Research as Part of a Creative Novelist's Process

Wendy’s Newsletter

The Writing Process

Newsletter 11 Thursday April 29^th 2015

Hello again. Thank you for returning to my Newsletter.

If this is your first time, welcome. 

Often, when I am signing my books or reading from them, people will comment on the amount of research one  must complete to get the details right in my novels which span from the 1890s to the present day, and in space from the hills of South Durham to wales, Singapore,,

Reading at
 in Bishop Auckland Library

 the United States and the Languedoc in South West France,

I have just written a post for my blog HERE about travelling in the mind as well as in physical terms. As well as this it’s also necessary for a novelist to travel in time, to research the time-contexts of the novel, to the extent that she feels comfortable and knowing, as she imagines and intuits the minds of her characters who lived in very different times.

Only then can she be creative, intuitive and playful in the way I outlined in Newsletter Three. Only in this way can we let the story forge its own creative path for us, even if it occurs in the 1890s, the

Gladstone Library,Hawarden.
I have researched and written here.
Middlesbrough Central  -
where I have also researched and read -
has the same  studious feel

1940s, or the 1960s. Of course the evidenced facts must be respected. Her story needs to be bedded in the public truths of those times so that it can fly free and fresh in her imagination.

 For Newsletter Eleven -

I have decided to put together my own thoughts on how I do my research and how I find resources so that my story is underpinned but not confined by historical facts, Of course the early part of the process involves straight historical research. Academic research was part of my day job before I became a full time writer, so I am aware of the rules.

Sources

At the beginning I tackle the Big Read, not dissimilar to the first

The Ultra Modern
Newcastle City Library
Fabulous Glass

reading phase when one is writing a thesis. To obtain these facts one follows the historic method one uses Libraries, Histories, Maps, Museums, Journal articles, academic studies, archived Newspapers and Magazines and other more fugitive ephemera such as itineraries and catalogues. And of course the swift resolution of the contemporary Internet search engines-

This is fascinating process requiring all kinds of judgement calls. As the novel grows, I will frequently return to these sources to verify certain fact. I might dig further to clarify elements in the narrative that I hadn’t foreseen.

But for me as a novelist this is only the beginning.

So I thought you might be interested in this novelist’s idiosyncratic research process

On average, in the last twenty years, I have written and published a novel each year. However there is a degree of overlap in the timing of the research for each novel. It takes much more than a year to generate a notion for a novel and complete the research to underpin it,

This is how it goes.

While I am at the later stages of completing one novel – the

An inviting reading corner
in Newcastle City Library.

transcribing and publishing cycles it happens that ideas already existing somewhere in my mind through time  begin to gather story-spurs and character-spins. Then more ideas and scraps of information lodge there somewhere.  

It’s as though these notions and ideas, inspiration and research fragments are iron filings on a metal tray. In time they begin to form patterns and shapes.    

At first I try to take no notice and focus on the absolutely final stages of this year’s story. But then the time comes when this year’s novel seems to be out of my mind, finished and I can’t resist tapping the tray with my creative magnet and generate new shapes of my own.

So, what stage am I at now?

I have now completed my work on my lovely Writing at the Maison Bleue (incidentally set in 2002 and travelling back in part to 1942). The launch is tomorrow (Friday 1^st May).   An at last I have handed it over to my readers for them to join their imagined world to mine,

 What next?

I have to tell you in confidence that I have now tapped this year’s metal tray with my magnet tray and what is emerging is a story that starts in May 1941 on an island in the Greek Archipeligo and reaches its climax here in Britain in the 1960s.

My main characters have spun themselves into being. I know there are two main characters. There is this young man: his story starts in that island in 1941. (I am enjoying more and more including young men in my stories.). The other character is a middle aged woman who we – and the young man - will (I think) get to meet towards the middle of the story,

And more research is involved when I develop my story by tapping my metal tray and seeing what starts to make a cluster.

But the fact is as a novelist my research is different to that of the straight historian. 

Sticking to evidenced historic facts can tend to create an awkward historical pastiche which can seem dead and gone to a modern reader. Of course fact laden novels can ‘teach’ readers some facts they didn’t know before. But they can sit stiff, wooden and irrelevant ruining the dynamic ebb and flow of a modern narrative,

Such evidenced facts can much more naturally ‘learned’ if – as does the researcher-novelist herself - you read diaries, autobiographies and journals. Such works have much more dynamism than a manufactured didactic story.

What good fiction does is bring to bear a modern identity and world-view (which she shares with her readers) into that historic evidenced world.

