Three for the Price of One

I watched the film The African Queen for the first time yesterday, and very enjoyable it was too.

Now, alongside Robots and Accordions, this blog celebrates good writing, and the screenplay had that in abundance.  I was particularly taken by a scene near the beginning of the film where Katherine Hepburn’s character kneels at the bedside of her brother.  He’s going mad, having just seen the Germans destroy the village where he works as a missionary, and he is reliving his past life.  Whilst his sister listens, he talks about how he must pass his exams tomorrow in order to become successful in life.  If he doesn’t pass, he resolves to become a missionary and in that way perform the Lord’s work.  He decides, that being the case, he will take his sister with him, wherever he is sent.

There’s a really nice example of the writer’s craft in the above scene:  many different bits of information being conveyed by one monologue.  First, there is the brother’s madness, which is distressing for his sister and the viewer.  Second, we get see a little of the brother’s back story.  And thirdly, there is the look of hurt on Katherine Hepburn’s face when her brother describes her as ‘not a comely woman’.  All that emotion conveyed in a couple of sentences.

I love this sort of economical writing, I’d rather see it than overblown prose any day. Three for the price of one.

Kerfuffle

Unlike many people, I don’t actually have a problem with X Factor.  Yes, I find the way they humiliate people in the early stages of the contest annoying to say the least, and yes, I’m fed up with the way they draw out announcing the results, but no, I don’t see any problem with having a talent show on TV. I can’t help thinking that some of the ire directed against it is due to the fact that everyone can participate in it, and not just the privileged few who have attended stage school.

Anyway, this is a very roundabout way of getting to the fact that I saw Kerfuffle on Friday night in Stockport.  It was an odd (though very enjoyable) event.  I can’t remember the last time I went to a folk gig where they put cashew nuts on the table, and I’m sure I’ve never been to one in a boat club before.  There was something reassuringly and authentically folky (and I’m not being sarcastic) about the raffle at half time and the support act that had an almost Music Hall feel to it (I haven’t sang Cushy Butterfield for years).

Anyway, the band themselves are young and very talented.  Hannah James has an assured touch on the accordion and a wonderfully clear voice, Jamie Robert’s guitar playing put me in mind of John Renbourn.  The group played an eclectic range of music, whilst remaining firmly within the tradition.  Definitely a group to watch.

But what’s all this got to do with X Factor?  Not that much, I suppose, except to note that this is a group of young people who have been immersed in music from a young age and who came together after entering a folk competition at the Derby Assembly Rooms (the place where Alt.Fiction has been held!).  So there you are are.  Talent shows for Folk Musicians.  I wonder what Simon Cowell would make of that?

Incidentally, posts have been a bit slow here recently as I’m busy working on another project.  More about this in the new year…

Books I didn’t Expect to Enjoy

People sometimes ask for my favourite books, or the authors that most influence me.  The following are neither of these.  They’re the books that were recommended to me that I didn’t want to read because they looked dreadful, the books that I picked up because I was bored or because there was nothing else to hand.  Never judge a book by its cover, be wary of its reputation.  I really enjoyed the following…

The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot

When my daughter recommended these to me I was like  no way,   but when I started reading them I was like hey these are soooo cool.

Actually, I found the books really funny.  Like all the best fictional diarists, Mia’s perception of herself is not that of the reader, and a lot of the comedy stems from this.  I like the fact that you could read these as teenager and then again as an adult and have a completely different view of what went on.

There are also links to online tips on how to be a princess on the jacket, but I haven’t used those yet.

Bravo Two Zero by Andy McNab

A number of friends (all male) recommended this, and I read it in the end mainly to keep them quiet.  I’m glad I did as it gave me a completely different perspective on army life.  The book deals with fighting and incompetence and torture, but it’s the small details that stick in the mind, the events that take part away from the action, like the author walking the streets with his girlfriend the night before he set off on his mission as they neither of them knew what else to do.

Rachel’s Holiday by Marian Keyes

Chick lit of the highest calibre.  Yes, its a rom com, but with a twist as the heroine gradually comes to terms with the fact that she’s an alcoholic and drug addict.  Marian Keyes know’s all about this as she used to be one herself. Writing a book that deals with the issue, but keeping it funny, positive and yet realistic is quite an achievement.

