That’s why I’ve obsessively read books since I sung my first ABC and it’s why I write just as obsessively now.

One of my biggest obsessions, is the concept of dystopian worlds. I heart everything about them. I want the t-shirt, the fan girl moves, the merch and ALL the books. ALL OF THEM.

But right now, as a writer, I’m more interested in how to get them right. What do you need building bricks do you need to include and what key factors do you need to make a dystopian world realistic.

I’ve just finished reading Jane Dougherty’s Abomination. It was both a fantastic read and an exceptional example of an apocalyptic and dystopian setting.

Here are 5 steps to perfect the dystopian world.

‘Dystopia’ is: “characterized by human misery, as squalor,oppression, disease, and overcrowding.” Dictionary.com. 

Dystopian novels usually examine a social or political concept through an oppressive or broken society or power. The juicy bits in these books tend to come from the exploration of the reasoning behind why it’s broken. But my most fave bit about dystopia is that its usually a reflection of our own fucked up society.

It’s an exploration of what could be, of what’s to come if we don’t shape up and what really, already is. It explores the darkness inside us all that if we’re not careful, will seep out, infect our shambles of a society and lead us on the path to dystopian hell.

Some of the first and most uber famous work in the dystopian field include 1984 by George Orwell and A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, both books I’ve put on my 30 by 30 list (30 things I want to achieve/do or in this instance read by the time I’m 30, in March 2017)

In the last five years there’s been an explosion of dystopian fiction in the YA genre, and anyone who’s hung around here for even one post, will know I am a super geek for anything YA. Famous examples include: Divergent, Hunger Games, Uglies and Matched.

If you’ve got any dystopian book recommendations for me (but particularly in the YA genre) tap me up and leave me a scribble in the comments below.

Step One – Something Broken

Writing dystopian fiction is fun because you can behave like a teenage boy; break shit and blow stuff up.

And that’s just the setting. Dystopian fiction dissects humanity. I get literary ecstasy when I rub my writerly hands together and drill down into the what and why we do stuff. Why is our society so corrupt? Why do we lie? And are lies ever justified if it’s for the greater good?

These moral and philosophical questions are exactly what should be explored in a dystopian world. It’s an opportunity to explore what really fucks you off about life. I have two dystopian books on the back burner waiting to be finished: Adultland, and The Firmament, the latter of which I posted an excerpt of in last week’s Writespiration.

The point I am trying to make is, BREAK SOMETHING. Something political, or societal. But it has to be something fundamental to how our society works.

In Delirium, they determine love to be a disease and find a cure for it. In Divergent, they portion society up by personality traits. In Hunger Games they send a child off each year as a sacrifice to keep the peace.

In Abomination, Dougherty’s something broken is the world itself. The apocalypse has come, and the world is breaking apart as hell itself descends on earth.

“As long as the satellites continued sending pictures, the monitors showed catastrophe on a global scale. Coastlines were submerged, islands disappeared, mountain chains exploded, fault lines opened and swallowed cities in a cascade of flames, plumes of smoke miles high, and the black dust and ash of the end of the world.” Ch 1 Abomination, by Jane Dougherty

Step Two – A Villain’s Reasoning 

Now, it’s all fun and games breaking shit for literary giggles. But readers won’t be laughing if there isn’t a fully thought out justification for society’s fuckedupness (that’s 100% a word).

I’m not about spoilers, so I can’t tell you about the main villain in Dougherty’s book, but Ace, the second villain, is really just a scared little boy, using bigger boys to beat on others in order to do what he wants and retain control.

Divergent is another good example of this. The ‘real’ world is broken by war, their justification for locking people in Chicago and sectioning them off into factions is to wait for evolution to bring about ‘whole’ humans again in order to broker peace. That sounds like a reasonable justification to me. But the key here is you do need a believable justification.

If you want more tips on Villains, subscribe to get the latest news on my book release, 13 Steps to Evil – The Ultimate Writer’s Guide To Creating Superbad Villains.

Step Three – Physical Dystopia

Now as much as you shaft your characters intangible psychological stuff in your dystopian setting, you also need to tinker with the physical. By that I mean your setting.

Usually a dystopian setting is based on a world that is dying, been through some kind of world ending war, or ravaged by viruses. Whatever the cause it needs to be messy.

Some things to consider include:

• Buildings, where do people sleep/eat/live
• Weather
• Clothing
• Technology
• Food and the ease of access to it

I am super visual and draw a lot of inspiration from seeing things. One of the things I wanted to achieve before I was 30 was entering a derelict building. So far I’ve got photos of a derelict barn and a burnt out canal boat. I’ve also managed to talk my way into being allowed into a derelict school so I’ll be taking photos of that soon too. Below are some images I’ve taken for dystopian inspiration:

Dougherty is the master of creating a broken world. I lost count of how many sentences I highlighted. But here are some examples of her gorgeous descriptions:

“…the track behind him erupted into a tangled web of razor wire and jagged pieces of beaten metal. The creatures raced into the trap, hoisted into the air by barbs that tore deep into their flesh.” Ch6, Abomination, by Jane Dougherty

“The smell he gave off was a heady mixture of unwashed human and decomposing canine.” Ch 7, Abomination by Jane Dougherty

“Everywhere piles of debris and smashed lights and windows bore witness to the fighting for control of the place. Shops had been pillaged, some burnt out, all had been defiled in some way. The wall were plastered with tags, scowls and daubs, spattered with paint, excrement and blood. Even in the cold, even with half the glass in the doors and windows put out, the stench remains. It was the smell of decay, of putrefaction, of a whole civilisation rotting away.” Ch 13, Abomination by Jane Dougherty

Step Three – The Struggle

If you break something, then something needs to be a struggle. It doesn’t matter what that struggle is, but you need to make some part of living hard for your characters.

Usual suspects, include food and shelter. But as in Delirium, it’s being able to love freely.

Step Four – The Extreme

Once you decide what your something broken is, and what your something struggle is (I feel like I’m wedding planning now, I just need something blue) you need to take shit to the next level.

I’ve talked about pushing readers to the extreme in recent post on giving readers book hangovers.

Struggles and extremes come hand in hand like cupcakes and my stomach. If you want to make your characters struggle the easiest way to do it, is to take whatever is broken and push it to the next level.

For example, in the Hunger Games, not only do they struggle for food, they then have to sacrifice CHILDREN to prevent war.

In Divergent, not only do they get ‘tested’ for personality traits, they then have to live, breathe and be all consumed by those traits.

In Dougherty’s book, everything is pushed to the extreme. The world really is ending. Food is limited and if they don’t starve to death first, they will freeze because of the weather extremes.

Step Five – The Warning Message

And here we come to an end. Through all the catastrophes, character starving and blowing of shit up, is the thought you want to leave your readers with.

What is your theme? What is the message about society that you are really leaving readers with?

In Uglies, by Scott Westerfield – in which at 16 you undergo plastic surgery to make you pretty – pretty being societies pre-determined definition of pretty- his message is clear. Don’t be a sheep. Stay unique, and don’t become a drone. Wanting to be the same as everyone else, is more than just visibly damaging, it’s mentally damaging. It’s okay to be different.

I asked Dougherty, three questions on dystopian settings, here’s our Q&A:

Q1. Jane, where did you draw inspiration from?

A.1 For the wormhole aspect the idea came from looking through a kid’s science magazine and thinking what a really cool idea wormhole theory is. Using them as shortcuts through time and space, I mean, since they really do exist, and have been created artificially. I love space, string theory, parallel worlds and all that but I don’t have a very scientific mind and it’s so rare I actually cotton onto a theory. Probably because the article was written for eleven year olds…

The shopping mall idea comes from a visceral horror of shopping and a morbid fear of being trapped in a mall. Photos of abandoned commercial and industrial sites have also worked their way into my imagination.

Q2. What did you find most important to consider when thinking about getting a realistic apocalyptic setting 

A.2 There are dozens of apocalyptic stories around, many of them, like mine set in the ruins of cities and inhabited by blood-crazed savages/aliens/zombies/normal terrified people who don’t know where else to go. It’s all very plausible (if you believe in zombies) but for how long would it be possible to scratch an existence in the ruins? There’s a limit to how many cans of beans and packets of cornflakes you could scavenge before the perishables just…perished or got eaten. No electricity, no water, no agriculture, nothing produced at all. I reckoned five years would be just about all we’d get, to paraphrase Bowie. I’ve read plenty of stories where food supplies, new clothes, shoes, munitions for guns, fresh fruit and vegetables, household implements etc all appear out of nowhere, when nobody is actually producing anything. When that happens, my belief in the story crumbles completely. If somebody makes a sandwich in a post apocalyptic world, I want to know where the f**k the sliced bread and the lettuce came from. How to manage on nothing seems to me what’s most important. If you can’t find a solution to that one, then everybody has to be dead.

