My writing seems to have taken a back seat to knitting at the moment, but I’m happy to report that my blanket is now past its 43rd square out of 70, and going according to plan despite the crooked finger (see previous blog below). The fingers are not the only things activated by the knitting; the brain has been mulling things over too. While waiting for feedback from reading friends on my current WIP, I have been thinking about the next novel. Or in this case, a previous novel.

My very first novel (long ago relegated to a trunk and destined never to see the light of day in that particular incarnation) started out ten years ago as a family history – my own. My great-great-grandparents came to Africa in 1880, from Manchester, with a small settler party destined for the farm Willowfountain, outside Pietermaritzburg. The Willowfountain Settler Scheme was a disaster from inception to final failure, but fascinating to me, particularly since it involved my family and gave me some insight into what my ancestors must have been like. 

At the time when I began to write about them, I searched the files of the Killie Campbell Museum and the Pietermaritzburg archives, but there was only so far I could go with the actual facts. Before long my imagination filled in the blanks and I created a frame story set in the modern day to encapsulate it all. This was to be an exciting romance between an actor and a writer who are adapting the historic story into a film.

Sadly, in reaction to my previous academic writing, my fiction writing style of ten years ago turned it into a turgid, wallowing epic. The narrative head-hopped between all the characters and I’m ashamed to admit to some rather embarrassing purple prose. The plot jumped about all over the place with no real focus and in no particular direction. Eventually it all got too much, too big, too long and very definitely too boring, hence its relegation to the figurative trunk in the attic of my computer’s hard drive.

I must confess, however, that every now and then something triggers in me the desire to tell that story properly; to take a few elements and give it my best shot now that I have more writing experience. Perhaps it’s guilt about a niggling duty to my ancestors, but I feel that there is still a story there that is worth telling, and it’s up to me to find it. I don't know any other descendants of this particular settler party who are ever likely to write about them and, even if they did, it would be their story, whereas this particular story is mine. Write the story that only YOU can write, as the saying goes.

Some years back – just after I had finished doing Michael Green's creative writing course at UKZN – I began to re-work my epic family saga about Willowfountain but, following the advice of a journalist friend, I took my newly acquired skills and started another project instead. That became my Greek novel The Epidaurus Inheritance and since then I have continued to apply myself to only new projects. 

The other day, I came across the file on my computer in which I had stored the re-worked first 6 chapters of the Willowfountain epic. I started to read the first page with great trepidation but four chapters in I realised to my surprise that – well, this wasn't too bad! Consequently I have been thinking that this might be my next writing project. Treating my original manuscript as nothing more than an idea, I will do a total rewrite from page one, but this time with a properly plotted outline.

First I will have to re-think my going-nowhere story and re-invent those flat, pathetic modern-day characters, but at least there is nothing wishy-washy about the setting. Nothing from the past nor present can alter the fact that the original farm of Willowfountain was the worst possible place to dump a party of English settlers. The facts concerning the hard life of those settlers speak for themselves, giving me a harsh, cruel and very real setting for my soon-to-be vibrant and tormented characters. 

Watch this space...!

In my seemingly endless quest for writing improvement, I return time and again to the three points of my magic triangle: Characters, Plot and Setting. This time I want to look at settings and why they influence a novel so much.

Let me give you an example: One of my favourite stories is that of Romeo and Juliet, and yet I don’t like the musical West Side Story. Why is that? In a word: Setting. Last year I saw an excellent production of this musical, but I still felt the same vague dissatisfaction I had felt as a teenager when a helpful teacher showed us the movie of West Side Story in an effort to help us understand the plot and passions of Shakespeare’s masterpiece.

The story of Romeo and Juliet – to me anyway – belongs in an historical, romantic Italian setting, and no amount of great dancing, fantastic music and memorable songs can sway it for me into the world of warring gangs whose passion and cause is probably even more poignant than those of the Capulets and Montagues. Sorry, Leonard Bernstein – I know it’s just me, but I can’t change the way I feel.  

People often ask me: “When you start a new novel, do you think of the story first and then find characters to fit, or do you think up some characters and weave a story around them?” I can’t answer that, because I have come to realise that I start with the setting: a place that moves me, and then I build both characters and plot around it.

I am a great believer in that old chestnut: Spirit of Place. I love to visit new places and soak up the atmosphere, the weather, the history, and the invisible threads that weave it together. A while back I realised that if I am going to be a writer for the rest of my life, I need to travel to exotic, faraway places and set my novels there.

Sadly, I just can’t afford to do that on my salary and with my country’s diabolical exchange rate, so I have to rely on past memories. I was lucky enough to travel when I was younger. In my wild impetuous youth I also changed jobs every three years or so and started life anew several times in a different city in my beautiful country. Some of the jobs I took involved plenty of travel and in each place I visited, I made copious notes and took loads of photos.

What shines through the most when I look back on these is the memory of how each new place made me feel on first contact, and it is this essence that a writer needs to capture in order to provoke a similar response in the reader. I can’t write about Russia or China because I haven’t been to either. Armchair travelling – books and television documentaries and staring down at Google Earth from above cannot give you that spirit of place that an actual visit can. You need to breathe its air and wonder why it feels different. For example, I have noticed that favourite foods in one place are ignored in another – for no logical reason – and that new tastes acquired along the road often lose their flavour in the next destination. Why? I don’t know but that’s how my senses respond.

A while back I dreamed up a complex plot involving a sojourn in the high remote mountains of Peru, because my best friend had been there. Six chapters into writing the first draft, I found that no amount of quizzing her and reading travel guides could make my words ring true because I had never been there. Since I couldn’t afford a trip there, I had to find another setting – one that I knew.

