First, I collected together several indispensible aids: a glass of wine, a bar of Hotel Chocolat chocolate, and a CD of Robert Downey Jr singing.

Next, I laid out my index cards. I created these last month, in a cafe in Dorset whilst drinking a gorgeously strong decaff latte. I basically wrote down anything I could think of that might happen, each event on a different card.

I find that plotting on index cards, rather than on paper, makes everything feel looser and less permanent. I can add or discard at will, without messing anything up. Here are the cards:

My next step was to do this all again, but this time on coloured cards. This might seem a bit repetitive, but in fact it’s really useful. For one thing, I have two major story strands in this book, and it helps me a lot to have them colour-coded. I can see the structure and pacing, and how the two strands work together. And because this was a second session, and I was thinking about the strands separately as well as together, I could add more elements to the plot, which is why I have more coloured cards than white cards in the next picture:

This stuff really helps with plotting. For example, if you come up with Episode A, the next logical step will be Episode B. Or you can back-engineer events, because if Episode B is going to happen, Episode A needs to lead up to it. At this point, for me, the nearer/earlier events are much more detailed than the events at the end of the book. I’ll have settings, some snippets of dialogue, or notes on the earlier events, but the end events will be much, much broader, like “C gets together with D”. I have no idea how C and D will get together yet. I have to go through more of the journey with the characters to figure it out.

The next step is generally to sort these events into some sort of chronological order, and put them up on my Plotting Door. That didn’t really work this time, and I only got a few scenes in order before I gave up. One reason is because I’m having a lot of trouble fitting one particular scene into the story, but I know it needs to go somewhere. But the main reasons are because my research has inspired me. Now that I know more about how a country house open to the public operates, I’m requiring certain scenes. And a conversation with one of my lovely former editors has led me to change the heroine’s profession entirely.

However, I have done some of it, as you can see from below, and even this little bit has really helped me. I can see the story structure quite a bit more easily now, which allows me to make some decisions about the logistics of the story’s world.

How about you? Do you do things similarly to this? Or differently? Any top tips?

In the comments to the post below, Josh said:

You seem to be talking a lot about when to introduce things in a particular story, which I guess I’d have called Timing? Pace I usually think of as how much weight to give things in a particular story or chapter? How quickly, or slowly, something is dealt with before moving on and I find that balance can be the difference between something poor and something good?

And I thought I’d re-post my comment back to him as a separate post, because I’d like to hear what other people have to say.

Pace, to me, seems to be made up of a lot of different things. For example:

Basically, pace is everything that has to do with your reader’s perception of how fast or slow the story goes.

In my first draft, which is what I’m struggling with now, I’m most concerned with the first three things I mentioned: the timing issue, the length of the novel issue, and the keeping the balls in the air issue, because those things have to do with the basic structure and skeleton of the book, and if you don’t get them right, you have some serious re-writing to do. The other stuff, I tend to look at in revisions.

And (to cheat) in an email to me, Josh added that pace is
just so important and can fundamentally change a story – the very same story told in the ’same’ way, just at a different pace – into something almost entirely different for the reader.

I think that’s a really interesting concept. I know that pacing can make the difference between a story you can’t put down and one you can’t be bothered to finish. But I’ve never thought about pacing actually changing the story, though I suppose it really affects the reader’s experience, so it’s bound to.

Of course this makes me much more paranoid, so thanks a heap, Josh.

What do you think?

(Now I’m off to pour myself a glass of wine and fiddle around with little bits of paper. Photos to follow.)

Amanda said something really true in the comments to my previous post, which was

And I’m with Amanda on this one. Generally if I’m inclined to hold back on an event or a revelation or whatever, it’s a good sign that I really should bring it in as soon as possible. My instinct is to keep all the big, climactic events for near the end of the book. But in fact, my instincts are often wrong. Big climactic events, or scenes of high tension, can raise the stakes for the characters and make the story so much pacier. And of course, if you use your big, emotional events in the middle of the book, you have to think of even BIGGER, even MORE EMOTIONAL things to happen at the end, which makes the whole story much more exciting.

However. With this particular book I’m writing now, I’m trying to balance the pacing of several story threads—creating a balance between them, so that they reflect each other. So I feel that I have to hold back a little on one thread, to catch up with the other one.

