Speeding up the pace

Things have changed since my last post, the writing is definitely beginning to flow.   I am living with these people now and wondering how they will react to certain situations.   I have also tried to add some light relief before the next serious happening.   I want to contrast a party atmosphere with the arrest of a saboteur who will certainly hang for treason.   The question is of course, will she talk?

The pace has sped up, and we are now about to move into an action sequence.  Time for speculation has gone.   Someone however inadequate has been caught.   But the mastermind is still unknown.
Time to try for red-herrings, misdirection and plants.  It's a bit like knitting, weaving a pattern that will eventually become clear.

Research and structure

For the last few months, I have made some progress, but have been held up by the need for further research.   Consequently my written work (now at around 40,000 words) has had to be edited and altered as the plot unfolds and I find some details need to be added, for example a piano, in one place and an umbrella in another.  

This being both an historical novel and a thriller at the same time involves a lot of attention to the small details that set the time and also to ensure that there are sufficient 'plants' to allow the reader to skip over the planted detail or whatever and then later to realise the significance.   This is proving tricky.   I am an admirer of C J Sansom's tudor mysteries because they come across as truly authentic on the small detail and at the same time have plenty of red herrings and other clues.

The research has to correlated as well in order not to waste time trying to find the bit of paper it was written down on.   This requires a reasonable filing system and a number of text books.   I have found 'Horrible Histories' brilliant for the small details and also Lucy Worsley's excellent 'If Walls could Talk'.  My old favourite 'Domestic Life in England' by Nora Lofts is also invaluable.

On the writing side I am beginning to find a flow in the narrative.   It seems to be becoming easier as I go along and get to know my characters better.

Plotting - the detail

I’ve reached a point where the action gets going. My main character, Lucy, now established in the Dockyard, needs to be pro-active if she is to achieve her ends. This means that, whilst I have an overall plot plan and know where the novel is going and how it will end, I need to detail the action sequences, arrange for plants and clues and generally begin to move the plot along and develop the main characters further. I have therefore made a diary for the next week with notes of where Lucy will be and with whom and what action takes place. It is just a list that goes something like this:

 Sunday
 L & M drive out with Bartlett. Elegant coach – RESEARCH types of coach in use at that time. How many horses etc. Does he have a driver?
 Weather good, slight breeze, sunny, ripples on river etc. L sees small sailing boats, reflections of home. Return to B’s house. Describe. Tea in drawing room served by maid.
Walk in the garden. B proud of what he has achieved. Some of his background comes out. B has chip on shoulder
Dinner at 7 – food, wine, table settings, grape settings. Dine in style. B out to impress Talk of summer ball. Lucy thinks of silk – way of repaying Meg  

Monday
Asks AM for permission to try and make appointment with Master Shipwright.
 L Warned it may be difficult.
 Ernest Watkins will not let her meet Master Shipwright. Lucy’s reaction.
A workmate – tells her Ned was ‘always down’ at the Ropery. They may know something. Ask for John Cherry.
 Domestic details at Meg’s house. Discussion of dresses for summer ball.

 Tuesday
Goes to Ropewalk at dinner time.
Talks to John Cherry who shows her round.
Told to take her shoes off. Lucy rebellious. Demands to know need for it.
Late back to Flag loft Given thin strand of rope with yellow band – off cut
Running through fingers, bumps into B B takes rope from her. Empty rope. ‘Glad to have found you’.


 This diary will I hope give a good, but not rigid framework for the building action through the next few chapters. There will be moments of passive reflection, memories of sailing small boats, domestic issues, dresses etc. There will also be reflection on the action itself. Hopefully this will prevent the reader from becoming exhausted!

 Action is all doing and/or excitement – it leads to knotted stomach, clammy hands, etc. Physical exhaustion afterwards even if action no particularly physical. I intended to make sure all the reactive parts of the action follow on.

Reaction/Passive Reflection, thinking, looking back, dreaming. Also domestic activity, chit chat, relaxation, sewing, even working.