The answer was on my doorstep. A mere two or three hours from where I live is the magnificent Drakensberg mountain range on the western border of KwaZulu-Natal. Not only is it a world heritage site, but I have been there many times, taken numerous photographs, soaked up the atmosphere of wild beauty and dreamed countless dreams about those mountains on my return home. In fact, I even bought a plot of land up there a few years back for when I retire, because I love the place so much.

A slow process of transition began to take place in my manuscript as my characters and plot adapted to their new environment. Two weeks later I was back on track and clocking up a word count faster than I had done on any of my previous novels. Just over a month later, I wrote those magic words “The End” and my first draft was complete.

Of course, the story doesn’t end there. I have been busy on it for another year and written another six drafts since then. Hopefully all will be revealed in the next few months.

You’ve probably heard about the Rule of Three: if your characters are on a quest, they will fail the first and second time they try something, and only get it right on the third attempt. Think Goldilocks – too hot, too cold, just right; too hard too soft, just right. And so on. Think Cinderella – the prince tries the slipper on the first stepsister, then the
second, and finally hits the magic on the third, when he tries it on Cinderella.

Basic fairy tale stuff, right?

When applied to novel-writing, the Rule of Three allows the characters to have two character-building attempts at something in order to crank up the tension before the third attempt. Complications arise and the story is spun out along an extended road which leads ultimately to the climax, usually in that section of the story which scriptwriters refer to as the third act – in itself a version of the Rule of Three.
 
I have another variation on this Rule of Three. Most writers recognise the important correlation between characters and plot, but often sideline that third vital element in story-telling: setting. In my mind this is also a Rule of Three. Not a consecutive 1, 2, 3, but three points of equal importance. A sort of magic triangle, if you like.

Good fiction writing has to be a triangulation between unique characters, a particular plot, and a specific setting. If any one of these three is taken away and replaced with something else, the story cannot be the same, because its very existence depends on the mix between only those people, that specific place and a plot unique to them. The story couldn’t happen anywhere else, or to any other people, or unfold in any other way, because it is the relationship between those three that makes a story what it is.

You’ve probably realised since my last blog that I have a bit of a thing about art forgeries. I even wrote a book about it: Benicio’s Bequest. But what I want to talk about here is not my book, but my favourite TV series. 

The American TV series White Collar is about an art forger who is released on parole in order to work as a consultant to the white collar crime division of the FBI. My niece, herself a fine artist, gave me the first three seasons of this series and it is now my favourite. The writers of the series have conjured plenty of witty repartee between Neal (the forger) and Peter (his FBI boss), and of course it helps that the actor playing Neal is extremely pleasant on the eyes, but is the gorgeous Neal Caffrey the only reason I like to
watch? No, there’s more to it than that. 

The main character may be a forger, but there’s nothing fake about his hatred of guns and violence. His crime is as clean as such an activity can be, and the action comes not from the usual blood and guts that is the standard fare with most television, but from the convoluted storyline as it swings between cases that both Neal and Peter work at solving, and Neal’s rather more underhand activities with his friend Mozzie. Neal’s fast painting skills and ability to copy with the right materials have saved the day more times than even Peter realises.

When I first tried to analyse what made me enjoy the series so much, several things came to the fore. First, you need great characters that you feel an affinity with, characters that you root for. Even when Neal and Peter are working against each other, I still want both of them to win. And then there’s the quirky Mozzie who provides solutions and problems in equal quantities, sometimes working against Neal, and sometimes colluding (against his will) with Peter. In relationships, never underestimate the importance of the triangle. It doesn’t have to be a love triangle, and divided loyalties can make for great conflict in any plot. 

Second, the overall plot and premise of the series. Perhaps it’s just me, but I am fascinated by the lengths to which someone will go in order to be thought one of the great masters, albeit not publicly. The artistry and dedication required for forgery is no easy task. How gratifying it must be to stand in the background and hear the critics heap praise on a work that only you know is yours and not the work of Rembrandt or Picasso. And we, the audience, get to vicariously share this feeling with Neal the perfectionist. He’s a great artist who just happens to be on the wrong side of the law.

Third, the setting: New York in all its glory. The good and the bad: Central Park, Chinatown, the overhead cable car, millionaire apartments, the world’s most famous department stores, banks and boutiques, yellow taxi-cabs, as well as the occasional sleazy drugstore. Neal’s career started when he arrived in New York and met Mozzie in Central Park.

The more detailed settings include the FBI offices, where the transparent glass walls allow for much casual subterfuge and pretence under the watchful eye of authority – on the part of both good and bad guys – and Peter’s cosy home with his wife provides a haven away from the bustle of his work place. 

Perhaps the best setting of all is the magnificent rooftop apartment that Neal’s leases after his stint in prison. It belongs to the widow (another glorious character, by the way) of a deceased criminal who had an eye for beauty. This sky-lighted bachelor pad has its own unique view of the Chrysler building. What a perfect place for Neal to paint and plan his next work of skulduggery with Mozzie! 

Not only does the series take full advantage of the local landmarks, but part of what drives Neal is that he knows he wouldn’t be happy living anywhere other than New York, and this causes much of his inner conflict in the third series. It is the Setting which changes that solid straight line between the two points of Characters and Plot, drawing them into a wider shape before fleshing out the sides and substance of a unique triangle.

This magic triangle rings true with any good story. Try it out for yourself and see.