As you can see my progress bar is nearly at 50%, I wrote about 5 pages this evening. This section is a bit dialogue heavy and will need some re-writing to trim it and look to see how to clarify the intentions of the various characters within the scene. (Currently it's a bit wishy washy.)
But the two groups have now met. Handling six major characters is quite tricky but we shall see how it goes. This evening on the train I spent some time looking at the different relationships you can have between Gwen, Ianto and Jack on the Torchwood side as opposed to Annie, George and Mitchell from Being Human.
How could the characters interact? What are the similarities and what are the differences? Where will they agree and where disagree?
There's lots of really juicy character stuff you could do, but I'll have to limit it. There's one particular thing I have lined up, poor George he always seems to end up in pain and poor Jack, always winds up dead...
My US Army expert, we'll call him Robert (because that's his name), got back to me today though I haven't read his notes apart from the introduction. Since I'm working on Which I don't want to get side-tracked back to Unit X until I've got the notes from Philip Shelley as well.
Still he was reasonably complimentary "There are many times that you get the military attitude just perfect. What the soldiers would say, how they would act. This adds to the authenticity, believe me."
Which was nice.
But I know there's a bunch of stuff in store for me, that will be less nice. But I want to get it as right as I can within the framework of the story.
It's also interesting, and this has happened with readers on other stories, how on offhand remark about something they don't consider important reveals that you, as the author, have failed to communicate something critically important.
I tore my hair out in Monsters over the fact that every reader assumed that the main character, Chloe, was supernaturally strong - when she was just using one of the simplest Jujitsu moves to immobilise someone, that anybody can be taught in a few minutes. I'm not 100% sure I ever solved it.
And, with Robert, there was a throwaway comment that showed I had got something wrong. It should be relatively easy to fix - much easier than the jujitsu thing. Of course, not being a proper script reader, Robert is offering solutions as well, but I was expecting that so I'm not offended. I asked for his advice and he's giving it, for free.
So. Tomorrow is Friday and I'm not heading home in the afternoon as I usually do because I shall be in work on both Saturday and Sunday. Not a delightful prospect, it can be very lonely here. On the other hand, lots of time for writing in the evenings. Should get Which wrapped up.
What's on the turntable? "Tubular Bells Part Two" by Mike Oldfield from "Tubular Bells".
No comments:
Post a Comment