Knocking One Out

How to Write Drama for British Television Part 37b of 83 by Derek Duggan

It’s becoming ever more difficult to make money out of writing books. If there is one thing that we’ve learned from the self-publishing revolution it’s that there are a lot of people out there who feel the need to justify the expense of buying a laptop by writing a novel and slapping it onto Amazon. In fact, according to recent market research carried out by the University of Market Research most new laptops come with a fucking terrible novel pre-installed, with a one click to publish option. This leaves the serious writer with a very simple problem which is this – How are people going to notice your not-shit novel among all the other shit novels? And is there enough of a shit novel audience to go around anyway? Probably not, is the sad but realistic answer to that. And that means many of you will be kissing your hard earned £130 a year from Amazon goodbye. So, how are you going to pay the mortgage?

Fear not. There is a solution – television drama. It might seem daunting, but really it’s the exact same as writing a book except that you don’t have to do all the boring description bits about how the characters are feeling as that’s what actors get paid to make up. And that’s one of the best parts – if your drama is shit you can just blame the cast and the director. Anyway, as with every type of writing there are a few basic rules and once you follow these you’ll be laughing all the way to the BAFTAs.

1. The very first thing you have to do, even before you write a single word, is to decide what part Olivia Coleman is going to play. According to statistics obtained under the Freedom of Information Act a staggering 73% of all scripts are rejected instantly because there is no obvious role for Ms Coleman and so almost no chance of the program winning an award as she is going to win it for something.

2. Don’t spend ages worrying about coming up with an original idea – that’s what Scandinavian writers are for. All you have to do is watch stuff with subtitles on BBC 3 and then change it into English and set it in Bournemouth and you’ll be onto a winner. Of course, you’ll have to make it a bit gritty, but a lot of this is easy to achieve as many British actors are naturally quite ugly – or what they call in the business ‘Character Actors’ – so everything seems that much more grim to begin with. This can be accentuated by getting an actor like the good looking Doctor Who to be in it too and have him look sad a lot and be upset about things which he can articulate by showing his bottom teeth and squinting his eyes a bit. Remember to put that into the stage directions –

EXT. DAY.

THE GOOD LOOKING DOCTOR WHO SITS ON A BENCH IN BOURNEMOUTH LOOKING AT THE SEA. HE IS UPSET ABOUT PEOPLE HAVING AFFAIRS OR BEING MURDERED AND STUFF SO HE STICKS HIS BOTTOM TEETH OUT AND SQUINTS HIS EYES A BIT.

Then you just need to throw in a modest amount of swearing and you’re sorted.

3. Another option to consider is reworking a classic. You have two options here. The first is where you can modernise something like in that one where Alan Turing and Bilbo Baggins solve crimes with the occasional help of Aunt Sally. That show has changed from the original classic mostly by being set in the modern era instead of ancient London. These updates have been so cleverly woven into the very fabric of the show that they are never directly referenced by the lines the characters speak. Instead, the writer has used costume.

EXT. DAY. 22B BAKER STREET.

ENTER BILBO BAGGINS WEARING A MODERN BINMAN JACKET

And you can see how easily the era was set there.

The second option is where you rework an old swashbuckling classic and have actors wear flouncy shirts while standing outside a castle in former Czechoslovakia and pretend that they’re not freezing their bangers off while they lock horns with Old Man Doctor Who.

4. You could also try your hand at a period piece. The main drawback with this is that you will have to do some research. For example, all the people in olden days were quite boring which is why the average life expectancy was so much shorter in the past as many people actually died of boredom and why a one hour drama about them feels like it’s been going on for fifteen fucking years. That’s the kind of painstaking detail you’ll have to include if you don’t want history pedants writing in to complain about the inaccuracy of your show.

So what are you waiting for? Get writing.

Glad I could help.

Christmas Fun. Fun, Fun or How to turn your fabulous imagination into big Christmas bucks by Derek Duggan

The one thing all writers have in common is the ability to use their imagination. Authors use this on a daily basis to imagine characters, stories and, mostly, what it would be like to make a living out of writing. Most people in the street would never have imagined that little boys like to be penguin pimps at Christmas and that the general public would find it cute, but a writer did. And then the shop the writer imagined this for went on to sell millions of cuddly little penguin sex workers.

Christmas sees massive book sales, of course, because there are so many people out there who are too lazy to buy a real present for friends and family. The market becomes flooded with celebrity titles making it difficult for the everyday author to break through. But maybe it’s an opportunity. Perhaps we should employ all that imagination laterally. There are other areas we could move into.

There’s nothing that people enjoy more at Christmas than sitting down after the disappointing meal and falling out over a game of Trivial Pursuit. Why not cash in on this tradition by inventing your own game? You could bring in familiar elements, like celebrities or well known TV shows.

For example, make some cards up with the names of random ex-footballers, ex-politicians and people who’ve slept with Hugh Heffner and shuffle them before dinner. Everyone picks a card and the ones who get Ant and Dec get to laugh at the rest of the guests while they try to force down the boiled to fucking mush sprouts and the dry as monkey jizz bird meat. During this round the person with the Slept with Heff card has to scream before every bite and the person with the Got voted off another reality show in the first round card has to try and get off with the person who has the Girl from Ireland nobody’s ever heard of card. The winner of the round is the one who compliments the food in the most sincere manner when it’s all gone. After dinner whoever’s got the Ex-model card has to go around in a bikini. Another rule is that if anyone needs a shit they have to do it in a lean-to at the bottom of the garden (except for those with the Ant and Dec cards, of course, who can shit in comfort). Endless hours of Christmas fun there.

Depending on your family, another game you might like to try is The Jeremy Kyle Game. This game requires a minimum of nine players – seven male and six female – a high horse and two Christmases – and it guarantees two Christmases you’ll never forget. On the first Christmas you draw cards. The person with the Jeremy Kyle card must go home at this point. Everyone else has to get absolutely hammered, switch the lights off, put on blindfolds and then shag the first person they stumble into. On the second Christmas, the person with the Jeremy Kyle card sits on the high horse and reads out the results of all the paternity tests and then the rest of the players kick the shit out of each other. Think of all the money someone like Hasboro would pay you for that.

Perhaps you’d prefer something a little more sedate, so why not invent something like The Jeremy Clarkson game? This could be good if you’ve got a Nan that makes taxi drivers look liberal. There could be lightning rounds where you have to see how many ethnic minorities you can insult in one minute or how many racist nursery rhymes you can recite. The winner is the person who goes on the news the next day and gives the most contrite apology.

If you’d like to try your hand at crafting a board game you could do something like The Kim Kardashian Road to Happiness game. Divide a board into one hundred squares and put a task on every second one. When the players land on a square they must do whatever is written there. For example, if they get the Make a reality TV show about absolutely nothing square the other players have to follow them around with their phones filming everything they do for six months. If a player completes a task successfully they get a small bottle of refined human fat which they can inject into their posterior. The winner is the person with the biggest arse at the end.

