Having decided to write my next book I thought I might use this blog to record my progress. Hopefully, I will be able to post regular updates as the project develops. To get things started I thought I would begin at the beginning, very original eh? What I mean by this is to start with the question, where did the idea for this book come from?

The simple answer is, I do not know, but that is pretty boring and this post should end just there if I was not willing to take it a bit more seriously. The reason why the simple answer is true is because the idea for this book did not come as a light-bulb that suddenly switched on over my head. There was no singe flash of inspiration. Like the Nile River it has many sources, some far more obvious than others. To illustrate this point I should first cover what I think the book is about. The basic idea is of a community that is established to be totally cut off from the civilised world. The people who founded the community have elected to leave money, politics, religion, and similar facets of modern living behind. They have taken what they believe to be the best of human achievement and plan to develop a new society free from the influences of an economy that is not based on resource management without money.

This not a new idea and it has been kicking about my jotter, a kind of journal of ideas for stories that I keep, for some time. A version of it appears in my book ‘Mesozoic’, but it was never fully formed. That one also appeared out of necessity, the planet having passed through an extinction event. This one owes its existence to the exercising of free-will. It is also not one of my original ideas; I know that I have gotten it from somewhere else. I read a lot of books, articles, and blog posts. It is impossible not to be influenced, consciously or sub-consciously, by that reading material. I think that many of my ideas come from that pool of knowledge. Anyway, this idea of the isolated community has stayed with me and keeps coming to the fore.

Reflecting on this notion I can see links to Isaac Asimov’s ‘Foundation’ books and James Hilton’s ‘Lost Horizon’. I was particularly impressed by the latter. Published in 1933, Lost Horizon seemed to predict the coming of the Second World War as a conflict that would cause unimaginable devastation and loss of life, one so terrible that even Shangri-La might not survive it.

My first attempt to write about this community was unsuccessful. I gave it a modern setting and established the premise that a charismatic figure was recruiting suitable candidates for a community that he himself would never be a member of. I included active opposition from the government to this idea, which was probably inspired by the notion that government likes nothing more than control and cannot abide the idea of something or someone being beyond that control. I think of people like the pioneers and freebooters who went out into the wilderness to escape what they then saw as the stifling nature of the governments of their day. The story did not work, however. It lacked what I needed to develop it further, but there were some good ideas in there.

This is my second attempt and it already feels much more successful. Several things have changed. One of these is my approach to writing. Like many another I mastered the technique of linear story-telling. My books had logical beginnings, middles, and endings. Probably 90% of books written follow that exact path. It occurred to me recently that although this style of writing is necessary to the telling of a tale how it is revealed to the reader does not have to be so predictable. I noticed that many television series use the flash-back technique in order to explain the background of particular characters. It has become so prevalent these days that I seem able to spot when it is going to appear. Although I understand why it is used as a literary device I wondered if there was not another way of imparting the same information that went with the flow of the story? I think that there is.

Another consideration is where should the story start? When I wrote ‘The War Wolf’ I originally started the book with Eorl Harold Godwinson’s midnight ride to King Edward’s palace at Westminster in January 1066 to witness the death of the king. However, this caused a long jump forward to September without any real explanation. Although I liked the passage I decided it was not a very attention grabbing opening to the book. Instead, I invented a battle-scene between the protagonist, Coenred, and one of the main antagonists, Tostig Godwinson. The action was more immediate as a result.

For me, as well as many other authors, there is a lot more to writing a book than what appears within the pages of the finished article. I posted pieces about how I created the fantasy world in which ‘The Queen of the Mountain Kingdom’ is set. It involved a lot of work, most of which gets nothing more than a passing mention in the actual story, but that is not the point. Going to the trouble of creating the background to any story, fantasy, historical, thriller, or any other genre is what underpins the book’s consistency, internal logic, depth, and believability. An important part of this is the style sheet, which is the means by which everything is pulled together.

Going back to considering where the story should start it occurred to me that very few books need to begin at the actual beginning of the tale. Again, this idea is neither new nor original. Other authors have used it, although I am determined not to use any flashbacks. To drop the reader right into the action, however, requires that all the background work has to be done so that it all makes sense, even if those resolutions do not begin until several chapters into the book.

I am now aware that I have gotten a little ahead of myself. I will take a step back and look at my process of writing a novel. Having decided to write the book I begin with the first draft. The first draft is not the book, however. The first draft is, for me, the point where I start to get all my ideas down on the page. None of the work mentioned above, including deciding where to start the story, can take place until the first draft has been attempted. One thing that I have noticed about my ideas is that only the good ones survive the anvil of the first draft. I write quickly and with little consideration for punctuation, grammar, chapters, character development, referencing, or anything else that slows down the process of capturing and then exploring ideas. I usually do not write any dialogue unless something good suddenly occurs to me. I often refer to the characters themselves by codenames rather than actual names unless I already have something in mind for them. How long does this take? How long is a piece of string? The first draft is very informal. I have stopped writing first drafts when they are unfinished and moved onto the second draft, the actual writing of the book, because I have at that point got the whole idea of the story in my mind. Although my fingers are no longer tapping the keys on the first draft manuscript I am still developing it in my imagination. That particular process never stops, even when I think I have finished the book!

If I am not happy then I know that there is something wrong with the idea. Most often I will relegate it to the back of my mind and think on it further, sometimes for years. I will probably write a few brief notes in my jotter to remind me of the shortcomings. If I am happy with the idea of the book that has come from the first draft then I set to the formal writing of the novel, which I will explore in my next post.