How I Wrote

How I wrote…

I know this blog doesn’t have much of a readership, but those who do pop by are presumably interested in my books so I thought I’d write a ‘how I wrote’ thing, for interest. How you do it is a question oft asked in the social media forums. I suspect everyone does things their own way, arriving at their favoured process through a series of trial and error.

‘Lambs Tail’, my most recently published crime novel was born directly out of ‘Wet Bones’, the book that preceded it. That book came from ‘Spiked’, or at least the first chapter did. In ‘Wet Bones’ I had a number of crimes and, after reviewing the book at the first draft stage, we decided that it had one too many. By we, I mean Sandra and I, she edits, I write.

Having published ‘Wet Bones’, all 107,500 words of it, I was back in the ‘is it the last one’ camp?, the end of the Thompson series, but I still had the crime, committed, investigated and, well you’ll need to read the book to find out but needless to say I had a fair bit of a crime written. The text for the crime had been dispatched to a saving folder under the ‘Lamb’s Tail’ title and I had intended to turn my attention to the next Howey Cross book. At around 40,000 words written in that one, it had reached the tipping point which pushes it on to being finished. The problem is I became bogged down, unsure that I was happy with the theme of the book despite a lot of it written, that is still the case.

Turning to ‘Lamb’s Tail’, I had one crime, but I needed to build around it so I came up with a starting sequence involving DI Thompson and some of the characters. I try to reintroduce characters to readers without giving a full bio. If a new reader likes the style of writing and is interested enough, they’ll spend a small sum on the other books to catch up.

Having found my intro, and setting the tenor of the pieces, I then set my crimes in place. One I had, more were needed, plus old crimes still under investigation needed action, so that was my next task.

I always set up an Excel spreadsheet to record the story progress. This I use to give written sections titles (writing chapters) and a short description of what they are about. This gives me not only instant recall of events, something you need when you tip past about 40,000 words, but also the flexibility to pick up and move parts that might become relevant elsewhere. In between there is also the need to record the lives of the players, especially the main characters. Thompson, obviously, but also those in his well-developed, if ever changing, team.

As I can’t paint, I’ll use a jigsaw simile. My puzzle has most of the main elements completed but there is still a lot of background waiting to be sorted out.

You might wonder why I keep referencing the number of words written. There is no hard and fast set of rules regarding novel writing, but there is a prerequisite to furnish enough words for the piece to be a novel and not a novella. There is a rule of thumb, it is: Novella = 17,000-40,000 words. Novel = 50,000-100,000 words. Apparently 110,000 words is considered too long for a novel but that number may be based on the attention span of certain nationalities, most of whom don’t, or can’t read anyway.

I hesitate to claim a daily number of words written, largely because each day is dictated by other aspects, in my case birding. Some mornings I’ll wake up with a piece, get up and write it, this may run to between 1,000-2,000 words. It isn’t finished, but the basics are down and the meat will be added to the bones when I revisit. Some days, when the juices are flowing, I’ll do between 2,000-8,000 words, usually when the story has taken shape and needs the bits that take it from my brain-where it inevitably makes sense, to the pages and then to your brain.

Getting the actual words down isn’t that difficult, apart from being time-consuming. The difficult part comes when you have to know what you’ve written, and not repeating it. Sometimes I might deliberately re-write a thing, then take the best elements of both to make something more cohesive.

Nowadays, for crime novels, I get a few thousand words down, perhaps half a dozen writing chapters, then I work all new material into that after writing it in a stand-alone document. Later, and possibly several times, I might shunt writing chapters around, as mentioned earlier, these are text segments with marker headings so I can plan the sequence, moving them up and down the story until I’m happy it sits right and you can’t see the join.

When you start writing, you naturally seek advice from published authors. I found Stephen King’s guide to writing most useful for those interested. If you ignore the ‘I am’ bits, his system obviously works, for him at least and so a tailored version should for anyone else. This is a roundabout way of saying I use the word count as a way of knowing how far into writing the book I am at any one time, it also helps to see that I am actually writing and not fiddling with bits. I don’t aim for a specific figure per day but do confidently expect to add something, if I open the file at all.

One final little bit of information I’ll share is about the characters themselves. I don’t know how many I’ve created, a lot, and each one who has a part to play talks and acts differently from the others. Main characters are especially different, that’s what makes them so interesting. To write a character, I have to hear them say their words, and I do, I also have to think like them too. I can do that because I created them and I know how they think, if not what they’ll say, that comes spontaneously. Hearing the voices of characters in your head is a perfectly acceptable part of fiction writing. The clergy do it all the time and they write squat that might be thought of as original.

I’m writing this blog post in early April 2023. I don’t know when ‘Lamb’s Tail’ will be finished but I’m 55,000 words in at this point, although it might be worth mentioning that those 55,000 words make up 212,500 words spread over nine active books, meaning I write depending who I am when I wake up. Life was much less complicated before I started writing books.

All my books are currently available from your local Amazon as Kindle eBooks or in print form. I say currently because Amazon may well go the way of all things and then I’ll have to find an alternative and probably more expensive way of putting my books out there. It would also kill what I’ve already written as other publishers won’t touch such things, or perhaps a financially viable alternative to Amazon will have evolved by then that will.

One other thing. We’ve been reviewing the covers for the DI Thompson series and have decided to follow the industry lead and try to create a Thompson-type cover. To that end we’ve now changed the covers although, ‘Coldhearted is pending’. Needles to say, if you bought a print version, you now own a very limited edition which, when fame looks my direction, will still only be worth what you paid for it.

If you have read my books, thanks for your support, it is always appreciated and never taken for granted.

‘Lamb’s Tail’, the DI Thompson story continues. Only 99c/77p for the eBook from Amazon. Print book will be out in a few days.