But these are just starting points. Don’t let your fabulous imagination rust away to nothing over the festive season – make your own games up, and who knows? Maybe next year everyone will be playing your game and you’ll be raking in the cash.

Merry Christmas everyone. Glad I could help.

A Shower of Golden Rules – or How to make social media work for you by Derek Duggan

There are a lot of pressures on writers these days. Not only do you have to write books and stuff but now, with the demands of an ever present public, you have to write about other things across several platforms.

This can seem a little daunting to the novice, but there are some simple rules and once you follow them you’ll be laughing all the way to the bank (and then, as a writer, crying all the way home again). First, and most conspicuously, you will have to make regular posts on social media sites. This can be a little bit tricky as you have to show people that you, as a writer, are better than everyone else while making yourself seem like a regular Joe Soap at the same time. It doesn’t matter which platform you choose, the rules are the same.

1. Wine/alcoholic beverages. You have to mention wine in at least every other post or people will think you’re not an alcoholic and therefore not a real writer. It doesn’t matter if you’re really a teetotaler, you still have to post things like – Hey, is it wine o’ clock yet? – or – It must be beer thirty – or – It must be time to down a bottle of whiskey and shit the bed by now! Nobody will buy your work if you don’t do this. In a recent study at the British University of Made up Studies it was found that the amount of times wine was mentioned on a writer’s time line was directly proportional to the amount of sales achieved. And that’s a fact. If you can’t think of any wine related thing to say why not simply post a link to some online article that says drinking lots of wine makes you really good at doing everything and makes you really healthy and people who live under bridges and shout at traffic are just doing it wrong. This will help you to connect with regular alcoholics and convince them to buy your stuff.

2. Work in progress. You have to mention this from time to time or people might forget that you’re not just someone who lives under a bridge and shouts at traffic. Don’t go into details – just say something about drafts and word counts and that should keep everyone happy. In this way you can connect with regular people by pretending that you do some work too and don’t actually spend the whole day farting about on the internet.

3. Stuff about dogs/cats. It’s a well-known fact that people who are interested in buying books are much more interested in photos of your dog than they are in your reviews. Think about it - How many times have you come across a novel that has all five star reviews on Amazon only to be put off buying the book when, on inspection of the author’s Facebook page, it turns out they haven’t posted twenty five pictures of their dog sitting on the couch in the last half an hour? I think you can see the logic in this. It will help to show that you have as little in your life as ordinary people and thus connect with them.

4. Wine. See number 1.

5. Links to grammar tests. You need to post one of these a month to show how good you are at doing English and to remind other people that they are shit at it. This will show people that you’re dead clever and that because you got ten out of ten on this online test your book is obviously a work of genius and is definitely worth reading. People don’t want to think that the book they’re reading is stupid as they feel it might reflect badly on them and people will think they’re a thicko. Dan Brown probably got ten out of ten on several online grammar tests. I rest my case.

6. Food stuff. In case all the animal pictures haven’t convinced the general readers out there that you are at least as boring as them there is always room for the occasional food post. Just stick up a photo of your dinner and watch your book sales soar. Everyone loves a good picture of someone else’s dinner. A recent study done by a University somewhere found that when normal people sit down with their families at night after being at work all day all they want to do is pick up their tablets and look at pictures of other people’s dinner. They can’t get enough of it. And the study found that when people see a picture of some potatoes and random meat and boiled-to-fuck vegetables on Facebook, the first thing they do is to go to Amazon and buy a book. It’s in a scientific study so it must be absolutely true.

7. Links to a good review you just got. There’s nothing that excites common people more than knowing that a writer they know has just received a five star review on Amazon or somewhere. Most ordinary folk can’t wait to read how LoveCats169 couldn’t put your book down and they’ll be delighted that she’s managed to spell most of the words correctly in her review. This shows how normal people, just like the other people you know on Facebook, would like your book if they read it.

8. Wine. See number 1.

And that’s it for social media. See? It’s nothing to be worried about.

Glad I could help.

The Secret to Writing a Series – Part 14 – or the real trick behind avoiding writer’s block by Derek Duggan

These days it is almost inconceivable to write a novel that isn’t going to be part of a series. Readers, apparently, can’t get enough of the same characters doing the same things endlessly. In fact, they cling to contrivances like, say, a magic baddie trying to kill a magic goodie only really while he’s at school and making sure to draw out his attempts to cover an entire school year so that the magic baddie can be defeated in a way that will allow the magic goodie and his friends to get an extra few points to ensure they win the house cup.

First let us take a look at the history of the series. The modern series was invented in 1955 by Ian Fleming when he released the third in the James Bond series of books, Moonraker. There had been many attempts at the series before, but they’d never quite made it past the sequel stage and most of these books disappeared into obscurity almost immediately after they were launched. How many of you have read Oliver UnTwisted,  1985, or Tolstoy’s massive flop A Bit of Arguing and then Everyone Getting Along?

Tolkien had a shot at this too, but ran out of steam at three, also in 1955, with the release of the ultimate volume of The Lord of the Rings, the prophetically titled Peter Jackson’s Pension. So Fleming was left to develop the format alone. He wrote fourteen books in all, many of them quite good, as nobody had realized at that time that there was no need to keep up any semblance of quality with a series. Since then, of course, there have been about 31 Bond books, including the rather good Young Bond series by Charlie Higson and the shatteringly awful Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks.

Writing a series is not for the faint of heart – Early attempter Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a ton of short stories featuring Benedict Cumberbatch, but when he tried to convert these into novels it sent him so mental in the face that he started trying to talk to ghosts and things until, in the end, the only person he spoke to was Bruce Willis.

Fleming avoided going bananas by being a bit of a subtle misogynist (allegedly).  You have to look in his books carefully to spot this, but if you think about it, calling a character Pussy Galore  (Goldfinger, 1959) could be interpreted as an example of this tendency. However, recently uncovered correspondence between him and his publisher that I’ve just made up shows that he had originally been much more even handed with his choice of character names and the title character of that particular novel, Auric Goldfinger, had originally been called Cock Uptheringpiece, so maybe we shouldn’t be too quick to judge. But finally the pressure of  keeping the quality up got to him and made him die.

So, how could he have avoided this early grave? Well, he could have taken a leaf out of Erle Stanley Gardner’s books about paint drying, or, as they are more commonly known, the Perry Mason series. This began in 1933 when Gardner realized that there was no Bargain Hunt on the telly in the afternoon and pensioners had nothing to do with their time other than smell faintly of wee. There were over eighty novels featuring lovable Perry and his pals and at the time of Gardner’s death there were 135 million copies of the books in print, which is, coincidently, exactly how many words there are in the bit of The Deathly Hallows where they just hang about doing a bit of camping while waiting for the big showdown at the end of the school year. The difference between Gardner and Fleming is that Gardner realized that in order to avoid a relatively hasty descent into madness and/or dying what he needed to do was to just stick to the formula and write each new book as if the previous ones never happened. And this simple system can really play into the hands of the lazy writer – you still have to actually sit down and type out eighty books, but you never have to worry about writer’s block or anything.

