Introducing Gabriela and a new way of working

Gabriela is the aunt of one of the girls who appears in book five. She is quite mysterious and seems to have some extra insights into what is going on in the war. She develops a very close relationship with her niece Anika. They have a love of the arts in common.

Gabriela is substantially different form Anika’s very practical mother. She is a dreamer and develops a love for art, music and theatre. She becomes involved with the German resistance but remains on the edge of it.

This time I’m working in a slightly different way.  I’m currently busy writing my next instalment of a YA SF book. However, I’ve started a notebook about this story. I’m finding odd moments to work on it a little:  

·         Sitting in cafes

·         On journeys

·         Holidays

I’ve spent time looking at:

• An overview of her life
• Meeting with Hans Dinkerman, a mysterious figure but who is also working in publishing as she does. He is her main contact to the Resistance.
• Her relationship with her sister
• How her love for the arts develops.

Many more items will be added to that list.

I unpick each of the threads and trace a story arc of development.  I write a short scene for each point on that arc.  

This is an interesting way of working. I hope by the time I’m ready to start on the story proper I will have a notebook filled with snippets. I’m suspect that not all of the snippets will make their way into he novel and there is even the possibility that none of them will appear. One thing is certain though: by the time I start writing I shall know this character thoroughly.   

Drafts 14, 15 and 16 - does it ever end?

 

There's always something else 

Draft 14 Kill off Your Darlings

This is where you get rid of the purple prose and the scenes that stick out like a sore thumb because they’re written in a different register.  Fortunately I didn’t find too much as I worked my way through.

Draft 15 Overall flow

This means reading out loud.  We used to have a cat and she was quite useful. If she walked away bored it probably meant my voice had become monotonous and that in turn meant I was bored with what I was reading. If I were bored surely the reader would be too?  

It is really good to read out loud.  You notice typos, missing words and extra words you’ve probably not noticed in any other edit. You also notice whether you’ve used pronouns too much or too little to replace proper nouns. You will find the odd awkward phrase. You will also notice in this edit more than in any other where you have the right balance of shorter and longer sentences.  Does the text scan well?

Draft 16 Presentation

I now compile my work with Scrivener. So now I’m working on a Word document. Scrivener sometimes misses extra spaces, missing spaces and duplicated words. Word picks up a few more spelling oddities – for example the blue line showing you that you’ve a word that’s spelt correctly but not for this meaning or that ought  to by hyphenated or written as two words and of course also where two words should be written as one. .

I’m tidying up the titles as well. Each chapter tittle should say Chapter X: place time. I’m only giving months, not days. If more than one place occurs in a chapter, I’m naming it after the main one. So, although Jamie is in Llangwm for some of one chapter it is called “Willow Farm” as about two thirds of the chapter is taken up by her interview at the farm.      

Extra

Even at this late stage I’ve noticed a few extra things:

There was some inconsistency in how many interviews Jamie had had for farm work, I’ve now settled on four.

Helga’s Aryan lover Eberhard helps them a lot as she and her friends hide under the town centre.  We only see a little of this. I realise I need to bring in more.     

 

What does your editing process look like? 

   

Resistance

 

As you may have seen form an earlier post I have just finished reading a book that involved three British girls in some form of resistance and a fourth in map work. One girl was involved as a double agent spying on Nazi sympathisers in Britain, another worked directly with the French Resistance and a third was involved in SOE.  

There is the Resistance, the French resistance of which we have probably all heard.

There was also the German resistance.  It actually existed as early as 1933. The Church resisted and some people associated with various churches also hid Jewish people. People such as these figure in the Schellberg novels. Attempts to assassinate Hitler were made in 1939 and 1943. And Käthe Edler may have also managed it if she’d thought quickly enough.  Students formed the White Rose Association from spring of 1942. They distributed flyers protesting about the Nazi regime. Jews themselves protested in the Rosenstrasse march in spring 1943. There is now a museum dedicated to this. You can read all about it here.

There is also a gentler form of resistance in that people didn’t quite comply.  Hans Edler always said “Heil Edler” instead of “Heil Hitler”. Renate’s teachers kept her safe for a while.  Several people kept Jews safe.  Again they figure in the Schellberg cycle.

How are we currently doing on resistance? What are we resisting? Personally I’m horrified at the attempted meddling with human rights.

Are there currently any Russian people resisting what is happening in the Ukraine?  

Never Forget You by Jamila Gavin

  

Dodo, Gwen, Noor and Vera meet at boarding school.  Just before the outbreak of World War II.   Dodo’s parents live in Germany and are Nazi sympathisers. Gwen acts as narrator and is at school because her parents live in India. Noor is from India, daughter to a Sufi philosopher and sees fairies.  Vera is Jewish.  Her parents and younger brother have been seized by the Nazis. She lives with her aunt and uncle in Paris.    

Noor’s story is partly true.  The other characters are fictional.

Dodo dies when she becomes involved in the rescue form Dunkirk. She has been working as a spy, looking into the work of Nazi sympathisers.

Gwen tells us very little about her work but it is top secret and involves maps.      

Noor becomes a member of SOE – Special Operations Executive. She works with the Resistance in France but is captured and executed.

Vera works for the Resistance in Paris and is very involved in forging documents in order to allow Jews to escape the Nazis.

There is some romance for all four girls and an upbeat ending for Gwen and Vera.   

