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Category Archives: writing techniques

MEDITATIONS FROM A BAR STOOL 10

29 Wednesday Apr 2015

Posted by James Mckenna in Meditations, writing techniques

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books, enjoy reading, good read, James McKenna, sex and gender

Sex and the unknown

Rock and roll was a great invention.  The girls twirled at speed, their long skirts lifted and eager young men caught a glimpse of their knickers.  Hence at youth club I became an observer rather than a participant.  Aged 13 that was as close as I got.

I did try the occasional exploration but all such ventures were met with a firm No and slap of the hand.  In those days, No, meant No.

My father was posted to Hong Kong and the family went with him.  I mixed with older boys, some of whom had girlfriends.  At 14 I found one of my own.  Had I arrived, was I to discover the great secrets of what lay beneath a female’s clothes?

We held hands, we kissed, we cuddled and my fingers crept down the back of her skirt.  No!  At night I lay in dream only imagining what sweetness waited beyond my reach.  Then one afternoon while walking her home from school we stopped in the park, we sat on the grass and my hand closed over the front of her shirt.  Paradise opened.  I had made it, but no further.

I began to record my adventures, most churned up from imaginings of what I had never achieved.  Hence a writer was born.

At the grand age of 15 I was sent home to join Boys’ Service in the British Army.  No girls there, just a barrack room with 40 other sex starved adolescents.  Outings and privileges were few, so once more I began to write, my imagination running wild.  Bubbling full of testosterone my scribblings allowed me to access the wildest ambitions of a hopeful young male.  I conquered every female movie star, every female singer, even the vicar’s daughter.  My short stories became much in demand by other boys.  Realising a talent and a market, I began to charge, only pennies, but when we were eventually allowed to go into town I had enough money to ask girls to the cinema.  There I discovered the convenience of the back row where I finally touched the tantalising secrets of what lay beneath the blouse. Sitting in semi-darkness, a caress over the knee and the tentative lifting of a skirt hem may have opened new horizons but instead came a clamping of thighs, the barrier of two hands and a firm, No!  This time in an outraged whisper so as not to draw attention but I was not alone in my endeavours.  Throughout the film, every few minutes somewhere along the back row, the darkness would be punctured with the word, No!  In days of old the maidenhood of Britain set strict boundaries.

backrow cinema

For being good, after walking her home I would receive a kiss and if it was not too cold, a little exploration beneath blouse or jumper.  Quite clearly, discovery of the hidden paradise would not come easily.

Go to my website at http://www.crimefiction-jamesmckenna.co.uk

MEDITATIONS FROM A BAR STOOL 5

11 Saturday Apr 2015

Posted by James Mckenna in crime thriller, Meditations, writing techniques

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books, crime fiction, crime thriller, fast paced crime fiction, good read, James McKenna

More about the strangers within, the beautiful and dark characters who lurk around the mind.  And just because you don’t write doesn’t mean they are not there.  You’ll find them in nightmares, daydreams, popping from your subconscious into your imagination.

Each person in this world is unique, with their own set of fears, loves, ambitions and prejudices.  Sure, many are regimented through mass indoctrination by religion, politics and greed, not to mention subliminal hypnotic induction (read The Unseen http://tinyurl.com/c3yjc9l) but most still retain elements of individuality and consequently, the different strangers within.

Knowing the strangers in their subconscious is essential for writers.  From the depth of my imagination I bring forth sadistic killers, mad men, those who lust for death and those who murder for greed and arrogance.  All are characters born from my mind and waiting to cross into the reader’s mind.  And no, I don’t drink a pint of blood every day before breakfast.  Yet these dark creatures live within me.  I must know them, understand their motivations.  If I don’t achieve this depth of intimacy, I cannot portray such characters to the reader, who will then feel cheated.

skeletons

Many of my characters are female.  To portray the female person in mind and body I must adopt a female persona.  Not always easy for the male writing about female, neither for female portraying males.  It all depends how you were indoctrinated as a child and what social environments you have lived in.  As a child I was told men were men and women were glad of it.  Yo, ho, ho and bottle of rum etc.  But later I became a free thinker, an explorer of the imagination and someone who always questioned what I had been told.  Which is one reason why I became a writer.

That brings me back to the occasions of adopting the opposite gender while writing.  For me this has provided a number of inner revelations that perhaps the genders are more mentally and physically aligned than some would preach.  Sure, procreation calls for physical differences but the mental differences are purely conditioning to achieve social acceptance.  Overcome that difference and a writer can portray opposite gender in much greater intimacy.

ws_Sunset_Beautiful_1920x1200

In my crime thriller, The Uncounted, about human trafficking, my heroine Jelena is forced through the horrors of modern slavery but her mental and physical strength keeps her above her male tormenters.  I could only portray that by mentally becoming Jelena, not easy, but not impossible.

In my thriller, The Unwanted, both assassins for Directus Iurisdictio, a vigilante organisation, are female.  Mentally strong and physically able, social conditioning places them above suspicion because they are looked upon as female therefore silly and weak.  One is even a transgender male.  Yet both prove to be mentally and physically stronger than their male colleagues.  Yo, ho, ho and a bottle of rum, etc, etc.

Now do you see how many strangers hide within the writer’s mind, both male and female, good and bad?

