The curse of the storyteller

There are many good things about being a writer.  You’re rarely lonely, for instance, as you can always have a chat with your characters (in your head – you don’t want to attract odd glances).  If the time and place in which you find yourself is not terribly welcoming or exciting or comforting (the UK in lockdown is none of these), you can simply select or invent a new time and place and spend time there instead.  And it’s an excellent mental workout, keeping track of plots and characters.  But I have recently discovered one significant downside of being a writer: it has made me extremely picky and critical when it comes to reading and watching other stories.

At the moment, in our house we are hooked on the drama “The Serpent”, about serial killer Charles Sobhraj, who drugged, robbed and murdered young backpackers in Asia in the 1970s.  (It has particular resonance, as I spent my teenage years in Asia in the 1970s – much of the setting and lifestyle and social comment is so familiar.)  It’s a complicated tale, with multiple victims, multiple locations and multiple timelines.  And last night my husband turned to me and said, “If you say one more time that the timing is out, or that a character couldn’t have known something because they weren’t in that scene, or that one fact has contradicted another, I’m turning off the telly”.

Reader, I had no idea that I had turned into a lean, mean, story-criticising machine.  But he was right: I had idly observed all of those things, and just in that one episode.  Now this doesn’t mean for one second that I wasn’t enjoying “The Serpent” (I cannot WAIT for tonight’s episode), or that it didn’t grip and convince me (I even spent five minutes “watching” from outside the room and calling “what’s happening now?” because the suspense was too great).  In truth, I am rather proud of myself: it must mean that my story-creating muscles are flexing and practising.  But for the sake of marital harmony, tonight I shall keep my comments to myself (even if it makes no sense that two Dutch characters would speak English to each other when alone, when two Thai characters speak their own language and are subtitled – unless it is to convey that one of them isn’t really Dutch, or that they want to be overheard and understood by a non-Dutch speaker, or the point is to demonstrate how fluent they are in English… oh goodness, I’m off again).

Death and birth

I know what you’re thinking: I’ve been idling away my time in the sun and not getting on with “Plank 5”.  Well, it’s not true: Sam, Martha, Wilson and I have had a lovely few days together while my husband has been away, and I can report that I have now written a quarter of “Plank 5”.  I know that sounds like slow progress, but with a publication date of March 2018, I’m happy with it.

As tends to happen with my writing style, the plot is developing in unforeseen ways.  I have just killed off someone – no-one central, so no need to worry – and had to do quite a bit of research around that.  I was about to dump the body in Carnaby Market (a fruit and veg market alongside the now-famous fashion street) until I consulted the marvellous British History Online Survey of London (a terrific resource, which describes each individual street and its history) and discovered that the market had closed in 1820 and been replaced by new homes – plus ça change and all that.  So the poor fellow is instead in an alleyway between two new buildings.

I have also spent some time making sure that my character records are complete.  For each recurring character I keep a record of anything significant that I have said about them in any of the books – appearance, family history, marital status, food preferences, odd habits, etc. – so that I can be consistent.  After all, there must be at least a dozen of you out there who have read all the Plank books, and you would notice if someone tall and dark suddenly shrank and went blonde.  My latest challenge has been the Atkins family tree.  George and Louisa Atkins run the Blue Boar coaching inn in Holborn, now home to Alice Godfrey and little Martha, and in “Worm in the Blossom” I casually mentioned in passing that they had six children.  Of course, I did not realise that I would like the Atkins family so much that I would keep hold of them for future books, and now I need to sort out their family tree.  If only I hadn’t made them so fertile…

It’s déjà vu all over again

When you have lemons, make lemonade – and when there’s sleet and cold outside, write “Plank 4”.  Thanks to the entirely untempting Cambridge weather today, I have managed a massive 2,697 words.

Something I have been mulling recently is repeat characters and how much to repeat about them.  For instance, today I was working on a chapter where Sam goes to see his friend John Wontner, the keeper of Newgate gaol.  Wontner has appeared in all three previous books, and he’s a very handy sounding board for Sam, working, as he does, alongside serious criminals every day.  But do I need to describe him every time?  I am very keen for each book to stand alone, as I think it’s unfair to expect people to buy more than one book – I can’t insist that everyone starts with “Fatal Forgery” and works their way through them in order.  But for people who do do that – and I love you all – is it irritating to read descriptions again?  I do try to vary them, and sometimes I give more detail (for instance, in “FF” and “Blossom” you are told why Wontner has a wooden leg, whereas in “Canary” and “Plank 4” you are simply told that he has a wooden leg), but I worry that readers will roll their eyes because they know all of this.  The compromise I am working with at the moment is that you’ll get a very short bit of character intro each time, and then the actual relationships are allowed to grow with each book – so I don’t say in each book that Wontner is one of Sam’s closest friends, but if you read them all, you’ll get the idea.

Bringing characters to life

I know I’ve been silent recently.  Nothing sinister: just a holiday.  I didn’t take my writing with me, as it was a cycling tour of the Netherlands and I had enough trouble negotiating space for two pairs of shoes in the panniers, let alone trying to fit in my laptop and a file of notes about “Plank 3”.  But Sam did come with us, in that my husband used some of our longer stretches of pedalling to quiz me about my characters.  He didn’t ask about the plot of “Plank 3” – he always prefers to go to his first reading with no expectations – but rather concentrated on background questions, like “How did Sam and Martha meet?” and “Do you think Wilson will make a good career police officer?”.  And I found myself discussing as though they were real people.