Incidentally, the book says Trust Marian on the spine.  I can’t help thinking that I should have something similar on the spines of my books.   How does Trust Tony sound?

Max J Friedländer

I came across Friedländer in Michael Frayn’s novel Headlong (which comes thoroughly recommended).

Max J. Friedländer , 1867-1958, was a German art historian who, according to Frayn, warned against the “vanity of attempting to describe pictures in detail”.  Friedländer recommends “the strictest economy of words”, limiting oneself to “aphoristic remarks, put together unsystematically”.  The advice struck a chord with me on reading the book, and, as I discovered on subsequently searching the web, it seems to have struck a chord with others.

The advice reminds me of the eyeball kick, mentioned by the the Turkey City Lexicon,  amongst other guides:

That perfect, telling detail that creates an instant visual image. The ideal of certain postmodern schools of SF is to achieve a “crammed prose” full of “eyeball kicks.”

It wasn’t always thus.  Chesterton opened one of his Father Brown stories  to excellent effect with paragraphs of atmospheric description of  dark and sinister pine forests, but this is old fashioned writing in the days of big budget movies, especially for those of us working in the SF field.  You’re never going to get the reader to imagine the same spectacle as they can be seen on the big screen, but you can arrest them with the small details (It’s years since I read Schindler’s List, but the image that to always comes to my mind from that book is not the barbed wire or the soldiers, but the little girl in the red coat).

Personally, I don’t like passages describing scenery, I like to keep such things to a minimum, but maybe that’s a matter of taste.

Or maybe not.  You’d be surprised how much description a reader fills in for themselves.  Think of Mr Darcy in Pride and Prejudice.  About the only description Austen gives is that he is tall.  The rest is left to the reader’s imagination.

KISS

“No, father, you never did care about anything except your precious job.”

This is a line from Blood and Iron, spoken by a young woman to her father, and overheard by a nearby robot.  Given the circumstances in which the words were spoken, I originally used an expletive in place of precious.  But then I realised that as the words were being translated by computer as the young woman spoke them, and robots don’t use human expletives which tend be organically based, the sentence would probably read

“No, father, you never did care about anything except your rusting job.”

This is logical, but it wouldn’t make a lot of sense to the reader at first glance as it doesn’t sound like the sort of thing a young woman could say.  I could have put in an explanation (a common writers’ mistake, in my opinion), but that would have slowed down the action, and worse, taken the reader away from the scene and reminded them they were reading a book.

I love a complicated plot, I love hard SF, but when it comes to the writing I always like to Keep It Simple, Stupid.

Anyway, Blood and Iron is finished and should be with Macmillan now.

Hymns Ancient and Modern

Watching Belshazzar’s Feast last Saturday evening in Bradford (they were the support band at the Bellowhead concert) I was struck by what an easily overlooked resource the hymn book is.

The pair played an old Welsh Hymn by the name of Ebenezer ( or Ton-Y-Botel), quoting the hymn number.  I checked  when I got home in the very tatty old book that I own and had a go myself.  It sounded great- even more so, I thought, when played in 3/4.

Now my preferred definition for Folk Music is something like this one I just found on the web :

the traditional and typically anonymous music that is an expression of the life of people in a community

and of course, hymns were an example of just that in the past for large parts of the community .

Of course, tunes travel both ways.  A quick scan through the hymn book showed many folk tunes appropriated by the church: Londonderry Air, Scarlet Ribbons even Scarborough Fair.  A quick scan through my records and CDs threw up such gems as John Renbourn’s excellent version of Monk’s Gate (which I remember singing as a child to the words “He who would valiant be”) and Kate and Anna McGarrigle’s Travellin’ on For Jesus, and an awful lot of Christmas Carols (I found at least five versions of While Shepherds Watched, including the local one which is sung to the tune of Jackson).

Anyway, I’ve been playing through the hymns, some of them sound very nice (at least, the ones written before 1950 do).  Definitely something to look at in order to increase your repertoire.  (Have you learnt the Valeta yet?)