Q3. What would your three top tips be for anyone wanting to create an apocalyptic or dystopian setting?

A.3 Decide on your social structure. Is society going to be organized to continue producing what we are used to having, or is it going to collapse completely and morph into something else? Who will run it, to what end, and is there an alternative?

There has to be a conflict; somebody has to be in disagreement with the new society. Perhaps there’s a threat, aliens, human gangs/armies etc. Whatever, even if it’s a utopia, it needs an opposition not only to make it credible, but to create perspective and depth and, let’s face it, a good story.

Keep it realistic. Whatever commodities your characters use, you need to be able to account for how they came by them or made them. If the refrigerator still works, you need to explain how, likewise where does the fuel come from for the cars, the electricity for the lights, running water, the sewage system. And don’t go to the other extreme with a highly urbanized population of Homer Simpsons suddenly intuitively rediscovering the lost arts of long bow making, home steel production and arrowhead manufacture, spinning, weaving and sewing with fish gut. Don’t kid yourselves, it wouldn’t happen.

NEWS ALERT – CALLING ALL READERS OF BOOKS!

There’s a new campaign out – if you’re a reader and you don’t leave reviews, then you should. Reviews are the bread and butter of a writers career. Terry Tyler has started a new twitter hashtag, #AugustReviews with the goal of encouraging readers to leave just one review in the month of August. PLEASE join in, and check out her campaign here.

I wanted to leave you with my favourite quote from Dougherty’s book:

“To go where? You don’t understand because you’ve only just arrived, but the rest of us have lived  through five years of watching the earth pulling the plug on itself and humanity squabbling over the leavings like dogs over a bone. There is nowhere to go, nowhere that isn’t exactly like this.” Abomination, Ch 35, Jane Dougherty

You can buy Abomination from Amazon UK or Finch Books.

As a point of review, while Dougherty’s book is awesome of the highest proportions, and I really did love it (go read it now), if you are faint of heart or on the sensitive side, read it with caution. Dougherty is not afraid of…well, anything.

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The post Perfect Your Dystopian World in 5 Easy Steps appeared first on Sacha Black.

This book is written in a unique way using the first person POV, so the focus of this lesson review will be on perfecting the first person POV.

Breathe is a YA dystopian novel, written in the first person* about love, courage, power and sacrifice. Amazon’s blurb says:

Years after the Switch, life inside the Pod has moved on. A poor Auxiliary class cannot afford the oxygen tax which supplies extra air for running, dancing and sports. The rich Premiums, by contrast, are healthy and strong. Anyone who opposes the regime is labelled a terrorist and ejected from the Pod to die.

Sixteen-year-old Alina is part of the secret resistance, but when a mission goes wrong she is forced to escape from the Pod. With only two days of oxygen in her tank, she too faces the terrifying prospect of death by suffocation. Her only hope is to find the mythical Grove, a small enclave of trees protected by a hardcore band of rebels. Does it even exist, and if so, what or who are they protecting the trees from?

How do I learn when reading? I collect words and sentences, especially unusual ones and I do it prolifically when I read in order to refer back later and dissect. I’ve had to retrain my brain to be able to read consciously. Normally my eyes switch off and I see pictures instead of reading words, so in order to pay proper attention to the words I refocus. Anyway, enough rambling. What did I actually learn?

First Person POV

I always hear the phrase ‘writers need to learn the rules so they can break them.‘ One of the cardinal rules I’ve learnt is that if you are writing in the first person you do it from one characters POV. *I said earlier Breathe was written in the first person. It is. But, from three main characters POVs.

Interesting.

Did it work? Not right away. The book rotates around each character, each chapter from one of the three main characters: Alina, Bea and Quinn.

The thing about first person that I love is that its so personal and deep to that one main character. The book opens with the character Alina. I assumed – she was the main character. But the book ends with a chapter from Bea. I started out thinking Alina was the main character especially as there was love triangle. Quinn and Bea are old friends, Bea loves Quinn – he’s never noticed her despite being BFFs. Quinn falls for Alina. And then, part way through the book realises his mistake and how he has always loved Bea.

I’ll be honest. I never realised but, wherever the love interest is (not the male, *climbs on feminist soap box, whips out bra and searches for lighter* but the relationship itself) is where the main characters are. By the end of the book for me Bea was the main character. I was left a little confused. For me, the book would have worked better if it was from just two main characters – Bea and Quinn, as the relationship could have had more depth from longer page time and we could easily have watched Alina through their eyes – that or perhaps it could have been written in the third person and worked just as well.

That being said, I did believe Bea’s heartache and I just about believed Quinn when he converted to Bea.

I would say it took a third of the book before I could easily switch between the characters, and for the first two sets of rotations I got very confused between Alina and Bea. Possibly because they were both female and therefore, it wasn’t until I was a third of the way through, that I really knew enough about each character to spot the differences between them quickly.

Once I did however I thoroughly enjoyed the variety.

Differentiating Main Characters

It wasn’t until I looked back at my highlights that I saw how Crossan had actually differentiated the characters. It’s subtle, and driven primarily through character desires and therefore in the way they look at the world. And actually rather genius. For example:

Alina – the rebel looks at life in a philosophical way – she is driven by the need for freedom and therefore watches the detail in the serenity and beauty of nature. Here’s two examples:

Every now and again I spotted something simple and ordinary – like a toothbrush. what happened to its owner?

Im afraid of upsetting the stillness

Whereas Bea who is driven primarily by love, thinks and speaks in a much more tangible way. Crossan uses tactile descriptions playing on the senses to build on Bea’s personality, goals and lust for Quinn.

He doesn’t feel that way about me,’ I say. I have never admitted this out loud, so when I hear the words spoken in my own voice, clear and undisputed, I could cry. I look at my mum steadily.

He squeezes my knee and leaves his hand resting there. My stomach tightens as I wait for something else,

…in my chest has swollen up so that my whole body feels like it’s filled with poison. I don’t love him in the way my parents love each other – sweetly, almost wearily. When I’m with him I feel each nerve within me awakening so that when he touched me, when he brushes my arm accidentally, I shiver and I have to bite back an urge to cry out. I feel the ache everywhere: in my neck, in my belly, between my legs.

What I love is that I had no idea I’d picked up on so much until the end when I  looked back at the random phrases I’d highlighted and found pure Crossan gold.

Describing Other Characters
The last key lesson I learnt was around describing other characters. When writing in first person, everything (including other characters) is seen through the eyes of your main character so you need to describe them fully as well as identifying their goals without making it seem arbitrary.

I think Quinn is the best character at doing this because he goes through some difficulties not having spotted who his father really was. Ironic, and more impactful because he spends a lot of his time looking at and kind of analysing other people, yet, didn’t spot what was under his nose  – both for Bea and his father.

What I think Crossan does really well is facilitate her main characters describing the other characters not through their physical appearance which can sometimes be shallow and stilted but through their thoughts, actions and emotions bringing a depth to the secondary characters you might otherwise not get:

She gulps down some water and squints at me as though she isn’t quite sure what she’s seeing.

She flicks her thick hair from her shoulders and pulls at the hem of her incredibly short dress. I’ve never met a person more in love with herself.

and my favourite of all – a description of his father…

He is speaking into the mirror, talking to my reflection as though he can’t bear to look at the real me any more.

Lesson Summary:

ONE

First person does work better from one characters POV, however, rules are meant to be broken and by the end of the book I really enjoyed the flick between the three characters and the tension that built having to wait to find out what happens to one of them.

TWO

I would say that if you are going to write in first person from more than one POV its better to do one male and one female, or two VERY different characters if they are the same gender and age it can make it hard to differentiate between characters.

THREE

Again, if you are swapping character whilst in first person POV, you need to be VERY clear who the main character is, otherwise your reader won’t know who to invest in.

FOUR

Differentiating multiple first person characters is hard. But it’s easily done by focusing on manipulating their speech and thoughts to focus on their goals.

If a character is driven by love then their thoughts and speech will be more tangible and oriented to the sensations they feel because of love.

