Creating well rounded antagonists

Photo Credit: Sue Eves

This post came about in a roundabout way and it was all Meg Rosoff's fault. She asked a question relating to the Harvey Weinstein business and then brought up an interview with the CIA operative that I also remember and it started those cogs whirring.

It made me think about writing, in particular, about antagonists. There is nothing worse than a weak, unbelievable and flat antagonist. It just ruins a story. They need to be fully rounded and as characters. You, as the writer, need to understand them and their motivation, just as much as your main character. The interview that Meg referred to was the interview with former CIA Officer, Amaryllis Fox, where she highlights that all the 'bad guys' do in fact think from their perspective they are the good guys. They don't think they are doing anything wrong.This is something you need to think about when you are writing your antagonists. You need to walk a few miles in your antagonist's shoes to see how they view the world so you are aware why they make the decisions they are.

Another great example of this, which Philip Ardargh also highlighted in the same Meg Rosoff thread, is this comedy sketch by Mitchell and Webb. It is done for a laugh but it makes quite a serious point.



I am not suggesting that you make your antagonists likeable but it is about making them believable. It is allowing the reader to understand why they do what they do. The chances are we will have all come across characters like them. We will have met that bully at some point in our lives. We will have met a Malfoy at school. I was certainly bullied at school and knew people just like him plus several of the people I came across in my life rung true with the characters in Sophia Bennett's books. That is what is so great about books, so often you can relate the stories to your life. They can help you to understand what is going on with your life and also realise that you are not on your own. There are others out there going through the same thing.

This is why it is so important to get those antagonists right. When you are creating your antagonist's bio you need to think beyond what they look like. You need to think what drives them? What do they believe? What has happened to make them feel like this? What are their political views? Are they being controlled? If so, why and how? Are they being bullied themselves? What is happening at home? Could that explain their behaviour? Are they hurting? Look beyond the two dimensional. Write a letter from your antagonist to you as the writer introducing him/her/them/itself so you can get right under their skin. A lot of this may never get into the story but it will add depth to your writing because you won't need to think about them when writing. You will know exactly how they will react in any given situation. Make sure you understand your antagonist and their purpose in your story. Most importantly though enjoy creating them.

I have picked this song today because I am really angry about a certain American President's behaviour and comments relating to LGBT communities. How dare he incite hatred. Thank you, Greenday for saying what I think of him.

I don't have time to write...apparently yes you do!

Meg Rosoff's Eck 

It has been an interesting week. On Tuesday the truly wonderful, Meg Rosoff came down to the University to talk to our MA students. As always she gave a fascinating talk, open to all and to a packed room, which she finished by reading from There is No Dog. This was followed by a workshop just for the MA students that had us all digging into the depths of our feelings looking for our voice. It certainly gave me a lot to think about. It was a very useful session.

This week I have also been bemoaning my lack of time to write my new book. Blaming my work, blaming the fact I know I have some rewrites to do to Trafficking and therefore can't focus on new stuff. Blaming everything I could think of rather than facing the truth. Of course you can find time to write if you want/need to but I wasn't. Then I was sitting vacantly staring at my iPad yesterday in the Learning Cafe after a student had failed to turn up to a dissertation meeting (*sigh*). Next to me was another colleague also sitting and working more productively on his iPad. However, little did he know that I was in the middle of an epiphany (as opposed to wasting time on Facebook as I was accused). It suddenly came to me why I was struggling to write this book. It wasn't working. It wasn't right. I am a member of a great critique group who had given some very useful and positive feedback on the chapters I had written so far. But the writing had stalled and I still couldn't move forward with it. I kept walking around it, dancing with it every now and then rather than engaging with the narrative. Why? Well that was my epiphany - I needed to kill off another character. I had started off with four siblings, cut this down to three and now I knew I needed to cut it down to two. Bye, bye Rose, exit left stage from Persephone's Pegasus please.

