Introducing Joss Korvus

If you are brave enough and have time enough to trawl through the back catalog of blogs on this site, sometime around Novemberish of 2011, you will find a discussion on the pros and cons of this author using a pen name. This author's real name being John Potter. All that time ago in 2011, I decided I needed all the advantage I could get. If the name Potter on my book caught peoples attention, then why not.

The trouble is, as I gear up to publish two books this year (2014), I need a recognisable and easy to find brand name. If you type John Potter to any search engine you will scroll through pages and pages of architects, musicians and singers, professors, war veterans, American footballers and a few inventors, long before you find yours truly. While a popular book will always be easy to find by title - type in Chasing Innocence and you will see what I mean - finding other books by the same author requires finding the author. Which means John Potter isn't cutting it.

So it's time for Potter to be branded. In a world full of mingling cultures and names, you might imagine finding a unique name is difficult. It is, and I won't bore you with the protracted details and research it took finding one.

Eventually I found the best way to create a good pen name is not to use an actual name. For instance another author with the last name of Potter came up with Ali Knight, which is a firstname and a noun seldom used in names.

My grandmother, on my father's side, had the maiden name of Crow, which I have always liked and is one of the reasons this site and my publishing company are called Creative Crow. I couldn't use Crow itself as a pen name because it is a very popular comic and movie brand. Fortunately I was rescued by a fellow writing buddy, who suggested I use the name Corvus, the name given to the wider crow genus. I loved that idea and found very little correlation to any popular myth, media or naming convention outside of the Crow world. I chose the firstname of Joss to compliment Corvus because Joss is also very rare and not coincidentally the firstname of my favourite writer - Joss Whedon. Paired with Joss, Corvus didn't quite work on the printed page, so it was amended to Korvus and in the process became more masculine and thriller authory, I believe.

So now we come to style. The real John Potter is a nice guy, a little quiet in new company, a little too passionate about knowledge, funny given a following wind or two pints of guinness and completely devoid of style. The real John Potter always dresses like he got up late, buys for comfort and doesn't have Gaiman's looks, charisma or intellect to make that look cool. So Joss Korvus would need to be a little different. Joss is afterall a brand. He is going to be stylish. Thank goodness he only exists as a name on book covers and as a profile picture here and there on the web.

Imagine neatly trimmed hair, a shorter beard,
different facial features and squint.
Joss Korvus will be wearing a white shirt.

Joss Korvus is a man who wears his hair short (much like mine except neatly trimmed), is rarely found wearing anything other than cowboy boots, fitted jeans, white shirts and dark jackets. He has a simple suaveness about him. An easy style and a charming smile.

Photos of Joss Korvus will follow, just as soon as I've got my hair cut, bought a suit and worked a little on the smile.

Yeah, and don't talk to me about the pitfalls of living an alter ego's life. I've read the Dark Half you know. I'm in control.

To be continued...

NaNoWriMo - The Handyman Day 30

Potter survived with a little
mad look in 'is eyes

It is done. November is over. In the last 30 days my hair has grown unreasonably long, as did the hair on my face - at unreasonably strange angles too. Some of the summer lustre has disappeared from my skin - now paler. And I do believe there might be a bag or two more under my eyes. Maybe that's just from the count of my years and not just 30 days in November.

NaNoWriMo has at times felt a little like trying to run on ice. It has been impossibly, dangerously fast (god it feels good writing adverbs and adjectives) and at others, like I was getting nowhere.

Above all I entered the month hoping to learn a little more about the kind of writing process that works for me. As ever these things often end up revealing the obvious. I discovered writing isn't about hitting a daily count or monthly targets. It is about giving yourself time to write every day, even if that time is then spent researching the obscure and arcane. It is about finding some way of progressing the story each day even if it's in building the detail of the world and not the word for word. I learned writing is about being imaginatively fearless, believing in what it takes for you as an individual to write the best story and not worrying about others or hitting those targets. I learned I can write upwards of 2k in a day with a full section of the story plotted in my head. That it sometimes takes me two or three days of no words and lots of pondering to get to that point. It is more efficient for me to take these days of no words rather than writing 6k of words because I need something on the page to hit a target, only to later find the story doesn't need those words. Or worse being blind enough to justify keeping them simply because I wrote them.

It feels like I have tried everything this last year in learning the best method for my writing, with the irony being that I've come full circle to the process I started with while writing Chasing Innocence. I do know that the initial translation of mental imagery to the page is the part I struggle the hardest with.

For the baying millions waiting to hear my final count for NaNoWriMo of November 2013 of the common era - it is 23,433 - the most words I've ever been aware of writing in a single calendar month.

I will be continuing with The Handyman now to completion and will be posting progress through this blog, if only revealing the word count infrequently.

< NaNoWriMo - The Handyman Day 27 - The Handyman Day ?? >

NaNoWriMo - The Handyman Day 27

Fifteen beats of the sheet

Before I started writing the actual story of The Handyman, I spent about a month mapping out the fifteen or so key markers I'd need to hit during the story. This process also maps the core plot complexities. Not what happens but why it happens, the character motivations and backstories. The beat sheet for The Handyman totalled some 25k of words before a single word of fiction narrative was written.

In creating the beat sheet for the Handyman I didn't want a standard revenge structure where Daniel went straight out to kill Angela's murderers. Earlier this year I read Helen Zahavi's brilliant 'Dirty Weekend' and loved how she transitioned her heroine from timid victim to effective vigilante. Daniel has never been timid but his fear of losing the memory of his wife keeps revenge in check. When he sees video footage of Angela's murder, he hears one of the killers laugh. The seed for his journey is sown.

The story then to the mid-point is all about him tracking down the murderers. In my beat sheet they are described as The Driver, The Mercenary and The Psychopath. It is Daniel's interactions with the Driver that will lead him to the Mercenary and indirectly to the Psychopath. I intended for the Driver to be part of the murder squad because he has been radicalised. He isn't the guy who laughs or pulls the trigger. Just the driver. For all his hard believing the deaths have an effect.

That's pretty much what I laid out in October. Two days ago I reached the point in writing the Handyman, where Daniel tracks down the Driver, and therefore the moment life has to be breathed into the Driver.

It is very important to me that each of the Driver, Mercenary and Psychopath are living and breathing characters in their own right. Their actions are undertaken with the same kind of convictions and justifications Daniel uses for his goals. So how do you create a living and breathing radicalised twenty-eight year old male with two children and a wife?

The answer is of course - not easily. I definitely didn't want to make him the 2D bad guy terrorist. I wanted to create someone we understand and therefore empathise with as Daniel relentlessly closes in. A similar understanding of character to Simon the child kidnapper in Chasing Innocence.

The last two days then have been about researching the different facets of radicalisation, which is a well documented trait in human societies. Radicals have existed in every culture, religion and ideology through time. They are a result of an individuals belief that the institutions and structures defining law and society are de-legitimatised and need to be replaced. There are usually multiple facets, society, cultural and often family, that have to fail in the person's eyes. Even then most people do not possess the capability to radicalise and then only a small percentage that do, would actually turn to violence.

My driver's first name is Aslan. He has grown up in a largely orthodox family. A strict father who believes the old ways are best, who also views the ruling structures of society to be de-legitimised but change must be achieved politically. Aslan had an older sister he was very close to, who was beaten and died as a consequence while at University - never solved and thought to be racially motivated. The family discovered she was leading two lives, a western life at University and a compliant orthodox life in-front of the family. She had a secret western boyfriend who Aslan believes murdered her. It is Aslan's belief the structures of society covered up the murder. That she didn't matter. Society failed her and so did his father, who's pedantic attempts to introduce orthodoxy politically are as flawed as the ruling society itself. He is frustrated by his communities inward focus at observing doctrine while not doing more to force change in a society that demonises his culture. Azlan believes the deaths of Angela and Molly are part of the vital process for deconstructing the existing infrastructure. Except he is also haunted by the laugh in the car as Angela was killed.

That's the premise. Now I have to put Daniel and Aslan in the same space on the page and see what happens.

