… Or Should I Cut This Chapter?
What ho! and welcome back to my little internet series, in which I read a chapter a week from a book that I wrote when I knew practically nothing about the world, except for how to chase sheep out of my garden on a regular basis. Then, after the chapter, I talk about it - the chapter, not sheep unless relevant, and try to work out how little I have changed since then.
I am Daniel’s Nemesis, a name I devised for myself when I was a university student studying film and drama but actually learning the art of the pretentious bullshit.
XBook is an unpublished novel I wrote when I was nowt but a teenager, and which then went through heavy revisions when exposed to a world of film that existed outside of Hollywood. Each week, as we delve further into the story and the characters we will learn that I was a bit troubled back then.
If you don’t know what it’s about, then imagine an alien invasion right after the First World War. I did, and I wrote about it.
Today we are moving forward in time a bit to December 23rd, 1918, and Ginger is going on vacation. But what has happened previously in the story so far? Well... Ginger got leave from the air force, and William made an important decision. Ta da!
And as customary,
Please remember:
This is fiction,
Always fiction.
Logic is as logic does.
Dec 23rd.
Chapter 4 - A Ginger story, part 2
A few days later, I’m pulling up outside of my girlfriend’s house, Dee Dee (Deidre or Dee, I can’t actually stand Dee Dee) Carling. I’m back in my once brand new Model T Ford, desperate to show it off to as many people as I can, but dismayed by just how popular and easier to get hold of this car it is becoming. And how old it is now. I’m picking her up to take her away with me on holiday. Holiday. The word seems almost meaningless. I’m more inclined to think of it as leave. But leave from what? I certainly never had much during the war, and now that it’s ended, this is not leave from that. It’s more of a holiday, but that suggests freedom, not that I feel I have that, because I know I’m going to have to return.
I honk on the hooter to tell her that I’ve arrived. Of course I can just knock on the door and greet her properly. Of course I can do that. However, I feel a certain level of optimism creeping over me, I certainly know from the level of excitement that Dee’s been generating over the last few days that I’m not going to have to wait long for her to come out of the house. I barely even need to honk the hooter as I can detect a movement by the curtains. She must have been waiting for me, but I pretend not to notice. Very shortly, Dee comes out of the house carrying her suitcase with her. I get out of the car to meet her, we kiss and I put her suitcase into the back of the car. But I notice just how deathly pale she is. Very pale. I wonder what excuse she’s given people, how managed to get away from a chaperone. I wonder, even, if she’s just running away without telling anyone.
“What ho, Ginger.”
There’s a certain way that the middle classes of England speak. And she’s no different.
“What ho, Dee Dee. Off to West Wales we go.”
“Absolutely spiffing!”
I think of tennis, cricket and strawberries and cream. Right now she’s bowling a cricket ball towards me, but it’s shaped like a strawberry as it gets closer to me and I’m able to pick out that detail. I raise my racket, and go to hit the strawberry for six, but it reaches my racket and as I hit it, the impact is too much. The strawberry, serrated by the racket, splits into a hundred pieces, leaving a trail of red glistening in the air for a momentary existence. I feel a sense of Déjà vu. I’ve seen that before somewhere. Where?
I start the car and off we drive. We’re going off to stay at a small cottage by the coast over the Christmas period, something, a privilege that has been denied me for too long. Only, this year, it’s going to be much more special. I have four years of catching up to do, and as I recall, there’s a pretty hot little momma that works in the bar nearby. Dee has lost her chaperone. Dee expects me to propose to her. But how can I commit? I’ve spent the last four years not getting to know anyone in the fear that they will go away. I can’t get over that quickly, and it’s not like I have a great track record when it comes to long term relationships, despite how great a person Dee is.
However, back in the car, Dee is beginning to get a bit restless. Now that I’m aware of this, I guess I better find something to occupy the time. My mind’s tired though. I can’t be doing with getting into a discussion right now. Today is the first day I haven’t had to get up before six in the last four years. That didn’t happen though, I got up at exactly the same time I get up normally, but the idea of not having to do anything is creeping up on me slowly and I’m feeling sleepy. I just want to pick it up and throw it away. No good having a conversation. It’s difficult enough trying to concentrate on the road, without it turning into a tunnel of sleep. But for someone who looks like death, she has great amounts of energy. I need something mindless, but something to keep me awake. A game. Anything. Something children play. She’ll enjoy that.
