“What comes first, character or plot? And do either of them take on a life of their own, so a story veers off in an unexpected direction, or characters say and do unexpected things? And how do you keep track of everything and everyone, so runaway bride way back on page 10....?"
(That's Elle from Tempted By Trouble, btw!)
As with my earlier post on openings, there is no single answer to this question. It isn’t even a one author/one method solution. The genesis for each story is different. And sometimes, I have to admit, it would be hard to pin down exactly where is came from. A few, though, are absolutely clear.
Maybe, because inevitably it had a long gestation, I know exactly where the ideas for my first book came from. It started with location. Africa. More specifically a safari camp I’d visited many times when we lived in Kenya. Add to that a Clive James/Patrick Lichfield documentary about shooting photographs for a motor parts company calendar. Add in a feminist demonstration at a Miss World competition and you have the background. And from that, inevitably, I had a photographer hero and a feminist heroine. Plot took longer. It started out as a revenge book, but the editor who picked it up didn't think the conflict would carry the book and asked me to think again. Same characters, same location, but it became an "oh heck, I don't want to be here, or at least not with HIM because the last time we met...well, I don't want to think about that" book. It was mostly about the growth of the heroine - because back then the book was totally in her viewpoint.
Another instance is very clear to me. I was driving with my husband through Gloucestershire when I saw a small manor house high up in woodland. We all know the phrase “Who would live in a house like this?” Writer's instinct suggested a grumpy recluse. And I could see my heroine pulling the old-fashioned door pull and said grumpy recluse answering the door - grumpily, but nothing else.
It was a couple of years later when my editor mentioned that the perfect title would be “The Bachelor, The Bride and the Baby.” Every hook in the book. And there is was, the conflict. My heroine, tugging at the doorbell, was days from her wedding, the bachelor who opened the door - carrying a baby - is expecting her aunt, his old nanny. She's been bamboozled. He just wants to hand over the baby. The best laid plans... By then, the “perfect” title had been snapped up and mine became THE BRIDE, THE BABY AND THE BEST MAN.
Occasionally, an idea comes from Editorial who decide to run a mini series. Marriage of Convenience, Runaway Bride, What Women Want ...my editor had a list of ideas for that one including "being thin" which I thought was pathetic. But then I saw this plump, lovely girl, hiding away, heartbroken by a louse needing to stand by her lovely thin sister on her wedding day. Celebrities, a Hugh Grant-type actor as best man and well, The Bridesmaid's Reward (or the one with chocolate as it became known) was nominated for the RNA Romance Prize.). It was the character that led all the way on that one.
Baby on Board, High Society Brides and, most recently, Escape Around the World are other themes. That one gave me the chance to return to Africa and the Botswana book I'd been itching to write. It wasn't just the setting, though, I already had a character in search of a story, a secondary character from THE BRIDE’S BABY. You don’t have to be a published author for that method to work for you btw. You can use any mini series title for inspiration. In fact it’s probably a very good idea since they have a built in hook and editors love a good hook (I refer you to the Bride, Baby and Bachelor scenario!)
One of my favourite ways to build a story is with a character I already know. Like Josie, in A WEDDING AT LEOPARD TREE LODGE, Amy and Jake in THE BACHELOR’S BABY, Veronica and Fergus in A SUITABLE GROOM (my editor said any woman with that much “cool” deserved a book of her own), had all played their part for other characters. Sophie had appeared in two earlier books before she was given her own happy ending in A SURPRISE CHRISTMAS PROPOSAL. When you know your character, all you have to do is put her in a situation where she’s out of her depth, struggling. (When I say “all”, I’m leaving you to fill in the hollow laughter.) But that's the same with every book. Take an ordinary girl and put her into a extra ordinary situation. Remove her props - what they are will depend on who she is - and send her out into uncharted territory.
Then there’s the book that it’s impossible to pin down. It grows out of a throwaway line in a soap opera. A memory. A photograph in a magazine. Something your mother said thirty years ago (in my case it was a friend who had three daughters all with the same initial letter in their names... "That'll cause trouble when they're older..." muttered my mother - godmother to the youngest. A tiny spark that just grows into character. A story that seems to spin, like magic, out of thin air. And I’m sorry, I don’t know how to make that happen, except by reading, watching, absorbing everything you hear and see. Filling the well.
The important thing to remember about all of these “starters” is that an idea is not a plot, a setting is merely background, that romantic fiction is character led. Not cardboard cut out characters that you move across the landscape — if you find yourself wondering what you can make them do next, you are in deep trouble — but real people with a solid, heart-wrenching conflict keeping them apart. The emotion must be deep, sincerely felt. The reader has to understand why they resist, empathise with them, weep with them, long for their happy ever after.
Did I say there was more than one answer to this question. Wrong. While a place may inspire an idea, it is character that leads the way. I could have set my Kenya book anywhere - I saw a second Clive James/Patrick Lichfield photoshoot documentary and it was set in Moscow in mid-winter. Those poor naked girls! And while Botswana lent an added extra dimension to A Wedding at Leopard Tree Lodge, I could have written that story set in a stately home or castle in the UK and the setting would still have been spectacular.
And how can you have a plot if you don't have a character? You can have hook - ordinary princess, abandoned baby, but it's what the heroine (and the hero) do when challenged that makes it a story.
I’ll get to the second part of that question next time.
