It begins!

But it’s top secret, so I can’t tell you anything about it.

Pain in the arse, really

Humdrumming Gets Œstrogen Injection

Yes, here’s that news I was telling you about earlier in the week (oh, all right, last Monday). As lifted from Humdrumming’s website:

We are pleased to announce the addition of a bouncing girl to the family! No longer will the hallowed halls of Humdrumming be exclusively the domain of dead-butch, testosterone-oozing manly men! No no! Now we’ve got a bit of skirt around here, and not because it’s one of our ‘theme nights’ either!

Trudi Topham is the self-proclaimed ’shipping monkey’ for Humdrumming, with practical tasks such as insertion of books into boxes of the mailing variety beginning with the up-coming release of Gary McMahon’s novel Rain Dogs.

“Goodness me,” you cry loudly, “that’s a familiar name to my ears; from whence cometh this intellectually staggering Amazonian help-meet?”

Trudi Topham has been frittering away her time with travel and art and, as a side-effect, hasn’t led anywhere near as interesting-sounding a life as the other Humdrummingers. She may occasionally let slip that she spent thirteen years in i.t. to fund her travel addiction, but for the most part she fobs off attempts to pin down what exactly she’s been up to since 1974.

We suspect that she has a secret lair in the Swiss Alps.

As someone who’s aspired to being a writer since childhood, Trudi’s aversion tactics have evolved to the point where she now edits two magazines (Pantechnicon and Hub), provides oft-ignored editorial advice on her blog, and pops out a bit of fiction now and again while nobody’s looking.

She is currently working on her first novel.

Visit Troo’s site: www.troodler.co.uk

Write a Doctor Who novel in six months.

The lovely Lance Parkin has a challenge for you. Yes, you. Click here for the full details.

Actually, Lance’s The Eyeless blog is going to be extremely helpful for all you people looking to be writers. How do I know this? Because I do. I know these things.

The challenge is deceptively simple. You want to be a professional writer? Come on, then. Come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough.

Will I be following Lance’s challenge? No. Because I don’t have the time to write a 55,000 word Doctor Who novel for fun. But I will be following the blog, because I have a novel underway, and if I can hit the finish line by the deadline (Boxing Day) then I’ll be sorted.

So for me this is more of a “pull up your bootstraps, stop fucking around with computer games, and get back to writing” clarion call. But for you? Make it whatever you want it to be. Write that Doctor Who novel, or maybe just write something of your own.

Go on. Do it.

How to create great characters.

You should know as much about your characters as they would know about themselves. Oh, sure, you don’t need that level of depth for a short story (although it’d help, if you’re really struggling), but for anything longer than 10,000 words you’d better have a really good idea of who they are, what events shaped them, how their past informs their outlook on life, and why they want whatever it is they’re after.

Two-dimensional characters often come about from an outline such as this:

David was born in 1965. He discovered he was a wizard at the age of 13, and since then has been studying really hard. He is now a really powerful wizard. He lives in San Francisco.

What? Is that it? David’s whole life revolves around him being a wizard? Has he no family, friends, rivals, enemies, pets, favourite foods, lovers, overdue books at the library, or any other influence which could turn him from a dull set of facts into a living, breathing person?

Here’s the thing. You might be writing about a powerful wizard living in San Francisco, but he’s also a human being. Well, he is for the purposes of this example. Here’s a shortish checklist of things a human being generally knows about himself:

Birthdate of himself, his parents, his siblings, long-term partners and friends.

The schools he attended.

What pets he or his friends / family had.

How popular he was at school, and whether or not he’s still in touch with school friends.

His employment history.

When and where he met his best friends and / or lovers.

Their names (usually, although it speaks volumes about a character who can’t list his lovers).

What he likes and dislikes (from food and drink, through to holiday locations, political viewpoints, and “certain kinds of people”).

Date of death of anyone important (a parent, a sibling, a best friend).

Hobbies.

And that’s just your basic starting point for a human being. If your character is from another race, he’ll know just as much about himself, just with facts pertinent to his race’s culture – he may not know what “school” is, but his race might follow a rigid path of indentured servitude or military service, about which he’d know just as much as a human does about their school days.

And I’ll step in now, Mr. Clever Clogs: If your character is an amnesiac, you still need to know these things.

Then you layer in what makes your character stand out from the crowd. What makes him the hero, the antagonist, the ally, or the Tin Dog? What makes him get his arse off the sofa / rock / grassy knoll and get involved in a story? All this should come from the world you’ve built to set your story in (you did do that bit, right?): If your world is contemporary London with Vampires, did a Vampire kill his sister? If your world is a distant planet with spleen-sucking aliens, did he witness a spleen being sucked and get so terrified that he’s acting purely in self-defence? Has he been living a dual life, or has this taken over his life? Is he in contact with his world, or has he been removed (or removed himself) from it?

Since stepping off the path of dull, normal life, who has he met? Has anyone taught him what he now knows? Has he teamed up with others who seek the same goals? Is he still with them? If not, why not? Has his new life utterly changed his personality? Was he an easy-going guy before dog-faced beetles chewed his father’s head off? Have new-found powers made him overconfident, or does the new playing field scare him to death?

