John Dickinson

Keys has gone back to my agent, 17,000 words longer than the first draft with - I believe - no loss of momentum. Right now I think it’s a great book - the best I’ve ever written. Which is how I ought to be feeling. If I ever suspect that my latest book isn’t the best I’ve written then something is probably wrong. And since it’s going to be a while before I’m called to copy-edit WE (the publication date has now slipped to January) I now have that delicious and rather fearful moment of trying to decide what I’m going to write next.

I think I know the answer.

About six, maybe seven years, ago I experimented with dictation. This was when I was still working in an office and it was hard to get time to write. So I acquired some voice-recognition software and a headset and dictated a novel while riding to and from work through the streets of Brussels. As an experiment it was only partly successful. For one thing the cycling meant my breath came so hard that the voice-recognition software could not, in fact, recognise my voice. For another I lost confidence in the story.

It was a fantasy, like my other work at that time, quite inventive, but I feared that it was too short and that I would never get away with the ending. However, I never quite forgot it. And a month or so ago I had an Insight. A jolt. I saw a way of telling those final scenes that seemed to work, with the right amount of juice and not too much risk. So I got down on my hands and knees, rummaged around in the back of the cupboard and found the floppy on which the fruits of those bike journeys are stored. (Yes, I said floppy. That’s how old it is. Listen. My first novel was typed, OK? I’ve even got bits of it that were handwritten. I’ve been doing this for a while, you know. Comments about tablets of stone will be Moderated.) And…

Well, some of it is better than I remembered. You couldn’t tell that it had been put together in broken sentences while swerving to avoid traffic on a Brussels autoroute. But it’s striking to see how much my tastes - and techniques - have moved on since that time. The thing I really notice is how much effort it took me to get my hero from scene to scene. Whole paragraphs are devoted to crossing a stream in the darkness, for example, while the action waits on the other side twiddling its thumbs until I to catch up. All that’s going to have to go. In fact, probably the only way to do this is for ALL of it to go, so that I can re-write the whole book from scratch. The story’s a good one. It always was a good one. But this writer is older now. The telling is going to be different.

My hero Gilbert has just fallen into a well.

There were two ways of doing this, and like a patient, professional actor he tried both for me. Take One: we lowered him into the well on a rope held by three of his men, with whom he had an argument about whether they could have a horse to help them pull him up again. Then he looked for treasure in the wall of the well, gyrating slowly on the end of his rope while continuing to argue with the men above him, and so on for a thousand words or more before finally the inevitable happened and he got his soaking.

Take Two: I dropped him in with the first sentence of the chapter. In you go, Gilbert - Splosh!

There is no doubt in my mind which is better way. To prove the point I have done it to him again, in the first sentence of this post. And I’ve saved a thousand words to boot.

The late Jan Mark, a writer whom I was just getting to know when she died, would say that comedy was the only emotion that you could not fake on the page. The hottest love scenes can be written with a cold heart (and many are.) The most poignant tragedy can be written with a cynical smile on the lips. But you can’t fake laughter. You have to be laughing yourself when you write, she said, or it doesn’t work. She was right.

On the face of it, Take One should have been better. There were many things there that ought to have been funny. But there’s a world of difference between something that Ought to Be Funny and something that Is - just listen to any comedian on an off day. The tense build-up isn’t actually tense. The release isn’t a release. The well-turned phrase that the reader wants to rush off and read aloud to a friend - it doesn’t come. And you can’t make it come. And you’re left looking at what you’ve made and thinking ‘Why doesn’t it work?’ Like a failed Noah looking at his ark and saying ‘Well I made it 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide etc. Why doesn’t it float?’ Answer: because you made it of concrete.

Only the laugh within you will make it live. What makes me laugh? In you go, Gilbert - Splosh! There, I did it again.

Sorry, Gilbert.

The Keys to Cleary has been to my first circle of readers. They are three women, including my agent, and one man. Man’s daughter also picked it up and read it, which is a good sign. Their reactions trickled in through January. I have spent the last three weeks mulling them over.

All readers are different. All good readers, at this stage, will tell you what they didn’t like about the book as well as what they did. It’s what they didn’t like that I need to hear. And when I get two or three different readers saying the same thing, then I know I’ve got to do something about it.

