My biographical bit, part 13: University 4

I graduated with first class honours in Chemistry in 1978, and I knew that I wanted to carry study further. I began a PhD, still at Nottingham, in sythetic organic chemistry under the supervision of Don Whiting - he was a Reader in organic chemistry, in the UK the next payscale down from Professor.

And so began a whole new era, and some very odd stuff along the way. Mostly down to the daftness of the people in the research lab, C29, who were there at various times: Dane Toplis, trumpeter and research technician, who was always a laugh; Ray Denman, a chubby guy who loved his dogs who was a Demonstrator to undergraduates; Roland Smith, postdoctoral researcher, who was known as either the Baldy Moron or Mr Semi-Erect but whose intelligence was not in doubt and did not walk around in a state of dubious arousal; Andy Hobbs, known as Hobbs the Gob (or HG for short) who always bragged how great he was until his girlfriend left him and he crashed his car into a bridge, luckily wothout injury; Paul Clawson, whose Danish grandfather changed his name from Claussen after the war, fellow chess player, and the only person I know to have saved on a student grant, who was always stirring mixtures in conical flasks - it looked very simple but was actually a delicate reaction of a carbonyl ylid; Phil Thomas, known as Dick Brain (or DB for short), fellow chess player, and very high on the list for entertainment value with many lab cock-ups; Clive Till, postdoctoral reaearcher who got his PhD at Southampton, and who had the ability as a personal timepiece - you could set your watch by him when he rolled up at 10am every day, who had a girlfriend called Rowan from Huntingdon (or Humpingdon as we called it); Khalid Khan, lothario, and the palest Pakistani I've ever seen; Peter Amos, known as Groper for his wandering hands, who was Roland Smith's morning running partner; Samuel Yeboah, postdoctoral researcher from Ghana, who wondered how I got to be always filtering off fine crystals (I kept some odd hours); then there was me - the guy who once managed to get a crappy brown froth to ooze out of a flask before I'd even put the solvent in or heated it up. There was a special award for that, bestowed by the lab members, but that is for next time.

Jack Orchison
May 25, 2014.

Being a writer, part 11: Real examples 2

I'm going to let you compare extracts from the beginning of two novels, one published, one not (yet). I wonder if you can tell which is which?

FIRST EXTRACT

Alan Greening was drunk. He'd been boozing all night in Covent Garden: starting at the Punch, where he had three of four pints with his old friends from college. Then they'd gone to the Lamb and Flag, the pub dowwn that dank alleyway near the Garrick Club.

How long had they lingered there, sinking beers? He couldn't remember. Because after that they'd gone to the Roundhouse, and they'd met a couple more guys from his office. And at some point the lads had moved from pints of lager to shorts: vodka shots, gin and tonics, whisky chasers.

SECOND EXTRACT

'George,' Olivia says, 'are you a bad person?'
I take her little hands in mine and kneel down to her level, completely disarmed by her. I gaze at the pretty face with the sparkling blue eyes below the blonde hair and the black hair band, knowing I can't lie to her. 'I've been a very bad person.'
'Are you going to do bad things to me, like make me deaded?'
'No, sweetheart, but you do need to pretend you're my little girl for a while. There's something I need to finish. I think you can help me.'

The first is from The Genesis Secret (Harper, 2009) by Tom Knox, the second is from one of my works in progress, entitled Victim.

The trouble with the first passage is that it's a boring pub crawl itinerary and you don't care about Alan Greening and his drunken mates. Chances are, you've already switched off. This is not the way to start a story.

The second passage sucks you in, even if I say so myself. The named characters speak and interact, coming to life in the process, we are in the head of the creepy, evil George, and we are shown (not told) that the two characters have a captor and captive relationship, that the captive is very young. And it poses questions: what has George done and what has George yet to do? Doeas George tell lies? Does Olivia survive? This is why we read on, why we turn the pages. Make the reader care, make the reader ask, and you'll not go far wrong.