I mentioned earlier that your characters are after something. This is vital. Without desire, they won’t move forward.

All your characters must want something.

All your characters must need something.

What they want and what they need are two different things.

So let’s look at David the San Francisco wizard. Let’s say we now know what school he attended, what happened to his parents, who mentored him in magic, and all those other great facts. Instead of a couple of lines we now have two or three pages of background (or more – don’t be shy now). With all these facts you’ll have a better idea of the kind of guy he is – trust me, you will. How he’s dealt with enemies in the past will inform how he deals with them in your story. Does he hurl fireballs, or does he retreat to the library and research his foe? Is he too prone to losing his temper, or is he such a perfectionist that enemies run unchecked while his nose is in a book?

What does he want?

Why does he do what he does? Does he want to become all-powerful, or does he want revenge? Does he want to protect those unable to defend themselves, or does he want to rule the world? Does he seek to cure his wife from a Lich’s curse, or does he want to become a Lich himself? If he doesn’t want something, he won’t strive for it, much as if you don’t want money you won’t bother turning up to work every day.

What does he need?

Oh yeah. Now we’re down to the guts of it. What is it that your character needs, that he’s unaware of? What would truly solve his problems? He may want revenge, but maybe what he needs is closure, and revenge won’t give it to him. Maybe he wants to find that cure, but what he needs is to recognise and accept that even his power can’t achieve everything. Perhaps he wants to protect the defenceless, but he needs someone to make him feel protected.

What he wants and what he needs should conflict one-another. And the moment you give him either, the story is over, unless you can replace one want or need with another want or need. Remember that if you want to draw your story out into a series.

Nobody wants to read about a character who’s got nothing to do.

Opportunity for SF writers.

I’ve been asked to circulate this rather fab-sounding call for SF writers. So, without further ado:

EXODUS169.COM

A new departure in drama and interactive entertainment – an ambitious sci-fi show for an international audience which is first launching on the internet rather than linear television.

In the year 2020 a vast colony of human pioneers leaves a troubled and environmentally challenged planet Earth for Lumina, an uninhabited world. The journey will take 169 years. Exodus, the craft that carries this nascent society, is a microcosm of the world, entirely self-sufficient and entirely dependent on the cooperation of its inhabitants for its survival.

The ‘show’ is delivered in the form of an online community themed around a narrative which is told in the form of a graphic novel in Flash animation. Visitors to the site are invited to join the craft, are allocated a home of their own in this virtual world which they can personalise. In the first season, members of the community will elect a governing body with the power to propose laws. This experimental society will have a constitution, a legal code and embark on an experiment in virtual democracy and justice.

As the site becomes more sophisticated, the linear narrative increasingly impacts on the community. E.g., when a disease breaks out, it will actually affect a random sample of members. The online society then works out for itself what to do with them.

On board is an area of the ship known as the Science Park. Here we will operate a wiki of science and articles related to the issues thrown up by the socio-anthropological experiment that is Exodus169. Articles can be of any related topic, from the psychological effects of separation from Earth, to the effect of solar radiation on algal growth, or prospective methods of propulsion for a ship of this kind / the means of defending such a craft from the potentially deadly effects of space dust and rocks impacting at ultra high speeds. The possible avenues for discourse are enormous.

Those who are prepared to contribute articles prior to the launch of Exodus169 will receive a years free access to enhanced content as well as ‘Founder member status’, which will become significant as the site progresses, and the underlying architecture of the site evolves to allow ever increasing levels of interactivity.

There is no simple term to describe the Exodus169 experience, it is so much more than a game, so much more than a piece of entertainment, and at its heart will seek to harness the amazing potential of mass collaboration to evolve a truly revolutionary web experience. The Users will be at beating heart of this journey – they will simultaneously follow a story and feedback and evolve the entire experience. Jump on board at the beginning and you will cement your place in the history of Exodus169.

Yours,

Cassian Hall (Producer Exodus169)

If you’re interested, drop me an email and I shall forward it on to Cassian.

First Aid refresher course.

I’m off on my First Aid refresher course today and tomorrow, but hopefully by tomorrow I’ll have something rather spiffy to talk about.

As in there’s something in the works, not as in “Oh, god, I hope I’m magically interesting by tomorrow”

Finding the time to write.

One of the loveliest people I know wrote the following on the Pantechnicon forum:

Right, how do you all fit it in?

How do I fit in everything that I want to do? There’s the weekly SMALLVILLE review, the movie reviews, the book reviews, the zombie article and the superman article (the latter of which I haven’t even started thinking about) all of which I desperately want to do, and do well. But I also have a wife and kids and a full time job, and I feel like I am neglecting them at the moment.

There’s more, obviously, but that’s the pertinent stuff right there. And while there are answers over on the forum, I thought it’d be nice to go into this issue in depth.

So just how do you find the time to write?

I could give you a huge answer. I could write a whole essay on this. But there’s a simple, one-word answer: Prioritise.

