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Post by pulphack on Apr 19, 2024 8:59:22 GMT
Enfield ghost coach is it... The area around Nags Head Road was developed around the start of the 1920s with terraced housing and allotments. I know this as my dad's oldest sister got married then and lived the rest of her life in King Edwards Road which is just off Nags Head Road. My cousins, one of whom is still alive and was in the Boys Brigade at the same time as one of the witnesses mentioned, grew up there. This story was never mentioned and was not a common urban myth around there. It sounds like someone heard an old story and decided to repeat it for attention.
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Post by pulphack on Dec 11, 2023 12:14:25 GMT
Very sad to see this. I only met Mark twice, the second time spending several hours in the pub after a bookfair with him and one other writer (whose name I cannot recall) when we were the only ones left drinking. Both times I met him he was a lovely feller who I wish I'd had the opportunity to know more. He was also the pitbull manager of Richard Staines, of course and the only man who could keep that giant of popular fiction in check. Sort of. RIP.
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Post by pulphack on Sept 1, 2023 15:45:40 GMT
Put like that, yes indeed it would look absurd! That's where the writer has to make decisions about what serves their purpose best. Personally, what techniques you use are dictated by the idea of clarity - having a clear idea of how you want to present the story to the reader, and then selecting the tools to make that work on the page. Which may differ from story to story, depending on the approach you have to the telling. Anything goes, as long as it has the clarity to say what the writer wants, how they want to say it. Whether that makes sense to the reader is another matter - everyone reads and sees things differently, and once someone else looks at it, it's out of the writer's hands.
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Post by pulphack on Sept 1, 2023 15:41:32 GMT
Ha! Yes indeed... I remember reading TV novelisations by John Burke back when I was about 8/10 and being baffled by the way he wove things together and how some of the characters were markedly different from the ones I watched (Parminter, security chief in the Gene Barry series The Adventurer being a case in point - much stuffier, stupid, and also fat and bald in the book, quite unlike Barry Morse on screen!). I preferred the straighter versions I recognised - the reverse being the case now. Like yourself, I wonder if not reading the novelisations of the last two/three decades I might have missed some gems. It's the script draft thing as well - I'm sure I banged on before about the cut scenes from the movie of sit-com Dads Army that Burke included in the novel that were the highlight for the depth they brought. I'm not sure if its buried on here or was on a long-dead website that Johnny Mains had for John Burke, but his elucidation of the working method for novelisations and how he was handed draft scripts so the book could be ready for the films release were fascinating.
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Post by pulphack on Aug 31, 2023 19:53:30 GMT
I've not read that, but that sounds like a perfect example of how a writer who puts some work into their novelisation can make something that stands out as a book in its own right, rather than just a kind of souvenir of the film or show, which is I guess what tie-ins were supposed to be before VHS, etc. Card expanding the characterisation with some interior monolgue and POV to give them an extra dimension is exactly what a writer should aim, really - it must make the job of novelising more interesting to put that thought into the work.
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Post by pulphack on Aug 31, 2023 19:48:57 GMT
Anything is acceptable in prose if it achieves the effect the writer wants. Whether or not its acceptable to the reader is down to them. Having said that, it wouldn't be my thing but I can see that it could have a good effect if used with some intelligence, as a surprise element and perhaps a comic (as in humorous) one.
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Post by pulphack on Aug 31, 2023 19:46:28 GMT
The Ghost Of Flight 401 was a book I remember my mum getting on holiday one year - she loved it and didn't swallow a word. I think there was a Flight 401 that disappeared (I can't be bothered to google now) and the book was full of documentary detail but then veered off into a bit of a Bermuda Triangle vibe. It was a good read (I read it after her) and his journalistic tone gave it a bit of a Fortean feel (not that I knew what that was at that point, mind). Worth reading with a large container of salt at your elbow...
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Post by pulphack on Aug 27, 2023 14:47:39 GMT
Now there's an odd coincidence - I'm not a big Dr Who fan but I can solve that little riddle for you, Steve! Pertwee was referring to his previous Patrick Troughton incarnation, as that Dr Who faced the Yetis down in the London Underground for a 1968 serial called The Web Of Fear. I'm just too young for Troughton having been four when that was broadcast, but I am obsessed by the Tube, and I saw this in a charity shop the other week, buying it just as because of the setting. They're all sets, obviously, with no actual location filming in the tube, but the sets are very well done, and it is great fun. The only reason I looked twice, by the way, is I saw it mentioned in a magazine article a few weeks before, otherwise I would have flicked by it in the rack as I'm not fan enough to buy Who dvd's per se. Synchronicity, eh?
PS Tooting Bec is in Sarf London - that's bandit country, we never go there if we're north of the river...
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Post by pulphack on Aug 25, 2023 18:09:09 GMT
Fair play, I never suggested that - the original poster does have some odd views on writing (but that's just my opinion). Life's too short to keep up sniping.
BS Johnson's death is an interesting one in that he was allegedly involved with an occult group and there was some suggestion of threats and pressure on him. Coe looked into this but could find nothing concrete. It was very odd that so many of his friends believed this with none of them actually knowing how the rumour originated. They talked of this group, knew him well, but couldn't actually tell you who they were. It's hard to know what to make of this, really. He wasn't a happy or fufilled man, and as his career and private life progress through the book, it becomes horribly inevitable. Worth checking out, I think you'd find it fascinating.
