Viking Novel

10 Tips for Winning Writing Contests

2006-02-26T00:39:00.000-08:00

Contest Tip Sheets: "1. Begin with a bang. Editors routinely say they read the first paragraph of a piece, and if they don't care about what happens next, they stop there, because the incoming mail stack is too high. Contest judges often face even higher manuscript stacks. A quick way to weed out the losing entries is to discard all those where the first page doesn't give them a reason to go to the second page. Before sending in an entry, read every article or book chapter you can find on openings, beginnings, leads. Then compare yours to what the experts say. This applies equally to fiction and nonfiction."

National Novel Writing Month - National Novel Writing Month

2005-10-01T15:21:00.000-07:00

National Novel Writing Month - National Novel Writing Month
site is due to be relaunched today

and I must get my head together for November

reading and thinking

NOTES ON WRITNG

2005-05-11T00:58:00.000-07:00

General Advice: Clues For New Writers Of Crime Fiction

The first time you put on a pair of ice skates, were you eligible for the Olympic figure skating team? No? Well, chances are, your first attempt at writing could use a little work before it sails out over the slippery surface of publishing.

A friend of mine says, "Writers are the only artists who expect their first paintings to hang in the Louvre."
The Official Website of Jan Burke

Rule #5 is "Turn off the television. For eight months.
Spend more time writing. You never waste time by writing—you only waste
time by not writing

FROM Google Groups : misc.writing.moderated

This blog

2005-04-23T09:18:00.000-07:00

this blog is on hold until I rediscover the energy and impulse to write fiction

please visit some of the others http://hughw36.blogspot.com/
is my main blog

sincerely

Hugh W

Which point of view?

2005-03-31T01:41:00.000-08:00

the leading character and the storyteller are not usually the same person

Which POV point of view is a technical and artistic decision

When I hang out with writers we discuss POV as technique

google search POV+techniqu

Stylistic Devices - Points of View

First-person narrator

The narrator tells the story from his / her point of view (I).
It is a limited point of view as the reader will only know what the narrator knows.

The advantage of the first person narration is that the narrator shares his / her personal experiences and secrets with the reader so that the reader feels part of the story.

Third-person narrator

The narrator is not part of the plot and tells the story in the third person (he, she).

Usually the narrator is all-knowing (omniscient narrator): he / she can switch from one scene to another, but also focus on a single character from time to time.

http://www.ego4u.com/en/cram-up/writing/style/point-of-view

google search First-person+narrator

google search third-person+narrator

Fantastic Narrator

read on
http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/gm/penney14.html

An author can relate a tale through a third person narrator detached from the story or by allowing one of the characters involved in the action to describe the events.

Different stylistic techniques also present varying possibilities within these forms of narration.

Why do

BBC - Get Writing - Hugh Watkins

2005-03-20T01:31:00.000-08:00

BBC - Get Writing - Hugh Watkins
I had forgotten about that page until it turned up in a test search
via http://www.freefind.com/
I did not logon much more,
after I was recruited from this BBC board to Writing Buddies

On language and style

2005-02-11T18:42:00.000-08:00

I have been cooking my viking novel for many years, a retelling of
some sagas, and thinking about style and languge I relfected on my
style and if I should reject words of latin origin and especially not
put them inthe mouths of characters because they would be anachonisms.

To succeed totally in that would mean I would be writng in pure
icelandic or saxon - so that was a non-starter

The skill of the writer in introducing new words into the english (or
another) language is to make them self definng by their context.

I reached for my dictionary - on line or OED 3 on cd - even such a
word as communism has a pitfall

Do you mean Communism or communism?
because the remarks about revolution apply only to the former.

see Merriam Webster dictionary - communism

remark:-
Main Entry: 2 com·mune
Pronunciation: 'käm-"yün; k&-'myün, kä-
Function: noun
Etymology: French, alteration of Middle French comugne, from Medieval
Latin communia, from Latin, neuter plural of communis

I see no reason to suppose latin is a younger language than greek
see evolution of the alphabet

but a language will exist long before it is ever written

from a thread in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wittgenstein-dialognet/
we were discussing
Laurian:-
In Jowett's translation of the "Laws" of Plato, one may find the following sentence "The principle of piety, the love of honour, and the desire of beauty,
not in the body but in the soul. These are, perhaps, romantic aspirations;"

It seems that Jowett was to great a translator to make such a trivial mistake.
For it seems that to translate anything from Plato by "Romantic" is a stupid anachronism.

