India Black is a memorable character who has had a tough life.
With an outline in hand I know what each scene needs to accomplish and I’m free to use my imagination in the writing process as opposed to trying to figure out what comes next. It would be like walking the high-wire without a net. Nothing would scare me more than to write without an outline. I’m a lawyer by training, so I prefer taking a logical approach to writing. I do a shorter outline for my editor, but my working outline will have scraps of dialogue, character descriptions, settings, and all sorts of details in the margins. “I’m a plotter,” she confessed in a hushed tone. The emphasis is on action and character, though I do weave in a bit of mystery.ĭo you outline the plot or some variation of that (a little/a lot of detail, a strict 3 act structure etc.) before sitting down and writing? The plot develops also as I read, but my plots are fairly simple. Hence I have Russians, Germans and French among my anarchists. Many anarchists fled to England in the 1870’s because of pressure in their home countries. I actually moved up the time frame a bit, as my book is set in 1877 and the anarchists didn’t really start blowing up people until a decade later, but why let the facts get in the way of the story? After settling on an idea, I’ll do research: Who were these anarchists? What were they trying to accomplish? How did they make their bombs? My reading usually generates characters. In the case of the third book, India Black and the Shadows of Anarchy, it was the history of the anarchist movement and its impact during the late Victorian era. It’s a great excuse to read more history. I generally have an idea for a plot, which is usually a topic that I’m interested in and want to know more about.
What is your routine when you're facing your next novel? Do you start your next mystery with the killer, the victim or a plot idea? And that, in the end, is what motivates me: telling a story and hoping that people like it.
But I do love the satisfaction of having completed a book that people enjoy reading. (I have also learned a lesson in humility along the way, but that’s a different answer to a different question.) I will admit that I do not enjoy the writing process. I wrote one really bad novel, and then a less bad one, and finally produced the first India Black novel.
Of course it’s not that easy to write a novel. I’d like that to be my excuse, but actually I was old enough to know better. Many years ago I read a book that was so bad it made me think that I could write a better one. Why do you write? Do you love it or love having done it? What motivates you?
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