113. Write or Wrong!
Writing is possibly the most satisfying and least destructive opiate available. Once one gets beyond the point where every page written has been an agony of uncertainty over its content and one’s confidence in writing is strong enough, it becomes a powerful drug.
I’ve been warned not to work too hard, but what the average person doesn’t realize is that for me writing is not work; it’s a blessed relief to disappear into my own world. In this world I am God. I am the master of the world I create. That doesn’t stop me from always trying to improve my skills. Whether people love or hate what I write, I am expressing my thoughts; and in the case of fiction, which I prefer, I am the puppet-master. I create the characters and then place them in situations from which they need to extricate themselves. The good guys need to win and the bad guys have to be overcome.
When I first started writing, I would carefully plot out a story in note form. In the case of movie screenplays or television series, this would be a treatment of anything between ten and fifty pages or more. I would then take those little squares of paper called “Post-Its” and describe each scene in no more than fourteen words. These Post-its would then be stuck on a board in sequence. This gave me the opportunity of switching scenes around if I suddenly realized that there was a better sequence of events. This has been a popular way for screenwriters to look at the storyline contained on one large board, before writing the actual screenplay or TV series. In the case of a movie screenplay, I would stick to the three-act concept of structuring the story. Briefly, Act One is the establishment of the situation which motivates the whole story. It is somewhere between 25 and 30 minutes long and ends with a crisis climax which indicates what the hero and/or heroine are up against. Act Two runs about 50 or 60 minutes and reveals the hero/heroine battling against the odds to solve the problem, ending with the realization of what has to be done to resolve the situation. Act Three runs about 20 minutes, resolves the situation and wraps up the story.
Of course, as with any rules, there are many exceptions and variables – but it’s important to know the rules before you consciously break them. A number of writers today have discarded the three-act structure, but I have always found it to be a good basis to work from. More recently, however, having been writing for over fifty years, I started to do something I would never have attempted when I first put pen to paper. I now work out in my head the premise of a story and how it would end, then simply start to write it. I realized that my earlier disciplines were subconsciously ingrained in me, and I am probably still mentally following the structures I had used for so long.
However, what I did find was that I would often write my poor, long-suffering characters into a corner, which would take some intensive thought to figure out how they would get out of the jam I had put them in. This I have found tends to increase tension and unpredictability. I would not recommend that a new writer starts off this way but honestly every writer needs to find his or her own direction and style, so some may be able to do this right away. I certainly couldn’t have. I was not a natural writer. I always had good ideas, but it took me quite a few years to be able to write them effectively.
When I first heard about people writing blogs, I could not conceive of doing so myself; but (because I had finally broken away from the strictures of my earlier carefully structured writing) when I was finally asked to write this blog on the ExoTech website, I decided to take up the challenge. I don’t get that much feedback but what little I’ve received has been positive. So, I’m continuing along the way that all my previous blogs have been written. I spend an hour or so every week thinking about what I want to say, then write the blog. When I’ve written about my life (which has been the majority of the blogs), I’ve jumped all over the place, from the Namib desert to canoeing across France, to working as a bouncer in a night club in Soho, London, to working in British TV, then back to South Africa – but not in sequence. Because I’ve almost run out of writing about the more interesting moments in my life, I’ve tackled some other subjects, including writing about other people, most of whom I’ve known at some stage.
A blog in some respects is like writing poetry. You get an idea and you put it down. It doesn’t have to follow a logical sequence although it should have some structure. I write mostly free verse, which is non-rhyming but there should be a rhythm to it even so. In many ways it’s a welcome respite from the more structured form of movie screenplays or the marathon of writing a novel. To have the opportunity to create all these writing genres is the perfect balance, which is something I’m finally able to do.
Although most of my working life has been involved with writing movie screenplays or TV series, the last nine years in the UK have given me the opportunity to put more emphasis on novel writing. By the way, I no longer use the term “film” if I can help it – for the simple reason that movies (or pictures, if you prefer) are mostly shot on digital today rather than on film. Some “old school” diehards continue to shoot on film believing that the quality and texture of the good old celluloid cannot be surpassed. Despite my advancing years, I embrace new technology where it works and try not to cling onto something just because it’s always been the way it’s done. Digital movie technology continues to become more and more sophisticated, and I truly believe that today any effect created on film can be duplicated or even improved with digital. Besides, there are many ways in which movie budgets can be reduced with the efficiency of digital cameras and editing.
