It's always wonderful to have new visitors and that's what's happening today. I'm opening the door to Gilli Allan, who has come to share her thoughts on planning a novel. I'm finding a lot of similarities over how she works, and how I find myself writing my new works in progress, in as much as I'm basically a 'pantser' who lets images and ideas flood in from different stimuli... and sometimes that takes quite a while. Gilli is also sharing information about her books -in particular - Fly or Fall. (Check details below for a Kindle countdown deal from today- 12th March 2014!)
I love the startling cover image!
Welcome Gilli, and over to you...
What is the key that opens up a story?
I
envy the writers who are able to conjure up an entire story, producing a
skeleton plot or a detailed synopsis, before they begin a book. It
sounds easier than the way I work. I
think of my next book like a shuttered up house. I may have some concept of the front
elevation but I have very little idea of what is going on inside. What I need
to do is find the key to unlock the front door.
I find the story by going from room to room, flinging open the shutters
to let the light in to see what’s inside each one.
The key to ‘TORN’ came to me on a car journey to Somerset. I was the
passenger and I had just a split second to register a turning on my side - a
lane sloping steeply down to the centre of a village. Evidently the road we were on had been
developed as a by-pass. ‘I bet those
villagers were pleased to have the main road re-routed,’ I thought. ‘But what about the home-owners living along
this road?’
Life is rarely black and
white. There are always two or more sides to every question. TORN grew from this
single thought. A single mother takes her young son and runs away from an
abusive relationship in London
to find sanctuary in the country. She wants a quiet life with no entanglements,
where she can devote herself to being a good mother. But there are stresses and
strains here too, and the people she gets to know are on different sides of the
argument about everything, from lifestyle to a proposed bypass. She is TORN
between the suitable man and the unsuitable boy.
I’ve attended a life class for many years and always thought it
would make an interesting setting for a novel. And LIFE CLASS would be a good
title. But I didn’t have a story. I
began to think about women I knew and the jobs they did. I have a friend who, at the time, worked as a
lab technician in an STI clinic. This
was the key that opened the door to my imagination. What if my heroine did this
job? It might bring her into contact with many different people - some possibly
known to her - at a vulnerable time in their lives. Tempting for her to make
assumptions about sexuality and life-style. Add into the mix her sister - a bored
housewife, their art teacher - a sculptor, who feels a failure, and a damaged
boy, who knows all about sex but nothing about love. They all need to confront
past mistakes and accept that love has many faces.
I first began writing FLY OR FALL many years before TORN or
LIFE CLASS. I had two books already
main-stream published and I wanted to get on with the third. As I had before, I began searching for the
key to it by looking at my own life experiences. I knew about moving house, the last time was only
four years previously. How would I feel if I’d moved unwillingly? If it had all
been my husband’s idea? I began to think
about a woman who dislikes change but after her invalid mother dies, she is persuaded,
against her instincts, to move house from Battersea, in London, to an area where she knows no one. To
further disrupt and depress her, the new house needs modernisation.
I had some experience of ‘having work done’ on the house,
but I’d never been propositioned by a builder.
I’d inferred from women I knew that this was a commonplace and sometimes
welcome element of home improvements! I don’t believe I gave out encouraging signals
and, in truth, there’d never been a workman that I’d found remotely attractive,
but what if....? All these thoughts
rumbled around in my head as the story progressed.
I was now doing an evening bar job at my local squash club,
and even though I’m fairly sure I still wasn’t giving out the right signals, bar
maids are fair game it seems. It occurred to me that my heroine could take a
similar job which would expose her to an entirely different world to the one
she’d left behind in right-on, politically-correct Battersea.
 |
| Gilli Allan |
It was then that real
life began to mirror events in my story rather than the other way around. My
mother died unexpectedly and my husband was head-hunted. Suddenly my world had
been turned upside down and I was faced with exactly the same dilemma I’d given
my heroine. The job was in
Gloucestershire, a county neither my husband nor I had ever set foot in, let
alone had friends in or connections to. But it was an extremely good opportunity;
I had a portable career and I’d always fantasised about living in the ‘real’
country.
Even
though I supported our move, I found myself living through many of the events
and emotions I’d imagined for my heroine - grief, displacement, loneliness and
feeling like a fish out of water. I put
the still untitled book away and, though I admit to having tinkered with it
over the years, I lost interest. Last year I decided to have another look at
it. I’d only read the first chapter when the title Fly or Fall jumped out at me. This was the key I needed to revamp
the book. I could instantly see what
wasn’t working and why. I knew how to re-write the story, to both bring it
up-to-date and to give it a new, believable and satisfying conclusion.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00EWSHCBQ
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EWSHCBQ
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EWSHCBQ
All my books are available in paperback.
FLY OR FALL is on a ‘UK only’ Kindle Countdown from Wednesday 12 March, for
3 days.
So,
what about the query posed at the beginning of this piece - what is the key....?
It can be many things - a momentary image, a real-life experience, something
witnessed or recounted to me. It’s what happens next, where that opened door leads
me, which is more fascinating.
http://gilliallan.blogspot.com
twitter: @gilliallan https://twitter.com/gilliallan
FB
author page: http://www.facebook.com/GilliAllan.AUTHOR?bookmark_t=page
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1027644.Gilli_Allan
Thank you for such a great post, Gilli. It's a pleasure to welcome you, and the best of good wishes for your Kindle Countdown on Amazon.
Slainthe!
Thank you for such a great post, Gilli. It's a pleasure to welcome you, and the best of good wishes for your Kindle Countdown on Amazon.
Slainthe!
Thank you so much for having me Nancy. The blog was a process of self-discovery for me too. Gillix
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