I then had another epiphany - it was a busy day for them - that even when you don't think you are having time to write you are in fact sub-consciously thinking about your work in progress. It is there in the back of your mind being mulled over quietly. My panic that I wasn't writing, I felt, was unfounded. I was in fact writing but not necessarily on the page. I am hoping I can move forward now and take this story where I want to because I do believe it is quite a good one.

My epiphanies may well have been instigated by an  interview with Nick Cave, which was posted earlier this week by JW (thank you). At the end of the interview he talks about the brief light bulb moment when you get an idea. I thought, rather insightfully, he talked about the fact it is not just having the ideas, it is what you do with them. He pointed out that, inevitably, it takes a lot of hard work to make the light bulb moment into something really good. See being creative is not easy!

This is one of my favourite songs from a new album I have just got by Heidi Talbot. Happy Weekend everyone!

Books that silently follow you....

The love of books

A colleague's Facebook status made me stop and think. They had been to see a play and they were saying how good it was it had been silently following her several days afterwards. How many times can you think of books that have done that to you? You finish reading them but yet several days later they still come back to haunt you - in a good way. They make you ask questions of yourself and your surroundings perhaps. Or have just wrapped their metaphoric arms around you making you feel warm and wonderful.

Lots of books used to do that to me when I was a child. I was an avid reader. I used to love escaping into their worlds and then creating my own. Books like Noel Streatfield's Ballet Shoes was one, Nina Bawden's Carrie's War, K.M.Peyton's Fly-by-night, Philippa Pearce's Tom's Midnight Garden and, of course, Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden, all had that sort of impact. And even now if I go back to them I can get that same feeling of being at home and being thrilled by the story as they silently follow me still decades later.

As you get older it seems that not quite so many books have that impact and silently follow you. I have read many, many books over the last few years as part of my academic career. Some books have left me cold (and probably unfinished) and others I have enjoyed but they haven't stayed with me. Some books have stuck out though, books like: Louis Sachar's Holes, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, Once by Morris Gleitzman, The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson, Malorie Blackman's Noughts and Crosses, Meg Rosoff's How I live now, Tabitha Suzuma's A note of madness.and Sophia Bennett's The Look. This is not an exclusive list but they were the ones that first came to mind. I have just started reading David Massey's Torn and I get the feeling that is going to be another book that silently follows me.  

To a certain extent that is the disadvantage of leading an academic career. I can read so many books that even though they may be fantastic and do live with me silently for a few days they don't stick in the mind. I think it is T.S Eliot who said every time something new is written all the authors and writing beforehand have to shift along a bit to make room, it sounds like a huge bookshelf to me and it is something I find when I am having to read so much. Some things must inevitably fall off that metaphorical book shelf. I just need to remember to go and pick them up again and put them back on the shelf, ready to be read at a later date.

What are the books that follow you silently?

Seems appropriate to listen to Simon & Garfunkel's 'Sound of Silence' for all those books that follow you silently and, with regard to my previous post, allowing your brain to be silent so you can listen to the answers. I was lucky enough to see them perform back in the early 80s.

Writerly moments

BOOM!

This sign has suddenly appeared in the fields just outside our village and following a large explosion last week. (Thank you Debbie Found for allowing me to use her picture) We have all been walking through these fields for years and we had no idea. What a surprise that could have been!

Anyway in this blog I have previously spoken about Meg Rosoff and her idea of 'throughness' when writing - that moment when you feel totally connected. (If you are interested she wrote a brilliant article about it in Write4Children)  It is the most wonderful feeling when it happens, though I am sure we all know as writers, it doesn't happen that often unfortunately. Further to this I was talking with a good friend this week about how our respective writing projects were going. He told me about a moment when a character just suddenly appeared complete with name. It took him totally by surprise. He had no idea where they had come from. And it certainly is a very different character but I am not going to tell you about them, that is his story to tell.

