Dredd

For some reason, I missed this one when it came out at the cinema, which is a shame because, now that I’ve seen it, Dredd is one of the films I’d most like to watch in big-screen 3D.

In the end, it was a stray movie trailer that brought the movie to my attention. I’m naturally predisposed to like this sort of thing as I was a fan (though not a hardcore fan) of the excellent Judge Dredd / 2000AD comics. However, my expectations weren’t that high after the unfortunate Sylvester Stallone treatment that came out a few years ago. On reflection, it was probably the haunting music in the trailer (In For The Kill by La Roux) that made me think of Blade Runner and compelled me to go out and get the DVD.

And I’m so very glad I did, because Dredd is a fantastic film for all sorts of reasons.

Firstly (mild spoiler alert) it feels as though it was made by someone who had never heard of focus groups. Defying all convention, principal character Judge Dredd doesn’t go on some trite emotional journey. The young rookie Judge Anderson doesn’t teach the older lawman new tricks or force him to confront his inner demons. And there’s no contrived love-interest.

Another welcome omission is the almost mandatory how he became section. Sure, there will be a lot of people who come to this movie without prior knowledge of the characters or the universe it’s set in, but Dredd works just fine without it. So many comic-book adaptations spend so long spoon-feeding us the protagonist’s back-story, that there’s little time for a decent story.

This does have a story, and it feels like a real, comic-book story – straight into the action, and staying with the action all the way through to the hugely satisfying end.

I loved the costumes and the production design. Often, the best science fiction has that gritty, lived-in quality – a future that might have emerged from the decay of our own present, rather than something designed by Apple. Dredd has a wonderful look – maybe the best since Blade Runner – but it isn’t all dark and gloomy. The idea of featuring a narcotic called Slo-Mo was inspired. With stunning photography and saturated, sparkling shots, the drugged-up sequences are moments of glittering beauty that starkly contrast the rest of the film.

Dredd is brilliant. It’s as good as the previous version was bad. And Karl Urban’s performance in the title role isn’t just good – it’s assured enough for him to keep his helmet on for the whole film! Grab the DVD now.

Really? No women?

Recently, our studio began recruiting for a couple of new app programmers. Initially, I was concerned that we might not find enough candidates with the right skills. Now, I'm troubled to learn that we've got more than forty applicants… and not one of them is female.

I often hear our industry accused of being sexist, particularly in terms of the relative number of men and women it employs. However, our attempt to hire new staff suggests that the industry may not be entirely at fault – part of the problem may lie elsewhere.

Historically, I know that electronic games were once perceived as "boys toys" and that doubtless skewed the number of male applicants, as they were more likely to be interested in the sector. Yet now, women gamers are the norm. Females growing up in recent years have every reason to be interested in games, so it would be something of a statistical anomaly if they didn't make up a good percentage of applicants for new jobs.

Are there other reasons? It's certainly true that a lot of the content that the industry produces portrays female characters in a less than respectful light – consider the recent GTA-V trailer if you need a reminder. And there are often troubling stories on the web about sexist behaviour and language from individuals in the games industry. Such attitudes are clearly wrong, yet I doubt that they are unique to games. Are there really no cases of sexism in law, medicine, science, or journalism? Because if women are succeeding in other sectors that aren't yet free of sexism, then perhaps sexism isn't the only reason there are so few female programmers.

I don't profess to have the answers to this issue. But I'd dearly like to see a debate, and one which isn't immediately bogged down with (understandably) outraged stories of disrespectful language and Neanderthal attitudes. Because none of that explains why we got no female applicants. And why there were so terribly few female coders on the courses that our male applicants attended.

I can't believe that young women aren't interested in a well-paying career-type like this. Something must be amiss further back down the training path – maybe at college, maybe at school, maybe at home. Wherever the blockage is, wherever girls get the idea that they wouldn't be able to do this sort of job, needs to be addressed. Right now.