Not Writing but Dreaming

To me, creative writing is rather like making wine. First, there is the gathering of ingredients; the succulent fruits of word and phrase, the sugared waters of the imagination. These must then be mixed together with thought for colour, taste and scent. Into this murky cordial is poured the yeast, the living heart of the vintage, without which there will be no wine. We also need those bubbles of transition to make our writing live. Technique alone is not enough. It’s no good pounding the keyboard, practicality will not serve. These bubbles rise only when the mind is still; in the dreamtime between waking and sleeping, or when our eyes are fixed on some far horizon. It is only in stillness that we find what is missing – the word that has eluded us, the change in syntax that puts the beat into the heart of our poems. Small changes or large ones, this is part of the creative process. As writers we have to listen to that inner voice. It tells us when the rhythm jars, when something is wrong. In my case, my finals were upon me and my submission was almost complete when that nagging voice began to tell me that my story, the first part of a novel, was not sufficiently grounded in the past. It was not direct enough. I didn’t want to listen, but I had to accept that there was a problem. I tried reworking the assignments, adding titbits of historical detail, but still my characters remained distant and I was running out of time. Then one day, when I was out walking the dog, watching him play in the stream and thinking of nothing very much, it came to me that the tense was wrong. The tense I was using put the story back in time, but my characters were not acting out their story in the past. They are in the here and now. The action needed the tension of the moment, something the past tense couldn’t provide. I decided to rewrite the whole thing again, in the present tense which would, I hoped, take the reader back to a different world, to 1804, when Napoleon was threatening to invade and my characters were in imminent danger. After days (and nights) of frantic writing, I felt I had achieved immediacy. I wanted to dive into the heads of my characters, know what they were thinking, feel the weight of their clothes and taste their food. I didn’t want to relate what it was like to live in 1804 but to live it, with all the pleasures and discomforts of the time. That moment by the stream changed my writing completely. It was a spark of enlightenment, but then this is the nature of creativity. It is transient and elusive and to find it we need to dream; to tune in to the subconscious and listen to that inner voice. It could be the whisper of the muse herself.

Character and clues

I have been continuing to tell the story of Lucy as she works in the Flag Loft of Chatham Dockyard. I have been trying to concentrate on her as a person and I think one of the best ways to show this is to follow her thought processes through to the resultant actions. In the section I am working on, Lucy is given a new task as the can't sew. This is to 'finish' the signal flags, adding toggles and lanyards. She also has to pack the flags into canvass sacks ready to go out to the ships. This is all explained to her by one of the ladies, Mary, who is only too happy to relinquish the job and get back to her sewing circle. But she is a motherly sort, kindly but a bit scatterbrained. She takes time to help Lucy, but she forgets to tell Lucy which knot to use to tie the neck of the sacks once they have been packed with a full set of flags. Towards the end of the day, Lucy makes up the sets of flags and puts them into the bags, tying the sacks in the way that she believes to be right. But when she goes to put the sacks away in the store room she sees that all Mary's sacks are tied with tight reef knots. She takes one of her own sacks to the supervisor to check that the slip knot she has used is, in fact, the right one. It is, but she doesn't mention that Mary has tied up dozens of sacks in a way that would make them difficult to undo, particularly at sea when the knots would tighten in the damp conditions. She decides to come back when it is quiet and retie all those on the shelves with the proper knot before anyone finds out - particularly Mary who would be very upset. She sees it as a job that can be done quickly and that there is no need to make a fuss. This seemingly minor incident shows something of Lucy's character. She is prepared to work extra time to cover up for a colleague. This shows her as kind, generous, observant and intelligent. It also moves the plot forward as the business of the knots is a clue which may eventually lead to the villan of the piece who, at this stage, is still hiding in the shadows.

A new beginning

I have come round to the idea of continuing to blog. I know it can be time consuming, but it also focuses the mind on the job in hand. What am I planning to do next? Well that is simple enough, finish the book I started for my course work. However now there is no pressure, I am spacing out the clues and red herrings a bit more within the story, I don't want the reader to work things out before I'm ready. So this is where I'm at at the moment.