Synopsizing (1)

One of the trickiest and most annoying things about writing a novel, particularly anything at all plot driven, is having to turn your finished book into a synopsis. It's like painting a picture and then having to describe it to a blind person.
Despite the salience of synopses to commercial book selling, I've not found finished synopses easy to find. It's much easier to find film synopses than books'. And of course spoiler alert is the phrase that comes to mind. (Interesting that the word 'spoiler', in this sense, is very new. Apart from being an aerodynamic device on a racing car it traditionally meant a plunderer or robber, as in this enjoyable Desmond Bagley book I read many years ago http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Spoilers.html?id=-opiAAAACAAJ&redir_esc=y)

So as a way of improving my own plotting, I've prepared synopses of some successful books. Here is Tripwire, one of Lee Child's most satisfying books, a fairly early Jack Reacher novel. (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tripwire-Jack-Reacher-Lee-Child/dp/0857500066)

Whilst this is in no sense a review - I'm not making any value judgements, it's fascinating to coolly analyse how such a skilled writer gets his emotional effects. The synopsising process takes the 'excited' emotional response from our reading, thus enabling a careful study of the plot foreshadowing and character clues.  But DON'T READ THIS if you have not yet read the book!

TRIPWIRE by Lee Child

Italic Prologue says that Hook Hobie has received two tips off, from thousands of miles away, but doesn’t run. He decides to stand and fight.

Reacher is working in Key West as a bouncer (and swimming pool excavator). A private detective called Costello comes looking for him, mentioning a client named Mrs Jacob. Reacher denies his name. Similarly with two men who come to the nightclub.

In New York, the MD of a company making cameras and projectors is shown in financial difficulties.

Reacher finds Costello murdered, fingers removed. He had identified Costello as a New Yorker from his accent, and now travels to NY.

The company MD, Chester Stone, leaves his wife Marilyn at home and goes to see a loan shark – Hook Hobie. A temporary loan is agreed, secured on stock.

Reacher identifies Costello through a call to NYPD. He learns that he only worked for lawyers.

Hobie’s two enforcers who have killed Costello were unsuccessful in finding out who he was working for. They go to his office and kill his secretary.

Shortly afterwards R. arrives at the office and finds it empty. He obtains the name of Mrs Jacob’s law practice but finds out she is at home in Garrison, north of NY. There he finds the aftermath of a funeral. The funeral was for his old army boss Leon Garber. Mrs Jacob is his daughter, Jodie. Meanwhile Hobie’s men have followed him and are watching the house.

When the mourners have dispersed, the enforcers confront R & J but are fought off.

Back in NY they tell an embroidered version of the tale to Hobie to justify their failure. He asks one of them to kill the other and bring him his hand as proof.

J & R visit the hospital where her father was treated, and are told he was very thick with an old couple called Mr and Mrs Hobie.

Some backstory about Hobie, mentioning Vietnam, losing a hand, becoming a money lender.

Chester Stone’s FD tells him that the company’s stock has been put on the market, at very low prices. This is Hobie’s work, but the FD resigns in disgust. Now the company is almost worthless, the bank who was Stones’ main creditor tells him it has sold their debt (to Hobie.)

One of the enforcers proceeds to murder the other, and brings the hand to Hobie. He puts it in his fridge.

The survivor, plus another of Hobie’s men, attempt to kidnap Jodie on the street, but R fights them off.

R goes to see the Hobies and discovers they have been searching for years for details of their son, missing in action in Vietnam. They paid for him to be traced and an investigator came up with a picture of a man in a jungle being held at gunpoint.

Marilyn puts her house on the market via an estate agent named Sheryl. Hobie poses as a buyer and kidnaps Sheryl and Marilyn. He needs Chester’s signature on a stock transfer for the whole company.

R steals a gun on the street.

A relationship, based on an old infatuation, develops between J and R.

R takes her to the zoo and reveals that the Hobies’ photo was faked in a zoo conservatory. He visits the investigator, Rutter, beats him up and makes him pay back the money they gave him, and also give him a car.

Bodies are seen being brought back from Vietnam to Hawaii, with an old general in charge.

R and J travel to military archives and research Hobie’s life, and then to Hawaii and meet the old general, Nash Newman. They view the skeletons that have been brought back from a Vietnam helicopter crash site. One of the skeletons was of a man named Carl Allen who was being returned under arrest. Two other skeletons are of the MP’s escorting him.

Marilyn insists that Sheryl, injured by Hobie, goes to hospital, and that a meeting with a lawyer is essential before Chester can sign the stock certificates.

At the hospital Sheryl arouses police suspicions. Two cops go to Hobie’s office, but (later) are killed.