Of course, you need to come up with a simple hook. In Gardner’s case it is that someone is accused of a murder and then, despite what seems like overwhelming evidence at the start, it turns out they didn’t do it and after a bit of cross examination by Perry the real murderer fesses up, just like in real life.

A recent series that has taken this approach is Alexander McCall Smith’s The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency in which some people drink bush tea and some don’t and some people talk to their shoes. And some cars get fixed. This may seem pedestrian, but the hook, the clever bit, is that it all happens in Botswana, so people have funny names which is absolutely hilarious.

And that’s it. That’s all you need to write a series. Just pick a random place and have some people with funny names prove that someone didn’t kill someone else and you’re on your way to your first (of many) bestseller. Here’s a title you can have for free – Hamish Mc Floogenhat and his Outer Hebridian Key Cutting Shop. There’s no end to the possibilities with that one.

What are you waiting for?

Glad I could help.

GENRE SPOOF COMPETITION (FREE Entry!)

In association with Bookmuse

A departure from our usual first page and short story competitions, this time we’re looking for a condensed spoof of your favourite genre, up to 1000 words. See examples below.

Entry is FREE and our favourites will be published in a Bookmuse Reader’s Journal later this year, which will include review templates, quotes, to-be-read record pages and more.

Prize

All published entrants will receive a complimentary copy of the journal, and the overall winner, chosen by the Triskele Books team, will receive a £30 Amazon voucher.

Closing Date

30th September 2014 (winners announced by 31^st October 2014).

To Enter

Simply send your entry as a Word Doc to submissions@wordswithjam.co.uk with the subject ‘Genre Spoof Competition’ and include your name, address and phone number in the body of the email.

A Few Rules

• We will not return or keep entries after the winners have been announced. Please keep your own copy.
• Entries must be in English.
• You must be 16 years or over.
• Stories must be previously unpublished either online or in print, and must not have been accepted for publication elsewhere. We do, however, accept stories that have been on critique forums or are currently submitted to another competition.
• No alterations may be made to a submission once received.
• Copyright remains with the author. However, Words with JAM/Bookmuse retain the right to publish the winning entries on their websites and in the Bookmuse Journal.
• Entries from regular columnists of Words with JAM are welcome.
• The prize of £30 Amazon voucher will be paid within 30 days of publication of the winning entry.

EXAMPLE A

Making Up Stories, by Angelica Poppet

It could only happen to Honey!

She’s standing in the rain in only her chemise, her Uggs are soaked and the keys are still upstairs in her Mulberry Bayswater. She only ran out to stop JayCee escaping into the cute little park at the end of her divine Chelsea mews terrace. But the blue-point Siamese has a mind of his own. He slipped between Honey’s shapely, tanned and smooth ankles, just before the door slammed shut. Just wait till she tells the girls about this tonight at the Balenciaga apero!

A taxi pulls up and a man gets out. Honey has no time to notice the Savile Row suit, the hand-tooled Italian leather loafers and rose-gold Rolex Oyster, because she’s hypnotised by his absinthe-green eyes.

“You’re wet,” he says, his voice the rich roasted brown of Sicilian espresso.

“I know,” she breathes, her voice the rippling tinkle of Nepalese windchimes.

* * *

Allegra, Sophia and Loveday screech when they hear about the tall, dark, handsome, minted neighbour. By half-past Bellini, they’re talking weddings.

“And his name?” demands Allegra.

Sophia tuts. “If it’s neither one or three syllables, darling, I simply forbid further contact.”

Honey does the Lady Di (dipped chin, coy smile, lowered lashes).

Allegra gasps. “OhEmGee, it’s both!”

“His name’s Benedict Story. But I can call him Ben.”

Screams, air kisses, more Bellinis.

Allegra cuts to the cuticle. “So no visible weirds?”

Honey hesitates. “He is a bit... odd. He wants to know my ‘über-narrative’ and says stuff like ‘Content is king’. Is that normal?”  Sophia scowls. “Probably works in publishing. Does he have a hairy back?”

* * *

Shanice finds her, eventually, with no tears left to cry. When Honey spills the reason she collapsed on the Conran chaise, unable to move since her morning macchiato, Shanice shrugs and gets on with the dusting. Honey gathers all her sobbed-out strength to confront her. Shanice says Ben has a point. Not only does Benedict see Honey as shallow and lacking a developmental arc, but her cleaning lady agrees! Honey can’t bear it. She has no alternative. She must go to Bali.

* * *

A monk in saffron robes (totes perfect for the downstairs bathroom) tells Honey she needs a spiritual leader. She tells him she already has one and confesses why she named her cat JayCee. Turns out he’s never heard of Jimmy Choo.

* * *

Meditation sucks. At least while sitting still for a facial peel, Honey knows she’ll look radiant. Inner contemplation is about as interesting as Radio Four. Sophia, Allegra and Loveday are in New York but ‘admire Honey so much for seeking herself’. Easy to say when sipping Cosmopolitans on Fifth Avenue.

* * *

Heathrow Airport, even after a First Class full reclining bed and antioxidant breakfast, is absolutely as hellish as Honey remembers. But before she can hail a taxi, a burly, brawny and Tom-Ford-scented pair of arms spins her off her feet.

“Benedict Story! I... um... what... er... ohm...”

“Honey. I missed you. So did JayCee. I may look like a catalogue model with passionate ethics and expressive brows, but I’m just a boy in love with the girl next door. Could we combine our expertise and contacts? What say we set up a bespoke personal service providing a beginning, middle and end for the terminally vacuous?”

“Why Benedict, I adore the idea. Whatever shall we call it?”

He blushes attractively. “If you will consent to become my wife, we could call it... Making Up Stories.”

EXAMPLE B

Only Dead Fish Have Open Mouths by Jed Blood

It’s Friday night in Greensville, Colorado. Apple-cheeked Melanie Mills is pretty tired after school and a volunteer shift at Kitty Corner, the homeless cat charity. But tonight is special. She has a secret. She tells her folks she’s studying with the girls and heads out for her romantic blind date.

I’m neither romantic nor blind, but I’m waiting for you, Melanie. Inside my head is a lonely place. Inside my pocket is a garlic crusher. Tonight is for Daddy.

Lauren Laphroaig (don’t try to pronounce it, honey, you’ll choke) is woken at 3am by the phone. On the other end is Detective O’Malley, wearing a shower cap on each shoe, shouting at civilians to stand back and chain-smoking cheroots. The mutilated body of an apple-cheeked teenage girl just washed up in the creek. Lauren sighs, swears and drags on a leather jacket. En route to the river, she listens to Miles Davis, snacks on a chilli dog and regrets her inability to commit to relationships.

