Time Crystal

I’m waiting for John Jarrold to finish editing TC. He tells me it’ll be done next Monday.

I want to print 60 or so copies for review by the students I’m taking to Geneva in December, and others, but I doubt whether I’ll have time to incorporate his editorial and get it printed ready for them to read it before we go. That’s a pity, since it would be good for them to know some of the background to CERN. It might help them get more out of their trip.

You can download a review copy of the Prequel by right-clicking here and select “Save Target…”.

This describes the events leading up to the start of Time Crystal. Note that it is written in an earlier style, and is awaiting a rewrite.

This is YOUR chance to affect this story. I want to know:

• What do you like and what don’t you like about this story?
• How do you feel about the characters?
• Do you love or hate any of them?
• Which chapters are boring, which exciting, which too short, which too long?
• Are you dying to read the next part?

I would also like to know a little about you especially or age and gender but also what kinds of books you normally read.

Please add comments here or email the above information to: reviews@pennypress.co.uk.
Thank you.

Notes of version history

The above link should always link tot the latest version of the Prequel (then called Part 1). I am making earlier versions available in case students of writing would like to see how the story evolved.
Subscribe to our RSS to keep abreast of changes.

The versions are (date format yyyymmdd):
20071020.pdf
20071101.pdf
20071225.pdf

Geoff van Nelder also raises the question of whether the narrator should intervene or whether a character should have sole ownership of POV.

I’ve tried to write scenes using the character’s voice as narrator. The inspiration for doing this was James Joyces’ ambition for the novelist to be “refined out of existince” and let the characters tell their own story.

But I’ve found it doesn’t work for me. The POV character might use different names for other characters (Mummy, my darling etc) which are not appropriate for the narration. They also may also use inappropriate language. I’ve switched back to having a narrative voice, and indeed I’ve done work to develop that voice so the reader recognises when the narrator is speaking.

This is not just because of technical problems with character-as-narrator. In the story I’m writing (a multi-volume epic) the reader needs to know she is in safe and competent hands. She needs to trust that the writer is a professional who can get her safely and enjoyably through a long journey of several volumes. So it’s worth developing a narrator’s voice. However I don’t want to speak directly to the reader. The narrator should not be a character in the story but a sort of invisible guide, making sure that everything works but letting the characters’ voices come through.

So my technique is to use nature as the narrator. So we see things from the POV of the Sun, wind, birds, plants etc. These things have an anthropomorphic essence. This technique is fully integrated with the future of the plot. One final thought about POV.

Geoff in his critique says:

I think you have to be careful with your POV usages in this novel. You are head hopping and if it happens too much the reader cannot build a relationship with a main character.

In general I agree with him. A scene or whole chapter should be from a single character’s POV. If a chapter is broken across different POVs then I signal this by leaving a large gap and omitting to indent the first line.I stick to this rule except in the second scene in the first chapter. Here I am introducing three characters at once. I therefore deliberately allow POV to move from one to another in order quickly to introduce the inner lives of these characters. I am trying to establish inter-personal rivalry between two of them and felt this was an effective way to do it. However I’m willing to be convinced there’s a better way.

Geoff van Nelder from the British Science Fiction Association kindly reviewed TC and commented:

One issue is that of italics or other means to identify when a character is thinking as opposed to thinking or when the narrator is commentating. In workshops I’ve attended it has been stressed that the owner of the POV has sole control of thoughts. There is no narrator’s voice as such unless you are using the Omniscient POV – not recommended esp for non-established writers. One important point here, is that there is NO convention on this issue. Different authors handle the display of thoughts in their own way. In mine there is no separation between thoughts and narration because as above, the POV owner has it for that scene / section. The problem in using italics or other differentiation technique is who is then the narrator?

eg excerpt from The
Dangerous Moon by Geoff van Nelder.
———–
Fred thought, ‘If I jump,
I might not make it across that gap.’ Fred knew that if he fell he would be
killed…
———–

Both clauses represent Fred thinking, don’t they? I know the first could be regarded as what he was thinking at that moment and the other is knowledge. Can you access knowledge without thinking?
Errmm maybe you guys can but this one can’t!

Of course we know that each editor has their own opinions on this and every other issue. The bottom line will always be: does it work? So does it really matter?

In writing speech there is a difference between direct and reported.

“I like this,” she said. (direct speech)
She said that she liked it. (reported speech)

The value of this is reported speech keeps us at a greater distance from the character. We don’t actually see the character talking. Instead it is the narrator who is talking, telling us what happened.
The convention of using italics for direct thought and saying what the character hought is exactly the same distinction.

If I jump, I might not make it across that gap. (direct thought)
Fred knew that if he jumped he might not make it across the gap. (reported thought)

In direct thought you don’t need to say “Fred thought” since the reader knows that italic means the character is thinking. Likewise you don’t need quotation marks. The distinction between thought and knowledge which Geoff draws strikes me as not relevant. It’s just a stylistic mechanism for controlling something we might call the character’s or narrator’s point of view.