Tag: characters

Uncategorized

A Quick Word About Postcards

Although postcards are now virtually obsolete in daily life, I can remember a time when they were used to enter competitions, to cast votes in polls, and to let friends and family know you’d reached your holiday destination safely.

But when I’m going away for a day or two, I like to maintain the last of those traditions. In most cases, I know I’ll arrive back home before the mail does, even when it’s within Great Britain, but it doesn’t diminish the surprise for the recipient.

A typical card measures around four inches by six, although there are wide variations, with the front featuring a picture or design. The back is split into two equal sections, so your text has to fit into that left section because the address and the stamp will take up the right-hand side. You can also buy books of plain postcards where the address and stamp go on the front, allowing use of the entire rear side.

Still, the fixed format forces you to pick your words wisely or to minimise the size of your handwriting. The inventors of the SMS initially chose 160 characters as the limit based upon those restrictions.

In the earliest days of mobile messaging, each one typically cost between 5p and 10p to send; those figures are not adjusted for inflation. Some handsets supported longer messages, but each block or partial block of 160 characters was charged separately.

Despite this, an SMS easily undercut the price of a stamp in the second half of the 1990s – shown by this table from The Great Britain Philatelic Society – especially as you didn’t need to buy a physical postcard either.

The cost of SMS and similar messages today is negligable. Most phone subscriptions have some element of inclusive or unlimited allowance, putting the higher cost into perspective. On a day trip to Birmingham yesterday, I sent just two cards, but they cost me 87p apiece in second-class stamps.

Knowing I might not have a chance later in the day, my intention was to write them both on the flight and post them at the other end. I forgot to take them out of my bag until we were almost ready to land, but they’re both now safely in the post awaiting delivery.

Uncategorized

Memorable Names for Fictional Characters

Most of the time, I find it easy to think of what the characters in my stories should be called. Their names often appear at the same time as the storyline.

I wrote one such piece in 2014 titled Adrian Eats the World, which appeared at the same time as the title. Until I found the file while writing this, I thought that was still its name. In 2015, it seems I had a change of mind and amended his name to Mikey. I can’t remember what made me change this, so it’s now been restored.

More recently, I’ve included a Rosalind McQueen because the cadence simply worked well. During the story, she changes this to Scott McQueen, which has a different cadence but is equally as pleasing.

The most difficult character to name was a sci-fi story set during the 1960s in a world where a group of intelligence agents were worried about an impending visit from aliens. This character was supposed to be the young man who had been drafted into the unit as a favour by his father.

I looked to take the James Bond approach, with an ordinary first name and a distinctive last name. It took weeks to settle upon Malcolm St Clement. Even then, I wasn’t certain because the only other person I could find with that last name was the actress Pam St Clement from EastEnders, and even that’s a modification of her real name: Pamela Clements. However, it sounded good, and I kept using it.

On other occasions, a name is the least of my concerns.

In one of my series, the first-person narrator remained unnamed until the 24th part. I didn’t even realise I was omitting the name at first; it simply wasn’t central to the storyline. Besides, the 2004 film Layer Cake pulled off this trick nicely.

Even once I became aware of the omissions, there were workarounds I could employ to avoid saying it. It helped that the series was an ensemble effort comprising seven other named main characters. Eventually, I decided to reveal the narrator’s name as a minor twist in what was intended to be the finale. I’ve since added a surprise 25th story.

The other layer to this discussion is the use of nicknames. I find these hard to pull off convincingly. Unexplained nicknames can be jarring, yet when they are explained, the backstory can feel contrived or a little too perfect.

In this instance, it might be wise to take a cue from real life. For instance, there’s a website for pilots and fans of the F-16 fighter jet that has a whole section devoted to the imaginative callsigns in the forces. A few are clever, but most are a little ramshackle and that makes them sound a little more convincing.