AND :-
It seems that Jowett was to great a translator to make such a trivial mistake.
For it seems that to translate anything from Plato by "Romantic" is a stupid anachronism.

To be more explicit:
(1) "Plato had communist views" - is a well-formed sentence
(2) "Plato believed/said that communism is good" - is an unacceptable sentence .

Second Wind by Dick Francis and what I am reading this week

2005-01-28T22:04:00.000-08:00

Google Search: second wind dick francis
I am not doing much writing but reread the above, and I really admired the technical skills and structure of the book.

That is the sort of standard I wish to achive - another "writer's writer" is the supreme story teller Stephen King.

Google Search: "+the stand" stephen king
The Stand is a mere 1100+ pages which I am whacking my way through in all the spare moments I can find.

Google Search: viking novel

2005-01-19T13:53:00.000-08:00

Google Search: viking novel mine is not there - yet

dong some thought experiments

what would the trader take to the Faero islands and back to Norway

wood for wool is the obvious answer
birch bark roofing tiles for woolen cloth

NO knitting - that was invented by the arabs and unknown to vikings

The NOVEL - introduction

2004-11-30T10:33:00.000-08:00

And this is where I am going to retell viking sagas, and when there are many chapters on line you will have to start at the oldest archive to find chapter 1

this is a public first draft

Hugh Watkins Nov 1 2004

MY BLOGS

GENEALOGE

Exploring Rootsweb
Exploring Ancestry dot com and co uk
Getting to know AOL

Viking
1805

Memories
Hugh's Review of Reviews
Hugh's Bloog

Hugh's Bloog2

Viking Novel

Chapter 1

2004-11-29T06:10:00.000-08:00

The left wingtip of the aeroplane seemed to reach out to brush the bare rocky hillside, but I was not scared because I was used to soaring closer to the ridges of the foothills by the scottish mountains at Portmoak, and when I had a job teaching a summer course at the Cairngorms Gliding club as a professional instructor we use to turn off the wire and tuck into the beautiful tree sprinkled ridge in order to gain thousands of feet inheight, but little did I know a military jet would crash here at Vágar Airport (FAE EKVG ) a few years later.

The airliner rocked as its momentum carried it through the rough air over Søvág fiord and when we rolled to a halt on the runaway, there was a loud round of applause from the passengers. Then the engines stopped and the only sound was the cold rough wind whistling outside the fuselage, and we all sighed and shivered in anticipation.

This airport was opened in 1942 as an RAF base during the british occupation of the Faroes and from 1963 with flights to Iceland or Denmark.

I had only vaguely heard of the Faroe Isands as somewhere in the shipping forecasts on the old Philips radio of my childhood in Solihull and reading the situations vacant in the British Bandsman I saw a 3 month contract for a conductor wanted for the brass band in Klaksvik .

And who are the Faeroese? And how did they come to settle on their rocky islands? Where do they come from? So let us go fast forward.

I had been on the islands for some weeks and after two ferries and one taxi, I am spending my first Saturday morning in Tórshavn, the capital city of the Faroes, and there is this beautiful bookshop in a typical red painted wooden house with a grass roof. Bókasølan, The Faroese Bookshop and being an bookaholic I go in, but at this stage I hardly know any faroese so I looked for english language and picture books. I found Kenneth Williamson's The Atlantic Islands about the old life style observed during World War II when he was on the islands, and The Faerose Saga translated and published by G. V. C. Young and Cynthis Clewer from the Isle of Man. There was not yet television on the islands so I soon read both books. I was gripped by the story and identified with Sigmund who like me lost his father at an early age.

“There was a man named Grim Camban.
He first settled the Færeys in the days of Harold Fairhair.”
and thus starts the 1896 translation of
”Maður er nefndur Grímur kamban; hann byggði fyrstur manna Færeyjar.“
Which is the opening sentence of this saga about the people of the Faroe Islands and which belongs with that group of chronicles creating a sense of national identity, and which were written down by the old monks like Bede and Saxo and the great skald Snorre, and which link lost oral histories with the conversion to to christianity and the universal questions.

What happens after we die? And where do we come from?
And what kind of people are we who live here?