What I am interested in is this idea of our writing taking us by surprise. We think we plan it, sometimes to the nth degree and that we know exactly where any story is going. But then suddenly it takes this about turn. It can be a new, unexpected character appearing, or even, and this has happened to me, a character turning round and saying 'But that's not what I would do!' Or they go to a place you had never thought about. Or do something you had never considered. Often all of them making the story better and stronger.  I find these moments can happen when you are so engrossed in your writing and I do wonder if it is our unconscious selves stepping in with ideas we didn't know we had because we hadn't taken the time to think about them.

There are other times when these surprise turns can happen. They are moments when you are doing something totally unrelated to writing. I have been stuck before now, not sure quite how to solve a plot problem or a character issue and I can almost guarantee that the answer will appear in the shower, when I am driving, doing the ironing or anything that means my brain is not really thinking and I have nothing to write with! There is a wonderful story, that I may have told before, of Tom Waits, the American singer-songwriter, who was driving along and ideas for songs kept coming. He apparently shouted to the sky, 'can't you see I am driving!' I think we have to have these moments in order to allow space in our over-active brains to let those ideas in. Unfortunately it is not that easy to contrive these situations, they just have to happen.

I was watching a glorious TED talk (I do love them) by Amy Tan on 'where does creativity hide?' She was talking about how she found when she was writing she would see hints everywhere. And this is something I also find. When I have an idea for a story I will often suddenly start seeing things that are related to it and that I have never noticed before. I always thought it was chance and it was a secret message to me that I was right to write the story. She, more logically and, I think probably rightly so, believes that it is because we are more focused. I do love the romance of chance though....

I am struggling to find the time to write at the moment let alone have wonderful surprise moments but maybe this week will be the week again. There are so many ideas buzzing around that need to be dealt with. I hope you have some wonderful writerly moments.

I heard this and fell in love with it. And it does what it says on the tin, it makes you feel like you are 'Wrapped in your arms' by Fireflight.

Elation and fear!

Why elation and fear I hear you ask? Well I am elated because I have finished the first draft of the rewrites and a week ahead of the deadline I had set myself. On the other hand, I am full of fear that it won't be what the editor wanted. I have to say it is not ready for her to see but I have something tangible to work with at least. A story with a beginning, a middle and an end, which seems to flow too. Miracle!

Of course, these are not emotions that only I have as a writer, I know we all go through them. Meg Rosoff wrote a great post the other day about finishing the book,which is well worth a look. I was delighted to read that some of her first drafts are 'thin'. I know that is a problem of mine but as I write cold and edit hot I should be able to sort that. My plan now is to print it off, have a quick look through it and create a book map (yes I know that is probably the wrong way round but it is the way I work), it will help me see where there are holes. (Thank you to IC for the map btw). I will then put it away for a a couple of weeks, maybe if I can be strong the whole of July, and then I will go back to it with eyes afresh. It will be that editing time where you have to distance yourself from the piece and read it as a reader and not as a writer this time. Should be fun.

This book is a rewrite of my PhD novel, last year's great achievement, but apart from some characters it bears very little relation to that story. Even the name has changed from Ham & Jam  to Trafficking. But I have to admit I think it is better for it. Don't get me wrong it was tough killing my babies like that. The PhD novel had been a huge part of my life for a very long time and it was hard to give up sometimes, however, you have to do these things all in the name of art.

I feel I am standing on the edge of the high wire (see Keren David's post where this idea came from and Candy Gourlay's brilliant response). It is a moment where there is a lot of potential ahead and it is down to me to make sure I make the most of it. That's another part of the fear - what if I waste it? But I mustn't think like that. It is all about looking forward. Having read Candy's post it made me thing of some high wire moments in my past where I haven't grabbed the moment and I deeply regret it. However, it is not all negatives, I have also grabbed several other moments and they have made a huge difference. One of which was making the decision back in 2002 to go to university after I had lost my business through illness. Who knew that that idea was going to take me to this point? It had been my way of not vegetating in the corner waiting to die as the medicos seemed to think I should, instead I found a whole new career and love of life. And I am sure it is going to continue like that.

I have pinched this from a friend's recent post because it is one of my all time favourite songs and I know I have used it before but hey who cares.

