Monthly Archives: August 2010
Reflections on rejection
This is going to be perhaps a more personal post than my usual offerings. But yet another rejection has that effect on most of us. Writing is such a very personal thing – or it is for me. My books have a lot of emotion in them. I expect a clever analyst could find out a lot about me from my writing. So when one gets yet another rejection… it hurts.
Oh, I know they’re not rejecting ME. My book hasn’t worked for them for whatever reason. But let me tell you, an impersonal, routine rejection of a query is much, much easier to bear than a rejection of a whole ms.
So I navel-gaze. And I reflect.
Is it my best work? Well, yes. I’m not saying it can’t be better, mind. It sure as hell isn’t a first draft. Or a second or third. My trusted beta-readers approved. Even Ms Agent said she liked the plot. And the fact that she allowed me to send the entire ms without even a query tells me she thinks I can write. Besides, I’ve had some excellent reviews on my published novel. So I don’t think I need to flay myself on my ability to tell a story. She just wasn’t sold on the story itself.
So do I change the story? I’ve already done that and I thought I did a good job. Refer back to beta-readers. If anything, they thought I’d streamlined a little too much, taken out some of the explanatory details. I can look at that.
And at the end of the day, one person has passed on the book. Others liked it. Plenty of people passed on famous books and authors. I’ve read whole lists of them. Here’s one list of rejections to warm the cockles of the heart.
So I guess I’m shrugging my shoulders and moving on. One day when I’m famous, I hope a few people out there in publishing are going to be kicking themselves.
How photography can improve your writing
I like taking pictures. Have done for a long time and of course, in this digital age it’s even easier. Since I’ve been writing, photography has become more than just a way of making something pretty (or interesting) to look at. I’ve become a voyeur. Yes, that’s a good word. I look at details; consider how to describe things, note how light plays on the object of my interest, perhaps what it sounds like. I try to find the words that go with the image. How would I express myself if I was describing this scene in a book?Take this one. The molten metal sea reflects the clouds, a whitish glimmer on scarcely moving water. Follow the curved blue line of the sky from the deep azure of the zenith towards the paler blue of the horizon, where a boat bobs, while nearby the shadow of our vessel lends a deeper green to the languid swirl of the waves. Further away a heavier cloud mass, mottled and angry, betrays a change – but perhaps not just yet.
So it’s more than just an image. You break down the elements of the image and then assign importance to those elements as you search for the words to use so that if the photo isn’t there, the reader still has enough information to paint their own picture in their heads.
Since it’s a book about a shipwreck, seascapes are an important feature of ‘Die a Dry Death’. I’ve done my best to convey those scenes through my words. Many people have told me the book is very visual – so my writing worked.
Try it for yourself. Take pictures of scenes – any scenes that might work in your writing – and then describe them in words. You’ll find it isn’t easy but it’s certainly worthwhile.
‘Truth’ in historical fiction
‘Die a Dry Death’ is certainly not the first and will not be the last, novel written about the loss of the Batavia in 1629. I recently had an email conversation with somebody who knows the history well and it got me thinking about the idea of ‘truth’ in history.
You see, conventional history states that the Batavia’s captain, Adriaen Jacobsz, plotted with Jeronimus Cornelisz as far back as when the ship called in at Table Bay to kill Commandeur Pelsaert, steal the vessel and make a fortune from piracy. Pelsaert’s journal includes his summary of the events that took place on the Abrolhos Islands, where Cornelisz and his thugs murdered around one hundred men, women and children. The executive summary hinges around the planned ‘mutiny’ by the skipper and despite his undeniable seamanship in getting the overloaded longboat to the city of Batavia without loss, Jacobsz is remembered as the architect of disaster and some go so far as to suggest that Cornelisz’s behaviour stemmed from Jacobsz.
I have always found that argument difficult to believe, for the following reasons:
- Pelsaert and Jacobsz hated each other. Pelsaert would have readily believed the captain guilty of anything.
- Evidence was extracted using torture and it’s easy enough to answer loaded questions with the expected answer.
- If Jacobsz intended (with Cornelisz) to kill Pelsaert they had plenty of opportunity on the voyage (accidental fall overboard) or when Pelsaert was ill. Cornelisz was an apothecary, after all. Or even in the longboat. You could even ask why Jacobsz took him in the longboat at all.
- Cornelisz was a liar and completely without conscience. He blamed everybody else and lied through his teeth to get out of everything. It was he who testified to the plot between him and Jacobsz at Table Bay, he said Zwaantie was a tart, he said Jacobsz offered Lucretia gold to sleep with him. He’d say anything to avoid torture, too.
- The main players apart from Cornelisz were already dead before the journal was written and couldn’t defend themselves.
- Pelsaert executed most of the more important of Cornelisz’s gang before returning to Batavia, so they couldn’t be interviewed, either.
- We know what happened to all the members of Cornelisz’s gang who were returned to Batavia, so it seems odd to me, given their idea of justice, that Jacobsz was not put to death immediately and that his fate is unknown.
To a point, the journal itself is a work of fiction. I do not doubt that Pelsaert did his best to record the known facts and the interviews with the murderers. But it certainly wasn’t a transcript of a trial in the modern sense. And I have no doubt that Pelsaert had an eye on the person who would read the account – the formidable Governor of the Indies, Jan Pieterszoon Coen.
So my book is that little bit different. I applied a ‘what if’ question. What if the captain was innocent of a planned mutiny? Can the events recorded in the journal be interpreted in this way without fiddling with the facts? I felt it could and I guess my efforts were successful. One reviewer who knows the history described the book as a dramatisation, rather than fiction, which is exactly what I tried to achieve.
That’s the wonderful thing about history. We can (and should) reconsider events and what they meant. But of course, we’ll never know for sure.
The third law of writing
Newton’s third law states that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. One of the laws of writing should be that for every hero there must be an equal and opposite villain. Because if you don’t have a powerful villain, you don’t have a conflict. And conflict drives novels. Maybe not all novels, but certainly the ones I write.
If you have a kid with almost magical powers and a light sabre, you have to have an adult with those same magical powers and a bigger light sabre. If you have a dragon slayer you must have a big, bad dragon. The nine riders and the nine ring-bearers, Gandalf and Sauron. Flash Gordon and the Emperor Ming. You get the picture.
Often villains are fascinating characters. You might not like them but they’re interesting in a way that heroes can’t be. We wonder what makes them tick, why they’re like that. Star Wars iconic villain Darth Vader was so well introduced it took my breath away. A ship under siege, hunted down by a star destroyer that seemed to go on forever (yes, I ducked). There’s a brief battle, the goodies lose. And then this… being arrives. Black body armour, black cloak, black death’s head mask. And rasping breathing. Whoa. There’s something seriously wrong with this dude. And he’s nasty, nasty, nasty. Breaks a man’s neck with his hand. And all this in the first few minutes of the film.
Yes, okay the heroine is a smart-mouthed princess in a white dress (black vs white, get it?). But once we see Darth Vader, we get an idea of the odds stacked up against the wide-eyed farm boy and we start to feel some sympathy for him. And of course, Darth was very, very popular with the women. Tall, dark and powerful, quite a few ladies fantasised about ripping that mask off. There are still several websites dedicated to the original Star Wars villain and it is Darth who provides the impetus for all six movies.
So when you’re crafting your novel, make sure your villain comes up to scratch. Make sure Superman has a Lex Luthor with a piece of Kryptonite, Batman has The Joker. Because if your hero doesn’t have to battle the odds, who cares?
Any examples of villains you’d like to share?