“I know, let’s have a sing song,” I say, stupidly. Spirit-lifting mess habits die hard.
“What a dashing idea. What shall we jolly well sing, hmm?”
“Oooh, oooh, let’s sing ten green bottles.” My mind’s died, my brain is no longer connected to my mouth.
This makes Dee Dee laugh. She hasn’t sung this song since she was six, I will discover later. “Rather! Let’s sing a verse each. You start.”
I start, but despite my amazing academic record, and my excellent flying skills, my singing is not quite up to scratch, but is made up for by effort. It’s more to do with the fact that my mouth is having difficulty enough forming words without having to put a tune behind them. Dee, on the other hand had always been a good singer and has had her moments in the Music Halls around the country. This strange mix of singing attracts much attention as we drive through what has now become Marlow.
“What shall we sing now?” says Dee when we’ve finished.
I’m feeling a bit up-staged by Dee Dee's singing and decide to change track. I’m also too tired to put any effort into singing as I’ve just found out. “How about a game of some thing such as I Spy?” My mind lacks inspiration, but it is well received.
“What a dashing idea. I’ll start. I spy with my jolly eye, something beginning with....” She looks around, trying to decide what to ‘spy’. Finally, she settles on something. “...R.”
Without looking around, I just say the first thing that I can see that begins with that letter. “Road?”
Dee’s surprised. She obviously hadn’t expected me to get it so soon. She looks hurt, putting it on, but can’t keep up the pretence. “Oh Gingee, you’re too good. You got it in one. Your go.”
I tell her I have to stop first. I am so hungry right now, and I need something to eat. Dee decides that she wouldn’t mind a bite as well, so we stop off at a little café. We chat whilst we wait for our order. Making the only noise in the place. Our sounds reflecting off the stone walls. It is an early hour of the afternoon. And we are the only ones here. The waiter, an elderly gentleman brings us our orders. He puts the two dishes in front of me and tells me that I must be hungry. I say, yes, first leave out of the war and all that, and he looks at me. He mutters something about having to prepare something and he leaves. I push Dee’s plate over to her and tuck in eagerly. I pay attention to nothing else until I have finished. I sit back and relax before noticing that Dee has not touched a morsel on her plate. I ask her if she is going to eat it, and she tells me she is not as hungry as she thought. We leave.
We are just getting back into the car when a woman in her early thirties, I’d take a guess at, approaches us. It is only because of Dee Dee’s interest that I don’t just drive away.
“Excuse me, sir, you haven’t got a spare penny or two, have you? Only my poor Bobby got killed in the war, and I haven’t been able to pay my way since. Got chucked out of me own house. Please sir, just a ha’penny would do me.”
I tell her to hang on a minute whilst patting my pockets, hoping I hadn’t just spent the last of my cash. Dee leans over to hand the woman some money telling me I can pay her back later. I smile at the woman.
“It’s all the same to you lot, isn’t it?” she asks as a reply. I look at her, confusion forming on my face. “You think, just ‘cos you’ve been in the war that no-one else matters, don’t you?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Just ‘cos you’ve still got that uniform, don’t mean you can’t help out a war widow. You ain’t the only ones who’ve suffered, you know. You said you’d give me some money. Where is it?”
“Didn’t we just give you some?”
“‘We’? Who’s ‘we’?”
I just drive off, not wanting to talk to this insane lady any more. We just drive in silence until we are getting out of Marlow. I’m beginning to get even more tired. I do not think that meal helped in the slightest.
“Well?” Dee asks me. “It’s your turn, now.”
“I don’t want to play, any more. Let’s just go.” My foot puts more pressure on the accelerator. I’m forgetting why I wanted to play these games in the first place. “All right, then. My turn.”
I stare around, my eyes beginning to swim with lack of focus. I don’t know what I can or can’t see any more. It’s beginning to get dangerous to drive, yet I’ve been in this situation many times before, albeit in a plane, not a car. I just need to go into automatic mode, but it’s difficult when you’ve got someone nattering in your ear. I can’t see anything. I look into the sky, hoping she won’t think to look there, so I can drift off into neutral while she guesses away. I look into the sky, which turns into space.