< The Handyman Day 23 - The Handyman Day 30 >

NaNoWriMo - The Handyman - Day 23

Now what the hell am I going to write this blog post about? It is day 23 of NaNoWriMo by 93 minutes. I'm in Birmingham sat in a friend's study. I've had about three Desperado's too many and I have just watched Sucker Punch - which was nothing like the movie I thought it would be. In fact I think it was rather excellent, save for the fact it tried to be too clever by holding onto the secret of reality far too long. Which wasn't even the Sucker Punch reveal. Zack Snyder is an incredibly original visionary but he isn't at this stage the genius story teller he aspires to be. Watchman spoiled him. Classics are not so easily conjured.

Anyway, a few days back I was thinking I'd soon hit 20k or at least be close, then when I look at the posts that was nine days ago - aarrggghh.

It is day 23 as previously mentioned. I have just breached 20k. This is disappointing on two levels. First it means my average word count per day has been less than 1000 words through November. The second is I'm so horribly far behind on NaNoWriMo it makes me shudder to think.

This has been a wonderful exercise though. I know writers who have already tipped 50k this month. I find that inconceivable. While I am writing to a carefully plotted structure the line by line for me is entirely from the characters perspective. What are they thinking in the moment to moment? Creating a scene and having the characters play the scene to the benefit of the story is tough work. I write short scenes, in the main. It takes a while for me to reset between scenes. To properly stage them in my mind.

Of course at 20k I have just finished the hardest part of the book - act one - the bit where we introduce characters and give them substance, set-up all the key markers that will play and evolve through the story to it's conclusion.

The hope is I am now playing these established characters in the story. I have so many hopes and aspirations for how this will play out, that trying to hit a word count feels entirely wrong. Sitting down and trying to creatively tell a sizeable chunk of the story each day does feel good. I will have mentioned it before. The key lesson for me has been to make sure I sit down every day and commit to writing for a few hours. No matter what.

Off to bed now with the hope I will have chance to write for an hour or so in the morning without being too anti-sociable. Am off to a Memorabilia Comic-Con type event at the NEC tomorrow afternoon.

With seven days left and the 25th as my next realistic writing day my hope is to hit 30k before the end of the month.

We will see.

< The Handyman Day 19 - The Handyman Day 27 >

NaNoWriMo - The Handyman Day 19

Wave hello

One of the toughest parts of starting a book, is getting the characters on the page. I'll often see them in my mind but finding the words to convey them as real can take some time.

Invariably there is a magical moment during the process, usually about the time we get into the mix of the main story, when the characters make themselves known. They become real and the words to describe them come a lot easier.

It is a moment I seldom see coming. In Chasing Innocence it didn't happen for Sarah until late - when she was fighting Simon. For Mahrie it was her return after burying her husband, and her reaction to the police waiting outside her house.

When the characters do start waving from the page. It is one of the great feelings.

Of course you may read the following excerpt and wonder what the hell I'm going on about. It might be difficult to know without the context of what happens before. This was the moment for me when Daniel Harper started waving. It will now be about honouring his story that drives me to the end.

Daniel does a last check, makes sure the keys are secure in his rucksack, the change of clothes, clips his shoes into the pedals and freewheels onto the road, merges into the traffic. 

The bike is gleaming, oiled, there are no gears. There are no brakes, the bike's momentum is controlled by the continual rotation of the crank - it stops and the bike stops. The handlebars are seven inches across, left hand to the right, designed so he can filter through traffic, between cars, taxis and buses. He’s spent the morning giving it the once over. He wants to see if he’s ready to work. 

At the station he pulls on his cap because he doesn’t want trouble. The train has to pass through Slough. London is the multi-cultural hub of Europe. He’s nervous. Not the fear of physical confrontation but of being reminded of other people and their anger. There’s a telescopic batten taped to the inside of his bicep, just in case. 

The worry is for nothing. He climbs on the train, lifts in his bike and they rattle and roll into Slough where people pour off and on, the doors close. On into Paddington. He doesn’t think anyone paid him any attention. He has been trained to notice these things. 

The underground could take him to Wimbledon but he needs to get back into the flow. This is where his days were spent, couriering envelopes and packages, criss-crossing through the alleys and roads of the ancient city. Tuned into cabbies and bus drivers, pedestrians with a death wish. Upwards of one hundred daily miles on a seat narrower than his wrist. Decent money and flexible. It could be unpleasant, the weather, the nutters, never worse than sitting in an office. 

It’s nine miles to Wimbledon, it takes him forty minutes. He’s an hour early for his appointment. Sits in the park to cool down. Knows the child voices and the mothers aren’t Molly and Angela, has to stop himself hoping. Watches them with his body heavy with loss, a malevolence wants to twist inside. For those who robbed him. A tension he lets flow to the cool autumn. He thinks of Angela and the love she had for life. 

When he’s ready Daniel takes his lock from the rucksack, the sort you’d get for a high-end motorbike. A long chain of thick links encased in a kevlar sheath. He removes the bike wheels, takes them with him. Only the frame is shackled to the bike rack. He changes in the public toilet, the cloying bleach and piss. He sprays deodorant. He knows Wimbledon well, he used to see Doctor Mistry at the Neurological hospital, after he came out of the army. Daniel likes to be respectful. Would never wear his cycling gear to see a Doctor. When he leaves the toilet he’s wearing his wedding suit trousers and a shirt. Polished black shoes. The wheels in one hand in a special carrier, rucksack on his back.

  < NaNoWriMo - The Handyman Day 18 -  NaNoWriMo - The Handyman Day 23 > 

NaNoWriMo - The Handyman Day 18

Keeping the study warm
while Potter feverishly
creates pearls of fiction...

And then there were 18 days of November almost gone. Life has kicked in the last few days and I have not written a single word of fiction since the 14th #gulp

I knew I was going to struggle Fri for the same reasons I mentioned in the last post - I was trying to find an innovative way to introduce the video found footage. Sitting down on Friday I thrashed through the details, working through potential scenarios. I didn't want the found video to just arrive through Daniel's letterbox or be nailed to a wall or something - although I seriously considered these as solutions. I wanted some interesting angle, and how I vexed myself.

1.6k of debating words later, which is how I resolve plot issues, by writing down the debate in my head, I had some great additional ideas for the story but nothing original for the found footage.

Then the weekend kicked in and projects I was working on with other people took precedence. Chasing Innocence is getting a fresh proof and copy edit to try and get the last few rough edges out of the text. I'm starting a business and needed to get business card designs ready for the printers.

Saturday I finally came up with the found footage solution by thinking outside of the problem and looking at which characters could solve it for me. I came up with an excellent idea - hoorah to that. Now It's Monday and business needs took over again. So it's 16:00 and not a NaNoWriMo word has been scribed since Thursday night. I need to get back into the mindset, to get going. 20k of The Handyman beckons. I'm currently at 15,500 words. Wildy behind schedule but the set-up and introductions of act one are almost over. I'm about to move into the fun and games of act two. It'll be easier, words will be plentiful, I keep telling myself.

I'll let you know how it goes.

< NaNoWriMo - The Handyman Day 14 - NaNoWriMo - The Handyman Day 19 >

NaNoWriMo - The Handyman 14

It happens like this just about every day, at least those days I'm supposed to be writing a blog. I'm just about to pack up and go to bed, when it suddenly occurs to me I haven't written the damn NaNoWriMo blog.

I then spend about ten seconds deciding whether to give it a miss or not, the outcome of which will largely be determined by whether I bunked off the night before. In fact last night I didn't give the blog a single thought. So here we are, sitting here at 00:23hrs on the 15th November, trying to be insightful.

Today was one of those writing days, NaNoWriMo or otherwise, when the needs of the character changed the needs of the story. In my extensive plotting of The Handyman, I had cleverly created a moment halfway through act one that would serve as a catalyst for the rest of the book. It was a moment when Daniel looks through the pictures of his dead wife's camera having dreamed of her asking him 'What do you see?' I go through this whole section as he hunts through the pictures as if we are looking through found footage. He sees her life and world through her eyes. One largely unknown to him. It is a lovely moment and frustrating for him because he cannot see anything that might lead to her murder.

I wrote the scene today. I like it a lot and it works real well. This moment pays off later in the story. It immediately leads onto a scene with actual found footage of her murder, taken by the murderers. In looking through the footage he hear's one of them laugh and his revenge gene kicks in. He is now on board for the main story.

