My biographical bit: Part 2

Last time I brought you to where I got a lousy start at school.

The best I could do was get my head down and learn. But there were some kids I remember in particular - Catherine Geall, the oldest girl in the class; Gerard Howson and Mario Coggins, who were good at running like me, and Narinder Kaila, a young Asian lad. And I remember some teachers, too. There was Mrs Banks who lived next door to us (what could be worse, eh?) and Miss Brown (later Mrs Brewin) who was a right b*tch and told me to 'Take the plum out of my mouth' just because I spoke differently, and also once said the word 'crap' in front of a class of six and seven year olds.

The way the schools were near me back then meant I had to go the nearby Mayflower Junior School when I was seven. The head was a guy called Fred Oram and he was OK. It was the dreadful Miss Kettleband that put the wind up everyone. She was obsessed with your school tie even though it was invisible under the school jumper, and woe betide you if you didn't have it on. The sour faced old bag taught dancing amongst other things (fear, mostly) and I've had three left feet ever since. I did excel at maths and what passed for science, though. And there was a girl back then, too. Gail, her name was. A chubby blonde thing that I liked. I was right mug there and it preceded seven years of girl-free education.

You see, little did I know that at the age of eleven there was a test called the 11+, basically an IQ test where you had to score over 112 to go to a grammar school, which were single sex, and avoid the hideous Crown Hills Secondary Modern School. I achieved this, one of 39 to do so that year (1971). I went to Wyggeston Boys' Grammar School (now Wyggeston and Queen Elizabeth I College), and one of a choice of four, where my uncle John had gone thirteen years before me. The most famous alumni are David and Richard Attenborough, by the way.

More in a later blog!

Jack Orchison, December 24, 2013.

My biographical bit: Part 1

It is a fact that some readers are more interested in the writer than the writing, so here goes part one of my biographical bit.

I was born in Whitehaven in January 1960 (followed by a sister in November 1961), although we soon moved to the Cumbrian village of Drigg - probably best know for its nuclear waste dump. My mum was a homemaker and my dad worked at the Sellafield site, not in Sector 7G like Homer Simpson, but as part of the maintenance crew. He was a painter and decorator by trade, and died last year at the age of seventy eight.

Back then there were very few children to play with. One was a little girl called Karen, but I didn't like going round there because I was scared of one of her soft toys, and another was a boy called Andrew where he and I ended up throwing coloured wooden building blocks at each other (I think mine were bigger than his and he was jealous). So that was that, really.

After some bad winters, the Cuban missile crisis, and the Kennedy assassination (I remember them) and an episode where the cows in the neighbouring field decided they wanted to consume the contents of our garden, the time loomed when I would have to go to school. That was not practical as it was twenty miles away in Millom! So we moved house - to Leicester, where my dad got another job (with the painting firm TJ Cundy) and we bought my mum parents' house for the princely sum of £2500 (4 bedrooms, detached!). I had never seen so many people in all my life, and it was here that I first met black and Asian people, too.

Then came the school (Evington Valley Infants) - and the dreaded headmistress, the evil white-haired Miss Spanton. Worse still was the experience of being shoved into a classroom with forty-one other kids, all of whom knew each other. I was the instant outsider. Not from there, someone who spoke differently, too. Not a good start.

Jack Orchison, December 15, 2013.

A Novel's Parting Shot

How should you end a novel?

The ending should be satisfying to the reader and shouldn't drag. It must be logical (or possible, given what went before - there can be no conveniently placed gun or magic wand that wins the day without any effort from your hero and their mates), tie up most loose ends, and conclude the journey of the hero/heroine - and this character must come away wiser, stronger, and often to have grown emotionally, too. It helps if the end is upbeat, but not everyone gets the girl, characters do die or get injured, and love can be lost. The ending must never place the main character back where they started.

A lot of thought should be given to your ending, because this is the place to set up a sequel (or trilogy) by deliberately not tying up all the loose ends and giving little pointers into the future - the uneasy truce, opposition to a mixed-race (or same-sex) marriage, the threatened career, an escaped bad guy etc - that can set up a new scenario because forces still exist to mess up your main character's life again.

My plan is to blog a bit about my life for a while, then, hopefully, I can get down to giving some examples in the future of what I've been talking about.