I can see all the usual planets flying around, that’s too obvious, as does the shooting star with it’s trail of debris, turning red, shimmering in the pure sunlight, reminding me of that strawberry, and that sense of déjà vu. Constellations of stars. If I pick one, she will never guess, but I see something else, it looks different, not out of place, designed for it’s purpose there, but still very foreign. Back down on earth, in the glorious daylight sun, I speak.
“Oooh, I spy with my little eye, something beginning with T.”
“T. Oooh a hard one.” She looks around. As she does, she must notice the trees flying past us. “Ooh, I say Gingee, slow down. I mean you are travelling at a dashing speed. Slow down, old bean.”
“Sorry, old beanette. Besides, that started with I, not T.” Along with my singing, my jokes really aren’t up to much, either. But I laugh, anyway. Manically. I also neglect to slow, doing the opposite.
“Ooh, don’t be silly, Gingee.” She playfully punches me, causing me to assume that my aircraft has just been hit, me reaching out to battle with the joystick, readying myself for emergency procedures, as well as looking out for the nearest enemy aircraft, trying to work out who shot me and who is the most immediate threat as I swerve off the road, into a ditch, which, fortunately, is not too difficult to get out of and back onto the road. Dee takes a guess. “Oh I know it’s a tree, isn’t it?”
“You’ll have to try harder, I’m afraid.”
“I jolly well give up, then.”
As I’m falling through space, I’m getting closer to the object, at quite a significant speed now. But soon it stops growing any bigger, and just stays at the same size, not growing, not shrinking. I realise that I’ve stopped falling through space. Yet that still does not explain what it is. My mind is tired, and I cannot describe what I see, I cannot explain it and I do not know what it is. But my mind still searches for an answer, a name and in the depths of space, all that can be heard is my one and only answer, and I scream out its name: “It’s thingy.”
Dee Dee laughs to herself. “You’re so silly.”
“Yes, you keep saying. But if you bally well look up there, you’ll see what I’m on about.”
Dee Dee looks up to the sky. I was right. There is certainly something up there, although she too cannot make out what. All we can really see is a small, round, black dot. It also appears not to be moving.
“Oh yes, What is it, Gingee?”
“I don’t know, old chapette. It’s not moving, so it must a hot air balloon.”
As we both continue to look at the object, there seem to be small lights flashing at different points. It is not entirely unfeasible that it’s a hot air balloon, in this post-war world we have suddenly been thrust into. There is still a large amount of paranoia, that no-one feels completely safe, and the Great War proved that. Everyone expected the war to be over in a couple of months. That was wrong. Everyone thought the greatest technological weapon we would need would be the horse and cavalry. We were wrong. Us sods in the aircraft thought that we would only be needed to spy and go on reconnaissance missions. We were wrong. We shook hands with the Twentieth Century well and truly. Maybe the lights are a new feature, for relaying visual messages.
“What’s it doing, Gingee?”
“Well, just floating, I imagine. It does look awfully high, though, and it must be pretty darn big if we can see it at this height. I do say, I hope the people inside are all right.”
“How exciting it must be though. They must be able to see for miles around. I wonder if they can see us?” That would be the point of having placed a reconnaisance balloon. But why is it there? Do the Government expect an attack? From whom?
Dee starts to wave frantically, and ends up by hitting me a few times by accident, distracting me. This causes me to stop. Just as well. I need to sleep. But not yet.
“Please be careful, Dee! You almost caused an accident.”
“I’m sorry, Ginger. I was only trying to get their attention.”
“You’re not going to be able to. Not when they’re at that height. I wonder what they are doing, though. It must be awfully darn cold.”
Dee looks at me, realises how tired I’ve become, now that I’m starting to unwind. She offers to drive. I protest, as I don’t want her to destroy my car, but she insists and I give in fairly easily. I give her a quick lesson and take my position in the passenger seat. It is my responsibility to be the navigator. As I sit there in the car, I watch other cars shaped as strawberries fly by. I can’t get strawberries out of my head, can’t even remember how they got in there, as I’ve eaten none today. But the cars aren’t strawberries anymore, the drivers heads are strawberries instead. Heads. Strawberries. Streaks of red flying by.