Twist

If book three turns out to be particularly popular, it will be largely down to today. The core of the novel currently lurking on Amazon's pre-order catalogue as "Untitled McNeill 3" has been in my head for a long time - years, in fact. And yet, excited as I was about it, I had felt that something was missing. I was pleased with the premise, and the characters, and the setting. There was a nice twist, part-way though...

...but today, chatting with Anna in an Exeter cafe, I finally saw the real twist. It was a wonderful feeling - a little like finding the £10 note you thought you'd lost, and discovering it's actually a £20.

Now all I have to do is knuckle down and write the rest of the book. Oh, and think of a title that's better than "Untitled McNeill 3".

Writing On Location

Okay. I admit it's an odd place to find someone typing. I probably cut a somewhat puzzling figure, hunched over my laptop, while perching on the sea wall in the shadow of the Second Severn Crossing suspension bridge. Some authors have a study, or a favourite room where they do their best work (and battle the temptations of Twitter) but more and more I've found myself drawn to the places where my next scene is unfolding. For some reason, writing "on location" really works for me.

The idea came years ago, at a seminar on screenwriting. The speaker, a wonderfully forthright man, caught our attention with an intriguing statement.
"There's no such thing as writer's block," he warned us. "Just a lack of research."
The solution he illustrated went something like this. Let's say you're writing a chapter where your character needs to leave their apartment and walk to a hotel somewhere else in the city. If you find yourself unable to summon up the atmosphere and the sense of place, what can you do? Go and experience it! Walk the route. Put yourself in the character's position and get a sense of how they'd feel.

That advice stayed with me. Plotting the first murder in "Eye Contact", I had a fairly clear sequence of events in mind. But when the time came to actually write it, there were sections where I found myself staring blankly at the screen. I knew what was going to happen in general terms, but I wasn't sure what the next sentence should be.

So I took my laptop and went to Bristol. I went where my characters went, following in their footsteps, picturing them in each setting, until I ended up on the beautifully bleak shoreline of Severn Beach. I'd been typing up rough sections and notes every step of the way – now the challenge wasn't a lack of inspiration, it was almost a struggle to capture the torrent of thoughts.

I'd expected this process to help me with scene-setting, or creating atmosphere, but it did much more than that. Being where my characters were gave me a powerful sense of empathy with them. Suddenly, the story felt terribly real – as though I was researching and recording events which had actually happened.

From then on, I made a point of visiting all the key locations in the book – the old canal towpath in Oxford, the lobby of a Mayfair hotel, a busy Starbucks at Canary Wharf, or a lonely park bench in Winchester. Sometimes it would be a fleeting visit to refresh my memory and take some notes, on other occasions (weather permitting) I'd sit and type for hours. It was always rewarding, and often surprising, as the story shifted and unfolded into its natural setting.

So, the next time you see someone bent over their laptop in an odd location, take a good look around. You might be standing in a future crime scene!

(this piece first appeared on the Kindle Post blog)

Be Seeing You...

Recently, I've been lucky enough to do my first few author events. Public speaking isn't entirely new for me, as I've given many talks at trade shows and conferences, but those were all focused on my day-job making games and apps. A small gathering in a library or bookshop is much more intense.

It's all about the audience. Even if it's a smaller crowd, there's a much stronger connection between reader and author, than between industry professionals at a business-to-business event. It's about engaging with people who actually want to be there, rather than employees who've been required to attend, and you get a wonderful sense that what you're saying really matters.

Then of course, there's the subject matter. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy designing apps, and I really care about representing my company and its products. But no matter how exciting the project or technology, it's still just business. Books are personal.

As a writer, you put so much of yourself into your novel, and reveal so much of yourself through the shape of the story. When you sit down and chat with people who've taken the time to read your book, you're sitting down with people who've shared a very personal journey with you. If that sounds daunting, well, yes it can be. But it's also incredibly exciting.

The opportunity to discuss a story with others brings it out of your imagination and into the shared consciousness of the readers. It's no longer just a series of chapters, it's an experience (albeit a fictional one) that exists with a life of its own. As an author, I can think of no greater thrill, and no greater privilege.

