An anonymous interview

Looking through my files, I found these interview questions. I forget what, why, who, where or when I did them, but here they are with the answers.

WRITING AND YOUR BOOKS:

1.    In 140 characters, what is your book / series about?

18th century Covent Garden prostitute solves crimes - short enough?

2.    When did you start writing?

Is this a trick question? I was about four. I was an avid reader. Writing just seemed a natural progression. At first it was just my name but I soon progressed to whole phrases. Ummm. I guess it’s not a trick question. I started writing in 1988. I was 31. My son had just been born. I wrote a ten minute script for Channel Four, which was brand spanking new at the time. I was short-listed and I just thought ‘I can do this’.

3.    What is your next project?

Never just working on one project at a time. Always got three or four on the go at the same time: French wartime tearjerker, 18^th century prostitute solves crimes, ghosts in Paris and Marseilles, 17th century PParisian poisoner.

4.    What is your long term writing ambition?

To build up a body of work that will stand the test of time.

5.    How have you found the publishing process?

It’s a bloody nightmare. Agents are like gold dust and it's not getting any easier. Self-publishing on Amazon has become the slush pile. I still want to do it the old-fashioned way. I would work my socks off for an agent who believes in me.

 

6.    What did you learn from writing your first book?

To finish it.

7.    What two books would you take to a desert island?

John Steinbeck’s Grape of Wrath, and The Grifters by Jim Thompson.

8.    What was your favourite childhood book?

Muffin the Mule – it had a map. Love maps

9.    What are your three top writer tips?

Forget about waiting for the muse to hit. Just write every single day – good, bad or indifferent.

If you want to be a writer, quit saying it and just do it.

Finish what you’ve started.

10.  Why should people buy your book?

Because you can escape into another world and experience all the horrors, shocks, and excitement of that time. Because it sets your imagination free and allows you to be someone else for a short while. Because it’s a detective story and you love trying to work out ‘who dun it’.

11.  Do you plot or do you free-style in your writing?

I learned to write scripts for TV and film before coming to novels. I plot pretty much every damned thing and then I freestyle it.

ABOUT YOU:

1. School lover or school hater?

Hated every moment of it – except for art.

2. Who is your greatest supporter?

My son, Jacob.

3. Twitter lover or Twitter hater? Why?

Used to hate it, then I loved it, now I hate it again. Worldwide Chinese whispers.

4. What is the best TV series you have seen lately, why?

The Musketeers. Handsome pointy-bearded men. Do I need any other reason?

5. Do you blog about anything else other than writing? If so, what?

I blogged about going to California in 2010. I have a website for the fountain I am rescuing along with the lovely people of the Friends of Priory Park.  On the whole though, I find it hard to blog. I'm too busy writing novels and scripts to blog much.

http://ariaje.wix.com/stpaulsfountain

6. What is your life motto?

Never give up

FUN TRIVIA

1.    Favourite flavour of ice-cream – I don’t eat ice cream

2.    Crisps or chocolate? – both but also neither – I don’t eat chocolate or crisps. I used to, but chocolate upsets my stomach and crisps are all fat.

3.    Tea or coffee? – I don’t drink either. I don’t do caffeine. I drink redbush and herbals. Aren't I boring?

4.    Wine or water? - Water

5.    Camping or glamping? – What the hell is glamping when it’s at home? I’m strictly a hotel only girl these days.

6.    Must your socks always match?  Oh yes, it is slothful to be otherwise dressed.

7.    If you were to have 5 famous people (dead or alive) to dinner who would they be? – Johnny Depp, Tom Waits, Marquis de Sade, now those three would have a ball together. James Boswell and Dr. Samuel Johnson.No women, sorry.

8.    If you could relive one moment from history, what would it be? Any of it. All of it.

9.    If you were Noah, which animal would you have left behind and why? – Humans. Do I really need to say why?

10.  Tell us an amusing secret that nobody else knows (fun not serious) – I intend on buying a derelict castle when I make my first million. When I make my second million I might be able to afford doing it up.

11.  Who would you most like to have a good rant at and why? – Women doing their make-up in public. Cheesh, finish your ablutions at home will you?

What happens next? - Plotting and Planning

Okay, so you've got this amazing idea for a book and you dive right in and write until you run out of go. Then what?

You put it in a metaphorical drawer (usually a file on your computer) and forget about it? You leave it open on the desktop and worry about it? You come back to it each day, but don't write more than a few lines? You start to add to it, but it flounders because you aren't really sure where it's going? All writers have this problem - the story that's going nowhere. The story that's long on idea, but short on execution. You move on to the next idea. You might repeat yourself in an endless cycle of false starts. I know I have.

