Words are all a writer has…
How and what do you write? Most authors reply in generic terms initially, for instance, non-fiction, fiction, historical, novels, sagas, family dramas, crime, thrillers, fantasy, sci-fi and lately with ebooks, there is a great deal of genre mixing, something traditional publishers once discouraged. But now, if it's a good story and the book will sell well, who cares quite so much about its label? As we've moved along the technical route, people have shorter spans of attention and want to get to the nitty-gritty as fast as possible. People want page-turners and so I'm keen to make my stories tense and exciting from the very start. I've never been able to write long, descriptive pieces of prose. I write with an emphasis on dialogue. Almost everything can be conveyed by the characters, in their own way, firing the reader's imagination subtly, giving as much description with a few words as can be sweated over in a long paragraph. At least, this works for me. My East End "inner" voice springs from my childhood, growing up amongst colourful, no-holds-barred, dynamic, lyrical, unforgettable cockneys who to this day, live in my mind as fiercely as they did when I was a child and a teenager. And so, once I am in the vortex of writing, seated at my computer, I hear nothing but their voices and I know it's my job to record them as honestly as I possibly can. This is not a whacky-type thing – or perhaps it is! Perhaps the voices do come from a collective unconscious linked to my own emotional focus. But whatever it is, the words flow from my fingertips and onto the keyboard. Not that I haven't given the plotting a great deal of thought beforehand. My last synopsis for my editor ran to nearly forty pages. But the synopsis or outline, is just the general direction of where the story will be going. The real writing comes in the voices – voices EVERYONE can hear from life's experience. So let's daydream right this minute. I'll start us off. What about the day at school when you were lying on the sports field, sweating and breathless, a stitch in your side and painfully gasping in the scent of freshly mown grass and recently churned up earth? You can hear your mate telling you that after school, they're walking home the long way – for a very special reason. You know you're being asked to do something, witness something, be part of something you shouldn't, but at fourteen or fifteen, you don't care. It's exciting to do or be part of a risk – you can hear that excitement in the voice persuading you to make a decision that might change your life forever. You can hear the huskiness, the coercion, the lure – and that voice, the tone, the seduction, the words, will translate into every other such moment in your life from here on in. Because that voice and all it contains is eternal. Your material for a writing career. That's what you put on paper, under the guise of your created characters, the gut-churning feeling expressed very often in only a few words – chosen words – and that's what a writer writes about. At the very beginning of this clip of WHISTLE DOWN THE WIND, Alan Bates (the man) who is found sheltering in the barn, utters two words that dominate the rest of the movie. In fact, they ARE the movie. Such a classic! Such a gift to us, as writers!
