An Englishman with too much free time writes words.

Friday, October 10, 2008

Fix Up, Look Sharpe

Judging by this months site stats for now, it seems the only people searching for my wretched hole of the Internet are people who think I’m some sort of mine of Space Marine information. Such people evidently haven’t realised that said Codex is now very out, and its much easier to go and buy it, or at least hit up a reputable torrent site. When I’ve bought the right arm, we’ll see what my He’stan conversion is.

Until then, here’s some more nonsesne about Nanowrimo.

I’ve scoped out most of the ideas I want to use in my story now, which is always good. The main one being that its going to be done in a similar style to the works of the absolutly legendary Tom Sharpe. If I can pull off a fraction of what he can do with about 50,000 words, I’ll be happy. Nothing this, there’s a number of conventions I have to remember when doing a Sharpe.

  • The book must be set in England, or at the absolute bare minumum, have Englishness as a central theme.
  • In the fine tradition of British comedy, two of the main characters (usually the first two characters introduced) do not get along, but are stuck in a situation (marriage, working together) where they are forced to coexist.
  • One of these characters will set up a cunning plan to make the other one look stupid, and get said other character out of the way of something.
  • A combination of circumstances, bad luck, the other character reacting, and the other character setting up his own cunning plan will create a chain of snowballing misadventures.
  • By the end of the book, any cunning plans have long since gone out of control, and ended up causing problems on a national scale, so that the government has to get involved in what started as two schoolteachers having a fight.
  • There will be a character from the Army, usually a general.
  • A character wil hang-ups about his sexuality will be advanced on by a fat, sexually vocarious woman, who will not get the cock she craves.
  • A common setup for jokes will be a character saying something, then the book seguing into another characters actions, or another scene entirely, using a play on those words. For example:
  • “Micheal dear, I thought you’d stopped smoking!” said his wife, smelling the smoke. He perhaps had stopped smoking, but his hat was smouldering in a corner where he’d thrown it.
  • Only its done so its actually funny.
  • Usually, by the end of the book, the status quo is completly restored, everything returned to how it was at the start of the book, just with a character or two locked up or blown to pieces.
  • It will be a better book than any you’ve ever read.

There we go, how I can fail to do well with a plan like that? Apart from giving up by the end of the first week, of course.

posted by Chyld at 4:15 pm  

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