It all sounds cool, and reads pretty well in a story outline. The trouble is in writing the two back to back found footage scenes you get found footage overload. The two scenes show different mediums of camera and video, have largely different content but have very similar narratives. They are essentially the same scene played out twice in a row. Readers will disengage.

The solution so far is to move Daniel doing the camera review to a much earlier stage during the setup in the first half of act one. And then think of some imaginative way of revealing the video found footage, which I haven't quite come up with yet.

Hopefully next time we meet in the middle of the night, which should be Saturday(ish) at the latest, I will have. See you there.

<NaNoWriMo - The Handyman 12 - NaNoWriMo - The Handyman 18 > 

NaNoWriMo - The Handyman Day 12

It's amazing how the days get away from you. One minute I'm mostly doing a blog a day, or every other day, the next it suddenly occurs to me I've not done one for three days. Not even thought about it at all.

So it's the twelfth day of November. If I was keeping track of the NaNoWriMo thing I should have 19k of words under my belt. I actually have 12k. Which is so far off the pace it is almost totally unrecoverable in terms of hitting the 50k word count at the end of the month.

The realisation of this month for me has been understanding it's unlikely I'll ever be able to write 50k in thirty days. I can work all day sometimes and have little in actual additional word-count to show for it. Here is an example of why:

Sunday, I spent four hours editing two chapters I'd worked on the day before. You might ask why I was editing and not writing, it is after all NaNoWriMo. The simple answer is everything I write is character centric, if I haven't got their perspective accurate in chapter five, it's not going to feel right in chapter six, seven etc. If I don't take care of the characters viewpoint and world perspective in chapter five, I'll end up increasingly uncertain and go off course. Which will later take a disproportionate amount of time to fix. I might as well get it fixed when I realise it needs fixing and keep subsequent chapters on message and building from a sure platform.

So Sunday, I'm editing these two chapters. One heralds the catalyst for what will be the reveal at the end of the story and therefore needed to say certain things in a certain way. I'd got it written but it was too obvious in leading Daniel to the catalyst. I needed to be roundabout in the reveal and blend the conversation so the reader realises the catalyst a line or two before Daniel does. The other was a conversation between Daniel and another man about their motivations for the upcoming story. The Handyman is a revenge thriller. I'd written the scene but didn't have a valid reason for him being reluctant to embark on the revenge element. I had to make sure he had valid reasons for rejecting the cause but give the reader a clear understanding he will of course eventually get going.

It took a lot of work and I eventually laid it out not as a reluctance to embark on the story but a reluctance to leave the memory of his wife and their life together behind. A very tricky thing to pull off. Four hours of hard work with a total twenty-two words added to the project's overall count.

The next NaNoWriMo word-count update will be Friday 15th, where I should be hitting 24k but will be grateful to be near 20k.

< NaNoWriMo - The Handyman 9 - NaNoWriMo - The Handyman 14 >

NaNoWriMo - The Handyman Day 9

A wise man once said get it right and do it first time. Or something like that.

I doubt that wise man ever tried writing, moreover a work of fiction.

So here goes this writers evolving and guaranteed not to be right first time, daily routine.

I get up, make a cup of tea and read emails, check-up on a few bits and pieces for about twenty minutes.

I'll open up Scrivener, find the section I finished up the previous day or if applicable the bit that feeds what I'm writing next. I'll read the section, fiddle a little and get going. It's a combination that really helps me to get into the headspace.

I start writing two lines below where I left off the day before, even if I'm starting a new chapter, because lets face it, who likes starting writing on a blank page.

When I've built up a few paragraphs or am ready for my second cup of tea, I'll split the new text into a new chapter. I'll keep writing and drink lots more tea.

Sometimes I'll reach a stage like I did today, where I'll realise the conversation I have in chapter fourteen, that takes place in a white house, needs to take place after chapter seven in a hospital.

For something like this I will stop right there and move the chapter and blend it into the required location. References to the white house become the hospital and conversation will reflect the new scenes need. I'll build a fresh chapter fourteen, hopefully paying off this extra work.

This of course is not productive if you're only focused on word count. I have tried lots of different approaches but I cannot continue writing if I realise the structure of the early story doesn't hold together at a high level. I'm not so worried about the line by line perfection of prose.

I have found it is unlikely I'll have more than a thousands words before I'll hit a point that will require lots of thinking, walking about and looking like I've entered a catatonic state. Invariably the background processes will throw out a solution sometime during the day.

At some point I'll sit down and start writing again. This will be a harder session to initiate but it will also be the more productive because everything has been busy brewing through the day. I'll still be in the zone from the earlier session.

I've sometimes written upwards of 3-4k during a day but tend to find the narrative becomes increasingly disjointed or bland and will require a disproportionate period of time editing or even re-writing to make it feel right the next day.

I tend to produce about a thousand words of good prose in a three hour morning session and about the same in a two hour afternoon or evening session. Which means I can churn out about 2k of decent fiction a day. This will by no means be the end product or close to it. It will represent about 70% of completion at a line by line level, as long as I've got my planning correct or don't later think of a better way to progress that section of the story. Or realise it needs to be dropped altogether.

Writing the first draft of the story represents about a quarter of the total work required to eventually make the story anywhere close to entertaining. For me at least.

As an example, here's the very first chapter of The Handyman as it currently stands. This is the first time I've written third person present tense. I have got better at it but this isn't quite there. What I learn about the needs of the characters and story will evolve this chapter during the writing and further in the editing. It will be crafted to give a greater sense of the moment, the desperation and fear and more technical detail on the weapons sounds etc. Then it'll be given to proof readers. Anyway:

It is early afternoon. A sunny day with powder blue skies, wisps of cloud chased by energetic breezes. There is a junction of roads and open grassland, cars parked on the gravel verge. Picnic tables and walkers in small groups. Horses roam free and graze. 

Angela is sat at one of the tables, occasionally brushing loose hair from her eyes as she reads, sometimes looking up at Daniel and Molly, her daughter’s excited yelps and his deeper, joyful shouts. A kite skits over and between the breezes, a yellow trailing tail. She returns to her book, grateful for these happy days and this holiday. 

The breezes carry the sound of a distant motorbike, the pitch of it’s small engine rises and falls as it climbs and descends the low rolling landscape. Molly in her excitement of holding the kite, lets go and it is carried away, the string and the handle bump across the gorse and grass and lift into the air. Daniel sets off after it and Molly shouts encouragement as it bucks and twists higher. Her voice fades as Daniel chases, knowing the mischievous plastic cannot stay up forever. A broad happy grin on his face. There is nowhere he’d rather be 

The motorbike engine hitches, an almost silent break in the pitch, a bungled gear change. The momentary break in noise carries a singular sound on the same blustering eddies carrying the kite. A latch, a mechanism, a spring and Daniel is running. No longer chasing the kite, barely even recognisable as the happy man he was a moment before. His legs and arms piston, angled towards the road, between his daughter and wife and the approaching motorbike. His eyes are wide and there is nothing to see in his face but intent. Daniel runs fast, upwards of 25 mph over short distances, in the right shoes, a flat surface. Can run faster than a pushbike for longer than anyone would want to cycle. He bares down on the road, limbs and heart and lungs working to the same goal, towards the space he has calculated the bike will be the moment he makes the road. He can see it at his right periphery. The sort of small motorbike you see learners riding, jeans and a beige jacket, a red helmet. Daniel sucks in air, blows it out, takes in everything, Molly at this left periphery, 150 yards now, Angela a hundred more beyond her, now standing and watching, hand up to her mouth, dotted cars on gravel beyond the road, beyond Angela. 

The red helmet has seen him arrowing in, thirty, twenty, ten yards, one arm directing the motorbike and the other up to rest on it. Aiming. Daniel weaves as mud and chipped stone kick into the air, spray his face, a tug on his arm and then his side that spins him around and off his feet, felled and rolling and back up and running. A wet stain above his hip that does nothing to slow him. 

Now he is the wrong point of the triangle, the wrong side of the bike as it heads towards Angela and Molly. The sun glints off the cars parked on the gravel beyond the road and he runs harder. Angela has her back to the motorbike, running across the grass, dragging Molly behind. She knows what Daniel can do, she just has to stay alive long enough for him to do it. 

