Dick Morris's Travels: March 2014

Sunday, 16 March 2014

From The North Bank of The Thames (Saturday 15.03.14)

A sunny day on The South Bank (Saturday 15.03.14)

HQS Wellington (which featured in my novel The Investigators.)

Sunday, 9 March 2014

A new favourite parking spot.

On the Llanvihangel Crucorney to Llanthony Road

The sun will be behind you and the

road is very quiet. Just the odd car,

the odd farm vehicle,

the odd horse rider.
Oh, and the odd train goes by a couple of
hundred yards to the west.
Bliss!

Lucas drew his gun and fired three shots. Three figures fell. That made twenty hits in twenty shots. Every alien invader of the planet Earth outwitted, outguessed, eliminated. And in record time. God! Computer games were easy.

He snorted with disdain and closed the game. What did children see in them? He clicked on the little bishop icon to bring up Deep Fritz. Chess. Let’s play a something grown up, he thought. He had time now that he had finished his homework, and his voluntary extra homework, to work on his Elo rating, which was currently 2350, making him an International Master. Not bad for a twelve year-old. His aim now, was to raise himself into the Grandmaster category. But the travel alarm on his desk interrupted his thoughts.

Lucas got up from his seat, went to the window, and peered out. For a moment, his own face - round, bespectacled, capped by curly fair hair – was reflected back at him in the glass. A larger face loomed behind his own. Topped by a halo of unruly white hair, it had the topography of a walnut. Albert Einstein. Lucas had fixed a picture of the great theoretical physicist above his bed. On another wall, was one of Beethoven, and on a third was one of Leonardo. One day, Lucas hoped to be famous too.

He pressed his nose to the windowpane, placed his hands either side of it to cut out the reflections, and looked out into Philbeach Gardens. A fine drizzle fell, and leaves glistened on the London plane trees lining the road.

What would it be tonight, he wondered. White duck? Or red chicken?

BUY

Friday, 7 March 2014

How to Write Your Novel - Part One

My Preferred Method

Everybody has a book inside them, so the saying goes, and most of these books will be novels. This is because everybody has at least a little imagination, and everybody has had experiences they can use in their story and has met a variety of people they can base their fictitious characters on. Of course, the older you are, the greater your material source will be.

So, how do you go about writing your novel? I shall describe my referred method in this piece, and in several parts, so as to keep each part easily digestible. It is, what I would call, a modified John Braine method. John Braine was an English novelist who invariably employed a version of this method to write his very successful novels. I have modified the method both to suit myself and because nowadays many novels are published electronically via, for example, Amazon’s Kindle.

The first thing you need to do is have some idea of what type of novel you are going to write. You will probably base your book on the sort of books you like to read, or on some experience you have had, or simply on an idea that has suddenly come to you. Give it a little thought before proceeding: you can make notes, as I have done in the past, or keep the ideas in your head, as I do these days. Then try to think of a central character for the story. Just conjure up a few details such as gender, age, how they look, what they do for a living, where they live (if they have a home), and so forth. Don’t worry too much about any of these details, since, as the story unfolds, many of them will probably need to be changed as the character develops in your head. Next, think of the storyline of your book. But don’t worry too much about this either. This too, will need change and develop because it is the characters that will drive the plot, and not the storyline that will control the characters.

(To be continued.)