Chief Inspector Elmet Bird is at the scene when she arrives; besuited, livid and in urgent need of soundbites for the city council. Lauren rolls her eyes (because she’s feisty) and mimes ‘Bird Brain’ to O’Malley. Bird spots their sniggering and assigns one of his own to assist in the investigation. Travis C. Weed is a law-enforcement-consultant with an apricot tie and a handshake limper than wilted chard.

Pathologist Rita Ferrongut won’t hazard a wild guess as to cause of death, insisting on a full PM first. Lauren and Weed talk to Melanie’s parents (traumatic), her friends (dramatic) and the weird owner of the cat sanctuary (erratic). Weed takes everything in his stride and asks intelligent questions. Lauren notices his long eyelashes and warm smile but still hates his tie.

The morgue. Ferrongut is having lunch (sashimi, sushi and edamame beans) over Melanie’s eviscerated corpse. She offers everyone chopsticks, while demonstrating how the victim’s injuries were caused by kitchen implements, including an oyster schucker. Weed rushes out to puke. Ferrongut belches. Lauren sighs, swears and goes home for a hot shower.

Time to wash off all that death, grief and wasabi. Wraps herself in bathrobe, fills whisky glass, puts on Chet Baker, has bitter phone call with ex-husband. “Married to the job? Maybe. But I’d rather be married to something I care about.” She sighs, swears and sleeps on the sofa.

Detective O’Malley uncovers police records for Barry King, owner of Kitty Corner. The man is dangerous. So Lauren decides to investigate, at night, alone, with no phone. Oh, and it’s raining.

Stumbling blindly through the midnight-black catty-combs beneath the feline refuge, Lauren is whacked on the back of the head. When she comes around, she’s in a cage, gagged and tied with fish scales smeared on her face. Barry (call me Bar) King, with fetid tuna breath, unveils his master plan – the only restaurant in the world to serve human flesh.

Weed, worried, turns up at Lauren’s house. He finds her mobile and listens to the last message. Kitty Corner? That weird guy who smelt of Whiskas? Of course! He tracks them down and calls for back up. But waiting is not an option when Bar King  selects the Hiromoto Hacker from his knife block. Today’s Dish of the Day, with truffle oil and rocket, will be Carpaccio of Inner Thigh.

Weed mans up and bursts in, wrests the cleaver from the madman’s grasp and stabs King with a chopstick. With his last gurgling breaths, King explains he was abused as a child and only allowed to eat tofu.

Beside the corpse, Weed unties Lauren and wipes the scales from her cheek. Relieved, she holds him tight. Confused, he confesses his love.

Lauren sighs, swears and with one regretful lingering kiss, moves on to the sequel.

Are You Made of the Write Stuff?

Or How to let people know you’re a real writer By Derek Duggan

While it’s obvious that a big part of being a writer is actually doing the writing, there are several other things that the modern day author needs to become. A salesman, for one. An entrepreneur, for another. And a lot has been written about these things. However, one thing that is often ignored is this simple question – How pretentious do you actually need to be?

It may seem abhorrent, but being pretentious is a vital part of being an author. And don’t make the mistake of thinking that this is the preserve of the high end literary set. No – these days it is expected of even the most ordinary of writers. Even if you’ve just written a book about army people going around doing shooting and stuff, you will still be expected to be such a pretentious twat that you will do interviews on the telly wearing a balaclava. And that’s a fact.

But you don’t need to jump to this level of bellendedness straightaway. It’s very difficult to carry this kind of thing off from a standing start, so ease yourself into it. Start simply.

Step one is to listen exclusively to BBC Radio 4. Even Gardeners Question Time. This will teach you the vernacular. After a month or so of solid listening you’ll be ready to begin.

The first thing you can do is to stop calling yourself a writer. If you want to be taken seriously you must always refer to yourself as a wordsmith. If you introduce yourself to people thus you can rest assured that they will remember you.

Next, you’ll need to let people know how clever you are without actually saying anything. This seems tricky, but actually it’s very simple. Merely buy a copy of Ulysses by James Joyce and carry it around with you everywhere. Make sure you crease it up a bit and dog ear the pages so it looks like you’ve actually read it and then just leave it on the table when you go to meet friends for coffee. Don’t worry; you won’t have to actually read it. Nobody will ever question you about it or want to discuss it because despite selling millions of copies worldwide the only person who’s ever actually read it is Mrs Joyce and the chances of her showing up to have coffee with you is pretty slim. Once you’ve become comfortable with the book you can learn off a couple of random quotes from it and slip these into conversation. For example, if someone tells you they’re going on holiday to Ibiza or something, why not say – Won’t that be nice? Or, as Joyce might have said - The sea, the snotgreen sea, the scrotumtightening sea. This will make your coffee partner realize that you are indeed a right wordsmith.

After this you might want to have a shot at doing some literary jokes. Perhaps take some friends to the Zoo. When you get to the bear enclosure indicate one of the animals with the corner of your copy of Ulysses and say – I think that one is a Samuel Beckett bear. Your friends may look at you quizzically. Then say – Yes, you can tell because of the big paws! Guaranteed hilarity will ensue and everyone will marvel at how bloody brainy you are.

The next thing you might think about is wearing a hat or some roundy glasses or if you want to go the whole hog, both. Nothing says I’m a brilliant writer like wearing a Panama hat while it’s pissing down in Croydon. And would anyone have gone to see Waiting for Godot if the author responsible hadn’t been an ardent roundy glasses wearer? I think not.

Next you’ll have to start producing something yourself. As a wordsmith you will be used to getting inside the heads of your characters, so use this skill to your advantage and think your way into the head of a teenage girl so you can write some horrendous poetry. Once you’ve done this you’ll be able to whip out your notebook at social gatherings and subject strangers and friends alike to an impromptu recital of your latest poem – Polite Smiles. You will be amazed at how well people will relate to your theme.

Once you’ve mastered this the sky’s the limit. You really can do what you want. George Orwell got so good at it that he pretended to be a tramp for a couple of years. Ernest Hemingway was such a master that he regularly got drunk, punched people in the face and joined in random wars. And John Irving talked about how important he was endlessly.

So what are you waiting for? Dress up like Doctor Who and get out there.

Glad I could help.

Things People Get Wrong Every Day

Number 12: The Book is always better than the film, by Derek Duggan

So, you know how it is – you’re at a party listening to someone who is justifying your misanthropy. Your fake smile is hurting your teeth. Your partner said she was just going to the bathroom for a moment, but that was half an hour ago. You haven’t said a single word in all that time, but your new best bud hasn’t noticed. You imagine being able to open your mouth wide enough to just lean forward and swallow them whole and the tremendous pleasure you’d take in shitting them out the following morning. Somewhere along the line they’ve gleaned you’re a writer and they’ve been telling you all about the sort of book you should be writing and how they only read quality stuff like Danielle Steel or Jackie Collins and then, out of the blue they’ll say – Books are always way better than films. They’ll back this up by telling you how the film of The DaVinci Code wasn’t a patch on the book without ever considering that while the film was so bad it could only have been made worse if Jeremy Clarkson had been in it, it was certainly no worse than the scuttering pile of arse gravy of a book it was based on. Eventually you just think Fuck this and kick them in the banjos/flange before making your excuses and leaving.

