Starting Again and Getting to Know New Characters

I haven’t been writing here much recently.  There are a couple of reasons for that.  Firstly the courts have been extremely quiet since they went back at the start of October so I haven’t been covering any trials (which I write up here as well as cover for the Sundays).

The second reason is that after finishing the novel I’ve been working on all summer I’ve been taking the time out to think about what to do next.  The novel was something I’d been working on for years and finally finishing it and saying goodbye to the characters I’ve got to know better than some of the people I know in real life was a bit disorientating.  The feeling was a little like the one when you’re suddenly torn away from a book that you’ve lost yourself in but more so.

I’d spent all summer living in a world of my creation and the realisation that the book was finished, the changes made and the story at an end was rather sad.  These are the first characters I’ve ever fully formed, they’ll be back in sequels but never as they are in this first book.  When I write them again they’ll be older, wiser, different from the innocent kids I’ve been writing about for so long.  I like the way they’ll be in the next book and I’m looking forward to continuing their story but it’s still a strange feeling.

A lot of writers describe feeling down when they’ve finished a book so I presume my feelings are normal but for the moment I’ve nothing to base it against.  I spent so long writing this book when it was just a dream, something I hoped to some day find a publisher for but that I was still only writing for myself.  It was a welcome break from newsroom life and a story I had first come up with many, many years ago but finding a publisher was simply a dream.

This summer I came back to it as a published author.  Devil had been on the shelves for some months and I had since signed up with an agent.  Suddenly my private project had become part of the day job and that brought it’s own differences in the way I worked.

Now it’s finished.  My agent is subbing it around publishers and all I can do is wait and turn my attentions to the next project.  Not going straight back to court meant that while I was deciding on that next project there was nothing else to distract me.  For the first time ever there is no manuscript to tinker on and whatever I start on next will be a completely fresh start.

I had been tossing around several different ideas since I sent off the manuscript but nothing really felt right.  Then last week, having an end of the week pint with the husband we started talking about what ifs.  One thing led to another and an idea started to form.  By the time we had finished dinner there was a plot, two main characters and several supporting cast members.  I knew my protagonist as if he was someone I’d just met and had an interesting conversation with, his female counterpart was sashaying across my mind like a memory.  I knew how the story opened and the main twists the plot will take.  It was an idea that excited me and that I could see had the potential to grow into a book.

So after weeks of having very little of sense to say here I finally have something new to write about.  It’s going to be a bit of a departure, crime fiction instead of true crime, a genre I’ve not ventured into up till now but these characters are insistent and already feel familiar.

As I said it’s been a long time since I was at this stage with a story.  I started the novel I’ve just finished almost seven years ago and back then was learning as I went.  I wrote a first draft without any kind of plan, worked out that is not a method that works for me so went back to the drawing board.  My characters for that book grew organically.  By the time I sat down to give them a more formal planning it was like filling in a magazine quiz on a friend.  It was the same with the plot.

My new characters are just that.  Brand new.  I’ve only had them in my head for a little over a week so now as I sit down to write I realise I don’t really know them well enough to let them run the story (yes I know that sounds a little bit loopy but honestly that is how it feels when the writing is going smoothly, as if you are simply watching events unfold).  So my solution is to start from scratch and slowly get to know them.

The time honoured way is to be able to answer detailed questions on the character.  This is the stage where you build a character with far more detail than you’re ever going to use in the book itself.  I like having a strong character to start with, otherwise I find myself at crossroads in the plot and having to stop and decide what the character would do in that situation rather than simply knowing instinctively.  So for the next week or so I will be answering questions about my characters that sound like security questions for Internet banking.

I’ll know what their favourite pet was when they were a kid, how they felt when it died (if it died), were they the kind of child that would pull the wings off flies, what they would be like as a date, what books they like to read, what music they listen to, favourite films…you get the idea.  It’s a little like the getting to know you stage in a romantic relationship, when you’re both staying up all night comparing tastes.  At the moment I could pick my characters out of a crowded room, by the end of this process I should know exactly what they think of the crowd.

I’ll post again when I’ve got a bit further with all of this, if not sooner. But now I’m off to start getting to know my leading man!