Think About Setting Before Things Get Set

Four walls -- almost -- and a roof : the Steves are zipping ahead with the construction of my house-shaped shed.

Before we started working on building it, we did think quite a bit about location: no room in the house itself and the pitch of the roof was too shallow to squeeze anything into the loft, so it had to be the garden.  Once that was decided, we had to consider where (although you can see from the picture above that our options were limited). In the end we opted for the bottom lefthand corner because the ground slopes away there and we wanted the structure to be as unobtrusive as possible.

The reason I'm going into all of this in such yawning detail is that you have to make similar decisions about location when you are starting to write a novel or a story, and very often your first decision (if it hasn't already been dictated to you by your choice of subject matter) will dictate a lot of subsequent decisions.

Where you set the story can be massively significant.  Thomas Hardy is remembered as much for his recreation  of Wessex, and Emily Bronte for the wildness of the Yorkshire moors, as  for Bathsheba Everdene or Cathy. When you are making your choice, remember that it's not just a question of plonking your story down somewhere, you need to choose a location that can influence and interact with the action, not to mention the characters themselves.  The New York setting of Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Letham defines how the story unfolds - you would be missing a trick if you didn't make sure that the location of your story made an important contribution to the book as a whole.

The novel I am working on the moment is set on a very, very small boat.  This yields some comic potential as the two main characters are living in extraordinary cramped conditions; it also exposes them to danger.  The boat, and the canal it sails down, are vital to the plot and provide a massive  hook for the story as a whole.  So while you are still in the decision-making process, before you have started to write properly, take some time to think about your setting -- it's an interesting and pliant ingredient to play with.

Playing the Line - Structuring the Narrative of Your Story

At this stage in the writing process, you are likely to have a number of bits and bobs coming together.  You may have captured a snapshot of them in your synopsis, but already your ideas, fluid and free, are moving on, changing shape and direction. When you have a mass of thoughts brimming in your head, it can be quite difficult to know what to do with them and where to start.

In my stretched-to-breaking-point shed-building analogy, it's a bit like the Steves piling up sheets of ply ready to start filling in the walls of my novel hovel. The sight of them stacked in what currently passes for our sitting room rather reminded me of giant post it notes, and it occurred to me that these might well come in handy for you at this stage in the construction of your story.

Try writing down a brief summary of all the scenes you have thought about so far on individual post-it notes, or index cards.  This will give you the opportunity to experiment with the running order -- moving a scene once you have written it can have complicated consequences later on in your narrative, so if you can pre-empt that from happening you will save yourself a lot of trouble further down the line.  Even beginning to think about the running order starts to move your planned story from the hypothetical to the actual -- it can be an enormously exciting moment. Try mapping out a logical storyline, then throw everything up in the air and try various different, more fractured versions to see which interests you most.

With the help of the post-its you will gradually get a sense of the narrative arc of your tale and once you've achieved that, you will be in a position to think about where on this arc your story should start.

Writing a Synopsis

You see?  There are just the beginnings, a glimmer, of the size and shape of my shed; an intimation of the height of the structure and the amount of space it will take up, as well as an impression of how it will sit in the garden, of its location.

It's a little bit like the synopsis of a story. A good synopsis will set out what the story is about, who the main characters are, what genre the book will fall into, and its target audience.  If you are contemplating writing one, you may want to sketch out the number of chapters (the struts holding up my walls) and summarise the major scenes in each one.  Even if you don't show the synopsis to anybody else, it will be a useful document for you to file away, because it provides a benchmark for your starting point; you can look back at it three months into your writing, six months, a year,and see how your ideas are developing, how your vision has changed.

So, if you have had ideas swimming around in your head for a few days now, try sketching out a synopsis yourself : notes on character (not just how they are at the outset, but how the action of the story will work upon them to bring about change); the skeleton of a plot.  It might help crystallise your thoughts a little and make you think who (other than yourself) you are writing for.

Later, much later, when you are ready to show your work to potential publishers, your synopsis will provide a useful hook to hang your submission on.

Displacment Activity - A Vital Tool for Writers

Well it isn't dawn, but the sky is so overcast, it could be...

...which means that rain has stopped play, but in writing terms this is a good thing, an excellent thing.  One of the commonest mistakes that new writers make its to charge in and start writing too quickly -- the literary equivalent of premature ejaculation. The trick is to contain your story inside your head until the pressure to tell it is so great you can't hold back.  During this time your subconscious will get to work, filling in all the interesting gaps.

There's a lot to be said for displacement activity, both for builders and for novelists, which is why we've got a rock star called Luke (check out Goan Dogs who recently appeared on Channel 4) pulling down our kitchen ceiling, while one of the Steves picks up his dog from hospital.

Life goes on, fantastically, leaving you time to think and plan and plot...

Thinking about the Foundations of Your Story

Dawn again, in the drizzle...

Even in the murkiness, you can see more clearly the shape of my house-shaped shed. The Steves have had to make a few adjustments, lowering the foundations so that the finished structure will be within height regulations - the literary equivalent is making sure that your story will work within the conventions you have chosen for it.  There's no point in setting out to write a thriller if there is no element of mystery in your plot. By checking things thoroughly at this stage, they have (fingers crossed) pre-empted problems later. 

There are endless debates about how much advanced planning you have to do as a writer: whether setting everything in stone (or concrete) restricts your inspiration or offers it valuable support, but my hunch is that it is helpful to have an idea of the direction you are heading in, at the very least.

In terms of creating your story, perhaps you should be jotting down a few notes (or simply thinking) about any characters which interest you (and why).  It might also be helpful to start letting a few ideas about their situation float to the surface. WHATEVER you do, DON'T start writing yet - just let everything ferment.

How to Build a Story from the Start

Dylan Thomas had his boathouse, Philip Pullman has a garden office, and very shortly I shall have a - shed.  When you're writing seriously and over an extended period of time, it helps to have a dedicated space to do it in if you can manage it, so we are squeezing a house-shaped shed into the bottom of our garden.

This is how it looked at dawn this morning.  You can just make out the concrete pile foundations and the lengths of string to show the outline. I thought it might be a handy metaphor for -- you've guessed it -- writing a story.  Here you have the beginnings of a base, an idea, if you like; there's also the faintest notion  of the shape it might take. There's a massive amount to do and it takes quite a leap of imagination to picture how it might look when it is finished - dispiritingly familiar to the starters of good stories.  However, our builders Steve and Steve don't mind the cold and are definitely up for the job.

So let me take you with me over the coming weeks.  Start thinking of an idea.  Let it churn around inside your head (cement mixer analogy coming on), put down a couple of markers, then let's get construction under way.

An Exercise in Autobiography

To a greater or lesser degree, most people draw upon their own experience of the world, when they are writing fiction.  No matter how much you refract and filter it, there's bound to be a few grains of your core thoughts and feelings lurking in your work, and it's not necessarily something to apologise for or to try and hide. You could even make a virtue out of it -- after all, it's the area where your work is likely to be strongest and most insightful.

In a bid to get a little bit more texture into the autobiographical aspects of your writing, to layer it so that it has depth and perspective, here's a little exercise to get your teeth into if you have time over the weekend.  Write a scene in which you introduce the person whom you think you are to the person you would like to be. Think carefully about when and where you set it as there may be significance to mine, and then  explore the affinities and seize on any  tension.  It may prove to be a slightly surreal experience, but it could just open up an interesting seam for you to exploit...