look like anything much until I start slapping the clay on top - and that, clearly, doesn't happen until Draft Two, the real donkey work of the novelwriting process.

So... if Draft One was the conception stage, it looks like Draft Two is the pregnancy. I wonder if it causes weird cravings, backache and swollen feet too?

But I'm not downhearted - far from it. It's actually quite exciting, and I'm up for the challenge. Well let's face it - if I'm going to fall at this hurdle I don't have much chance of making it as a bona fide novelist in the future, do I? So bring it on, Renegades Draft Two! Meet me at the computer in ten minutes time -  'cause you and me have an appointment, and I don't like tardiness...

Six Weeks Is Longer Than I Thought

OMG (as I believe people under thirty years old say these days) have I really got three-and-a-half more weeks to go before I can start on 'Renegades' Draft 2? I'm sure weeks weren't this long when I were a little girl...!

I've given up on the kid's comedy novel, by the way. Well no - not given up exactly, just pushed it aside for a future project. Mothballed it, I suppose you could say. Instead I am now working on - another sci-fi novel. Yep, it seems I just can't leave the genre alone, no matter how hard I try, so I decided not to fight it and just go with it. Although I suppose I'd better not get to like this one too much, since I'll have to put it aside again when I start 'Renegades' Draft 2 - and even when that book's fully complete, it's just Part I in a trilogy, so I'm going to have to write the other two before I can go back this new one... Tsk! Get me, with my 'Oooh, I'm writing a trilogy" line - without even knowing if Draft 1 of Book 1 will make the cut yet. Me and my ridiculously lofty future plans!

How on earth do the professonal novelists deal with this? How do they resist the burning temptation to take 'just a little peek' at their simmering Draft One for six whole weeks? Some of them wait even longer. I haven't taken any sneaky peeks yet - but most of my writing thoughts have been consumed with what I remember of it, already debating in my head what I'll probably need to change, cut, add in... Am I allowed to do that? Is that breaking the rules? Ah, Stephen King et al - you give us these rules about 'setting your manuscript aside for a time,' but when we have questions WHERE ARE YOU, eh? EH?

Writer's Block: Like A Unicorn, But Not As Pretty

Well, it's now official; in the past three days I have only written about another 800 words of my 'Avalaff' children's novel; that works out at about roughly 1.5 hours of writing. About a third of the output I set out to achieve for my weekly writing schedule. Pititful. Lazy.

What can I say? It aint coming, it's not working, it just doesn't seem to be flowing at all... now, where and when have I heard myself say things like that before? Oh yeah, I remember...Those times when I fell victim to that curse of all writers. The dreaded malady that no writer ever wants to catch, because it can be crippling, life-destroying - even fatal to the fledgling writer if left untreated for too long. I'm talking, of course, about Writer's Block.

Now even as I speak those two words, I can picture half of you fellow writers out there coming over all funny and having to go for a sit down. And then I see the other half getting a twitchy eyelid and fighting an urge to punch a wall. (I'm not suggesting for a moment that you're all lunatics, that's just the crazy, over-dramatised way my brain works. No offence meant, believe me.) Because, as we all know from all the Writers' How-To books and courses and whatnot, opinions about Writer's Block can be neatly divided into two camps.

Firstly, there are those who know, with sharp, icy fear in their hearts, that it is completely real, it does exist and anyone who says it doesn't is lying through their teeth because they think denial is the only way to fight it, the poor, deluded fools..! These are the ones who have known the pain of sitting in front of a blank page/screen for what seems like days, weeks... hell, hundreds of years sometimes... waiting for something to bubble to the surface in their brain, and getting precisely nothing. Or, worse, a load of bubbly brain farts that are about as welcome on that blank page/screen as they would be floating around in the air. There's no way of knowing how long they're going to suffer from it, and there's nothing medicinal they can take to make it go away (although popular 'home remedies' include junk food, nicotine and alcohol.) All they can do is hope that it will go away eventually, and their mojo will return once more.

And then there's the other camp, who say that Writer's Block is a big, fat myth, a lie, and a conspiracy. There's no such thing, they cry - it's just procrastination and laziness masquerading as some kind of giant mental fog that threatens to engulf your creative brain! These are the ones who get angry with themselves and go straight into full-on Fix It Mode whenever that stream looks like it's running dry; "Too many distractions, that's what it is - I'll shut down my email... and my web browser... in fact, I'll come off the computer entirely, hah! Yeah. In fact, I won't even write here at my desk, where I can keep getting up to make coffee and go to the toilet and stuff, 'cause that's more distractions. Yeah, I'm gonna go and lock myself in the broom cupboard with an A4 pad and a biro! And I'm not gonna let myself out until I've written at least two pages of something decent! Right, here we go then, get myself comfortable, let's DO this... Damn! Where are my Jammie Dodgers? I can't write a word without my Jammie Dodgers... I'm going to have to go out and buy some more before I do anything else... Damn, damn, DAAMMNN!!!"