The Civil Wars and 'Dance me to the end of love'

Write4Children e-journal

e-journal latest edition

Today the latest edition of Write4Children went live. You see I am not just a lecturer and a writer, I also edit, with Andrew Melrose, an ejournal. Write4Children is an open access journal that is online. What that means is anyone can have a look at it. You don't have to pay a huge subscription in order to read the fascinating articles inside it.

We set it up back in 2008 because whilst doing my own research I spotted a gap in the market. There are some excellent journals that deal with children's literature and some equally good journals on creative writing. But there were none that really, and deliberately, combined the two. Children's literature is a broad and fascinating subject and as a writer of children's books I am a great believer that I need to have an understanding of it. This understanding can inform my writing. But also I consider it just as important, if you happen to study children's literature, for you to have an awareness of the issues involved when writing for children. And there are many things we have to consider when we put pen to paper. On this basis it seemed the logical conclusion to pull the two together into a single journal.

The journal has been supported by the University of Winchester Press and being online gives us a lot of flexibility. We can including pictures (with appropriate permissions),photographs and even YouTube clips, if you so desired. All our articles are peer reviewed, this is important for an academic journal. But I do believe that many of you will find something of interest in the articles therein. They are not all purely academic. We have had articles written by Meg Rosoff, Lucy Christopher, Lucy Cuthew (an editor) and most recently Madeleine Milburn, who is an agent. They have all spoken about various things from their creative processes to what it is like to be an editor. This time there are articles by BJ Epstein, Tony Eaton, Jessica Seymour and Felicity Pulman, as well as Madeleine's

It can be at times a huge amount of work but I have a great deal of support from our editorial assistant, Jen Morgan, who is fantastic at going through everything and chasing people up and generally being there. The satisfaction when it finally goes up is enormous. And we are going from strength to strength which includes having an international following now....But rather than me telling you all about it go and have a look at Write4Children

And here is a clip of Where The Wild Things Are being read as a tribute to the outstanding children's author, Maurice Sendak, who sadly died this week. Thank you for all the inspiration.

Rewriting in the New Year

It is the beginning of January of a bright, spanking new year. Many people have been turning to lists of resolutions, or not, in my case. If I do have a resolution it is to write every day. Since September I have been trying to do some rewrites that I have been asked to do by a publisher but life and work keep getting in the way. I thought I would have them done by now but I still have quite a way to go. In a way doing the rewrites is harder than facing a blank page. The pressure to get it right is enormous.

I have recently come across two excellent blog posts for writers. One is a brilliant list of 25 things a writer should stop doing - I could empathise with almost all of them! And the other is a post on meditation increasing creativity - something I might try.  I need all the help I can get! Making decisions about which words are the right ones can be so difficult at times. We all know the quote from Oscar Wilde who claimed he spent all morning adding a comma and all afternoon deleting it.

I know so many people who are currently rewriting work and we are all struggling the same things - getting the words in the right order - but we all know that writing is all about rewriting and there is no short cut.

Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still.
– T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets


Good luck to all rewriters out there!


And here is something to listen to whilst doing that rewriting. Mumford and Sons have had a brilliant idea of having gigs in book shops. This is called Winter Winds and for those who live in the UK it couldn't be a more applicable title.

When I handed my MA dissertation I felt bereft but nothing prepared me for the way I would feel once the PhD process was over with. I am totally lost. Something that filled every waking minute for the last four years has gone and I have to say it is a very strange and horrible feeling. What do I do now? Part of the problem is I don't think I ever thought beyond the PhD. I am told that there is plenty to do, just got to work out what it is. Doing a PhD gives you a structure and a title -you are a research student - then when it is has finished both have gone.

