Al goes nuts about POV

My post of the other day has got me thinking.

I talked about writing in a non-linear fashion. That is something that most people who commented did not generally do. It seems that people will generally swap POV as they go rather than jump around like I am at the moment.

That got me thinking about POV and how many I have in my current WIP. It’s quite a few. In fact my WIP Veiled in Storms has no less than five narrators.

But then I sat down and counted how many voices contribute to my first novel Veiled in Shadows. It is, wait for it… eleven.

That’s right no less than eleven characters contributing in some way to the narrative flow.

Now to be sure there are (only) six main narrators. Then there are…

Wait a minute it’s actually twelve voices. I went to count less important narrators and realised I’d missed one!

Six major narrators, all of whom narrate as if speaking. But then it gets a little more complex, two of the minor narrators also speak, but the third ‘talks’ through the medium of a record of interrogation. He is one of a few real historical persons in my book and his ‘voice’ is based in part on his actual interrogation as a prisoner in 1945.

One of the three extra voices speaks as a narrator, another takes the form a of a one page letter and the third is presented as a two page police report.

By now you must think I have a serious case of multiple personality disorder.
So what do you think, does it sound too complicated?

From my perspective it was a challenge to write, but an enjoyable challenge. Interestingly none of the people who have read or reviewed the book have said (at least to me) that it felt fractured or disjointed.

Two piccies from my archive. And given I am talking about writing I am going to feature libraries today. The first is a small rural library in the gold-rush era town of Clunes.The second is a suburban Melbourne library. The Fitzroy Library is in the suburb of Fitzroy. It is a grand structure built with gold-rush money in the nineteenth century.

Secondary Characters?

I think I am in a crazy mood tonight so you will just have to forgive me.

I have been puzzling about characters. Where do they come from?

How do we as authors (or daydreamers, or whatever) create them?

As I write my characters grow. In some ways that should be obvious, a novel would be fairly tedious if characters did not change with the progression of the plot.

But for me it almost feels like my characters shape the plots as I write.

I talked a while ago about Valentina, one of my characters in my WIP, forcing her way from a secondary character into prominence.

I have to say this is not the first time I have had this experience. In my first novel Veiled in Shadows two of my minor characters met and fell in love. It was a necessary plot device because those two characters being together meant two of my main characters could meet, but then sparks flew.

So how is it that the secondary characters shifted into prominence? Well in my first draft both characters Penny and Danny were present. Both had roles that were important to the plot but they never even met.

Yet by the time my final draft had been completed they had not only met. In fact it went much further, they had fallen in love and been married.

On the surface it made sense, the plot needed my main characters to be drawn together through a chance meeting. Logically it made more sense to me to have some of the characters already in the story bring them together, rather than creating new characters to use in one or two scenes.

So Danny Parnell and Penny Chesterfield were introduced. On the surface they did not seem at all matched. She was beautiful, elegant, educated and sophisticated. He awkward, not particularly good at anything and shy. Yet they fell madly in love with each other. (I will forgive myself that contrast. I have known many, many loving couples who seemed to have nothing in common).

As an author I have to take the blame. These characters sprang from my mind (at least I think they did). Yet it really seems like they were in charge. I’ll add a couple of points to show why -

I mean Penny and Danny? Would any self respecting author have a couple with such names. Daniel fine, Penelope fine but together?

And Penny Chesterfield becoming Penny Parnell, it is so alliterative as to be almost painful. Yet neither character would let me change their name once they were on the page.

I swear it was their choice not mine!

Have you ever created characters that took charge of your WIP?

Sunset and trees damaged in the 2009 Bushfires taken this evening with my new camera

A Formal Outing

A quick post again this afternoon.
I have just come home from work and I have to go out this evening. My other half has a formal opening of a new building at her workplace. As one of the executive team she has to be present at such events and it is expected she brings a partner.

That would be me.

It is a suit and tie affair which is ok, except I might wear a tie, let alone a suit a couple of times a year. My workplace has a neat casual dress-code, which usually means jeans and t-shirt level for most people. Even head office doesn’t usually go past a tie. Ah well, the things we do for those we love. I should look on it as practice for looking civilised.
Seriously though, I expect it will be a fun evening I have met many of Deb’s colleagues and they seem like a nice bunch.

It was my birthday on Friday and as partial consolation for edging closer to 50 I got a couple of gift vouchers for Borders and JB Hi-Fi.
With the Borders one I got a couple of books; no fiction, I was in a history mood apparently.
The first:

I have had my eye on Beevor’s D-Day since it came out. I loved his Stalingrad and Berlin. But D-Day has had mixed reviews so I have held off, at least until it wasn’t me paying for it. Maybe I’ll review it once I have a chance to get through it.

The second:
Troop leader by Bill Bellamy is of course looking at the same period. I haven’t read any reviews of it, but it grabbed my eye. Also as I said in a post a little while ago, I am researching bits and pieces for my second novel. This account isn’t directly related to that, but I find personal accounts like this can help me get into the mind space I need to write my characters.

I bought an odd mix of DVDs.



A graphic novel brought to the screen, a study of a famous interview and a twist on a classic romance.
Coupled with the books I bought, I guess it seems I must either be well rounded or suffer hopelessly eccentric tastes.

Until Next time (at least if I don't manage to accidentally hang myself with my tie.)

Tanks and other distractions

Today I have been climbing in and out of and all over a World War II vintage tank.
To be specific I have been getting to know a tank like this.

A Russian T-34 produced in various models from 1940 to 1958.
And from inside
I should probably do the right thing and note the photos of the tanks I am using today are not mine. They are from the Wikimedia Commons and are either in the public domain or available for reuse. To check attribution just click on each image.

There now, copyright is sorted out I can go on. So what is an Aussie lad doing mucking around with Soviet military hardware?
Well for a start I should confess, I have not actually been anywhere near a T-34 today. It has all been via my imagination liberally assisted by a number of videos, images, and just as important memoirs and other recollections of real users. It is all about authenticity.

As I have already said on this blog, I am trying to get my first book Veiled in Shadows published. In the meantime I am continuing to work on a sequel (tentatively titled Veiled in Storms). No, Sequel is too strong a word.

Some of the characters of the first book feature in the second, but Storms does not really follow on from Shadows. The two overlap in time with Storms finishing about eight years later. While the first looks at the human impact of the Holocaust and the war in the West, the second looks at the war in the East, but also looks at the nightmare that was Stalinist Russia. I am writing them so it will not matter which book people read first. Each book stands alone but readers will meet characters they already know as they go through whichever they choose to read second.

How did I get onto this? T-34 tanks! One of my characters in Storms will spend some time in the Red Army, so from my point of view I need to know everything I can about that institution and its equipment. Call me picky, but I hate it when I read stuff in fiction that is just plain wrong due to poor research.

When I develop characters, especially an important one, I spend hours, days, sometimes even weeks fleshing them out, and often writing quite involved stories and histories for them. Most of that detail never appears in the final version, or if it does it might be a single sentence in a chapter. For me it helps make a character more authentic, somehow more tangible. If I understand someone’s history before they ever show up in my book I feel I can write them better. That I can “know” what they would do in any given situation.

You'll have to forgive me I've finished with this tank, but I see a stack of rifles over there. See you later.