FIVE

If you’re not conscientious, describing other characters in the first person can steer you down a path of describing clothes and appearance. But by a character observing action, emotion and pondering another’s thoughts, you achieve a depth you can’t get with clothes and appearance.

What lessons have you learnt about the first person? Have you ever read a first person novel and found habits you don’t like? What tricks do you use when writing in the first person?

If you’re a fan of YA books, especially with a twist or hint of dystopian fantasy I think you will love this read. I did.

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The post 5 Lessons in First Person POV appeared first on Sacha Black.

A few weeks ago I wrote a piece of flash fiction which I called Adultland, the story continued in Part II, but today, I bring part III. You can catch up on all the past instalments here.

We left Lou, pacing outside her parents flat building, waiting for the mist and Hunters to come and kidnap her parents. Can she save them? Read on to find out.PART III 

The mist really did sparkle, it was like a cave filled with glow worms, popping and twinkling so brightly I was mesmerised. I gravitated towards it.

I wanted to touch it. Needed to touch it. I reached out, a stampede in my chest made my fingers tingle as they edged towards it. I wasn’t sure if it was the adrenaline from Kirsty’s serum kicking in or the thrill of getting close to the mist, but my fingers kept stretching. Closer. Almost there. I just wanted. One. Touch.

My arm twitched.  My eyes snapped to the microchip. A furnace of heat exploded from the chip and up my arm. I yelped and yanked my hand away. Was the chip failing already? I shook my head, I had to get as far away from the mist as possible.

I took a step back. And another. My heart kicked harder, stomach dancing. Rustles and twig snaps echoed intermittently from the wooded cops at the end of the car park.

I wasn’t alone, I was being watched. I’d felt it for weeks; the light prod of a single pair of eyes. Of someone watching me.

A hand clasped my mouth. I stiffened, muscles instantly charged, ready to lash out.

“Don’t scream,” a voice said, “I want to help and we don’t have long.”

He kept his hand across my mouth and stepped into view. He was dressed head to toe in black. His head was covered by a hood and a strange mask with cogs and tubes that protected his mouth. All I could see of him were enormous hazel eyes that had a perfect black ring round the iris.

He was a Hunter.

I had to think fast. He was a lot taller than me. If I attacked and didn’t knock him to the ground he would catch me and probably kill me. If I stayed put he could still kill me.

“I’m going to take my hand away. If you scream I won’t be able to save your parents.”

I relaxed just a fraction. Why would a Hunter want to save my parents? I opened my mouth to hurl questions at him but, he put his hand over my mouth again. I glared at him.

He smirked. “Knew I’d picked the right Orphi,”

“Orphi?” I mumbled under his hand.

“Yeah, orphan.”

My heart clenched at the inevitability of his word. I  shoved my shoulder into his chest hard enough for him to know I meant business.

“Calm down, Orphi.”

I yanked his hand away from my mouth. “Thought you wanted to help?”

“I do, but I don’t have time to explain everything so none of this is going to make sense,” he said.

Wood cracked to our left. His eyes snapped across and examined the mist covering the wood.

“They’re near the edge of the woods, we need to hurry up.”

“Wait. Tell me who you are.”

“My name’s Hawk.”

“Hawk? What sort of a name is that?”

“Look, we don’t have time. I have to do this quickly or it won’t look convincing.”

“Convincing?”

“You ask too many questions, Orphi,” he said, pursing his lips.

“Well, you don’t give enough information, Hawk.”

Boots struck rhythmically against the tarmac. They were in the car park. If the mist wasn’t so thick I was sure they would see us. Hawk moved closer to me, pressing his body against mine until he backed us against the flat wall. I only came up to his neck and I could smell the faint trace of a woody perfume on his skin. The tiniest flicker of heat flared behind my cheeks.

“Listen, when you reach the end of the city, look down. I’ll be waiting.”

“Look down?”

The clap, clap of boots stopped.

“HAWK? Where are you?”

His hand clamped across my mouth. My jaw flexed against the palm of his hand. I didn’t care if he was a Hunter, or if we were going to get caught. If he did that again, I was going to knock him out.

He leant into my neck, his lip brushing against my ear. My stomach tightened. 

“Ready?” he whispered.

His hand slipped into mine and he gave it a soft squeeze, “I’m sorry, this is going to hurt because you took the anti-sleeper.”

He let go of my hand, yanked a needle out of his pocket stabbed me in the neck.

Pain erupted through me, blood solidfing like ice in my veins. I screamed clutching my throat and collapsed on the floor.

“GOT HER SARGE,” Hawk shouted and disappeared.

Frozen crystals flooded my system as I writhed on the concrete outside the flats. Black spotted my vision and my throat finally clamped shut. I couldn’t breathe, even the faint trace of heat from the suns first rays was too much.

Black dots turned to grey static; I was passing out. Poison poured into my limbs, stiffening my hands and feet. Palpations ricocheted through me feeble attempts at fighting the cold warrior trying to control me.

I blinked.

My vision dimmed. The patch on my arm where the microchip was embedded blistered. Shooting pains burrowed deep into my wrists.

I blinked again.

Dozens of heavily booted feet stormed through the flat building’s door. I rolled over trying to crawl towards them. Muscles defied me, pinching and convulsing instead of moving forward.

“Nooo.”

I reached out clutching at grass, trying anything to stop them getting my parents.

I blinked again.

I was surrounded by darkness.

“I’ll be waiting at the end of the city…”

Hawk’s words rolled around my mind, each one poked and prodded at the recesses of my consciousness. Time slowed like the thick gloop of primordial sludge. Words merged and hopped about like soldiers in front of me.

My parents.

I blinked again.

Two enormous glowing orbs were floating out of the front door. Two Hunters pointed some kind of tube at the orbs like they controlled them. Inside the orbs were the limp bodies of my parents. They had wide eyed stares that darted across the chaos in front of them. They were still alive. For now.

“DAD,” I screamed, but only a silent breath escaped my mouth. I tried to force volume but I was paralysed. A gentle tug tempted me back to sleep, but I knew I needed to stay awake and witness the kidnap. My eyes were so heavy, maybe I could shut them for just a second?

I blinked.

The comfort of darkness consumed me. I swam through the emptiness. It was oddly comforting against the agonising paralysis. I searched my unconscious raking through memories, thoughts. I was meant to look for something, but what? Time oozed away, merging into the lake of memories playing out in front of me.

Two people drifted into view. They looked familiar. They floated into the air, heads hanging, eyes staring. I had to save them. I could do it, I just needed to move my legs.

I blinked again.

The car park was empty. I knew the sun was high because my skin throbbed from the heat blazing into the car park. The Hunters, orbs, mist, Hawk and my parents had vanished.

“He lied,” I mumbled staring at the place the orbs had been.

 “you’re a dead man, Hawk.” How dare he lie to me and kidnap my parents.

The numbness in my limbs was subsiding.

“Lou?”

“Harry,” I said sitting up, “where did you come from?”

He shifted on the spot, peering at anything but me. My gut lurched. I scoured my memories of last night, desperate to filter through the gunk and scan faces to see if I recognised Harry’s strangely large eyes through the Hunters masks. But my brain was fossilised, like ten thousand years of sediment was weighing down any coherent thought. I didn’t recall seeing him, so I decided to give him another chance and look after him like dad had said.

“It’s lunch time, we expected you to surface first thing this morning,” Harry said, and offered me a hand up.

His face was drawn, hungry black bags consumed his entire face.

“You look like shit, Harry.”

“Thanks,” he snorted. “Well, somethings, umm… we have a problem. I need to show you. The others are waiting. Are you ok to walk?”

“Think so. Where are we going?”

“Edge of the city.”

We walked for an hour, the closer we got to the edge of the city the more abandoned it appeared. Children needed to be together like pack animals. Parents were meant to be our alphas. But now we found solace huddled together in the centre of the city in flats and large office buildings where we desperately clung to any sense of belonging we could.

“So where were you living when they took your parents?” I asked.

“Falst…” he stopped dead, coughed and then continued, “just a suburb to the west of the city.”

I frowned, a seed of unease sprouted in my stomach. Falston was the next city but one. It was also the first city the Hunters attacked. My dad’s request to look after Harry filtered through my mind, and I did know of a westerly borough called Falstingbury. That must be where he came from. But what was he trying to hide?

“So what happened to you? You were the first in Daxley City, right? So you must have a story.”

He glanced at me, his face tight, A trace of sweat beaded on his forehead.

“Can we talk about something else?”

“Sure.”