So these are the points of consensus among the readers, together with my immediate reactions:

READERS: The main character needs to be more likeable. His motivation should be clearer. His relationship with the lead woman isn’t satisfactory. And there should be more in this book for women anyway.

SELF: What, you didn’t like my nasty, ugly, foul-mouthed misogynistic hero? How possibly not? (All right, yes, I can see this might be a weakness.)

READERS: The ending is too much of a let-down. There needs to be more of a climax. A glorious bloody battle would do nicely.

SELF: But… But… There can’t be a battle! Not after what’s happened just before it! That defeats the whole point! I just can’t!

READERS: Actually we are divided on whether there needs to be a battle. But more of a climax…

VOCIFEROUS MINORITY OF READERS (NOT EXCLUSIVELY MALE): Definitely a battle. Go on. We know you can do it.

SELF: All right. One battle. But not glorious. I don’t…

VOC MIN OF R(N.E.M): Just do it.

SELF (Sigh)

READERS: And we think it’s too short. We want more.

SELF: Better that than the other, I suppose.

On the face of it, none of that seems too difficult. By the time the third reader had told me I needed more climax - and preferably a violent one - I was beginning to see how I could do it without betraying everything I thought the book was about. And when I’ve turbo-charged the ending and put in some more heroic motivation - well, that will have addressed the ‘too short’ problem, won’t it? Right at the moment the trickiest thing is dealing with the character points. And that’s not so much about what they are, it’s about where they come.

It’s what I think of as the second act of the novel. We’ve had the dramatic opening. Now we have to sustain the momentum, keep the reader reading through chapters three to six while the main lines of the story unfold. It’s just a fact of life that something written all in one go will have more natural momentum than something you’ve come back to and patched several times over. Doesn’t matter how good your patching is, you know it’s a patch and because of that your reader is likely to sense a slackening of pace. If I insert hooks to pull the reader through, then the hooks that precede and follow the patch also need to be adjusted so that they appear to the reader to be a single coherent trail. Momentum is key. Patching is death. Look, I’m not complaining - I know what I’ve got to do. Only I haven’t worked out how to do it yet.

Well, all right. I am complaining. But it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just the writer-warming-up dance, sort of.

Thank you, readers.

I have a companion on my journey through medieval Wales.  His name is Gerald.

Gerald is a churchman.  He is tall, gaunt, pious, learned and very full of himself.  He was born in the middle of the twelfth century and pursued a career in church politics, in which he was ultimately unsuccessful.  But he left detailed descriptions of the people and customs of the Wales of his time.  He is therefore essential reading for anyone trying to write a novel set there and then.  He is a good guide, full of stories and useful little nuggets of information.  He describes country dances and local superstitions. He tells me that in his day there were beavers on the river Teifi.  I may suppose Wales to have been the land of the longbow, but the bow that Gerald describes is short, and it isn’t made of yew either.  These are all good things to pack in around the story that I have written, to make it firm and strong and to help it belong to the time in which I have set it.  I feel quite friendly towards Gerald.

I cannot believe that he would feel the same towards me - or my characters.  One thing that’s clear from his writings is that he was quick to condemn.   The human frailties that I want to celebrate - lust, drunkeness, fear and greed - are all failings that he despises.  Piety and obedience are his virtues, but he will not find them in my pages.  His ghost stands behind my chair rolling its eyes and clicking its tongue as my words creep on to the page.  This morning I will try my hand at some Latin.  He will take one look over my shoulder and then wander off in disgust.  For sure he was a writer himself, and a penniless one.  “Nowadays no one ever pays for books,” he wrote “and I do not seek or expect any other reward.  Among men in high places there seems to be a conspiracy against authors.”  He knew all about an author’s self-pity.  But that did not stop him damning his fellow writers with his pen.  That’s another thing authors do.

Yet I have this right over him - that I have read what he has written.  It’s what he begged for eight hundred years ago.  I am neither the first nor the last to do this, but I too have granted his wish.  Therefore I may grab him by the hem of his robe and demand that he guide me.  He is no Virgil and I am no Dante.  But it is the fate of the greater that he must lead the less.

If it’s December it must be Wales.  This is the Plan.

