If you’re comfortable with words and organised, writing non-fiction is easy. The end result may not set the world on fire, but the doing of it is a simple matter of sorting out chapter headings and writing bite-sized essays to fit, one after the other. A linear, left-brain process.
Writing novels is
whole different ballgame - what one writer described as wrestling with a jelly(fish)
and most often the jelly wins. Every novelist approaches it in a different way.
Some start with a flash of an idea, a poignant human dilemma, and allow their
muse to sweep them along on a magic, mystery tour into the unknown. I’ve a
drawer full of unfinished novels that started thus; one of them swallowed me up
in its darkness before chapter 6, others stuttered to a confused halt.
The other approach is
to sort out the goodie bag in advance. 1. Story content – even if it’s a
murder, find corpse find killer book, nowadays it needs a context. Global
best-seller The Dinosaur Feather plunged the reader deep into paleontology;
Mark Billingham’s Love like Blood into honour killings; Abir Mukherjee’s A
Necessary Evil, a witty historical dip into old Raj India. Content dictates
setting. Where, when and how best to tell the story. Robert Harris (sigh)
always a genius storyteller, brilliantly evoked the horror of Pompeii through
the eyes of a young water engineer who knew when the aqueducts stopped flowing
that destruction was imminent.
2. Characters – that you actually like, even if they’re reprehensible anti-heroes, since you’ll have to live with them probably for several years. Names can gum you up for days. Stick to them; if you change half way through it’s a real grind to replace. Always (memo to self) keep names of minor characters on file, since you’ll forget by chapter 28 what they’re called.
Then holding all of
the above in your head, as well as coping with the money-earning day job, a
mountain of domestic trivia and mandatory dog walking, you’re ready to go.
Message to brain – construct a nuclear bunker where novel lives, breathes and
can be ready to activate at the flick of a switch. Hah. Order more post-it
notes.
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