(Again, the above is likely to be a mild exaggeration of Real Life. I can't help it, my brain just does that, okay?)

I would like to propose a third theory, if that's alright with everyone. And that is, that Writer's Block is like a unicorn. Most of us at the very least suspect that it doesn't exist and has never existed - even if we can't actually supply conclusive proof - but for those who do believe in them they are very real indeed, and they don't need to gallop across your telly screen with Clare Balding commentating in the background to justify their existence, thank you very much. If you believe in something, it's real for you - and if you don't, it's not. Simples. So let's not fight about it, and instead try to think of ways to cure those pesky bouts of Writer's Block/Procrastinatitus, shall we?

Well, perhaps it helps to first define what the 'Block' is in the first place. For me, at the moment, it's this blimmin' Avalaff novel. Don't get me wrong, I'm very fond of it and feel it has potential as a 'keeper' work... but I've hit a speed bump with it now, and my creative stream has dwindled to a sad little trickle over the past three days. But does this stop me writing anything? Well, no... I'm writing this Blog right now, for starters. So, if it is a Block, it's only with this particular piece of work. Which automatically doesn't make it Writer's Block - just 'Writing Avalaff' Block.

So, maybe the answer is to just acknowledge that, and instead work on something else for a couple of days. After all, the important thing to keep yourself going is simply to write - to come to the page/screen regularly and keep those writing muscles toned, like athletes do when they're training. (Although I don't think they're allowed to scoff junk food, nicotine or alcohol at the same time, so that's one-nil to the Writer's Life already - woohoo!)

So, however much I may want to adhere to my 'schedule' of sticking exclusively to writing 'Avalaff' until my six-week stewing period for 'Renegades' is up, I think I may have to cut myself some slack on that. Switch to something else for just a day or two - probably something completely different in feel - and give the 'Blocked' work a little time to breathe.

I suppose it's a bit like crop rotation really. After a field's been used to grow crops in for two or three years in a row it needs a period of time to 'lie fallow,' where it's left to rest and replenish its nutrients ready for the next planting session. But the farmer still grows crops in the other fields - one of which will be a field that lay farrow last year, and is therefore ripe and ready for planting new stuff in.

Yes, I know - I can hear you saying it out there, and you're right; it is alright for me, I'm not on a deadline, having to finish a piece of commissoned work that someone's screaming at you to get done. Well my answer to that is that I think it's good to have an alternative bit of writing to do anyway - even if it's something that's never going to see the light of day - for just these 'Block'-y periods. After all, surely the alternative is sitting in front of a piece of work for hours and not getting anything done anyway? Might as well fill your time up with the equivalent of 'writer's star-jumps' - it's got to be better than 'non-inspired writer's facepalms.'

And, while you're about it, why not have some more junk food, nicotine or alcohol?*

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*Disclaimer: Yes, Mr. Lawyer-type, I  will of course stress to impressionable writers that indulging in any of the above substances may be harmful to their health, no,  I am not under contract to endorse Jammie Dodgers and yes, other biscuit-related products are available.

This Week I Have Mostly Been... Procrastinating

Well... it's Confession Time, I guess.

During the writing of  'The Renegades: Redemption' I was cracking out a steady pace of about 10-15 hours a week of work on it. Yeah, alright, I'm not asking you to faint with admiration, don't worry. I'm well aware that's not many hours compared to, like, a full-time job or anything. But when you're a mum and housewife you don't get many hours that you're 'allowed' to call your own for 'indulging' your 'little hobby.'

 ( I HATE that word - 'housewife,' by the way. Makes me feel like a mindless drone. 'Domestic Engineer?' Makes me sound like a plumber or something. Not that I've anything against plumbers... it's just not a very accurate description to apply to running a house and bringing up a kid, that's all. We need something more dynamic that doesn't sound like a patronising mickey-take. Future project, perhaps? Anyway, I'm digressing...)

The point I was making, just before my brain randomly took a wander away from it, is that I had myself a nice little writing schedule whilst writing Renegades and - more importantly - I stuck to it. Now I've had to put it aside to stew for a while, and work on something else that's about as different from that as it's possible to get, my schedule's gone... a little wonky, it's fair to say. To the point where this week, for the first time in about six months, I am unlikely to achieve my minimum 10 hours of writing.

