John Dickinson

The book was written and the title chosen before my attention was drawn to Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We, published in English in 1924. I have only my ignorance to blame, for Zamyatin’s work is an important early dystopian novel, inspiring Orwell’s 1984 and influencing many others.

I did look for another title (Cold Eden seemed a possibility, although this again was not original.) But nothing else captured with such short, stark simplicity the theme I wanted to write about - the place of the individual in the larger group. So We it remains. I, too, owe a debt to the great Russian. And I don’t feel bad about that. Not with Orwell’s footprints before me on the road.

Orwell and Zamyatin wrote in the context of the early and mid-twentieth century, which saw the rise of powerful totalitarian states founded on the argument that “we” – the people as a whole – were far more important than “I” – meaning you, the individual. That “We” fed itself upon show trials, purges, mass murder, and war. Against it, the “I” had no appeal. It was terrifying. “If you want a picture of the future,” Orwell wrote in 1984, “imagine a boot stamping on a human face – for ever.”

In the twenty-first century, those clouds have parted. The worst dictators are dead. Their armies are defeated or have rusted away. But the “we” is of course always with us. It has to be. We (ahem) would never achieve anything if we were only a collection of random “I”s. So where does the balance between “we” and “I” now lie, in our comfortable, liberal, if slightly bankrupt societies? And what seeds have we sown that could transform it?

Look at the screen on which this is written. Consider what lies behind it. All those connections, all that information.

Think about how you use it.

…And fast forward fifty years…

WE comes out in January. It’s my first science fiction novel, set not very far into the future – say the second half of this century, so that all the technology is still recognisable and plausible and hasn’t transformed into substitute magic. Inter-stellar travel is not possible. The action takes place on a tiny moon on the edge of the solar system, where gravity is one-tenth that of Earth and the average surface temperature is about forty degrees above absolute zero.

Just think about that for a moment.

The sky above the moon is dominated by a giant planet, as big as two fists held together at arm’s length. On Earth, you can cover the moon with the tip of a finger. The forces on that planet are massive – winds of hundreds of thousands of miles an hour, an ocean deep enough to drown the Earth and hot enough, at its lower levels, to poach it. But you can’t reach it and it can’t reach you. it’s just up there, looking down on you. The sun is so distant it appears to be the size of a bright star.

(All this is for real, by the way. The planet is based on Neptune and the moon on Triton, though I don’t use those names in the book.)

It takes years to get here. The costs are enormous. In the low gravity the human body sheds most of its weight-bearing muscle and the bones become brittle. Once here – do you ever think you’re going back? So why come here in the first place?

That’s what the novel is about.

I’m now two-thirds of the way through this story I first did about seven years ago. At first I thought I was going to have to re-write the lot (see “The Next Story”). Then I found I was importing whole chunks of text from the old version, because I couldn’t see that it was worth doing that bit of imagination all over again. What’s emerging now is a blend of old and new. So here’s the interesting question - what am I doing differently, after seven years of professional writing? How have I improved – and what have I lost?

The thing that hasn’t changed is what I want to happen. The story is about a young bronze-age warrior who has six sisters. And then this happens to them and then that and that and so on all the way to the ending as I imagined it all that time ago. Also the basics of the setting are the same – an isolated little world, a landscape of hills and forests, firelight and shadows and the presence of the sea. It’s a fantasy, but the fantastical elements are not obvious to the eye. In fact it’s very similar to the setting of The Cup of the World and its sequels, except that the culture of the people is more primitive.

What’s changed very much is the way I tell the story. I’ve introduced a narrator. This was someone who is very important at the end, but her presence needs to be felt throughout – and now it is. I let the reader discover important facts much earlier in the telling, rather than springing them right at the end. That’s because I have greater self-confidence. I don’t need to hide stuff as much as I do.

I’ve made the language less pompous. The main characters don’t say ‘is not’, they say ‘isn’t’, just as we would. I use fewer adjectives and fancy phrases. I want to make it easier to read what I’ve written.

I’m less shy about the romance. Seven years ago I wrote all that bit through they eyes of a third party, very much from the outside. Now it’s one of the most interesting questions – why does she go with him? So there are new scenes, seen from her point of view, that tell you why. I’m paying altogether more attention to the women. They are supposed to be spirits in their world. So what’s it like, being a spirit?

