01/02/07 - Secrets of Crime Writing
Holding council over an audience of crime readers, Iain McDowall, Priscilla Masters and Rebecca Tope relax into a discussion at Sandhurst Library that shares common ground between the three as much as it highlights their separate approaches, and even their disagreements about their genre.
Cormac McCarthy, begins Iain, is literature but he reads like crime. His books are written with vivid descriptions and great characters that get him noticed by the Booker Prize list, however, his work is underpinned with the structure of crime novels.
Sat between Priscilla and Rebecca, Iain opens the evening by pointing out the over-reaching arm that crime has on today’s readers. People don’t want literary wonderment so much as a good plot, but where those authors, such as Cormac stand out, they are still situating their works in narratives of a crime nature. Later in the evening, this very point will spark a discussion about the similarities in so many books and the inability for many to stay in the reader’s minds after the last page has closed. But, to make his point, Iain asked the audience whether they had a preference for literature. The response was silence. This audience isn’t concerned with what the literature genre, so much as finding a good story that holds their attention.
Turning the discussion on its head, Iain asked Rebecca and Priscilla about their story origins and plotting. Rebecca explained that she has her setting (a megalithic burial ground in one book), her main protagonist and often a second main character, but no more than that. Surprisingly she doesn’t even know the victim. The flip side of this is when she write the novel adaptations of Rosemary and Thyme (the ITV programme starring Felicity Kendal and Pam Ferris) she is given the scripts and, obviously, the entire plot, the climax points and characters, but has to work out a way of producing up to 60,000 extra words. 
Priscilla uses a mixing bowl approach, listing her ingredients as either names, characters, settings, ideas, and/or crimes. She works in a hospital and has a friend who is a coroner’s assistant. Not wishing to waste her resources she uses this as her starting point. For example, one of her novels took the floods that occurred in the year 2000 as a basis for the story. The river Shrewsbury in particular has always flooded. Setting the novel in Shropshire she found a town house: No. 7 Marine Terrace, which she flooded in her book – the next year local newspapers ran a story about “Marine Terrace floods again.” Priscilla likes to think she predicted that one – next she took a real name she’d heard and liked: Martha Gunn, and used that as her coroner. The town, the flood and the coroner’s assistant are her starting point. Speaking of the change in procedures, Priscilla says that back when she started, the coroner never met any of the victims, but these days coroners can authorise a police investigation.
Iain has written 5 books. The scenario is the same in each one, using established characters and locations that are already up and running. He begins each one with 1 idea or image that, as he puts it, “Haunts me… that’s where I’m going to go.” He hasn’t got the image for his 6th yet, and he wakes wondering if it’s happened whilst he’s been asleep. Sadly, no. 
Iain says that he chooses big themes for his novels. The last book included racism and race murders. This goes back to 2003 and Iain seeing a photo in the Guardian of two new councillors from the BNP winning a local election. Iain was haunted by this picture, thinking of how much the two men reminded him of Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. “Why are they like this? How do you get to that?” he asked himself. So, he started there with that photo, and piled on the plot and clues later. The plot and clues, he says, in themselves are a learned technique from the crime writer, pinning down a sometimes convoluted plot to make it make sense, or at least link up.
Regarding plot, Rebecca noted that the crime genre has changed considerably since Agatha Christie. The people, the place, the setting, and social comment, are all far more important today.
Iain pointed out that Dostoyevsky and Edgar Allen Poe didn’t write like Agatha Christie. There works had social commentary. So it would seem that during Agatha Christie’s time, the readership focused more into the mystery content.
Rebecca said that this diversity between the crime types – the mystery, the gritty realism, the detective books – has led to crime being the biggest selling genre for 20 years. “The bubble will never.” And the readers won’t stop going back in search of older books. Rebecca has been invited to a reader group to discuss one of her older books, but cant, for the life of her, remember who the murderer was.
Looking to the contemporary crime fiction, Priscilla pointed out that there are still new things that shock and surprise, which is great that this can still be done in such a huge genre.
“Horror has disappeared completely,” said Rebecca, explaining that crime subsumes other genres. Romantic writers for women’s magazines have turned to crime. And even the History novel, which was pronounced dead by publishers during the 80s has made a come back. The readers complained and now we have historical crime fiction.
Musing on the prevalence of crime, Iain said that even Agatha Christie never forgot structure or style. Whilst other genres have often lost this – literature fiction for example, has nice sentences but often have lost the story – crime never has. At crime’s centre the structure must exist.
Rebecca agreed, “Crime is driven by narrative plot.”
“It’s also a great platform for social comment,” said Priscilla. She went on to explain about the introduction of a proposed new law to arrest people deemed capable of carrying out a crime – be they a paedophile or psychotic. Her husband is a paramedic, who whilst treating a patient, the patient told him they had a predilection for children. What does he do with that information? What is moral, what is ethical? Where do the two meet?
Rebecca disagreed slightly from Priscilla, arguing that social issues are lessened. She went on to say that crime has a resolution, and its strength is often in consoling readers. After September 11th crime fiction flew off the shelves. People had a hunger for n ordered universe.
Iain agreed that it is the tradition to provide closure, but this isn’t characteristic of all. There is a necessary catharsis.
And, Priscilla added, “It’s the change in character, the development that sustains the reader.”.