Okay, as Crimes of the Century go, it's hardly up there with Grand Larceny. But it's made me feel twitchy. Does it mean I'm Failing As A Writer? Aren't writers supposed to bounce out of bed every morning going "I want to write today, I was born to write, let me write right now, damn it!" ...Or something like that.

I've got to be honest, I haven't felt like that any day of this past week. Now that I'm working on this other project, it's been more like "Oh god, I suppose I'd better do some work on this again... nothing's coming... aw jeez, I'm not sure I can even do this..." It's not because it's not a 'fun' thing to write; it's a comedy, after all, so it should be ten times the fun of the predominantly giggle-free Renegades. And, if I'm completely honest with myself, it's also not because my six-year-old son is still off school, and doesn't go back until Wednesday next week. Sure, he has the energy of a Tasmanian Devil, and I've long run out of ways to get him out of the house that don't cost tons of money, don't need a car to get to and don't - JUST DON'T, MUMMY - involve going anywhere near shops to buy ANY things that aren't new toys or games. But that in itself is not what's slowed my momentum down. So what is the cause then?

Perhaps I'm 'missing' Renegades. After all, I devoted six months and some 200-plus hours of writing to it - and once I start on Draft 2 it'll be at least another 200 more before it's completed, I'll wager. Perhaps I'm just having trouble adjusting to the shift in perspective, from dark, gritty sci-fi to children's comedy in the space of a week. Or perhaps I'm just subconsciously trying to 'take a week off work' and feeling too guilty about that to let it properly happen. I can't imagine that, if I did, my Writing Brain would really shrivel to the size of a pickled walnut and I'd just be sitting there drooling and grunting the next time I tried to write. But it's there, in the back of my head, nagging away like an exasperated parent. The Fear.

Is that the Writer's Ultimate Nightmare, I wonder? That you somehow 'lose the muse' forever if you stop, for even a couple of days? Or have I just become as nerdy about my 'schedule' as I am about many other aspects of my life? Maybe I should join a support group or something.

Or maybe I should kick myself up the bum and get back to my writing, like a good little writer. *Sigh*... okay, ta-ta for now then...

New Novel... New Identity Crisis

Okay... while Draft One of my sci-fi novel, 'The Renegades: Redemption' sits and stews for a while, I've started another one. Well, it keeps me off the streets, doesn't it..? Anyway, this one is a childrens' fantasy novel, and is completely different from Renegades in the same way that Joyce Grenfell's humour is completely different from Frankie Boyle's. Which has got me thinking, for the first time, about the thorny issue of Pen Names.

Y'see, my sci-fi novel is very 'adult.' No, NOT in the 'Fifty Shades of Grey' sense - but certainly not the sort of thing they'd consider televising on CBBC any time soon, if you catch my drift. If, in the magical world of Dreams Come True, it gets published with one name attached, I'm going to have to think about using an alternative name for any kid's books I write - purely to avoid the scenario of some innocent mum going into a bookshop and thinking "Ooh look, a Wendy Christopher novel. She wrote that jolly tale about the king of Avalaff that my little Tyler liked so much - I think I'll buy this 'Renegades' one for his seventh birthday..." You know what I mean. Don't want to be accused of corrupting the nation's youth.

So... how do I want to play this? Which genre would I want my real name on, and which one the pen name?

And no, before you ask, I would not do that thing where an author has "Jenny Bloggs writing as Matilda Saucebucket" or whatever. I've never understood that. I mean, I understand a writer wanting to write novels in different genres under different names, so as not to be pigeonholed... but surely announcing the fact on the front of your books just makes you seem like you have sort of multiple personality disorder? Isn't it a bit like an undercover policeman turning up to his 'case' in full disguise - and then lifting up his fake beard in front of the crims and going "Woo-hoo! It's me all along - did you guess? Oh whoops - sorry, just pretend you never saw that..!"

So no - if I'm going to use more than one name, I won't be listing them all on the front of my books like some sort of Pick Your Own Alt-Fest. I will be using them purely for the altogether higher purposes of deception and subterfuge.

This is of course, assuming that ANY of my novels get published. I have to have the attitude that they will, because otherwise my confidence will crumble like a sandcastle and I will just give up on my writing dreams and - in all probability - go completely insane, which is not something people approve of in suburban Maidstone.

So I'm bigging up my own ego for entirely altruistic reasons. I'm glad we got that cleared up.