Skeletons and structures

Posted by Simon on 13th, July 2009 at 13:43:55

How do I go about writing a book, I'm asked?  Good question!

The start can often be just one simple basic idea - as with the riddle of the Death Pictures - and the rest of the book then gets built around that.  It's fairly similar with Evil Valley, as that too is built on one central premise, the man who's gone badly off the rails and what that then means for the people who come into contact with him.

After the initial idea I sketch out sub plots, to give the book pace and variety, thoughts on what new characters I'll need, and what they'll be like, and what's going on in the lives of the usual gang, Dan, Adam, Claire El, Lizzie and all. Combine that together and you've got the ingredients for a book.

Then comes the skelton, or structure.  I write down pages of notes about what will happen to start with, how the story will progress and then ultimately end.  Around that evolve the sub plots and the characters' lives, but with a mind to always work back towards that skeleton of the narrative.

However!  There is an oddity to all this - I've never yet written a book which has followed my planned structure entirely.  Things tend to happen as you write which you don't expect, and can lead the book off in odd direction - it's usually the characters which cause this little problem.

And so arises an interesting / worrying question.  If they're my characters, and I'm supposed (nominally, at least) to be in charge of what's going on, how come they seem to manage to live for themselves and end up doing their own thing.

And to that, despite many hours of thought, as with many of the strange things that go on in my head, I still have no answer...

 

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