It appears that Hobie’s body was not among the skeletons, and that he survived and avoided his parents. Reacher discovers an old report that a one-handed crash victim escaped from military hospital, killing an orderly.

Marilyn arranges for a ‘lawyer’ to attend a meeting with Hobie. In fact this is a private detective.

R finds an extra hand in the collection of skeletons.

He seeks a piece of identification information from Newman. This is found via a search of dental records. We are not told what the information is.

Hobie is bribing a captain in Newman’s unit, so knows that R. is onto him. He contacts Jodie’s lawfirm and summons her to a meeting.

A meeting is set up, with Hobie and Stone, and two lawyers, Jodie for one side and the disguised detective for the other side.

Arriving at Hobie’s office, the detective is immediately spotted. He is disarmed, relieved of two small calibre pistols. He and Jodie are taken hostage along with the Stones.

Hobie forces J to phone Reacher. Through saying ‘Hi Jack’ she alerts him to the fact that she is being held captive. R lies about his whereabouts then tricks his way into Hobie’s office by pretending to be a postman. He kills one of the henchmen, removing his hand, so as to distract Hobie. He shoots another henchman.

There is a showdown when Hobie threatens J with a gun while R, already badly wounded, threatens Hobie. He tells Hobie he knows he is really Carl Allen. R feigns a worse wound and deliberately takes a bullet from Hobie, hoping the small calibre revolver round will not be fatal. He just has time to make sure of Hobie with a shot to the head, before collapsing.

He awakes in hospital three weeks later, and explains to Jodie that he realised ‘Hobie’ was in fact Allen, and that he had swapped dog tags with Hobie as the sole survivor of the helicopter crash. 

It was noisy, but it was public

Many's the time I've been heading to or from the West Country and I've pulled onto the A344 for a 'comfort/heritage' break.

Half an hour has been enough to give the kids a flavour of the stones. Usually when they realise they can't climb on them they don't want to stay much longer. You could even get a reasonable view for free, from the public road, not that different to the view from the rope circle.
Now though, that road is being closed http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/daysout/properties/stonehenge/our-plans/stonehenge-visitor-centre-faqs/and visiting the stones becomes a question of advance planning. Timed tickets will be needed for the shuttle buses from the new visitor centre some way off. Yes, there will be less traffic around the stones, so visiting will be a lovelier and quieter experience for those with the time. But for the rest of us, with precious weekends into which we have to cram travelling and friends and family and maybe a bit of heritage, visiting will be much less easy.
It will be interesting to see how visitor numbers hold up in the face of a dirigiste and un English policy that makes the 'best the enemy of the good.' Meanwhile local people are coping with predicted traffic chaos. http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/68337000/jpg/_68337800_stonehenge_andy_rhind_tutt.jpg. The A303 narrows as it passes the stones anyway and the A344 was useful extra capacity. I think this local mayor who presided over some kind of reverse ribbon cutting ceremony to close the road may have cause to regret his complacency:




Yes, it would be beautiful if it was all back in its bronze age glory, so silent and stately, but then we wouldn't be visiting at all, would we?

Two little lives

Pets go from childhood to senility within the lives of your children. A guinea pig aged five is an old man, his whole life encompassed within just a few years of a child's development. And today we buried the last of our two -  Flopsy, no longer the heavy aggressive overweight big boy he had been when overwheening his brother Scamper, but skinny and prone to fly attack. Scamper had died on New Year's Eve in the morning, as if not wanting to see another year. And this afternoon, on what was probably the last breath of a summerlike Sunday, Flopsy quietly slipped away. We won't have another pet at the moment. So our garden is now just for plants and grass and trees. I'll no longer see, through the window of my study on misty mornings,  my daughter moving his run and putting him out to crop another patch of grass.
Though brought up to be a  non-pet person, hardly ever having handled an animal before, I learned a lot of love and care from these two little men. Now they lie at peace, buried in the garden that was almost their whole world.  

Just watched Rush. Very enjoyable, even when you know who's going to win. Some uncanny likenesses, eg Chris Hemsworth as James Hunt. I went with my son who's about the age I was when it all happened for real - but he didn't know what was going to happen - (unlike the cinema's other handful of customers) -  that Hunt was going to scrape through at the last lap, while Lauda was the moral victor. Whilst I idolized Hunt, modern kids are all more like Niki Lauda. Focused. Hunt seems like a buccaneering throwback, an Errol Flynn out of his time. Or, as my son acutely said, a vague romantic Englishman in the mould of Scott to Lauda's calculating precise Amundsen. The interesting difference is that Lauda displayed all the physical courage of Scott. He comes out of the film very well - the benefit of being the survivor. If Hunt was still alive, an older statesman in his 60's, this would have been a different movie - if made at all.