The novelist’s task is to engage the imagination so that the reader can empathise and identify with people who lived in another time, in another place. She needs to get into the mind-set of her characters who live in a different era.  So that when they read the story her readers can feel and think, and laugh and cry with them.

What cannot be gainsaid is – however some writers and academics may flee from this – that within the world of the novel a view of the world emerges from and illuminates present-day concerns and interests.

For me this is what makes a novel come to life for both the writer and the reader. And it makes other decades, other eras, come to life and tell us something about our own.

Happy writing, happy researching!

Wendy

Significance of Great Proofreading for the Independent Publisher.

Wendy’s Newsletter

The Writing Process

Newsletter 10 Thursday April 22^nd  2015

Hello again. Thank you for returning to my Newsletter.

If this is your first time, welcome.


***********************

 Every day produces something new: a new idea, a new approach to writing, to reading, to researching and reviewing. One day we are inspired by someone who turns present day despair about publishing into the personal adventure of independent publishing. Another day we meet  a new contact who urges us to try a new thing …

********************  

 Today - a further note on the importance of good proofreading when you are publishing your own work or are collaborating with colleagues -  as I am - to publish works of fiction.

I had meant to write something about research.  But things have happened here this week to make me add a footnote to the points I made last week about the need for assiduous proofing in the final stage of producing your novel, to ensure that your manuscript is as perfect as it can be before it goes to press.

Three things happened:

A new reader (thank you Christine!) pointed out some proofing omissions in Writing at the Maison Bleue. The great thing is that - now I am in control of my own publishing process - I have been able to go back into the Kindle and the Paperback edition of the novel to make those changes and make it more perfect for my readers.

I was talking about this to my daughter (an experienced professional writer and editor) and she said, ‘Here’s a tip. Don’t give your work to a friend or an acquaintance to proofread because they ‘like to read’. They don’t have your priorities and many of them think that proofing a book is like being a teacher and marking an exercise. And it isn’t.’ She paused and added. ‘An ill-proofed book is the sign of the amateur. Nowadays there are a lot of these around.’

And then, I was talking to a good friend (a successful eminent author) who said her best tip was to start at the end of the book and go backwards in your proofing. ‘This stops you reading on for meaning and ignoring the slips which might be there.’

Chastened, and determined to increase my efficiency in this area, I decided the think further about this proofing problem. In the author press I see advertisements for courses in proofreading, promising work at upwards of £13 an hour. Much as I would like to provide work for deserving people, it has occurred to me, as an independent publisher, that I could not afford these rates for my forthcoming 92,000 word novel The Pathfinder.

Clearly those of us who are going it alone and creating new pathways in publishing have new and stringent responsibilities.

With all this in mind  I was very responsive when into my inbox dropped a name and a service that I decided to investigate. I liked Clive Johnson’s clear and helpful website and we exchanged emails. (He is the professional proofreaders whom I quoted in my last Newsletter).

 I liked his very clear distinctions between proofreading and editing – the different aspects of his service. I liked the fact that he is a writer himself and can take on board the manuscript from the writer’s perspective. I liked his time scale. The work is done on-line, although he can and will work on hard copy. He said that The Pathfinder would take four days.
So the third thing that happened was that - sure enough - four days later his meticulously proofread version of The Pathfinder plopped into my inbox.

Looking at the proofread manuscript I am very happy. This work was clearly worth my investment. He has snagged all the tiny slips (hundreds!) that my writer’s eye had swum over. My mind, crowded with compulsion to edit this quite complicated narrative, had failed to catch on onto these small but imprtatnt things.

In the days when I was much more corporate I complimented my big-publisher editor on the quality of her work. She smiled and said, ‘Well, that’s my job. I could never write a novel as you do. Not in a thousand years.’

Horses for course, you might say! But in these more challenging times for the novelist you might say she has to be able to drive a four-in-hand to get her book to market.

Next time I will write about a novelist's  unique and esoteric approach to research

Happy writing, happy proofing.

Wendy

Link: Clive Johnson.

I 

 

Passionate Substantive Editing for Publication

 Writing Process 9 Thursday April 16 2015

Hello again! Thank you for returning to my Newsletter. If this is your first time, welcome

As novelists who drive our own work to the level of publication

we have to recognise that in creating our novels we are using and developing  two distinctive pockets within our brains.