Jack Orchison
May 25, 2014.

Being a writer, part10: real examples

Today I'm going to look at the start of a real novel to see if it is good or bad. It goes like this:

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.

This is the start of Herman Melville's 'Moby-Dick.' The ridiculous hyphen apart, generations of writers and critics have waxed orgasmically about this opening and Melville's authority and 'voice.' But, in truth, the passage stinks.

It's sloppy and lazy, and makes Ishmael look like a flake who floats from one whim to another - and someone you don't care for very much. Not what an author needs. Oh yes - Melville goes into great detail later on about the anatomy of the whale only to call it a fish - what a plank!

He fails to put the situation in context, in scene, and to show proper reasons for Ishmael's departure - you wouldn't go to sea on a whim in the nineteenth century.

How about this instead:

I dropped my bag on the harbourside and took a last look at the grey, prospectless town that had given me only intermittent work, shoddy accommodation, and that unfaithful bitch in my bed.
'Hey, Ishmael! You comin' or what?'
I turned to see the first mate waving to me, the ship rigged and ready, and behind it a brightening horizon. I picked up my things and almost ran up the gangplank.

Okay, so I've just made this up and it's not exactly deathless prose, but I hope you get the idea. The character doesn't have to name himself, the passage shows his state of mind, and compares the new and the bright with the grey and the despised. It shows both problem and goal in a way the other version doesn't.

Next time: more openings.

Jack Orchison
May 3, 2014.

My biographical bit, part 12: Chess adventures 2

Chess matches even extended to the University Championships. One of these was in Birmingham (England), a concrete jungle but at least it had its own railway station. One night our team went out on the piss and we were very much the worse for wear after, in my case, much rum and blackcurrant and possibly a Vindaloo. Our chain-smoking top player, John Stephen (a geneticist who knew a guy called Michael Jackson - regrettably not the singer) was violently ill with such a diet but still got up the next day. I kept everything down and spent all the next day expecting vomit to emerge at any time. It was a shame really, because we were up against a Cambridge team - I was wasted by some lank-haired, limp-wristed individual and the team was soundly thrashed.

Even after University my chess ezploits continued. I got a postdoctoral position in Swansea making peptides, and lived on the Gower Peninsula. I played for a little village club called Pennard for three years (even against the University teams), where the standard was such that it hovered between the two top divisions of the West Wales league and I played on either board 1 or 2, depending on availbility and illness. I didn't learn from Birmingham that chess and drink really didn't mix, one night sitting up with our team captain (Adrian Davies) drinking Carling Black Label when his wife and son had sensibly gone to bed. I blacked out when I tried to stand up and don't remember how I got home. I won my first competition when I was there, however. Also, the British Championship came there one year. I got 4/11 in the Major Open section.

After Swansea, I went to Orpington in Kent where I worked at Coates Brothers. It wasn't a happy time for me, though I liked my landlady (Sheila Crouch). More of her another time. I played chess for the local club the eighteen months I was there, between learning to drive rather late in life (whatever you do, don't drive in Sidcup at lunchtime!). The form was similar to Pennard and I did briefly have to scale the heights when our top player was injured in the Cannon Street rail crash (he broke his arm). My last competitive over the board game was on April 17, 1990, against Sevenoaks.

For a long time during all this I did play postal chess, not to mention the big interest I had in chess playing computers, and I achieved a rating in this up to BCF200 (Elo2200)! I haven't played any chess seriously since sometime in 1991 (probably around the time I lost interest in the pop charts and Freddie Mercury died), but that was because the time consuming game had been overtaken by meeting my wife, Christine.

Jack Orchison
April 22, 2014.