I think this then look back to my controls, as we fly over the Belgium line into the battle fields, flying over the British trenches, believing I can see and hear the Brits beneath me cheering me on. This gives me a sense of glory and purpose as I fly into No-Mans Land, the fear having suddenly left. The mission as always is to spy out the German lines. That’s obvious, that’s all we’ve done since the war began a few months ago. We’re reaching the German lines now, and there is ground fire, but that’s easy to avoid as the guns are slow, and the rifles have no effect on us as we’re too high up to get effective range. The mission is going successfully, we’ve completed our job and we’re turning round to go back, but there’s something new. The Germans have got their airforce and they are coming to attack us. This has never happened before, but it’s happening now.
We’ve always been warned about the possibility of attack in the air, but never really got that far, and I have no idea what’s going to go on. There’s only one thing for it. To plough forward and pray for the best. I pick my target and start flying head on towards it. My guns are blazing, stalling, stuttering back to life, then failing again. Better ease off. I’m getting closer now, flying virtually head on into the German, both of us firing away, not hitting, turning into a game of chicken. Who’s going to fly away first, or are we just going to smack into each other and score our kills that way? My confidence fails me and I swoop away, relieved to find out that he did at exactly the same time as me. I swivel round in my seat, trying to see where he’s going, trying to get myself back into a position where I can destroy him.
Looking around, I can see that the whole air battle is a complete farce. No-one’s scored a hit, all flying aimlessly around, narrowly missing flying into each other. I find my nemesis and get him in my sight. I’m pursuing him this time. But he’s found another prey, and I can see the guns glaring and I feel as if I’m that bullet, flying towards the target as I desperately try to work out who the target is. I can feel myself being ejected from the gun, flying through the air, towards the British aircraft that has been chosen to be destroyed. The airplane is in my view as I drift towards it, at speeds mankind will never know. Only I’m not going towards the plane. I’ve missed. All that’s in my path now is the head of Steven, my Commanding Officer. And I slam into it. With all my force. But I’m not the only one, there are many more bullets behind me, all on the same course, though not all of us will hit this target, and some do tear holes in the plane. I see this, and I see the opening up of Steven’s head, the way his once freezing pink head just dramatically changes colour, leaving a trail of blood in the air, glistening in the sun as the cold freezes the drops slightly. And the momentum forcing them forward slows down, converting itself into a downward movement as gravity takes hold, widening the band left in the air.
The plane, itself relatively unharmed but now uncontrolled, goes into a graceful dive towards the Earth, not stalling, not going into a spin but just gracefully arcing itself so that it faces downward.
As I watch, all I can sense is that this is the most beautiful sight that I’ve ever seen in my life before reality kicks in and I work out what’s going on. Things are getting dangerous now. As Wingman and next of command, now that Steven’s dead, I signal to my boys to get out of there, a retreat. We lost that round, but we were unprepared. The war has changed once again. We will be back, though, and we will destroy. My debt to Steven. Dee asks which way to turn. I consult the map. A left turn is needed.
General Notes
Another chapter where nothing much happens, though there are hints - an alien craft doing reconnaissance, and Dee. Setups, if I want to be kinder to myself.
Ginger’s not involved in the story, yet, despite his heavy presence. But I felt the need to give him something to do to help establish his Normality - the world he exists in prior to the story taking hold. Really, this is more of a satellite chapter. Basically, it may help us know more about the characters, yet it doesn’t push the story forward in any way.
Despite some darker moments, this is more of a comedy chapter with the comedy in quotation marks. Moments of humour are, for example, teaching Dee to drive in a matter of moments - comments on the disregard for road safety at the time, as well as being a bit misogynist - the misogyny of the times, not my own. Humour here is certainly subjective, and tastes change over time. Mine certainly has from half a lifetime ago.
I was trying to imagine a road trip with a girlfriend. Essentially I’d only been on longer trips with my family, where everyone retreats into themselves. Dad’s concentrating on the driving, mum’s listening to the radio, feeding dad with the occasional bit of conversation or a sweet. My sister had her headphones on, and me reading a book, or playing with my Gameboy. The Nintendo version. Don’t let your imagination wander there. So, imagining a road trip where two characters were supposed to engage with each other was a bit beyond my experiences, but some of my grumpiness of being trapped in a car is reflected in Ginger.
But if this is to establish characters a bit more, then what do we learn about them? About as much as what we can learn of someone through their internet dating profile.