There are so many cases where the film is at worst on a par with the book it’s based on and in several cases vastly better. This year, for example, sees the big screen release of Noah. Seriously, Noah, for fuck sake. (The tag line is – I’m the father of a soaking son and the husband of a drenched wife and I will have my big boat full of animals in this life or the next!). Now, no matter how bad that film is - and I’d rather let Christopher Dean do a triple axle spin thing on my knackers than see it - it will still be better than the book it’s based on – Genesis (which is about how God made Phil Collins and Peter Gabriel and stuff).

And what about The Hunger Games? The films manage to skirt over some of the frankly staggeringly awful plot holes in the book (although not the biggest one about the selection process – please see prior rant in a previous issue) and it had that fantastic laugh out loud moment when all those people watching the screens did the really corny salute thing. Add this to the fact that despite the film being a whopping 142 minutes long, it’s still a lot quicker than having to sit down and actually wade through the books.

Next year we are to be treated to the big screen version of Fifty Shades of Grey. I struggle to imagine a way in which the film could be any worse than the book. Again, possibly if Jeremy Clarkson was cast as Grey - Do it to me, do it to me like you’re shooting a badger while setting fire to a gypsy camp.

Sometimes you can see a film that is so tremendously bad and yet inexplicably popular that you think the book must have been very good and they’ve just made an orangutan’s anus of the film. But don’t be tricked. This sort of thinking can lead you to do terrible things like reading Twilight, or Eragon. These are perfect examples of instances where the reader’s imagination is so strong that they actually imagine the book they’re reading isn’t cock cheese.

There are times where, although the book and the film are different in many ways, the director has managed to capture the atmosphere of the book so successfully that you don’t notice the changes. Lasse Halstrom did a superb job of making his 2000 film Chocolat exactly as boring as the book it was based on by Joanne Harris.

Of course, there are many books where both the book and the movie are good, even if in some cases they’re quite different. A case in point is Phillip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? which was filmed as Bladerunner. One of the main reasons I wanted to mention this particular writer here is so I could tell you that in all truthfulness I am a massive Dick fan. The movie doesn’t stick strictly to the book, but it’s equally successful. And this is also the case with Pierre Boulle’s Planet of the Apes. I’m also quite a big Boulles fan. Between Dick and Boulle my weekends are always exciting and I can often be seen with a Dick in one hand and, well, you get the idea with that one.

So, to sum up, what are the main ways in which many films are better than books?

1. They cut out all the shit bits (although sometimes leave lots of shit bits in – all camping stuff in Harry Potter for example).

2. They’re not as long – all descriptions of each individual fucking rock that Frodo and the gang passed on the way to Mordor have been thankfully left out of the 150 hour movie, for instance.

3. Some films of books have Liv Tyler in them whereas no books actually feature her.

I hope that clears up any misunderstandings.

Glad I could help.

The Emperors New Franchise – Is there even any point in attempting to be original?

By Derek Duggan

Here’s a fact – not everyone looks sexy in a thong. Just saying. Here’s another one – eight out of the top ten grossing movies last year were franchise movies, sequels, or based on existing properties. And none of them wore thongs.

So, that means if you’re thinking of writing an original screenplay with a view to selling it for millions you are already at a disadvantage. There’s not really any point in slaving away, developing characters and carefully crafting your plot, if in the end the only films that anyone goes to see are ones where  muscly men and women in lycra (also not something everyone looks sexy in) knock seven bells of shit out of each other, or out of robots or something.

Just how important it is to attach a franchise to one of these movies to trick people into thinking it’s in any way good only becomes obvious when they use precisely the same formula as the big box office winners and come up with a dreadful flop. Nowhere was this clearer than in that film last year where Nelson Mandella fought the big monster things while wearing the giant robot suit. It was called Pacific Rim Job or something and it bombed, despite Mr Mandella’s appearance. If it had been called Godzilla (slated for release this coming summer) Versus the Transformers (also slated for a summer release) then people would have been falling over themselves to see it.

And the quality of the writing has nothing to do with box office success – Star Trek into Darkness was recently voted by fans at a Trek Convention in LA to be the worst Trek Movie of the entire series which takes some fucking doing – and it was beaten by Galaxy Quest which isn’t even a Trek movie. It still made a lot of money. We’ve also had The Amazing Spiderman which had a good cast, decent special effects, but a story that was thinner than William Shatner’s actual hair (allegedly). We’ve got the next installment of The Amazing Spiderman to look forward to this summer along with another X-Men, Captain America, Robocop, Frankenstein etc etc etc.

Indeed, it’s beginning to look like Hollywood is trying to get rid of writers altogether. Even Joss Wheedon, well known for such nicely written pieces as Buffy and in particular Firefly, recently was much lauded for the script of Avengers Assemble which might have read for large parts –

EXT DAY NEW YORK

People in lycra and some aliens and Norse Gods beat the shit out of each other and smash the place to fucking bits for the next hour. Someone in the background wears a thong.

(Note to producers – that will be ten million dollars, please. Thanks, Joss)

This trend is not restricted to movies. Take something like Dexter, for example. It’s based on a book, and that’s fine. The first series was clever and tense with good characters, a great idea and some nice story telling. The second was OK. The third had the same actors in it, but may as well have been a different show altogether for all the resemblance it bore to the original series. But it didn’t end there – it went on for a further five or six seasons. And this is where the difficulty enters – you begin to feel as if you’re in the Twilight Zone (which is surely due for a reboot) as you seem to be the only person who notices the massive drop in the quality of the writing. You begin to think you’re going crazy and feel the need to wrap your head in a sanity towel (you may even feel the need to crowbar really dodgy word-play gags into articles). It seems as if you’ve been sucked into a parallel universe where critical thought causes your toilet parts to fall off or something because everyone is falling over themselves to say how good this thing is despite the fact that it clearly isn’t and has more holes than a week in Vegas with Tiger Woods (probably).

Of course it’s easy to laugh at Hollywood, but before anyone gets on their high horse let’s have a look at some of the recent big hit franchises on British TV. There are currently three Sherlock Holmes things on the go – An American TV thing with Lucy Lu as Watson, a film series starring Tony Stark and directed by Guy ‘Fa faaack sake’ Richie and Sherlock from the BBC which stars Benedict Cumberbatch (excellent as Holmes, but coincidentally one of the stars of the worst Star Trek film ever made, apparently).