But now I will tell you my version which starts more than a thousand years ago
with the eight year old Sigmundur Brestisson who loved to play with his two winters older cousin Thorer. They played together high above the family farm on the small island called Skúvoy whenever they could get away from their chores.

Those summer mornings they used to beg some food to take with them, and
Sigmund's mother Cecilia would tell the old housemaid to give them the
sun dried split cod fish and bread, but if they were lucky they might even get
a sheep bone with a few scraps of a dried meat still on it.
As they left their home, which always smelled of peat smoke and cattle,
their mothers saw that they looked like delightful miniature Vikings.
They carried their food in their left hands so that their right hands were free to
grab the hilts of the hand carved wooden swords in their belts.

One dark evening last winter in the smoky hall lit by the flickering light of the
central peat fire and the fish oil burning in the flat soapstone lamps,
the two brothers, their fathers, had lovingly carved the swords.
The women were weaving the thick woollen cloth on the vertical frame loom with the warp tightened by hanging stones and the beautiful brown worsted would be bartered at the next market day for wood and iron and a few luxuries from the east. The men used their knives making small things of bone and wood and horn for use on the farm and in the boats.

The oldest man slave had a good memory and was entertaining the company by retelling the story of the troll who lived in the great stone by the peat moss, when Sigmund's father Brester found an odd shaped piece of oak in the firewood. It was left over from a boat repair, and its shape suggested a sword for weaving, or for play becaus it was too thick Brester took an axe and spit it down the middle with a few gentle taps.

"Here Beiner," he said handing over one of the pieces, "It's about time we taught the boys a little bit about sword fighting, let's carve them each a sword."
"Yes dear brother" said Beiner "they are sleeping deeply now and it will be a great surprise for them in the morning"and after about an hours work with their daggers, and then rubbed smooth with a rough stone, the new toys were finished.

Those wooden swords were jiggling at their hips as the boys walked past the hut where their kinsman Einar from Suderoy still snored.
“Silly old fool – whenever he gets drunk he gets into fights,” said Thorer.
“And runs around waving his axe” answered Sigmund.
“Wicked!” was the reply as they vaulted the sheep proof stone wall around the inner field
of the village.

And they climbed and climbed because Skúvoy, except for the peat bogs and the high meadow, was just one great slope up to the top of the black basalt cliffs. There were no schools but the children learned their duties and roles by working with their parents and watching and copying whatever they did. So at the cliff top they knew how to go down on all fours and crawl to the edge of the cliff in order to avoid being blown to their death by a sudden gust of wind and they loved to look down at the seals in the breakers more than a thousand feet below and the host of birds soaring in the updrafts.. The egg collecting season was every spring and past for this year, but soon it would be time to catch the fat young puffins by standing on the cliff edge with the fowling net at the end of a twelve foot long pole. The boys' young mouths watered in anticipation of the fishy taste of the dark meat. The islands were no stranger to starvation and food was seasonal and always a topic of conversation amongst the grown ups.

1219/ 50 000

Chapter 1 continuation

2004-11-28T13:23:00.000-08:00

yes I am falling further and further behind on word count
but making real progress in the head work:-

ANOTHER POV

Einer sat by the steersman but his thoughts were still on the island he was leaving. How could he be so dumb getting dismissed like that from by Hafgrim his job as the farm manager and butler in Hov. The ten oarsmen were rowing lightly because the boat was riding the counter current northwards close to the cliffs of the southern point of Skúvoy.

FRAGMENTS

One day Einer Suderoy had turned up at the Skúvoy landing place after getting fired from his job in Hov, which is on the southermost island of the Faroes.

There was a tiny beach at the mouth of the stream which ran through the handful of houses and dropped steeply through the low cliffs.

An eight oared boat was on its way to Sandoy and he had three chests and two bales to be carried by wading oarsmen through the shallows at the Skuvóy landing place.