But we didn’t because I’d run out of things to ask and the seed sprouting in my stomach was rapidly growing. Instead I stared at our surroundings as we walked.

Since more people had disappeared we weren’t able to look after massive parts of Daxely but I hadn’t realised how quickly rust and decay had taken over. Bricks were crumbling everywhere I looked, our beautiful city had become a desolate waste land. But amongst the dying buildings and months of neglect, new life was thriving. A plethora of plants ravaged the sides of buildings. Growing like viruses up walls and into the cracks of houses.

“We’re here,” he said, drawing us to a stop, “when you round that corner, you’ll see…the, erm. You just need to look.”

Harry had said virtually nothing about what was wrong. Just that we needed to get to the edge of Daxley so he could show me. We were right by the border of Daxley and the suburbs which started at the end of the next street. My parents were going to move to the suburbs right before the Hunters started taking the adults, but they got caught up trying to protect their friends, and eventually thoughts of a move were forgotten.

I rounded the corner and froze. My heart squeezed to a halt making my breath catch in my throat. There were no suburbs. No ’end’ of the street. There was no street at all.

“What the hell?”

A grey concrete wall as tall as three houses towered above us. It stretched across the street and smashed straight through houses, paths and front lawns. It loomed angry and dark like a giant preparing for war.

“It’s surrounding the entire city, Lou. There’s no way in or out.”

“No. NO. It can’t.”

I stepped off the path and ran to the next street expecting the concrete monstrosity to vanish. My heart fired into life and pounded so hard I could feel the pulsing of blood in my ears. All I could think about was my parents. I had to save them. I had to be able to get out of the city.

The wall covered the next street. And the next. I ran harder. Skipped across pavements, gardens and alleys. Three more streets passed. But still the wall loomed as colossal and firm as it had on the first street.

Harry stumbled after me.

“Wait, Lou,” he said, panting.

“How do we get out, Harry?” I screamed throwing myself at the wall, “I need to get out, I have to save my parents.”

I slapped at the wall. It was cold and gritted like sandpaper but, I punched and kicked at it anyway. Pain sliced through my hands as the gnarled surface cut into my knuckles. I revelled in the hurt, it eased the panic.

“LOU,” Harry said, touching my back, “stop.”

I slumped to the floor, exhausted, blood seeping out of several knuckles and tears spilling onto my cheeks.

“We’re trapped aren’t we?”

His face was ashen and clammy. He looked as I felt.

“Harry?” I snapped, “are we trapped?”

He nodded once. A heavy, but resolute nod. We really were trapped.

The post Adultland Part 3 appeared first on Sacha Black.

Last week, I wrote a piece of flash fiction in Writespiration #55, about a city in which the adults were kidnapped by Hunters. Several of you asked me to finish the story, something which blew me away I was so shocked. But I’ve written on. I decided to name the story Adultland. If you would like to read Part I, it’s only short and you can do so here. Or here, where I will collate everything I write. I can only apologise that part II is so long, I’m currently a plotter writing in a panster world…So I don’t know where this story will end up, or how long it will be I have never ‘just written’ without a plan or a synopsis so if this ends badly, be kind! Here goes an adventure into the unknown… Hope you enjoy the ride.

The flat door was open, just a crack. Like someone forgot to shut it in a rush. I froze. Doors were never left open, not now. It was careless; an open invitation to Hunters.

Blood hammered in my ears like the thud of a pneumatic drill. My heart raced against my rib cage and the twist, twist, twinge of adrenaline kicked round my stomach. They couldn’t have been taken. Not yet. There was still the best part of a week before the Hunters were due to come back. I refused to believe they were gone, they just couldn’t be, I hadn’t said goodbye. This must be what the other children had felt like over the last year. A constant fever pitch of anxiety and paranoia, never knowing when their last kiss goodnight would be.

I pushed open the door. They were sat in silence on opposite sofas, staring into space. I shut my eyes let my head drop and expelled the breath I’d been holding. The tension oozed out of my shoulders leaving the smallest trace of an ache; reminding me that although they hadn’t been taken tonight, they would be eventually.

Mum was first to speak, “Rita, and John…” was all she could muster before tears spilled onto her cheeks.

I nodded, “I know, mum. I know.”

I wished more than anything it hadn’t happened, that this time we’d managed to stop them. But we hadn’t. There was nothing I could say to make their pain disappear. That’s what parents were meant to do, make your pain disappear. I wondered when the roles had reversed.

The air in the living room was heavy. Like an awful truth lingered making it taste like the bitter after bite of coffee. Tears stung the backs of my eyes. I shook them away. I wouldn’t let my parents see me cry. I had to be strong. I pushed the window open and let the cool breeze of early winter in. It worked, my tears retreated.

I sat on her sofa next to mum, “I’m so sor…” she held her hand up to stop me. Being sorry was a waste of time. She knew we had tried to save them. We’d tried to save all of them.

“Kirsty and Liam are science geniuses, Mum. They are still working in the school lab on an anti-sleeper drug to counteract the pink fog. Last I heard they were real close too.”

Dad sat up straight, an almost smile skirted the corner of his eyes. No body actually smiled any more. There had been so little success, so few break-throughs there never seemed to be much to smile about.

“That’s good, Jan, isn’t it?” he nodded, urging her to speak, “we just need one kid to witness the attack. Then we will have some clues, a direction. You know?”

Mum stiffened, her lip wrinkled into a pout.

“Bit late for that, Graham.”

I winced. I hated to admit it but, mum had a point. It was too late to save them. Even if they had found an anti-sleeper drug there was no guarantee it would even work. And who were we going to test it on? My jaw hardened. We’d formed a Council of Children to fight the Hunters and save our parents. But we were failing. Too young, too naïve and too afraid to save anyone. I sunk into the back of the sofa and pawed at my temples.

Mum’s bony spine curved dragging her shoulders into a hunch. I’d always thought it would be dad that lost hope, not mum. But she looked like a shell. She was a young mother and I’d been lucky enough to inherit her supple skin and sparkling eyes. But her body was limp now. Her beauty drowned by haggard skin and dull eyes.

I remembered exactly when she lost hope. It was the morning Sarah, my childhood friend, ran into our flat and flung herself into mum’s arms. Sarah’s mother was mum’s best friend.

“They’re gone, Jan,” she shrieked clawing her chest, “they took mummy.”

Sarah crumpled into mum’s embrace. I had to watch as my mother and oldest friend fell to the floor broken and sobbing. I remember the feeling, the testing in my heart as I stood helpless. That was the moment the sparkle was snuffed out of mum. Extinguished, like the destruction of a species.

She was just a ghost of hope once felt now. My heart ached because even though she was still here, it felt like she’d already died. I wanted to be angry, to feel the burn of resentment because she’d given up, but instead I just longed for a cuddle from my mummy.

“It’s a positive, Jan. I’m telling you. I just know we’re close to something,” dad said, reaching for her. She pulled away.

“Don’t.”

Dad surprised me. Mum had always been in charge. I’d always thought that made him weak. But maybe he just wanted a peaceful life. Because in the face of terror it was dad who was painting himself with the colours of valour. He was becoming the unlikely hero. I smiled. He was becoming my hero.

***

The days blurred into a haze of broken sleep and hours in the science lab with Kirsty and Liam. Mum just sat in the same position on the sofa. Silent. Lost.

“I think if we add a little more adrenaline, a pinch more caffeine and perhaps some synthesised endorphins we might just have a strong enough solution to counteract the gas.” Kirsty beamed as she mixed the final components Liam was passing her. She held up the solution and grinned.

“We did it.”

Dad clapped and bowed at her achievement, she giggled and curtsied. It was sweet, and for the first time in weeks I cracked a smile. Kirsty danced around the lab desks. Liam rolled his eyes and then smirked shuffling his feet behind Kirsty and pushing her into a conga. Dad joined in.

I’d forgotten the sound of laughter. All I’d heard for weeks was nervous ‘ha-ha’s’ and broken sobs.

“Corr, it is a bit weird though,” Liam said, breaking up the conga.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“The anti-sleeper’s started to shimmer.”

“So?”

“Well, and I know a couple of others that saw this too but, before I fell asleep the night my parents were taken, I remember seeing a pink mist, it sort of shimmered. Just like that,” he said, pointing at the vial.

***

On the morning of the last day The Council of Children called my parents to a meeting. Mum refused to leave the flat so dad went alone.

