Love London!

Visiting the Southbank on a sunny, Saturday afternoon in London, I recognised that life doesn't get much better. Add to the mix a couple of Coronas, three girlfriends and discussions ranging from the merits of blue veined cheese to the hot bartender in Las Iguanas.

Our languid afternoon started off at said Las Iguanas when we realised that finding any space in a restaurant/bar on a busy summer Saturday in London is all but a hazy mirage in the distance. Every teensy space was 'reserved'. Londoners are obviously used to this state of affairs and plan in advance. Even single seats and cosy chairs with a small coffee table on which you could barely stand two glasses of wine successfully, were slapped with a white A4 sheet stating time of reservation. You gotta love it.

Patience prevails however .. helped by the liquid relaxative of a golden brew. Space came up at the window bar and we took full advantage of it.

Wahaca, a novel, Southbank experimental restaurant was our next port of call. It offered Mexican street/market fare in a Jenga style configuration of vamped up containers (yes, those that travel on ships across the sea with tons of stuff in them) balanced on top of each other. One of them had the entire side glassed out so you could sit inside gazing out across the Thames.

On our walk to the Swan at the Globe (Shakepeare's to be precise), a crowd had gathered at the edge of the Thames. A creative fellow was sculpting a sofa out of sand. If you look carefully you  can see the beginnings of a seated person on the righthand side.
There are even folds in the cushion where its innards are squashed - so lifelike.

Further down the Thames near London Bridge, there was a guy sitting on the sand in a deck chair. Small speakers in front of him, and an amplifier. He strummed away on an electric guitar singing to his own tune. A hat in front of him in case you felt his musical talents warranted a contribution. Thing is... the hat was rather small, and surrounded by gravel and stones. If your coin missed the hat, heaven knows how he'd find it in all that!

We ended up stuffed and replete after a sumptuous feast at The Real Greek complete with bouzouki and plenty of raucous clapping. Time to go. Headed home around 11 having spent a good 10 hours of revellery in the city.
Woohoo London!!!

Research your book for depth

I remember being told 'write what you know about'. And I thought, 'but I don't want to write about a normal life, a happy childhood, getting an education and building a career'. I want to write about strange people and creepy stuff; action, adventure, romance and magic. I want to escape in the writing and in the reading of my stories. I want to be able to travel to another space in time in my books, and hopefully write in such a way that it transports my readers too.

Enter a drastic change in approach with the advent of the internet. Now, I don't need to know about something I want to write about, I can find out anything I want online. Technology has provided us with a fantastic resource for delving deep into the secrets of anything we choose. I'm not sure that reading about it or researching it will ever replace the actual experience of being there, but my imagination is a powerful tool and if I remember to bring in the five senses, I can conjure up some very real people and places.

The trick is then getting them into words on a page that paint a picture which the reader sees in his/her mind. When I paint my picture with words, I need to keep in mind that my readers have vivid imaginations too. I want to leave just enough little blanks so they can fill them in in a way that they relate to.

Someone asked me the other day... "Did you I actually walk along all those roads in Rome that appear in Deadly Obsession?" Yes, I did. Deadly Obsession being my first novel, I wanted to really feel the story as I wrote it. Now I know what that feeling is like, I can create stories in my mind and imagine how it feels to be immersed in a situation.

Its funny, but I remember thinking the self same thing about Dan Brown in his descriptions of the streets in the Da Vinci Code! Had he actually walked those streets and seen the things he spoke of? I don't know if he did or not, but I've just heard an interview with him on his new book Inferno, and he said it took him 3 years to write it, 1 of those years being purely research!

Plot - the 4 Mover/Shakers of a good one!

I'm a writer of stories. I put people in situations, place a number of obstacles (life-threatening or otherwise) in their paths, and then travel with them on the journey of overcoming them (or not).
Besides the description of places and people and things to set the scene for my characters, the most important thing to get my story moving is plot. What happens to whom; where and how; when and with what...

When I consider plot, I look at a number of elements:
1. Credibility: As much as I like to shock and surprise, whatever happens to my characters must be credible. If my story is about a cat.... the cat cannot go up to someone and punch them. Cats just wouldn't do that. I know that sounds really stupid but I'm exaggerating the point here in order to get it across. So, keep it credible. Imagine yourself in your characters shoes and ask the question 'Would they do/think/say that?'

