Repeat Readings Part Three

Try to convince someone of an author’s control and intention, and they’ll often raise a suspicious eyebrow. Yeah right, their face says. That pattern of images is coincidence. You’re reading too much into it. Teaching, you get this a lot. You might be discussing “…patter out their hasty orisons” in a poem by Wilfred Owen, for example, and drawing attention to the poet’s use of sound. It’s like a machine gun, see? Yeah right, go the faces. You’re not seriously saying he meant that?  They write it down, but they don’t buy it.

However. The editing process has given me a little bit of fresh insight into this one. I’ve read and adjusted Poisonboy seven times now. (Previous posts with this title – there’s two, I think – have told little stories about re-reading. Poisonboy is now my most read book, beating this, which is more than a little narcissistic for my liking.) Anyway, here’s a pretty exact account of what happened with one image as I re-read and re-wrote.


It started with the antagonist whose face, torn by dogs and healed ugly, is raked by scars. He only has one eye. When he blinks in the half dark of a shadowy room it looks like a peeled egg. Level of intention here – currently zero. I just like the idea. My boy Dalton Fly is our protag. He has a Lucky Jack; a playing card he believes serves as some sort of protecting influence. On re-read two, I notice the Lucky Jack has only one eye because, well, Jacks do, don’t they? And the single eye ‘stares impassively at him’ or some such line. It’s a neat link between goodie and baddie so I keep it in and forget about it.

Later on in the book, one character has a toy rabbit, a throw-back to their childhood, as a pet. It has no eyes and it's called Hoppy. I added the detail early on with no sense that it might link to anything. My daughter has a toy rabbit called Hoppy and it has a missing eye, so it was a little reference to that. On re-read three and four, I’ve now got the eye image stored away somewhere in my mind and the level of intention starts to rise. Following a dose of Belladonna, Dalton can’t see properly; his vision buckles and distorts. It’s a straightforward symptom of the poisoning, but I play it up a bit more than I would have. Later, I fiddle with a fight scene in which the lad takes a beating and comes round, face swollen, with one working eye. By re-read five, I have to describe the hot pellet of a bullet, so it becomes a ‘metal eye’. For another character, cleaning spectacles and being able to see properly is important - he never can; his lenses are always grime-encrusted. 

What does all this mean?

I’m not entirely sure; I’ve made a dodgy pattern and I don’t know why. Except that the story is a bit about seeing the world, and seeing it in a new way, maybe. Yeah, that. I write all this because it might look, just a little bit, and just occasionally, like I know what I'm doing.

Rest assured friends. I don't.

Germolene and Sticking Plasters

“You put him through a lot of pain!” someone said to me after reading The Poison Boy, aka Sleepwell and Fly recently. They were talking about the protagonist. And yeah, I’m prepared to admit he has a pretty rough time of things. There’s the poisoning, the explosions, the fights – that incident with the knife; I could go on. Re-reading the whole thing again (I’m down to the final line edits now) I got to thinking about why I’ve done this. In many ways, I think, it’s a kind of weakness in the book, and it springs from a weakness in myself.

Here’s what I mean. I’m comfortable when my team of cheerful protagonists are pulling together, battling immeasurable odds and getting a good old-fashioned kicking. Cuts and bruises will heal and they’ll still be the best of friends after it’s all over, see? What I’m a little more scared of – I recognise this now – is putting them through emotional turmoil or upheaval. So I make up for it by throwing an extra gang of heavies with pistols in their direction and watching them grit their teeth and get through it.

It doesn’t necessarily make for a good novel though.

Let’s imagine two protagonists, both at the same point in their narratives; two-thirds through, entering the final act with daunting challenges ahead of them. (And rather than break with tradition people, let’s imagine these guys are both called Argyle):

• Argyle 1 has to escape a prison cell at the top of a high tower, battle his way through a flotilla of armed guards and rescue a stranded pal before the book ends.

• Argyle 2 has to choose between breaking a sworn confidence by revealing his best friend’s dreadful secret, or betraying his girlfriend.

There you go.

Now, I know which I’d tend towards: Argyle 1. Why? Because I feel more comfortable putting poor Argyle through the straining of muscle and sinew, the fear, the physical danger, the broken teeth, the fist in the face. He’s trapped in a corner? No worries, Argyle! Open a can o’ Whup-Ass and it’ll all be alright in the end, yeah? I know that, the reader knows that, and as a result all we get is a prose version of Mission Impossible with endless running and jumping, hiding around corners and wise-cracking as the bodies mount up.

