How To Write A Book!

Writing a book is easy if you know what to do.

Unfortunately no one now, or ever, has ever known what to do. Ever.

There is no road map, no set of rules, no step by step formula that takes you from page one all the way to the end. And yet many, many books are written every year. So even though writers don’t have the faintest notion what they’re doing, they do it anyway.

Writers are brilliant, aren’t we! They, THEY, I meant to say they.

The writer part of me has just finished the final draft of my first psychological thriller novel. By ‘final draft’ I mean the one where I can’t bear to read another word of it for fear it will make me cry, pull out my hair or consider pitching a tent in the wine aisle of Asda.

As some of you will know, since January, Sarah has been swanning around Australia and New Zealand with her Kate Bush show. If you don’t know what her ‘Kate Bush’ show is, I can’t help you, the only thing that can is a ticket. Get one. See it. Get back to me. I’ll be here.

Tra-la-la. 'And if I only could, I'd make a deal with God....'

Oh, hello, good isn’t it? Yes! I knew you’d love it. Great, so we’re all on the same page now, with regard to Sarah’s KB show. If you’re unsure what ‘swanning around Australia and New Zealand’ looks like, do you remember the film Summer Holiday? Well, it’s essentially Cliff Richard and Una Stubbs riding around Europe in a double-decker bus, singing a lot. Notably, singing Summer Holiday, which is such a coincidence, seeing as how that’s the name of the film. Remarkable really. (With an epic storyline like that, I’m appalled to say it only has a rating of 6.1 on IMDB.)

Sarah's antipodean tour. Sort of.

So, anyway, Sarah’s life for the last two months has been exactly like that. Except not in Europe. And Cliff and Una aren’t there. And there’s no bus, double-decker or otherwise. But essentially it’s identical.

I think it would be unfair to subtitle Sarah’s version of this as: Sarah Abandons Her Still Quite New Husband And Semi-Orphans The Kittens In Favour Of Four Months Without Una Stubbs, so I won’t even say those words out loud. But what this separation has meant is that I’ve had quite a considerable amount of time on my own. And when I’ve not been cleaning litter trays, dealing with ‘free-rage’ kittens and watching old Cliff Richard movies, I’ve had plenty of time to concentrate on my book.

This book is called Father’s Day. It is not a tale of a Hallmark holiday during which unnecessary greetings cards, depicting golf clubs and pint glasses, are sent to biologically related men of the previous generation.

It’s a little darker than that.

This is not my first book, by the way. Oh, no indeed.

My first was a romantic comedy tome about the last week in the career of a West End dresser. For those not in the know, being a West End dresser is a subject I have extensive first-hand experience of. Almost two decades worth actually. Its title is, essentially, the entire work requirement of the aforementioned job.

Picking Up Pants - an unpublished classic!

It has never seen the light of day. Maybe it will, never say never. (Unless you’re explaining to someone how often they should use a three bar heater to warm their bath water, in which case, the word should be said a lot.)

My next book was The RSVPeople. My co-author now virtually lives down under with Cliff Richard, so I’ve heard. A memoir of sorts, documenting the attempt to make contact with the pop fans who placed pen pal ads in a particular copy of the late, great Smash Hits magazine in the mid-80s. It was begun in the dark days of covid, when following in the steps of Mr. Richard and Ms. Stubbs was simply not allowed. It’s still available from all good bookshops – as long as the bookshop is entirely online and run by one of the world’s richest men, who has so much spare cash he can afford to fly pop stars into space (for eleven minutes!!). Essentially The RSVPeople paid for that, just saying.

Click here to buy it. Then read it and enjoy it!

Father’s Day, however, is not a book about funding future space travel for billionaires.

It’s a little darker than that...

But what the book is about is not what this blog is about, so stop distracting me with all these infernal questions!

Father’s Day first emerged ten years ago. Whether Sarah was, or was not, down-under is beyond my ken, as we hadn’t even met. Back then all I had were memories of seeing Summer Holiday during, ironically, my summer holidays from secondary school. Back then I had no idea the entire plot of the film would be acted out in reality by my future wife. Without me.

