C is for Commander Benjamin Trainer

(Post 3 on my WIP)

Commander Benjamin Trainer is the head of the Time Police Academy, the father of Jamie Trainer and Jane Thomas’ stepfather. Extremely proud of Jamie and his friend Dylan, he nurtured the two boys through police cadets and in the development of time travel, advancing his own career in the progress. He realises the potential pitfalls of this new technology and seeks to do everything ‘by the book’, incidentally, the one that he writes himself.
He was Sergeant Trainer and on duty the day Angela Marsh disappeared. He was the one to find her body; according to the coroner she had only been dead for five minutes. Despite believing in the intelligence of Jamie and Dylan he never really thought that two teenagers would be responsible for inventing time travel. However, because after Angela’s death, fixating on that was the only thing that dragged Jamie out of bed in the morning he encouraged it, financially as well as with emotional support.
He has never had a strong relationship with Jane, who refused to take his name, instead holding up what he believes is an idealised vision of her father. He does care for her and it is only with his backing that she joins the academy and escapes jail or sectioning.

This is what he had to say at the start of the training year.

I manage the whole time academy and still maintain links with the local police force. The academy has around 20 staff in total and each one has been selected for being the best in their field, whether that’s Technology, Administration or Catering.

And when asked about this year’s group of trainees.

We take in just under 40 trainees a year, so far this year 7 stand out to me.

Petra is, according to Dylan, the female version of him. A technological genius.
Larry is a gentle giant, looks ferocious but has the people skills to never need to use his strength.
Freddy is determined to be as good, if not better than he was in the army.
Kyle is very cocky but his gift of the gab means he’ll always succeed.
Skye is a nice girl, maybe a little too nice for this type of work.
Gabrielle shows a lot of promise – she just needs a bit more heart if anything.
I know Jane has it in her, if only she’ll stop pushing against me.

And on his experiences of time travel.

Apart from the brief demonstration this year my last experience in the field was when I went to collect my son’s body; I prefer not to talk about that.

Don’t you think Colin Firth would make an excellent Ben (if we aged him up a bit), with his son Jamie played by Orlando Bloom? Hey, a girl can dream ;o)

Commander and Jamie Trainer?? (Image from imdb.com)

B is for Beta-Readers

(Post 2 on my WIP)

Sending your baby out into the world is a scary scary thing.

Back on Facebook at the beginning of 2011 I made a promise to send a ‘handmade’ gift to the first 5 people who commented on my post (a meme that was going round). Fairly fresh from writing 50,000 words in NaNoWriMo 2010 I had hoped to double that word count to a full first draft and polish it up a bit by the end of 2011 so I suggested a copy of my ‘handmade’ (Well I did type using my hands!) novel. But, real life got in the way and I didn’t touch the work until NaNoWriMo 2011 in November and I only managed to add an additional 10,000 words.
By the time the end of December was approaching I was aware that my work was not up to the standard I would have hoped; being pretty much a piece of stream of consciousness writing. But, I had promised. I used Scrivener to make what I had into a Kindle Version – apologised for the typos and inconsistencies I knew the book contained and sent it to the 5 people I’d promised (plus a few more – the handmade group did get a novel related painting too).

Then I waited…

And I didn’t have to wait too long. So far four of my friends have read and commented on the draft. All have encouraged me to continue working on it. I am very grateful to them all for spending the time to read it especially with critical commentary in mind (I know some of them took notes as they read). I did particularly encourage some positive comments too (for my ego), asking questions along the lines of ‘What aspects did you really like, so I don’t remove them in the editing process?!’ They’ve also come up with really helpful suggestions on what I could do with the scenes that needed more development/the missing middle part.

I guess what I’m interested to hear from other writers is:
How much do you incorporate feedback from beta-readers into future drafts and how do you ensure you remain truthful to your original concept?
How soon into a draft would you normally let anyone read what you’ve written?
Also do you find there a difference between the advice you get from beta-readers who are writers too as opposed to more voracious readers?
How do you let yourself accept the positive comments and balance this with the fears that those who haven’t commented hate it (when in reality they probably just haven’t had time to read it!!)?

Do let me know about your beta-reader experiences too.