We entered the disused city council building. Despite several taking ownership a couple months ago For the Council of Children, the best part of a years neglect made it looked like a war survivor. Bits of paper were strewn across the floor, doors crooked and snapped off hinges. Bricks and plaster crumbled and left abandoned in the middle of the floor. But, it was the faint hint of mold that traced the corridors that worried me. That was the scent of decay. It convinced me we weren’t going to be able to survive alone.

“Graham,” the child sitting in the chairman’s seat began, “we of course, hope that Kirsty’s serum works and that you will be saved from the fate of the Hunters…” he paused and shifted in his seat at the top of the table. He gulped at the air as if tasting sour words, “But, should the serum fail, and you are taken, we need to ensure counter measures are in place.”

The chairman, Harry, was twelve. Twelve. A baby, it wasn’t right that he sounded so grown up. He shouldn’t have to use words like ‘counter measures’ or be the chair of a committee of orphaned children. If his falter, or the incongruence of his age to words showed the pressure he felt, then tomorrow would be so much worst. He wouldn’t just be the chair of a committee, he would be the leader of an entire city of Orphans.

“How can I help?” dad said.

Harry blinked and nodded to the boy on his left who  was holding a needle. I studied Harry for little longer. He was odd looking for a young boy. Mostly, it was his eyes that made me uneasy. His irises were too big for the whites of his eyes. He sort of ogled at everything like he knew too much. I felt like he  could see right through me. I shuddered.

“Er…what are you doing?” I said, barging in front of my dad as the boy brandished the needle.

“It’s ok, Lou.” Dad put an arm across my chest stopping me from standing in front of him.

“This is a microchip,” the boy with the needle said, handing it to dad, “it activates as soon as it’s embedded in the skin.”

The boy turned to face me, cocking his eyebrow, and pulling his lips tight, “we will be able to trace the location of your parents.”

“Oh. Ok. Fine. Good idea.”

I retreated and glanced at Harry. He pulled his hands through his hair, and rubbed his neck. He really was odd for a twelve year old. My eyes narrowed as I stared at him. I couldn’t quite place what it was about him that felt wrong. I shrugged it off. He was probably just messed up like the rest of the orphaned kids.

“We should have thought of this sooner,” I said to needle boy.

“What if the Hunters find it and remove it before they even get dad out of the city for godsake? We only get one shot at this now.”

The boy glared at me but stayed silent. A worm wriggled in my stomach. I shouldn’t have snapped. It wasn’t his fault he’d only just thought of it. I should just be grateful.

He took dads arm and pushed his sleeve up, “there is one other benefit, but…” he looked at me and pulled out a second needle.

“What?” I asked.

“I’m not certain it will work. And I don’t know what impact Kirsty’s anti-sleeper will have on the effectiveness either.”

I rubbed hard at my forehead I wanted to pull at my face and shout. But it wouldn’t do any good. Why couldn’t anything ever be simple? My face felt wrinkled. Sixteen was far too young to have wrinkles and I didn’t want to end up like mum.

“Go on…” I said, through gritted teeth.

“It’s a second chip, which we implant into your arm. I found the pair of them in the security firm building on Tower Street. I think it will enable one way communication.”

“Only one way?” I snorted.

“Only one way,” the boy nodded, “it’s the best we can do. I’m putting the communications transistor into your dads arm. So he will be able to get messages to you,” he turned to my dad, “Graham, we want as much information about where you are, how you got there, any security and the Hunters. Anything you can give us that will help us get you back.”

“Assuming they’re still alive you mean,” Harry mumbled.

Dad winced, his face fell. Another piece of hope stripped from him. My head snapped in Harry’s direction. How dare he. His eyes were wide, he cupped his hand to his mouth. My chest tightened I wanted to fly across the table and punch him.

“They’re still alive, Lou…Of course they are…. They all are.” His stuttered words were too late. Even if he removed the knife from dad’s back, the wound was still there.

Harry’s brow was strained, furrowed and lined like mine. Only, I wasn’t convinced it was for the same reasons.

“Ok,” I nodded, to the boy, “do it.” And I held out my arm.

***

Gracey-Mae came to say goodbye. It was sweet. But she wasn’t really there for my parents. It was an act of solidarity for me and I was grateful. She told me she was there when I needed her and that she would find me first thing tomorrow.

There were no goodbye tears. We had all run dry through months of crying. Weeping for stolen friends and loved ones and for our inability to defend ourselves. Mostly, I cried in fear of losing hope.

But tonight there was a plan. A tiny flame of opportunity ignited… a renewed purpose. I could feel the change in air as the news spread through the city. The anticipation buzzed and popped on my skin. This evening, in the tiny vial of anti-sleeper that pressed against my thigh in my pocket, there was hope; a possibility of rescue and the potential to reunite an entire city of families.

The chip had slipped through the needle and embedded in my arm like it had always been a part of my muscle. The only evidence of its existence a tiny red dot that looked more like an unimposing bug bite.

I kissed my parents. Dad placed a soft peck on my forehead and held me tight. My throat was thick with grief. Even if I’d wanted to say good bye I couldn’t.

“I’m so proud of you LouLou, whatever happens, you protect this city. If you don’t find us in a couple of weeks, get the kids out. Move to a different city, find the authorities. Do whatever you have to, but Harry…” he paused.

Adrenaline flickered in my stomach. I wanted him to say something to confirm my suspicions. To tell me my gut was right. That he felt it too.

“He’s not old enough to lead a city of children.”

My stomach wilted, I must be wrong. Paranoia from the constant anxiety of being watched, of waiting for my parents’ to be taken must have been taking its toll. I decided to give Harry another chance. If my dad trusted him, he must be ok.

I nodded into dad’s chest, clinging on to him with desperate fingers. I wanted to stay there. Embraced in his arms. I wanted him to tell me it was all going to be ok. But I couldn’t stay there. And it wasn’t going to be ok.

My chest was so heavy I could barely catch a breath. He let me hang on for a few minutes longer. I needed to be strong, but I wanted let out the gut wrenching hysteria that was crawling through my insides like a virus. I wanted to stamp my foot and throw a childish tantrum. I couldn’t be alone or an orphan. I wasn’t ready to be responsible for an entire city of children. I needed my parents. I needed him, my hero.

“It’s time, Lou.”

He peeled my hands off him. We both stood staring at each other. I wouldn’t say it. I couldn’t. Part of me still desperate it wasn’t really goodbye.

“I love you, Lou.”

The lump in my throat was so hard it was agonising, I managed to choke an “I love you too, dad,” before sprinting from the flat. If I’d stayed a minute longer the Hunters would have had to prize my leeched like body off my parents.

I leaned against the flats wall outside, breathing heavily. I shook away the thoughts of my parents alone upstairs just waiting for their fate. I felt for the vial and stared at the contents.

It still was shimmering.

I necked it. It tasted sweet in my mouth but, as it slipped down my throat it burnt. My arm where the microchip sat tingled. I wondered which would fail; the chip, or the anti-sleeper.

I lost count of the circuits of the flat I did. Minutes drifted into hours and as the first specks of sunlight kissed the horizon I thought the Hunters wouldn’t come. Butterflies danced on delicate bubbles around my stomach. Maybe the Hunters had changed their minds. They didn’t need my parents. They had taken enough.

A soft pink vapor drifted across the tarmac in front of the flat. It was beautiful. It acted like clouds, billowing and fluffy. It shimmered in the dawn light, just like they said it would. I found myself wandering towards it. I wanted to touch it. It was calling me, singing in time with the chirps of morning’s first birds.

I was wrong. My parents weren’t special and they hadn’t been forgotten. The hunters were here. And they had come to take them.

***

So what do you think? Should I carry on the story? Or forget it and go back to my plotter ways?!

The post Adultland Part II appeared first on Sacha Black.

There’s something wrong with my opening chapter. I’ve edited it eight times, two of those were major overhauls, the rest tweaks. But still… just plain wrong, and the closer I get to the end of draft one (and I am real close now) the more preoccupied I become with the first chapter. I figured the best way to work out what was wrong, was to study the masters. Examine the books in my particular genre that have made it, and see how they do it. And you know what… They have a formula. They all have a set of things in common. I’m not suggesting I need to follow their formula exactly, I still want to be unique, but I can at least learn from it.

I’m a victim of having read too many posts about ‘how to write,’ and ironically, I am now sharing the lessons I’ve learnt! But I just can’t help myself. I want to write well, so I try to absorb as much as I can from others. But here’s the thing. You can read advice, and a lot of advice that all says the same thing and yet, it’s still not right for your book, or your genre or for you.

