How do you begin a novel?

   

    Following on from yesterday's post and the link to the How to Get Published conference, I've been delving into the Writers & Artists site, a great resource for anyone interested in writing and publishing. Have a look, for instance, at the interviews with authors page which includes inter alia a short Q&A with Alexander McCall Smith and a longer conversation with Suzy Joinson.

    One question which comes up almost every time authors are put under the spotlight is "where do you get your ideas from?", or to put it another way, "how do you get started?". I find the genesis of a novel quite fascinating, learning what snatch of overheard conversation or glimpsed image, say, sparked a train of thought which eventually resulted in a complete book. It's a seemingly magical process based on that indefinable, intangible 'inspiration' and underpinned by a great deal of time, effort and talent, but every writer starts somewhere, even if that is with a blank sheet of paper and a similarly empty mind. Novelist Katie Hickman (author of The Aviary Gate - post on it here - and The Pindar Diamond) describes the process in her piece How do you begin a novel? and gives what sounds to me like very good advice.

Comments

[Linda Gillard]

For me the genesis of a novel is always a question to which I don't know the answer. Perhaps the most striking example I can give you is the time I passed a white transit van marked "Bomb disposal", parked on a suburban drive, outside Glasgow. I asked myself what it must be like being married to someone who works in bomb disposal?... But it was the 2nd question I asked that made me realise I had a potential novel: "What sort of boy grows up to be the sort of man who chooses a career in bomb disposal?"

It took less than a minute, but I knew I had a book there. A couple of years later it was published as UNTYING THE KNOT.

I suppose if I'd travelled by another route I'd never have written that novel.

[Cornflower]

Wow! That's just the sort of thing I had in mind, and it shows your novelist's 'radar' (for want of a better word), i.e. that you examined what you noticed and detected a plot there. Many thanks, Linda.

[Linda Gillard]

I think lots of writers and would-be writers must think like this, but they possibly think they need to know the answers to their questions before they can write the book. (Answers to Qs = Plot!) But over the years I've realised it's the writing of the novel that answers the questions and if I already knew the answers, I wouldn't need to write the book.

It was unsettling in the early years, not knowing how - or if - a book would end. But I learned to trust the process. My unconscious is in charge of plot development. I just scribe. ;-)

[LizF]

I see what you mean about the Katie Hickman piece - as I have loved both The Aviary Gate and The Pindar Diamond, her advice is well worth taking.

Linda's comments though give me hope - I frequently find myself wondering about events or places or people (I might not work as a reporter any more but I still have the instinct which is possibly sheer nosiness!) but so far I have never taken it further than a few pages in a notebook.
I realise now that I was expecting to know where it was going before I started and because I didn't it all petered out, whereas I really should have just kept writing and seen where it went.
Thanks for the advice and links - I am now itching to get work out of the way to make another start (I have a character who has haunted me for years)and maybe this time I will get a bit further,if only for my own satisfaction!

[Cornflower]

That's wonderful Liz, go to it!

[Cornflower]

See below, Linda, your advice has already had an effect!

[Linda Gillard]

Go for it, Liz! I think not knowing where a book is going is a big advantage, provided you're able to look at your manuscript later and know that if it's rambling, it must be fixed.

My books have been described as "unputdownable" and I've often wondered what that quality is. Over the years I've concluded that my readers keep turning the pages because they want to know what's going to happen - and that's how I write, to find out what happens. I wonder if this increases the suspense? It must also help with the surprises and plot twists that I'm known for because sometimes I don't know about them in advance. I can be writing and suddenly realise something about a character that has been true all along, but I didn't know. This happened once and I felt stunned, quite upset.

I assumed I'd have to go back and re-write. I looked back over the ms and found I didn't need to change a word. I'd written this character in a way that was compatible with her secret. In fact she'd seemed to me one of my failures, something not fully realised. Then when she "told" me what was really going on for her, I realised she made sense after all. I'd been writing her at some unconscious level.

If you know where your story is going and you have a detailed plan for each chapter - as many writers do - it's not likely you'll have that sort of "organic" experience. I know if I planned, I'd play safe. I'd go for the obvious because that's what's at the forefront of my brain. In order to avoid writing predictable plots & characters I try to keep asking questions, but let the answers look after themselves. And they always do.

I see writing as a process of discovery, or perhaps excavation. I always think of that line from THE X-FILES - "The truth is out there, Scully." The stories are out there, it's a question of discovering them somehow, tuning into them. I experience this as listening hard to my characters and trying not to be too shocked or surprised by what they do & say. 6 books down the line, I now assume I'll catch up eventually. ;-)

[Cornflower]

This is fascinating, Linda! Thankyou so much.

[Dark Puss]

A very interesting discussion indeed thank you Linda - it sounds just like experimental science (though I bet writing brings more immediate joy to vastly more people!)

[Linda Gillard]

Thanks, Dark Puss. I was Durham Uni's Celebrate Science writer-in-residence last year and I got to hear a bit about experimental science from physicists. They were getting very excited about the possible discovery of the Higgs Boson which will apparently hasten the day when they'll have a complete Theory of Everything (or "Toe" as they call it.) It all went completely over my head of course, but I had inklings of connections between how they work & think and how writers work & think.

A few years earlier my blind heroine had said in STAR GAZING, "For me the Earth is a conceit, something I’m told exists but cannot see – like Pluto or Neptune for you. Astronomers deduced that Neptune must exist long before they devised telescopes powerful enough to view it. They thought it must be there because something was affecting the orbits of the other planets. There was a gap in the galaxy where a planet ought to be and they trusted that there was. It was an act of faith: faith in mathematics and physics."

Or what I now call "trusting the process".

[LizF]

Thanks Linda, your advice is very welcome and inspiring too.
I was quite put off at the thought that I needed to plan everything and know where things were going before I even started because I couldn't help feeling that that would be setting myself up to fail.
I really like the thought that the characters write their own stories especially as I have a couple of characters who have been hovering for a while in the back of my mind so maybe it is time to stop making the excuses that work and family commitments mean I don't have the time (especially as this autumn will bring an empty nest dv),make a start and see where they take me.
BTW I am really enjoying The Glass Guardian as I finally twigged that I could read it on my iPad!