Two little boys jumped up and down with excitement but all the smaller children shyly peered round their mothers' skirts

THIS STORY HAS TO BE ABOUT EMOTION TO GET ANYWHERE and the opening needs much much more warmth.

notes===========================

Thrond he had a shock head of red hair, and was freckled of face and right grim of look,

AND we are going to meet him at the midsummer TING on Tingness Tórshavn in chapter 2 or 3

Chapter 1 part 2

2004-11-27T21:09:00.000-08:00

When I visited Skúvoy to research this book I took the direct ferry one morning from Tórshavn and had most of the day ashore and walked the walk up to the highest point of the island. There I found a pile of dark rocks deposited in the ice age which in my, or a childs, fantasy could be a fort or a castle tower looking out over the north atlantic. If a longship or a knarr, a broader beamed trading ship, appeared I could imagine the boys rushing down to alert the village where 68 people live today. There was always a danger from pirates and slave traders so some villages built refuges to hide in high in the hills and out of sight from below. Going down hill on a faroese island is like running down a house roof, I was lucky enough to learn rock climbing in my teens in the Clifton Gorge

and knew the basic survival rules for this kind of terrain. What you do is a sort of controlled fall by making giant strides in slow motion, then landing on two feet every so often in order to check your momentum and keep the speed under control. Boy's games.

1423/ 50 000

2 -- 22 November 12 2004

2004-11-19T16:32:00.000-08:00

Last winter Einer had sat by the steersman of the boat but his thoughts were still on the island he was leaving. His fingers absently sought the Thor's hammer hanging at his thoat, give me luck he prayed.. How could he be so dumb getting dismissed like that from by Hafgrim his job as the farm manager and butler in Hov. The ten oarsmen were rowing lightly because the double bowed boat was riding the counter current northwards close to the cliffs of the southern point of Skúvoy. Hafrgim's wife Guðrið had been planning to go Sandoy to visit her father and offered to help Einer escape to the safety of his cousin's house on Skúvoy. She had pretended that his things were hers in order to get them loaded on to the boat when a fine mild day had dawned.

The trouble had started over some beer on a fateful cold autumn evening. Hafgrim had told a slave to add a well dried out log to the peat fire, there are no trees on the Faroes and all wood is imported or salvaged as drift wood, so a wood fire was a true luxury, This tree had too many marine worm holes in it to have any value for roofing or boat building so after drying out for nearly a year it wasonly fit to be burnt.

The fire in the central hearth of the great hall at Hov (which means Temple or chieftains court) was burning brightly and hot making long shadows on the wooden panels lining the house built of turf and stone. The hall was fairly smoky because this was long before the time for chimneys, but the smoke hole in the roof could not be too big or the hall would never get warm enough.

All over the Faroes gossip and talk about each other are the news and life blood of such a small community, where everyone knows everyone and even their great great grandparents reputation for five generations. In the prechristian nordic culture land was owned by the king or jarl and each chiftain earned his rights by good service but no slave or descendant of a slave might own land.. Hafgrim had served Harald Graafell (of the grey fur cloak) and been granted his land by him.

The brothers Breste and Beine were being discussed by Einnar and Eldearn Combhood, thus nicknamed for the jagged cut of his cloak.

The brothers were sons of Sigmund, the brother of Thorbeorn Gatebeard who was the father of Trond from Gota who was easily recogised by his broad red beard.

They had been a-viking with Earl (or Jarl) Haakon Sigurdson of Lade by the river Nideros in the Trondelag in Norway and through their friendship with the Jarl had been granted half of the land of the Faroes.

Breste and Beine lived on Skúvoy and had a second farm on the precipitous island of Store Dimun and the grazing of Lille Dimun, which has hardly one flat place on it.

In the great hall the large fire crackled and popped sparks towards the roof where the blackend roots of the grass hung down, and even the spiders must have got tears in their eyes from the sour peat smoke. Einar was chewing a piece of sun dried cod fish and listene to Eldearn expounding the virtues of Hafgim as being far superior to all the faeroese warriors, but in reply he pointed out that Hafgrim may be older and richer, and make many sacrifices to the gods too, but although he was quick witted, he was hardly as wise as Breste nor as law learned.
Eldarn had a bad reputation as a fast talker and a liar and a back biter and for being quick tempered but now he was lost for words and grabbed a stick and started beating Einar around his head and neck and on his shoulders. Einar grabbed a little axe from by the hearth and hit Eldearn hard on his head, unfortunately the axe twisted in Einar's fist and instead of hitting with the flat, the well sharpened blade sank deep into Eldarn's skull.
Eldarn dropped and never spoke another word.
2127/ 50 000

too slow and too busy with other things
and off line for 10 days too with ISP problems in Denmark
see explanation in my AOL blog