The motorbike is on its side, front wheel spinning, the man in the helmet aims and fires, successive cracks carried across the landscape. The wrong gun for distance, the woman and her daughter more than a hundred yards and still running. The man from the motorbike runs too. He wasn’t expecting this, he’s wearing cheap shoes, a crash helmet. He quickly gains on the woman dragging a panicked child. 

Daniel is moving faster, a jack-hammer punch to the base of the man’s spine, mid-stride and he has hold of the gun arm before he hits the ground, the arm twisted and the gun loosed with the body’s momentum as he kick through the arm at the joint, a muffled scream as the helmet hits the gorse and Daniel switches the weapon between hands and fires twice through the visor. Turns and immediately fires three times in the direction of two cars parked across the road. A BMW, a man is stood, a tall silhouette against the skyline, using the roof to aim, a long barrel. The windscreen etches cracks and gravel kicks but it cannot stop the heart breaking roar, a drifting cloud of cordite and Angela is no longer running. Molly stops bewildered, the warm hand pulling hers is gone, a billowing floral dress and sobbing tears and Daniel is closing in  on the BMW. He knows he will not make it, fires hopefully, knows the gun too, its strengths and weaknesses, held straight in front as his legs carry him, the windscreen shatters, the dull clunk of the car’s bodywork. Another roar and now there is no Molly.  

Daniel doesn’t stop, makes the road and a different kind of sound, a lower calibre, from the car and a punch high on his chest and he’s on his back looking up at the sky. The pop of gravel beneath tyres and a face looks down on him, inquisitive and dark, a gun poked through the open passenger window, a camcorder. Daniel only feels the impact as the bullet buries itself in the tarmac beneath him, the taste of exhaust as the engine is gunned. Soon it is only his ragged breathing he can hear, the taste of copper in his mouth, the echo of the heartbreaking roars. Then distant voices, cautious shouts. Eventually footsteps. He can hear Angela’s voice now, he is sure, coaching and soothing.

< NaNoWriMo The Handyman Day 8 - NaNoWriMo The Handyman Day 12 >

NaNoWriMo - The Handyman Day 8

The good thing about blogging when things aren't working out is you're never short of something to say. The flip-side is when everything goes well there's little to whinge about.

So I'll keep this brief because it's going unreasonably well. I struggled for a few days blending in and cutting down a whole load of Angela background into the beginning of The Handyman. I'm sure it would have been quicker to re-write it, except I'd invested so much time and effort in the original text I didn't think I had it in me to do again.

The text is now blended, some contextual changes have been made and we're into the story proper. All that planning is paying off and I'm having fun writing Daniel and Angela Harper's story.

The question is whether I think it's any good. This is of course a first draft, I don't even think of it as that - more like Beta v.02 There are some sections that will be cut and shaped and others I know need expanding. There will need to be an extensive smoothing over process to tie things up and bring it all to a cohesive whole and something closer to what I would consider a completed first draft. Which is when the real work will begin.

Right now it is all there in the same way Chasing Innocence only was going into the back third. I really did spend a lot of time hammering out the details, twists and turns of The Handyman. It feels like it is paying off. I have read back through some of the sections and love it. What a great feeling that is. I really do think the Handyman has the potential to be one of those stories you put down and are still thinking about weeks later.

Of course in two days time I'll be wringing my hands and beating my head against the desk, but then that's all part of the fun too.

< NaNoWriMo The Handyman Day 6 - NaNoWriMo The Handyman Day 9 >

NaNoWriMo - The Handyman Day 6

In terms of starting this post with something prophetic, it would seem I have failed. However, today is not about fortune telling, it is about hard numbers and some considered thought.

Day six of NaNoWriMo is done. The scores on this Scrivener's board stand at a total 6872 shiny new words, which falls some way short of the mean average requirement of 9996 words.

However, if I have learned anything this past year, it is that writing is not about numbers. I've experimented a lot. Writing is about story and characters. Word count is just a number. Numbers are only cool if you're writing math.

What NaNoWriMo has made me realise, is the importance of setting aside time to write each day. Another no-brainer, it sounds like. But I mean writing each day no matter what. To write every day even if it is an internal monologue about how you're going to make the next book, twist, character schism or cultural viewpoint play as entertaining narrative. Or how you will build, block by block towards it.

Magic happens if you write, nothing happens if you don't.

Write every day, not just 30 days in Autumn. Don't count words. Count every moment as precious. Your characters need you.

In keeping with the spirit of the event, the next Potter word count check-in will be November 11, which should, if one is keeping to the mean average, tally 18k.

Another post tomorrow, on the quantitative quality of the currently accumulated 6872 words.

NaNoWriMO - The Handyman Day 5

NaNoWriMo - The Handyman Day 5

Blame it on Truman

This is my first NaNoWriMo. I think it's a great premise and a really worthwhile experience. The plan for me is to see what the experience can add to my writing method.

My fiction writing and planning is all done in Scrivener, in which you can set a target word count and target date goal for the project's completion. With a 30 day deadline for NaNoWriMo and a defined target word count goal of 55k, it seemed like a great idea to enable them. Except it hasn't been. I've been fixating on the count and even with a good story structure in place, the whole experience feels like running down a steep hill too fast - sometimes it's exhilarating but mostly it's about worrying I might break both legs at the bottom.

A good example of what's not working in aiming for a daily word count, is a chapter I finished yesterday. I did a lot of planning for The Handyman, I have a scene map for the entire first half of the book. I knew the scene I needed to write was of a detective talking to my protagonist who is laid up in hospital. I knew what they needed to discuss and the outcome.

With the required word count taunting me, especially as I was 1k off the pace after three days, I headed straight into my detective narrative without giving any real time to imagining how I would stage it. I just went for it and the result was 500 words of event and discourse without any sense for the moment.

For me, feeling confident about writing successive chapters, hinges on the previous ones playing well in my mind, even if I know they will be edited, sometimes extensively, later. It has to feel right and that feeling has to come from character. I have to look back at the chapter in my mind and be able to see it play like a scene in a movie.

Just getting a scene down to hit a world count and not being able to 'see it', feels like building a house with the wrong kind of foundations, or more to the point, getting an actor to recite lines of dialogue without any attention to the quality of the performance.

Which makes the whole writing a book thing not fun. It has really brought home to me what is important about my creative workflow, which is giving myself time to write the filmed version. Not trying to hit a word count. That sounds like a no brainer now I say it, but all you seem to hear is the 'word count'.

So, I just disabled the Scrivener targets. While I did, I got to thinking how a movie director might approach 'creatively staging' a scene on a given production day. I don't expect they make up how it will play on the day, they will have planned and know ahead of time. So... over the next few days I'm going to end the day by looking at the scenes I will probably be writing the next day, and have a go at visualising how they will play.

This is still NaNoWriMo however, and in keeping with the spirit of the event I will be posting total word counts once every five days, starting from tomorrow (Day 6).

I'm not expecting anyone will be wondering where yesterdays NaNoWriMo Day 4 post went, but if you were - I totally forgot. I sat down to watch The Truman Show last night and was tucked up in bed watching the end credits before I remembered. Oh well, I thought.

Now off to plan the next five scenes. No doubt you will be hearing how it went in the next day or two.

< The Handyman - Day 3 - The Handyman Day 6>

NaNoWriMo - The Handyman Day 3

There I was, heavy eyed and thinking I might bunk the last quarter of the Eagles handing it to the Raiders, when it suddenly occurred to me - I'd not posted about my NaNoWriMo day.

I'm not sure if any of you listen to movie audio commentaries, but I listened to a lot. I'll buy a bad DVD if it's got a audio commentary, just to hear what they had to say about the process.

There are a lot of repeated themes across these commentaries, the most frequent are statements about dropping treasured moments to drive on the story. The second most frequent, is of actors bemoaning how hard it is to act the scene they auditioned with. Simply because they have to dig deep coming up with something fresh.

Which is exactly what it was like for me today. In the first and abandoned edition of The Handyman there was an extensive scene in the hospital where Daniel repeatedly mixed visions of his dead wife with flashbacks of how they met. This is a scene I previously spent a lot of time writing, editing, perfecting and cared deeply for.

