Tag archives for Perfects
Opening Chapter “Ambush!” – Excerpt from Perfects
'Ambush' is probably the (very short) opening chapter of my novel, which will be edited professionally over the winter. I'm also thinking about re-titling the novel to avoid confusion with the original novella that it was expanded from. Ideas accepted in the comments. Ambush Pandora’s driving scared the hell out of all of us, but the simulator couldn’t lie. She was way safer and faster than any of us, even me. We didn’t buy that though, given how scary she was driving on manual, so I got Han to compare her real driving performance with the simulations. She was slightly slower and safer when we were actually in the car with her, but still faster and safer than any of us could do in the sim. So we reluctantly agreed that she should be the driver. Two Police Cars in Liverpool…
Cell Tradecraft – Plot Hole Plugged
The cell tradecraft in the first draft of Perfects had a plot hole. I found in my first editing pass, it relates to the cell tradecraft when it is compromised. Background Core and infrastructure from a typical cell system (Photo credit: Wikipedia) The main characters in Perfects are a group of genetically modified people. They're illegal and trying to help other genetically modified people escape from the country under false identities. The parallel here is the evader networks in nazi occupied Europe during WW2. Indeed the group has consciously modelled it's way of working on the SOE manual. They have a compartmentalisd cell structure to prevent the whole network being compromised. The Plot Hole The story involves the cell being compromised. The police raid their identity factory and arrest of a couple of the cell members, including the leader. In…
Dialogue: Five Facts for Fantastic Dialogue
Dialogue can be difficult, but there are some things you can do to make it way better. Here are five things for you to focus on when editing your dialogue. If you do these then your dialogue will be amazing. As with everything, you need make sure the dialogue advances the plot or develops the characters. If it doesn't do either, or both, then cut it out. Dialogue Directions 1. Read it out loud 2. Show the emotions 3. Give each character their own voice 4. Use only 'said' 5. Keep it short Read it Out Loud This is how you know that you've got the rhythm right. If you can record yourself reading it and listen back. Don't take any shortcuts here. You need to actually say it out loud, reading in your head doesn't work. This is good advice for all…
Autonomous Vehicles pt.2
Social Impacts of Autonomous Vehicles Perhaps Autonomous mobile homes will cruise round here: Catford Road (South Circular Road), London SE6 (Photo credit: Wikipedia) My previous article on Self Driving Cars covered some of the technical points, that self driving cars are starting to look safer than human drivers and that there are traffic management benefits to most vehicles being self-driving. But there's more to it than that. For a start there will be more than just 'cars' that drive themselves around, so properly one ought to talk about autonomous vehicles (AV). No More Professional Drivers The most obvious consequence of autonomous vehicles is that those who drive for a living will rapidly be out of a job. The cost base for taxis, truck haulage and bus companies involves driver pay plus the costs of the vehicle. I expect that initially there…
Editing Perfects
Over the last few weeks I've been editing Perfects for a second draft. I finished it over two years ago and it has sat in the metaphorical drawer waiting until I had time between uni courses to focus on it and apply what I learned from A215 to it. As a re-cap, Perfects is an evolution of Exodus, which was my multi-threaded NaNoWriMo 2012 story of a mid twenty first century exodus of people from Earth into space as space travel became an order of magnitude cheaper. I decided when I re-looked at it that there was an interesting world there, but that the strands needed loads of work to knit together. One of the strands became the novella Crisis Point, which I released in 2013. Perfects followed a group of genetically engineered teenagers and twentysomethings living mainly in Cambridge.…