Dee is essentially middle class. The middle classes here, in my head, are regressed pleasure seekers, kind of how the upper classes are represented in Blackadder or Jeeves and Wooster. Dee more than the Flight Lieutenant is the symbol of this. She delights in the simple things in life, a contrast to Ginger who has seen the world at its worst.
However, Ginger also becomes more childlike to placate Dee Dee. By taking her tone, he is being subservient to her, perhaps something to do with class. She is his superior, and so he follows her example even though he complains about her internally. Interesting as he doesn’t bend that way with Johnson in a previous chapter. It seems that class affects his behaviour to make him more submissive, unlike authority, which seems to make him angry or want to rebel. And despite Johnson also being of a higher social class, Ginger just sees the authority in Johnson. After all, he walked into that office and saw himself as a King. However, in the encounter with the working class woman, he is able to take the authority and drive away. Notice, also how it is not Ginger that pays her, though he tries, it is Dee. Ginger seems to be placed in the middle of these two worlds.
Reading this chapter I had a thought. What class is Ginger? I have always thought of him as working class, and at least one sentence “spoken in the way the middle classes do”, does suggest he is separate from the middle classes. Also, the working class lady treats him as if he is of better social standing than she is. Maybe his class is mentioned later in the book, I haven’t got there yet, and have completely forgotten.But let’s look at some of the clues. He’s dating a middle class lady. Not to say that the working classes didn’t court the middle classes, but surely that would be severely frowned upon? He has a car. A bit more luxurious than the workhouse, certainly, and I doubt the military paid that well back in the day. We’ll return to the car later.
So let’s look at the working class argument. As the 1907 song I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside reflected, many working class people were visiting the seaside pre-war. The idea of going to a cottage is suspicious, though, as it seems too luxurious, but would Dee lower herself to going to a working class seaside resort? We don’t know when they started dating, but Ginger has certainly been there pre-war as he remembers a hot little momma there. Finally, he’s in the air-force. Now at that time, most people would think of the upper-classes being in the air-force. In fact, the upper-classes didn’t start dominating the RAF until the 20’s. In the First World War, about 20% were well-to-do types, and the majority of the air-force were working class lads and people pulled in from the colonies. So, that is kind of in Ginger’s favour if I want him to be working class. He has a rank, but that may just have come through experience and outliving the infamous 20 minuters. The car is the issue here. I guess I could remove it, but as I will examine later, the car seems to be a lot more important to Ginger than I was ever to have imagined when writing this.
I mean, my word, it’s been nearly 20 years, and for the first time, I’m wondering what Ginger’s position in society is, even though he doesn’t really fit in at any level yet. And this is a reflection of my own position, growing up around a working-class environment with a family background that was far, far away from that. But this is not the Psychologist’s Chair, and I shall leave that thought here.
Cheesiest Moment
Essentially, it’s the character interaction, and in particular the dialogue. The poor, poor, character dialogue. I covered this already, but it bugs me so much that I have to bring it up again. To summarise, I didn’t have a lot of friends growing up, and my social skills were non-existent. Basically, don’t try and write dialogue when your only major experience of people talking is from the TV.
Why none of this dialogue changed over the years of edits, rewriting and revisions, I have no idea. The actions, internal monologues and descriptions all evolved, but why I felt the need, unconscious or not, to leave the dialogue alone, I have no idea. By the time of the final version, I had found friends, I had had conversations. I had written unproduced plays and film manuscripts, very dialogue driven and some at Master’s degree level. But I could not see that the dialogue was extremely unnatural here. I guess I had a lot more confidence in my abilities than existed.
This trope of not altering the dialogue from the earliest version will continue throughout the book. Some dialogue will have been removed if it no longer fitted the action, or new dialogue was added to cover action that was subsequently put in. But the dialogue between Ginger and Dee here is possibly the worst, even more so than between Ginger and the Flight Lieutenant.
The dialogue here makes me cringe. As cheesy and as bad as everything else may be, it’s the dialogue that I despise. Everything else related to the book became a learning experience. I mean, what is the dialogue? What topics do they cover? Essentially, it’s 10 Green Bottles, followed by a game of I Spy, with a short discussion of the strange object that they see. I think what happened was that when this chapter was first conceived, I just found the idea of two adults acting like five year olds amusing. I essentially wrote a sketch, and nothing more than that. Then, as the chapters evolved over the years, and started to get darker and weightier, this child-like interaction would seem like a good counterpoint to some of the topics covered in Ginger’s head. However, I was wrong.