And that’s exactly where I went wrong. This makes me slap the keys and grit my teeth in frustration…

I’ve read countless articles, blog posts and even excerpts in published books that all say some derivative of this:

Start with a hook, throw your reader straight into the action, most writers end up cutting chapter one and starting at chapter two where the real action is.

Well you know what? I should have started at chapter sodding two, but not because that’s where the action is. But because it’s where the action isn’t .

Let me explain…

The genre I write is YA/NA Fantasy/Dystopian genre, the genre infamous for The Hunger Games, Divergent and Uglies to name but a few. So, that’s exactly where I went to study first chapters.

When I opened the first book – I just started reading because I didn’t know what I was looking for. I had planned on taking just the first line or two for thorough examination. But I realised pretty quickly that I was actually looking for something specific, I just didn’t know what till I read the first couple of books.

There are five excerpts below, I have copied the text from the beginning of each one, right up to the point where I found what I was looking for.

And what was it? Let me show you with an example, I’ve bolded the bits I was looking for:

Hunger Games By Suzanne Collins

Chapter 1:

When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Prim’s warmth but finding only the rough canvas cover of the mattress. She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course she did. This is the day of the reaping.

***

There you go, what I was looking for was in the first paragraph. Let me give you another example:

Divergent By Veronica Roth

Chapter 1:

There is one mirror in my house. It is behind a sliding panel in the hallway upstairs. Our faction allows me to stand in front of it on the second day of every third month, the day mother cuts my hair.

I sit on the stool and my mother stands behind me with the scissors, trimming. The strands fall on the floor in a dull, blond ring. When she finishes, she pulls my hair away from my face and twists it into a knot. I note how calm she looks and how focused she is. She is well-practiced in the art of losing herself. I can’t say the same of myself.

I sneak a look at my reflection when she isn’t paying attention—not for the sake of vanity, but out of curiosity. A lot can happen to a person’s appearance in three months. In my reflection, I see a narrow face, wide, round eyes, and a long, thin nose—I still look like a little girl, though sometime in the last few months I turned sixteen. The other factions celebrate birthdays, but we don’t. It would be self-indulgent.

“There,” she says when she pins the knot in place. Her eyes catch mine in the mirror. It is too late to look away, but instead of scolding me, she smiles at our reflection.

I frown a little. Why doesn’t she reprimand me for staring at myself?

“So today is the day,” she says.

“Yes,” I reply.

“Are you nervous?”

I stare into my own eyes for a moment. Today is the day of the aptitude test that will show me which of the five factions I belong in.

***

Boom, Roth did it too. She mentioned the word faction in her first paragraph. What do Factions and Reapings have in common? They are the fundamental constructs of their books. They are what makes their books unique. It’s the foundation of their dysoptia’s. I read a little further with Divergent, and highlighted another sentence. Let me give you another few examples of what else I found:

Matched By Ally Condie

Chapter 1:

Now that I’ve found the way to fly, which direction should I go into the night? My wings aren’t white or feathered; they’re green, made of green silk, which shudders in the wind and bends when I move – first in a circle, then in a line, finally in a shape of my own invention. The black behind me doesn’t worry me; neither do the stars ahead.

I smile at myself, at the foolishness of my imagination. People cannot fly, though before the Society, there were myths about those who could. I saw a painting of them once. White wings, blue sky, gold circles above their heads, eyes turned up in surprise as though they couldn’t believe what the artist had painted them doing, couldn’t believe that their feet didn’t touch the ground.

Those stories weren’t true. I know that. But tonight, it’s easy to forget. The air train glides through the starry night so smoothly and my heart pounds so quickly that it feels as though I could soar into the sky at any moment.

“What are you smiling about?” Xander wonders as I smooth the folds of my green silk dress down neat.

“Everything,” I tell him, and it’s true. I’ve waited so long for this: for my Match Banquet.

 ***

Uglies By Scott Westerfeld

Chapter 1:

The early summer sky was the color of cat vomit. Of    course, Tally thought, you’d have to feed your cat onlysalmon-flavoured cat food for a while, to get the pink right. The scudding clouds did look a bit fishy,       rippled into scales by a high-altitude wind. As the    light faded, deep blue gaps of night peered through    like an upside-down ocean, bottomless and cold.

Any other summer, a sunset llike this would have been  beautiful. But nothing had been beautiful since Peris  turned pretty. Losing your best friend sucks, even if its only for three months and two days.

***

Both Hunger Games and Divergent do the same thing as Uglies and Matched. They all start on the day of, or almost on the day of a graduation or coming of age event:

Hunger Games – starts with the reaping

Divergent – with the aptitude test

Matched – with the Match Banquet

Uglies – the pretty operation

What else do these first chapters do, other than the obvious introduction of the main characters, they:

Introduce you to the key tennets of the dystopian world and build an image of it.

They do it in a way that feeds you little drips and drabs of information though character thought and setting description. I’ll use on final example:

The Testing By Joelle Charbonneau

Chapter 1:

I can hardly stand still as my mother straightens my    celebratory tunic and tucks a stand of light brown hair behind my ear. Finally she turns me and I look in the   reflector on our living area wall. Red. I’m wearing red.No more pink. I am an adult. Seeing evidence of that    tickles my stomach.

“Are you ready, Cia?” my mother asks. She, too, is      wearing red, although her dress is made of a gossamer   fabric that drapes to the floor in soft swirls. Next to her, my sleeveless dress and leather boots look childish, but that’s okay. I have time to grow into my adult status. I’m young for it at sixteen. The youngest by far in my class.

I take one last look in the reflector and hope that today is not the end of myeducation, but I have no control over that. Only a dream that my name will be called for The Testing.

***

celebratory tunic tells you it’s a significant event

reflector signals that it is not a world like ours, purposefully using the word reflector instead of mirror, a word similar enough for us to know what it means but different enough to signal the uniqueness of their world.

Red. I’m wearing red. No more pink. I am an adult. This does lots of things. It tells you age is denoted by colour – another indicator of dystopia. It tells you their world is likely controlled by a higher power who has decided colour is associated with age. It tells you the character is just becoming an adult. Charbonneau killed several birds with one stone, getting description of their attire, and describing a control mechanism in one fell swoop, as well as showing her age.

I have no control over that this confirms that there is a society or higher authority running their dystopian society, and that it controls and makes decisions about their lives

The Testing the construct that makes this world dystopian. The control mechanism and the coming of age plot device. The centre of this book.

***

So what did I learn? What top tips can we draw from these experts? We all know you have to introduce your main characters and that usual jazz, but I wanted to focus on the detail of the formula of these experts, so I haven’t covered the obivous. These guys clearly follow a formula – is it right for everyone? No, of course not. I’m just sharing what some people have written. This might not be right for you, and actually I hope it isn’t for everyone otherwise we will never have anything new on the market.

Let me know if you think I missed anything. And, let me know what lessons you have learnt from reading other writers first chapters.

1. Get the key dystopian construct into the book early. Really early. Whether it’s factions, testing or pretty surgery that makes the world dystopian, a reference or link has to go in somewhere in the first couple of pages.

2. None of these books start smack in the middle of the action. They all start just before the proverbial poop hits the fan. Think about how you can draw your reader in first, and then smash them with action in chapter two.

3. Create an image of the world through the characters thoughts and actions as well as through blatant setting description. You can kill two birds with one stone if you’re clever like Charbonneau who used a colour linked to a construct in their dystopian society. There are plenty of other ways you can do that if your world is detailed.

4. Details – ensure there is a balance of world description in chapter one to explain your world, but not so much it confuses the reader

5. If your protagonist is going to come of age – consider starting with it – especially if the ‘coming of age event’ is going to incite action for the rest of the book.

The post 5 Top Tips for Writing Chapter One – Lessons from the YA genre appeared first on Sacha Black.

I made a point recently about the lack of ‘actual’ writing I do. You know, with my hand and a real life pen. The post discussed Distributed Cognition, a concept that debates where the boundaries of thought are and one example is the use of a pen. Does the physicality of using a pen change your thought process through the action of writing? Where do your thoughts end, and the pen and ink begin, and what is the reciprocal effect of the thought, hand and pen interacting.

Why am I talking about this again? Well, in my author interviews, I ask a provocative question making a point that the publishing industry is in decline (I don’t actually think it is, but it tends to provoke an interesting answer). That question got me thinking, is penmanship in decline?