It's a good movie though.
If you were alive in England in 70's, or even if you want to know what 'life was like' then (one of my other son's favourite expressions) this is well worth a watch. Have to be quick though. Only about 10 people watching it tonight...

On July 4th my aunt Bernardine Chambers died after a very long illness. Writing as Bernardine Bishop, she was on the brink of a newly revived career as a novelist. (She started out as a writer in the '60s, publishing two early novels, then worked as an English teacher and a psychotherapist.) Her first mature novel, Unexpected Lessons in Love came out from John Murray this January, and two more novels, even better, are ready for publication. She writes with rare economy, wit and compassion. This is a very humble tribute, based on some conversations we had and a video interview made by the family. But those three mature novels are her real monument. 

Last Bloom

The heat pulls on growth from our Easter-chilled land

Old roses, chrysanths (once a gift from a man)

And our fruit softly ripens, summer’s treat newly made.

Here’s a thin long stem in the midst of the garden

(Little ones round about, drawn to care’s gentle shade.)

There three flowers bloomed in storial tiers –

The recounting, the teaching, the hard work in pairs.

Now shrivelled, near-gone, save fresh memory’s ear.

But a fourth, like the first, catches sunshine’s strong gleaming

And there’s beauty and hope, keen detail, firm limning.

There was ease for your pain, when the dream people came

To page-anchored life, in a window mount frame.

Those dreams poured so strong, God faded life’s squalor

For those long solo mornings as you sat whilst you could

And you knew that that glory of people and places

Was not just from world’s life, nor yet memory’s store.

It was prayer on the page, it was Grace in the telling.

The powers you gained came from more than just you.

Yet your pain marched its road, till you lost earthly grip.

Left here in the garden, the last bloom scattered tips

As its heart gently withered, and three petals fell.

And we stand here around, where your stem strongly grew,

Let’s cherish the three as your words linger with us

Be thankful for that, when church prayers will not do.

Time for that grace midst the pain of the parting

(Relief to your body, yet a gulf’s interposed)

And though faith’s slog seems weary, and our road dark and dreary

There’s a glint in the dark, faint hint of your smile.

As you told us a story for camera and sound –

Sheltering inside on a frost-ridden night

Your hospital spurned, yet fear gone for a while.

That night your glimpse was the love ‘cross the gulf

And an old fond promise seemed maybe half kept.

A sign’s seldom granted, else we’d not call it faith

But mother’s help in your darkness – there’s support in that percept.

So there’s a light to hold on to, your books fix love’s gift

Inspiring our march till our heart’s last lone lift. 

Enjoyment beyond entertainment 

Funny, sexy, utterly intimate, Before Midnight is a film you don’t know you’re watching. It almost defies belief that this is a work of fiction, and you’re in a cinema, rather than there on that Greek island with Jesse and Celine. In their forties now, their characters are fully formed - his irritating bravado and evasions, and her hyper sensitivity to slights and old wounds.  If you’ve ever had a long relationship, with the distractions of children and jobs and money, you’ve GOT to see this film. And if you’ve ever wanted to be a writer, or known any successful writers – then there’s a lot in it for you too!

OK, this is a positive review, almost to the point of fawning. But I can't imagine a better played, better written movie than this. So well written, in fact, I would want to buy the script and read it. 

Quantum of Drink

Poets and preachers alike were earnestly advised to seek inspiration in a bottle or glass. This is one of the historic songs on the classic album The Tale of Ale:

Ye poets who pray on the Hellican brooke
The nectar of Gods and the juice of the vine,
You say none can write well except they invoke
The friendly assistance of one of the Nine.
His liquor surpassed the streams of Parnassus
That nectar, Ambrosia, on which Gods regale
Experience will show it, naught makes a good poet
Like quantum sufficients of Nottingham Ale.

You bishops and curates, priests, deacons and vicars
When once you have tasted, you all must agree
That Nottingham Ale is the best of all liquors
And none understands a good creature like thee.
It dispels every vapor, saves pen, ink and paper
For when you`ve a mind in your pulpit to rail
It`ll open your throats, you may preach without notes
When inspired with a bumper of Nottingham Ale.

There is an element of hyperbole in the song but it prompted me to think about the affect of particular drinks on the mind and temperament.

A single glass to help speed creative thought seems modest enough, but keeping it single is the challenge. The point is reached where ideas become wackier, characters’ motivations become less consistent, and dialogue becomes flatter. The balance between the inner voice of characters or of a storyteller, and the weird thoughts we always have fizzing around our heads somewhere (else we wouldn’t be attempting to create anything at all), becomes more elusive. It’s that old dichotomy between control and fantasy.