The first one – colourful as a Persian Carpet - is the original creative, brainstorming, intuitive, ballooning and character galaxy-making  pocket which involves creative, intuitive writing-by-hand and creative transcribing – all described here in earlier newsletters. The second – woven in sober Blue Calico - is the much calmer logical, diagnostic, editorial pocket in your brain.

Without making profound use of that first Persian Carpet pocket you will never produce a unique novel keyed into you own original world view which will excite readers.

And without using the editorial skills tucked into the sober Blue Calico pocket you will never produce a novel which is publishable. This is especially important in these days of independent publishing.

Many creative writers, by the time they are embarking on a substantial novel, already have a well-developed Persian Carpet pocket in their brain which deepens with each creative writing I have written my earlier Newsletters to encourage you to make this pocket made even larger and more fruitful and inspiring.

*

Self Editing

In my experience it’s easier to edit other people’s work that my own. After you have written your novel it is hard to see your prose objectively. By this time you almost know your prose off by heart, There is a real danger here of becoming word- or even paragraph-blind, as by now the text is lodged implacably in your head, You can rehearse it but you don't necessarily see it.  

So writers who are involved in their own editing need to develop their own objectivity – deepening and extending that blue editing pocket in their brain to use in further projects.

You can turn to literate friends to help edit your work although there might be a problem with objectivity here. And they might take on the inappropriate role of a teacher ‘marking’ a student’s assignment, which could not only be discouraging but can also be dysfunctional.

But help is at hand. Because of the current dynamic changes in the marketplace there are people out there who are now offering proof-reading and editorial services. If you use them,  at least a degree of objectivity can be guaranteed. But quality control is an issue. You need to be very careful that the person who is proofing or editing your work has his own, deep Persian carpet pockets to inform his or her judgement of your work.

One editor/proof-reader whom I consulted told me ‘[I pride] myself on seeing the work very much through the intentions of the author – seeing through his or her eyes, as should be the case.

So there are good free-lance editors around. And they can be helpful in contributing a professional outcome to your creative production. This same editor said: Maybe there is now a need seen to show a professional approach in what is still a largely amateur – and unfortunately, too often amateurish – marketplace.

I looked into the costs of such services and they do vary. I found some which I considered reasonable – as long the outcome is a professionally-proofed novel ready to go forward to publication.  I found that you get your book professionally proofed for the cost of a night away, or edited for the cost of a long week-end away, with your mate. Seems reasonable to me.

And it’s a way to show yourself and those around you that you have pride in your creative work and think it worth this investment.

It is possible and necessary, though, to develop your own editing skills. 

My recurring theme here is that you need to apply creative

passion to this editing process as well as the creative process of writing your novel. 

So here for you is my  

Guide to Substantive Self-editing.

This can apply to fictional prose of any length. And it is also a good idea to new edits a quarter, half and three-quarters of the way through a long novel. This is refreshing and inspirational for embarking on the next part of your novel. But this guide applies to a finished novel. You can adapt it as you will.

The first thing to do is to print off a paper copy of your transcribed story. You will work on the paper copy and enter your marked up paper changes onto your online copy when you have finished this substantive editing.

This is the process:

1.      Read the text out loud right through. Just mark anything that sounds lumpy or doesn’t flow. Some people actually record it and listen while they edit. I don’t do this but it seems like a fair idea.

2.      On the page itself scribble self-suggestions, questions, connections that occur to you.

3.      Remember that in this interactive dialogue with the text you are taking the role of the reader. Is it accessible to the reader as it is written?

4.      In the role of reader you will find yourself inserting amendments that enhance your meaning or improve the flow of your text.  

5.      The matter of chapters.

Remember new chapter, new page. Are you going to have chapter titles? If so they might occur to you in this read-through.  Chapters can be numbered. Or not.

6.     Sort out the paragraphs.

Paragraphs can be a puzzle. I meet good writers in workshops who haven’t yet got paragraphs nailed. It’s a bit of an ambiguous area. To a degree, paragraphing can be a matter of taste and style. Paragraphs in modern literature are distinctly shorter that those written in novels – say – before 1950. (See my examples.)

It’s a very good thing to note the way the writer uses  paragraphs when you read contemporary

Pages from E;izabeth Bowens brilliant novel
The Heart of the DayLong Paragraphs. Very 1946

novels (which you surely are…). Or, if you are going all post-modern you can get rid of paragraphs all together. It could appeal to an erudite if somewhat limited readership.

If we aim for High Quality Self Editing we have to make our own choices regarding paragraphing – but try and keep your reader in mind.

Me? I’m of the opinion that white space on the page makes text more accessible and helps the narrative to flow forward.