What was interesting about the first two seasons of Sherlock was the way the script was cleverly put together to show us the workings of the great detective’s mind. We got to see him making the connections we mortals would never spot unaided, and we delighted at how the only thing he seemed to enjoy was showing us how brilliantly brainy he was. And then we got the third season which everyone seemed to think was superb, but which was, in fact, tremendously disappointing. It may as well have begun with him in the shower with Bobby Ewing. Wearing a thong. Every move was telegraphed to the viewer hours before it happened. There was no satisfactory explanation of how he managed to survive his apparent suicide at the end of the previous season which is precisely the sort of thing the character would have loved. It just looked like the writers couldn’t be arsed to think up anything. A couple of really lame ideas were offered, but nothing that went anyway towards being as clever as the previous series.

And all of this is reminiscent of that moment in Catcher in the Rye, when Holden remarks that Old Ernie, the piano player that everyone adores, is so used to listening to the applause of his fans that he no longer knows what’s good any more. Read the bit yourself on page 84.

So, let’s get our heads down and write something truly original. And let it involve thongs.

Glad I could help.

Getting the most out of the Internet – a basic guide for everyone and God by Derek Duggan

Surely there is no better tool in the aspiring writer’s arsenal than the internet. It makes you wonder how anybody ever wrote anything at all before it was invented by Mr T in the eighties. One of its most basic uses is, of course, simply to check facts, but that’s not much good to us writers. It’s always preferable for the fiction author to just make things up as we go along and then try to apply a plan retrospectively to our story at the end. And writers are in good company there – where would we be if God had checked his facts when he was writing the Bible?

No, there are much better ways to use the internet as a writer. For a start it gives us a great opportunity to see inside the minds of the characters we want to people our stories with without having to actually go out into the real world and do any tedious mucking about with actually talking to people or anything. For example, you may have a story that involves a character who works in the customer service department of an office. You may never have experienced this for yourself and so you could be at a loss as to how to truly inhabit the skin of this person. In the old days you might have had to actually take a job in a real office and spent a year or so working there, befriending people, asking them questions, making endless notes, before you could really understand what it is that office workers do all day. Now, thanks to the internet, that sort of research is a thing of the past. Simply fuck about on facebook all day instead of doing any work and hey presto you’ll know exactly what it’s like to work in customer service. Job done.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are thousands of blogs out there to tell you how useful having a blog is. So, why not write your own blog! You could invite other bloggers on to do a guest blog where they can tell you and your readers all about how useful their blog has been and maybe you could do a guest spot on theirs saying that yours is also useful. This is also the very place for talking about the plan you have retrospectively applied to your new bit of writing in case anyone that has read your stuff has the wrong idea about it. Not only that, but you can fill your blog with other very useful information like how many cups of tea you had while writing your book, what biscuits you prefer, and most importantly, what music you were listening to at the time and how that influenced you. Nothing interests people more than reading about what music someone else has been listening to. If only God would do a blog –

           

Extract from God Blog @yesitsreallyme.com, Bloginus, verses 1-4

Verse 1. And lo, I had hit a wall and wasn’t sure how to continue. In truth I thought I might have to abandon my ambitious project altogether for no baddie had presented himself to hasten my tale onwards.

Verse 2. Thenceforth did I proceed to my mp3 collection and make great declarations that it was to play my favourite song at the time – The Number of the Beast by Iron Maiden.

Verse 3. And then did I fall to my knees and declare Alleluia! As like a bright star in the East the notion did present itself and come fully formed into what would be my head if I had one and thence did the story flow like the Rivers of Babylon (also on my playlist, as is Rasputin – I mean, thou can’st beat a bit of Boney M).

Verse 4. And truly I did give great thanks to Iron Maiden, for I would have been verily bolloxed without them.

Of course, one of the greatest things a writer can do on the internet is to develop a strong social media presence. When you submit your manuscripts this is one of the first things a prospective publisher will look at because it’s much more important to be able to make virtual friends with people than it is to be able to write. The correlation between how many friends you have and how good a writer you are is well documented, but how are you supposed to garner all these friends and followers in the first place? The simple way is to keep asking your existing friends to continuously share links to your blog (and to your friend’s blog that you’ve just done a guest spot on) and to your good review on Amazon. You can occasionally throw in a photo of your dinner (which isn’t a mental-in-the-face thing to do at all) and the odd one of a kitten or dog. This must work and definitely isn’t boring at all as is evidenced by the amount of writers who do just this. You must also throw in constant status updates on how your current work in progress is going. Here’s one I spotted from a while ago on God’s facebook page –

Verily hast I finished my fourth rewrite of the sequel to The Old Testament which is called The New Testament – This time they’re coming back from the dead! (In truth I’m still working on the by-line, maybe I’ll drop it? My publishers simply want to go with – The Gospel, but I think that makes it sound a bit like a West End Musical. What do you think?). I’m not sure which version to go with – perhaps I’ll release all four and let the readers make up their own minds.

And you get the idea with that.

So, that’s just a couple of ways for you to use the internet to great effect. Glad I could help.

Who Are You? (The Dr Who Quiz)

It’s been a hundred and fifty years since Doctor Who started on the BBC and so we thought we’d capitalise on this by having a fun quiz designed to see which Doctor you are most like. Have fun!

Question 1 of 1

Look in the mirror. Examine yourself closely. Do you see –

a) An old grumpy man in a long white wig that looks like it has been bought out of the bargain bin in the joke shop? And are you in black and white?

b) A man in a fur coat with a terrible Beatles wig? Are you still in black and white?

c) Worzel Gummidge?

d) Someone who goes around offering sweets to strangers?

e) A TV vet?

f) Someone who is going to be a lot heavier when they are older?

g) That bloke out of top 1970’s kids art show Vision On? (Not Morph).

h) Someone out of an episode that no one has ever seen?

i) Someone who’ll never talk about it again?

j) A man wearing a coat that’s too big for him?

k) Someone with a chin that begins below your bottom lip and ends slightly above your navel?

Jules Rimet and Me

Procrastinating with Perry Iles

 We played a game, my parents and I, during the 1966 World Cup. At the start of the televised stages, my father took down an ashtray from the mantelpiece, wiped the detritus from his pipe out of it and put it on the footstool in front of his armchair. At the start of every match, the three of us each put a shilling into the ashtray and my father assigned us numbers: zero (me), one (my mother) and two (himself). If no goals were scored, I kept the three shilling kitty. Meagre as it was, it was still a chunk of money in my terms, back in 1966. If a goal was scored we each put in sixpence and the kitty passed to my mother, who won the money if there were no more goals during the match. But if a further goal was scored we added another sixpence and the pot went to my father, and subsequent goals cost us sixpence each and moved the kitty another step round our little numbered circle. I was hoping for goalless draws or results in multiples of three, but each game was rendered interesting even if we weren’t rooting for a particular side, because it didn’t matter which team scored.