Uncategorized

The Stories That Have Legs

Around this time last year, I intended to write a silly joke for Twitter. It was intended to read along the lines of ‘Does anyone remember before the Internet, you had to phone in your YouTube order and wait for the videos to be delivered?’

I never posted that joke because I kept thinking of details I wanted to add. at last count, that one-liner has gradually morphed into a short story of more than 1,800 words.

Now another piece is currently growing legs in a similar manner. My old school sports grounds are on a main road, so I often walk past them. This prompted a one-off story about a group of teenage school pupils who are required to take games class, but either loathe it or are at least indifferent about it, so they find other ways to keep themselves occupied during this time.

Unusually for me, I posted it to a popular writing website to see what the feedback would be like. Some commenters pointed out there was a potential cliffhanger, so I wrote a second part to fill that gap.

That second installment received as much attention as the first. By this time, the characters were so well-rounded that I could take them out of games class and into other locations, so a third part quickly followed.

In an effort to avoid confusion in the one-off story, I’d only named a handful of the 14 characters. This was fine for the sequel, which took place in the same location the following week. However, it had been established in the one-off that the summer break was nearly upon them. The narrator is shown to ask the named characters to meet up again during summer, but none of them were keen for their own reasons.

I therefore injected some retroactive continuity in an effort to avoid inconsistencies.

It would have been possible, but implausible, for all the named characters suddenly to change their minds about meeting up again. However, there were two unnamed characters mentioned en passant by the narrator. I pushed them centre-stage when said they had somewhere to meet over summer. This in turn persuaded the best friend of the narrator to change her mind and join them.

As such, the number of characters reduced to four, arguably a more manageable than 14. Introducing that new location then meant I was able to introduce other characters who weren’t necessarily required to have been in the previous installments.

The third part hasn’t made nearly as big a splash on the website as its two predecessors. I’ve nonetheless planned for a series of six or seven short stories because I really need to write this tale, almost regardless of the reaction.

I’m now considering releasing them as one collection, which will give me even more opportunity to make the continuity seamless rather than retrospective.

Uncategorized

The Double Act

One style that’s common to all genres is the double-act. From comedy to fantasy to police dramas, having two main characters is a powerful tool for increasing the tension and driving forward the plot.

One type of double-act takes two characters who are fundamentally different and observes what happens between them. In the 1987 film Lethal Weapon, the veteran Murtagh sees the world very differently from the trigger-happy Riggs, and they often fall out over each other’s actions.

However, a double-act doesn’t necessarily need to argue all the time. In Good Omens, Aziraphale and Crowley represent good and evil respectively, but they have a longstanding agreement to let the other do his job without interference. I find it interesting that the novel was written by a duo, but because Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett write in a similar style, I think that accounts for the consistent quality of the writing.

But even a duo needs support from time to time, and that’s where a supporting character can be useful.

In the Channel 4 comedy Peep Show, the duo comprises the serious Mark and the laid-back Jez. Two of their constant supports are Mark’s love interest Sophie and Jez’s acquaintance Super-Hans. Their actions can affect the two main characters, and drive forward the plot, in ways that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.

Uncategorized

Unpicking Suits

Over Christmas and New Year, I had the chance to catch up on legal drama Suits up to and including season 7.

So far, it’s been an engaging watch, and I think that’s down to the strong writing. The characters are motivated by what they want, whether that’s money, power, or – especially in the case of Louis Litt – petty one-upmanship.

It’s also clear that the writers have lived the experience of being a lawyer rather than simply researched it. In that sense, it has a similar feel to The West Wing. But the writing does have some flaws.

It is reasonable that characters will think in a similar way because they work in the same field, but they often express themselves with identical turns of phrase, sometimes down to swearing in the same manner.

The other piece of dialogue that often appears is: ‘What are you talking about?’ Used sparingly, this allows a character to explain the point in a different way and allow the viewer to understand it more clearly. In Suits, however, it’s used as a crutch.

That said, I’m still looking forward to season 8, whenever I have a chance to watch it.