Part one of Bill & Joseph’s series on novel writing: The idea
November 3rd, 2008
Over the course of the next few months these sorry scribblers will be talking about the construction of the novel, from the blueprints to laying the foundations, from shoring up that load-bearing wall to the final decorative flourishes upon the architrave.
They begin with The Idea…
BILL: So, Joseph, what’s the Big Idea…? Sorry, that came off needlessly aggressive. My question is that dreaded by all writers - where do you get your ideas from?
JOSEPH: I was hoping you wouldn’t ask me that. However… the simple fact is I have no shortage of ideas. They come to me all the time, like flies to poop, and I write them in a notebook. Boring, I know, but true.
BILL: Ah, the ideas notebook. I always have good intentions when it comes to the ideas notebook. I try to carry mine around with me but generally leave it lying about at home. At the end of most days, I find my pockets full of receipts, restaurant bills and sweet wrappers covered in incomprehensible babble with things like ‘What if there was an X in the middle of X and the whole X had no idea it was buried there.’ Then it’s just a matter of deciphering what the hell I was talking about… But the germ, Joseph. The germ of a novel or short story. Where does it come from? Meat, for example…
JOSEPH: It’s a good question. And the answer is lots of different places. The opening of Meat is an exercise I did in a creative writing class several years ago. Pared down, reshaped, edited all to hell, of course. And I’ve always thought about the ethics of taking life in order to survive. To make the idea striking I took the rather obvious step of putting the occasional human through the process of slaughter. How about you, Bill? Where did Through a Glass, Darkly surface from?
BILL: It’s interesting you talk about that ethical dilemma that inspired Meat. Through A Glass… came from a similar place. It originated in a moral debate I had with a staunchly Christian friend. The conversation ranged across mercy killing, embryo research, holy war. At one point my friend asked the age-old question – ‘What would you do to survive? If it meant breaking every taboo, every moral code you hold dear. To save your skin, what would you do?’. It’s a fairly standard moral maze question but it gave me a scenario: a man with an insatiable lust for life is dying of a morbid illness. He is offered a chance to live but at a terrible cost…
But like you, Joseph, I think ideas can come from anywhere. For my next book, The Absence, it was simply a matter of place inspiring story. I had visited Cogglesford Water Mill – one of many very old Lincolnshire mills. The atmosphere of the place just caught hold of me and I fashioned a story around that setting. But here’s a question – instead of waiting for the muses to descend, have you ever sat down and thought ‘I’m going to come up with an idea today’?
JOSEPH: Yes, indeed, I have. When I spent a year overseas and unemployed, I wrote like the devil was after my soul (caught me now, hasn’t he? Damn that Master Petherick…). I did all kinds of ‘exercises’ made up very randomly. Some of them became publishable stories – e.g. ‘What they want, (what aliens really, really want)’ sold to Far Sector but was nothing more than a forcing of the alien theme in any direction I came up with on the spot. But for novels, Bill, doesn’t an idea have to be stronger than that? This is a loaded question by the way, so point it away from yourself…
BILL: The novel idea needs to be strong, sure. But are we talking about the finished, lovingly polished idea here rather than the germ? I think the germ can be a fairly small thing – full of potential, exciting enough to make you skip about the room a bit, but I don’t think it has to be fully formed at the initial stages.
At the risk of this coming off like an advertising blurb for future projects, I’ve recently started 2 new books. The first was inspired by watching wind turbines being built off the coast of Skegness. The second was a line from Dracula in which Mina Harker imagines the Count among ‘the teeming millions of London’. Fairly bland beginnings but they have inspired stories. Both were at a time when I was consciously casting around for ideas rather than waiting for those overrated muses!
I suppose my question is this: does an idea have more legitimacy as a ‘novel idea’ if it comes from those muses rather than being deliberately sought?
JOSEPH: Not in the least. Bollocks to the muses, I say, Bill. We have to rely on ourselves. Any idea is a worthy idea if you do a good job with it. Even a fairly drab, one-dimensional idea can become a feast for the reader. The simple ‘Good vs. Evil within a single character’ became the legendary Jekyll and Hyde.
