Here is part two of my interview with author Luke Bellmason.
You did the cover for Canterbury Tales yourself.
It’s very impressive, a rarity for authors. Simple and yet instantly
recognizable. Is there a difference, for you, between writing and creating
visual art?
Thank you for
saying so. I am so critical of my own work and it's almost impossible to judge
yourself. I think there is link between all of the creative arts. music,
painting and writing and it's aesthetics. It's such a difficult concept to
grasp because it's entirely subjective. Two people might agree that something
looks beautiful but ten others might not. Who is right? I know when I've done
something that looks right image wise, but I can't explain how. I just look at
it and say to myself "yes, that's right." When someone else agrees that's very
pleasing. I only wish it were that easy with writing, I am never quite sure
whether that's good or not. There's a lot less certainty.
I think I must
have a visual sort of mind, I tend to visualize everything in the story before
I ever write it down. The writing part is the last part, like the events have
happened and the words are just the 'reporting' of those events. I did a two
year course in visual communications about six years ago and, even though I
can't draw that well and have never seriously considered working in the
industry professionally, I learned how to present things professionally. How to
'sell' yourself and take a professional attitude to manage deadlines and such.
It seems like something so simple now, but before going to college I would
start projects and never finish them, or never plan them out to how I would
complete them. I'm a lot more workman-like about my writing as a result of that
and it's certainly come in very handy to know how to do typesetting and produce
stuff for print and all that.
The other great
thing I learned at college was to be experimental. You have to do something
which will stand out. Everyone has access to Photoshop and computer imaging
software these days but they are just tools. There's a great temptation to let
the computer do all the work but then you'll simply end up with something
which looks exactly like everyone else's.
At college, they
would encourage us to go out and photograph 'textures' or to collect unusual objects,
or do something else totally random. Then we'd have to incorporate these into
our work. It made us think differently and come at things from another
direction. I have certainly tried to apply this ethos to my writing.
Like the story
I'm working on at the moment, which has the plot line of 'discovery'. The main
character discovers something which ends up changing his life and leading him
in turn to discover something fundamental about himself. I took the word
'discovery' as a theme and 'discovery' wrote the first draft instead of
carefully outlining it like I normally would. The result was a different story
to the one I would have written if I'd planned it, probably. I don't actually
know this for certain of course. I would be inclined to say I learned 'to think
outside of the box' if that phrase wasn't so hideously overused.
Describe your writing process? How often do
you write and how long per session?
I write do a lot
of my writing at work, in the truck or sitting in the driver's waiting room. I
can easily clock up three or four hours of sitting-around-time a night. Having
said that, I do have an iPad and waste a huge amount of that time on twitter,
or watching TV shows and movies.
I recently set
up a very convoluted system for making myself write, which involved writing a
text adventure game. Check my blog for more details. It's completely crazy, and
I know it's crazy, but it seems to be working. It goes back to what I said
about being experimental. Nobody in their right mind would waste time creating
a text adventure game to help them write a novel, but doing the obvious and the
expected is only a sure route to creating something obvious and expected.
The first four
tales took over four years to write, but it allowed me to develop a kind of production
line system where I start out with a concept, themes and a plot then go on
through drafts on to a final version.
So to begin with
I draw up (with coloured lines and everything) an outline for each main
character. If you've seen that video of Kurt Vonnegut explaining Cinderella and
other classic tales, you'll get the idea. That outline forms the basis for the
first draft, which is a really free-flowing exploration of all the ideas I've
had for the story. I don't hold anything back, I just chuck everything in.
Usually the story has been gestating for months and rolling around inside my
head. I like it best when the first draft spills onto the screen in a couple of
weeks.
Sorting out the
mess of the first draft is the task of the second draft, which is where I try
and figure out where the scenes are, and each scene has to advance the plot.
This is vital with a short story where space is at a premium, but it also keeps
the story moving along and I like to switch up locations a lot too, have
contrasts between scenes so the mood changes and the reader gets a sense of
following the character through their journey.
The third draft
is where I edit down, make things clearer, try to cut out scenes which aren't
necessary or merge scenes. It's great when you can double up things too, like
having dialogue which doesn't just explain the plot, but also describes a
character and maybe foreshadows or sets something up for later. The third draft
really has to get the story ready for publication, with line-editing to cut
down the word count as much as possible. Someone once told me to 'imagine the
editor is charging you for each word'.
Then there's the
final draft, where I do the last bit of proof-reading and checking for overused
words, like 'just' or 'decide' or 'wonder', which I seem to use a hell of a
lot!
I am the worst
procrastinator in the world and will do anything to avoid writing, but with
this new system I'm hoping plan out my time much more carefully and get the
next volume out in a year.
The ideal amount
of time I've found for writing is about 90 minutes. You have to decide to make
those 90 minutes sacred, keep away from Twitter and the internet. Even so, for
the first half an hour is just messing about, getting the brain warmed up. Then
I'll hopefully be in the zone for a good hour, before I stop. I stop at the end
of the time, even unless things are going really well, because I'll go off the
boil and stop producing anything any good.
One of the
things I like to do at the end of a session like this as well is to set up the
thing I'm going to be doing in the next session. Write the first few lines of
the next scene or a few lines of dialogue. So I'm not coming to the work
completely cold next time.
What do you think is your weak point as a
writer? Or, to say that another way, describe something about your writing you
would like to improve.
I often worry
about my characters and whether they're all the same, or whether they're all
just versions of me. I enjoy writing dialogue but it's so hard to get into a
character if you're not sympathetic with them or if they're supposed to be the
'bad guy'.
My main gripe
though is my lack of output, the procrastination that I mentioned. But then
again, I would not be too unhappy to have written only one or two good books by
the time I leave this rock by one means or another.
I used to read a
lot of books on writing and listen to writing podcasts and go to writing
workshops, but in the end I think you can overdo it. One tends to end up with
analysis paralysis, where you end up doing nothing because you think everything
you're writing is bad. There's a sort of bad writing hypochondria where you
recognise every example of bad writing and think 'yes, I do that.' You can
easily convince yourself you're writing is shockingly bad and that has the
effect of stopping you from writing, which is the opposite of what you should
do of course, which is write more and more until you get better.
Or, you could do
what I do and just have your story told by a narrator and then blame all the
bad writing on him.
Lastly, how many volumes are planned for
Canterbury Tales? Have you thought about what you’d like to write after the
series is finished?
There will be
two more volumes of the tales to come, making up the total of twelve tales.
Volume 2 should be out next year, with volume 3 following in 2015. Then I'll
probably collect the three volumes together into one book, and I'm thinking
that maybe I should add some new stuff for that version.
There could
be an infinite number of follow ups, but I'm a big fan of ending things before
they go stale. Leave your audience wanting more and all that.
The book after
was planned so long ago, well before the Canterbury Tales were even conceived.
But it's going to be a better book for the fact that I have honed my
story-telling skills on this project first. I'm really aware of learning all I
can from this project to build up to writing the next one.
It will also be
based on video-games and the culture that surrounds them. It'll have two levels
going on, a little like the Canterbury Tales has; firstly the group of players
in an online game and also the events and characters they play in the game
itself. It will also tie in with what I said about online games and the
character's stories emerging from the players themselves, rather than having
pre-written and scripted things in the game.
I'd love to
explore the iteration between the players and their characters in a system
which could potentially generate and manage an entire fictional universe drawn
from all the world's literature and culture on the internet. A sort of
automated AI storytelling machine which injects new stuff into a video game all
the time. Such a game would be endlessly playable (not to mention highly
addictive.)
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