I owe you for the thing with the guy in the place
Shot list everything so you can turn up and be more free in the moment
School boys blow up a data centre to delete their school reports
Lazy flakes of ash. What's going on here? Mopping up or dealing with an event
Be princess julia
shaping the final structure of the novel
Pretend to be filming a documentary, find a niche but interesting subject
Don't go bananas on the piercings front. Aide d'orgasm.
But this is about pride
Talks like an instruction manual, youtube assembly video
Nick Cage in Bringing Out The Dead but he's an assembler. Likes Lego too. My new build?
Guy whose ocd pings when furniture is out of whack or misarranged or misassembled
Giy Ritchie's been sniffing around like a randy bloodhound. All the crimos and gangsters of South of the river.
Writing as building. "My new build".
Write in first person present tense like Winslow. He surveyed the room, he petted the dog. He headed upstairs. He went to her room.
Who's the Latino?
But Queenie married the slippery Minhas Suburu who used private equity to fund . When he died in a deck chair of congestive heart failure he left her with . The only things Queenie cared about now were cats and ceramics. She had a gallery in Southwold.
Need a good solid plot
Keep your eye on the doughnut not the hole
Write Text about the completed novella
12 parts portfolio of connected short stories
Use dictation to work out the plot of each chapter
The hero is Nicolas Cage
By 50 he had identified all his flaws and impulses, those things injurious to his mental health (certain women, politics, drink, over-eating) and those essential to his well-being (books, writing, a little socialisation). He owned his own home. He had mastered himself.
The two were using the opportunity to arrange a business deal. Which went wrong. But what's the actual story here? The dance is the B story, the A story is to be revealed.
The dance is Trollopian. He attended reluctantly because he would much rather preferred to have stayed at home with his Raspberry Pi, 3-d printer and box set of Public Eye but he had half an idea the single life meant he'd cark it sooner and he still held out hope of finding an amenable type.
Paz is sent on a mission to get some information from a crazy. This appears to go wrong but Dulcie disappears only to reappear later with the information. Paz, on the other hand, flees to a side world and gets terrorised by its inhabitants, the others need to retrieve her to progress. This is pure side-Quest.
Side-quest, head to the out-house, there you or one of your friends will be attacked by a hideous beat monster which will turn you into a raving maniac.
Bitten by a radioactive bee
Pomeranian
James Gorden Bennett obsessions for colour. Owls, weather monitors
Naval and military paraphenalia everywhere
Gather characterful paraphenalia
In the shed was a fake alligator. On the landing was a skeleton. What furniture there was had been chosen for comfort, anything else had been an obligation and acquired on the cheap from the 1950s via the British Heart Foundation.
Give reality the slip for the rest of the evening
Or nuttier than peanut brittle
Rum brave
Describe as if Andy C or Zeg is the star, put on his best pantaloons and talked sternly to himself in the mirror. No, he would not regale Sheila with his theory that missing Patrick Troughton Doctor Who episodes were in the Nigerian Tv archive. Nor would he get rum battled unless of course she turner out to be a frost and he needed to evade reality for the rest of the evening.
Woody Allen overhears character talking about fashion or furniture or art. Cutting to the danxe scene in crimes and misdemeanors
Be trollopian: I cannit say that with me John Bold was ever a favourite
Confabulate as if to Amanda, the empty quarter story
She just would not let an issue go once she had hold of it.
I can't do it because I am diligent and I am tenacious and that means I have legions of enemies. Many people wish I would go away but I do like a project and willarr Curtis prints don't pay for themselves.
It had been like hell
...for a strange and mysterious company. I had just moved back to the UK from Cairo where the souks... I was skint, I was renting a single room in a shared house and I didnt really care where the money came from. I was also done being a hero so my disinterest was of use to them.
I had a boring job doing Excel spreadsheets for a company of research scientists invetigating hibernation. The research went nowhere. The company was not a front.
Fruitloop
Many years ago, when I was a different man
Nor can I begin to tell you just how much stuff happens over the eight episodes. You get death, murder, suicide, love affairs, arrests, diseases, broken homes, broken hearts, fires, earthquakes, a few preposterous coincidences and many intimate moments of great delicacy
Otto sniffed and looked over my shoulder, visualising once again what he had been through. Of course, this was back when I was an emergency contractor for Shell. The rig swayed below. Only emergency lights. The madness of what I was doing had to be parked if I were to get through it.
I came back to find the city had changed in ways I couldn’t quite fathom. All these strange formations, breakages. There’s a rift through central London which has been covered with planks of wood.
I headed over to the Tav licking my lips
“Well, well, well. Look who it isn’t.”
