The Word Cloud

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Yep - I want more, not bored and I'd think about stealing it.

John is enough of an idiot to be interesting - not in a 'I hope the hero achieves great things' way, but in a 'what stupid thing will he do next' way.

This is not a book that publishers will be interested in. This is a book that publishers will start a six-figure bidding-war over. If there is a story to tell, or a significant scandal, the Brit press will be all over it and it will sell itself. International appeal (certainly Europe and the US), and about the best hook for best seller sales I've seen in a while.

This is very readable. Is the main character a yob? Why is he smashing bottles? Is the first paragraph the best way to introduce him. If so it could be made more imediate and active. When you said it was about Google I had imagined it would read like a text book. Fortunately it doesn't.

I pelt [why pelt? Hurl, perhaps] an empty Jagermeister miniature bottle of across the dancefloor and. It shatters high against the wall opposite, raining shards of glass on the drunken scrum below. A friend, standing in the far corner of the bar, responds by smashing another bottle into the wall above me. Nobody pays the exchange much attention, nobody cares. the dancefloor resembles a mosh-pit and as the crushed mass of bodies surge in one direction then another, people begin to panic, slip and fall.

I think this reads really well, T.W. Wow, what an amazing story this guy must have to tell, and how exciting that you are able to tell it. There was just one part that sounded odd, and it was minor,

Thanks all.

Nashelle, thanks a lot for the 'stood/standing' correction - a classic example of the writer being blind to a glaring error.

The main character is perhaps a little bit of a yob but the scene is more to show how out of control the party is.

TWD

Also, Em - 'escalated' is classic big corporation business-speak.

TWD

That's great, TWD. I'm probably the least qualified person to criticise, but am enjoying finding out what happens behind the scenes at Google. Its another world!

Apologies for not having time to look properly, but the comments alerted me to a particular bête-noir of mine, which is a bête noir of many editors too, which is 'may' used when it should be 'might'...

FWIW, I unpicked it a while back on the Cloud:
http://www.thewordcloud.org/forum/topic/1111

Emma

Cool - thanks EmmaD. Yes, I added that bit quite late into this and you're spot on (Unfortuantely I'm sloppy and need to check, re-check, check again and edit, re-edit and edit and edit again - anyway changed! (I haven't changed it in the dialogue though - do you think I should?)

TWD

You're welcome. I'd be inclined to change it in dialogue unless the characterisation - of someone ignorant in a modern way of proper grammar - is an important part of the point, and it's one among lots of other such errors.

Emma

Sure, understood, thanks - it's used in the context of someone adressing several others and saying:

'As you may or may not know...'

You've thrown me EmmaD! Do you think this is okay or not? It sounds right to me but you're comments have made me unsure of myself (you're going to create a madman out of me!).

TWD

Sorry, I didn't look at the original quote (I'm not really here, you see, I'm marking assignments for another organisation entirely!)

'May' is entirely correct in that case, because the question of whether 'you' know or not is still open an unresolved (see the post I linked to for a proper explanation). 'Might' would be correct too, mind you, expressing a greater degree of unlikelihood that they do know.

Emma

Makes perfect sense - now back to your marking please.

TWD

Great stuff, I was hooked, even tho it's like signals from an alien planet to me. I thought I knew what 'vertical' meant . . .

I think the challenge you face here is bridging the gap between the reality of what goes on at these company jolly's (do I mean jollies?), which can every bit as wild as you have described (if not more so) and making it acceptable to an audience that would think that such behaviour has come down from Mars. Tricky. So you could pepper it with computer speak or management speak buzzwords, but that would probably make it hard work for the majority but at the same time you have to create that atmosphere.

Just one thing, in the general scene, rather than the structure. I worked in this business for years (not Google, but IT) and I can confirm that people like your subject and his mates are real, generally they are account managers. But they are also arrogant and totally devoid of imagination about the real world. Your chap is worrying about consequences. From his performance and demeanor I should have thought he would think that really he was a BSD and would get another job with more money in no time and to hell with Google. Their loss not his.

Just some thoughts, take or leave as usual.

It's interesting stuff, but at the moment I don't really care if he's sacked. He's hassled women, throws beer bottles around crowded dance floors and thinks he's an ace pole dancer. Even his girl-friend is off the peg. Where are his redeeming features - the things that make me want to emotionally invest in him and therefore read on?

Google hasn't been done yet, but the yuppy/yobby banker stories the media are reporting are similar to this and I'm not that keen on them, either. 'Married, single, other' , currently airing on Monday evenings has a corporate yuppy as one of the main protagonists. He's made more sympathetic by his interactions with his mates and by the fact that he's met his love match. This guy needs humanising , but that's just my take on it.

Hi Alan,

Thanks for this, some good points raised.

The whole hook is supposed to be Google (an inside view) but then the whole book's narrative is powered by the story of the lead character, a village idiot, who tricks his way into the company only to find himself surrounded by Oxbridge grads and incredible wealth. So it's a story of how he copes (or doesn't cope) after entering this secret World. He joins the company in 2005 and is there for the 4 years of steepest growth of any company in the history of the planet. It's his story but it's also the story of Google. The next chapter will go back to his time in a grim Polytechnic and follow him as he undertakes various menial jobs until he tricks his way into Google (who he doesn't even really know about). The book then builds back up towards the ski-trip.

What do you think? A good story?

What does BSD mean?

TWD

Well TWD, I usually make it a rule not to read such long postings; just haven't the time. But the 'Google' title intrigued me and I had a look and had no trouble continuing to the end. You grabbed me. The writing flows and the content makes you want to hear more. There was hardly anything to fault that I noticed, except "worse come to worse". The original phrase was "if the worst comes to the worst" which is still used, but the more logical, "if worse comes to worst" is more commonly used nowadays. Your version is used occasionally but seldom in print.
I like the idea of the flashback which eventually takes us up to the ski party again. Presumably, therefore, you won't let us know whether he gets fired or not at the end of chapter one!
I enjoyed this. I hope you have a good libel lawer ;-). Write on TWD.

Thanks Tony - correct about the cliffhanger part.

I'll change the part you mention, yes, sloppy on my part - really, really useful to have such detailed analysis.

TWD

I see. So he is trying to fit in with a crowd he doesn't really belong with, thinks he is probably out of his depth and probably is. Fair enough. Yes I think that it can be a good story although it's going to be a challenge to convey the change in his circumstances. I suspect that his personal story will be significantly more compelling than the Google story, except in one major point. They both appear to have lucked out for a while.

I see that he isn't going to think himself a BSD, which is city speak and stands for Big Swinging Dick, ie more important than the company, a mover and shaker.

Have you read Liars Poker? There's another book I can't remember the title of, something like, "then they took it all away". Both evoke the unreal world of smoke and mirrors business (finance and advertising). Yours is more personal I think.

"Then we came to the end" by Joshua Ferris. I just used Google to find that. That's the advertising book I mentioned. Now I must do some real work.

Thanks Wrath and Maryluv - apologies, I missed your commennt earlier.

Yea Maryluv, I agree - that's something I'm going to try and do (or maybe I'll just make him a repulsive carcrash type character).

Also, thanks for your comments Tony - v. helpful, just like all the others.