Over the years, it’s inevitable that if you do something on a regular basis, you develop a way of doing it that suits you best. You may have tried dozens of different ways but through a process of trial and error, success and failure, joy and frustration, you arrive at a solution that works for you. At least that’s the theory.
That’s not to say your solution is perfect and it might need the odd tweak every now and then, as new ideas or new technology comes along to make you think again or consider options that weren’t available before.
So it is with writing. Over the past fifteen plus years since I started, I’ve read many books on the subject, attended conferences and seminars, watched countless video tutorials, listening to the wise words of famous and successful authors and gleaned something from every one.
I’ve realised that everyone who sits down to write a book – fiction or non-fiction – has a different way of going about it, every process is tailored to the subject matter, personal circumstances, writing environment, time available and other outside influences that help or hinder the creative task of getting the words down and aiming towards the finish line – publication.
My own process starts with an idea, or in the case of Susie Jones, an investigation. Several years ago, I wrote out a list of potential subjects for Susie to investigate and it ended up being a long list, which keeps growing. The joy of creating a character who can investigate anything, anywhere, either in pursuit of a story or to uncover corruption or criminality, means there is almost limitless scope for intrigue, danger and hopefully, page-turning thrills. So far, Susie has touched on the plague of spam emails and the dodgy world of fake meds in Sharp Focus. She’s become embroiled in the effects of a cyber attack on the online payment system in Four Meals from Anarchy, and in Silent Thunder she finds herself up against powerful forces in the energy industry. And there’s plenty more to come.
Once I’ve settled on an idea for the story, I go down multiple rabbit holes in the name of research. People, places, events, products, all the elements essential to add credibility and atmosphere. Sometimes it’s OK to use real names, real places, real companies or organisations, other times I have to – shock horror – make it up. And that’s where the fun starts.
Probably the most difficult part of the whole process is working out the structure of the story. It’s a matter of taking the rough outline of an idea and fleshing it out into a cohesive plot with all the necessary ingredients of a readable story – tension, suspense, action, clues, foreshadowing, twists, red herrings, character development – and all the while keeping it reasonably plausible. There are certain conventions to stories that a writer is supposed to stick to. Those conventions apply to almost all fiction, and equally to film. The three act structure is the most common convention, where the narrative comes to what’s referred to as “the inciting incident” about 25% into the story – the end of act One. The bulk of the story takes up the next 50% with a key part of the story happening about the three quarter mark – the end of Act Two. The final 25% of the story culminates in the exciting finale. Most books, if you read them with an objective eye, will follow the same format. If it’s done right, you won’t be aware, but if you analyse the book (or the film) you’ll find key moments happen around these points in the story. I use a software program called Plottr to lay out the structure of the story in a visual way. Apart from plotting individual scenes and chapters, it also gives me somewhere to create and store details about characters and places, as well as make notes and save scenes I may have written but later rejected.
Once I have a plot and a rough outline of what happens chapter by chapter, it’s time to put distractions to one side, sit down at the keyboard and start typing. This is where discipline comes into play. I’ve heard/seen interviews with award winning and multi-million best selling authors who are disciplined enough to dedicate hours in the day and days in the week where they are not to be disturbed and they can get thousands of words a day written – day in, day out. For others (like me), days vary from the highly productive, to the “why did I even bother to sit down and stare at the screen wondering what to write“. Then there’s distractions; food and drink are obviously unavoidable, the internet and email are avoidable, but it’s too easy to get sidelined when you have to ‘just checking something online” and find an hour has passed and you’ve not written a single word. The generally accepted length of the novel is at least 80,000 words, but it’s very easy to carried away and get to the end and find you’ve written 120,000 words – Guilty as charged. I write using an excellent software programme called Atticus which doubles as a formatting tool to enable me to see what the story looks like as either a paperback or an ebook. The tool allows me to customise the final look of the book before it’s sent to the printers or uploaded to Amazon.
However – once the story is written and before it is uploaded or printed, there’s the small matter of the cover design and the marketing blurb. But that’s enough for this post. In part two, I’ll go into more of the process around getting the book into the hands of readers.