I clapped my card against the reader, enjoyed the sense of relief when the four green lights lit up. When I sat down, Otto had busied himself with rummaging in his bag and I was mildly put out to find he wasn’t sitting alert, waiting for my return. Sense of being a low priority in his scheme of things which didn’t engender much goodwill.
Prefects and students at warring schools. Or biscuit factories. Playing out pathetic playground dramas. Legitimiser because they get mentioned in histories of the school. These teetering structures are ripe for dismantling.
Westminster, the media, the church are warring corporations who each sell a product and believe themselves beyond reproach. The public is also a querulous child, screaming baby Jesus, corporation, feared alcoholic headmaster.
I do need a writing map. A misshapen plot outline for each 1k to 3k or set piece.
I need to commit to 1000k a day. But directed writing.
Most people dream of writing a novel. Are you willing to put the work in to do it?
Without analgesiacs
I had to play the "but what if he does it to someone else?" card. I heard nothing after that. I hope he lost his job and died unattended without pain killers in a mixed ward.
The cook, Guzman, whose daughter - for reasons no one knew or were too repressed to ask - hung around him in the kitchen, at the back door, smoking cigarettes, winking at the stable boys.
The religious sites would then be converted to secular places of social support, congregation and even a place to hold memorials for births deaths etc. Marriages would be de-mystified, God would not be invited. The cosmos could come, bearded sky fascists could not. As for Israel, Palestine, Damascus, Jerusalem. Nuke them from orbit.
Except...this would never happen. You could never unpick it just add your voice and actions to slow social change.
3-d scan all churches and cathedrals, temples, mosques in high res, future proofed for Virtual Reality then knock them down.
Make like Linford Christie
The message comprised a series of unsavory assertions, one outrageous accusation and a potential solution to a hitherto intractable problem.
The communication was digital, the device irrelevant, and the contents indicated he should make like Linford Christie to a basement eaterie in Mortlake where, on his tab, a ratfink of his acquaintance would be waiting.
Pilates exercises at an open window until one morning he inhaled sharply and swallowed a fly, the coughing fit that followed drawing concern from those in the street.
He had taken a bite from his chocolate brioche and glanced furtively at a pink haired girl reading a tablet two tables away when there were shouts in the street.
Narrate like Wes Anderson
On the 23rd June thos unremarkable schedule was routed by the events at the Otis Hotel. A reclusive artist. A failed politician had met there to discuss opportunities
He lived in fear of running out of disposable contact lenses. He brushed, flossed and sluiced his teeth twice daily.
There was a cafe on the way from the station which served hot drinks metal furniture and served omelettes with a cornucopia of tasty fillings which he couls gladly eat every day but he liked to vary his routine because he preferred anonymity to the familiarity of the staff on his umpteenth return.
Writing directionlessly is just vomiting out words and results in nothing useful.
The fiction should sit alongside the blog, an outgrowth of it.
1000 words a day, leading to a 10k breakdown for Godalming (or whatever it ends up being called)
Novel events are those that would go in a diary so you're going to need a lot of stuff happening.
Daughter Autumn in cryogenic suspension, searching the deep for a cure
Captain Nemo, steampunky, what if Elon Musk decided to live beneath the waves, Nemo as an idiot, looking for something.
I am not going within a million miles of that woman. I'm sure she's Mother Theresa. She didn't burn her bridges, she blew them up.
Notes on writing. We start from a position of pressure but not forgetting the lifestyle of the protagonist. Who is he? Is he some B-grade flunky, sweaty, racing through the crowds. "What's this, Mossie? What piece of God awful modernity have you brought to my door today? Not another bloody start-up"
"Not at all. Dolores wants to see you."
London meant surrendering to the tumult which was not attractive.
It was a place no one much cared about, under-thought, remaindered, underclassy.
Sydenham was scruffy, shapeless, a jumble of residential streets and shops. The houses were elderly. The expectation of the co-habitees to participate in shopping runs, house meals, socials. Suspicion towards reclusivity.
Diazepam sleeping drug
Crussian acid
Need to MAKE TIME for writing, don't focus on the word count. Just paint pictures.
Night Manager - there is a lot of local colour, visual description of the lifestyle, clothing prep, breakfast, travel to restaurant before the big inciting incident. How to personalise all this, deliver it novelistically but in character, like KA/AC/Flashman on the cruise etc
Thug full of boiling rage and anger, sat next to Musk at schol muskcopied his homework, cheated, took his girlfriend, killed his cat.
Politics is rhetorical wrestlemania
At the point of death the Institute ensures is that the patient experiences the most collosal full body organism.