Anyone for pink Champagne?

the-uncounted-3dThe Unwanted bookcover

Read The Uncounted http://tinyurl.com/d7zspq2 

Read The Unwantedhttp://tinyurl.com/mbx2fht

and go to my website http://www.crimefiction-jamesmckenna.co.uk

MEDITATIONS FROM A BAR STOOL 4

08 Wednesday Apr 2015

Posted by James Mckenna in writing techniques

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books. crime thriller, crime novel, enjoy reading, James McKenna, scary, The Unseen.

Meet the strangers within you.

Strangers, how can that be?  You are who you are, there is only one you.  But not if you are a writer or actor.

Actors have to become the characters they portray, while writers the characters they invent and make vivid with words.  To be a good writer you must become the character you write about.  You must know how they behave, think, react, dress.  What makes them scared, brave, angry, sad?

Writing-writing

In my crime thriller novels, The Unseen, The Uncounted and The Unwanted, my protagonist, Sean Fagan, is a large, dependable policeman with a failed marriage, two teenaged daughters, a liking for Guinness, class music and Victoria Lawless, his girlfriend.

Fine, you say, easy character for a male writer to portray.  True, especially if I base his behaviour similar to some of my own.  But when I write from Victoria’s point of view, then I have to mentally change gender.

To truthfully portray her character so the reader believes in her, I must understand her passions, her motivations, her anger.  I must be inside her body to feel the joy of her love making, her sweat, her fear; what clothes she likes, her feelings towards others and the forces which drive her.  I must become Victoria Lawless, in mental vision and physical presence.  If I do not, the reader will see a shallow character, one they cannot believe in.  In which case I fail as a writer.

So, there are two strangers I have, but darker ones lurk in the deep recesses of a writer’s mentality.

In The Unseen I have a brutal psychopath named Zoby who butchers his victims and keeps body parts as trophies.  To portray him as a believable mad man I have to look inside his mind and understand why he commits the horrors he does.  What are his thoughts, his motivations, his pleasures?  I have to become Zoby in the same way I became Sean and Victoria.  That can be scary.  For Zoby and his actions are inventions of my mind.  This is what I mean when I say meet the strangers within you.  Read The Unseen and meet some of my strangers.  Read The Unseen http://tinyurl.com/c3yjc9l

Frontcover of the unseen

More about characters in my next set of meditations from a bar stool.  How to change gender, how to think like a killer.

Go to my website http://www.crimefiction-jamesmckenna.co.uk

James McKenna Has Voices In His Head. What Goes Through A Crime Writer’s Mind As He Writes The Next Novel?

15 Saturday Dec 2012

Posted by James Mckenna in writing techniques

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crime fiction, crime novel, fast paced crime fiction, James McKenna, use of dialogue, writing a narrative

IMGP1264

The evening sky from my window

I find myself inhabiting the characters in my new crime novel for most of the day. Even when I am doing something mundane like cleaning out the wine tanks after this year’s amazing wine harvest, I am pondering about my characters’ reactions as the plot unravels; it really is one of the things I enjoy so much about writing.

I do actually find it quite tiring as thoughts strike me at any time which means I have to scuttle off to the study and jot down ideas before they evaporate from whence they came. First thing in the morning when I become conscious is a particularly busy time for characterisation.

Characterisation after all, is such an integral part of writing a narrative, whatever genre you might be involved with. So many decisions have to be made so that a character appears to live and breathe on the page. Do I use description, action, speech, thought or an amalgam?

In fast-paced crime fiction there is little place for acres of description. I know Dickens made a career from it but I’m afraid that doesn’t suit me and I quite like the technique of implicit characterisation where my reader can work out what my character is all about through their thoughts and speech. Careful use of dialogue can indicate so much about character; after all, we all make judgments about people in reality by their choice of words and how they express themselves and I like to capture that in my work.

Occasionally I find it necessary to be a little more explicit and I have made use of a narrator at times. Information can be given of course through another character who offers an opinion; I quite like that idea and it can be achieved quite subtly. I also find it interesting seeing how my characters react to others in the book. This is especially satisfying when you are writing about the same character from one book to another. We all change, things happen in our lives that skew our approach, feelings and even health and I like pondering over such things as I go about my own day to day life.

I find I live and breathe every aspect of the characters I am penning and I do hope much of this thought process is finally evident when you read the book. I am keen to balance the predictable with the unpredictable. I want my readers to ask questions especially as I deal with hard-hitting themes which scrape the underbelly of the society in which we live.

My books are mainly driven by plot and character so I spend much time removing any flaws I see in both, which after all is what makes some of our greatest literary novels and heroes so timeless. Shakespeare of course has given us so many complex characters that even when their behaviour is totally unacceptable, like Macbeth or Lear, we are still drawn to them and even find excuses for their actions. As we are all flawed we understand how our own fears, ambitions or sense of inadequacy can make us do and say things we should not. A weakness is a key aspect of character and is what makes any reader identify with a creation and makes them feel a character’s humanity, or lack of, perhaps.

As I look out of my study window I am watching the mountain turn from red to copper as the sun sets. It is approaching the shortest day; the vineyard is bare and silent; the optimism and growth which happened through spring and summer has gone. The wine is safely made and is doing its thing. I have to admit to enjoying a glass or two of last year’s vintage in front of the roaring log fire of an evening and very nice it is too. However, I may well appear to be in the room but there is no saying where my head is and with which character I am conversing.

I’ll keep you posted regarding how the novel is progressing next time.

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