The Cutting Room Floor - What Would I Change?
I’ve got to hold my tongue here a bit. Explaining the real things that I would change to improve the story and why will result in spoilers later on. There are a lot of things here that I would love to talk about, but may need to just go into a separate episode at the end of the project, a “Things that I would love to have talked about but couldn’t at the time” podcast. Yep, my podcast titles are as snazzy as my chapter titles.
Again, just more dynamism between the characters would be a nice thing to have. We see more dominance over Dee from Ginger. I have them playing kids games, but could have done so much more with that - there's still plenty of humour that could be drawn from this situation, as well as some drama by getting them to argue or something.
Basically, the pacing is a bit off. Slow beginnings are one thing, but so far, it’s basically just been people talking, and about nonsense at that. We’ve been promised an invasion from the Trascons, which thus far, has only been approved. We’ve moved forward in time, just over a week or so. Surely this time shift is important. And it is. And I am setting up the pieces on the board, moving them into the places they need to be at. Well, in Ginger’s case, where I wanted him to be, more than where he could actually be better off dramatically and story-wise. But then again, (sings) “I do like to be beside the seaside, I do like to be beside the sea”! Yeah, my singing’s as good as my writing.
There is nothing going on, no drama, no tension, no suspense yet. It is at least a contrast. But is it a contrast worth showing? The human side of the story doesn’t have knowledge of the Trascons yet. But do I need to show my human characters as having no knowledge of anything? And I hardly consider I Spy or 10 Green Bottles to be progression of any kind.
If an alien invasion is to interrupt something important that is being set up on the human side of things, could it be a bit more important than a vacation? Where are Ginger and Dee going in this story? I don’t mean geographically, I mean in terms of their story goals, both individually and jointly. What needs to be established is a sense of jeopardy for our hero caused by the oncoming invasion. A path that Ginger needs to be on that is interrupted by the invasion. There is jeopardy for humankind as a whole, but this needs to be personalised through Ginger. Sure, he’s getting some rest, and his goal is to rest. This is a want, more than a need. And I’m being hard on myself - in most stories, most characters don’t figure out what they need until the end of the story. What I’m saying here is that some kind of path should be beginning to be laid out for Ginger that is interrupted. I have set up the leave, but I now don’t feel that that is a strong enough stake.
We know that he doesn’t intend to marry Dee, so that kind of shoots that path down, unless the events of the story lead him to choosing to marry Dee, but that can easily lead to a cheesy tacked-on ending, and let’s not rule that out as an option. But if they were already getting married, and the invasion threatened his life with Dee in some way, well there we have stakes, and motivation for Ginger to get involved with later events. But, as we have it, Ginger doesn’t really seem bothered by Dee, does he?
His mental issues have already been covered, and will be multiple times, so that is not an issue here. I am merely just treading water with that issue, and treading water doesn’t add anything. He is childlike, but we know him not to be, so he doesn’t even need to grow-up or mature in some way.
He is just going on vacation, and it seems not to matter if Dee is there or not. Our second chapter with Ginger, and we should be seeing something new about Ginger, watching his character grow and develop and learning more about who he is, his place in the world, and what he wants his place in the world to be. Instead, we see him regressing. As a writer, I seem to be going backwards both story and character-wise.
I think it’s pretty clear now that I do not like this chapter for narrative reasons, and would cut it. But we have the text, and without going into structural issues that would reveal later plot-points, let’s see what I could do if it had to stay to improve this chapter.
Were I to summarise this chapter, what would I say? Ginger picks up Dee to leave on holiday. They play games and see a UFO. Oh, and they also eat lunch. Wow. What are the consequences of any of these actions? True, there’s a long game to be played, and I’m just setting up. But what have I actually set up, other than saying “this is the world that these two characters live in?” And that’s fine. That’s my job, and what most writers do. However, what are the smaller, more immediate consequences of any of these actions? Does Ginger attempt to contact his base? No. Should he? Well, how much does he trust his mind? I guess that’s something I could have explored. Is there a sense of dread from seeing the UFO? No. An alien presence, and it has no impact on our two characters. That’s a wasted opportunity. We are still establishing Ginger and Dee’s relationship, but how would we describe this relationship so far? Childish. Could you blame Ginger for not wanting to commit? But then, how have we actually explored this relationship so far? We practically haven’t.