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Post by pulphack on Aug 25, 2023 18:02:28 GMT
It's been up for a while now, so you should be ok. I was happy to find it as it's never - as far as I can tell - been on dvd. It's very gritty and the street scenes reminded me very much of growing up in suburban London and also day trips to Epping Forest (that last bit you'll understand when you watch).
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Post by pulphack on Aug 25, 2023 15:12:33 GMT
Johnson's an interesting feller - his Christie Mallory novel is written as per a system of double entry book-keeping, so you have two column on each page that you can either read consecutively, going back to pp1 and starting again, or concurrently to get a look into the mind of Mallory. He also wrote a novel set in a care home for dementia where a series of chapters represent the statements of the residents, with less and less wordage and less and less obvious sense occurring with each statement, according to the degree of dementia. Then a statement from the matron reveals 'real' events. Of course, what is 'real' for each resident whose statement is represented is debatable. I'm not sure that it really worked for me, but perhaps that says more about me as a reader. Yer man Jonathan Coe's biography of Johnson - 'Like A Fiery Elephant' - is worth a read for understanding his approaches.
I've always been fascinated by different approaches to writing and presenting a story in terms of structure and how the writer can make the reader approach the text, but ultimately I think the approach that has always been the most prevalent and most straightforward is there simply because of that latter factor: it has a clarity the other methods lack. Most 'experimental' methods have been with us since Stern, after all, if not before.
PS just looked back to the first post on this thread - 'experienced (non-hack) authors'. Nice piece of snobbery.
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Post by pulphack on Aug 25, 2023 8:44:50 GMT
A perfect example of what the initial post was asking, Steve. Gerson must have found it particularly satisfying (perhaps frustrating as well) to do this in a novel published by the BBC, the same company that had altered and cancelled the series. Oh the irony...
Which reminded me that Christine Sparks penned the novelisation of The Enigma Files for BBC books around the same time. That's a very good example of a writer taking the ides of straightforward script adaptation and running with it, as she uses the whole series to weave a complete novel that reads really well in its own right, and adds some great character depth for supporting players who didn't get a lot of screentime.
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Post by pulphack on Aug 24, 2023 15:33:27 GMT
Having read far too many of these over the decades, as far as I can see it depends partly on how old the tie-in might be, and what the owner of the IP wants. There are several basic types.
1. the straight script-to-prose conversion. These can be interesting if the script was particuarly good, or if the writer works from an early draft that then gets changed - sometimes you get different endings, some sub-plots that may have been cut from the finished product, or some scenes that have been omitted but are quite illuminating (there's one of these John Burke's 'Dad's Army' movie novelisation).
2. Speaking of Mr Burke, writers of a better cut, such as Mr B, can make a silk purse from a sow's ear by the quality of their prose, and the odd addition of some background. Mr B liked to take a couple of episodes and weave them into a fuller narrative (cf Strange Report and Jason King). Chris Barlas, who did the George And Mildred novelisation, gave us George's POV quite a lot, and a right little Left Wing thinker he turned out to be. If you've ever watched G&M you may think that the writer got a bit carried away... It's a fun read though.
3. The continuation - yes, this is very useful if a series gets cancelled, as the books can finish that story nicely.
4. The prequel - Fringe did this with the novels based on the series, which is fact covered backstories for three of the main characters and created new narratives that used the existing world and their ideas to shed new light on events that had already occurred in the original medium.
5. The original story - this will take place within the existing universe of the story, and may refer to existing film or TV episodes but will basically be a whole new story using the existing characters. The X-Files and The Prisoner come to mind from my own reading, and I believe Charmed and Alias also did this (don't ask).
6. The franchise - I make a distinction here as we're in Dr Who, Star Trek, Star Wars territory. Yes, they had straight story-of-the-script jobs, but later developed their fiction franchises into worlds that used the characters and went beyond just the 'original story' idea to weave a whole universe around the novel series. A universe in which the original novels would refer to events in other original novels, which is not so common in the likes of 5. and makes for more depth to the franchise fiction.
All of these have their good and bad points depending on the quality of the story, the quality of the writer, and the editorial guidance from whoever oversees the franchise. Generally, the bigger the franchise the better the editorial and the overall standard of the writer. When it became serious ££$$ then the quality control improved. I always refer back to the US Berkley originals for The Avengers (60's UK TV one) where decent US pulpsters make a pigs ear of it as they've obviously never seen the show and have had bugger-all background material to work with.
It's what you want from such a book, in the end, but it does seem that streaming, and DVD and satellite before it, have made this a bit of a dying form. Again, that depends on the franchise - those mentioned in point 6 would appear to have a core that like to read as well as watch.
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Post by pulphack on Jul 5, 2023 15:16:04 GMT
Anonymous Bosche, the secret Nazi... (thank you Viv Stanshall)
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Post by pulphack on Jun 9, 2023 8:45:53 GMT
It's not a novelisation, Steve - the book came first. One of my little irks was how critics like Kim Newman praised Chris Wicking's 'kinetic script' from a pulp novel, when all he really did was copy it almost scene for scene. John, it may feel like three writers to you, but this suggests you've never struggled through any of Steve Francis' more 'written in a night' Hank Jansons! If you have, then it makes perfect sense...
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