“The protagonist shoulders the burden, by absorbing the reader’s projection.” Said Rebecca.
Iain discussed the key to good crime fiction being in the focus on small evils. Not September 11th, not Darfur. Often writers of the bigger scale evils and disasters work with thoughtless crassness. To which both Priscilla and Rebecca agreed.
Rebecca, “It must be at a manageable level.” 
Priscilla, “You’ve got to personalise it the way journalists do. Focus on small story.” She highlighted newspaper stories that don’t describe the thousands of bodies that litter a field, but centres in on the small child with the body of a parent.
Returning to Agatha Christie, Rebecca raised a point about the cold indifference of Agatha’s novels, how unemotional they are. The characters don’t take anything on; they are a foil for the plot.
Iain regards a dependable character as important. The reader, he said, needs a dependable character to share the nasty moments with.
The conversation turned toward research and the approach each writer takes to it. Rebecca said that she doesn’t do any research into Police procedure. She finds it boring, and like Colin Dexter, just started making It up. In fact, she chooses not even to research her settings. “Life follows art,” she said, afraid to interview locals in case they see themselves in her book – whether she put them in or not.
Priscilla said that she once saw the name Soloman Blizzard on a hospital board. It caught her eye. She said that the man died shortly after, prompting Iain to say, “You can’t libel the dead.”
Rebecca added that Fay Weldon once stole the character name Apricot Smith from her after a writer’s workshop in which Rebecca had been deciding a name for her unborn baby. 
Iain – lot of research on pc matters. Proc. It is interesting. Don’t use it all. You can get lost in it – writer wants to tell you everything he’s learnt. Give away = 6 pages of acknowledgement, starting with pc constable, all the way to the cleaner. I couldn’t write that, but I couldn’t do it without knowing. I deliberately put in occasional fake proc. But, you owe it to reader to get it right, like forensics.
Sometimes, said Priscilla, her medical research becomes pivotal to the point of story. She’s drowned in research before, but she loves medical and psychology research. Just by slipping in the odd phrase is enough to give the reader the necessary flavour and colour.
Iain argued that the author must do as much research into their own series as that of other knowledge areas. As a series progresses new readers are bound to join in, and need to be brought up to speed. This poses a technical challenge all of its own, and his computer is employed greatly to search for the information. He can then make oblique references that help different readers at different levels. He likes the idea that readers that know the series will get a deeper meaning from certain references.
Priscilla likened it to being at a party with people you don’t know. By the end of the night you still know only a little about them. This inner research that the author does is often essential to avoid readers asking awkward questions. She was once asked: “What happened to cat?” by a reader. Priscilla couldn’t recall the cat, and it wasn’t essential to any part of the series and yet the reader had picked up on it. Priscilla said it wasn’t as easy for her, as Iain. She had a huge filofaxto go through with her notes and old novels.
Rebecca said that Stephen Booth insists readers read his series in the right order, but as far as she’s concerned, it’s moderately easier because her character starts each new book in a new village, with little to link the books together. She sets her plot in stone at a very late juncture during her writing, often with 2 or 3 people having possibly committed the crime up to a point. She has been known to change her mind at the last minute, but she cites Minnette Walters as saying this is great because you put in the clues as you go anyway.
Iain writes line by line, knowing the ending already by changing it as he goes. He keeps inspired by the advice of Somerset Maugham, who said that inspiration was difficult but found that it struck every morning at 9am. Iain says that being a professional writer is being bloody minded. Even published authors fall by way the side. Laziness is the greatest adversary. The other is that life experience can sustain an author through 2 books, and then one day they wake up and it’s gone. That’s when writing becomes hard work.
“That’s why I hit the word count button every 50 words,” says Rebecca, who does get stuck even now. But, she says you can’t let it happen, you’ve got to plough on, or get out for a bit and change your scenery.
Priscilla likes to leave herself on a climax so that the next day’s writing can hit upon the resolution, giving herself something to come back to. “You can’t just do it when inspiration hits. Get on and do it.”
Iain left university and became a lecturer and researcher in humanities, for 10 years. During the 90s he moved into computing during the .com explosion, and then fed up again he became a writer. This was his 3rd attempt at a decent living. He suddenly remembered being aged 16 and wanting to be a writer. Crime seemed natural because he used to read crime for relaxation. “The more you look, the more you see the joins,” he said. He finds the whole process iterative, a single draft that is constantly rewritten until complete. But that doesn’t negate errors. His latest book was finished before he went on holiday. He was already behind with the deadline and wanted to get shot of it. On his return he had an E-mail from the editor: “The book’s good but it’s not finished.”
Iain re-read it and enjoyed it (which is a good thing, because if you find your own writing bad or boring, you’re in trouble). He got to end and realised that indeed it wasn’t complete, but it required further information earlier. Not at end. This made the ending satisfactory.
Iain raised the point that lots of writers put off starting. They research and research and research but never try to actually start. They put it off because once they’ve put word to paper, or screen, they feel like they are stuck with it, and it is set in stone.
Priscilla imagines a very critical reader watching over her shoulder and she is trying to keep them awake. “My readers scare me. You’ve got to tease them.” 
Rebecca however, writes for herself, and herself alone and Iain says that he’s always keen on varying chapter length to maintain interest, as well as copious surprises. The reader in him stops his pretentious, purple prose.
Richard Howse
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