01 The birth of a novel
What causes a novel to come into
being?
This is the only part of the process
I cannot help you with.
It can be something you read on
a crisp packet, a conversation in the street you overhear.
Sometimes you start with a character, sometimes a line
of dialogue, sometimes a concept or a place or an event.
They all start differently. There is no right way to start
them off.
Most of mine start off as odd questions.
Broken Eggshells started
out as this thought: "Terrorist groups always target
large populated areas to create terror. What if a terrorist
group deliberately started targeting the most desolate
areas of the world where no one lived at all?"
Pulling Power started
like this: A French guy on his last day at the company
I work for was being a bit slow in moving his desk and
my colleague Alex was getting annoyed. I was round the
other side and mentioned I could speed Benoit up by reaching
under the desk and randomly pulling out power plugs from
the four way adapter.
I said "It would be like
playing Russian Roulette with power plugs." They laughed.
My mind suddenly grasped hold of
that phrase... Russian Roulette with power plugs. People
aren't electric so you couldn't play Russian Roulette with
power plugs. Unless the plugs were for life support machines
in a hospital. But why would anyone do that?
Nix Ex Machina started
like this: After being referred to as 'The Duck Man' once
too often (Through my association with the IFoundADuck.com
website), I decided to do another bizarre publicity stunt
and thought about selling snow to the Eskimos. I reasoned
that as long as I made people pay up front and didn't pay
the delivery companies until it was delivered I wouldn't
ever get stung.
No one would buy snow anyway, but
if anyone was stupid enough to do it, at least I would
be covered financially and legally. So it looked like it
couldn't go wrong. I then put my imagination into top gear
and asked myself... "What's the worst that could happen?"
The answer to that question was
the plot to Nix Ex Machina.
The start... the initial creative
seed. That's the only bit I cannot help with...
The rest of it? It's easy. Though,
while you're in an upbeat frame of mind, you might want
to take a peek at this
rather scarey looking diagram.
Before we start there is one golden
rule and you ignore it at your peril... never attempt to
start at the beginning of chapter one and simply write
your entire novel from scratch. It will end up disjointed,
shallow and lack any depth.
The novel should start as rough
notes that you order and then expand slightly to be a detailed
overview and then flesh out to become first rough draft
etc. This process of building the novel layer by layer
is the key to making it a successful piece of literature.