Here are my useful rules of thumb for paragraphing.

·        - New speaker, new paragraph

·      -   New idea, new paragraph

·       -  If you change place, time or action within a story, leave a double space and place the first line of the new paragraph on the margin and then continue normal indentation.    

7.     Now onto other Important  Things

·        Enter all these changes into your online copy

·        Carry out a computer spell and grammar check to iron out residual mis-spellings, expressions and extra spaces that have escaped your eagle eye. You may have imported new ones with your amendments.

·        Read the whole text again (I know! I know! But after all you are practising your High Quality Self Editing Skills.)

·        Now get your drafting notebook and open a page which you head Names. Make a single list of the names you use in your story. Check back through your story and make sure they are consistent.

·        Turn a page in your notebook and head the page Characteristics.  Now check back through your  sory on your computer for the physical characteristics of your characters (hair eyes, legs, feet  etc). Are they consistent?  Make tiny amendments to remind the reader of these characteristics as the story unfolds.

·        Spell/grammar-check any changed sections. Or the whole story again if necessary. You may have imported unforced errors with your changes. This often happens to me.

Outcomes

You have worked hard now, not just on writing but on editing your novel. It could be ready now for publishing. But before you take that plunge I would hand it to a new, interested reader to read through and react to it. Or I would invest in a professional proof-reader and/or editor to check that your Substantive Self Editing Skills have succeeded in making your novel the best it could possibly be.

You can be sure now that the Persian Carpet and Blue Calico pockets in your brain have expanded. They will ensure that both your intuitive story telling skills have deepened and your substantive editing skills have developed to be more fundamentally at the service of your intuitive writing.

Writer’s Note

A good and very easy  reference – and a fascinating read, if you are interested in the grammar element of your prose creation – is

Elements of Style by Strunk & White. 

You can get it on Kindle but I recommend that you buy it – new or second hand – so it cam sit on your writer’s book shelf the more you write and build your self editing skills and watch  can get more battered with Post It notes tucked in like ticker-tape.

Happy Writing, Happy Editing

Wendy

Writing Process 8: Time and the Novelist

Writing Process 8 Thursday April 9th 2015

Hello again! Thank you for returning to my Newsletter. If this is your first time, welcome.

 My newsletter is an outcome of  focusing on my process to support writers in their own process and to give readers the inside track on how a complex novel may emerge from a single consciousness. 

In my last Newsletter I set out my stall about the galaxeian forward movement of decisions you may make about characters – for instance my decisions that Francine - as she insisted - should move to the centre of my novel Writing at the Maison Bleue.

Alongside your constant and forward movement of inspired and intuitive writing of your novels, whether you think it or not, you are making decisions based on time.

First there is the time you must spend on writing this novel

See my earlier reference in the Newsletter to Dorothea Brande's advice that you should about make time to write creatively.  This regular writing - as little as twenty minutes a day - ensures that the story is in your head even when you are not writing. One thing that might pop occur to you is the nature of time as it as it impacts on all parts of  your novel. 

For instance there  is the year or three you spend on writing it.

All writers have their own creative rhythms. Mine has normally been a yearly cycle. For many years my rhythm involved a self-imposed 30^th November deadline for my completed manuscript.

I remember one of my editors saying, ‘When we get to November I always look forward to your manuscript coming on the mail trolley.’

This sense of annual time has  allowed me to feel some sense of order in the slightly chaotic creative routine I had developed in writing my novels.

I had to build in times of reflection to make decisions about the interior cultural and historical issues in my novels. This is especially important to me as a novelist who often has historical settings in my novels. In this sense time in the abstract becomes even more important.

    That down to earth twentieth century novelist JB Priestley – influenced by contemporary theories of of JMW Dunne  - was fascinated by the fluidity of time and the variable way in which all people experience it. His play Time and the Conways switches backwards and forwards in time, exploring alternative time-futures experienced by a single family. This play has been performed through time and across cultures since he first wrote it.

cnit.

As an aside here:

reading plays is a good way for the novelist to explore notions of structure, pace and character within a tight story arc there in thirty or so pages. Look also at Tennessese Williams' plays for sexual tension, characterisation, and strong forward movement. 

So as you write your daily prose and get on with your daily life and more decisions come to play.

This great soup of prose is building and growing the story space in your brain is now occupied by the creative bulk of the organic part of your novel. Other things seep into this growing creative space as you go to and fro in your day job, in your taking the children to school, in your mowing of the garden, in your organising the linen cupboard, or reading the paper or the latest prizewinning novel.