Ho-hum, I wonder if the litter tray needs changing..?

Any-hoo, the story began dribbling into my head as a TV series idea. My agent had suggested I come up with some. And some is not really a big ask because ideas are easy.

Almost everyone who says they ‘have an idea for a book’ has the equivalent of a blank piece of paper onto which they plan to write the shopping list for a magnificent banquet, hosting a thousand people in a castle on the moon, but the reality is they’re still in their pyjamas and haven’t yet found a pen.

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against penless fantasists in their slippers, but, as I said above, ideas are easy. And essential. Without an idea you’re, well, you’re probably not even contemplating finding a pen. However, once you have an idea, you have not started. Because the idea might be rubbish. Rubbish ideas are the easiest ideas to find.

Here’s an idea:

A couple fall in love, but their families hate each other, and it all goes to shit.

Now, if you’re Shakespeare, you’ve got the kernel of a brilliant idea for the most over-produced play of all time. If you write for a soap opera, you’ve got an instantly forgettable, yet repeatable, plot you can churn out every time a character returns because a career on Loose Women didn’t pay as much as they thought it would.

If you’re looking for a pen in your PJs you have very little. Until you come up with something new to say about such a familiar storyline.

Not a good idea.

 The kernel for Father’s Day was a pondering about the lengths people might go to in order to cover up a crime. That could have been the end of it – but I am a man with hundreds of pens and more than a few of pairs of pyjamas! (Although some of them, presents from Una Stubbs, have shrunk in the wash, but nightwear, for the purposes of this exhausted metaphor, they remain.)

The story began coming together as I walked the countryside of North Wales while listening to the suitably bleak and moody music of Nick Cave. Ideas would come and I’d record them into my phone. Nick would sing and after an hour or two of wandering, he’d have me so scared I’d have to go home and write them up.

I wrote a document for my agent, like a teaser statement of how the TV series, Father’s Day, would land. It was brilliant.

It was this assertion, and this assertion alone, where my agent and I disagreed. He thought it was garbage. He didn’t put it exactly like that, but his meaning was clear. I returned to the document and tried to squidge it into something approaching what my agent wanted. But I had thousands of words of notes. It was impossible to distil it down – because I hadn’t worked it all out.

I know, I thought, I have to write a very detailed treatment of the whole thing. 6-8 episodes, 2-3 pages for each. Blimey, I thought, that's a lot of writing. But off I went. The first three episodes were easy. Beginnings are always easy. And, because you usually know where you’re going, so are the ends. But the middle is like the sinking sand that people disappeared into in those old Tarzan films I used to watch on Saturday mornings as a kid.

The middle of the writing process.

I really enjoyed writing the treatment. And it was time well spent as I now had a new document that was of no use to my agent whatsoever because it was far too long. And my notes were overly complex too. Ideas I’d had at the start were now at odds with ideas I’d had more recently. And changing or erasing one or the other had a knock effect to notes based on these notes.

I wasn’t yet sobbing at the stress of it all, but I was wandering round a lot telling people I had something in my eye.

Then I realised what was wrong – it wasn’t a TV series, it was a book! A book, that when published, I could adapt into a TV series.

Now all I had to do was work out which notes, plots, characters and structural choices should stay and which should go. I made lists. Then I made more lists. I used highlighters and procrastination to help the project along. Then, about two years ago I began writing. If it were the sort of book that began with Once upon a time… and ended with The End, the expectation was that between the words Once and End there should be around 80,000 or so other words, preferably not 8000 repetitions of the sentence All work and no play makes Paul a dull boy, but I wasn’t making any promises.

Part of my process for everything I write, involves putting together a playlist to which the thing will be written. I do this for two reasons. The first is to create a soundscape for the story that, with time, will work like a bell rung to Mr. Pavlov’s dogs – hear the music and I’m back into the world. I find this amazingly helpful. The playlist will expand over time, as I come across tracks that fit the vibe.

