Story beginnings

There’s nothing quite like the thrill of starting a brand new book in a brand new series – which is exactly where I am right at this moment. I’m a pantser rather than a plotter so I tend to begin with the germ of an idea and then see where it takes me, and it’s so much fun beginning a new idea and creating new characters and seeing where they go.

When I was a kid, I was fascinated by the idea of sculptures, particularly in generations gone past. You know, those ones who would begin chipping away at a block of marble until the sculpture revealed itself to them. It suggested that there was no choice for the stone to be anything other than what they eventually created and that the man or woman or angel or whatever underneath was just waiting to be brought out.

Writing is like that for me. I might think that the story is going to go in one direction and then it ends up heading in the complete opposite direction because that’s what the characters tell me. I’m not alone in this either. I read something Tolkien said about Lord of the Rings and that (I’m paraphrasing) “no-one was more surprised than me when Gandalf didn’t show up to the inn at Bree”.

I have a sneaking admiration for authors who know exactly where their story is going to take them and who have everything planned out. That will never be me but I think there’s something reassuring in the thought that we’re all different. One thing’s for sure – it’s certainly never boring when you don’t know what’s going to happen next any more than your readers do!

This is what my novel plan looks like!