The world of the novel

My story takes place largely in Johannesburg, South Africa, although it must be said that I plan never to mention that city in the book. It will be clear, though, that it lies some distance from Paris, and therefore Europe, requiring an overnight plane trip to get there. But in every other respect the city in which my story takes place is as urbane and sophisticated as any other in the world.

The industry within which my story takes place is the one with which I am most familiar: the soap opera industry. My heroine, the directionless but sparky Juliette Surname, is enticed into that world by an unscrupulous but charming producer. It is there that she meets the hero, Simon Surname. And it is in that world that she encounters obstacles to her love (after a fairly devastating detour with Jonathan Nesbit, the producer. The cad.)

Having chosen the world, I toyed with the idea of my central characters. Now, it is my experience that characters largely suggest themselves. Their outlines seem to coalesce in the mists of your imagination—or, at least, they do in mine. There’s a certain inevitability about who they turn out to be. It’s not really that we, as writers, are constructing them. It seems much truer to say that they at least half-construct themselves.  (This is even more the case, in my experience again, when it comes to writing dialogue: your characters speak through you, just as Joseph of Arimathea (sp.) is said to speak through psychic mediums. (Have you read any of the novels of Hilary Mantel? Marvellous.))