The playlist has ended at 54 songs. The most played song is Nick Cave’s, Jesus Of The Moon. It’s played 125 times during the writing of the book. It’s a brilliant song, but if it were to cross my path unexpectedly, I fear I might vomit – such is the visceral connection I now have with it, and many of the other 53 songs in the list.

The second reason I put together the music is, I’ve realised, just an excuse to say ‘I’ve started’, when I haven’t.

Then I started. Properly started.

But before I properly started, I put together a cast list of characters with faces, names and ages. Not, I hasten to add, a hopeful cast list for the TV series adaptation, but rather faces that fit the characters. People I could bring to mind when writing. Based on this principal I have ended up with Kaste Winslet as the lead character. She’s not Kate though, she’s DI Harri Vincent.

The corkboard cast.

So I’ve got my writing playlist and photos of my characters, and now I’m ready to start properly-properly.

As I’ve said, I’m a planner. I always have been. For me, planning in great detail is how I make sure that when I boot up the laptop in the morning I know exactly where I am and where I’m going. Things change, of course, because the plan is usually just the plot beats of story and there’s room to fill in the details as I go. Imagine a colouring book. You’re going to colour in a tiger. Grr. There it is, a basic outline of a tiger. But whether I colour it in with pencils or felt-tips or watercolours, is entirely up to me. And maybe I want a green and orange tiger wearing a bowler hat and carrying a handbag with a golden clasp (I grant you, that’s extremely specific). But I can do what I want, it’s my world and, frankly, tigers need places to keep their nick-nacks.

Those who don’t plan are known as ‘Pantsters’, in a ‘flying-by-the-seat-of-your-pants’ way. I have nothing but respect for the Pansters. Having been a Picking Up Pantster in the past, I feel creativity of this kind in my near future – although I’ll have to be more of a long johns-like pantster, as it gets bloody cold up here in the north.

The first few chapters were amazing to write. I had decided to create a story told by an ensemble of characters. (It includes five first-person narratives, the rest is third person.) The differing voices came together beautifully. I think having been a screen/script writer for more than 20 years it meant the chapters were essentially gorgeously roomy monologues where I could wax lyrical and really eek out the inner thoughts of the characters.

Tippy-typey-tip-tap. To the power of lots. The words came easily, Nick Cave barked me back into the moment when my mind strayed to other things.

Until Johnny Weissmuller’s quicksand appeared in the middle of the story, when all the characters, on the way to the denouement, stopped heading forwards and turned into dodgems, going round in circles, bumping into each other.

No amount of Nick Cave could push them in the right direction. I was in a world of: but if this, then what about that? Several times I invited the book in for a chat. Unfinished books are very accommodating, so it was never a problem. But when it sat in front of me, I couldn’t think of what to say. I just wanted to beat it to death with my own chair. Which is never a good idea. With anything.

So instead I made a 30 page table, detailing chapters, characters, plot beats, red herrings, what we knew, what we needed to know, questions that needed answering etc, etc, etc. Highlighters were utilised again. It took ages. It felt terribly satisfying to see the story mapped out like that.

Once finished, I put it in a folder in my filing cabinet and haven’t looked at it since.

Then I found the key to the difficult middle section: bitch and moan about it at every opportunity – to myself, to others, to the cats. Grow to hate it. Refuse to do any more. Decide it’s all too hard and why don’t I write easy things like, like – NOTHING IS EASY TO WRITE!!!!!

Sarah said if I didn’t finish the book she would divorce me.

Now, even though that never happened and isn’t even remotely true, I can’t tell you what an incentive it is!

So, through a combination of procrastination, lightbulb moments, occasional mild depression, and a pig-headedness I didn’t know I had, I dragged the maggot-ridden, pustulating carcass of my novel across its arbitrary finish line.

For nine seconds I was elated. It was done. It was finished!

It wasn’t finished.