2. Tension: Whilst I'm a huge fan of scary stuff, and creepy things, I quickly get bored of what I call 'gratuitous tension'. This is where the writer includes bog standard, nail-biting stuff that simply isn't credible (there's that word again), simply in an attempt to keep anxiety levels peaked. Example: Girl on her own in a house, bad storm outside, its dark. Hears howling wolves. Goes outside to check it out.... Now, who in their right mind would do that? I've immediately lost respect for her; she's an idiot!

3. Pace: My aim on each page is to get you to read it and turn it. I want you to be desperate to know where the story goes and what happens. Years ago, books were filled with flowery descriptions of hills and dales for three pages just to get you to picture the scene your character was sitting in on her picnic blanket. Today, in the digital age we live in, everything is more immediate. We want a lot of stuff to happen and not all in the last few pages.

4. Hook: I aim to put one at the end of each chapter. Its the question that fills your heart with dread at the thought of what might happen to the hero/heroine. Its the sentence that raises doubts as to the direction the character is taking. One of my favourite authors, Peter James, is a master at the cliffhanger hook.

Make no mistake, I do not consider myself a literary genius. I have read people who write well; who pen classics and become famous for them. So, you've picked up one of my books and you're reading it.... what's going to hold you? As much as I'd love it to be the fluid individuality of my prose, that is highly unlikely to be what grips you.

I'm counting on it being the story...

Character Central - set them apart from the crowd

Oh, that I would imagine a character that jumps off the pages! I've read many a book with superb, multi-layered characters, but its the ones breathed life into by film that stand out the most....Take Sir Anthony Hopkins playing Hannibal Lecter in 'Silence of the Lambs'. He won an Academy Award for Best Actor with a screen time of only 16 minutes! His character is so memorable, and his portrayal so chilling that he dominates the story even though he features for so short a time.
Then there is Indiana Jones, and Lisbeth Salander; Ferris Bueller and Rocky...

Characters in books are not easy to get a depth to. And its this depth that draws the reader in. The character needs to stand out from the crowd, do things differently, make the reader feel an empathy or a fascination whether they like the character or not. The better the character stands out, the easier it is for the reader to construct the mind movie.

Three elements to a character that create depth:

Nighthawk Moth

1. Physical - what do they look like and wear; what do they do - their mannerisms & affectations, where do they live; what is their profession; what do they drive; are they married, single, with children or without; star signs; religion; and everything that makes up what you see on the surface.
2. Their emotions - what they feel about a specific topic, like politics; how they confront issues; have hey a quick or a slow temper, do they make friends easily; how do they feel about being married or single, or having kids or not; and everything about the way they react to their surroundings, or influences in their environment.  
3. Their issues - this is the deep stuff. This is where you can get into why they do what they do, or why they feel the way they feel. It could be as stereotyped as 'he had a bad childhood, so he became a ... recluse, murderer, the Barber of Seville.

The more you get into the head of your character, the more you'll find yourself saying 'he/she wouldn't do that, they would do this'. Essentially, you know them well enough to make that observation. That's the place you want to get to with your characters.

To get a handle on this, you can review scenes from movies. I've even paused and rewound so that I can write down a summary sentence for each scene across the length of a whole movie, just so I can see how all  the scenes weave together to make up the whole story, and more importantly, how the characters evolve over the various scenes.
As with Hannibal Lecter, they don't need to even feature in a scene to evolve through it...

A Scene is a Story

I enjoy a good movie just as much as anyone, but in addition to the entertainment value, I love seeing how they tell a story in each scene. A scene doesn't need to pick up exactly where a previous one left off. Nor does it have to give every detail - only those details relevant to the particular storyline. Our minds fill in the gaps in milliseconds anyway. It is all the scenes put together that tells the entire story, and each scene moves the whole story along in some small way (or big one).

It takes some concentration and imagination to get this right and for myself I can say, its a work in progress. Every time I do it, I get better at it (I think!).

With Sedgwick Green, I completed my beat sheet, and a broad outline of all 60 scenes (bare bones of the story). But I found that as I've started to write, the story has evolved and become more complex so I keep fine-tuning and then writing more, and then stepping back and fine-tuning again. I want to get each scene to move the story forward in a 'wow' way so my readers cannot put the book down.
The addition of a hook at the end of each scene (or most), I think I can add in on the rewrite when I have all the plot twists and turns worked out. Ideally they need to pull the reader forward to something that could affect the character in the future, or a consequence of an action - theirs or someone else's.

This way of writing is new to me, and I have yet to find my rhythm. At the moment its a discipline that I do everyday. I imagine that as the bits of the story come full circle in my head, it will flow easier. During the rewrite (after the first draft is complete), I'll fill in the areas where I need to conduct research or drill down into something more deeply.