This is useful time. It may land you with a further decision about the need for further research for an element of the action in your novel: the need to read or experience more sources.

And all the time you are writing: inspiring yourself by checking out and adding to the balloons in your Balloon Game and checking the decisions you are making about your Galaxy of Characters.

And writing on.

You are becoming an imagineer  

- building the muscles of your imagination in that story-space in your brain so that the next time you embark on a new novel-adventure you are swifter, more competent, and more savvy about how to write that next novel.

And now here are some questions to ask yourself to inform your creative and practical decisions about time as you plough on with your novel:

When has your drafting finally set the time-direction of the story?

For me, with Maison Bleue this happened half way through when I went back and added the days of the week to the chapter titles. I thought this would make the movement through the week clearer to my readers.

Over what fictional time does your story take place? A week? A year? A generation?

With Maison Bleue the time-frame for Ruthie and Aurelie acquire and run the retreat was three months in all, with most action distilled into the seven days where the retreaters were at the Maison Bleue.

Also there is a larger time-frame for Francine’s individual narrative which is the spine of the novel which stretches sixty years from 1942 to 2002. These leaping sequences in time are – sometimes called a time-slip. I like time-slip because I think this is how our minds work. (See JB Priestly) It was not always popular with editors although readers always seemed to like it.

How does age, and the aging of your characters your influence decisions about the narrative, their language, their interaction and their world-view? 

The ages of my characters in the Maison Bleue range from Joe (19), Abby and Felix (21 & 23), Tom (47), Kit (49) Mariella (41) Ruthie (42) Aurelie (54) Serge (57) and the delicious Francine who is in her eighties.

I knew at the start that I didn’t want my characters to be of similar ages. But the only one whose age I knew when I started drafting was Ruthie (whom I originally thought would be at the centre of the novel). The rest grew out of some inner logic in the writing – walking on stage when it seemed inevitable.

Your answers to these questions, as you refer them to your own creative process, will be unique to you and your novel.  You might feel you want to create further questions. 

The point is that by asking yourself such structural questions during appropriated stages in your writing process you will underpin the logic of your narrative, sustain the creative energy in your process and enhance your novel's dynamic appeal to your readers..

Links

JB Priestley

JMW Dunne

Writing at the Maison Bleue

The Writing Process: Visualise Your characters as a Galaxy

Newsletter 7 Thursday April 2^nd 2014

Hello again! Thank you for returning to my Newsletter. If this is your first time, welcome.

 My newsletter is an outcome of  focusing on my process to support writers in their own process and to give readers the inside track on how a complex novel may emerge from a single consciousness. 

The Galaxy
Charactersinhabit  and define a novel!

I have talked in earlier Newsletters about gaining distance on the structure of your novel by visualising it in graphic terms. My notion of The Balloon Game is, I feel, especially helpful towards the beginning of the novel when you are labelling and also writing stand-alone events that could possibly appear in your narrative, and afterwards making tentative connections between them for future writing.

Interestingly A.G. my American correspondent, has written to say this about the Balloon Game: I like this idea. I sometimes have poems in progress for months, adding phrases and images occasionally as they spontaneously come to mind. But a mess can result. Much needs discarding as I realize it is redundant or irrelevant to my purpose (yet to be made clear). I'll experiment with the balloon idea - see if it helps me organize/clarify thoughts as I "raise my eyes to the horizon", as you say, and "see" what I mean.

        A.G's words made me think that as well as poems The Balloon Game might help some writers to structure and develop short stories and novellas. Halleluiah!

        So now, inspired by A.G., I am will try it with my own half -finished novella.

This week’s spotlight is on characters and their role in the novel. This graphic visualisation is rather more useful when you are well into your novel   – perhaps half or two thirds of the way.

Let’s imagine that in the first half of the novel you have enjoyed making strong progress with you free drafting (See earlier newsletter); your brainstorming (See earlier Newsletter); and your creative transcribing (See earlier Newsletter) 

I know your initial characters were probably there in the beginning – at least in terms of names (Look out for a forthcoming Newsletter on naming…) and some characteristics and some dilemmas. They will have been in your head from the start, emerging from observed fragments of people you have known and – crucially – fragments of your own character and personality. 

They are not yet themselves.

As your creative drafting and transcription establish your story the fragmentary nature of these skeletal plumps out and they become their unique selves. They start to elbow themselves to the front of your brain and demand their independence.