We sat around our little Dynatron black and white television during July 1966, ignoring the warm summer evening sunshine, watching as the World Cup played itself out and England, mostly by virtue of being the host nation, managed to survive to the final. The opening game, England against Uruguay, was goalless and won me two shillings plus my stake, so I was bitten by the gambling bug from the start. A few days later, France beat Uruguay by two goals to one and I won a further five shillings and sixpence. 5/6d, we wrote it then, and to this day I do not know why “d” stood for “pence”; it just did, and that was good enough back then. It was probably something Latin. But five-and-six would have nearly bought a Rolling Stones single, and I’d have had change from buying a pint of mild and bitter and twenty Players’ Number Six if I’d been old enough to do such things. We sat through the games, drawing the curtains to stop the sun reflecting off the television screen, cursing the high static levels that made the picture crackle and blur and fine tuning the vertical hold when it started to jump. In Group 2, three of the six games ended 2:1, and my parents paid up with feigned ill-grace. In Group 3, four of the six games ended up 3:1 and my mother won some of her money back before scooping a fifteen shilling pot when Portugal beat North Korea 5:3. In the later stages, one of the quarter finals, both semis and the third place playoff finished 2:1 and my holiday savings started to look healthy. We even joked about the possibility of a game with six goals in it.

But our holiday was the fly in the ointment. On Friday July 29^th we left the comfort of our sitting room, opened the curtains and aired the cigarette and pipe smoke from it and departed for Italy. This was quite a convoluted process back then, because we drove there. There was no Channel Tunnel, no Eurozone, no common currency and no motorways or bypasses. We left in the late afternoon when my father got back from work, we drove out of our Cambridgeshire village and crossed the Thames estuary on the Tilbury Ferry, heading down towards Dover. Crossing the channel to Ostend we dozed fitfully on hard chairs while people who’d got there before us lay down across the longer benches and slept more soundly. There seems to be a universal law of travel that says whenever you need to sit somewhere, or are faced with a delay, the seats are always taken up by unconscious gap-year students, each one lying across four seats and sleeping the sleep of those who believe the world owes them a living. The same is true today of airport departure lounges, where Sebastian and Ophelia consider themselves entitled to four seats each because they stayed in a mud hut in Nicaragua once and ate a lizard for tea. How I would love to be able to summon up the courage and strength of character to simply roll them onto the floor and sit down. But like everyone else, I tiptoe around them so as not to wake them up and smile secretly when other people’s children start striking their sleeping faces with sticky lollipops.

In the early light of dawn we drove through the flat Belgian countryside and got lost in Brussels as usual. When we eventually found the right road, we continued through hilly woodland toward Luxembourg, ate lunch under a tree in the Ardennes somewhere and pondered the football match that afternoon that we were about to miss. These days, of course, we’d have watched it on a laptop or on someone’s iPad, plugged in to the car’s cigarette lighter. Back then, this was impossible, because the car didn’t have a cigarette lighter amongst other things. So my father decided we should go and look for a café with a television, which entailed finding a city, which is how we found ourselves in Metz.

Metz was primarily red — a dusty brick red like a Midlands city. Somewhere to the east of the town, a sluggish Moselle wound its way towards the Rhine. It was hot, so hot that we’d wound the windows of the car down and the pinking of engine valves blatted back at us from the walls. It was the sort of weather when you used to drive with an elbow out of the window and a hand on the roof, fingers drumming with impatience at any minor holdup as you got yourself a cabbie’s suntan (one blackened arm, the rest a pasty and unhealthy white). You don’t get that now because of air-conditioning, which is a godsend in times of extreme heat, but I remember the days when cars were made of plastic and tin, and you couldn’t sit on the seats or touch the dashboard without incurring minor burns. But in Metz there was a pre-storm summer heat, all airless and echoey, as if someone had turned the bass up and added a touch of reverb. Sweaty and sleep-deprived, we found a bar in a rough looking area and went in, which we quickly realized might not have been a good idea. Behind the bar there was a small black and white television showing the match to a silent, concentrating crowd of locals who turned and gazed at us for a few seconds with flat, half-lidded Gallic stares before returning their attention to the match. We could perhaps have done better that to ask for tea, but sadly that’s exactly what my father did, and of course they messed it up, bringing a pot of hot-but-not-boiling water and teabags in cups. My mother went to ask for milk but my father put a hand on her arm and gave her a restraining frown. We sat at a table by the wall drinking black tea and watching the game, which by then was in the final stages of normal time. England was winning 2:1 and I was reasonably happy, mostly because it would win me more money.

But then, in the dying minutes of the game, the Germans scored and the Frenchmen in the bar went deliriously insane. 

In the fug of Gauloise smoke, the yellowed curtains shook to the sound of their roaring. Cups and glasses rattled and hobnails stamped on the floor. Our conclusion was that the French, being French and a great deal more demonstrative, had applauded the goal because it was a goal, not for any more mercenary reasons. My father had been in the war, and had done his bit for his country by helping drain the Italian national economy by spending four and a half years there as a prisoner of war. Why he wanted to go back there for his holidays is beyond me now, but at the age of eleven, mine was not to reason why. Nevertheless, I saw him and my mother exchange a worried glance as extra time started. My father could of course be forgiven for imagining that the French would have been on our side, especially because we were in the Alsace Lorraine region which we had helped liberate from the Germans a couple of decades previously. Verdun was just down the road, where nearly a million French soldiers had been killed by the German guns in World War I. The French owed us, for heaven’s sake. So when Geoff Hurst scored a dodgy goal in extra time, we expected the shouts to be even louder. Instead, Hurst’s goal was greeted with pin-drop silence, a few muted grumbles and then a rising growl of protest that the goal had been awarded despite the ball not appearing to cross the line. I rose from my chair to yell in triumph but my father’s reactions were quicker. He leapt to his feet and clapped his hand across my mouth. A dozen French faces turned to stare in a new silence, a silence that was broken only by the sound my chair made as it fell over backwards onto an uncarpeted floor. It was the sort of silence you get in Texas schoolrooms when you try to criticize creationism and you realize that Bubba and his brother Bubba are going to take you outside and beat you like a red-headed stepchild. I was eleven, tall and quite fat, but my father carried me from that French bar in Metz, walked with my mother in his wake back to our oven-like Vauxhall, where he bundled us in with an unseemly degree of haste.

“Tim, did you pay for the tea?” my mother asked him. My father said nothing, but dropped the car into first and accelerated as hard as possible along the road out of town.

Later I discovered England had won by four goals to two, and was able to collect some more winnings from my parents. I still don’t know why those Frenchmen wanted Germany to win. Why did they hate us so? What’s wrong with the perception of Britain and the British abroad? The countries of Europe are like a bunch of teenagers, lost in Europe on a long journey through time and bickering because we can’t get away from each other. We’d argued with the French for centuries because they were sitting next to us in the back seat and kept pulling faces, but when the Germans had gatecrashed the party we’d grabbed France and pulled her to safety. And now, with the fickleness of adolescence, France was going out with Germany because he was handsome and drove a Mercedes, and we were cross. There’s no telling in European relationships, and we all have really big bombs now, so the future isn’t looking too good. But for the ordinary French homme dans la rue, Germany ruled in 1966 and they’d just taken a bit of a punishment. And as far as the shifting sands of England and France’s relationship is concerned, they might think it’s all over, but it never will be; not in my lifetime and probably not in anyone’s.