If the inspiration flies a little fleeter as a glass goes down, this begs one question. Is this solitary drinking?

The conclusion I have come to is that the first drink is not. The second and third may well be. As long as the characters are still there with the writer, clearly audible, then no. But once they  go, then it’s another matter.

 The heavy brownness of bitter, usually bottled when drunk at home, is quite quick at drowning them out. And yet in company, at the pub, it opens up the questions that lead to good exploratory conversations. Beer is an unselfish drink, perhaps? It's significant, I think, that the key quality of a good bitter is balance – the malty and hoppy and indeed the fruity, all in balance.

Whereas – keeping to traditional English drinks for now – cider provides that jolt of physical energy that makes it an ideal labourer’s tipple. The other day I did quite a lot of wooding – sawing and splitting logs – and cider seemed to help me get through it. And yet there is an affect on articulacy. Not a writer’s drink.

Wine or spirits are perhaps the best drink to help the words flow. As Churchill said:  ‘A single glass of champagne imparts a feeling of exhilaration. The nerves are braced, the imagination is agreeably stirred; the wits become more nimble. A bottle produces the contrary effect. Excess causes a comatose insensibility. So it is with war: and the quality of both is best discovered by sipping.’

There are Champagnes amongst beers. These are perhaps the perfect drinks. Bodger’s barley wine. Lodz porter, a Polish beer very hard to find even in Poland, let alone here, and probably one I will have to write about separately...

A craft Champagne maker I met a few years back. 

Lodz Porter from Poland

Too Close for Comfort (Niamh O' Connor)

This crime novel has an intricate plot, a setting with some of the same unfamiliar bleakness as Larssen's Sweden. We are in Dublin in the recession, a gated estate where most residents are in negative equity and the Wicklow mountains loom nearby. There is none of the jolly 'Oirishness' that we English expect, though there are some quaint characteristic expressions - renters for tenants, swoon for faint, fuck is said freeely in front of children, and the repeated references to 'presses' is nothing to do with the crooked journalists in the plot (they're just cupboards!)
There are possibly too many characters, some with names that are not well differentiated. O'Connor is quite willing to use cliche in her descriptions, and indeed her title. The book could have done with more editing. The Sean Hore character (a real life corrupt journalist) seems somewhat 'bolted on' to a plot that perhaps she had roughed out before the worst of the NoW revelations came to light. Maybe later a real corrupt journalist thriller can be written.

However, the experience of reading the book is gripping and fascinating, as the plot's unpredictable twists are calculated to surprise and draw us in. Rather like driving along the Military Road from the Sallly Gap into Dublin, as above.

There's a boy with autism who is a very well drawn character, ultimately with decisive role to play. And we have a leading lady in Jo Birmingham who is fallible, foul mouthed and forgetful, along with her cleverness and drive. I would have been very happy to have written this - to have kept the many stranded plot together -Enjoyable.

Argo (what do I know?)

With its uninformative title, customary creditless opening, and fanciful storyboard history with a monotone commentary, coupled with my very vague recall of events in  from Iran in 1979-81, I sat down to watch Argo with remarkably little prior knowledge.
And so I was drawn deeper and deeper into a movie with superb, accelerating pace - (yes, it *did* get the Best Editing Oscar as well as the others), spare fluent and believable dialogue, and that generous confidence with performances and tone that one associates with an actor-director. Alan Alda and John Goodman added humour, through timing and pauses, warming characters that could have been abrasive and aggressive. The read through of a sub-Star Wars script was hilarious though the humour was tightened by cross cutting with a chilling Soviet style mock execution.
There were some 'Hollywood' concessions to limited attention spans - surely if the Revelutionary Guards wanted to stop a plane from taking off they could simply speak to the control tower beforehand? - but it worked incredibly well for someone in England who didn't have the slightest idea how true it was before the end credits.
Then we had pictures of the real people portrayed, looking mainly quite like the actors. And a rather quavering Jimmy Carter. And having declared the astonishing truth of whole pseudo movie plot, the titles brought back the facts that were half buried in my memory. The 444 days of the hostages' captivity, etc...
And this is unusual. I normally approach a historical film with prior knowledge that greatly affects the experience (for example knowing that the opening scenes of the dire Cromwell supposedly take place after the Irish uprising of 1641 but before the Scottish war of 1639!) And this is a historical film. The cars, hair, clothes and above all the *glasses* put the characters into a period long gone, one I can hardly believe I lived through!
But last night, watching Argo, I was like a non-techy person watching science fiction. Taking it all at face value. This was a good way to be. A rare pleasure.
Recommended .