When I was a kid I used to have a pen pal, in fact, I had two. Didn’t everyone?

My mum still has her from childhood, a fact I love. When I went to school, I had a friend who liked reading and writing as much as I did. We used to hand write each other letters. I still have them. Dozens of them. I would painstakingly scribe words, colour and decorate pieces of paper in order to swap post with her, and more often than not we would stick a stamp on them (because back then you didn’t need a mortgage to buy a stamp) and pop them in a post box. I love nothing better than receiving post. I can’t remember the last time I received a letter.

I used to write a journal, I’ve said before I have a box of them in the loft, thousands hundreds of thousands of words scribed by hand, poured out in a labour of love for the written word. Then I started writing journals electronically. I don’t even know where they are now. Probably on a floppy disk somewhere *cringe* yes, I know what a floppy disk is. My wife’s students don’t. That’s depressing. We are only a decade older than them. But for them, the concept of ‘dial up’ is alien. They just don’t ‘get it’ and blank stares and sniggers follow her when she talks about floppy disks. I used an encyclopaedia – they use wikipedia.

That’s just ten years of development. TEN.

Is this evolution? Are we really developing? Or is this actually regression in disguise?

We apes evolved hands for a reason, to craft tools, feed ourselves, rear babies. I’m not interested in the argument that typing counts because you type with fingers. It doesn’t count. Not in my mind anyway. Theres no physicality. It’s mindless tapping learnt through rote memory.

The physicality of writing comes from having to push the pen around, forcing ink to curve to make shapes and markings. The mental process of deciding feeling where the next dot and cross has to go. I find it satisfying marking the page, leaving an imprint, knowing I created that design, story or letter. It’s gratifying.

Evolution is about progression, right? the ‘gradual development of something.’

Well penmanship is a skill and evolutionarily speaking, skills are things we had to learn too. If typing was just the next evolution, then why does its loss feel like such a sacrilege?

Is the loss of a skill not regression?

We are living in a technological black hole. Anthropologically speaking, in five hundred years how many people are going to be able to understand our culture? My guess is not many. The number of physical records is dropping, we are publishing books electronically rather than physically. Egyptians use to carve writings and explanations into granite, forever left as a guide to their culture. The internet records our culture. But, one day, the oil is going to run out and the electricity switch off. Then it’s all gone. Every record, every piece of information will disappear in a poof of smoke from the last drop burnt oil.

I’m troubled, I don’t know whether it’s my obsession with apocalyptic/dystopian fiction, or a worry founded in philosophical thought, but I am deeply concerned. Look at my wife’s students. Ten years is all it took for them to not understand a concept that to me (and I’m really not old),  is completely normal. I mean what about the words going into the dictionary that originate from text messages for goodness sake. In 2011 the Oxford English Dictionary added OMG, LOL and FYI into the dictionary. What does that mean?

I can’t shift this nagging thought that one day, kids won’t even be taught how to write any more. How long is it going to be? Thirty years? Fifty? Two hundred? It’s going to happen. The pen, and hand written scripture is becoming redundant, typing is faster and more efficient. You can erase your mistakes and no one will ever know. But aren’t mistakes part of what makes us fallible humans? Are we heading for a dystopian future where no one knows how to write?

Penmanship will become a lost art. 

There’s one more point I want to leave you with. My wife is dyslexic. She spells better on a computer. For her, the rote patterns of movement from tapping words is more kinesthetic and memorable than the closed hand structure of holding a pen. Her brain remembers how to spell patterns on a keyboard, but can’t remember the physicality of holding a pen to spell. Something I find truly fascinating. For her, although she believes the lost art of penmanship is regression, there is no doubting that for her, computers and typing are evolution. For me, a lover of pen and ink it’s regression.

What do you think?

The post The Lost Art of Penmanship – Evolution or Regression? appeared first on Sacha Black.

I’ve been waiting for the release of this book for the best part of a year. End of Days is the last instalment in the Penryn and the End of Days trilogy from Susan Ee. I’ll admit I felt like a kid, but I had to have it on pre-order as soon as it was available, that’s how much I wanted to read it!

Susan Ee’s trilogy is a YA/NA Fantasy/Dystopian trilogy – the same genre as the likes of Hunger Games and Divergent – the same genre I write, so I couldn’t help but read it. I adored the first book Angelfall. The second book World After was ok – but it felt much like a lot of second books in trilogies – a filler, a stop gap before the climax in the third book. (I’ll put links and photos and blurbs to the first two books at the end).

So you’re not completely lost the general background to the first two books is – Angel apocalypse – they bring war on humans the protagonist saves an angel (Raffe who happens to be an Archangel and gods wrath.) They start to fall in love – which is completely forbidden.

To End of Days, the final instalment.

Amazon gives this blurb:

After a daring escape from the angels, Penryn and Raffe are on the run. They’re both desperate to find a doctor who can reverse the twisted changes inflicted by the angels on Raffe and Penryn’s sister. As they set off in search of answers, a startling revelation about Raffe’s past unleashes dark forces that threaten them all. 

When the angels release an apocalyptic nightmare onto humans, both sides are set on a path toward war. As unlikely alliances form and strategies shift, who will emerge victorious? Forced to pick sides in the fight for control of the earthly realm, Raffe and Penryn must choose: Their own kind, or each other?

My Review:

I adored the first book so I was eagerly waiting for the final installment to find out what happens to the main characters. Ee doesn’t disappoint.

The book is generally quite pacey. Stylistically it’s written as an easy read. So much so that I found myself slipping through the pages, I’d blink and I’d read 15 chapters. The chapters are short which helps to keep the pace too.

The main character Penryn, is a really loveable protagonist, you can’t help but want her to ‘win’. She sucks you in and makes you feel for her. Ee beautifully depicts the raw emotions that teens really do feel. I found myself grinning at her first kiss, feeling her pain as she’s rejected and the desperation for her to get the boy. This really, is a love story at its heart. For me, the rest of the plot seems to disappear into trivialities, did I actually care who was elected as the new messenger? Not really, I was too busy caring about Penryn and Raffe. The characters really are exceptional. I imagine they are relatable to an entire generation of YA readers and those who are not quite so YA anymore… *cough*.

What I like about this series is that it is ‘real’ Penryn’s mother has mental health issues, and her sister… well, I will let you read and find out what happens to her. What Ee does, is touch on gritty real life issues in her fantasy genre (albeit mostly in the first novel). I like this, because a lot of novels in this genre don’t do that.

The novel builds to a wonderful crescendo. I did find the last 20% of the novel smidge slow. After the pace of the first two books and the first two thirds of the final book, it felt like a lot of fannying around to get to the ending we all knew was coming (and wanted). There was so much description and nothingness in the last few chapters before the final battle commenced.

But the actual ending? Well I got what I came for – I was thoroughly satisfied with the outcome.

That being said, this is my only other critique. The book got to the crescendo – what happened, happened and then it stopped dead. If I had a physical copy I would have flicked the pages over going ‘Huh?’ Don’t get me wrong, it was exactly what I wanted, but it was so good, I sort of wanted to know a bit more, I needed just a tiny bit more closure.

Thankfully Ee wrote an epilogue… I breathed a sigh of relief and then read it… Sadly it didn’t add anything to the book, plus it ended even more abruptly than the novel. It was two utterly random pages of nothing, and as I finished it I genuinely frowned and say ‘is that it?’… out loud, in the middle of the night with my wife asleep in bed next to me (she wasn’t impressed at being woken up!)

Am I complaining? No, not really. At the end of the day I got what I came for. I loved the characters, the plot and the overall ending. Would I recommend the trilogy? You’re damn right I would – especially to YA fantasy/dystopian readers.

There are two other reasons I love Susan Ee:

1. She skirts around religious topics – angel wars, Nephilim, Archangels and apocalypses. I find this fascinating as a topic for a YA novel.

2. She started out at an indie author. She self published Angelfall, and I think due to its success has gone under a publishing house now – Hodder Paperbacks. Good for her – that kind of self published success is something I can only aspire to. Also – and I am very excited that she is in talks with film directors…. Angelfall might well big coming to the big screen… eeek.

Final Book Rating: 4 out of 5 because unlike Veronica Roth, she gave us the ending we all wanted!

I’m going to give the overall trilogy two ratings – For anyone who doesn’t read the genre I’d say 3 out of 5 – it probably won’t set your world on fire, but it’s a good easy read and wonderful story with fantastic characters.

For anyone who does read the genre I would give the overall trilogy 4 out of 5. You will love it. It’s everything you want from this kind of series.

