Monday 26 July 2010

60,000 plus 221B

I'm nudging 60,000 words on the manuscript and just had a ball writing a big battle scene. You can't beat a big battle scene. They're, well, big. And full of battling. This one was a doozie.

I must also mention what a treat last night's Sherlock was. Great script from Stephen Moffat, and bags of charm from and chemistry between Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman. Oh, and cute tie-in websites to boot, namely Sherlock's The Science of Deduction and Dr Watson's Blog. Sunday nights are suddenly awesome.

Monday 19 July 2010

An emotional chapter

This evening's session brings me to around 52,000 words on the first draft of the fantasy novel I'm ghost-writing. That's chapter 22 complete, out of a probable total of 35. And the scheduled delivery date's looming.

When I'm ghosting, I live in constant fear of just being a hack, you know, going through the motions and not really living the story. I hope I avoid that most of the time. Tonight I think I managed it: I've just written a very emotional chapter in which there's an escape and a death, both of which are critical moments in the story. The best part is I barely looked at the outline I'm working from once during the whole thing, but still kept to the proscribed plot. And tonight, for a little while at least, the words came from that good and golden place where everything just seems to sing.

Friday 9 July 2010

Back on track

Another 10,000 words of first draft puts me soundly back on schedule with the current novel. That's 18 chapters down and around 15 to go. Which puts me comfortably past the halfway mark - a very good place to be.

Is it any good? Always hard to tell at this point. The last few chapters felt a little mechanical - a bit of a slog. But I have to stick to my word count schedule on a ghost-writing job like this (actually, it's good discipline whatever the project). There'll be time to iron out any shortcomings at second draft stage. The mission here is to get the story down.

That said, the pace is good, and the storyline I'm working to is pretty gripping. I think I'd have to work quite hard to mess it up. But hey, that's always a possibility!

Saturday 3 July 2010

Ghostly puppeteer

Quick status report on the current novel-in-progress. I'm currently at a smidge over 33,000 words, which means I'm running a little behind schedule again.

The thing is, even though I'm working from a detailed outline (this is a ghost-writing project, so I'm putting the flesh on the bones of a plot created by others) I occasionally hit the occasional plotting problem. For example, this morning I happily started work on chapter thirteen. Two thousand words later I'd just about dealt with the action described in the first sentence.

This magical alchemy - converting a single sentence of outline into an entire chapter - is part of the endlessly rewarding and utterly frustrating business of writing to a tight synopsis. Just when you think the whole thing's mapped out, you realise your main character has no motivation for what he's about to do, the secondary character who popped up at the end of the last chapter really does need fleshing out if he's to be anything more than a cipher, and the spooky environment they both find themselves landed in deserves a little descriptive TLC.

That's why this kind of work is more rewarding than most people think. Ghost I may be, but I really am in control. If I don't do my job properly, the story I'm telling will have no more life than Pinocchio after his strings have been cut. So you could call me The Ghostly Puppeteer. Hmm. That's not a bad title for a story ...

Thursday 1 July 2010

Sci-Fi Airshow

What if all those cool spaceships from classic science fiction movies and TV were real? Furthermore, what if they held public airshows where you could see performing spectacular flypasts? Maybe even climb on board and take a tour of the cockpit?

If that idea puts a smile on your face, visit the fabulous Sci-Fi Airshow website. It's the brainchild of ILM legend Bill George, and that rarest of things: high concept executed to perfection with genuine love for the subject matter. And yes, it's geek heaven too!