In a couple of weeks the whole process comes to a very final end when I graduate, which will be an amazing experience. We get to wear the most wonderful gowns and we graduate in Winchester Cathedral which is truly spectacular. I will be surrounded by family and friends so it will be a fantastic day. But I have set myself a challenge I have got to get over this dreadful feeling of loss by then. There is so much to do out there, so I am told, even if things like not being able to travel are thrown in my way. I have rewrites to do to the PhD novel for a publisher who have expressed an interest. I have papers to write. But it is all very scary. I think I need a whole bucket full of courage. Fancy holding my hand ;-)

I should also say I haven't been totally wasting my time. I have been reading several books which I am going to post reviews on very soon. It is a novelty to read a book without having to think how it fits in with the PhD, so there are benefits. Keep an eye out for my reviews on Meg Rosoff's There is no dog, c.j.Skuse's Pretty Bad Things and Jandy Nelson's The Sky is Everywhere, for a start.

Don't get me wrong despite all the stress at times and the feeling of loss now I wouldn't change a thing. My PhD years were truly good years.

Something old, something new, something borrowed....

I have had a week of forced recuperation following surgery. I had promised my children, and many friends, that this time I would let the body heal rather than my normal “I’m fine!” approach where I never actually stop to take a breath regardless of what has been done to me. It also felt like a full stop ending a period in my life. It was a brief moment to take breath before starting the next phase and whatever that might bring. I had planned to write but the brain wasn’t willing. I think the final ultra-stressful last few weeks of intense writing and re-writing in the lead up to submitting my PhD left me with, and as Meg Rosoff has recently highlighted, a writing hangover. So instead of sitting looking at a blinking cursor on an empty screen I decided to read. For the first time for nearly nine years of study and enforced reading (BA, MA and submitting a PhD) I could read anything I wanted to.

So firstly, ‘something old,’ I read Elizabeth Goudge’s The Little White Horse first published in 1946 and also the Carnegie Medal winner for that year. It was one of those books which give no clue to the delight to come when you start with a dark journey across what appears to be a gloomy moor. It is a quest story where the delightful Maria Merryweather with the help of numerous animals helps to make amends for the past misdemeanours of her long dead relatives that lead her into all sorts of dangerous escapades and adventures. As a reader you are taken through the rock tunnel to a sumptuous story that is full of colour. It draws you in then wraps its pages around you like a hug. It is a ‘Pollyanna’ of a book. But don’t get me wrong it is not a sentimental book even though every plot and subplot is neatly tied up by the end of story like every perfect ‘shoelace’ aka plotline should be. It is gentle yet thrilling; romantic yet scary. The characters are a delight and fully rounded. In particular, I fell in love with Marmaduke Scarlet and his ability to cook and his insistence on using the longest words possible in every conversation. On that note I should point out it is a ‘wordy’ book but that is one of the reasons I loved it. It is also one of those books I wished I could have written.

Continuing on the note of past misdemeanours the second book, ‘something new’, is one which deals with some very difficult issues. It is Out of Shadows by Jason Wallace, also a prize winner, but this time it won the Costa Children’s Book Award for 2010. It is a good but truly uncomfortable read as it takes us back to Zimbabwe in the 1980s. It is a school story but a school story like no other I have ever read. It is certainly not Malory Towers. The main character, Robert Jacklin, is from England but has to go to Zimbabwe following his Dad’s new job and is sent to a boarding school there. The war for independence is over and Robert Mugabe has come to power. And I think as an adult maybe it is that fact that meant I found it an uncomfortable read knowing what has since happened to Zimbabwe. You know there must have been people like the characters in this book but it doesn’t make it easier to read, it is not one, unlike the previous book, to wrap itself round you. It is a tense book where you often find yourself holding your breath reading rapidly to see what is going to happen next. There is a rawness to the narrative which I believe relates to the subject matter and the author, Jason Wallace’s ability to use language so economically yet so powerfully. It is just as good a read as The Little White Horse but in a different way. It leaves you with many questions and a definite feeling of ‘what if?’

