You have a beginning. An event that kicks off the story and a clue where it will go shortly afterwards. These are the shots that will hopefully pull the thing into focus at the start and make the reader think, ‘OK, I’m with this one.’Good news. The planning phase is coming to a close. How do you reach that conclusion? What do you need to know in order to commit to a project and feel comfortable that it’s worth pursuing? Here are some pointers.
You have a beginning. An event that kicks off the story and a clue where it will go shortly afterwards. These are the shots that will hopefully pull the thing into focus at the start and make the reader think, ‘OK, I’m with this one.’
You’ve worked out some characters. The key ones are sufficiently clear in your head that you feel you’re getting to know them. Others are just cards with names and brief descriptions. But that doesn’t matter. The narrative will flesh them out.
You have an idea of the principal locations, the canvas for the book, the world which will enclose it.
You’ve fleshed out that world with some kind of material that goes beyond people and places. A context – the seaside and magic in the case of Charlie and the Mermaid perhaps – that will give the book some resonance and depth.
You know what kind of story you want to write. Not just ‘a good one’ but a book that will fit inside a specific area that readers, agents and publishers will recognise and say, ‘Ah yes. It fits there.’
Fine. Now let’s list some of the things you don’t have.
A detailed outline, unless you demand it. If you’re the kind of writer who wants to work that way, fine. But don’t feel it’s essential.
A precise idea how the story will end. Is Sally all she seems? Is she ‘good’? Is Charlie for that matter? My feeling at the moment is that Sally isn’t all she seems and may have wicked intentions. But she’s virtuous at heart and something in Charlie will bring that out of her, in a way that will involve some sacrifice on someone’s part. That’s as far as it goes. The details are something they will need to reveal as we go along.
Any idea how long this is going to take. Deadlines are for established authors – and even they frequently miss them. Beginners should push all ideas of finishing dates out of their mind and just work on the manuscript at a speed that suits them. The truth – which you probably don’t want to face – is that this is going to take a lot longer than you think. Best put that out of your mind for now. No one climbs Everest staring upwards at the peak all the way. It’s easier and more comforting to focus on the obstacles you’ll meet as you struggle to get there.
A name for the finished book. Charlie and the Mermaid is fine as a working title for something in the young adult field. It may even fit as the final one if the book didn’t get too dark. Too early to say. Titles tend to be either easy to find or desperately difficult. Either way they can wait. It’s pointless to obsess about them now and deflects the mind away from the real business – which is writing the narrative. Better to have a finished book lacking a title than the reverse. Always avoid the trap of obsessing about small details to such a degree they get in the way of doing some real work.
There’s one more ingredient required and that’s, perhaps, the most important of all. What ambitions do you have for a project? What, in broad, general terms, are you trying to achieve? I imagine most new writers starting out will have some very simple ones.
To finish the blasted thing.
To sell it.
To see it published successfully.
These are admirable sentiments, but scarcely count as aspirations. They’re fundamental objectives in most writing projects any author is going to undertake. Why else would anyone spend all this time slaving away over words? As Samuel Johnson once blustered, ‘No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.’
Fine man, excellent words.
Individual books need specific aspirations, ones that are narrow and reasonably well-defined. You should set them out at the beginning so that you have some idea of the goals you want to achieve.
Here are some that might apply to Charlie and the Mermaid.
Paint a picture of the world of a solitary fourteen-year-old boy on the cusp of adulthood, excited and a little scared by what he’s beginning to encounter.
Try to peer inside the mind of Sally, a strange and eccentric teenager who has very little in the way of self-knowledge and is a victim in a fashion she fails to understand.
Take the reader to the grimy, creepy atmosphere of a rundown seaside town.
Explore what draws people to the world of magic.
Look at the tough and occasionally unforgiving world of impoverished immigrants struggling to make a living at any cost, a world that somehow touches Sally, though I’m unclear how.
Aspirations, like the other techniques outlined here, help provide two essential elements in the writing of any project: focus and control. They let you home in on what matters and keep your concentration on those essential elements once you establish them. And they will, of course, change along the way, the peripheral ones cast to one side as your story grows and comes into focus.