Jack Orchison, December 12, 2013.

'If I were you, I wouldn't start from here'

This sounds like the punchline of an old joke. Stories have a beginning, middle and end - surely you start at the beginning? Perhaps, but the beginning of what, exactly? These days, readers want action and to get to it straightaway. You have to choose something that pulls in the reader, be it a secret meeting, a whispered conversation, a discovery, a murder, a realisation, a confession. Although it often is, this start need not be the start of the time span on your story. The initial piece could be near the middle or even the end, the narrative returning to the start to show how it all came about. Often there is a lot of back story to fill in by flasbacks or dialogue because characters are not newly-synthesised one-dimensional beings: they have pasts, friends, family, relationships etc.

You may find yourself trying different places to start. This is OK - go with the version you feel happiest with, because there's nothing worse than having to ditch a story halfway through. The same thing applies to viewpoint characters - choose the wrong ones and the story seems flat and uninspiring.

Pull in the reader with something that quickly introduces a main character, possibly a some crisis point, that allows the reader to ask who, what, when, where, why, and how. Keep them asking questions, and they'll read the whole book!

Jack Orchison, December 11, 2013

Finding a Hero

Imagine the evil influence in your horror novel is a demon-worshipping cult. We've all seen the films: we need a macho man like Arnold Schwarzenegger and/or a priest played by Gabriel Byrne, don't we? Wrong! This is all too predictable. It is far more exciting to have a reluctant hero or heroine, someone who knows nothing of the task ahead and who has to grow into it. Make him or her unlikely to succeed, then it is all the more satisfying when they do - and through their own wit of course.

The case above is the situation for one of my novels in progress. So what was my hero like? Young, inexperienced, small, slight, female, gentle, rich, sheltered, adopted (so she didn't know her genetic past), an only child (to increase the risk of loss) and with a powerful double connection to the bad guys (which, initially, she knows nothing about). Of course I had to give her some useful enemy-fighting attributes: she is bright, very determined, a great planner and organiser, and has a knack of surrounding herself with people willing to help, protect - and fight.

As a result of all this, someone stepped up to the plate. That's how I found the pretty, waif-like, seventeen year old Shauni Kelleher, a talented musician and composer with every privilege you can think of. Yet it is she who wins. One day you will see how.

Jack Orchison, December 7, 2013.

Where and when do you write?

Greetings again. This is another commonly asked question and the answer is probably much less glamorous than you might think. Anyone aspiring to be a writer must write everyday, even when you don't feel like it, you feel ill or the muse has deserted you. Never wait to be inspired. Battle through the lethargy - it's the only way to get the words on the paper. Or, put another way, it takes regular application. Most people who write are amateurs and hobbyists with full time jobs (or full time mums) and they don't have the luxury of a particular place or time to write. You have to take the chance when you can: when you get up, on the bed, eating your sandwich at lunchtime, waiting in the car, when your partner is out, the kitchen worktop... Always have a story or notebook with you so that you can get on with it or make notes and observations. You will be surprised how this builds up a body of work. We all only have 24 hours in a day, but as writers we must carve out little chunks of it for ourselves. Why waste it in front of the TV? Jack Orchison, December 3, 2013.

To plan or not to plan?

Hello again. When it comes to novel writing, should you plan in detail or just get on with it the moment an idea strikes? The latter rarely works - if you ever get to the end it will be an overblown incoherent mass the best use for which is to warn yourself never to not plan again! Many writing experts advise all writers, and especially those starting out, to plan in some detail, but too much detail and you will end up taking for ever to write some weighty outline you will never stick to, or you will get bored of the story before you ever write it. The best way is to find a happy medium. the way I try to operate is to make sure I know my characters, their relationships and motivations, and when, where and how the story starts. You also have to have your ending. An ending, not necessarily the ending - at least have something to work towards. Also, make sure you have a few events (encounters, disasters, arguments etc) that get in the way of you viewpoint characters and that must occur in the story. That way, your end is connected to your beginning by a series of milestones, but what goes in between is up to you. It is not pre-cast. The journey will be an exciting adventure for character and author alike, but the result will be far more coherent than having no plan at all. Jack Orchison, December 1, 2013.