A lover of the lavender passageway
The mixing of different scented bubblebaths summons a devil
Do soldiers from the future blast into existence and try to kill him? Is this Day of the Daleks?
What about an opening like Maltese Falcon, partner killed, Spade picks up the case
Maybe he's shot in the driveway? Or the guy in the car abusing the woman is accidentally shot
Take the characters visitors Michael Corleone in G2. Troublesome sister, a drunk, a gangster from Hyman Roth, a two-faced politician
Yes Prime Minister Bishop’s Gambit. Humphrey is giving a tempting offer of a new role but the current incumbent isn’t likely to leave or hand it to him so he must be ousted. Only trouble is he’s only likely to be tempted out by a plum role in a sector elsewhere which he will only be a dead cert for if he can be made to look good. So Humphrey has to get involved engineering that opportunity which could be anything sailing, head of intelligence.
There is the tempting offer
There is the complication
The plot therefore involves the engineering of the lure away of the mark, trying to get him off the chess board.
Thrown into a snake pit a la Flashman
Energise with a wild Rago scene when you get bored
Use plot of first john d macdonald
GRRM: Triggering events
I genuienly admire fhose novelist who can shut of he rational sode of their brain and go full on devils, demons, ... Vampires I still find silly, always have done.
Black Notley
Parenthood is the training up of a mobile AI/LLM only for it to rinse you and turn on you.
Your consciousness manifests for 70 years or so, renting reality space before being unceremoniously uninstalled.
What do you believe in? I used to believe in love but things went sideways.
Where is the sense of something fantastical, something cosmic allied with ordinariness? Mystery. Suspense. Jeopardy. Mounting problems.
There's a classroom topic element to this, what obscure but interesting subject matter can be spin a tale around?
Human muesli
My whole life has been but…therefore….
Do the wordcount backwards. So the first 1k is actually the last of the monthly 30k.
A group of renegade time travellers working for the BBC hiding in the 1970s
“Your godson is providentially around,’
“Margaret Drabble’s The Ice Age, an overt ‘condition of England’ novel, described the nation as ‘sliding, sinking, shabby, dirty, lazy, inefficient, dangerous, in its death throes, worn out, clapped out, occasionally lashing out’. Keith Miller, in an excellent account of Jake’s Thing, accompanies this quotation with comparable quotations from John Fowles’s Daniel Martin (1977) and William Golding’s Darkness Visible (1979).
“Jake, too, feels ‘menaced by a falling real income, a decline in status and the emergence into power and affluence of uncouth persons who sneer at what he feels and stands for’.
A male fantasy for men to have a male fantasy about
“herdwords and herd-phrases.
“ the miracle, the wealth of her body, her inexhaustibility.
“a tall thin nondescript man with rusty hair
Ideate myself in these fictional situations. Actor Ant being filmed taking part in the scenes.
Just write. 1k a day.
Diarise the world and let things happen. Narrate this to Atlantis and lean in a character for the narrator. What is their goal and what wider impact will their involvement precipitate. Also, just finesse one page of this and accrue. Don’t look to the summit.
Once a woman is out of her twenties and stops being randy as all hell its downhill all the way.
Once a woman is out of her twenties and stops being randy as all hell its downhill all the way.
All the women looked like Russian peasants.
What fresh hell would this be? We'd really like you to talk to him, if that's alright. He's cuckoo. I waited until the dead of night to scope the place out. 3am to be precise and I drove down to Brighton and bought a balaclava.
It is mornimng.
Jesus Christ. What the fuck happened to you? Wherein lies Adonis? The double-chin, the flaps of fat. I'm thinking any twenty-something looking for a little maturity for breakfast will need a shit-tonne of charisma to offset this. The dirty rain trailing workmen's fingers down the defeated pane.
And yet...and yet...there is work to be done here. Certain angles catch that raffish look in the eyes, still not quite hosed down.
Ownership of the chapters
It doesnt matter that you build he ai, that will quickly become unglamorous, its what you do with the result. Its the thing that gets you to the thing
It doesnt matter that you build he ai, that will quickly become unglamorous, its what you do with the result. Its the thing that gets you to the thing
OpenGod
So he created an LLM from the Bible
So God became an app and then
Plot this hard. 26 cps of 1.5k words so lots of stuff
Does he have a nasty little secret like holodeck ballroom dancing? Is he one of the trek autocrats but robbed of status.
Treat these as just ideas for an off-centre character, not necessarily the lead.
Maybe he goes for a walk up Ben Nevis or is in that eaan mcgregor le carre film on holiday, asked to courier something home, refuses, consequences.
