Author: johnrsermon

I’m a writer from Stockport, Manchester, England, who mainly enjoys writing short stories in the soft sci-fi genre. I do like writing in other genres, fantasy in particular, but I’ve settled on soft sci-fi because I enjoy adding fantastic things that could exist right now or in the near future. I’ve been writing in my spare time since around 2001 with varying degrees of discipline. I’m always looking for ways to improve myself and my writing, and I use my blog to showcase my writing and discuss things on my mind. Every so often I’ll talk about other things in my personal life (Football – I support Manchester United, Holidays, Food, amongst others). I enjoy writing short stories, but I have also finished a few novels and completed NaNoWriMo a couple of times. Writing makes me happy, and thankfully, I can’t see that changing any time soon. My interest in writing began when I took a Film Studies Course at College in 2001. One of the assignments was to create a character and give him or her a back story. I did this and got some good feedback from my tutor, and I loved the feeling of creating a character from scratch. My other interests include running and listening to rock and metal music whenever I’m running. I enjoy watching a wide range of films and TV to relax. The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly is my favourite film, and Arcane is my favourite TV show. My favourite authors are Giles Kristian, J.R.R Tolkien, JK Rowling, Bret Easton Ellis, Gareth L Powell, and Robert Lewis Stevenson. Thanks for reading. If you like the sound of the above, I’d be more than happy to discuss all manner of writing-related stuff. See my contact page for details.

Time travel and moral ambiguity. Obviously?

· Leave a comment ·

Hello

With my last post in mind I am still no closer to knowing what I would do if I knew when and how I was going to die. And no one else does either considering I didn’t get an answer to the question I posed last time. Yeah, I’m sticking with that for the reason why nobody answered it. I’ll sleep better if I do.

Anyway, I closer to the end of my sci-fi story. Well at least I think I am.

My hero Arthur had just woken up on the day of his death and was about to put his plan in motion. He did just that and it all went exactly as he wanted it to. But only if you forget about the explosive reaction of a certain someone within the government. That someone was watching him all the time and kidnapped him and took him to his lair. Makes my villain sound like the claw or something. He might be? I’ve taken Arthur to his final show down with the villain of the piece and I am enjoying writing it. I have said in the past that I mostly enjoy writing battle scenes but battles of will’s between hero and villain are actually pretty cool to construct in themselves as well.

So how did I end up having to develop moral ambiguity within my story?

This did creep up on me I have to say. I’m about half way through the ending of the story and my hero is faced with a problem. Should he let the government head honcho continue ruling as a secret dictator, which has made the UK very wealthy, or stop him completely and thus restoring the UK population to its free and sometimes reckless self. I’m not sure which way he should go. On the one hand my hero, who is only just beginning to live life the way he wants to after years of slogging away for seemingly nothing, could rule the UK and become an even further behind the scenes dictator of a dictator. On the other hand he could destroy said dictator along with the government and put the UK into potential chaos, but it would be a chaos that could lead to a better future without being pushed down by an iron fist the public currently don’t know anything about.

I got to this point all on my own and then I read a wonderful article by Alex Davis in the February edition of Writing Magazine that concerned character-building. There is a section about moral ambiguity that I seem to have covered all on my own. Though I have opened myself up to asking more questions and making sure I’ve got it right. I may even have to rewrite parts of the story so it will flow.

And with that in mind I’m going to go away and try and answer them. Once my story is finished I’ll post parts of it on here for your eyes to peruse. Or not. Your choice of course.

Bye Bye

My time travel story is almost complete. How will it end?

· Leave a comment ·

Hello

Well, following on from last time, this isn’t one week later but it almost was. I felt sure I was going to finish my time travel story and be able to update this blog last Thursday but a few things like life and hangovers got in the way.

Seriously though, I did think I would have my latest short story done and done by now but I underestimated it as I usually do with these things. I have however, sent my hero through time.

So, to re-cap ever so slightly without giving too much away, my story is set in Manchester, UK circa 2020 and the ability to travel forward in time is available to the general public either at an extremely high cost or if a member of said public is lucky enough to win a government run competition to qualify for it. If you are a winner, which my hero Arthur is, then you can travel up to six months into the future. The risks with doing this are many, especially if you see your future self.

Arthur has travelled forward two months has seen his future self (what else was going to happen?). And he is now in the process of trying to change the events of his future self, which is where I’m up to. My hero has a plan and he’s just woken up on the day of his death to try and put it in motion.

I can’t imagine what I’d feel like if I knew, without any doubt, the day and exact time I was going to die. What would I do? I’d like to think I’d do what my hero is doing. Everything possible to stop it. I already roughly know how the story is going to end but I always like it to form as I write. With all this in mind I’m going to get back to it. But I leave you with a question.

If you knew when you were going to die and exactly the time of your death, what would you do?

The story gets bigger and (hopefully) better.

· Leave a comment ·

Hello

So, last time I said I had started a story and that I would probably need only another 8-10 pages to finish it.

That was a lie.

And…well that was the only lie from my last post.

My story, which involves time travel and the impact it has on those who are lucky or unlucky enough to partake in it, is picking up speed but is taking longer than I thought it would. It is for a good reason though.

