The fiction farm
A busy day at the fiction farm yesterday. We’ve started to put the first chapter of ‘Straight Swap’ into the layout and editing process. It’s all about font size and gutters, margins and layout for the moment. We arrange the chapters in a template that the editor makes up in a thing called In Design, but we need to decide on that template first.
We’re going with the same size and layout at ‘Lonely House’ and ‘The Judas Inheritance’ as this next one is also being published via RC Publications, so it’s a ‘house’ style thing. We’ve dropped the font size down to 12 from 14, as it was for the others, because ‘Straight Swap’ is around 120,000 words in length and I want to keep the number of pages down. The more pages, the more it costs to print a copy, but it is still easy enough to read. When we finally get the Kindle version out you will be able to select your own font size, so that’s not an issue.
I’ve seen the first chapter layout, though nothing has been edited yet, and it looks fine. A bold heading, the quote – each chapter starts with a quote – and then the main text in a standard way. All I need do now is make any last edits and send each chapter up as a separate file. Meanwhile, I’ve been doing the Donkey work on ‘Donkeys.’ The story, for those who don’t know it:
A few years ago two of us set about wringing a screenplay about the first gay marriage in Greece. (Imaginary, in our case, though there was a ceremony carried out on Tilos several years ago now.) Even civil partnerships were illegal then, and they are only now just coming into being, or were about to just before Christmas, I’m not sure where the legislation is right now. The script caught the attention of a South African producer who found a director and started looking into funding but, as is the case in 99% of film projects, no funds were forthcoming, despite alleged interest from some ‘names’ and Elton John. The script hung around on the professional script-selling sites for a while and the moment passed. But during all the time it’s sat there, people have been urging me to write the novel version and that’s what I’ve started doing.
Only this isn’t your average novel, it’s very fast, the points of view change constantly and there is minimal lengthy backstory. It’s a story written from a screenplay, literally; I’ve copied the text and dialogue across and am basically filling out the gaps and allowing myself a little space to expand on things, which a film script doesn’t give you space or time for. So it’s not going to be my usual style, but it is coming on.
And that’s what I have been doing these past few days as the festivities of Christmas slowly fade and bit by bit one returns to the usual routine. Up until yesterday I was still in sofa mode, settling in in the late afternoon with some films, while the wind battered the shutters and the sea swelled, while the cat made vain attempts to sit on my head and puncture my anatomy and the Christmas lights taken from the tree lit up the hall windowsill and I made my way through the last of the chocolates, blue cheese and other goodies which lose some of their sparkle and attractiveness by January 7th onwards. Back to the working grind and back to the quiet winter on Symi.
