Authors Electric

What do you do when you finish a book? When the final edit has gone to the publisher, or you’ve pressed the publish button and it’s live on Kindle do you take a break, or immediately start to write the next one? Some writers take time off to recuperate, or to plan, or research their next novel. Lee Childs famously starts to write each Jack Reacher book on September 1 st , the anniversary of being made redundant, and aims to finish in six months, leaving the rest of the year free. For Susanna Clarke there were sixteen years between her debut, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell and Piranisi which was published in 2020. Years she spent planning and writing. Lee Childs never plans. He simply sits down and starts writing. Other writers, especially those writing historical fiction, use the time to research the background for their next novel. As for me, much as I like the idea of taking time off, I find that it never works out that way. It is as if the stories are lining up waiting to be told

  When I write fiction, I have no idea where the story will end. Something sparks my imagination ⏤ an overheard conversation or an image glimpsed from a train window. Maybe I can sense already the character I want to portray. I might have a general direction of where that character will go. Or not. By the time I’m ready to edit my fiction, most of the moving parts will have revealed themselves. I have a setting, some plot points, and a cast of thousands. It’s time to decide whether I want my story to be plot-driven or character-driven. A plot-driven novel compels the reader to turn the page because she needs to know what happens next . A character makes a decision that causes a cascade of effects. Consequences follow in rapid order. The question in the reader’s mind is: did the character make the right choice? The character-driven novel centers on why a character makes certain decisions. What fear or desire is driving their action (or inaction)? Their int

The Snow Goose 1946 In the autumn of 1940 the Saturday Evening Post in America published a short story, 'The Snow Goose' by Paul Gallico (1879-1976). It won the prestigious O. Henry short story prize and in 1941 was expanded into a novella, published in both the US and UK. It was hugely popular. Later it became a Golden Globe-winning film, a spoken word recording, an RCA record with words and music. More recently it's been represented as a touring puppet show and it's an acknowledged influence on Michael Morpurgo’s hugely successful novel War Horse .  For me, as a 1950s child, the story was accepted as truth and the most significant version was the book published in December 1946, with illustrations by Peter Scott. (I'm faintly shocked that there could be any others.) Our copy belonged to my mother but I appropriated it as soon as I could and have always treasured it. I never actually asked her whether she minded me removing it to my shelves -- or indeed how she fe

In the couple of weeks leadig up to Christmas, I had a sit-down (virtually, of course) with some writer friends, and we spent quite a lot of time discussing the mechanics of writing. All of us have have recently been working with new writers, trying to help them, and someone (not me, wish I could take the credit for it) thought it would be an idea to get a set of guidelines and tips together, based on things we'd seen and questions we'd had. (Yes, the inevitable question was asked – how do you write a book? My answer was the same as, I suspect, most authors – one word at a time, until you have a lot of them that hopefully forms a coherent text.) What was interesting, though, was the views of some people on the whole process. We started the process of collating this material, but the following is the top 4 things that came up: "I don't rewrite or edit as it spoils the creative flow." This came up several times. Quite simply, I suspect there are few writers,

To answer that perennially put question ‘Where do you get your ideas from?’ I always have to think hard. Often, for occasions such as talks or workshops, to generate discussion or just activity, it’s a question I pose myself. Because the problem is that completed books are more than 'ideas'.  All sorts of things fit together to make them – characters, situations, progressions, solutions – and it all seems … well, complete, and certainly much more than just a few 'ideas'. I’ve written eleven novels so far and there’s no real pattern which links them. The 'idea' for the first in my crime series, Material Evidence , came from reading a book on forensic medicine. One of the cases described was very striking so I borrowed it but, by the time the characters had had their say, the details of the killing had changed completely. The second, Rough Justice , was sparked in a meeting with a very  rude, unpleasant individual for whose company I had to write a promotional

Have I written here about Christmas cards? I’m not sure I have, but I lose track sometimes  –  having blogged here since the site’s inception, I’m fairly sure I’ve duplicated topics from time to time…  Never mind: Christmas cards. Or any other occasion cards, I guess. We got significantly fewer this Christmas past. I’m not sure whether that’s because 2020 is desperately trying to be the Year That Time Forgot, or if it’s simply that people just don’t write any more. Several of my friends send out email missives summarising the year for themselves and their families; others donate to charity in lieu of sending cards. And I know we’re all about saving the planet – but there’s something old-fashioned, quaint and just nice about the sending and receiving of cards to mark an occasion. It means that somebody has – just for a short moment of time – thought about you as they scrawled your name and address on a card and envelope. I know I do it; as I write each card, my mind drifts back to mo