Each act should build to a point of crisis. True, we are three chapters in, four if you include the prologue. And the UFO is at least an indication that things are happening in other areas of this world. And slightly beyond it. But Ginger basically doesn’t react to it. He shrugs it off, assuming it to be military based. Could he not have been more suspicious of it, as he does acknowledge how unusual it is. What would be more in his character is for him to wilfully ignore it due to his leave. An anti-action perhaps, but more decisive on Ginger’s part. Or, as mentioned before, report it, with the limited technology they have - going out of his way to get to a post office to send a telegram is an action. Something, if little, but a consequence of there being a UFO.
And what of Dee? Her excitement causes her to hit Ginger a couple of times, on one occasion causing him to swerve into a ditch. But, again, what is the consequence of that? Ginger dismissed it. He’s passive once again. Passiveness does not reveal a character. It hides it. Any reaction, big, small, positive, negative, would reveal something. Although this is not a movie script, I am telling, not showing - the opposite of what I should do, and books need actions too.
Even if I wanted this to be more of a satellite chapter, one that doesn’t impact on the story as a whole, there is no real inconvenience in this chapter. No little drama that would bring more dimensions to the characters, or little things that they learn that could be brought back out in a later chapter. A satellite chapter may not impact on the story, but should have a reason to be there, a little, mini-story that justifies its presence.
Of course, I am responding to the text that exists. I could completely rewrite the chapter, or not have it at all. I have foresight here, I know where the story, overall, is going. That’s why I’m being so tough, as I know how this chapter truly fits into the story as a whole. And, this is the flaw by doing this in a serial fashion - the build up is delayed so much more than having a book in front of you, and being able to read it at your own pace. I am also responding to the text so far, and do not want to give any spoilers. I know that I haven’t, but by talking about what I could change, what I truly want to do to improve the chapter, kind of sets things up for things to come later on, as I would be putting emphasis on certain things and how they relate later on. That is why I will have episodes at the end of this project looking at the structure and where the real changes would come, and why. Also, I can’t currently refer back to say why I dislike some things, as there’s been just the two chapters with Ginger so far. There’s basically no context. I truly have to take this chapter by itself, as do you. That’s why writing this section is so hard.
We all break the rules. And we need to know the rules to break the rules. And sometimes, as in my case, I just didn’t know how to cut dead weight. This is what this is. Dead weight. Basically, this is the story of me not knowing how to, or even that I could, cut chapters out of my own story.
You have to trust me, things do eventually start happening. I keep saying that, don’t I?
Quote of the Day
Not an easy one, this time. Nothing stands out too much for its pomposity and grandiosity. Seems that I couldn’t find some grand statement to summarise or criticise the world for this chapter.
The one that I think I am going to go with, though, is “My mind is tired, and I cannot describe what I see, I cannot explain it and I do not know what it is. But my mind still searches for an answer, a name and in the depths of space, all that can be heard is my one and only answer, and I scream out its name: “It’s thingy.”” I just like the vagueness as a result of confusion blended in with something as vast and impressive as the universe itself. That of all things ever created, this one thing has been highlighted, and it’s indescribable, yet still has enough power to invoke such passion in Ginger that he must scream out its name.
Really, it’s more of a joke, with a setup describing something that could be important, worthy of note, and the punchline reducing it to something silly and small, almost pointless.
I’d love to say that my joke telling has got better, but -
The Shining Light
Ginger’s delusions are more imaginative and blended in with the action. I particularly like his using a tennis racket to play cricket. And, I like the chance that we get to see a flashback, even if devastating, of Ginger’s involvement in the war. And the moment, I have always felt, when the Ginger we meet was created.
As much as I have trashed this chapter, I kind of like it, because essentially this is just Ginger. This is his normality. Maybe not the most dynamic person but this is his world, and he seems content with it, not really trying to change much about it. We get to spend a bit of time with him when he doesn’t have much to particularly worry about. This chapter is kind of the equivalent of him just sitting alone in his living room in his underpants. Maybe not the most charming guy, but more likeable than when we first met him. And this is probably why it never got cut.
But, as the next section will show, there is something much deeper going on with Ginger, and I don’t think any other chapter than this one could show what I am about to say, which is an argument for keeping this chapter in.