These days though, I finish everything I write - good, bad or indifferent - because finishing something allows me to move on properly.

Here's how I write now. I get a good idea, or at least what I think is a good idea, and I immediately pose it as a 'what if' question. For The Finish it was 'what if an 18th century prostitute woke to find a dead man in her bed?'

Then I think how will this look as the start of a book? What is she doing? Where is she doing it?

Next up I go straight to the end. What's happened by the end of the book? Has she survived? Has the situation resolved itself? If so, how?

Having envisaged the opening scene and the end scene, I decide which characters will aid her progress and which will cause problems. In Kitty's case it's fairly simple - without giving you the end, I need her to survive because she features in three more books. However, the situation is dire, with the possibility of hanging, if she is brought to trial and found guilty of murder. She lives in a brothel so we have the madam, Mother Shadbolt, and various other prostitutes. We also have a number of clients and the 'bully' on the door. A detective story is plot driven, as the character moves from one set of clues to the next. By its very nature it also requires twists and turns. A good 'who dun it' shouldn't give up the actual murderer easily. It should make the reader think.

All this said, any story can follow this kind of development plan. From beginning to end and join up the points inbetween.

Some people can write straight through, from idea to actuality. That's how I work, but I can only do it because, having been trained in scriptwriting for film, I've internalised the process and format. Some people need to map it all out. I would say, for safety's sake make lots of notes and plan, plan, plan.

Here's some bullet points to help you plot.

1. Have a great hook and make sure it's in the first five pages.
2. Establish the character's goal in the first quarter of the book.
3. Establish all the major characters in the first quarter of the book.
4. Know how your book is going to end.
5. Know what it is that will happen at the end of the first quarter that will propel the character forward into resolving the matter at hand.
6. Chart out the important points of the story on a timeline, taking caring to consider rising action.
7. Know what it is that will happen at the end of the third quarter that will begin to work towards the end of the story.
8. At the end, tie up all the loose ends - explain red herrings

Find The Finish here

Tips for novelists, from a scriptwriter's toolkit. Part Two - plots

In the first part of this article I talked about why the best stories are archetypes, and where those archetypes came from. This time I want to talk about types of plot. Some people will argue there are 22 plots. Some will argue there are 36. Some, that there are 7. I am here to tell you that there is only one.

 The way I look at it is that every single story, no matter what it is, is a quest: a quest find true love, a quest to find the criminal, to escape from a desert island, to find the perfect recipe, to reveal the ghost, to travel across the country. It doesn't matter what the theme of your story is, the plot is a quest. Once you realise this then you can work out the various aspects accordingly. Writers get so hung up on fitting their story into one of the 22 or 36 or 7 types (or however many plots is the favourite number this week) that they end up confused and struggling to fit it into any kind of a plot. Couple this with the idea that novelists always seem to have, that they don't really need to know their characters, and that what they are actually doing is waiting for them to reveal themselves on the page, and you have a recipe for disaster.

Fact is, it is absolutely imperative that you know everything there is to know about your characters. Scriptwriters learn very early on in their 'training' that you have to do this, otherwise you cannot play out your story to its full potential. Then, there are all the others aspects of your story to take into consideration. For instance, will it be a slow burner, or will you leap straight into the action? Will it be plot led or character led? (If you can, make it both.) Have you worked out the beginning, and the end? Do you know which of your characters will carry the story, or will it be an ensemble piece? What's the location and era? Will it be first person or third? Past or present tense? Do you want it to be a page turner? Will it be action packed, or a drawn out emotive tale? All these aspects, and many more, must be carefully considered before you put pen to paper...or rather, these days, fingers to keyboard.

The thing is though, you don't need to worry about all the different types of plot there might be, if you just keep in mind that there is only one plot, and in fact, no matter the theme of that one plot, it is actually only about one thing. That one thing is survival. Everything in our life is about survival. So, if we are looking for the perfect partner, its about our survival in a potential relationship. If we are hoping to sail across the Atlantic, it's about whether we will survive that journey. If we are planning the perfect crime, it's about whether we will survive to commit more crimes (or end up in prison). Catch my drift?

Now, it may well be that you think I have over simplified things, but I assure you,you can throw stories at me until you are blue in the face, but I will show you how it fits this model. Scriptwriters know all these things because scripts are very carefully designed stories that model archtypes. Even those who argue otherwise, and attempt to write scripts outside the format, unconsciously conform. Even those scripts for stories that challenge everything we know about storytelling. This says a lot about how the human mind craves completion, and satisfaction.

More soon.