The Pain in the Art blog

Clearing the mists

With the help of a professional review by the incomparable Gillian Stern - more of this later - I've come to understand that the list of good points about my draft is buried under a steaming pile of fundamental uncertainties (or uncertain fundamentals, depending on your point of view). Genre was one.

My vision was for a crossover between crime and literary fiction, taking the best of both and creating a rich mix of page-turning tension and thought-provoking issues and character studies. What emerged was somewhat closer to the worst of both worlds: an under-developed character living through a sometimes unremarkable and occasionally contrived series of page-pausing set-pieces and longeurs.

This wasn't deliberate. I made some basic errors that made the job of delivering a satisfying story too difficult. Most importantly I devoted too much time and effort to being different.

To play with genre, you need to know the rules. By all means break the rules to serve the story; just make sure that the story is better for it. I know the rules of crime writing, and I wanted to break them. There would be crime without murder (hard but interesting), death without a conscious perpetrator (getting more difficult), a protagonist who was neither police/gumshoe/lawyer/scientist/nosy gardener (this is getting ridiculous), and would rely on the subtleties of the UK's company takeover rules for jeopardy (cue hysterical laughter).

'So, Anthony, on which shelf of Waterstone's would you see your book sitting?' Truthfully? On the shelf marked 'Creative Writing degree dissertations that value ideas over readability'. It's a long and dusty shelf.

I gave myself too many constraints (and we haven't even talked about setting yet ...) and then had to prop up the plot with well-intentioned artifice to make it feel more like the story I'd intended. Putting the eggs into a cake mix after it's been baked doesn't work, I'm told.

And here's the immense value of a good, independent manuscript report.

Clarity.

A clear view of what isn't working. A clear opinion on what is worth saving. The space to make the right decisions, freed from the clutter of all those misjudgments and wrong turnings. Gillian's report helped me see where I needed to simplify, where I needed to raise the stakes, where I needed to let my protagonist live.

There is a lot of work to be done. Giving Stephen Fiske a properly compelling role in life is high on the list, a role that works with the genre rather than against it. Oh yes, and freeing him from all my baggage.

What's this book about?

Of all the questions I could ask myself about this book, this is the most fundamental: what is it about? And the fact that I am still asking the question after all this time is telling. Of course, it's possible to write a book without knowing what it's about, at least at the beginning. Put characters in a situation and see what happens. It works for John le Carre. In the case of this book, however, I definitely want it to be about something specific.

Back when the book was just a twinkle in its father's eye, I wanted to write about the plight of innocent people suffering at the hands of organisations that should be looking after them. I wanted a crusading character (let me introduce Stephen Fiske) who could deliver justice in a satisfying way. The real world doesn't deliver that justice, and what better way than fiction to make it happen? All very worthy.

There's more to a good story than that, though. It's all solution, end-product, left-brain. Where's the empathy, the inner world? Why do we care? I've had to face facts and accept that I've been altogether too male about this story. Instead of artificially introducing emotion-inducing plot points, I need to dig for the buried treasure of my protagonist's motivations - why does he care? I've done quite a lot of this (Fiske's wife is a big part of his story) but crucially it isn't core to the story I've written. It's a wash of colour in the background.

If I've learned anything while staring into the abyss of this rewrite, it's that the story isn't about justice for the innocent. It's about why Stephen Fiske picks up that particular sword and whether he is the man for the job. That's the human story.

Now I'm interested.

Beginnings

I've written a book and it's not very good. There, I said it.

I'm giving it one last chance, because I have reason to believe that it has some redeeming features. I have plenty of other things to do if it doesn't work out, but it's been a saga and it needs an end. There's a lot of back story here, but you'll have to wait for that. Let's just say that Seb Coe put together the best Olympics ever in about the same time it's taken me to get to this point.

So this blog is about the rewrite, or to put it more accurately the rebuild, of my first book. I promise to be honest, and I'll be as regular a poster as a full-time finder-of-better-things-to-do can be. There's a reason it's taken this long.

Feel free to laugh, make suggestions or just throw things. If I really wanted to talk to myself I wouldn't be here. And if it all goes quiet, don't worry; I've just reverted to type.