Except in this revised version of the Handyman it calls for a vastly smaller hospital section. So today has been about delving into what I'd previously written and working to create something new and fresh with less than a third of the original word count.

It isn't quite there, the first draft was first person past tense, where this is third person present. In the original Daniel's injuries were a lot worse - it took him almost a year to recover. In this it takes him three months. It has taken some serious effort trying to give insight into Angela's past in so few words.

It is getting there. For me Daniel's character has only ever worked if we care about Angela, and so anytime I give her life, everything comes together. It happened in patches today.

See you tomorrow.

<The Handyman Day 2 - The Handyman Day 5>

NaNoWriMo - The Handyman Day 2

Getting in a few NaNoWriMo
words between sessions at the
Imperial College

Well howdy folks, day two of NaNoWriMo is rapidly dwindling.

This whole experience has so far been hugely liberating and I would go so far as to state this is the most I have enjoyed fiction writing since I was powering to the end of Chasing Innocence, waaay back in the last decade (2009).

It's all about control. I have planned The Handyman around a great structure and know where I'm going with every scene. I'm not constantly worrying about the story, whether it will work or where I'm heading as I've already thrashed the hell out of the story. I'm just trying to make what I'm writing as good as possible. Very liberating.

In between my 1.6k NaNoWriMo words today (hoping for a huuge day tomorrow) I went to the Writers and Artists Self-Publishing in the Digital Age seminar, at the Imperial College in Kensington. There was some great interviews helmed by Amazon's Jon Fine of Tracy Bloom and later of Mel Sherratt. Both authors were incredibly interesting in vastly different ways. The highlight of the day was the talk on marketing by Joanna Penn.

I also had my first experience of networking which actually went really well. Met some really interesting people.

Here's some of what I wrote, mostly this morning in Starbucks Paddington before the Imperial College and after I got home. This is as written, so first draft caveats and all that:

He knows it isn’t real because this happens every night. It feels real though. Angela is dressed for work, it’s night because that’s when she usually worked. Smart trousers and shirt, short jacket in the summer. She is stood in a road, walking towards him, camera strap wound around her wrist, camera held in her hand. There is a car moving fast, coming towards her from behind, the headlights cast long shadows of her limbs that reach out. He can hear her voice but her mouth isn’t moving. Her eyes implore. Any second the car will hit her, it isn’t slowing. 

‘What do you see?' 

Daniel sits up in the spare bed, swings his feet onto the floor. He hasn’t slept in their bed since the night before the holiday. He stares up at the picture in the half light of night, ambient light outside casts shadows, early traffic builds momentum. The picture fills the wall, has been printed to the highest resolution, so much detail and colour although he sees little in the pre-dawn monotone. If you had asked Angela, she would deny it was her best, but it has been her most successful. It predates Daniel in her life, even Molly but not Nikolaj, who was with her in Hawaii when she took it. In the water beside her, keeping her stable in the relentless surf. You first see it and think of telescopes and space and far away galaxies, sparkling stars and hued greens and rusty nebulas. Then your eyes adjust and realise the shapes and textures and you see a giant wave crashing into a seabed, stirring silt and stones, the distorted radius of a setting sun filtered through dense layers of aqua, glinting sand. It is an image you can lose time to. It has adorned books and hung from gallery walls, sold in supermarkets rolled in plastic and framed in specialist stores. Ten years after Angela lay at the bottom of the ocean, trying to capture the perfect moment, royalty cheques still fall on the doormat. Once a quarter, twenty pound, sometimes less, or a little more. 

Her cameras and the accessories of her work are lined and stacked in bags beneath the print. He is still sat on the bed as daylight pushes back the shadows. The traffic drums outside. Sunlight creeps up his back. He has less muscle definition than before, two months now. Has only just started working out again. His wounds are purple puckered flesh, will in time fade and blend with the other scars. Daniel has many scars, at the periphery, his arms and legs, several beneath the hairline above his right ear. He used to be too quick to sustain anything but peripheral wounds. The angry flesh in the middle of his torso stands alone.

< The Handyman - Day 1 - The Handyman - Day 3> 

NaNoWriMo - The Handyman Day 1

It is 20:00hrs of November 1. Which means National Novell Writing Month 2013 is but four hours from its second day of thirty.

At ten o'clock this morning my Mac was on the desk and waiting. I had not written a word. I was cradling a cool cup of tea, leaning against the kitchen counter. My mind was working overtime, skimming through a psychedelic collage of images and scenes and dialogue that changed perspective and narrative faster than I could blink. It's not that I didn't want to write the story, it was the fear of the journey.

A journey that will absorb me like a great movie does, except the experience may last days, months, sometimes years. Absorbed to worlds with characters larger than life and twice as real. So real the only way out will be to do their story justice. The needs of groceries, housework and personal relationships fade to black.

Leaning against the counter with my cool cup of tea is like waiting to be parachuted into Jurassic Park long after it was overrun by velociraptors.

Here's part of what transpired after I survived the landing. This is not the beginning, it is about chapter three. First draft caveats and all that, as it was written:

The apartment is open plan on the ground floor. A kitchen and living room. David Ford presides over a clear plastic kettle as it vibrates around a boiling [tumult]. He pours water into three cups, stirs and places them on a counter. He carries two of the cups into the living room, a barely discerned imbalance to his gait, his left leg. 

He hands a cup to Daniel who is seated and wearing the dark grey suit he wore to his wedding. His only one. He cradles the cup in both hands and continues staring beyond a slender urn set on the coffee table. Angela had been adamant she never wanted to be buried. She never made her wishes formal, just joked about it. It was the thought of the mud and worms. 

There is a brown leather sofa, covered in complementing cushions neatly patterned and aligned. On the floor beside the sofa is an identical pewter urn - Molly. Her father is upstairs. Nikolaj is packing the last of his daughter’s possessions. The sound of his footsteps above move between carpet and sanded floorboards. 

What’re you going to do with them? 

Daniel’s eyes shift across to his friend, back to the table. Find them, he says. 

Bins considers this. The ashes. He clarifies. 

The footsteps above break their pattern, approach and Nikolaj descends the stairs, a small suitcase in either hand. He aligns them side by side by the front door and takes his waiting cup from the kitchen counter. Steps around the table and sits amid the cushions on the sofa. He is wearing a grey shirt beneath a dark cardigan, dark jeans and shiny shoes. He is taller than Bins. Blue eyes and cultivated beard, dark hair swept to one side with his hand. A poetry in movement. He addresses Daniel. Is there nothing of hers you would like to keep?

Daniel shakes his head. She is your daughter. 

She was part of your life. A statement. Nikolaj’s voice is accented amid smooth English. The two men are diametric. Daniel is two inches short of six foot, lean, not unattractive, not in the same league as the father of Angela’s child.

<NanoWriMo - Handyman -1 - The Handyman Day 2>

NaNoWriMo - The Handyman Day -1

Get set...

Back in 2009 about four months before I finished the first draft of Chasing Innocence, I came up with the idea for another book. It would be about a man who is guided by his wife as he hunts for her killers.

The idea grew in the months and then years it took to bring a polish to Chasing Innocence. I started writing it in 2011. I abandoned it in 2012 after it had turned into an unwieldy mess of a political thriller I had no desire to write.

The concept of a man hunting for his wife's killer has stayed strong in my mind and continued to push for a way out. Two months ago while on holiday in Cyprus I'd just finished reading Truman Capote's 'In Cold Blood'. A whole bunch of ideas came together and suddenly the solution to writing The Handyman came to me. It would have to be a story focused entirely on the protagonist throughout. It would have to stay tight to him and resist all attempts to get large.

Unfortunately this meant most of the originally abandoned draft of the book, save for a few early scenes between the man and his wife, would have to be shelved. I also needed to balance my desire to get Handyman out of my head and not derail my schedule for Hunting Demons - the sequel to Chasing Innocence I'd been writing during the summer.

I read an article about National Novell Writing Month, which is an annual event where writers from all over the world try to write a 50-60k book in November. While writing Hunting Demons in October I started outlining the revised HandyMan with a plan of devoting all of November to writing it.

The outline is mostly done and November beckons. I'm super excited and will be posting every day during November with excerpts and word counts and maybe even some of my favourite bits from the first draft.