You don't have much time. Set a deadline and stick to it. 2k words a day for 20 days gives you the wordcount
Think Marvel regarding your array of characters, think of the panels.
Fernat Branca is 90k words
You need to watch your speed on those roads. Not because they are perilous which they are but familiarity teaches you every but the drivers round here are similarly inclined towards familiarity-based recklessness which, not to put too fine a point on it, is a phenomenon that I have been guilt of in too many a relationship.
Not going to make that mistake again. Not now I have Alicja.
Three plot lines per chapter, the rest colour and fun
Set Godalming in Arabia
All very nice but I could barely concentrate considering the bind I was in. Alicja in the arms of that man, giggling as he drooled into her ear.
My own arrival was lower-key than I was expecting, probably these .pondlife.
Lots of bowing and scraping.
I launched the bottle off and it pranged and rebounded. Ha ha, very funny. Smashed the fellow in the head and he put a twisted step towards the lip of the scaffold, everyone gasping and lunging towards him. Someone behind leant into space to retrive the bottle and was launched off.
Scots girlf3iend bane
I'll hack his computer and get him extradited to Siberia. See how he likes forty years in a salt mine.
I imagined I was a noble political refugee, in exile from my own country, the one I really loved, the one in which everything was set up to facilitate my every whim. Home, in other words
Could be asked to run for mayor, don't worry you'll fail but anyone than this other guy. Split the vote.
Always, always, always start with a problem
Rago judging a beauty contest would be the perfect set-up for his character. Chinn needs a way of demonstrate how he sucks up to the powerful, like that Tory diarist, in charge of a test firing and getting it wrong. Put him on the inner track, making a mess than expelled.
If you're going to imprint the status quo do it through an event rather than inactivity
A more noir opening would be him turning up back home dotted with blood and the smashed up car outside.
Cut to an inciting indicent
3 - Think standalone. The errand
2 - what would require an ex-MP and what errand would be of use to a Sternwood figure
Otto and the occult bit, plus what will they head off too, plus what is the visitor with Anya all about?
Got to have competant story
Have lots of fooling around
What reason would someone have to drag Giles out in the middle of the night. Would he go out to visit his sweet church-going school-friend? Choir?
Do this before work, row and write.
Every third day massage days 1 and 2 up to chapter length 2.5k words
Pretend this is your dissertation and you're in a last minute rush to come top of the class.
I need to perform this A LOT
Godalming could be about my journey. Is Godalming Tolworth?
Is this chin or danny dyer?
Never did move to the constituency, good god no.
He was a late replacement for a dead and scandal eidden peter morrison, snoring in the office
Got to be major crisis point where he driven back on own resources
Sort of Shrinker character
Whats that bastards book?
Build the character as anone-off and deploy
Prover jimself and got into the plot ellroy - jack ruby character, nightclub owner, pimp procurer of girls for cameras everywhere, heaviky into EDM.
When he's emmisary rip off lucence renewed, and have fight with welsh version of caber
Log the sessions in the front room
The pot-wreathed demons of Sydenham
Kk/JP in a high stakes game of snap, worried his pastor will find out or jis wife will debag him
Casino roayle, warned off, posioned, fails at game
Kit cars as interest? Banging his fists as he is one-upped by a competitor, potential for driving hero moment
Backgammon, cars, chill out, note celwbrity interewts, gambon lathe
Now he's emmisary and man of imoirtance but not mp, so how could he get to a safe seat abd rwstore his girl
Alongside all of this should my be version of the bowling aesthetic
1 is oddball says follow me. 2 is meetjng gollum, fuck it I'll take it ot him but every move has a consequence
Since you proved yourself could you find my daughter.
Now then, what goodies could he add to my pile?
Some sort of grima wormtongue charactwr for cp2
He had done deals he had not honour.
Mitzy with blueprints, architecture.
He was what the writers I was forced to read at school would describe as "rotund" which in my book meant he wasn't going to be smashing the Iron Man challenge any time soon. He moved from door to table to chair the way cumulonimbi do, without any rush or sense he was running to keep up with the world and his air of all business set my antennae twinging. Here was a man not to be underestimated.
"Drink?"
Giles is under pressure, running low on tin, his mistress is strongly indicating she's a lot less interested in him and he has superhero fantasies, wet dream of every ex-politician not to have to slum it in reality TV but to be inducted into a secret cabal of monied lizard VIPs. It's also strongly hinted that he did a deal with the devil to get where he's gone. Chinn-esque, hugely demoted in status, consumed by his petty obsessions, minor royalty, his competitor. Obsequious to those in power.