By the standards of the time

When I was studying for the stringent exams I needed to pass in order to obtain the Museums Association Diploma (a qualification to join a profession that later turned out to be too unremunerative ) I was undecided as to whether to take the oral practical exam in social history or science and technology. Not having been good at maths or science at school, I plumped for the former. So the day came. I was presented with a table of domestic bygones, silver spoons, iron firebacks and other blacksmiths' productions of uncertain vintage. And whatever I said about telling the objects' stories made sense. It was one of the exams I managed to pass first time.
After all, it was the 'story' in it that first drew me to history.
At that time I was looking after a collection of old gramophones and phonographs. Mechanical music machines that combined the arts of the clockmaker and carpenter. Beautiful and obscure. I wrote a book about them that has been in print for most of the last twenty years and sold around 10,000 copies. It's pretty popular, of its type. Maybe its success is because I wanted to bring the machines to life, to describe the human context in which they were sold and used.http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gramophones-Other-Talking-Machines-Library/dp/0747801045
Later I worked in providing photographic and digital access to unique and rare items in the 'paper museums' of the British Library and the Bodleian Library.
Holding a piece of paper, or a machine, or a wax cylinder - still smelling like a fresh wax crayon - is a tremendous link to a past world. The durability of objects, compared to the frailty of life, is something fascinating. As Betjeman put it

And the iron knob of this palisade So cold to the touch, is luckier now than he.
 

But beyond that there is the question of what would the people of those times be like? How much really would we have in common with them?
Even a hundred years ago - the days of Captain Scott and World War One - there was a physical toughness to life that seems daunting now. A man might lie in a shellhole on the Somme with a shattered thigh all day, and write to his brother what a grand view he had of the army going forward (this happened to my great grandfather). Boys fought and played at fighting, and humour was practical and rough. The importance of 'character' and stoicism is something we have lost now, in favour of  attributes such as good communication skills and empathy.
In writing fiction - in my two novels - I have flirted with the historical novel form. I have provided a medieval narrative and a Victorian narrative. Each is bracketed with scenes of modern researchers, is perhaps only viewable *through* the modern researchers' efforts. Do my historical characters really exist in their own right?
If we consider a young woman of the fourteenth century, the difference in outlook is almost unbridgeable. If she indulges in creative work, perhaps writing songs or poems, can we really imagine with any authenticity where that creative spark comes from?
In Anya Seton's Katherine, a well spring to so much of my creative thinking over the years, Geoffrey Chaucer appears as an individualistic romantic poet. Who knows whether he was really like that, or a social climber who used his cleverness with rhyme to ingratiate himself with royalty?
And leaving that aside, what of the sheer violence of those days? If our young woman happens to be the daughter of a knight, or the fiancee or lover of a knight, she has bought into that part of society whose God-given duty was to fight. The knightly class were mainly concerned with the codification and preservation of violence. For all their talk of chivalry, once hostilities in the Hundred Years War reached one of their periodic pauses, the knights would stay in France, rampaging through the countryside seeking free quarter.
John of Gaunt, the medieval Rhett Butler as pictured by Anya Seton, made up in brutality for what he lacked in the military competence of his older brother Edward the Black Prince. 
Leaving women and children to die in the wake of his scorched earth Chevauchee, such a man would now seems to operate with the moral code of such as  Dale Cregan, the Manchester cop killer.
So the pursuit of true authenticity seems ultimately fruitless. Or at least for the good characters. You could write a historical novel with authentic villains. The authentic Gaunt would have made a good villain.

If we met one of those people from a hundred or six hundred years ago, would we really understand them, even if we can understand their machines or their handwriting?

Investing a historical novel with the superstructure of a research plotline - ie making it 'timeslip' -aims to give it an extra authenticity, like the patina on a card long carried in the wallet. By providing less history, I have aimed at more historicity.
However I have not embraced  the 'truth to genre' that helps you fit into the commercial world. One of these novels is facing self publication - Perhaps the second will also have to 'leak out' that way too.

To be a really successful historical novelist - Bernard Cornwell or Elizabeth Chadwick for example - I am wondering if you are writing of the world of reenactment. The world of modern people in period clothes, with period weapons and some period attitudes - class distinctions, 'cruelty lite', but mostly just people like the Sealed Knotters who spend blissfully enjoyable weekends fighting and singing and drinking.
And before anyone thinks I am ridiculing reenactment, I have to point out this is something I did myself for a similar period the old National Service. And like a national serviceman, I learned a lot about my fellow man, and made some firm friends.

 Perhaps the next book will be a straight historical...