Sunday, 18 November 2012

Diversionary tactics

I normally write my stuff in linear fashion, but occasionally I will divert away from this and write a later scene and store at the back to be included at a later date.

I use an author-friendly program called Scrivener, which is ideal for this as I can label the section as something that appears last in the list of files and I will use the 'explanation' scene later. It runs to some 850 words because it contains dialogue between the two characters central to this part.

The only reason I did this scene out of order was to avoid carrying a somewhat complex bit of reasoning around in my head while juggling other aspects of the tale. I may, however, still remember all the bits of it and write it out again, rather than paste my later scene in.

We shall see as a lot depends on who else might need to be present at the explaining. I don't leave a lot of characters in any scene as silent observers, so it may have to change.

One other aspect: although my story is set in London in Victorian times I have avoided in my rush to do a lot of research into street names. Having lived there years ago I can remember all sorts of place names and so on, but when I come to the second draft I will insert place and streets to provide an 'authenticity' (if a steampunk novel can have aspire to that) so that my character doesn't go from say one road in east London to one several miles to the west in an impossibly short time.

(I recall seeing a movie set in my home town which, for purely visual purposes to entertain an audience who had never visited it, had the characters turning a corner and being in a completely different end of the city five seconds later.)

Anyway, I have got hold of a map of London from the early years of the 20th century or so that shows me street names as they were, though in fairness a great many of London's roads have been named exactly the same then as now. Any city that can still have an Isle Of Dogs and a Ha-Ha Road* can't be all bad.

*Yes, really! Ha-Ha Road is in Greenwich, of GMT fame.









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