You can follow me on Twitter using the tag of #thehandyman, which will also contain daily links to posts and in the trenches updates.

Here's a quick synopsis of The Handyman that will be:

A veteran of two middle-east wars is guided by his wife as he hunts for her murderer 

Veteran soldier Daniel Harper’s wife and step-daughter are gunned down during a family holiday in the New Forest. A released video of their murder states they were killed for his crimes as a soldier in the middle-east. 

Daniel’s unique skills are deployed to hunt down the cell responsible. As he delivers justice to each in turn he is plagued by repeating dreams of his wife, dreams that lead him away from revenge to look elsewhere for her true killers.

Good luck to my fellow NaNoWriMo participants. I'm going in. Writing will commence at midnight tonight, just to get the ball rolling.

< The Handyman Day 1>

Deconstructing Story - Edge of Darkness

The Premise

When Homicide detective Thomas Craven's daughter is gunned down outside his home the one thing he still holds precious has been taken from him. In hunting for her killer he discovers his daughter had a secret life as an activist - trying to expose a cover-up at a government contracted weapons manufacturer. As Craven begins to understand why she died a government agent is dispatched to clean up the mess.

The Appeal

In creating story there are few that resonate more than those with primal themes. There isn't much more primal than a father avenging the murder of his daughter. Likewise few do primal better than Mel Gibson.

Box Office

In 2010 Edge opened average and quickly fell off despite being highly anticipated. Worldwide takings of $81million barely covered the production budget of $80million.

Mel Gibson had not headlined a movie in eight years when Edge was released and hasn't headed a major production since (2013). He had directed two brutal movies though : the commercially successful Passion of Christ and the very violent but excellent Apocalypto. Passion had changed many peoples perceptions of Gibson away from a action movie star to someone with a religious agenda. His subsequent drunken and anti-semantic views further disengaged his core audience.

Trivia

Edge of Darkness was originally a British mini-TV series in 1985. Both the series and this movie (2010) were directed by Martin Campbell.

The role of Jedburgh was originally cast with Robert De Niro but he left after the script moved away from conspiracy thriller to revenge thriller. Ray Winstone was cast in his place. It is a small but significant role.

The original music score was composed around the movie originally being conspiracy based, which didn't suit the revised revenge theme. When the original conductor declined to re-compose the Lord of the Ring's Howard Shore was hired.

Disclaimer: Deconstructing Edge of Darkness means the whole plot will be revealed.

Full Synopsis (743 words)

Edge of Darkness is a thriller set in modern day America against a backdrop of three bodies floating to the surface of a lake next to a Nuclear Storage Facility.

Thomas Craven is a detective with a pedantic nature. He lives alone and is estranged from his daughter. His key relationship through the story is with his daughter who he loves so much he has driven her away. Her death seven minutes into the movie is the catalyst for everything Craven does. Her presence is retained throughout in Craven's mind.

Jedburgh is a government fixer who's job is to extradite solutions to national security threats. Craven's attempts to discover why his daughter died bring him into contention with Jedburgh. The two men have a common moral and bond despite Jedburgh being a constant threat.

The movie opens with a strong image of Craven dotting over his happy and loved daughter as a young child. Switching to the modern day and his grown daughter has made the 100 mile trip to see her father in Boston. Their strong bond is immediately re-established and we see there is still only one woman in Craven's life - his daughter. Emma though is ill, vomiting and suffering from nose bleeds. As they leave for the hospital a man wearing a ski-mask calls out 'Craven' and shoots Emma. She dies in Craven's arms.

Detectives work on the assumption Craven was the target. A disconnected call to Emma's mobile sends Craven in a different direction.

Haunted and comforted by his daughter's memory, a theme played to the very end, Craven unexpectedly finds a gun while sorting her things. He traces it back to her boyfriend who worked with Emma at Northmoor nuclear facility. The boyfriend won't talk in fear of  his life. In Emma's apartment Craven realises her laptop has been stolen and she has equipment for detecting radiation that goes wild when near a sample of her hair.

Craven is confronted by Jedburgh. The two men form a bond as Jedburgh reveals Emma was flagged as a terrorist for contravening security at Northmoor by working with activists. When Emma's boyfriend relents he confirms Emma went to a lawyer to help expose secrets at Northmoor but was turned away, only then helping the activists into Northmoor. They were killed on instruction of Bennett: the head of Northmoor. With Bennett culpable for Emma's death Craven cleverly evades his security and has a chance to kill him. He can't. He needs to know what his daughter was trying to expose.

Emma's boyfriend is killed and Jedburgh warns Craven away when asked what Bennett and Northmoor are hiding. Further bonding they talk about family and death, foreshadowing a key theme through the finale.

Meeting with a terrified friend of Emma's, Craven is given DVDs Emma made for him. When the woman is mown down by a car, Craven narrowly escapes and kills the driver. The threat of Northmoor grows.

The DVDs reveal Northmoor are contracted by the US Government to secretly make weapons using foreign specifications and materials. The previously estranged Emma tells Craven how much she loves her dad. All seems lost for Craven now he knows what he's up against and it quickly gets darker. He has been contaminated with radiation just as his daughter was - a plan created by Bennett and the government officials to ensure Craven dies and is discredited by Emma's terrorist label. We discover Jedburgh's fascination with death and family comes from his own terminal illness. Having leveraged a meeting with the Senator, Craven tells him everything and implores him to do the right thing.

Moving into the finale Craven outwits Northmoor again but he is now seriously ill. He is captured and taken to Northmoor. Without much time to live Craven wants justice, escaping and going to Bennett's house. He kills the Northmoor agents who shot Emma and then Bennett.

The senator is part of the Northmoor cover-up and Jedburgh helps put a lid on the deaths. When they mock Craven who is now dying in hospital, Jedburgh has a change of heart and kills the government officials and the senator. He is killed by a young cop when he lowers his weapon after learning the cop has a young family.

The movie ends with Emma's DVDs arriving at a TV station. As Craven dies in hospital Emma comes to him and they both walk into the light together.

Fifteen beats that make the story

Running Time 110 minutes

Characters
Thomas Craven - Mel Gibson
Jedburgh - Ray Winstone
Bennett - Danny Huston
Emma Craven - Bojana Novakovic
Whitehouse - Jay O. Sanders

Disclaimer: Deconstructing Edge of Darkness means the whole plot will be revealed. 

One - Opening Images

The story opens with two distinctive images. We start with a moonlit river in the dead of night, a distant riverside building like a power plant. We hear bubbling and then three bodies float to the surface.

Second we have video footage of a very young Emma Craven happily playing on the beech with the loving voice of her father urging her on. A date of 1990 is listed at the bottom to establish the video was taken some time in the past.

Two - Introducing the characters (2-13 minutes)

Thomas Craven meets his grown up daughter at the train station. Immediately Thomas is set-up as a pedant. This is repeatedly reinforced through interactions with his daughter in this section. There is a strong bond between father and daughter but we get a sense she has been gone a while and his obsessive nature might have been the reason. There is no mention of a mother at any stage in the film.

While shopping Craven sees his daughter vomiting outside the car. A brief discussion about whether she is pregnant turns to why he doesn't have a women in his life. He states she is the only girl for him.

The bond between the two, the length of time she has been away and his pedantic ways are re-stated back at the house. We also learn for the first time Craven is a detective. When Emma's nose starts bleeding and she vomits again, the daughter starts to panic. She tells Craven there is something she needs to tell him. Heading to the hospital they step outside and a man in a ski-mask calls from the road 'Craven', and fires a shotgun. The daughter takes the hit and dies trying to speak to her father. Craven weeps over her body.

In the following hours police are wrapping up forensics and we are given a real hard look at the mindset of Craven. He is practically catatonic with a blank faced, vengeful countenance familiar to anyone who's watched Mel Gibson's films. His boss, referred to as Whitehouse, tries to get him out of the house for a while. On being reminded the bad guys are armed and dangerous, Craven responds with a classic Gibson line: 'What do you think I am.'

Alone Craven washes Emma's blood from his face. Her mobile phone rings but when Craven answers the caller disconnects. Getting ready for bed he hears her voice, which soothes and guides in a theme that re-occurs to the very end of the film. He dreams of Emma as a child and wakes to the sound of the gunshot, his gun at the ready, adding substance to his capability. By casting Mel Gibson in the lead role capability can largely be assumed.