I had 11 pages of notes I’d made during the writing of this draft. Some of them were as simple as ‘Was Harri wearing a hat earlier?’ (spoiler alert: whether Harri wears a hat is of no consequence to anyone or anything!). Some of the notes were terrifying. Including:

Notes: Hey, Paul?

Me: Yes?

Notes: You know 'the killer’?

Me: Er, yes. The killer that has been in my head since day one? The character I’ve been going out of my way to disguise and ladle so many red herrings onto they now smell a little fishy?

Notes: Yes.

Me: The killer who was one of my first amazing twists? The character least likely? The killer who makes the book a satisfying read? The character with all the post-read reasoning, so when the novel is studied in Novel School it will be trawled over and over for all the evidence you didn’t know was there until you read it for the 17th time? That one?

Notes: Yeah.

Me: What about them?

Notes: I don’t think it was them.

Me: … … … thunk.

Notes: Hello?

Me: … thunk … thunk … thunk …

Notes: Er, are you OK?

Me: Oh yes… thunk … I’m absolutely fine … thunk …

Notes: What’s that noise?

Me: … thunk … oh that’s nothing … thunk … just me banging … thunk … my head … thunk … on the … thunk … f*cking wall!!!

Notes: Right you are. I’ll be over here when you’re ready to chat.

My killer wasn’t my killer. How can that have transpired? I am god of this world. I spaffed it into existence, I’ve led the characters hither and thither. I’ve put words in their mouths and thoughts in their heads. Until one of them turned out to not be who I invented them to be. Gah!

So I did an edit. I spotted typos. I spotted verbosity. I spotted names of characters that had changed for some reason. For more than 200 pages Nadia became Nadine. And I applied the notes. I moved chapters. I rewrote chapters. I made characters do and say different things. Occasionally they objected so strenuously to their creative grooming, I had to relent. Bastard characters with minds of their own!

The edit took weeks. By now Sarah was living Summer Holiday on the other side of the world, so I had plenty of time to get it done. It almost finished me. But I got there. I celebrated for another nine seconds. Then I looked at the word count. Almost 96,000 words. That was too long for the genre.

But that was ok. It was essentially finished. It just needed trimming. Like a hippy’s hair.

Sarah said Cliff Richard was very keen to read it, but I said he’d have to wait. I dove back in.

Then I wondered if a Detective Inspector wears a uniform on a regular basis because I’ve a great moment where they should. (They don’t.) I wondered if I had police hierarchy right. (I didn’t.) I wondered what a coroner actually did. I wondered what the unit cost of a sheep was; whether a gun would still work if buried for 20 years; how you geographically get from one station in London to another, via the Underground, in the time I need it to take; what the significance is of a Viking symbol; and a gazillion other things that weren’t part of the story but were immensely important to the truth of the world I’d created.

I even invented place names. The story is set in Kettlesworth. Near the Dark Peaks.

Kettlesworth in Kettlesworth. A village with a two 'T' maximum on all signs. Evidently.

And then I got to the end, again. I had crossed through all my notes, checked all my their, they’re and theres, and told my original murderer that I was very sorry they were not going to be responsible for all the death stuff. They weren’t happy, so I killed them off. After that they were much more compliant.

Bits had gone, bits had been added. I looked at the word count. Overall I’d cut approximately – nothing. It was, give or take the same length as before this final draft.

Sod it. I was done with it for now. I contacted Una Stubbs to see if my wife was available to read it on the other side of the world. She was. And is. And when she got on the plane to fly from New Zealand back to Australia this weekend, she started to read it on her Kindle.

Richard Curtis said that it’s very important to have your writing, in the first instance, read and fed back on by someone you love. I am very lucky to say, as we speak Cliff and Una are sharing a print out of it and trying very hard not to let the pages fly out one of the open windows of their bus.

So now a lull while I wait for feedback. Now I can write a few blog posts for you lovely people.

But in the meantime: the above is how you write a bloody book!