By the way, I enjoyed Belshazzar’s Feast.  Accordion and Fiddle:  a classic combination.  I’m not so sure about the slide whistle though…

Micro Men

Have you seen Micro Men yet?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00n5b92

If, like me, you learned to program by typing out lines of BASIC on a Sinclair ZXx, an Acorn Micro or Commodore machine, then you’ll love this story of the rivalry between Clive Sinclair and Chris Curry as they battle for supremacy in the early ’80’s micro market.  If you are too young to remember those days (for example you may be one of my Computing class who is reading this rather than getting on with your homework, you know who you are, and it’s due in by Thursday) then watch it anyway and marvel at how primitive those early machines were.

What struck me whilst watching was how much of a dead end the first home computers were.  Although many machines were sold, nearly all of them were used for playing games.  Only a few people put the micros to their intended use and learned to program on them (Incidentally, I remember paying £10 for a book on Assembly Language, and another £30 for an Assembler on a ROM cartridge.  Nowadays, if you want to learn to program you can download a fully functioning IDE and access hundreds of excellent tutorials for free).

One question we never really asked back then was why did people need to learn to program anyway? The subject is no longer taught in schools, except as a specialism.  Ten years ago most people wanted a computer so they could learn how to use the internet or to word process.  Today even that isn’t really the case, and pupils are now  taught Flash animation or how to set up websites instead.

A few of us may owe a debt to those early machines, but what the world was really waiting for was the PC equivalent.  The trouble was that such a thing was too expensive, or at least more than people were willing to pay in those days.  It was down to Alan Sugar to produce the AMSTRAD word processor, the first reasonably priced machine that bore some resemblance to today’s computers.

Anyway, watch the program.  It’s funny and poignant, full of the sense of missed opportunities.  I can’t help thinking the world would be a much geekier place if Sinclair and Curry had worked together instead of fighting (and geekness, of course, is a good thing).

Folk against Fascism

Now, I realise that I am stretching the brief of this blog a little by including a picture of a melodeon (we deal with robots and accordions here, after all) but it’s for a good cause…

Why Folk against Fascism?  Well, if you haven’t heard, this is not so much a call for Morris Dancers to take up arms, but rather the reaction of a group of musicians who are understandably annoyed that the BNP are trying to hitch their wagon to traditional English music.  Crofty describes all this rather well on his blog.  The FAF site is here (and includes an interesting take on the issue by Jon Boden)

Personally, I’m pleased if anyone wants to come along and listen to the music and help keep the tradition alive. What’s annoying is appropriating someone else’s work for your own political ends.  What’s irritating is when you don’t appear to have studied that work in the first place.

Anyway, I’m going to see Show of Hands tomorrow night in Chester.  They’re quite folky, if anyone is interested.

Reading Aloud

Listening to David-Rees Thomas’s excellent reading of my story, “The Waters of Meribah” the other day, I was struck by just how awkward some of the sentences were.  This is not the fault of David’s reading, I should explain, but my writing.

No false modesty: I can give two reasons for this.  Firstly, and I’ve heard many other writers say this, when you read any piece of your own work once it’s published on publication, its always the case that every mistake and piece of bad writing becomes glaringly obvious in a way that it never did when you were still redrafting.

But secondly, and this is the main point here, back when I wrote  ”Waters” I hadn’t yet learned the trick of reading my stories aloud when redrafting.  I don’t always do this now, if I’m honest, mainly due to pressure of time, but it’s a good trick to learn.  Reading aloud makes you more aware of the rhythms in the dialogue.  It exposes wordy sentences and unnatural expressions, and it makes you realise just how awkward some of your sentences are prose is.

Most importantly though, you experience the story via another input stream and this gives the brain a different perspective on the work.  (Similarly, some writers re key in the entire final draft of a story in order to send it through the brain in a different way).

By way of experiment, I just went through the above text reading it aloud.  I’ve marked my deletions using strikethrough.

See?  It works.

Blood and Iron

Follow this link to my website to see Jon Sullivan’s amazing cover for Blood and Iron, published April 2010.