A tale of romance and deceit

Well, of course the slate upon which I start to inscribe my story is not quite blank. I knew from the beginning that my story was about a girl who gets recruited to act in a soap by a sexually amoral producer; who falls in love with an actor who just happens to despise her; and that in earning his love, finds her way through the thicket of indecision that has up to this point in her life blighted her search for a career or a calling.

But of course, real story lies in the details, and the characters and the setting.

I now have a better appreciation of my central characters, and of some of the subsidiary characters. I know the world in which the novel will take place. And, critically, I know the destination towards which my story should drive.

Now I come to a critical decision. In our course, we advise writers to work out what we have loosely termed a “beatsheet” – a rough outline of the plot of the novel. We know that many writers rely heavily on these blow-by-blow synopses of their stories. Ken Follett, for instance, has written about his habit of writing a 40-page synopsis before he begins writing his novels. On the other hand, I’ve heard Ian Rankin talk about his method of writing his Inspector John Rebus novels (if you haven’t read any of these quite wonderful, character-driven stories, you should – immediately!): he says he doesn’t ever know what the outcomes of his novels will be when he starts writing them. Likewise, Josie, my colleague and fellow-writer, says that, while she knows the destination, she only works out what-happens-next for the next three or four chapters.

So what am I to do? In my film and television work I wouldn’t dream of starting a script without a detailed beat-sheet or breakdown, as we often call them in this country. They fill me with confidence. They make the task of writing a breeze. But – and this is a big but, and one that gives me pause – they also restrict your choices once you’ve started writing. Because if you do veer off the carefully plotted path you’ve mapped, you’re liable to have to reinvent vast swathes of story. A small change to the plot in Chapter 2, in other words, can lead to huge changes in consequence in Chapter 13…

So after much rumination, I have decided not to go the beat-sheet route. I know where I’m headed: I want Juliette to learn to spot a good man when she sees one… To learn what she really wants to do with her life… In short, to grow up. Necessarily entailed in this is Simon’s journey: he must learn that the path to success is not an easy one and that what’s important is not necessarily the fame (and money) that he earns on the soap, but the infinitely more risky enterprise of stretching himself by exploring the limits of his talents…

So Juliette, whose choice in men has always been execrable, has to choose in this instance a man who (a) doesn’t flatter her (b) doesn’t try to manipulate her and indeed (c) criticizes and lambasts her for her choices (of man – Jonathan Nesbit; and job – playing the role of Blair on the soap without having paid her dues).

But I thought, let’s not start with their meeting; let’s start with a red herring. Let Juliette meet Jonathan Nesbit. Let it look like the cute meet of heroine and hero. I had just been to the French consulate in search of a visa to travel to Europe, and had been struck by the opportunity presented by the hundred or more people lined up in the consulate with their pockets stuffed with cash (to pay for the visas). A perfect opportunity, I speculated as I waited… and waited for the interminable queue to shorten, for some of South Africa’s highly enterprising criminals to get away with a great deal of money…

So let Juliette meet Jonathan in the queue, during an armed robbery. A good way to grab the attention of my reader?

We run courses on writing romantic fiction with full modules devoted to character building on the one hand and story telling on the other. Or, if you’re a resident of Johannesburg, South Africa, you could attend our one-day character development course.