November Part I was about the launch of The Fatal Child - preparing and giving various talks in various places. November Part II was devoted to reviewing my Science Fiction novel WE, including a final round of research into bits of astrophysics that I felt I hadn’t fully understood.  And to conversations with editors, which threw up some issues with the story that I still need to sort.  But that all needs a bit of a mull, so I shall not start on it until January - a month or so before the final manuscript is due.

That leaves December free for a return to medieval Wales, to redraft the novel The Keys of Carey. If I can get this done, then Keys can be out with its first readers for a month or two while I finalise WE.  The sooner it’s out, the sooner it’s back and the sooner I will have it in shape for submission.  So this month is real. I need it.

But of course December is never free.  Never set a deadline in December.  As a working month it suffers from serious drawbacks. A trip to London for a publisher’s party, with side meetings, takes out two days (even allowing for no hangover).  A trip to parents-in-law, another to Kent, children at home… And (Oh God!) Christmas cards, Christmas shopping… Look, I’m trying to do a complete redraft here.  The scene where He meets Her for the first time is going to take a week to sort out by itself.  By January I’ve got to be on the moons of Neptune.  There’s only so long I can hang around in medieval Welsh mud putting rosewater in My Lady’s bath!  And yet the approach of the Feast is inexorable.  It’s a power that cannot be controlled.  It demands submission, and when the time comes I will have to submit.  Who would have thought that the arrival of one small baby could wreak such havoc to a chap’s schedule?  I can almost hear Herod saying the same thing.  (And what was he working on when they knocked at his door announcing those three strange visitors? His autobiography, I expect…)

I wrote those beautiful words on Monday: The End. They won’t appear in the final version because that’s not the house style. But I put them in anyway, partly for my own satisfaction and partly so that my editors don’t ring me up to ask if there’s a chapter missing at the finish. And now I can look at it and answer the question I struggled with back before I started (pacing up and down on a beach in Pembrokeshire last April, not far from where the action is set): is there really a book here? And there is. There definitely is.

There’s a bit of work to do, though.

It’s full of holes, for one thing. Lots of research is needed. It wasn’t just the saints who went into square brackets. I have to know more about 12th century cosmetics, medicines, diet, farming, feudalism, furniture, poetry, religious services and faith - all that. And the research will change the book. It’s bound to. I’m just hoping that doing it this way round will help me keep the shape of the story intact.

There are also scenes that simply don’t come alive - either because I couldn’t visualise them with confidence, or because I was in just too much of a hurry when I wrote them. These will have to be cut, replaced or edited. The final debate turns on a crucial point about confession, which will have to be foreshadowed earlier in the story if it is to stay. And…

…And there’s that woman.

On the whole male writers are less good at writing female characters than female ones are at writing men. So ’tis said, and I believe it. It’s the empathy thing, I guess. And when you are writing about a society with traditional roles for women it gets harder, because your modern reader is unlikely to be satisfied with a character who settles meekly into the place that is ordained for her. But if you give her a set of modern values she’ll just be wrong.

It’s not usually a problem that stumps me. Hitherto readers have been pretty kind about the leading female characters in The Cup of the World series and in The Lightstep. But it’s a hit-or-miss thing, and in the case of the main woman in The Keys of Carey, first draft, I’ve missed. I know what makes her tick but I’m having difficulty feeling it. The result is that when she appears I simply don’t believe in her - certainly not in her first scene, which is of course the most important. She should have stature and she hasn’t. She’s just shrill. That’s going to have to change. Humm. Quite hard, really. Hard because it’s always harder with a character when you don’t get them right first time. And harder still because in this case we see her only through the eyes of our hero, who has his issues with her. But she’s got to be right.

To borrow my own metaphor here, she’s the key.

So how’s the new book coming on?  Well, I’m up to Chapter 10, and going at 1500-2500 words in a session. At this rate I might have completed this draft in a fortnight. Which is not to say that it will be finished. All it means is that I’ve properly begun. On previous form I will go over the book at least another three times, and by the end the first draft of say 50,000 words will have gone to 65,000 words and probably back down to 60,000 in the final trimming. At the moment I’m skipping all the difficult bits, leaving them in square brackets for me to come back to later. I’m also square bracketing anything that needs research. Here’s a sample from yesterday, with our hero riding along a road at night thinking he is being pursued.

