Progress on Manhunt

Fifth root of fuck-all.

Can't seem to get the opening sequence right. Already changed twice. Will change it again. I know once I get past that, everything will flow smoothly. Getting past the first chapter is the toughest part.

Ah, well.

Say smoething ...

... don't just bellow, rasp, wheeze, croak, snarl, and shout. Let the reader form the picture of the character bellowing, rasping, wheezing, croaking, snarling, and shouting.

Of course how well you manage to get across the idea that your character is bellowing, rasping, wheezing, croaking, snarling, or shouting, depends on the quality of your dialogue. More often than not, dialogue ends up being hopelessly cheesy, outrageously implausible or incorrigibly corny. Some even sacrifice dialogue for the sake of action.

I don't feel confident about my dialogue-writing skill. So, in the novel I'm writing, I'm trying to give short, snappy dialogue. To-the-point, ones that move the action. Lemme see how it goes.

If Robert Ludlum had written Hamlet ...

... he'd have called it The Elsinore Equivocation. The story goes that Salman Rushdie said this. Apocryphal? Probably. But hey, isn't it fun to make up names of novels that would have been named differently had Ludlum written 'em? Here's a few.

Macbeth – The Dunsinane Deception.

Wuthering Heights – The Heathcliff Obsession.

Beowulf – The Nordic Terror.

From Russia with Love – The Russian Bait.

Gone with the Wind – The Tara Romance.

Thw Lord of the Rings – The Sauron Progression.

More to come ...

John Buchan: Thirty-nine steps to thriller superstardom

While Conan Doyle can be credited with making the detective- and science-fiction genres attractive in the English-speaking world, the credit for popularising espionage and adventure genres goes to Scottish-born John Buchan, classicist, lawyer, government administrator and prolific writer.

John Buchan (1875-1940) is most famous for The Thirty-Nine Steps and Greenmantle. Both starred Richard Hannay, a hard-as-nails soldier and colonial serving the British Empire. Hannay's character exhibited many of the traits that would later find their way into characters as diverse as Ian Fleming's James Bond and Alistair Maclean's Keith Mallory: he is pastoral at heart, preferring to spend time in his farm far away from the bright lights and the big city of London, but forever ready to leave at a moment's notice should the country demand; he is eternally loyal to friends, family and colleagues; he is resourceful and has a high threshold for physical pain; he is intelligent enough to put together pieces of a puzzle that has eluded the finest brains in the government; he is always ready to help out a damsel in distress; he is honourable; and he is patriotic to the British Empire and all that it symbolizes.