I’m always being asked how I do it. And I ought to know. I mean… I’ve done it around 30 times by now so I really should have worked it out.

How DO I write stories?

When I’m asked this during a school visit I often feel a bit awkward because I know that children are taught how important it is to plan their stories – structure them with a ‘beginning, a middle and an end’ and then diligently write to this formula.

And do I do this? (I try not to look at the teachers nodding at me and urging me to say ‘YES, of COURSE I do!’)

Erm… no. (I try not to notice the light dying in the teachers’ eyes)

Look – here’s how it is for me. I tend to get these flashes in my mind – a bit like the trailers you see at the cinema for upcoming blockbuster movies. A scene of the main character running through the rain, cut to a chase up the side of the building with flames licking through some broken windows, cut to flying through the air on a home made hang-glider, cut to emotional confrontation with father/mother/teacher/lollipop lady, cut to moment of revelation on top of a mountain/oil rig/stack of tins of baked beans in Tesco…  you get the drift.

I spend a lot of time like this, daydreaming scenes and getting to know my main character; what makes him or her tick, who their friend is, their enemy, their problem, their talent… and so on. And then I apply a lot of ‘What ifs’ and see where that takes me.

And I almost never write any of this down.

By the time I know I have to get on and write the story it may be quite well planned in my head – or it may not. It may just be a jumble of ideas but it’s only in getting down to writing those ideas that I finally start to make sense of it. Of course, often I have to do research too, and that’s the bit I DO write down. The fictional stuff, though, just floats around my head.

So – now you know. It’s a bit messy isn’t it? I felt sure my fellow captives would be horrified… So I asked them how THEY do it… and here’s what some of them told me…

‘I’m still searching for the elusive “AH HA!” approach!’ confessed David Gatward.

‘With any idea I try to nail it in a few sentences first and then see if I can get that down to a one sentence pitch. At this stage I take it to my agent to have her say “This is b*ll*cks”. However, if she actually likes an idea I then take this to a paragraph of about 2-300 words and work it till it’s tight. From this I work it to about 1000, trying to cover the main story arc (oooOOooh! – don’t really know what that means…). From this, I turn it in to a proper synopsis for the whole book. Once happy with that, I split it in to chapters.’

Blimey. I was so impressed and overwhelmed I immediately STOPPED feeling like a proper author. Jonathan Mayhew’s agreement didn’t help…

‘Very much a la Mr Gatward for me,’ he said. ‘I have an idea or a title, or a what if thought and then I develop it a little, usually around one character, what he wants, needs, how he changes. Eventually, I plot out a bit of a story arc. I try to know how it’s going to end and then (sorry but) I do a detailed chapter by chapter break down!’

Then came Joe Craig’s answer:

‘I come up with a kick-arse climax but don’t let myself use it as my ending. I put it at the climax of Act II, then challenge myself to come up with something even better for the final act and last twist. Plan all that out… bash it out into a step by step outline… start writing.

‘Ah no, wait, that’s not quite true. Once I have a step by step outline, I take ten minutes and pitch it to my wife. If a story can’t be told in ten minutes it isn’t worth telling. I watch her face and body-language at every point in the story, which tells me everything that is wrong (and right) with my plot. Then she usually asks a couple of questions and makes a couple of comments. I rip the whole plan up and re-do it, better. THEN I start writing.’

At which point I started to whimper and my husband brought in Marmite crisps and patted my head a bit.

Then – thank heavens – Gillian Philips came back with this:

‘I’ve always been of the seat-of-pants persuasion (teachers HATE me *sigh*) and it has worked for me up to now because I’d never get started if I had to plot it – it would seem way too daunting. However… I am very tempted to do a proper outline for the current work in progress because it just isn’t flowing, and when I do stuff for Hothouse or similar, I do find it really helpful to have a chapter by chapter breakdown (saves me having a personal chapter by chapter breakdown, yada yada…) so I think I could be converted to the Dark Side of actual plotting…

And then Sorrel Anderson…

‘Like Gillian, I’m a seat of the pants person. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone though because it’s awful, awful. I envy the planners,  but if I do, why don’t I do it? Is it laziness or thrill seeking? I don’t know. Sometimes I tell myself it’s ‘performance art’.’

Amazing. I would have thought it would be the other way around – that the male writers would be the seat-of-the-pants thrill seekers and the females much more cautious and plan-ny! But apparently not so!

So what have we learned? Erm…

 

Trackback URL