With the key characters in place and a premise set-up the story is good to go. There are however two key moments during this last section we need to take a closer look at.

Three - You are my girl (@4:35)

During the initial conversation in the car Emma askes Craven why he hasn't got a woman in his life. Craven tells Emma: 'You're my girl.' This sets in place the theme and driving force behind everything Craven does through the film. The theme is a father's love for his daughter.

Four - Emma's ringing phone  (@12 minutes)

Although the murder of Emma is the catalyst for the story it is Emma's ringing phone, disconnected when Craven answers, that sets him off on a different path to the official investigation and to her actual killers.

Five - Confronting Death (13 - 24)

Craven hands over Emma's phone to a colleague at the station and requests a list of all the contacts. At this early stage the police believe he was the target and Emma killed by accident. He is told he can't work the case but easily talks around this. 'Since it's me who's got to figure out who'd want to kill me for reasons only I would know about, I figured I might as well get paid for it.' All in the room agree.

Craven goes to identify his daughters body in the morgue where her death is confirmed as injuries arising from gunshot wounds. No mention of the vomiting. Craven cuts some of Emma's hair to keep and in a park he breaks down and tells his dead daughter he can't go on. She tells him he has to. Scattering her ashes on the same beech from the opening image we get another emotional scene and he talks to Emma again, this time as a child while she plays in the sea.

In searching Emma's room he finds ID stating she was an intern at Northmoor as a nuclear engineer. Craven finds a gun in the bedside draw and wondering why is daughter would need a gun, uses the serial number to trace the owners address. Whitehouse tells Craven a ski mask has been found with hair samples five doors from Craven's house with traced DNA. No opinion is stated but we and Craven think that sounds awfully convenient.

Through this section there were two occasions when Craven could have walked away from everything that subsequently happens. He is first told he cannot work the case but argues he needs to and later in the park he states he can't go on but is urged on by his daughter's voice.

Six - No Stopping Craven (@25)

Act Two gets underway with a twenty second montage taking him the 100 miles from Boston to Northampton. At the gun owners apartment there is a brutal fight further demonstrating Craven's ability. We discover Emma's boyfriend is the gun owner and gave it to her. He is very scared and refuses to talk, showing Craven he is being watched.

Craven takes Emma's personal possession and at her apartment discovers her laptop has been stolen. Craven discovers a meter for detecting radiation which goes wild when placed next to the sample of her hair Craven kept.

Seven - Jedburgh sub-plot (@33 minutes)

In a deserted underground parking lot we meet a government official and Jedburgh, who is immediately set up as deadly. His job is to mitigate national security issues by whatever means he sees fit. We learn Northmoor is a government weapons contractor and we get confirmation Emma was the target of the shooting, not Craven, because she helped three activists enter the Northmoor complex. Something highly classified is going on at Northmoor and Jedburgh will ensure the government's interests are protected. We get the first indication Jedburgh and Craven are on parallel paths destined to collide.

Eight - Finding Emma's Killer (35 - 55) 

Craven ensures detail of his investigation into his daughters life does not get back to Whitehouse in Boston. Working through the list of contacts from Emma's mobile he reaches a very scared woman who works in a luggage shop. She gives Craven his first lead that Emma's death is linked to her job as an intern at Northmoor.

Craven meets the head of Northmoor in the plush penthouse office at the high-tech facility. The smooth executive is called Jack Bennett who offers the usual platitudes about Craven's dead daughter and we learn Northmoor is 'officially' home to a nuclear stockpile and key to local economy. Bennett's smooth exterior drops and we get a sense of something slippery beneath the surface.

Craven gets news from Whitehouse the Ski mask DNA has been matched but when they raid the suspects house they find him executed. Investigating the scene Craven briefly considers this might be her murderer, but quickly realises there is a discrepancy in the hair length of the dead assassin and the sample found in the ski mask. This sets him against Whitehouse who seems too willing for the case to be closed.

Now believing he can't trust Whitehouse Craven burns the evidence of his own investigation and is surprised by Jedburgh. We quickly realise they have a lot in common as they discuss that Emma had been flagged as a potential terrorist threat as she helped three activists breach security at Northmoor. While smoking a cigar Jedburgh discovers Craven knows more than he should but sees merit in him continuing his investigation. Jedburgh tells him the activists were part of a group called 'nightflower'. At the end of the scene we get these two great lines and confirmation Craven thought he was about to be killed:
Craven: 'You going to arrest me?'
Jedburgh: 'I never arrest anyone.'

Craven revisits Emma's scared boyfriend and spots one of Jedburgh's cigars in the ashtray. Craven manages to bond with the boyfriend over their love of Emma, that she had worked with Nightflower to get the activists into Northmoor but didn't go in herself. That she only did this after trying every other course of action including going to a lawyer called Sanderman who told her he couldn't help. The boyfriend explains the activists we saw at the very opening were killed by radiated steam in the tunnels on Jack Bennetts orders. As we reach the mid-point of the movie Craven realises Jack Bennett was responsible for Emma's death but doesn't know how or why?

Nine - Mid-Point (@55 minutes)

After disabling Jack Bennett's personal security as he drives from Northmoor, Craven pulls Bennett over and has an opportunity to kill him in the sure knowledge he ordered Emma's death. What seems like a victory for Craven though quickly turns inside out  when Craven's sense for right and wrong and no hard evidence, prevents him from pulling the trigger.

Killing Bennett might actually have been the best result at this half way stage and possibly the one Jedburgh was looking for when he told Craven about Nightflower. Discovering who killed Emma is over, the second half of the film will be about why.

Ten - Northmoor closes in (60 - 85)

How high the stakes now are is immediately revealed with clever intercutting of footage between Emma's boyfriend and Jedburgh, both separately watching a smooth Senator talk about funding from Northmoor on TV. We see Emma's boyfriend has been shot in the head and it is implied Jedburgh was the assassin.

Jedburgh and Craven meet by a docks and talk about death and family that cleverly foreshadows the coming reveal of Jedburgh's illness. Craven wants to know what Emma was trying to help expose at Northmoor and Jedburgh warns him away. He has sympathy for Craven but may have to stop him if he continues. That these two men get on and that Craven fears Jedburgh is restated. An excellent scene.

When a young female reporter chases a story on Emma's death Craven is reminded of his daughter and takes the reporters card. He then confronts the lawyer named Sanderman who his daughter went to about blowing the whistle on Northmoor. We learn Sanderman represents Northmoor and never told Emma, tried to find out what she knew and had been twice put up for district judge by the senator we saw on TV. Craven now wants to talk with the Senator.

After more dreams of his daughter which remind us just why Craven is doing this he meets the scared luggage woman from Emma's phone contacts. She is terrified but gives him a package of DVD's from Emma after confirming a man called Robinson is the head of Nightflower. As the woman leaves she is violently mown down by a car that turns around and comes back for Craven. In a classic Gibson moment he takes out the car and driver which crashes into the river.

The DVD's are a video message from Emma explaining Northmoor is manufacturing foreign branded nuclear weapons, presumably so America can blame other countries for their misdeeds. At the end of the video, the now dead Emma addresses her father, and states her love for him.

Craven is quickly at the river shack Emma recorded the message, watching Northmoor from the same POV we saw the bodies bubble to the surface in the opening image. He is going to bring them down.

With an increasing number of loose ends around the deaths and requirement for cover-ups government officials put pressure on Bennett to put a lid on the problem. We learn Northmoor are actually creating dirty bombs that could be used to discredit Jihadist movements. Somehow.

Craven tracks down Robinson, the leader of the activist movement called Nightflower and while brutally beating him discovers the man has been paid off by Northmoor. Craven forces Robinson to tell him everything. Immediately after we see Craven checking his own fridge and discovering the milk is radiated.

Bennett and the government agents, realising there's an 'unsurvivable' and immediate risk of Craven talking, plot how to kill him while blaming it on Emma's involvement with the activists

As Craven heads to talk with the Senator it is revealed Jedburgh has a terminal illness. The Senator admits to Craven that Emma came to him blowing the whistle on Northmoor but the senator is very much locked into national security - she was in violation of 'classified' information. Northmoor is a major contributor to his campaign. Craven shows him just how much he knows believing the Senator can still do the right thing and expose Northmoor.