But we can all see what makes the more dramatic story; it’s Argyle 2. That lad’s got a major problem, and no amount of ninja skills is gonna get him out of it. He’ll agonise, he’ll fret, he’ll suffer terrible torment… I’m nervous just thinking about it. That’s real drama, right?

So I reckon I need to change direction for my next story. Be brave and tackle it head-on. I need to give my protag a problem that can’t be solved with germolene and sticking plasters.

The question is… what?

The Next Big Thing

I’ve been lucky a hundred times over this last year. Here’s an example. My good friend Veronique David-Martin – a great writer and tweeter who can be followed here, y’all – tagged me to take part in a pass-it-on blog meme called ‘The Next Big Thing’. Now I’d settle for being a thing of pretty much any size, I have to admit, but given the choice I would indeed pick ‘big’. Here’s hoping my luck holds, eh?

1- What is the title of your next book?

It’s called ‘The Poison Boy’. It was called ‘Sleepwell and Fly’ – the names of the two main protagonists. Maybe I’ll have to change the name of my blog as well now. *sigh*

2- Where did the idea come from for the book?

I was in a garden in Alnwick, in the north east. It’s an amazing garden – all the plants in it are poisonous; every single one. It’s walled with a black iron gate with skulls on it – very gothic. As I wandered around looking at all these poisonous plants and reading about all the terrible ways in which they could kill you, I knew I had the beginnings of a really good idea; orphaned food-tasters who’d become experts in poison-detection. As soon as I was back home, I started writing.

3- What genre does your book fall under?

Well – it’s YA Fantasy, aimed at readers of 10+ years of age. Maybe a little older; parts of it are pretty gruesome. I’ve been taking out some of the lurid gore from the opening scenes and trying to keep all that visceral nastiness in check a bit. I think it’s better for it. Hopefully it will appeal, to use a phrase borrowed from Carlos Ruiz Zafon, to “young and youthful readers.”

4- What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

Now there’s a question. As a younger writer, part of the fun of putting a story together was imagining which parts I could play myself. Seriously; if I’d answered this question fifteen years ago, I’d be saying – me, for all of them! maybe it’s time to admit that’s never going to happen. Anyway, I’ve got what they call a face for radio.

Because all the central characters – a gang of children on the run in a smuggler’s town full of flooded cellars, secret passageways and moonlit galleries – are all between the ages of fourteen and eighteen, it might be hard choosing established actors. So I’ll settle for a whole bunch of eager first-timers fresh out of stage school. Plus a heavily made-up Kenneth Branagh as the bad guy.

5- What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?

Jeez. One sentence? OK. But I’ll have to make it a long one.

When Dalton Fly – food-taster to the idle rich – wakes from a poison-induced trance, drenched in the blood of a dead companion, he knows he’s stumbled upon something he shouldn’t have; and as his life unravels, he realises he will need to use all his remarkable talents to the full and call on the help of a motley crew of dubious allies if he is to stay alive and take on the forces that threaten to destroy him.

Phew!

6- Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Back to the ‘luck’ thing. I won The Times/Chicken House children’s book competition for 2012. So I’ll be published by the lovely people at Chicken House in April 2013. What a smashin’ crowd they are, by the way. They’ve been so helpful and supportive as I’ve drafted and re-drafted.

7- How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

Still going. Two years and counting! I’ll be done by December… *crosses fingers*

8- What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

Well, it was inspired by a number of books with similar features. I’m not saying I’m anywhere near as good, but Chris Wooding’s The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray and Philip Reeve’s Fever Crumb are close cousins. And there’s a dash of J Meade Faulkner’s classic children’s book Moonfleet, which I love.

9- Who or what inspired you to write this book?

I’ve been playing with these characters for years. There’s one-and-a-half abandoned novels gathering dust somewhere, both trying to do something similar. I guess it just clicked this time. The main character was named after a beer, believe it or not.

10- What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

It’s all about poison! Imagine a little bottle of liquid that could blow your mind – or kill you. There’s no denying it’s an interesting notion – at least, that’s what I’m hoping readers will think!

 

Being a first-time writer, I’m not all that well connected. So passing this thing on is a tough gig. But if you haven’t yet visited the blogs of these three wonderful writers – all of whom have taken part – then you must!

Veronique David Martin

Emma Pass

Rachel Ward