In fact, Sam and Martha have already entered our everyday world.  Quite often we will see someone doing something, and one of us will comment, “Martha would have had plenty to say about that”.  Or when we hear another report of fluffy anti-crime rhetoric, where the speaker is trying to make a point without upsetting anyone, we’ll roll our eyes and say, “Sam would have known what to do – and wouldn’t have been afraid to do it”.

So today I am back with Sam and Martha on the page, picking up “Plank 3” and starting to tie together the various plot lines – I had a good idea for one link somewhere between Delft and the Hook of Holland.  As ever, I did consider whether I could use my travels more directly, perhaps by taking Sam to the Netherlands – which also contained Belgium in his day – but not for “Plank 3”.  I was sorely tempted to visit the police museum we spotted in Zaandam, but decided not to “contaminate” my picture of Sam and his Great Marlborough Street fellow officers with images of their “politie” cousins.  Maybe “Plank 4″…

The Inspiration Game

As regular readers will know, I am currently in the “bulk” phase of “Plank 3” – just get the words down, and don’t worry about elegance until the summer edits.  To this end, I have set myself the target of writing 2,000 words per week (2,107 just completed for this week – I thank you).  Occasionally it is hard to get going – but with that rolling target, I can’t afford to indulge a lack of inspiration.  (I’m not talking about writer’s block, which is an altogether more ghastly affliction and Much To Be Dreaded.  I mean just a lack of enthusiasm.)  And so I have invented a cure, which I call the Inspiration Game, and I share it in case it helps you as it does me.

If you’ve been staring at the page/screen for about ten minutes without writing anything, you might be ripe for a quick round of the Inspiration Game.  The rules are as follows:

1. Leave your page/screen
2. Go elsewhere – I tend to wander into town, but a turn around the garden or even unloading the dishwasher is fine
3. You can be “elsewhere” for a maximum of 45 minutes – anything more, and you’re now just skiving off
4. While you are elsewhere, you must notice at least one thing that you will use to inspire your writing when you return shortly to your page/screen.

Today, for instance, I played a short 20-minute round, and made a quick circuit of town on my bike.  I was intending to go for longer, but the heavens opened unexpectedly and I was soaked.  There it was: I pedalled home, and in the next scene Sam Plank was caught in a sudden downpour.  Not thrilling, I grant you, and it might not survive the summer edits – but it got me writing.  During earlier rounds of the Inspiration Game, I have seen a man with a really outstandingly enormous nose, heard a woman singing to herself, and noticed a little alleyway that I had never seen before (despite living in Cambridge for decades).  Will they make it into the final “Plank 3”?  Who knows, but they certainly made it more likely that there will actually be a “Plank 3”.  Game on!

An unexpected heroine

Apologies for the silence recently: work has been rather all-consuming, and “Plank 3” has been rather pushed to one side.  This weekend I did not manage my planned 2,000 words – I wrote only a quarter of that.  But I will have a whole week home alone next week – husband off skiing – so hopefully I will be able to make up some of that shortfall.

Trying to jolly myself up, I re-read all the reviews and comments that people have written about “Fatal Forgery” and “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat”, and one thing nearly everyone mentions is how happy they are to see Martha (Sam’s wife) taking a more prominent role in the books.  I never really planned this: I wanted Sam to be happily married specifically so that he wouldn’t be one of those brilliant policemen with a troubled home life (see Morse, Holmes and about a thousand others) – and I needed a “regular woman” in the stories to balance out the very male police and justice environment.  But I didn’t want – and I still don’t want – them to become “Sam ‘n’ Mar”, the crime-busting duo.  Martha’s role is as a sounding board for Sam, and the voice of common-sense and the feminine.  She is not a Regency Miss Marple, solving mysteries over the teapot.

Talking of Sam’s home life, someone did tell me, as I was writing “Canary”, that they thought there needed to be more sex in Sam’s life.  Despite the fact that I now know Sam quite well, I have no idea how often he and Martha celebrate their marital union.  They are affectionate and devoted, so I assume all is well in the bedroom department.  But he does not mention it, and I am firmly of the view that he should not.  It is mistaken to think that a man of Sam’s class and level of education, living in London in the 1820s, would have discussed such matters with anyone – even Martha.  And so, when it comes to matters carnal, I do close the bedroom door – not because I am being coy, but because to do anything else would be entirely out of keeping with the man who is telling the story: Sam himself.

He’s behind you!

I have just had a weekend of Plank-ing (not non-stop, but several hours on each day), and I can report an exciting development: I now know who is going to be the baddie in “Plank 3”.  And no, I’m not telling you – or not yet, at least.

I was enjoying one of those free-form research sessions – you know, where you just click and follow any lead that takes your fancy – and there he was.  (Yes, I can reveal that it is a man…)  I don’t think he’ll be the only baddie, though, as by his nature he works with others.  (Yes, I can reveal that he is a working man rather than an aristocrat.)  But he is a definite lynch-pin for my plot, and I am very pleased to meet him.  Now that I know what he does, I can start to think about his name and his appearance and his character.  I feel a visit to the National Portrait Gallery coming on, as I have always found their exhibits to be of great use – particularly the crowd scenes.  Several of the characters in “Fatal Forgery” and “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat” bear a strong resemblance to others on the walls in the NPG…  One day, when Sam is world-famous, I shall run a competition to see who can spot them!