Nigel 
August 30th,2010
Star image 1 (modified from an original photo by NASA)
When I’m writing I often create images to help me capture the mood I want. On the right is one such image created for the almost complete novel Sunken Star. It’s a modified section of a photo of Europa,one of Jupiter’s moons. Does Europa feature in the novel? Yes,in a very minor role. This part of the photo has the appearance of lines radiating out from a central circular object,and changing colours has emphasised this. I’ll show you some other Star images in later posts.
Some time back I let several people read the first part of Star. Chris Walbank read the first 80,000 words and said he found it hard to put down,which is quite a compliment. He also suggested I split the story in two,saving the science fiction aspect for a separate novel. I know what he means,but without the relatively minor SF element I don’t have a plot,and I’m too lazy to go looking for one. Anyway I like SF of this type,the sort of stuff John Wyndham wrote,where there’s one basic new thing to accept but after that it’s all about the people,how the deal with the situation.
Technically this one thing calls for a ‘willing suspension of disbelief’,but in the case of Star not remotely as much as in Lord of the Rings or Heroes. Actually I lead the reader fairly gently in to the oddest thing about the central character,Matt.
He’s 16 and weird. The psychologist who assessed him said he doesn’t quite match the criteria for Asperger’s Syndrome,so it must be something else. And like those other weirdos Newton and Einstein,Matt is brilliant. In his own way.
All of that is normal fiction,not SF.
My intention is that his other quirk feel reasonable once you reach it. Trouble is that although you know the novel is set in the year after tomorrow,it’s a long time before this key SF element is made clear. Some readers have complained the story is far too slow to get started. Well,I guess I’ve written something in that sense like some of Iain Banks’novels,and people read him.
I put the first 130,000 words aside for over a year,feeling I needed some distance from it before doing a thorough edit,some rewriting,and then finally creating the climactic ending. Every novel needs a climactic ending.
Then,quite recently,I stumbled across the website youwriteon.com. It was set up with the help of an Arts Council grant,and is now used by prospective authors around the world. The premise is simple:if you want other writers to review your work then you have to review theirs –in a constructive way. The setup is clever and effective. You can upload between four and seven thousand words of a novel. After eight reviews you qualify for the charts,but you must have reviewed someone else’s work in the last ten days to be included.
I’m enjoying and learning from reviewing other people’s work,and it’s great that writers are far more willing to analyse and criticise than most other people who’ve read a draft. I uploaded the first 7,000 words,and have already made a number of changes in response to review comments. The novel is improving,and people aren’t just telling me how to make the sample better. I’m also learning more about effective fiction writing in general,which is great.
And there’s more.
Because I’ve made my e-mail address public a number of other writers have contacted me. It’s good to be able to chat with them,if only by e-mail. They are making valuable suggestions about my work. One is called Liza Granville,and has already published several novels. I’ll tell you about one of them and her publishers in the next post.