The Psychologist’s Chair
This is where I get my teenage self to lie down on the psychologist’s couch, and the ‘now me’ gets to dig in with a scalpel to see what was going on in my head back then.
Well, there’s some obvious stuff to talk about. The gore and the disturbing imagery are probably the most obvious. Clearly, with the repetition of glistening red patterns, I was a bit body-horror fixated back then.
But a couple of details of note before I get into my main point. I use the strawberries as delusions harking back to traumatic experiences that Ginger will recount later in the story. I really have no idea if that was intentional, or accidental. I have a suspicion that it was an accident, me just splurging onto the page and some idea of the middle classes eating strawberries came out, but it worked, so I developed the idea tying it more to Steven’s death.
Despite the Images of bloodshed, space and even summer sports, and the bizarre juxtaposition that this creates, this is not the part that has caught my attention this week. Don’t worry, though, as there will be plenty of gore and bizarre juxtapositions throughout the book, so if I use up all my mumbo-jumbo today then there won’t be much to explore later on. So, let’s go deeper than the imagery.
Ginger likes his car, doesn’t he? Twice we've met him, and both times he’s gone on about the vehicles that he uses. True, he’s a fighter pilot, and planes will be a part of the story. If that’s a spoiler, then we are in trouble. But so far, when not in the plane, the car has played an important part in the background to his world. It’s almost like he needs machinery to complete him, not just aid him. And he will be paired up with machinery a few more times in this novel. I’m making him sound like a cyborg.
Back to the point, even the alien spaceship causes him to go doolally as he is unable to comprehend it, but becomes transfixed by it. This is possibly why he turns away from it, ignores it, because by not understanding it, he is unable to control it. Kind of like his relationship with people. We know he is passive around people, but is in his element when manipulating machinery. Just like coming across a supermodel in the street, he knows the alien craft is out of his league and so he crosses the road to avoid having an encounter with it, and letting the desirable object slip away without causing him angst.
Perhaps this is why he becomes the bullet when his commanding officer is killed in his flashback. He is unable to control the actions, but needs to. With this being something that happened four years previously he is unable to alter the result. The only control he has is to be the bullet - an object, manipulated by machinery by being catapulted out of a gun, but is what kills Steven. Relinquishing control in an uncontrollable environment, and yet taking responsibility in the result. If he is unable to save Steven, then he needs to be the one to kill him, dealing with his death in terms that he understands, even if he has to be submissive to the enemy gun. Control has been wrenched away from him, reverting him to the slave. And we seem to be moving into the stranger areas of BDSM.
But let’s look also at his different attitudes towards the vehicles in the two chapters that he’s appeared in so far. In the previous chapter, he’s complaining about his plane for not being sporty enough, and not being in peak condition. He also has trouble getting his car started. Neither vehicle is up to his standards, meaning he cannot control them in the desired way. This may explain his apparent bad attitude and mood in that chapter. Here, in this chapter, things are fine - his car’s working great, except that nobody’s paying attention to it, and it’s an older model and less noticeable, but otherwise it’s working fine. In the flashback, where he’s in the plane, again no complaints from him. He even admires the grace of Steven’s death dive, and how the plane itself has mostly stood up to the onslaught. His mood seems to revolve around machines, as in this chapter he’s pretty placid and content for the most part.
I mean, Christ, I wrote this book, yet all this has only just come to my attention. How or why any of this was in my head back then, I have no idea. Personally, I have zero knowledge about anything more technical than a pencil. And I suck at using that. Am I actually projecting an unknown desire of mine to be a mechanic onto Ginger?
Farewell
That’s it for today. And what have we learned? That Ginger forges better relationships with machines than people. Could this idea have been developed in later chapters? Will it even still be true in later chapters? And we have learned that I still don’t know whether to cut this chapter from my book or not. Thanks for bearing through with my self-indulgences - which is the point of recording a podcast… Please return next week as William goes over a lot of exposition, and then acts like Captain Kirk on the bridge of the Enterprise.
TTFN!
And just in case you were wondering, all text was written by me, Daniel’s Nemesis and XBook is purely a work of fiction and is not meant to be based on anyone or any events at all.
The music was also by me, Daniel’s Nemesis as was the image that accompanies this podcast.
It sucks, doesn’t it?
But there we go.