Writing A Novel: Part 2

Almost that time of year again once the witches have their fill of forbidden fruits.

Now the wedding photography season is coming to a close it gives me a few months of relative down-time to get back into writing. At this stage I’m 75% done with the first draft, all story threads are beginning to come back together to reach the end game which is quite satisfying.

This week the plan is to speed read my way through the everything to catch up to where I need to jump off again. This is primarily so that I can get the tone and flow right, but it’s also to refresh my memory on what happens when and how and to whom - spreadsheets and timelines and notes are great for quick references, but they don’t get across tone or pacing.

I’ve also constructed a map online, to help with locations, settings, and being able to judge distances, terrain, topography, etc. Always annoying when characters appear to travel great distances just because plot trumps logic.

Another part of making this world building exercise feel more substantial is playing around with concept illustrations, an idea I’ve taken from A24’s book of Robert Egger’s ‘The Witch’ screenplay. The Witch is a fantastic bit of film-making (perfect for halloween) and something I used as a jumping off point in terms of atmosphere and setting for my own story - my own story couldn’t be more different than The Witch, but seeing that world brought to life gave me the ‘in’ I needed to get going.

Art has always been a big part of my life. I’d gone to college wanting to become an illustrator after spending far too many summers drawing and writing my own stories, what were then referred to as comics but these days would be called graphic novels. I struggled with finding my way as an illustrator in college, I was too tight to let loose and find the freedom you need to become good at it. Maybe if I’d stuck it out, who knows.

Now, with AI apps like midjourney and Dall*e, amongst others, the world of writing and illustration is becoming closer than ever. Imagine being able to create a visual representation using just words to describe what you want to see.

That’s very nearly a kind of magic, and immensely satisfying.

Writing A Novel: Part 1

Because I’d read somewhere that whatever you end up doing by the time you’re thirty is pretty much what you’ll be doing for the rest of your days, I wrote a novel when I was 29.

Well, that aphorism was horseshit.

The book did okay. Nothing in the reviews to write home about, and nothing for me to beat myself up over either. Mostly the reviews were kind and positive, similar to how my old school reports always mentioned ‘potential’ as a way of putting a shine on whatever talent I possessed being outweighed considerably by my general sense of listessness.

Newspaper and radio interviews followed, now antiquated attempts at on-demand chats and sociable media LOLs in return for exposure. But bantz is not my thing. I find it draining being that extro on the fly, it’s hard enough living in one headspace without having to engage with others. Writing is a way to do that while staying one step removed. I love reading, seeing and feeling what someone else had created in my imagination with nothing more than their words on a page.

I was a ferocious reader, usually had 3 or 4 books on the go at any one time. By my late 20s I was curious to see if I could write a novel. Turns out I could, so I did, even if what I earned from doing it was laughable considering the time it took to write, rewrite, rewrite, work with an editor, rewrite, and publish. There are far easier ways to make far more money, they’re just not as enjoyable.

I can’t imagine choosing to be a writer without having some means to sustain such a precarious and ill-rewarding profession, if not that then to be in possession of such blind belief that you’ll make it against all odds. Writing for a living will always be a dream, but one that comes with the tantalising possibility of a life-altering ‘what if’.

Frustrating, being not quite on the viable side of ‘what if’.

Though I failed to become a writer, working with words was always fun whenever the opportunity arose. Lots of copywriting to be done in advertising, which can be fun for a while if you like strangling puns in 144pt type, bolded, in fire-sale red, to make a living. The only downside is having to live with yourself for all the sins you knowingly committed.

And that is how you make a photographer - take someone with creative potential and beat them to a pulp with puns and platitudes until they break and can only push one button instead of keyboard filled with them.

25+ years later, it was time to write a second novel by not intending to write one.

What started out as a Covid lockdown exercise in attempting to write a screenplay morphed into something far more expansive; I’d never written a screenplay before, although I had read plenty. The advantage of writing a screenplay is that it’s the fastest way to get ideas/plot/framework down on a page. You just need dialogue and directions, no faffing around with internal thinkerings or descriptive prose.

One hundred pages of screenplay became hundreds. A movie became a limited series. A limited series became a recurring series. The world-building exploded out from a small homestead shoot-out to something more universal and all encompassing. Even better, it still feels tight.

I put that down to starting with the ending. For me, how things end is the most important part of a story: nail it and the story becomes indelible for a lifetime; get it wrong and it will diminish everything that has come before it.

With the ending in place, there is a ready made route to the starting point. How did any of those people in the final scenes end up in this particular situation? And why?

In jokes, everything before a great punchline is the set-up.

In stories, everything that comes before a denouement is back-story.