How on earth does one plan, put together an extended piece of prose fiction. Find it on the page? That means multiple writing sessions.
"You don't speak any French do you?"
"Depends on the girl. Qu'est-ce qu'il ya, baby?"
"Uh? Translate this will you."
"No. I made no claims to intelligibility or comprehension. Am I adding value?"
"No."
"Still got the old magic."
"What are you doing here?"
He scowled and looked at me from under caterpillar eyebrows. "I got a mortgage, I needed the dough."
"But you hate this place."
"It's a vortex of venality and posturing mediocrities. Let it burn."
Lovely stout and maybe some herring from the fish-mongers for Pixel.
That mad woman, just out for enough tin for the next pint of stout.
That strange old woman stumbling about the shores of the Thames, exclaiming when she fell upon a sodden wallet or set of keys, brushing off the silt on her funeral rags and holding it up to the light. Treasures! And treasures needed to be protected from those who did not appreciate them or, worse, coveted them. All her wiles used to smuggle them into her derelict semi, all her performance skills used to convince others she was as barmy as ever and not worth scrutinising.
I have been trying to write at least a novella for years now. It really is time to put this to bed.
I think I know what's going to happen here - I'll come up with thousands of words of unrelated story fragments and then never complete the damn thing. I must push towards completion.
Events on Pohl's colony skew hard towards relationship dynamics and Viktor never seems to outgrow his commitment phobia or his jealousy. Marriage to Reesa is what you do rather than for any great love. Building the population is important but one feels other stories could be told here. The rise of religion is a bit of an ask for a colony of scientists and it makes for a fairly dispiriting read.
Writing is an act of high agency
Lean into the detail
That's the reason it's called Godalming, it's pathetic. Where are you this week? In some godforsaken sink estate playing the joanna for a bunch of sentimental types
Is Godalming about Matt? Skipping out on a cruise ship gig, picking up the pieces afterwards. Could channel that.
Make it more stephen king esque
Is Godalming NXIUM?
He escapes from Mitzy
Surf imagery, flick through images from all media and wire in
Progressing with short story
This is an element of industriousness to writing, I have to set a target and then actually do the goddamn work, it's not all play time. Shades of writing the Wiki for CBAM or training materials. I have to get on the horse.
What's the minimum one needs to write a short story? A character and a tune, a theme. Stuff happening - the plot - enables the real story of moving the character from one psychic place to another.
Embrace the lame
What is preoccupying this guy? What forces are out to get him or take advantage of him?
Godalming is the sort of title which should have a high concept idea behind it
Haven't really found the tune yet for Godalming
The novel is the real Great Endeavour
Writing is an act of high agency
I love writing
This is like writing some songs, spending your week off jamming in a garage
The stories came out of me fooling around, having fun. It's meant to be just a lot of nonsense really.
The endless iniquities served on me
Alacrity
He'll be doing the Newgate polka
We are trapped in our own yearning
All old men want to call back yesterday
An Unhealthy Marriage
People who have had a narcissist parent are really good at going into the room and taking care of someone else’s feelings or just reading them very closely.
Corum was only interested in his work and after the unfortjnate murser of his h
Assuatant he wantwd to see out his days in as quite a fashion as possible
Herr Kretzschmar
I spent it all on cards, Tequila and seniorettas
What he really wanted was to not have to work, to thumb his nose at society and stay in his cave forever. That would suit him fine. Pretty much anything else was an outrageous imposition.
Consciously look away from the word count/chapters. Think of the material.
Directed Play
This the song of my self
Completely devoted to his craft, it is his life
Night Flight giving up parts of yourself to get on a ship
Baksheesh
The world is better in fiction
test
Colourful escutcheons
A la mode
Garrulous
The writing of the notes is a project itself.
He's thwre to see womeone else. Shes wilky in temw od doom
Is he off duty cia, he goes back upstairs and everyone is dead
What have you got up your sleeve? How much more have you got in the tank?
It's the libby of a hotel. He's Cruise in Collateral, there to kill someone, she sees him, now he has to kill her
Wes Anderson, Angelica Huston
If this were Coen Bros the damily wod have made something boring
Is he Nic Cage, dri king, approached by someone and claiming ignorance
Presumably there had to be some wider issue in play, some election. Pay off the girl incase sge blabs. Been done. Clooney etc.
Fairly well off family to have paid for those skills.
What's he doing sti working if he has some big bad. Does the info mean potential innocence and freedom?
She's got to be important and someone has to ve pissed that she has gone awol. He doesn't give a hoot about her, he's done a lot of these, but something happens, something personal that puts her at the top of his list of persons of interest.