I’ve spoken many times of how Songs started, but never where Gair came from or why he has grey eyes. The answer is in a poem. A classic some might say; others might think it’s a bit cheesy. Certainly it’s one of the most accessible poems I was exposed to as a child, and studying English Literature to A Level means I’ve read a lot of poetry. Some of it I’ve even enjoyed.

Anyway, this poem’s been stuck in my head since I was about nine years old. You’re probably familiar with it. It tells a story and poses endless questions about who and why and where and when which I’ve spent the last thirty years trying to answer. It has an awful lot to do with why I’m a writer, so if you’re looking for someone to blame, here he is.

The Listeners by Walter De La Mare

‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,

Knocking on the moonlit door;

And his horse in the silence champed the grasses

Of the forest’s ferny floor:

And a bird flew up out of the turret,

Above the Traveller’s head

And he smote upon the door again a second time;

‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.

But no one descended to the Traveller;

No head from the leaf-fringed sill

Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,

Where he stood perplexed and still.

But only a host of phantom listeners

That dwelt in the lone house then

Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight

To that voice from the world of men:

Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,

That goes down to the empty hall,

Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken

By the lonely Traveller’s call.

And he felt in his heart their strangeness,

Their stillness answering his cry,

While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,

‘Neath the starred and leafy sky;

For he suddenly smote on the door, even

Louder, and lifted his head:-

‘Tell them I came, and no one answered,

That I kept my word,’ he said.

Never the least stir made the listeners,

Though every word he spake

Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house

From the one man left awake:

Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,

And the sound of iron on stone,

And how the silence surged softly backward,

When the plunging hoofs were gone.

I was inspired to compose this post by a friend of mine, MM Bennetts, who feels not at all confident about writing female characters and was therefore somewhat stunned to find one had leapt, fully formed, like Athene from the brow of Zeus, onto the pages of her latest book.

This got me thinking.  I’ve never actually considered that I had any difficulty writing female characters.  I mean, I’m a girl.  It should be easy, n’est-ce pas?  I’ve got the inside track on how a woman thinks and feels, her motivations, her desires.  Surely it should be the Sons of Adam, rather than the Daughters of Eve, that I struggle with?

Apparently not.

Someone commented that “Songs” was lacking in strong female characters.  I did point out to the (female) reviewer that she’d only read the opening chapters which are set in a monastic military order, wherein women are, ipso facto, somewhat thin on the ground, but I did another read-through of the script and noted that the dramatis personae had a definite XY bias.

Hmm.

Now I’m not going to start stuffing strong, empowered women into the narrative left, right and centre to satisfy some artificial notion of gender equality.  If the story doesn’t call for these characters, I’m not going to write them.   It depends on the book.  “Trinity Moon” is chock-full of strong women, for instance, whereas in “Songs” they’re few but memorable.  But it did make me wonder whether I subconsciously find it easer to write about blokes.

I certainly couldn’t write chick-lit, not if my life depended on it.  I don’t understand the heroines, and can’t relate to them, their lives or problems.  I have zero interest in shoes except as devices to keep my feet warm and dry.  Handbags are what I use to carry my purse, a biro and some lip balm around in–I’d be just as happy with a carrier bag.  Boyfriends?  I’ve been with the hero of my own particular romance for almost 13 years; I’m happy with the one I’ve got.  Freya, Lisa, you can relax.  I have no intention of poaching on your turf.

But I couldn’t write bloke-lit either.  Will Self, Nick Hornby and their ilk have the field to themselves; I don’t have the mental toolkit.  I don’t have (to borrow from Terry Pratchett’s “Monstrous Regiment”) the socks.

The truth is, I don’t actually think about whether a character is male or female.  They’re just people.  Whether they pee standing up or sitting down is irrelevant to me, to the reader (except those with a feminist agenda–why can’t they just enjoy the story for the story’s sake, without looking for politically-correct points to check off?), even irrelevant to the story, unless a particular plot-point hinges on what Character A keeps in his trousers, or the contents of Character B’s shirt.  Or the desires of A to get into said B’s shirt.

It just so happens that when the characters start speaking to me, they tend to be at the bass end of the vocal register.  I don’t know why this is.  Could some of them be rewritten as women?  Sure.  They’d still be just as brave, resourceful, stubborn or foolish, but you can’t just swap gender roles like that for the sake of “equality”.

Take a bunch of male characters and introduce a couple of women into the mix.  Now, if you’ve written them even half-way credibly, they’ll behave just like real blokes would in that situation, and there’ll be awkward attempts at gallantry, stolen kisses or a sexual harassment lawsuit by the end of the week.  I haven’t got room in the narrative for all that.  It gets in the way of the story–at least, my story, which is epic fantasy; if you’re writing contemporary women’s fiction it could very well *be* the story, in which case you’re on the wrong shelf and want the next aisle over.

