hayden thrillers
Saying “Goodbye” is so Difficult
Think about your favorite movie. How did it end? If you don’t know, then it’s probably not your favorite movie!
In the same way, there’s nothing more frustrating than spending hours reading a thriller that has a disappointing ending. Of course, the longer this genre has been popular, the harder it is to finish with a surprise twist. In my new heist-thriller, the goal with the ending was to achieve two outcomes – first, to tie up loose ends and, second, to paint a future (and potential sequel) for the characters. “Shock” was not my final intention, but “surprise” certainly was.
I had just posted this blog when I decided to head to our local bakery for something
nice for my wife for morning tea. The radio was playing an interview with Michael Morpurgo – one of Britain’s best-loved children’s authors (see pic). Michael was asked if he planned the ending for his books and he replied, “No,” and went on to explain that, for him, writing was an adventure. I can identify with this. My writing has the main plot in my head when I start to outline the place and people who are going to unfold the story, but the ending never comes to me at this early stage. Like Michael, I just want to discover where the writing adventure will lead. My hope is that this technique will be just as exciting for my readers.
Big Brother
My new thriller leans upon a short video presented by Apple when they launched the MacIntosh computer. The concept is far from new, but dramatic in presenting Big Brother in black and white, then shattering the conformity when an athlete hurls a hammer into the screen. Let’s take a minute to view this:
Big Brother is a fictional character and symbol in George Orwell‘s dystopian 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. He is ostensibly the leader of Oceania, a totalitarian state wherein the ruling party, Ingsoc, wields total power “for its own sake” over the inhabitants. In the society that Orwell describes, every citizen is under constant surveillance by the authorities. In modern culture, the term “Big Brother” has entered the lexicon as a synonym for abuse of government power, particularly in respect to civil liberties, often specifically related to mass surveillance. (source: Wikipedia). In my new novel, a group of talented underwater experts plan to turn the tide on a contemporary Big Brother through the most audacious heist ever.
Motive!
Motive is the glue that holds a thriller together, and keeps the plot racing to its conclusion.
In my new novel, I required a glue strong enough to sustain an outrageous heist; a glue that provided background for the characters, and helped them ‘stick’. Here is a sneak peak from page 15;
“In his 1949 novel, Nineteen Eighty Four, George Orwell feared a controlling Big Brother would conceal the truth from us. In his Brave New World Revisited, Aldous Huxley suggests our Orwellian dystopia is created by too many distractions.”
“In short, we’re overrun by messages; bombarded by endless data coming to us via the internet, mobile devices, and television. We’re lost in a sea of virtual, fake news. It becomes impossible to see what’s important, or even what’s real. We’re drowning in a rising tide of irrelevance and, since COVD-19, accelerated social regulation, telling us when to stay home, when to shop, how to socialize, when to be inoculated, and when and how we can travel. The loss of civil liberties is the first sign of a totalitarian regime.”
I would say that a global race to an Orwellian dystopia, with increasing social control, is high motive for action against it?
Ideas bigger than your life!
I came across a wonderful quote recently, by Gloria Gaither. She said, “You need to have ideas bigger than your life.” How profound and how ideal to sum up a writer’s goal. Novels, like paintings, can lift us above the ordinary and create worlds far bigger than our own lives; far longer than our histories and far removed from our world. Thank you, Gloria, for inspiring us to have ‘Ideas bigger than our lives’!
The Search for a Literary Agent
Searching for a Literary Agent is a bit like looking for your home in a snow storm. Why ‘home’? Because I am looking for an agent who fits me—who enjoys my writing and connects with me and wants to promote my work; the kind of agent who would feel comfortable at my place, and enjoy my company and conversation. For the textbook I wrote, the agent (and publisher) was professional, yet warm, and had a sense of purpose with humour. I liked that and it helped me stay on track and meet deadlines. Do I have an agent for my new book? Not yet, but I am hopeful for one soon. You, dear follower, will be the first to know! Meanwhile, I keep looking, which involves researching potential agents—looking up their profiles and youtube videos and twitter accounts, etc. to find the right fit. More on agent searching soon!
Finding Characters!
How does an author find their characters? Here’s a clue—look around you when out and about, at the cafe or while shopping. Everyone you meet and everyone you see has the potential to be a character in your novel! I have used friends and even people sitting opposite me on a train (well, their shoes got into a novel). You can have fun when writing to invent a character who is a blend of a few people. Take someone’s nickname, another’s hairdo. Add a dress from a shop window, and a handbag from a google search. Next, add some details—a hook nose, bald head, unshaven, tattooed, limping, sunken eyes, etc. In my new novel, one of my characters wears lots of yellow. This may not seem significant, but it does later in the book when Sir Christopher Jenson (based a someone close to me) discovers a woman wearing yellow who is cuddling up to another character who has just lost his wife in a skiing accident. Yellow connects these two women for the reader and…I can’t tell you what happens!
Inspiration
Looking for inspiration for my next novel. Hmm, something’s in the pipeline already!
A Writer Never Sleeps!
Novel #2 in Editing Mode: Such a relief to finish my second novel, which is now in the final editing stages. In summary:
write –> edit –> edit again (another full read through) —> ask trusted (brutally honest) friends to proof-read –> final edit –> seek a Literary Agent (more on that soon). On a funny note:
The other night I could not get to sleep and tossed and turned, mulling over my second full edit. I realized that I had made a minor continuity error and had to get up to fix it. Phew!
It really is encouraging that my brain is actively working on improvements all the time, even when half asleep! Motto?
A writer never sleeps!
PS: This pic is accurate, but the time is wrong – I was up at 2am.
Write Drunk, Edit Sober
This quote by Ernest Hemingway has an element of truth, although I certainly don’t ‘write drunk’. What rings true for me, though, is that you don’t have to be fully ‘with it’ when getting the rough story down. It might be a matter of grabbing a few minutes between meetings or, in my case, while waiting to teach a class. Some of my better writing seems to happen when I am mulling a plot or ‘what’s next’ while trying to sleep. In this case, I have to put the light on, get up and type the inspiration, just in case I forget when I wake up in the morning.Or, I might overhear a conversation while out and about and need to jot a thought down, ready to take back to my computer to bring into the story. For my second novel, I also set aside regular, early morning times to write. And, in the most part, I have kept to this schedule, even if the word output varies. On a good day I will type up about 800-1200 words and, on a bad day, 400-500. But, even the bad days can be good writing!
However, the editing needs time and concentration, plus a critical analysis of words, sentence structure/length, etc. Therefore, Hemingway is right—it is best done while ‘sober’. Incidentally, Hemingway also has a cameo part in my new novel, when two ladies meet an old man on the Croatian coast in a bar in Dubrovnik—the kind of place that Hemingway would, I am sure, have enjoyed!