When I started to focus on writing novels as well as movie screenplays, I found that there was a whole new series of barriers between the writing of something and the publishing of it. The first thing I learned was that, in order for one’s work to be taken seriously by a publisher, one has to first find an agent willing to represent one. Although there’s nothing to stop you approaching a publisher yourself, I’m told that your work is either dumped or put on a pile that may take eons to be read. The logic behind this makes sense. If any writer, good or bad, were to submit directly to a publisher, the publisher would be inundated with manuscripts, the majority of which would be unpublishable. The literary agents’ reputations rest on their ability to only submit works to the publisher that they truly believe deserve to be published. This makes it much easier for the publisher to select works from a list of manuscripts that he knows are already good enough for the agent to send to him. Sadly, I have found that agents are incredibly difficult to please because of their fear that they may submit a novel to a publisher that is substandard. Should that happen, the publisher may not accept that agent’s submissions in future.
So, having struggled through the process of getting my movie screenplays and television series accepted, I now had to start all over again as an unknown – well, not quite. In the 1980s I wrote my first novel and was lucky to meet an established writer in Swaziland who, surprisingly, wrote historical novels set in Europe. He was kind enough to recommend me to his London agent, Laurence Pollinger, who agreed to read my novel entitled Nobody. I was delighted to be accepted by the agent. My novel reached a final list of six books that either Penguin or Fontana, I forget now, were considering for publication. Sadly, they only published three of the six and I was not one of those chosen.
I continued to focus on movie and television writing, except for a short period between 2001 and 2002 when I managed to write a couple of weekly fiction serials published on the websites of two clients. The idea was to get people to come back over and over again to the website to read the serial and in the process pick up commercial information on the website as well. It worked well and I wrote two serials for Sparkling Waters (a country hotel outside Johannesburg in the Magaliesberg mountains) over those two years. In the second year I also wrote a serial for Mugg and Bean, a chain of restaurants spread throughout South Africa. Both were successful.
Much later, I realized that my Sparkling Waters serial, consisting of about five pages per week over two years, meant I had written the equivalent of two novels. I re-edited the episodes into novel form about the same time that I met Andrea Grant Webb, who after many years of involvement in the publishing business was just setting up her own publishing house, Pagoda Tree Books. Despite previous advice about getting an agent first, I took the opportunity to mention my two books which were now entitled Pursuit of Treachery and Deceit of Treachery. Andrea was kind enough to read the first one and enjoyed it. She then asked if I had a third novel in the series, which would then go out as a trilogy. I replied that I had not written a third but was happy to do so now. This has been written and is entitled Surviving Treachery.
All three books are linked by one family with other characters featured in each novel. They are mostly set in and around the country hotel, called Buffalo Hills in the novels, but also have sequences in the US, Britain and the West Indies. The genre is action/adventure/romance, set in the years they were written but with quite a bit of historical detail of the Magaliesberg mountain area, where two major battles of the Anglo-Boer war were fought in 1901.
I have done two book signings on the release of Pursuit of Treachery – quite an experience. They were very successful, and a number of books have been sold (paperbacks available in Britain and the US and on Amazon/Kindle). I have received some excellent reviews, but I’ve discovered that going with a new publisher means that both myself and Andrea have to work hard to make the books more widely known. The second novel will be released in June 2022 and hopefully that will gain some more momentum. Apparently, the more reviews I can acquire from readers, the more seriously Amazon and others will take the book. So, if you enjoy a fast-paced adventure story in an unusual location, well…
It does give me some perspective on how much work we need to do in order to launch ExoBrain, no matter how brilliant the product is. I’ve been praised for my writing and know I’ve got a good product but if few people know my books exist, I’ll not become a “best seller.” This also applies to ExoBrain, so it’s up to all of us who are part of the team to spread the word far and wide!
An ExoTech Ltd shareholder, Chris is currently authoring two of the four books to be published the day ExoBrain launches and has helped to create ExoBrain’s introductory video to the Confidential Technical Briefing. Chris has spent his working life in the film and television industry, starting with BBC Television in London, then ATV in Birmingham becoming, at the time, the youngest Studio Manager in Britain.
Later, in South Africa, he wrote and directed film and TV commercials, having four South African entries at the Cannes Advertising Festival. After a number of years of writing and directing or producing documentaries (eight international awards) and corporate videos, he concentrated on writing feature film screenplays (five screened) and television series (seven screened). He has a novel, ”Pursuit of Treachery,” with a literary agent and is currently obtaining finance for an action adventure feature film he has written and is co-producing. He is a published poet and has given many readings.