Also, I know my weaknesses. I know that if I were given free reign and never forced to concede to logic and plausibility, every novel I write would take place within the span of a week or so, because I simply can’t stand to skip over days in which nothing happens. It really, really annoys some incredibly anally retentive part of me. If I were allowed to do just as I like, every book I wrote would have the same format as 24. Non-stop action, with no time for the characters even to go to the bathroom or anything.

But that’s not possible, and this book has to take place over an entire summer, from the beginning of June till the end of August. And I’ve got events that can’t happen until certain dates on that calendar. So I have to plot against them, too.

Anyway. Yesterday I sat in a cafe with a very large hot chocolate, with extra whipped cream and chocolate bits on top (I had a hangover), and put the major events of the two plot threads, as I knew them, on post-it notes. (Note: I don’t actually know the ending yet. I never do.)

My next job, on Monday, is to transfer all those events onto colour-coded cards, and stick them up on my Plotting Door, experimenting with different orders of things.

Maybe after that, my head will explode. Time will tell.

I’ll let you know.

Pacing is something I really worry about in my first drafts. I think that’s because it’s almost impossible to tell if you’ve got it right, until you’ve got the whole novel written.

I made a pacing gaffe this week; I had my heroine meet a love interest a full chapter too soon, which then killed off the tension for the later, necessary scene. Of course I had no idea it was wrong when I was writing the scene, but now that I’ve got to the later scene, I know I made a mistake.

But when you’re thinking about a 150,000 word novel, it’s hard to know when it’s the best time to, for example, meet a love interest. Or expose the heroine’s secret. Or slot in that flashback that seems so necessary. Or have a big argument. Especially if you’re not a plotter, and just let the novel occur organically.

In practice, usually I just do what feels right at the time, and then revise it quite radically later, if need be. But I’d have to say that pacing is the main issue I think about when I’m doing the first draft of a book. When’s too early? When’s the right time? Should I hold off, or do it now?

My instinct is almost always to hold off, which means that I should, in fact, do it now. But if you get all the drama in now, what are you going to do later? It’s a land-mine of self-doubt.

Argh!

But this time I received a copy of the manuscript itself, with the copy editor’s notes right on it, so I could see every change and suggestion she’d made. What a treat! For one thing, it looked like another language. Copy editors have their own special set of marks that they make, so it was like being confronted with a marvellous secret code.

But the best thing was to see my prose being improved right before my eyes. Awkward phrases smoothed out, repetition eliminated, confusion righted. It was a lovely lesson in readability and for a perfectionist like me, it was wonderful.

For example, I have a tendency to write speech as I hear it in my head, mostly with lots and lots of run-on sentences and with far too many exclamation marks. In my normal prose, I try to steer away from exclamation marks and run-ons, but in dialogue, they’re everywhere. Those little squiggles and coded annotations taught me that I need to pay a bit more attention to how my dialogue reads on the page.

I sniggered a couple of times. I blogged here about my massive “just”-purge before submitting the manuscript, where I went through and cut as many “just”s as I possibly could. But there were at least two times when the copy editor put the “just” back in. Fair enough—or should I say just?

Of course along with this I had to reread the story, paying attention to every word, and that was fun too. I swore and cursed at this story while I was writing it, and it’s such a relief to read it and see that actually, I think it works now. And it feels even better because I know I had to sweat to make it work. It helps me with the faith that even though the rough draft of the book I’m writing might not be perfect or even close to it, eventually I’ll find solutions for the problems I’m facing.

There were two other very fun things I got to do with the manuscript this time round. When I revised the ms for my editor, I got to put in chapter headings, which was great. Interestingly, my editor chose most of those headings, lifting phrases straight from the chapters. I thought it was brilliant how you could sum up 10 or 15 pages with a single phrase from those pages. It became sort of like a treasure hunt for me—what phrase was the phrase? This time, the copy editor suggested some chapter headings for the chapters I hadn’t named, which are the ones in the heroine’s sister’s point of view. And she did the same thing, lifting phrases straight from the text. How editors learn to do this I do not know, but it’s a huge treat for me, and makes me see my own story in a different way.

The second thing I got to do was change my hero’s car, from this:

Aston Martin Vanquish

to this:

Aston Martin DBS V12

A small change, but very satisfying.