Here’s something everyone can try. I give it freely so don’t say we at HR are stingy. (Besides, a Bloody Books car battery attached to your tongue makes you want to wag it…) On a piece of paper write fifteen types of employment, fifteen themes and fifteen locations. Cut them into single pieces of paper and put them in three envelopes (could be three hollowed out skulls, of course). Pick one location, one theme and one occupation. Write the obvious story that emerges from mixing these three things. Magic! I’ve written novels like this…
BILL: I think one of the most important things when it comes to ideas is to read as much and as widely as possible. Reading voraciously is important for writing in general – it improves your skills in regard to characterization, pacing, descriptive passages, mood-building etc, but it’s also important as far as coming up with ideas is concerned. You might pick up a suggestion in a novel, for example, that you can tease out into a full idea of your own. And not just novels – read newspapers, magazines, tour guides, even pamphlets while you’re waiting in the doctor’s surgery! And don’t be snobby in your reading – bad books and red tops are just as good a source for ideas as literary novels and broadsheets.
JOSEPH: I agree. Read as much as you can of whatever you can whenever there’s a spare moment. Although, I have to say that it’s particularly in reading fiction that I really feel I learn about how not to do things and what I ought to aspire to.
But ideas are just out there for the taking, aren’t they? Like mosquitoes over a southern swamp. Why people ask where ideas come from I will never understand.
If I can add one last point it’s that when you have an idea you MUST write it to its conclusion – even if you think it’s utter dross. Otherwise you’ll never discover the nuggets of gold in the grimy ore of your mind. If the idea turns out to be worthless at least you’ll have had some valuable practice in stickability. Best case scenario is you turn out a piece you can be proud of.
BILL: Absolutely. There are ideas within ideas, and the writing up of a bad idea can produce those golden nuggets. Well, I think we’ve said all we can on The Idea. Next time: the joys and frustrations of RESEARCH.
JOSEPH: Research? What the hell’s Res– YAAAAARRGGGHHH!!! (Holy butt cheeks, that is one looooong trident the master wields…) Of course. Silly me. Now, I remember what research is. Boy, am I looking forward to that topic.
BILL: Blimey, that’s a nasty looking puncture wound you have there, Joseph. Well, three puncture wounds. I think you’ve severed your femoral artery – you’re losing a lot of blood. I’ve got some Savlon and a couple of bandaids around here somewhere.
JOSEPH: Thanks, Bill. You’re a pal.
Entry Filed under: Writing Chat
2 Comments Add your own
1. Mathew F. Riley | November 3rd, 2008 at 6:20 pm
Funny things, those writing class exercises, several years ago we pulled the ‘profession’ and ‘location’ for our short stories from a hat, but rather than the theme, we had ‘weather’ as the third option… so I got ’spy’, ‘a rock in the middle of the ocean’ and ‘cloudy’; for good or bad, (the rest of the class thought it was well-written, but hated it anyway), this is what resulted…
Coalescence by Mathew F. Riley
Kealan watched the two businessmen die slowly and, well, fairly silently.
When they were still, he made himself a drink, this time without his special added ingredient. He downed it in one. It was time to talk with the pilot. He opened the cockpit door and stepped in, crouching. The Cessna was a small plane.
“Nobody’s allowed in here,” the pilot instructed, turning to look up at the intruder.
“I’ve got special dispensation mate.”
Kealan pushed his Glock-36 against the pilot’s temple.
“Okay, here are the options. One: take me where I want. Two: I’ll shoot you and fly there myself. Three: you jump.”
The pilot’s eyes bulged.
“Who are you? You’re not supposed to be in here!”
“So you say mate. What’s it gonna be then?”
The pilot stood. In a single fluid motion he knocked Kealan’s gun arm away and drew his own, seemingly from out of nowhere.
Without thinking Kealan dropped to his knees, out of the direct line of fire. He shot the pilot in his left leg.
Poor shot!
The pilot screamed. His gun went off. Kealan felt a hot itchy sensation as the bullet zipped past his forehead. Then he was engulfed in stunning heat.
***
In retrospect, Kealan considered, he should have shot the pilot straight away.
I could have been more focused.
His training had prepared him well, or so he’d thought, but he’d leave that for someone else to decide. The Agency had got him on board as the flight attendant, although in reality the role was that of a glorified barman. Things had gone as planned. Until the pilot’s bullet had punched through the fuselage, entering the fuel tank. And now, his pilot’s license would go unused, so too his newly acquired ability to mix exotic cocktails.
Maybe I was too confident?
***
Kealan shouted at the silhouette of a bird far overhead. It ignored him.
Bastard.
He was freezing. He hugged himself. The singed remnants of his shirt and trousers provided no protection against the elements. His shoes and socks must have been sucked off in the blast.