So I'm looking forward to doing more events - from cosy gatherings in local libraries, to CrimeFest in Bristol - chatting about writing and listening to readers. If you have the chance, do come along and say hello. Nothing would please me more. 

Series Characters

I never set out to write a series character. When I started my first novel “Eye Contact” I told the story I wanted to tell, about a serial killer who chooses his victims at random, and the detective who hunts him. There was no grand design, no long-term plan, and I wrote without any restriction. Only when I was asked to do a second and a third book, did I begin to see the benefits and challenges of going back to an already established world.

For me, the biggest concern was not to write the same book again. In “Knife Edge” both my detective and my killer are returning characters, and it would have been all too easy to let them reprise their actions from the first novel. Yes, they develop and they grow, but such a course would have felt like treading water, and I wanted to go somewhere new.

So I shook things up. A pivotal event changes each of the principal characters’ lives and irrevocably alters the dynamic between them, while an additional narrative viewpoint promotes a third character from a supporting role to centre stage. As part of a series, it was easier to do this because these felt like real people and I knew them so well, but it also imposed restrictions on me – I couldn’t alter my characters to fit the plot, I had to let the plot grow from my characters.

With hindsight, I could have made things easier on myself, but at least I’ve tried to learn from the experience. At the end of “Knife Edge”, I tidied up a number of loose ends, and opened some doors ready for book three. I have no doubt that I’ll continue to be tripped up by innocuous things, that I’ll yearn to go back in time and give my detective a brother, or change where someone grew up. But that’s the real challenge of a series character – it may be a long story, divided into novel-sized episodes, but once each episode is in print, there’s no changing it! Just like real-life, it’s done and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Think that sounds like fun? Ask me again in a few books time, and I’ll tell you how well I did!

 

Strangers on a train

There’s a guy on this train who keeps smiling to himself. He’s maybe twenty, well-built, with an open fleece top, and tracksuit trousers that have a local rugby club badge on them. And he sits there, staring at the back of the seat in front of him, with an involuntary grin on his face.

This is what I’ve missed about travelling – people watching.

All sorts of wonderful little dramas play out on trains, but I’ve been somewhat reluctant to go on longer rail journeys of late. Waiting for a kidney-stone makes you edgy – the frequent bouts of discomfort really break your concentration – and staying close to home feels safer.

However, with book two off to the copy editor, my focus is back onto number three, and I have a backlog of Bristol locations to research. Normally, this is a job for the weekends, but top of today’s list was the Pervasive Media Studio down at the Watershed, where they have an open day on Fridays. One of my characters needs a suitably creative environment to work in and, as it happened, the studio was everything I’d hoped. A very helpful member of staff showed me around and answered my questions – by the end of the tour, I wished I had the opportunity to work there myself.

Next, I spent some time at Bristol Crown Court, getting to know the workings of the building and watching some of the proceedings from the public galleries, before heading up to Stokes Croft.

There, in a cafe just a few streets from the key locations where book three is set, I was rather startled to discover that the man on the next table had exactly the same day-job as my next villain. These life-imitates-book coincidences just keep occurring, and I’m never quite sure whether to be spooked by them, or simply accept them as uncanny anecdotes, to be stored up for future interviews.

I spent some time walking-off my lunch, round Montpelier and Redland, before it was time to head back to Bristol Templemeads and the train home.

Which is where I am now.

The guy is still smiling. It’s busy tonight, so he spent the first twenty minutes of the journey standing in the aisle, then managed to get a seat next to an extremely attractive young woman. They clearly didn’t know each other – hardly anything passed between them – just a couple of polite words when he took his seat, and again when she got off ten minutes later. But while the train was waiting at her stop, I saw him glancing out of the window and there, walking along the platform, I saw her glance up, pause, and flash him a broad, blushing smile. His face lit up – I can’t remember seeing anyone look so genuinely chuffed – and I suspect he’ll be feeling good all day.

No wonder I get so many ideas on trains. It’s a people-watcher’s paradise...
...and this was one of the nicest moments.