So *am* I secretly a bloke?  I was once asked that question, by a man, because he was surprised at how well I got into Gair’s head.  I will freely admit that I am not the girliest of girls.  I don’t wear makeup or nail polish.  I like motorbikes and rugby and tequila.  But I can assure you, having just checked down the front of my t-shirt, I am not a bloke.

Or if I am, I need to complain to the manufacturer because there seem to be some bits missing.  Specifically, the socks.

I thought I might avoid that with Trinity Moon, since I was working from a synopsis (a heretofore unheard-of event, I might add, which has proved helpful and frustrating in equal measure).  Everything’s chugging along nicely, and I come to an action scene where Gair throws a lock on Ne’er-do-well No. 1 and laying his sword across the fellow’s neck, threatens to cut his throat.

Whereupon the strangest thing happens.  Ne’er-do-well No. 1 takes a firm grip on My Hero’s family jewels and purrs, in a very feminine voice: “Not if I geld you first, Empire.”

Eh?  Where did she come from?

<scrolls through preceding paragraphs>

Nope.  No girls there.  WTF?

So I continue typing, to see where I will be taken, and suddenly she’s sitting cross-legged on the table, twirling her dagger through her fingers and eating my dates.  Gair’s dates.  Whatever.  The saucy minx.  She’s got backstory, she’s got attitude, she’s sensual and snarky and inordinately fond of knives, and she’s made herself right at home in the story without so much as a by-your-leave.

I’ve just been mugged by my own imagination.  And I didn’t feel a thing.

It needs an edit, since it hasn’t had the same amount of attention that Songs has, which is what I’m doing now, and the excitement has started to build.  I’m getting that little wobbly buzz under my breastbone again, and I’m absolutely dying to get through the edit and start turning the plan into some real new chapters.

Oh, didn’t I mention?  I’ve actually got a plan for “Trinity”.  Me, the walking definition of a pantser, has A Plan.  I’ll have a synopsis next, just you wait.

Unfortunately all that trimming and pruning and polishing means cutting stuff out.  Stuff you love.  “But it’s mine!” you howl.  “It’s mine and I love it and I don’t want to be parted from a single word of it.”  Sound familiar?

No matter how much you tell yourself that it’ll be a better book for it, you won’t believe it at first.  Then you’ll get to a point say 35% of the way through and you start to develop a bit of detachment and think yeah, I can do this–and what’s more, it’s fun.

This carries you through the next 50% of the job, and then it all comes to a shuddering halt, right as you turn into the home straight.  This is where I find myself today.

I’ve done the hard part, taken 15k words out of a somewhat overfed manuscript and rewritten a few chapters that just weren’t cutting it.  The result is cleaner, tighter, better paced and does more with less.  I’m well happy with it.

My problem is this.  In the big finale–I hate to use the word climax.  Maybe it’s my mucky mind but it just seems, well, rude, quite frankly.  It is inextricably linked to gentlemen’s top-shelf periodicals and Newcastle’s only blue movie cinema, which had a name beginning with C and ending in ax, with a lime in the middle.  But I digress.

In the big finale, the bad guy doesn’t appear.  I thought long and hard about this, and decided that he should.  It is, after all, his show.  And I had an idea that he should saunter on set in one of his Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen silk shirts and taunt My Hero about his girlfriend.  It’s the kind of thing he’d do.

So I started looking for where I could engineer an appearance by the bad guy.  And bugger me if I couldn’t find one.  The finale chapters work so well as they are that shoehorning anything in is just going to upset the balance (and you don’t want to start upsetting the balance in the Force, mate–anything could happen).

I therefore find myself in a quandary.  My head says a finale without the bad guy and My Hero squaring off is not much of a finale at all.  Dare I say it, an anti-climax.  And my heart is saying, don’t bugger about with it or you’ll spoil it.  Of course the logical way to approach this is to employ the wonderful “Save As…” command and make a copy of where I’m at right now, try the edit, and see if it works.  If it does, great.  If it doesn’t, no harm done, go back to the backup and all it’s cost me is a couple of late nights (sucks having to work for a living, eh?)

I am, however, a writer, and therefore only peripherally acquainted with logic.  None of this book or either of its sequels has been planned.  It has evolved on tea, chocolate biscuits and four hours’ sleep a night (sucks having to work…etc)

Aargh.

This, as my dad’s colleague used to say, is a two-biscuit problem.  I need more Hobnobs.