DAVID BARRIE
Thursday, 23rd September 2010. On writing in a straight line.
"Begin at the beginning," the King said gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop".
Although intended as advice for reading (from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland), this is the way I’m trying to write the third Franck Guerin book. When I was writing Wasp-Waisted I adopted a completely different approach, jotting down scenes as and when the idea for them came to me. True, I had an overall idea of where the plot should take me, but I was content to flesh it out in non-sequential fashion. I ended up with dozens upon dozens of individual Word files, each containing a single section, which I had to assemble in a patchwork at the end. The upside of such a technique is that you’re enthusiastic about every passage as and when you’re writing it, as it seems the fruit of sudden inspiration rather than the result of an obligation imposed by a methodically laid out plan. The downside is that you find yourself spending months knocking the final result into shape. (By the end of which I was completely fed up with the whole thing). It’s an approach which generates innumerable continuity errors (if you write scene B before you write scene A you have no idea of the details which should be carried over from one to the other), which can prove fatal as concerns character development, not to mention the exposition and elucidation of the mystery at the heart of the novel. The other great drawback is the resulting incoherence of style. It is of little consequence if a writer’s style evolves gradually in the course of a book, but if it jumps about from section to section, it can prove more than a little jarring.
This time around I’ve tried to be very disciplined. Although I haven’t plotted the book from the first to the final page, I did set out the intended sequence of major events right at the beginning and decided never to get ahead of myself. Thus, no matter how many times (many, I can assure you) I’ve been tempted to jump ahead and work on the final scene, I’ve not done so. So I am writing as a future reader will read: step after step. At least this way I'll discover early on, if I myself start getting bored, that something is seriously wrong with the plot.
"Begin at the beginning," the King said gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop".
Although intended as advice for reading (from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland), this is the way I’m trying to write the third Franck Guerin book. When I was writing Wasp-Waisted I adopted a completely different approach, jotting down scenes as and when the idea for them came to me. True, I had an overall idea of where the plot should take me, but I was content to flesh it out in non-sequential fashion. I ended up with dozens upon dozens of individual Word files, each containing a single section, which I had to assemble in a patchwork at the end. The upside of such a technique is that you’re enthusiastic about every passage as and when you’re writing it, as it seems the fruit of sudden inspiration rather than the result of an obligation imposed by a methodically laid out plan. The downside is that you find yourself spending months knocking the final result into shape. (By the end of which I was completely fed up with the whole thing). It’s an approach which generates innumerable continuity errors (if you write scene B before you write scene A you have no idea of the details which should be carried over from one to the other), which can prove fatal as concerns character development, not to mention the exposition and elucidation of the mystery at the heart of the novel. The other great drawback is the resulting incoherence of style. It is of little consequence if a writer’s style evolves gradually in the course of a book, but if it jumps about from section to section, it can prove more than a little jarring.
This time around I’ve tried to be very disciplined. Although I haven’t plotted the book from the first to the final page, I did set out the intended sequence of major events right at the beginning and decided never to get ahead of myself. Thus, no matter how many times (many, I can assure you) I’ve been tempted to jump ahead and work on the final scene, I’ve not done so. So I am writing as a future reader will read: step after step. At least this way I'll discover early on, if I myself start getting bored, that something is seriously wrong with the plot.