He supposed he was lucky though. He’d survived the explosion and the fall to earth, to water. He didn’t even remember hitting the water, or swimming here so it was some sort of miracle he hadn’t drowned. He’d simply woken up, draped over the rock. Since then, however long it’d been, he’d not even considered swimming away from here. There was simply nowhere to swim to. He looked around: nothing but simmering grey sky and a darker sea. He wasn’t sure how far away the plane had gone down; its wreckage was lost in the roiling spume.
Gone to the bottom.
He felt sick as he considered how deep the water might be that surrounded him. He imagined the tiny bits of plane and people tumbling over and around, over and down through gradually dimming fathoms of water, away from the radiance of the sun.
Seeing something, anything from the plane, a seat, a bag perhaps, would have made him feel better somehow. Not alone. He wished for a detail he could concentrate on within this monotonous landscape.
Black, he squinted into the distance, big, black, and empty.
Soon there would be even less to look at.
Not much daylight left.
***
The wind was invisible movement until it came into contact with his body, then it whistled and cracked around him.
The rock’s circumference was not much bigger than the width of his shoulders, so he simply stood here watching and waiting. Kealan wasn’t sure what he was looking out for, but it certainly wasn’t rescue.
Nobody would miss him.
The Agency, which had been his family for years it seemed, wouldn’t send anyone to come looking for him. Nobody used real names in that organization. There wasn’t even an office, just direct debits and telephone calls. He knew his place: an anonymous assassin. Assassins were killed too. It was part of the job. A bad day at work, they’d joked with him.
He hadn’t laughed.
Kealan realized he couldn’t feel the leaden sleet that relentlessly pounded his head and shoulders. He squeezed his hands together. Nothing, no feeling at all. He no longer hopped from bare foot to foot. At first it had been to keep warm, then just for something to do. He had no circulation in his legs, nothing happened when he tried to move them.
So he stopped trying.
Does a rock, a stone, feel cold? The rain?
The wind became silent once more as it moved on, forgetting him.
***
All next day something swam in circles around him.
He couldn’t see what it was because it remained underneath the surface.
Bastard.
He attempted to follow its path but his neck was stiff and turning his head was an effort.
The thing was too quick for him anyway, and after several hours he forget about it.
***
Unseen formations whirled above Kealan’s head; clashing clouds lifted him out his trance. Black waves broke against each other, across his thighs and chest, but he found he had no difficulty keeping his feet. His movements from the waist up became one with the swell. Was the water rising, or were the waves just bigger now? How could this sea possibly get any deeper?
Exhalations of thunder flattened the water; lightning pierced its surface once, causing it to bubble. Sizzling water splashed into his eyes and mouth. He wasn’t surprised when he found he couldn’t raise his hands. They were frozen to his sides. He blinked, the salt no longer stung. It had no flavour. His vision was clear, although he could see nothing. Such was the depth of the night in the middle of wherever he was.
All feeling had gone below his neck; he may as well not be here anymore. What night was this? His first? Third? He thought his heartbeat must have slowed to an hourly echo. He wondered if he’d be found one day, withered and watered down to a translucent shade of himself, adhered to this rock.
***
A field of seaweed had come close during the night; mist blew patterns across its oily green leaves. Kealan imagined the storm’s strength wrenching the weed up from the seabed.
In the thin morning light he stared at his feet through the now shallow water lapping at his ankles. The water rippled across the rock he was standing on, across his feet. His toes appeared to have dug into the solid surface beneath them, fused to the rock as if it were as soft as sand. He could see his veins trailing into the rock at these points, perhaps they’d decided his body was too restrictive and they needed other areas to traverse.
Or had the rock sent its fault lines up into him? He saw that his feet and legs were taking on that same mottled complexion a corpse assumes, as its blood thins and it fades into darker shades of dead.
His skin and thoughts were grey.
I’ve seen too many dead bodies. Killed too many people. Easily. Without thinking, without feeling.
He was as hard and insensitive as the featureless rock he was standing on.
Perhaps, it had been put here just for him.
He watched the undulating seaweed as it drifted slowly towards him.
***
Kealan saw movement out there.
Small things, grey and red, splashed towards him through the seaweed.
Crabs…?
Scrabbling shapes came into focus out of the mist.
Can a rock be scared?
He thought it could.
Kealan had his detail to concentrate upon.
He tried to open his mouth to scream.
It was the Pilot.
Or what was left of him.
2. Beverley Cameron | January 4th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
Am grateful to the person who referred me to your discussion posts and will try keep up to date. Also enjoyed the short story I found here in comments.
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