           So as you write and draft on, these characters begin to speak in your ear. You now begin to make them out on that screen at the front of your brain. They start to bring their friends – people you didn’t know at all before to you set up this novel party.
           These people elbow their way in and insist on being part of your action. They acknowledge your role as Pathfinder (See earlier newsletter) but insist on nudging the action this way or that almost despite you. Sometimes they throw a grenade in the midst of your neatly contrived action, forcing you to change the direction of your novel.

         One day – quite insanely - these people become as real to you as your neighbour, or the friend of your friend.

         This is the point where you decide to take control of this sprawling mass of creativity by some means other than mere ‘writing on’ as I suggested in an earlier newsletter. 

        Escaping from the anarchy is especially important if you, like me, are given to strange landscapes, eccentric characters, extended time-scales and challenging events. Without some believable structure, some eventual comforting order and sequence, your novel will resemble a firework display where all the fireworks all go off at once.

         Visualising, ordering and developing a pattern, an order underneath the apparent anarchy become necessary for you if you are to go on develop both the storytelling and the prose in your narrative.

      In the early stages of writing my new novel* to get some sense of the whole thingl I did play the Balloon Game and it helped me to progress.

        Much further on, - say at 50 – 60 thousand words - I felt the need again to visualise the whole novel.

         I decided to visualise this by thinking hard about these characters of mine who had begun to inhabit my consciousness during the process described above.

         I thought perhaps I could show them to myself by visualising a series of concentric circles. As I worked on this process - with the help of my writing friend Avril Joy - this visualisation developed into a series of concentric circles interacting with ellipses. Avril commented that on the page of card this really looked like a galaxy. 

So now, perhaps I will call it The Galaxy 

to go with my Balloon Game.

I started my own Galaxy by asking myself who  truly was the 
central character staying there at the Maison Bleue alongside six other writers. That was when I realised that, although at the beginning (at the Balloon stage…) I thought the main character would be Ruthie, the crime writer who invented and established the retreat by the Canal du Midi.

          I thought again and and realised that I had been wrong; as I wrote on and on, it seemed that it was Francine, the elderly romance writer who insisted that - with her unique World War 2 memoir - she must be at the centre of the novel. ‘I must, my dear! It is my country and my story.
         Then there was Joe, the 19 year old who became Francine's friend, who nudged himself in beside her at the core of the novel.

At that point I thought that the trio of Francine, Joe and Ruthie should remain there at the centre of my novel.

So I experimented with a graphic representation of the novel with Francine, Joe and Ruthie at the centre. Avril and I worked on that precept and we worked on and on – using arrows, triangles and one word commentary to clarify the importance and role of the various characters in the novel.
       Now it started to feel for a while that the anarchy I started with 

What a mess!
But an exciting
part of the creative process!

had now worsened .What a mess! It didn't look good…

But while the graphic result seemed confused and inchoate, our challenging discussion had really clarified my thoughts about every character. And there are seventeen of them: after Francine there are nine main characters and seven other minor characters.  
        So later, up in my little room with the narrow window, with my big sheet of card and my coloured markers I designed a graphic representation of the significant characters in my novel in a more coherent order of importance.  As I drew my circles and ellipses I tried to show graphically how relationships between my characters worked and further the nature of their relationship with Francine, who now sat determinedly sat at the centre.

At first I had tried it with Francine, Ruthie and Joe in the centre circle, but Francine insisted on being there on her own. Looking at it now, I think she was right.

I was happy now with the graphic representations of the characters

Now, neat and organised

in its own way.in my novel.

 I will pin this graphic representation of the structure of my novel on the board in my little room with the narrow window. But the truth is that I may never really look at the graphic again.

     I would never see it as a 'guide' or a 'plan' which demands my slavishly following it. It is the creative  thinking that counts in the creation of the graphic .          In going through this creative process I have learned so much about my story:  from the thinking, the discussion, the making the false starts and now to the final graphic image.  My Galaxy has become part of me and now I can luxuriate in the drafting on and on, transcribe on and on. I can finish my novel because my characters are urging me to do so on from inside their world and inside mine.

I know and rejoice in the fact that this writing process is quite the opposite of strict planning and formulaic writing; it is the opposite of writing within the straight-jacket of genre. (Now there’s a graphic image!)

But I firmly believe you create a novel by allowing your characters to breathe, develop and find their proper place in their narrative.  This truly has a positive influence the energy, nature and direction of your novel and therefore the way a reader can enter in it and enjoy it. 
Your novel will certainly be original. And who knows? You might have a renegade best seller on your hands.

Link: Avril Joy