Now that’s an opening sentence, isn’t it? I mean, if you didn’t know the pathetic reason why I needed to scrub my neck? It gives you everything you need for the beginning of a story—the time, the place, the heroine, and a mystery.

I analyse this sentence in order to make it sound writerly. Because I was on my way to the Festival of Writing, which is a brand-new event starting this year. I was giving two workshops, one on Creating Character and one on Chick-Lit: More Than Shoes and Shopping. I was also doing some one-on-one consultations as a book doctor (I wonder what a book stethoscope looks like), and generally hanging out with other writers and industry professionals for a couple of days.

First, though, I got four hours to myself on the train. This is an incredibly rare event. I thought I’d do some work, but in fact I ended up mostly staring out the window, relaxing and letting my brain percolate in a leisurely manner over whatever it wanted to, and definitely nothing involving laundry, hoovering or what to cook for tea.

York was sunny, with daffodils nodding around the medieval walls, and my taxi driver assured me in broad Yorkshire that he wasn’t really a reader, in fact he’d only read four books, including the two he had to read for O-level. But he reckoned he could probably write a book as he had a sort of a gift with words. Such was my joy in the day that this only made me more cheerful, because it was clear that somehow I am so incredibly, unspeakably fortunate as to have the job that everyone wants.

I had a fantastic time. I missed Katie Fforde’s opening speech (though I did get text message updates about it whilst I was on the train) but I did get to see her, and Sue Moorcroft, and also got to meet the fantastic Veronica Henry and Adele Geras. I met a very polite and charming young man who turned out to be Toby Frost, and I bought the first of his Space Captain Smith books to read on the train home. I had the great joy of discussing books with Barry Cunningham of Chicken House, I met agents Jane Judd and Oliver Munson. I made Helen Corner of Cornerstones squeal by showing her my shoes, and had the lovely experience of sitting next to Kate Allan as she signed copies of a book which I’d read in manuscript form. I thanked agent Lorella Belli for giving me one of the nicest rejections all those years ago. I got the real thrill of introducing an aspiring Mills & Boon author to two Mills & Boon editors. I had far too much to drink (as always) with my great mates Brigid Coady and Liz Fenwick, and I met so many friends, old and new.

But that’s name dropping—the most important part was meeting so many writers, published and unpublished, all of whom have an absolute passion for this job. The best moments of the weekend were probably the chance meetings, the word or two exchanged in a queue or at lunch or walking to and from somewhere where I just got to share the reality of being a writer, with another writer. Published, unpublished, veteran or just starting out, writer or publishing professional—everyone had that commonality, that they loved writing, and that they were there to take their careers to the next level, and also to help others to do so.

And that is what I came away with from York. The place was packed full of people who are very different from that cab driver. They all knew that you don’t become a writer through having “a sort of gift with words”. You need talent, sure. But more than that, you need passion. You need dedication. You need the brains to learn the skills and the humility to know when you have to improve them and the arrogance to know when you’re ready to share your words with the world. Mostly though, you need bloody, nerve-wracking, brain-straining and often body-wrecking hard work.

It’s worth it, though. Definitely.

Of course in my dreams, I had a queue of bookbuyers out the door, and in reality it isn’t quite like that. Okay, not like that at all. But my friend Biddy is coming to make sure I’m not all alone, and this time I chose a book shop with a coffee shop in it, so I will be well-supplied with lattes. And I will definitely be sitting next to lots of my book, which is mine, called Nina Jones and the Temple of Gloom. I wrote it, and now I get to sign it. Which is so incredibly cool.

It’s from 12.30 to 2.30 pm in the Waterstones in the Oracle shopping centre, Reading, if you are so inclined.

I’m also in a stupendously good mood because yesterday was a great writing day. I wrote nearly 3000 words—usually I try to stop at 2000 a day to spare my hands, and lately it’s been a relief to stop, but I couldn’t stop yesterday until I’d finished the scene, and today my head is zinging with ideas for the next scene.

And I have a great hero. He is beautiful and sexy and bitter and wounded and pretty much a dickhead. God, I love dickhead heroes. (And no, he doesn’t look like John Cusack—he looks like someone else and I’ll post a picture of him soon.)

I’m 25,000 words into this story and it’s come to life for the first time. Which is a pretty good sign to me that I’ll have to cut a lot of the beginning, but that’s fine. It’s come to life, and that’s the magical part. It will all work out.