Some of this I think I would have done anyway if I had started re-writing immediately, seven years ago. The emphasis of a book often shifts as you re-work it. Stuff that is under-stated at first does get brought out – sometimes at the expense of things that you had originally thought were more important. But I think my idea of who my readers will be has changed. They’re less patient. They want more things explained. They want more love and less agonising. They want to turn the pages, find out what happens - things like that.

And so do I.

A good blurb is like an elephant.

1) It’s rare.
2) You know it when you see it.
3) You need to be God to get it right.

How do you create, in a few short words, something that will make the reader pick this one novel from a thousand others? My editors and I have been batting the blurb for WE back and forth for weeks now. I’ve lost count of the number of versions we’ve gone through. Even our cover artist has had a go. It was quite a good one, I thought, but it did not find favour. Since then the wise man has retreated to a distance and let us get on with it.

We know what messages we are trying to get in. We have converged on a way of doing it. We agree that the first line should be a quote from the book. We have even agreed on a punchline. We just can’t get the rest of it right. Words that resonate to me seem to do nothing for others. They in turn write stuff that seems good to them, and when I see it I tear my hair and cry ‘How can this be?’ A few nights ago I had a revelation. I woke from a dream with my heart pounding, leapt to my computer and fired off the magic words at four-thirty in the morning. ‘There,’ I thought. ‘That’s how creation happens!’

My words fell into a well of silence. Round we went again. ‘Do you like this one?’ ‘ Well, not really . . .’ The most recent offering from my editor was prefaced ‘Hopefully final!’ I read it and reached for my sideburns.

But this time I am conceding something. This time I am working on someone else’s draft, rather than expecting someone else to work on mine.

This time, we may get somewhere.

So I’ve excised the heroine and one supporting character. I have replaced them both with a new heroine who combines both roles and personalities. I’ve put in all the other edits and copy-edits (on which more another time maybe). The book is due to go to Production at the end of the month. The editors will need it for a week at least before then. Next week is filling with engagements and the summer holidays loom. I’ve got about one more working day left.

I’ve had one last look and, as I thought, there’s still some stitching to be done.

Editing at this stage of the game is a bit like being a doctor who has to operate on the victims at the scene of his own drink-driving accident. In that:

1) You are not in the best state to be doing this;
2) There is no one else who can do it;
3) Everything you’re looking at is your own fault anyway.

I say ‘not in the best state.’ Even in your first draft it’s hard, as you struggle away at the paragraphs and sentences , to keep in mind what the whole thing will seem like to the reader. I’ve rewritten this manuscript six times now and I can barely imagine how it will read to a fresh pair of eyes. Over the various drafts I’ve cut scenes out, replaced them with other scenes, emphasised themes and de-emphasised them again. I’m getting the author’s equivalent of double vision. I was building up an idea in chapter nine today when I realised that the explanation on which the idea depended had been deleted from chapter three about two drafts back.

Like a concussed and semi-inebriated doctor at the roadside, I’m beginning to wonder which reality I’m in. And there’s delicate work that has to be finished before the Production van, blue lights flashing and sirens wailing, comes haring up to carry the victim away.

A fortnight ago we left our hero the author in the middle of a metaphorical car-chase. This week we find him struggling in a huge web. And it’s one of his own devising.

What we’re trying to do is to combine two characters into one. And this is in a novel that should be complete and in the last stages of editing before it goes to production. So we want to change as little as possible while we do it. It’s a bit like saying to an architect, as you watch the roof being put on his new cathedral –‘You know, I don’t think you should have those twin towers at the east end. Couldn’t it be a great big dome instead?’ And as his face falls, you add ‘…without redesigning the whole thing, of course.’ And you mean this to be reassuring.

Underlying every story there is – or should be – a web of supports and balances, a bit like the arches and buttresses of a cathedral. Each scene should be supported by the scenes preceding and following it, not simply in what is said and done but in mood, pace, variety, so that everything is given the right emphasis and the reader is carried through the story. Ideally this structure should go in naturally at the first writing , without too much labour or conscious thought on the part of the writer. (It’s always best when things happen naturally). After that, any time you go back and rewrite a scene or replace it with another, you have to look not only at the new scene but how it fits, consciously and subconsciously, with the others around it.