My biographical bit, part 11: Chess adventures 1

My chess adventures, which I promised last time, began when I was seven years old. I, and my dad (Albert), were taught by my mum (Jo) via my aunty Jane (who, sadly, is no longer with us). My dad (who has also passed away) was my first opponent and, for years, my only opponent, but I easily left him behind. When I was twelve (when I also learned to play Scrabble - more of that another time), I played Anatoly Karpov, then World Junior Champion, in a simultaneous display where the grandmaster plays many opponents at once. I lost of course, but it opened my eyes to a wider and much tougher world out there. It was also the year of the notorious Fischer-Spassky match (1972) where the American seized the title from the Russians who'd held it since the second world war. The book on the match by Svetozar Gligoric was my first chess book.

I joined Leicester chess club when I was 15 and started playing league games there. I won my first one as an unknown when old Harry Tharp left his queen en prise. I also played for my school, Wyggeston Boys' Grammar School, as it was then (It's now Wyggeston and Queen Elizabeth College)back when it had strong players like Mark Hassall, James Essinger and Richard Pennington. I did all right, though not as well as two people I met during this period - Glenn Flear and Mark Hebden, both of whom became grandmasters and made a living out of the game!

I also attended chess competitions (called congresses) and never really sparkled. But at eighteen I went to university in Nottingham. At their height (when they had international masters John Emms and Jane Garfield playing for them) they had seven teams and I was in the second team. It was here that my solidity and endgame play improved and I started achieving a grade of about 150BCF (about 1800Elo). The matches were always something to look forward to, and the most vivid memory I have (apart from drawing with the team from Sutton in Ashfield when we turned up late a player short) was our teammate Phil Thomas having a post mortem on his game with the opponent at Grantham, who we beat, and him missing the last bus home. He walked the 26 miles back to university and arrived the following day at breakfast time! (Phil was a fellow PhD chemist, by the way).

More chess adventures next time.

Jack Orchison
April 13, 2014.

Being a writer, part 9: Tense and point of view

We're almost ready to start writing but we need to decide on two things.

The first is what tense to write in. To me, this is simple: past tense. Stories have happened. However, the present tense does lend immediacy to the text and some writers, like Hilary Mantel, do write in the present tense. I find it annoying, though, rather like it's an illiterate ramble of some bloke down the pub.

Having disposed of the first point, the second is not so simple. Who is telling the story? Whose mind(s) are we in? If there is only one viewpoint character we have the choice between 'I' (first person) and 'He/She' (third person). I find that first person often doesn't ring true because it gives the impression the writer (rather than the reader, which is what we aim for) really was there and knows everything happened, when mostly we know this cannot true. There are exceptions, like Clive Cussler - I can well believe him. The first person can get very close to the character, but a reader can only see what the character sees. Third person has the advantage here because we can have more than one viewpoint character (hero/villain, hero/sidekick, lover/lover etc) and see more facets of a story and know what more than one person is thinking. But be careful - many viewpoints get confusing unless you have the skill of someone like the late James Herbert. And neither should you want to write from an omniscient (God-like) viewpoint where we know what everyone is thinking - that is not realistic, either, and leads to a dull 'telling' narrative.

Next time is writng time...

Jack Orchison
April 5, 2014

Being a writer, part 8: Settings and scenery

Your novel setting can be very important, sometimes rivalling a character. You probably know what I mean - the exotic for romance or spy/intrigue, the dark urban sprawl for detectives, gangsters and serial killers. And graveyards and Gothic mansions for horror. But some of these border on the cliché.

Now, I like horror, but this doesn't mean monsters, vampires, ghosts, werewolves etc need be present. Think for a moment about how vile people can be to each other. What secret might a respected businessman hide? What about bent police and lawyers? What might ordinary people believe or be members of? What could be worse than some violent and pernicious organisation operating right under your nose in a small, picturesque village? Disappearances, strange symbols, a derelict building, a dead tree, hidden mine-workings etc might be relevant, as might be computer hacking, phone tapping or internet trolls. All this can be particularly bad for your characters if they can't trust the authorities...

It also pays to use places you know. Of course you call them something else and take a few liberties with their geography. And look into their history - you never know what you can dig up.

Jack Orchison,
March 23, 2014