I managed to write 619 words yesterday on the train yesterday, in which Campbell takes Zack for a cup of tea in the mess hall before his next lesson is due to start.
Extract:
“His school lets him go out drinking?” Campbell wondered if he had worried excessively over catching the boys in a nightclub.
“They're not supposed to.” Hemmings sipped at his tea, having not touched the chocolate at all. “But some of the parents, they think lads will be lads, and they kicked up a fuss about the amount of detentions their kids were getting. So now the school just lets them away with it. It's a hell of a security risk: I keep telling Rob he shouldn't go with them if he wants to stay safe.”
The boy took after his father; Campbell had to stop himself from smiling at Hemmings' attitude.
“That club the other night: didn't you think that was a security risk?”
“He was with me, wasn't he? I can look after the two of us.” Hemmings fixed Campbell with a steely stare. “You saw that I can.”
And then I wrote 686 today while I was waiting for everyone else in the house to wake up so we could do breakfast and tidying up type things. Zack is starting to follow up on his suspicions.
Extract:
The images were distorted, and the colours seemed all wrong, but Zack recognised the bank machine close to the Base's main gates. It was the one he and Rob used if they needed money for one of their escapades, but didn't want to be traced by their transactions. The date in the corner was yesterday's, and that was Rob walking up to the machine, but where was his backpack? And hadn't he been wearing a different T-shirt under his jacket when Zack last saw him?
“It's fake,” Zack said. “Someone's faked Rob taking the money out yesterday.”
“You can't just fake a vid-record like making a vid-show. Those things are tamper-proof. They have to be, or it wouldn't be possible to use them as evidence in criminal cases.”
“I don't know how they've done it. I don't care how they've done it. That record's been faked, and Rob's in danger.”
There's another clue in that recording, so now I just have to decide how and when Zack works it out.
Thanks. I wasn't up early, it was the others that were up late ;-)
Hemmings is Zack, yes. I'll need to play with his dialogue in that first section at a later point anyway. There are a couple of words and phrases elsewhere in it that don't fit his dialect, but I'm struggling to think of alternatives right now (on the Rail Replacement bus today, one of the girls behind me was making a joke aout her grandfather's use of 'sithee', which I think is a perfectly good word, although I'd probably use the long form 'see thee' in text).
I admire your discipline - writing on the train must be awfully hard. And it's certainly paying off.
Have you considered putting Zack's observations about Rob's missing backpack into the dialogue? It would make sense for him to explain why he thinks the video is a fake, rather than just insisting that it is.
Thanks. Writing on the train is much easier now I have a netbook.
Campbell, being less of a conspiracy theorist than Zack, might explain the backack away as Rob having taken it off somewhere. What Zack needs is actual proof that Rob was elsewhere when the film was supposedly shot, and he does actually have that. He just doesn't realise it yet. Then again I may yet tweak the dialogue as well.
Hemmings is Zack. Campbell thinks of everyone (including himself) in terms of surname alone, unless they outrank him or are a civilian. Zack takes after his father in spotting potential hazards where Rob and his family are concerned.
Ah! I did wonder where Zack was. And actually I'd thought Campbell meant Rob took after his father (though I typed "Zack") but now I know Hemmings is Zack, all becomes cleat. :-) So the families were always close?
Zack's father worked for Rob's father (in the sense of being Chief of Security to the Prime Minister rather than a direct personal employee), but the boys knew each other from school before Rob's father took office.
As the others have said, brilliant time management. 1305 words because you snatched what few chances you had over the weekend, so sure enough, you've upped your target again to 17000. I hope you've got a nice little reward planned for yourself when midnight strikes tonight :)
From these extracts, this looks really fun. Is it a (long) short story, a novella, part of a novel?
Thanks. It's the beginnings of a Young Adult novel. I'm guessing that it will end up at somewhere between 60k and 80k words.
Not sure about a reward, although there are two books in the post on their way to me right now. I may have to set aside an evening to read one of them from cover to cover (probably ms_manna's latest as I tend not to want to put those down once I pick one up).
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I managed to write 619 words yesterday on the train yesterday, in which Campbell takes Zack for a cup of tea in the mess hall before his next lesson is due to start.
Extract:
“His school lets him go out drinking?” Campbell wondered if he had worried excessively over catching the boys in a nightclub.
“They're not supposed to.” Hemmings sipped at his tea, having not touched the chocolate at all. “But some of the parents, they think lads will be lads, and they kicked up a fuss about the amount of detentions their kids were getting. So now the school just lets them away with it. It's a hell of a security risk: I keep telling Rob he shouldn't go with them if he wants to stay safe.”
The boy took after his father; Campbell had to stop himself from smiling at Hemmings' attitude.
“That club the other night: didn't you think that was a security risk?”
“He was with me, wasn't he? I can look after the two of us.” Hemmings fixed Campbell with a steely stare. “You saw that I can.”
And then I wrote 686 today while I was waiting for everyone else in the house to wake up so we could do breakfast and tidying up type things. Zack is starting to follow up on his suspicions.
Extract:
The images were distorted, and the colours seemed all wrong, but Zack recognised the bank machine close to the Base's main gates. It was the one he and Rob used if they needed money for one of their escapades, but didn't want to be traced by their transactions. The date in the corner was yesterday's, and that was Rob walking up to the machine, but where was his backpack? And hadn't he been wearing a different T-shirt under his jacket when Zack last saw him?
“It's fake,” Zack said. “Someone's faked Rob taking the money out yesterday.”
“You can't just fake a vid-record like making a vid-show. Those things are tamper-proof. They have to be, or it wouldn't be possible to use them as evidence in criminal cases.”
“I don't know how they've done it. I don't care how they've done it. That record's been faked, and Rob's in danger.”
There's another clue in that recording, so now I just have to decide how and when Zack works it out.
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Hemmings is Zack, yes? Or am I confused. For some reason he sounds older than usual in that passage.
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Hemmings is Zack, yes. I'll need to play with his dialogue in that first section at a later point anyway. There are a couple of words and phrases elsewhere in it that don't fit his dialect, but I'm struggling to think of alternatives right now (on the Rail Replacement bus today, one of the girls behind me was making a joke aout her grandfather's use of 'sithee', which I think is a perfectly good word, although I'd probably use the long form 'see thee' in text).
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Have you considered putting Zack's observations about Rob's missing backpack into the dialogue? It would make sense for him to explain why he thinks the video is a fake, rather than just insisting that it is.
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Campbell, being less of a conspiracy theorist than Zack, might explain the backack away as Rob having taken it off somewhere. What Zack needs is actual proof that Rob was elsewhere when the film was supposedly shot, and he does actually have that. He just doesn't realise it yet. Then again I may yet tweak the dialogue as well.
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Clever! Both the fake and Zack detecting it.
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And thanks.
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From these extracts, this looks really fun. Is it a (long) short story, a novella, part of a novel?
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Not sure about a reward, although there are two books in the post on their way to me right now. I may have to set aside an evening to read one of them from cover to cover (probably
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Great job on making time to write on the train. I am in awe.
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I've always written on the train. Writing on the Tube is more of a problem!