This is a very long read – 500 pages of blocked text. There is a short note at the end about Noor Inayat Khan     

 

Drafts 11, 12 and 13

Draft 11 detail and description

This is about the taming of detail and description. Have I used just enough detail to give the right impression? Is there enough detail? And regardless of how much information is needed am I giving the reader enough time to digest it?

In the 21^st century we need less description than people in Dickens’ time would have. We know more of the world and even if we’ve never been there the name “New York” conjures up all sorts of images. People who live in town know about the countryside and don’t need several pages of description about frost in Wiltshire as we have in Dickens’ Martin Chuzzlewit  

It’s good to rely not too much on just the visuals but also to engage the other senses. One crucial scene is when Helga and Helmut come out of the cellars. Helmut is perplexed by the blue sky, the fresh air, and the sound of bird song; he has only ever known life in the cellars.

I’m still pulling myself up on logistics.  How could Owain even get his car to the Müllers’ farm if a sink hole was between him and main road? So, I’ve now had him borrow a car.

I had a similar problem with Jamie supposing the Mrs Thomas had been brought to Tesco’s by Glynn.  Glynn would have been working on the farm and he also would not be able to get his car out. So, Mrs Thomas has come on the bus – the one that runs only every two hours and goes all round the houses.  That helps to emphasize how deep the rift between the Müllers and the Thomases has become. She would rather endure the bus that travel with Jamie.  

There was also some confusion between meningitis and measles.  So, I correct this to James and Helmut (Miriam’s brother) having meningitis and Helmut (Helga’s son) having measles.     

I’ve been using Ma and Mam for Mum in the Welsh scenes. These are now all Mam, including Mam Thomas.

 

Draft 12 point of view

This is to check whether I have the point of view right. Do I keep with one point of view? Am I at the same distance from the characters each time and if I do move, do I zoom in and out too quickly?

I have two points of view characters here; Jamie in 2001 but with an epilogue in 2003 and Helga with stories from 1923-1980. Jamie is very much living in the moment whereas Helga is reflecting on a life lived and rationalises though as she tells her story she takes us back to these moments in the past.

I tighten this all up in places.

I also wondered a little about the recovery of one person who had been in hospital. She went from unconscious in hospital, to having visitors in hospital, to convalescing at home in what seemed a rather quick succession.  However, the dates work and to some extent the reader will be able to make up their own mind; I’ve decided for the moment only to have months and years on chapter headings.

 

Draft 13 Show don’t tell

That ever thorny problem.  It’s relatively straight forward in the Jamie scenes. She’s very much in the moment, and I think I’ve mainly achieved that balance of dialogue, actions inner monologue, description and very little exposition that makes this work.

With Helga scene it’s a little trickier.  She is after all “telling” Jamie about her past. In order to keep the reader engaged she must use some fictional techniques that take them to the then and there. But she intervenes and rationalises some of this. This is all a part of her voice.

On the whole, I’d got it mainly right for both characters but I was able to tighten here and there.

I did also realise that we needed a little more of one of the medium strength characters – Helga’s daughter, Tilde. So, I’ve given her a couple of scenes.

And I also discovered that the household brandy was in the cupboard and in the pantry.  It’s now firmly in the pantry!   

Draft 10 – Dialogue

I always check that dialogue is adding something to the story, showing personality or creating atmosphere. It’s good if it’s doing at least two of those things if not all three. It shouldn’t sound too natural – natural dialogue can be very pedestrian - yet each piece should sound as if it really is spoken by the character who is supposed to be saying it.  It should be possible to pretty well identity who is speaking even if there is no tag word there.

So, I also check whether I’ve overused tag words. Sometimes they’re not needed at all – if only two people are speaking for instance and if it doesn’t go on for more than about a page.  Sometimes they can be replaced with some body language or a small action. And “said” is the best though whispered, shouted, asked, and replied might also be all right.

Dialogue presents some special challenges in this text.  I want my Welsh character to speak with a Welsh accent. So, I’m reading bits out loud every time I check.  I think I’ve got it.

I have a few phrases in Welsh but I think their meaning is clear because of the content and how people react to them

Helga wills till have a bit of German accent.  She uses a few German words, in particular Liebling which finds an echo in some character using the Welsh equivalent, cariad. There are some food items and relations as well. She still get confused with the half hour; “half two” in German means half way towards two i.e. half past one.

Whole chapters are constructed in her voice yet dialogue with them must be in standard English because the characters were speaking in standard German.

A dilemma throughout this cycle has been can I use modern English to represent 1940s’ German. Or must I make it sound like 1940s’ English? I have gone for the former. The way they spoke would have been as natural to them as modern English is to us. I’ve even used the term “bro” for bother. It seemed to fit the relationship exactly.       

The Fuhrer’s Orphans : a moving and powerful novel based on true events by David Laws

 

Peter and Claudia get twenty-seven Jewish children to safety.

Peter is a pacifist but not afraid of danger. He agrees to work as a spy. Claudia is a teacher and has a secret from her past. Both have been involved with the Kindertransport. Part of Peter’s mission is to sabotage the new engine for the Breitspurbahn – the new die gauge railway that Hitler is planning.

I worry about some things, though. A hard plastic chair in the 1940s?   The incorrect spelling of “Führer”. The unlikely success of the way the children are hidden. They are confined in cavities in the new railway carriages. What about toilet facilities? Would it be that easy to hide them?

Nevertheless we are left with some interesting complexities. We leave the story as the children are being ferried across the lake into Switzerland.  Claudia decides to return to Germany which she believes is fundamentally a good country and will soon be rid of the Nazi regime.

A thought-provoking read and one that shows a German point of view.