If you want to buy the trilogy you can visit here:

Angelfall Book 1

Blurb:

It’s been six weeks since the angels of the apocalypse destroyed the world as we know it. Only pockets of humanity remain.

Savage street gangs rule the day while fear and superstition rule the night.

When angels fly away with a helpless girl, her seventeen-year-old sister Penryn will do anything to get her back.

Including making a deal with the enemy.

World After Book 2

Blurb:

In this sequel to the bestselling fantasy thriller, Angelfall, the survivors of the angel apocalypse begin to scrape back together what’s left of the modern world. When a group of people capture Penryn’s sister Paige, thinking she’s a monster, the situation ends in a massacre. Paige disappears. Humans are terrified. Mom is heartbroken.

Penryn drives through the streets of San Francisco looking for Paige.

Why are the streets so empty? Where is everybody? Her search leads her into the heart of the angels’ secret plans, where she catches a glimpse of their motivations, and learns the horrifying extent to which the angels are willing to go.

Meanwhile, Raffe hunts for his wings. Without them, he can’t rejoin the angels, can’t take his rightful place as one of their leaders. When faced with recapturing his wings or helping Penryn survive, which will he choose?

End of Days Book 3

After a daring escape from the angels, Penryn and Raffe are on the run. They’re both desperate to find a doctor who can reverse the twisted changes inflicted by the angels on Raffe and Penryn’s sister. As they set off in search of answers, a startling revelation about Raffe’s past unleashes dark forces that threaten them all. 

When the angels release an apocalyptic nightmare onto humans, both sides are set on a path toward war. As unlikely alliances form and strategies shift, who will emerge victorious? Forced to pick sides in the fight for control of the earthly realm, Raffe and Penryn must choose: Their own kind, or each other?

The post End of Days By Susan Ee – Book Review appeared first on Sacha Black.

It has taken me an inexplicably long time to read just one book. I am actually a reasonably fast reader I can sink a few books in a week if I have the time. Alas, baby Black has prevented this from happening, and shamefully, not only is this the first book I’ve finished this year, but worse this particular book has taken me way over six months to read. Tut. But huzzah I have finally finished it.

I have only (from memory) written one other book review, for A Disturbed Girl’s Guide to Curing Boredom, because I loved it so much I felt compelled to write about it on amazon and goodreads and such like.

But having read a few posts recently, about the benefits of book reviews, and the difficulty people face getting genuine ones; I figured it was my duty (as a budding writer) to review every book I read henceforth. So I will, and I will post them here, because where better? I will also reference them on my Reading for leisure list. But more importantly, I am going to try and sway the percentage of books I read towards the indie end, there are a couple of traditionally published books out this year, I have been waiting for, but otherwise, I am going to take a leaf out of Dylan’s book and ‘Pay It Forward‘

I’m caveating this review because I have no idea if I will say the right things… feel free to tell me if I have missed anything that should be covered in a review…?

To the book – Uglies, by Scott Westerfeld can be found on Amazon if you are interested in buying it.

The Amazon Book Blurb:

Tally lives in a world where your sixteenth birthday brings aesthetic perfection: an operation which erases all your flaws, transforming you from an ‘Ugly’ into a ‘Pretty’. She is on the eve of this important event, and cannot wait for her life to change. As well as guaranteeing supermodel looks, life as a Pretty seems to revolve around having a good time. But then she meets Shay, who is also fifteen – but with a very different outlook on life. Shay isn’t sure she wants to be Pretty and plans to escape to a community in the forest – the Rusty Ruins – where Uglies go to escape ‘ turning’. Tally won’t be persuaded to join her, as this would involve sacrificing everything she’s ever wanted for a lot of uncertainty. When she is taken in for questioning on her birthday, however, Tally gets sent to the Ruins anyway – against her will. The authorities offer Tally the worst choice she could ever imagine: find her friend Shay and turn her in, or never turn Pretty at all. What she discovers in the Ruins reveals that there is nothing ‘pretty’ about the transformations… And the choice Tally makes will change her world forever.

MY REVIEW:

I was originally drawn to Uglies, because it is comes from my favourite genre. YA Fantasy/Dystopian fiction. But also that’s what I am trying to write so I have been consuming everything I can get my hands on! Most (not all) books in this genre are written in the first person. Anyone who has read this blog for a while would know, I have a strong distaste for third person novels… unless they are written so well I can’t tell. I’ve even ranted about the third person POV, in the third person POV! So when I started reading Uglies, I did struggle to get passed the POv. I found myself annoyed by the protagonists name being littered across every page, and multiple ‘Tally felt this, or that,’ made the character’s emotions seem dubious at best.

That being said the concept of this dystopian setting was fantastic. I think it’s highly relevant to the model and surgery obsessed teens of today. What a pertinent and timely reminder to readers of the YA genre of the dangerous surgery and looks obsessions pose. For it’s appropriateness as a moral and ethical centrepiece for its targeted age group, I salute it. I would happily go under the knife, and It made me stop and think.

This book was painfully slow to start, I nearly gave up on a number of occasions. But several friends who have read it to the end encouraged me to persist because it ‘gets better’ as do the sequels (so they say). So I persisted, and to a certain extent they were right.

The book speeds up, eventually, but not until precisely 64% of the way through. I say 64% ‘exactly’ because, judge me not, I read the thing on my iPad kindle app. The point is I actually took note of when I started to enjoy the story. 64% is too far in to have kept me captive under normal circumstances, if it wasn’t for my friends I would have given up at 30%. I am a fan of speed, pace and action, this book does not give that until two thirds of the way through. And yes, I get that theres a story arc and most of the tension and climax comes at the end. But the world setting and history filling in, was too long, and too slow. I can’t for the life of me even remember what happened before 64%.

Sadly I didn’t feel much of anything for the protagonist either,ok, I did, a bit. But I didn’t cry, or get worried and feel bereft when I finished the book, and believe me, some books definitely do that to me.

By the end of the book, I was reasonably satisfied because it had action and was pacey. But, in the last couple of chapters, there were long paragraphs of description, it felt like the author was running out of words, and couldn’t afford the dialogue. The ending itself was not overly satisfying. It ended, and some storylines were closed. However, it was left wide open for the sequels, so much so, I didn’t really feel like I got closure on anything. I know that series are meant to be left open, (we have to make money somehow) but shouldn’t a book also give closure inself? I think so.

Would I recommend this book? If you read this genre regularly, then you will probably love it. At the moment, I expect the spectacular, I want to be wowed and inspired to write, not feel like I could do better. But, if you like YA fantasy/dystopian fiction then I would say, give it a go. If you don’t, don’t waste your time.

At a push, 3 out of 5.

The post Book Review: Uglies by Scott Westerfeld appeared first on Sacha Black.

I feel like these writing tips are becoming more like ‘heres a bunch of lessons I learnt from all the mistakes I’ve made’ as opposed to actual tips. But hopefully someone out there appreciates them anyway.

The lesson I learnt this week comes from a place of frustration. I don’t think there is actually anything I can do about it. Let me explain…

When I started writing, I didn’t appreciate that it would affect my reading. And it has. In a big way.

I have shamefully become a snob. I used to be able to muddle my way through anything, even if I didn’t like it, I would persist and find something to like. But now…Now that I am super critical of my own writing, and I am trying to pick up all the intricacies of the super famous or spectacularly fantastic; when I come to read the books of anyone less than exceptional I find myself getting really REALLY annoyed. Take the book I’m reading currently. Uglies, by Scott Westerfield. There is nothing wrong with this book, its fairly infamous, and written reasonably well, obviously well enough to be published and selling books. BUT It’s annoying the shit out of me, for reasons I will tell you all about in another post.

My point is, under normal circumstances I would adore this book, it’s exactly the type of genre I love, it’s YA, fantasy, dystopian and a trilogy or actually more like 5 books or something. BUT, because my stupid brain is trying to absorb all the tricks of the trade, I now find myself deconstructing books, reading line by line for descriptions, techniques, characterisation, POV, scene setting and foreshadowing techniques.

I have lost my ability to read for the sake of reading. For the enjoyment. For the love of a good story.

My dream of being a writer, is utterly ruining my first love – reading.

I’m not sure what the lesson is here – because if you want to be a writer, you need to read.

But if anyone has the answer – Please for the sake of my sanity tell me how to stop this snobbery!

The post Writing Tips #7 don't become a snob appeared first on Sacha Black.