“I bent my head and rode, and as I rode I prayed for my skin. I prayed to Saint David, who is the chief saint of our country, and I prayed to Saint [ ], who was a Fleming and should stand by all good Flemings. And I prayed to Saint [ ] that he should give my horse strength and also trip up the horses of those behind me. So fearful was I that I prayed even to the Virgin, which I am not wont to do for she is a woman, and women will not understand when a man is in a hurry.”

All those saints will need research, but I haven’t the time to do them when I’m writing at the gallop. I have an idea that the correct saint for this bit of country might be Saint Dogmael, but for now David will do. And there’s bound to be a patron saint of Flanders and another of horses, but that can wait until later (just so long as they aren’t the same person). And of course they’ll all have to be male saints, otherwise the crack about the Virgin won’t work.

The research I can do without, at this stage. We move through twelfth-century Wales, but the historical detail can be shrouded in fog. The crucial thing that is that the voice must be right. It feels right, but I’m only one looking at it at the moment, and I have an interest. My first circle of readers will tell me whether my foul, drunken, racist and misogynistic hero is in fact a sympathetic figure. If he isn’t, I’ll have some work to do. But at the moment I’m enjoying his company. In the next chapter someone is going to try to give him a bath.

I haven’t tried this before - telling the story in the first person, as ‘I’ rather than as ‘he’ or ’she’.

I studied Charlemagne in the lower sixth. My teacher explained that written records of the Dark Ages were few and far between. ‘It is like finding your way on a foggy night,’ he said (affecting a German accent, because he was quoting some great German historian). ‘Everything is obscure, and you grope your way from lampost to lampost…’ Charlemagne, it seemed, was one such lampost. And so we proceeded towards him.If Dark Age history is like a foggy night, then plotting a novel is a bit like Dark Age history. At the outset some scenes are very clear. I can see them happening, I can feel the emotions, I can hear the words in my head. These will be the scenes in which I have most confidence when I come to them. I may not get them right first time, but they will be there in the final version of the novel. I guarantee it.

Enough of this. Let’s write another book.

The idea has been brewing in the back of my head for a little under a year. (That makes it comparatively recent as my ideas for books go.) It started with two things. The first was a visit to Pembroke castle, which is a splendid place with some excellent displays. I was particularly taken with the story of the late Norman colonisation of Pembrokeshire, in which the Welsh princess Nest featured prominently, along with various of her menfolk. I was also struck by the dungeon and the story of one unfortunate man who was held there. The second was a dream which came to me some weeks later. I remember stairs, a murder, and a double killing in revenge. A man was stabbed through the carved back of a wooden chair. When I woke, the story was formed.

Well, I say formed. I know the setting is twelfth century Wales. I have a clear picture of the main characters and of the roles they would play. I also know how it will all end. Getting from one to another is not so easy. But already other ideas are beginning to gather around the central one. Some of them are drawn from my reading of the Njal’s saga, bloodthirsty epic where the central episodes are played out not on the battlefield but in debate - it’s a Viking courtroom drama, if you like. I was very taken with the way the tension ratchets up, with the axes just waiting for the moment it all explodes. Others come from other things I have read - a riddle here, a gruesome image there. Few are in any way original. They don’t have to be. It’s the telling that counts.

One thing I have resolved on is to do no research until the first draft is written. That’s completely different from the way I approached The Lightstep (see The Confidence Trick, 31 March). The first and most important thing must the pace and flow of the telling. If I get to something I can’t make up (say, medieval cosmetics) it will go in in square brackets, maybe just saying “[find some detail to put in here]“. I don’t know if this will work. But for this novel, which will be short, intense and atmospheric, it feels right.

The title? I’m not really sure. It’s a bit like naming a child, really. Sometimes you know just what it’s going to be, and other times you’re left looking at the little thing and say - we can’t call her that, but what about…?’ etc. And then they grow into the name, and make it their own, and years later you can’t believe you might have named her anything else. Well, in this case the working title is “The Keys to Carey”. Maybe it will firm up in a few weeks.

The first words went onto the page yesterday. More on this in due course.