Writing a book. What does it mean? What does it entail?

Fiction, in particular, engages or should engage all the senses. Otherwise, it’s a part story, an incomplete account, a limping, meandering path of words strung together without true feeling. But what does a writer attempt in a story? Does it have a purpose, or is it simply a mind worm that must be expelled onto paper in order to relieve that mind of its never-ending presence?

I don’t claim to know what it means for other writers, but I know what matters most to me. For this writer, what’s crucial is always the story. But the story must be told through the eyes, ears, skins, noses, feet, hands, minds and mouths of characters I’ve invented and come to know so well they’re part of me. It’s why I write as what is known in the trade as a pantster. That’s a term attempting to describe a writer who works without a plot, sometimes even without a plan. I can tell a short story without any plan, as that generally entails a tale in which a single incident changes the main protagonist in one way. A novel, however, entails the moods, feelings, hopes, experiences, emotions and concerns of any number of players, so relevant themes and some idea of the ending are essential before beginning.

I begin any work of fiction with the creation of my cast of players. That can entail anything from a single character to a cast of over a hundred named individuals. I have to do more than just ‘get to know’ these people. I must understand them, empathise with them, regardless of whether they’re good, wicked, both, or neither. In other words, I need to know who they are, how they think, what matters to them and, perhaps as importantly, what is unimportant.

I’m a visual person, perhaps because I was raised by a mother who was a gifted painter and a technically accomplished photographer father. I need to know what my people look like. The internet is a handy resource to find pictures of these players and employ suitable photographs in my character templates. No need to be concerned about copyright for these, as they’re not shared with anyone. The character sketches also detail gender, age, experiences, work, beliefs, political leanings, religious concerns, personal histories, parents, siblings, friends, enemies, level of education, and sometimes geographical roots. But I don’t describe all these details to the reader. They’re present to help me know the character, to understand how that person would act in any given situation.

I rarely describe a character physically. As a reader, I understand many who love to consume stories prefer to picture characters for themselves and I’ve no wish to spoil that enjoyment for my readers. Just occasionally, the appearance of a character will be essential to the story and I then describe that physical aspect, of course.

Once my cast of players is assembled, are well known tome, and I have an idea of which theme(s) I wish to explore in a tale, and a notion of the ending, the destination I wish to finish with, I begin to write. I set some of my main characters down in an imagined, or sometimes, an actual, spot and leave it to them what direction they take toward that destination. Because I work in this way, I have to spend at least as much time, and often more, editing a story as on creating the first draft. Fortunately, both these aspects of writing are things I enjoy.

Occasionally, a minor character will develop into a player who forces themself into a role deserving more time on stage, and that may entail some revision of the earlier chapters during which this person was hardly present in the draft. Sometimes, new knowledge, or a fuller interpretation of something I previously thought I understood, will cause alteration of sections, or responses to dialogue from one or more characters. Writing, for me, is essentially a matter of assembling a three-dimensional jigsaw with only a vague outline to guide me about the finished piece.

It’s for these reasons I’m still working on the novel I started over two years ago. The world has changed in that time. I’ve changed in the intervening period. What hasn’t changed is the period during which the story’s set; the early years of my lifetime from pre-birth in 1947 to around the mid-1980s. But I’ve gained new insights to that period over the time I’ve been researching and writing the story, I’ve come across new knowledge, sometimes from searching, occasionally entirely accidentally as a result of other reading.

So, I’m now at the stage where the first draft is complete, the story written, but there are places where new information must be sensitively included to explain why A did this, or B said that, or C became such a different person. I’ve started this process by re-reading what I’ve so far written, with the intention of finding those places where I might make such insertions, exclusions, changes and additions. Once that’s concluded, I’ll insert the new material and make the necessary changes to accommodate it!

For those who like to know the numbers, I’m currently on page 71 of 250. The MS was 106,017 words, at the start of this process, and so far, stands at 107,303. I’ve reached as far as chapter 10 of 40, though there may be fewer or more such sections by the end of the process. I invite you to watch this space, in which there may also be other posts on different issues, before the one that announces I’m ready to submit the new book for publication. I appreciate your patience! And I’ll try to keep you entertained.