And finally, ‘something borrowed’ or rather something recommend, which I think is like borrowed as it is like this great friend gave it to me to read when she suggested it. The book is a collection of stories by Alice Munro entitled Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage which was first published in 2001 and is a book for adults – things I have not read a lot of in the last four years! Alice Munro won the 2009 Man Booker International Prize for her lifetime of work. She is an outstanding short story writer and like Wallace her economic use of language just holds you tight and leads you through her short stories, each one of which is like a compact novel. It is something you can dip in and out of when you have a spare moment. It was a delight to read. One of my favourites in the collection, possibly in a slightly macabre way, is ‘Comfort’ where we hear how Nina deals with the suicide of her partner ‘Lewis’. It is a story on so many layers that leaves you feeling quite sated yet frustrated by the end. Her ability with words and her tightness of narrative was inspiring and something I will experiment with in my own writing.

Though I have spent the week reading there has been a lot of pre-writing going on, mulling over things, considering changes I want to make to The Book Protectors’ Daughter. I will not be touching Ham & Jam for a while. It is too painful for me at the moment (fear of finding a mistake) plus it is currently with a publisher at the moment who expressed an interest and wanted to see it when it was PhD ready. ‘Expressed an interest’ was a lovely and secure feeling to be able to say but now it is at risk because at any moment there could be that email that says ‘no thanks’ and you are left trying to work out what to do with it next. I am trying not to think about that bit and it is so difficult to type with your fingers crossed all the time.

I have another week of recuperation before back to work and lecturing so will take the chance to read some more and maybe the hangover will be over and I can start writing again.

But finally to complete the saying....'something blue' Here are The Beatles singing 'For You Blue': http://youtu.be/vcQ0YaAlnww (Youtube is not allowing you to embed things today so am afraid it is a case of using the link and clicking on it - hopefully)

Throughness and Ambivalence

This is a beautiful picture by George Kennedy of a horse doing dressage. Why? Well apart from the fact I have loved riding since I was very young I read the most wonderful and enlightening piece by Meg Rosoff in her blog on how she discusses a term used in dressage - 'throughness' and applies it to the connection between writer and reader - see her blog on http://www.megrosoff.co.uk/. 'Throughness' is a dressage term that describes that perfect communication between rider and horse. She perceives that it is a communication that is also achieve able between reader and writer. Where something she has written she knows is so good that the reader will understand exactly what she means. Meg suggests that she knows which pieces in a book will be used in a review and the considers that they often come from one of these 'throughness' moments where her writing has almost come straight from the subconscious.

I think this is the most wonderful concept and defines something I have been thinking about for several weeks not just as a writer but as a reader as well. We all know the best books to read are the ones we fell like we have walked into. As a reader you are so totally immersed in the story you become part of the plot with everything going on around you fading into oblivion. As a writer it is that moment when the words just fall out of the end of your fingers and you almost have no control on what is being said, it is the writer deep inside that doesn't have to think too much that has made a rare trip to the forefront of your brain because it is has something really important irresistible to say. This state either for reader or writer cannot be forced not can be it be predicted.But it is a moment of pure 'throughness' where the writer and reader are connected by a pulsating umbilical cord of understanding, they could be perceived as one at that particular moment.

I have one of those glorious weeks where I have had the opportunity to discuss my own work quite a bit. It is very self indulgent but also very useful when doing a creative writing PhD. It gives ideas that have been fermenting away a forum allowing those concepts, now fully formed, to make an entrance into the real world. They become clear and focused when verbalised.

This leads me onto another word I have been exploring this week and that is 'ambivalence'. Both Angela Carter and Freud suggest that ambivalence allows something to move from being 'othered' to being 'normal' implying that the more something is written about the more ambivalent people become to it. It seems a bit of an oxymoron in that ambivalence means to me that someone doesn't care but by writing about it a lot surely implies that you do care. However, as a concept it works and works well. It makes it to explain that sort of movement - for example in Melvin Burgess's Junk in 1996 uses cannabis and heroin to illustrate drug use. Now cannabis has become invisible and part of the plot, just every day life, whilst cocaine is used where cannabis was previously. It is often the drug of choice by writers to highlight drug use now.

Throughness and ambivalence two words I need to do more thinking about...I will let you know.