I realised that I had a lot to explain and that I just wanted to get the story written and not worry about it being a short, novella or long story. In my head I thought 15 pages would be enough but I sit here now with fifteen pages of it done and no time travel having happened. How could such a thing happen? You might ask.

I don’t know, is the answer.

I have made sure to describe everything well enough and to move the story along at a natural pace that I’m comfortable with and 15 pages isn’t enough. At this rate I’m sure it’ll be double that by the time it’s finished. And it doesn’t help that each time I think the next paragraph is going to have my hero travelling through time, which will change the pace of the story and everything from there will move along a lot faster, I discover I need to explain something else. Or set something up. Or describe something important. Each time this has happened with this and every other story I’ve ever written, I’ve been annoyed.

But then I move on.

To what? You may ponder. Well, to bigger and better things regarding my story hopefully. Each time I thought of something else I needed to cover I immediately knew that it needed to be done for the story to work. All the seemingly endless parts of the story must link together to make the whole thing run just like a song right?

And so it is that I’m now on the cusp of making my hero travel through time. What will happen to him? How will it change him? What will happen?!

No idea. But I’ll tell you when I know.

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next week.

Bye.

Getting back into the swing of things and feeling giddy about it.

· Leave a comment ·

Hello

As I mentioned last time out I’ve started to write my own time travel story. Once I’d gotten my head around my own concept, which was sending me loopy as I started to get into the story I have to admit (see https://johnrsermon.com/2015/01/29/oh-life-its-bigger/ for more details) it has been full steam ahead.

I’ve given myself the task of writing at least 500 words whenever I sit down to write and so far the story is moving along nicely. I’m hoping to get it all finished within the next week or so and then start editing it. I’ve introduced my two main characters and started my main character, Arthur, on the road to having his own ‘Future Chance’. Albeit against his wishes and he would’ve avoided any chance of taking such a…chance if his friend and would be/possibly/I’ve not decided yet love interest Victoria had not drunken entered him into a competition to win one. He is reluctant, given that it could end up in his death, but he’s starting to figure a plan to change all of that.

Pow! And that’s how far I am. I reckon it’ll only be another 8 – 10 pages before I’m finished and I have to say it has made me slightly giddy about the whole thing. Why only yesterday, when I’d done some exercise and eaten my t, did I feel a long dormant (a few months) giddiness about writing. I was about to write, get the 1st draft well on its way to being finished, and feel even better about myself than I usually do. And with that in mind…

I’m off to do some more writing.

Bye Bye

P.S Here’s a picture. Just because I felt like it.

IMG_10088872137343

Can I get behind this campaign?

· Leave a comment ·

I saw the following poster outside a 2nd hand book stall in Manchester City Centre.

image

Though I agree with it, I can also see how useful Kindles can be for aspiring author’s and how it could be seen as the future. Will books ever be completely replaced by the Kindles?
So, if this were a real campaign, would you get behind it?

Oh life. It’s Bigger.

· 1 Comment ·

Hello

How are you all? I’ve left longer than usual between my proper, just about me blog posts due to an assessment I was studying for as part of my day job. I’m glad to say that…I passed! With Merit! Leading up to the day I was going to take the assessment I had been running all manner of scenarios through my head. What if I don’t pass? What if I’m the only one who doesn’t pass? What if my head explodes with all this new found knowledge I have? What if I forget it all and start to cry? And so on and so on. I was amazingly relieved when the computer told me that I had passed. Nice to know all my hard work paid off and is paying off. A button came up asking if I wanted to re take the assessment. Bugger off! I’ve done my part. But now I have to get back to my other thing.

Oh life. It’s bigger. Popped into my head from R.E.M’s losing my religion. Not sure why. It’s probably to do with how I can’t just focus on one thing and I know that I’m happier when I’m focusing on many things in this big life of mine. Or maybe I heard the song on the tram into work. Who knows? But there it is.

So, just this past Friday was the day I took my assessment so I could not wait until the following Tuesday when I was going start writing again. I had received some very useful feedback whilst I was studying about the first half of the first chapter that I posted 04.01.2015 from one Giselle Marks of the Super writers group on Facebook. She very kindly lent me her eyes and made some editing suggestions and, as I have come to value her opinion greatly over the years, I took them on-board. She mentioned that some of the sentences seemed chunky and I understood what she meant when the edits were done and explained. She liked it so I’m quietly confident I’m on the right track. If you’d like to read it yourself, click here https://johnrsermon.com/2015/01/04/feedback-request-an-excerpt-from-my-latest-finished-story/.

As I said, I started righting again this past Tuesday. I’m tackling my own sci-fi story, which has time travel as one of its main story points. I’ve written two pages so far and almost tied myself in knots trying to easily explain how time travel is used in the world the story is based in, which is 2020 Manchester and a UK that has the best train network in the world and daft amounts of profit as a result, and why it is so dangerous, or possibly helpful, to those who populate it. And, it’s not the train network that is also one of the main themes alongside time travel, it’s the creation that made the train network possible.

Ok. I’m off now. Glad to be back to my writing and hopefully you’re glad to be back reading it.

Cheers