As we come to the end of Act Two there are two key moments we need to go back and look at.

Eleven - Dirty Bombs (@ 74 minutes)

At seventy four minutes Craven saw Emma's video message from the grave, that revealed Northmoor were illegally making foreign branded nuclear weapons. This is the first time we realise just how bad Northmoor are, what they and the government will do to cover it up. We realise how dire the consequences are for Craven. This moment echoes the mid-point where he could have killed Bennett without having to face off against both Northmoor and the government. He is now way out of his depth and the message of love from his dead daughter is testament all seems lost.

Twelve - Darkest hour (@ 82 minutes) 

At eighty two minutes we got three brief scenes.
First we assume Craven is ahead of the game when he discovers the milk in his fridge is radioactive, but the look of resignation is probably more a realisation he has drunk the milk and is going to die.
Bennett, who is on the verge of an unsurvivable scandal, decides with the government officials Craven needs to die via a 'radioactive element' passed on by his daughter.
Finally we discover Jedburgh has a terminal illness.
Everybody including Bennett is at their lowest point in the movie.

Thirteen - Act Three (@88 minutes)

We are launched into Act Three with another rise in the stakes when Craven outsmarts Northmoor agents by crashing into their car. Police attending the scene find automatic weapons in their boot. An ill Jedburgh watches it on the news. With increased exposure the government wants out from killing Craven but Bennett tells them it is already done.

Fourteen - A violent finale (90 - 108)

At ninety minutes a very touching scene with Craven and his young daughter reminds us what this movie is all about. Soon after we see Craven coughing and fear the worst.

Whitehouse comes to talk Craven into stopping after his own family have been threatened. In a strong scene between two men who have shared a past, Whitehouse reveals Craven will be set-up for the murder of Emma's boyfriend. Craven refuses to back down as Whitehouse knew he would and we see how ill Craven is as he vomits into the kitchen sink. The Northmoor agents capture Craven in his own kitchen having used Whitehouse as a decoy.

Locked up in Northmoor Craven immediately escapes and heads home to get his gun and to Bennett's guarded home. This capture and immediate escape is one of only a few odd notes in the whole movie. You get a sense the original script called for Craven to hunt down Bennett through Northmoor's high security complex but this would have been a costly and complicated set-up, so the face-off is moved to the more manageable and cheaper location of Bennett's home. I could of course be mistaken. Having Craven captured is however important - we have already been reminded Craven is doing this all for his daughter, we are now reminded Northmoor are the bad guys, which makes what Craven does next justifiable.

At ninety-nine minutes Craven approaches Bennett's home and we immediately know this isn't going to be a talky conclusion when Craven shoots dead one of the agents as Howard Shore's music rises with a sinister but triumphant edge. Craven kills the agent who shot his daughter and has a brief fight with Bennett. He pours the radiated milk over Bennett who goes wild with panic, proving one more time his culpability. 'Deep down you know you deserve this.' And bennett is shot through the throat. Craven who has been shot at least once collapses.

The senator and government officials struggle to create a press release explaining why Craven has killed Jack Bennett the head of Northmoor. We realise the Senator has been complicit all the time.

Jedburgh supplies a solution and at this moment he is on-board with the Senator. But the bond he had with Craven is invoked when they joke about Craven who is now waiting to die in hospital. Jedburgh kills the government officials and following these excellent lines as the Senator pleads for his life, kills the senator:

'I'm a united states senator.'
'By what standard?'

Jedburgh is then confronted by a young cop. In an echo of the family theme that he and Craven shared, he lets the young cop live because he has family, lowers his weapon and is shot dead by the cop.

The reporter we saw briefly earlier opens her post and finds Craven has posted her Emma Craven's expose CD's. She runs into her editors office with them.

Fifteen - Closing Image (@107 minutes)

As the movie comes to an end the dying Craven is visited by Emma. In a moving scene he dies and they walk away together into the light, providing a poignant closing image that beautifully contrasts the opening image of them together when she was a child.

Hunting Demons: Finding Momentum not 10K

It is funny how we come to things. Trying to write ten thousand (10k) words in a day was a consequence of needing to kick myself out of a ponderous editing compulsion. A single day word count goal that would prove beyond me, as it happens. But I had guessed that from the outset, having calculated it would take me over eight hours of non-stop typing at twenty words per minute, with no pondering, or breaks or anything to achieve it.

But I wanted to see what I could achieve in a day of flat out writing. Especially as I needed to get my arse in gear with a deadline looming.

Before starting on the day I planned the medium term goals of the characters and the story. And then I began. I wrote in three sessions of three hours. Managing on average 1.2k words per session. Totalling just under 4k for the whole day. I stopped just before 9PM having written myself to a standstill. An expected fail you might think, but a funny thing happened during the day.

A novel is a strange beast. It is nothing like any other writing medium. It is focused on the moment to moment and at the same time it is a dauntingly huge canvas of interlinked threads, most of which are layered deep into the moment and only realised as we move between these moments. A lot of the links won't even be neatly tied off when the first draft is finished.

And in the four years since finishing the first draft of Chasing Innocence, I'd forgotten about those interlinking threads. As I built momentum through the 10k day they started to form, wildly branching out the more I wrote. It was incredibly thrilling realising the shift from ponderous editing to full on novel writing. This is what I got most from the day, that once my characters feel real and I know where I'm going, it is momentum that will fill the canvas and build the core elements of the book I'm trying to write.

Here are a few other observations I made during the day:

I thought in trying to write a lot in one day I might overwrite - the actual output if anything was lean. It will be built on, with additional colour edited into the core story. It will change by percentages, getting swapped about, added to, moved or dropped. I do think those percentages are considerably less than I might have expected.

Dialogue was fully realised within the needs of the story as it currently stands. There were some nuances, emotion and character inflections built around the dialogue but only those that helped the characters speak as I progressed. Once more additional colour and drama will be layered, again in lesser percentages than I expected.

By writing with momentum I was far more creative in how I told the story than I would be in ponderous mode. I think this is important for me at least in my thriller mission statement.

If I realised I needed to change previous content as I wrote, I only went back if it helped build the story. If it was just an edit I made a note and continued.

I have to see the physical environment in my mind to tell the story, so if I can't I have to stop and mentally build it. This I had to do twice during the day. Better planning would have overcome this. I knew I was going to be in these environments but realised while writing I needed more geographic detail.

Huge fun.

Shout out to Melissa Foster for providing the inspiration to attempt a 10k day.

Hunting Demons: Writing 10k in a Day

Taking the imagery that exists in my mind and producing prose that plays that imagery in other peoples minds, is a complex multi-layered process. The first layer is the hardest for me, which is the actual process of writing the first draft. Anyone who thinks an author sits hunched over a keyboard, massaging the keys with conductor like flourishes while producing sparkling jewels of literary treasure, has quite clearly never tried writing fiction.

The production of my first novel took three years, largely because I made so many mistakes and learned a lot of lessons.

For book two I'm on a tighter schedule. I need to have finished the first draft before the end of September (2013), preferably earlier. With a publish date scheduled for February 2014.

I'm currently behind schedule. This is in part due to my usual slow start while finding characters and voice, but it's also a product of my propensity towards over editing. While writing I will habitually comb back through the last few paragraphs and smooth them out. There is nothing about writing I enjoy more than editing, but with a whole book to write, these edits are a luxury I don't have. Especially when so much will change once the first draft is completed and 20% of those excessively edited paragraphs will be discarded, as I tend to over write in draft one too.

I have a number of writer friends who have studied the art of productive writing. One in particular will manage to produce ten thousand (10k) words, usually on about one writing day a week, 2-3k on normal days. 10k is often the total output of a good week for me.

My 10k specialist friend says preparation is key for the 10k day, with bullet points to hand for where the story will head, the themes and character goals. Then go for it.

Which is what I will be doing Saturday 8 June, my first 10k in a day attempt. I will Tweet occasional updates #amwriting10ktoday on my progress and blogging my considered thoughts after.

If anyone else has any productivity tips, I'm all ears.