If you’re struggling to find the time to write, it’s time to sit down and ask yourself what’s the most important thing in your life. Then the next important. And the next. Go on, list them. Write them down.

Don’t worry if writing isn’t at the top of your list. Very few people have that luxury, and realistically keeping a roof over your head or spending time with your family is more important to most. But if you’re really serious about wanting to write, it should be in the top five. And if you find that it isn’t, well, relax a little. There’s nothing wrong with not living, breathing, and shitting writing.

Hopefully, though, if you really want to make a go of writing for a living your list will look something like this:

1. Loved one / children / family commitments
2. Paying the mortgage / rent
3. Writing
4. Some hobby that involves getting out once in a while

Before you get too excited that you got writing into the top five, think on this: I write for a living (full-time, non-fiction), and I earn what I like to think is a respectable wage. A friend who is a freelancer (writing a mixture of articles, journalism and fiction) is on about half that. Another friend who is a full-time journalist is on even less. So, basically, the more fun and interesting a time you have while writing, the less income you will have if it’s your job (and the freelancer’s been a freelancer for years).

Whatever you want to write, be it short stories, novels, journalistic pieces, how-to books or anything else, you then need to find the time. Having identified just how important it is to you, you then come to the magic part.

Time management.

Oh, it sounds scary, but really it’s not. Diarise for a week and see just what you’re spending your time on. Write everything down. Are you spending half an hour on the train every day? That’s half an hour you could spend writing. Are you watching a film a week at 90 minutes per film? That’s 90 minutes of writing time. Are you playing computer games for two hours a day? Cut back to an hour and use the other hour to write.

Once you’ve identified all the spare half-hours in your day, start scheduling. Allocate that time. Trust me, it’s the only way to break your old time-wasting habits and start new, productive ones. Eventually you’ll be so used to spending your time writing that you won’t need this, but humour me for now.

And, crucially, don’t rob yourself of all your downtime. You need fun in your life, and your writing batteries need to recharge. They feed on fun, on interaction with the outside world, on films and friends and hobbies, and if you don’t top them up, you’ll hit the dreaded Writer’s Block sooner or later (luckily we already know how to beat that).

Don’t worry if all the time you’ve accrued through this tots up to an hour a week. Just spend that hour writing. Ignore idiots who tell you that you should be writing ten hours a week, two hours a day, or any other arbitrary amount of time. Write for as much time as suits you, and write as many words as suit you.

Finally, don’t forget to reassess how you spend your time now and then. Priorities change as our lives change. You may find yourself with more spare time, or less. You may find that new things come along which are of a higher priority than your writing, whether short or long-term. If you are in control of your time, you’ll find that you have more of it.

Hub Magazine is site of the week on SciFi.com.

SciFi.com, the official website of the SciFi channel, is featuring Hub Magazine as their site of the week.

Well? What’re you waiting for? Get over there!

Shucks. Interviewed again…

I’ve been interviewed again, this time by British SF author Gareth D. Jones. You can read the interview in his blog, here.

Pantechnicon Seven available now!

Click here to download Pantechnicon Seven as a PDF, or here to visit the website and read all our juicy content online.

This issue contains:

STORIES
The Web Across The Door
DF Lewis offers a short slice of weird.
DF Lewis

The Trapper
Harsh winter, rotting food, and ghosts take their toll on a trapper and his wife.
Contains scenes of a graphic nature.
Johnny Mains

Blood
New job, new boss, same old corporate life. With telepathy, a ghost, and murder.
Brian Wright

Death Knock
A dead journalist seems to be visiting relatives of the recently-bereaved. It falls to the Department for Extra-Usual Affairs to investigate.
David Barnett

The King is Dead
JFK, Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley meet a newcomer to the afterlife. Only two of them have his best interests at heart.
Alister Davison

The Dopple Gang part two
Jake has a gun that can delete things. His only question now is who to kill first with it.
Colin Sinclair

Tranquil Sea
An expedition to create a radio telescope using the Moon’s Daedalus Crater suffers Jovian interference.
David Brookes

Seeing the Light
She’s not crazy. And she’s going to show everyone exactly how not crazy she is. Even if it kills them.
Suzanne Jackson

FEATURES
Interview: Barry Wood
Caroline chats to the Canadian author about his work and his future plans.

SF101: Olaf Stapledon
Sean Parker’s series continues with an exploration of Stapledon’s work.

Icon Oddities: The Musical Career of William Shatner.
Jamie Halliday kicks off a new series on the odd careers of genre icons, starting with the Shat himself.

Horror Gems: Sundown
The next in Jamie’s Horror Gems series takes a look at this bargain-bucket treasure, unavailable on DVD.

Weird Tales:
A Time-Travelling interview with DF Lewis.
Des and Caroline talk. And travel through time.

COLUMNS
The Fandom Menace
The Age of Innocence:
SF: Is it really for you any more?
Time for some Perspective:
And now, a look at the murky waters of Doctor Who fandom, and the raging battle of New Who vs. Old Who.