Fear and Loathing in the Chilterns

By Perry Iles

There’s a church on a hill, but the bells are pre-recorded because it’s more reliable than campanology. The sound system is more expensive than real bells, so the locals consider it a status symbol. Down the street, retired bankers live in million-pound houses behind high hedges and alarmed gates. There’s a no parking sign by the car park and no turning signs everywhere one might consider turning. It’s too old-fashioned for footballers and too uncool for internet billionaires. Every Saturday morning there are small traffic jams made of Volvos as yummy mummies take Orpheus and Chlamydia to the pony club.

Fear and loathing in the Chilterns. But in the middle of all this, set squarely in the Prosecco-and-Cambozola belt just north of the M25, there’s Chorleywood Literary Festival (cwlitfest.org — be careful with that W, guys. Chorleywood may only be one word but sometimes discretion is the better part). I’ve come from the land of the ice and snow, from the Tennents-and-chips belt just north of Hadrian’s Wall, in a ten-year-old car with 150,000 miles on the clock, full of moody diesel that should by rights be in a tractor. My wife made me sandwiches and packed a sixpack of Pepsi Max, so I’m full of pickle and flatulence as I prepare to rub shoulders with David Suchet, Bill Bryson, Kate Adie and Sirs Ranulph Fiennes and Terry Wogan. The stars of Downton Abbey will be there, as will Tony Benn’s daughter and Hadley Freeman off of the Guardian. And the cast of Triskele Books, an independent group of publishers looking to change the world and make it a better place, hoping to lead us all closer to home, like Grand Funk Railroad only prettier. I’d met them online over the years, but never in more than two dimensions, and their third dimensions were worth the 750 mile drive. Jill, Gillian, Kat, Jane and Liza are remarkable women. They have worked in close proximity for over two years and don’t hate each other yet. This is the first time in my life I’ve ever known that to happen, and I’m quite old now. They have carved an ethos in the ether and formed a partnership on paper. Their books have a style and an imprint that sets them apart and gives them a sense of individuality. Each writer is allowed total artistic control, there are no agents and nobody tells them what to put on the cover (well, you know, within reason…)

Over the last ten years self-publishing has taken over from the vanity trade, so anyone can write a book, design their own cover and hurl it into the world like a small plastic bag full of dog eggs. Because the result is invariably crap. Off-centre block-pastel covers with bad fonts, crushed up front matter, chapters that start on the wrong page, typos, spelling mistakes and the sort of English that makes Dan Brown look like Shakespeare. The Triskele collective does not allow this sort of thing. They have stipulations, including layout and proofreading and the ultimate power of veto. They’re fussy buggers, thank God. They read each others’ books, comment, suggest, hone, polish, sharpen and improve. They do this from the profound and extensive pool of their collected knowledge, which means the books wind up being pretty good. Then they put the results out to independent editors and proofreaders and insist that their covers are designed by Jane Dixon-Smith, who does not inhabit the same universe as us. Jane has three children under five and has moved house three times in the last six months. Nevertheless she runs Words with Jam magazine when she is not busy designing book covers for a lengthy queue of people. Jane has discovered wormholes in the space-time continuum and has harnessed them for the benefit of mankind. Some say that in real terms she is 84 years old, and that she is also The Stig.

Triskele (rhymes with Jellied Eel, by the way) symbolizes the power of the collective. Read their “how we did it” book, The Triskele Trail, by downloading a copy from Amazon. It’s full of good advice which may at first seem rather daunting, but these are the hoops you have to jump through if you want to spend a few years turning yourself into an overnight success. And this is why Triskele exists. The group can call on a vast network of resources and helpful forums, giving their authors a much greater chance of success. Their authors, rather than being cosseted stars who are jetted from one book signing to the next, become part of that process, encouraging dynamic growth and endless input, giving and receiving. On Saturday morning at Chorleywood, they explained how they did it, and released three new books into the world: Liza Perrat’s Wolfsangel, Kat Troth’s Ghost Town and Jane Dixon-Smith’s Overlord – the Rise of Zenobia. Discover them at www.Triskelebooks.co.uk. The three writers and their colleagues set themselves up for nearly two hours as a human resource library but couldn’t hope to cover all the ground that’s in the book. Then all five Triskele founders explained their ethos before letting the audience have a taste of the three most recent releases.

After all that, I went in search of lager and discovered that Chorleywood is scary. I’m from Scotland and Chorleywood is darker. I’d gone to abandon the car at the hotel so I could get drunk like everybody else, and I walked back across the common, where the path gave out and left me flailing in waist-high wet grass in total darkness. My phone wouldn’t work. There were no signals here, less than twenty miles from London, so I struck off through the grass, expecting a group of well-spoken and impeccably-mannered natives to appear in front of me at any moment and torture me by taking me to an antiques fair or making me read the Daily Mail or something. When I finally stumbled, wild and disheveled, onto the road across from the pub, I found everyone ready to go home again. Now, like any other ginger haired Scottish bastard, I wanted beer, so I had to go all the way back to the hotel and get the car and find, in this wilderness, a branch of Aldi where the lager wasn’t made from hand-rubbed Ruritanian hops and as a result didn’t cost £5 a bottle. The best I could hope for was something Mexican from Tesco Express, and thus armed I returned to the fray.

Here’s a sign of culture. If the food hurts, you’re somewhere posh (unless it’s Japan, where the food wriggles too). Here, the Chinese takeaways proved their true cosmopolitanism by filling their spicy chicken with… well… spices, to threshold of pain levels. I swear the lager hissed as it went down. My mouth hadn’t hurt this much since I was last in Switzerland and cut it to ribbons on Toblerone. I am a man of simple tastes, so my journey back to Scotland was a happy one. I ate what remained of my wife’s sandwiches, swithered between Maccy D’s and Burger King when I got hungry again and used up the last dregs of my wrongly-coloured diesel. My wife, I think, was surprised to see me again, considering as she did that the literary world was filled with loose-moralled floozies who would swoon at my every utterance like a gay man at an Oscar Wilde gig. My wife sees my better attributes, and occasionally forgets that they are framed within the body of a fat, bald sweaty bloke that’s knocking on sixty. I got home in one piece, still slightly hung over, a little bilious and marginally liverish. My first literary festival. No pretensions, no fuss, no prima donnas or over-sensitivity, just a good time with a great bunch of people and a fair amount of alcohol. Triskele books; brimming with talent and ability, populated by real people from a real world with stories to tell.

Go read them.