Now in this case we are not replacing any scenes. I can find ways of getting everything that needs to be said and done said and done with the new diminished cast of characters. If it’s no longer possible for the two-into-one character to take part in a scene with the hero (because she simply wouldn’t behave in the way that the scene calls for) I can bring on a supporting character to do that bit instead. Easy. Change a few words and turns of phrase, and the scene still works fine. What’s worrying me is what all this is doing to the subconscious structure of the novel. Every time I pull on a thread, other threads in the web get pulled too. I may be pulling things out of shape without knowing it. For example, this same supporting character appeared and did a scene with my same hero two scenes back. Now, even though everything she says is consistent, the set-up feels repetitive. Flabby. We’re losing momentum, here.

Or are we? Is it just that I’m losing confidence? I’m right in the thick of it at the moment, with web-thread wrapped round my arms and over my face. What I’m afraid of is that when I finally pull myself free and look back at what I’ve done I’ll find my once-trim structure all ripped and baggy. And at this stage in the process, that will not be good. Why don’t spiders get caught in their own webs? Because they know which threads not to touch. Why don’t architects redesign cathedrals? Because they brain the person who suggests it. But authors, it seems, are a different species. They are bent on self destruction.

In the classic tough-guy movie, there’s always that moment when the hero’s car gets ambushed, a bus blocks his route, the roofs sprout machine-gunners and bullets fill the air. The hero faultlessly executes a handbrake turn, the tyres screech and he accelerates away in the opposite direction pursued by bad guys and an orchestra. The ensuing mayhem carries on for far longer than any real ambush ever would, leaving a trail of destruction across the city. And the film-producer’s budget will have taken some knocks too.

I suppose every walk of life has its equivalent. In the quiet world of the author it’s when you get the copy edited manuscript back and the copy editor has left flecks of vomit in the margin.

The copy editor doesn’t like my heroine. She really doesn’t like my heroine. And that’s a problem. Because things like this should all have been dealt with by now. Copy editing is supposed to be about whether you really want to use the same word three times on one page, or whether the hero should have turned left out of the door at this point because the last time he went this way he turned right. It’s the last check through before you go to printing. But when your copy-editor is herself an experienced editor – and moreover she’s a She and what she’s complaining about is your principal female character – that’s when you’re looking at bullet-holes in your windscreen.

And people have been murmuring to me for a while that maybe the heroine is a weak point in the story, and each time I go away and I think I’ve fixed her, and each time it turns out I haven’t. I think the problem has been that she’s supposed to chuck herself at the hero without really knowing how. So her scenes are a bit cringe-making, which is tough for anyone who wants to identify with her.

The deadline for production is only weeks away. I am already half-way through another novel. I have three options.

1) Ignore problem. All books have flaws. It’s only one reader’s reaction after all.
Er…

2) Snip away at problem. Remove the phrases that cause most offence. Heroine is just less emotional. (Actually, she would have less character all round.)

3) Emergency manoeuvre. Rewrite character completely. In three weeks.

I spent an uncomfortable half-morning not working. I did the shopping. I don’t remember where light dawned – it might have been in the car park at Waitrose. The answer isn’t to rewrite one character. It’s to rewrite two. Combine them. The second character in question is also one that some readers have been murmuring about, because he has interesting features but doesn’t get to play much of a role. Actually, if I do that, then I need to rewrite the hero a bit as well, because the heroine is now going be rather icy and self-sufficient, and the hero will have to be a bit more touchy-feely just for balance. All in all I’m looking at changes running through about a third of the novel. It is late, late, late to be doing this.

Telephone discussions. Copy-editor is supportive. Desk editor is content. (Really, it’s nice that they have so much faith, but I sometimes worry about how lightly these guys hold the reins!) I grip the wheel read: mouse. I grab the handbrake keyboard. Screech! And on the rare occasions that anyone makes films about authors the next three weeks pass in a series of short clips of author typing feverishly (yes), pacing to and fro (yes), clock showing three am (not on your life) while dramatic music thumps away in the background. (No. I can’t do serious work with music playing. It gives me brain overload.) Which is of course why there are so many more films about tough guys than there are about authors. It’s just so much more fun when you can see the action.

Even if the action would never happen like that.

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.