Authors Electric

When I speak to people about my writing, if they haven't felt the urge to write themselves they usually express either blank disbelief - 'why do you do it?' - or mild interest in how I've managed to think of so many ideas. Some of the stories have their roots in real life incidents or situations, though I have only rarely attempted anything that actually depicts real people, so I doubt if I will be bothered by any libel suits in the near future. Actually the only example I can think of is a short story called 'Murder at the Drama Group' that I dashed off in a fury after someone annoyed me at a drama group for young people that I was involved in ages ago. I definitely won't be publishing it as it started with a (real) local council employee being found stabbed in the costume cupboard. I recently found myself using something that had happened in real life quite some time ago as the basis for a mystery novel. This isn't unusual, of course, though in this ca...

Image Credit:  Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos. I love writing prompts. I use a wide variety ranging from the various random generators to story cubes to picking a proverb or phrase from books and then writing a tale around this saying. They are excellent as themes. I also use books of prompts and have contributed to some too. As I write a lot of flash fiction and short stories, I always need ways of coming up with ideas. I focus on getting the characters outlined because for me characters make or break a story. But I’ve found the prompts have been brilliant in giving me my themes (and these often trigger the ideas for the characters to service said themes well). I enter competitions regularly too. Some have open themes but the majority I go in for have a set theme. I’ve found writing to prompts is useful practice for writing to competition themes set by someone else.  I also like mixing up the prompts I use as this (a) keeps me on my creative toes and (b) me...

  It’s funny where ideas come from, and how they can take hold of you. Just before Christmas, I was listening to a broadcast of Verdi’s Rigoletto, from New York’s Met Opera. It’s an opera that never fails to intrigue me, and every time I hear it I’m struck by just how dark it is thematically (and I learned something new, namely that the opera was based on a story by Victor Hugo). Anyway, there I was sitting with my headphones on and enjoying the performance when that ‘what if?’ moment struck me. What, I wondered, might have happened after the opera finishes. If you’re not familiar with the story, Rigoletto is a court jester, serving the Duke of Mantua. The Duke is a serial womaniser (and possibly guilty of multiple cases of sexual assault). Despite Rigoletto trying to protect his daughter, Gilda, from the Duke (and the world in general, really), she falls for the Duke, for whom she is merely another conquest. Other courtiers, jealous of Rigoletto’s position, kidna...

Image Credit: Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos.  Writing exercises make me think outside of my usual creative box and help me mix up how I create a story.  Using Random Generators I use random generators a lot. These include generators for random words, pictures, objects, verbs, themes, questions - the list is almost endless. All make me respond to the challenge of getting a story from what was generated. Often I can generate something and get two different stories. I like that a lot. Double bubble and all that. I send one of those stories off to an online magazine I write for and the other I use for my YouTube channel so I get to tick the submit a fresh story and do some marketing boxes all at the same time here. I like that a lot too.  First Drafts and Warming Up When I run workshops, I set exercises. For a recent one at the Swanwick Writers’ Summer School, I prepared my material but deliberately didn’t draft my “answers” to the exercises I set. I wr...

Image Credit:  Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos. One of the ways I fire up my imagination is to use random generators.   I’ve used the following to good effect. Random Noun/Adjective/Verb generators. Random Question generators (good for giving ideas for themes, sometimes titles). Random Number generators (I’ve used a number as a countdown in a story. I’ve also used it as part of an address where the action happened). Random Name generators (where you can generate a first name, surname, or both). Random Picture generator. If I select a landscape I come up with who might live there and what happens to them in this landscape. If I select a picture of a person, I prefer those where they are doing something, such as walking away from the camera at the time the shot was taken. I can rough out a story around that. Who is this person? What or whom are they walking away from? Could they be walking towards something instead? A successful generator makes me ask que...

 Probably the most common question a writer of fiction gets asked is where do you get your ideas from. It's not something I usually think about too much, but I thought I'd explore it a little in this post.   Firstly, let me say that ideas are not something I struggle with. If anything, I struggle with the opposite, having too many ideas. I rarely write them down, though (I know, very bad, goes against all the advice), preferring to let my subconscious do the sorting. The bad ideas usually disappear; the good ones tend to be those that won't leave me alone, and keep popping up reminding me that they're still there, and hello, am I going to start writing them soon?   See, almost all writers seem to be avid people watchers. We can't help it (I know I can't). Out having a coffee (I vaguely remember doing things like this prior to lockdown…) with your partner, and you spot a couple at a nearby table. Before you know it, you've started to develop a narrati...

 As a follow-up  (or -on) from my previous two posts (on the themes of 'what is laughter?' and 'where do writers get their ideas?') I offer this anecdote about an incident during a car journey I took many years ago with my daughter and her family. It was a totally insignificant event which nevertheless managed to achieve some momentum – and which I've decided I can twist into something connected with the writing process. I was in my daughter’s car, being driven from Glasgow to Loch Lomond. She was in the back, with h er two sons (aged 9 and 5), her husband was at the wheel beside me. In front of us was a VW Beetle. In the centre of its rear window dangled a plastic, half-peeled banana – exactly the same colour as the car. ‘Oh look, an amusing banana,’ said my daughter, with the devastating satirical tone which is obviously my legacy to her. Never one to be out-satired, especially by someone for whom I’ve striven to be a role model for years (with limited success...

So, last month I promised to be boring about my new book. Today, as a woman of my word, I deliver: you can tell I'm not a politician. I thought for the sake of brevity I’d interview myself: we’re in lockdown who else is going to do it? So, Nicky, where do you get your ideas from? This particular idea came from reading far too many stories of global warming. I love dystopian and apocalyptic fiction and JG Ballard’s Drowned World has been in my head for years as has Pullman’s Gyptians.  I live near the Thames and walk on the tow path most days. There are a number of old barges moored on the Twickenham side. They are covered in plastic and odd bits of timber, but in all the apparent chaos there is order: herb gardens and strange solar panels, half-built inventions put together from scrap. The boats got me thinking about surviving in a drowned London.    Ollu my heroine is one of a group of respected bargers. She lives on ‘the Ark’ a matriarch boat built before The Chaos, wi...

To answer that perennially put question ‘Where do you get your ideas from?’ I always have to think hard. Often, for occasions such as talks or workshops, to generate discussion or just activity, it’s a question I pose myself. Because the problem is that completed books are more than 'ideas'.  All sorts of things fit together to make them – characters, situations, progressions, solutions – and it all seems … well, complete, and certainly much more than just a few 'ideas'. I’ve written eleven novels so far and there’s no real pattern which links them. The 'idea' for the first in my crime series, Material Evidence , came from reading a book on forensic medicine. One of the cases described was very striking so I borrowed it but, by the time the characters had had their say, the details of the killing had changed completely. The second, Rough Justice , was sparked in a meeting with a very  rude, unpleasant individual for whose company I had to write a promotional...

In the last few weeks I’ve done several sessions with 10-12 year-olds in a very lively school (Finham Park 2, Coventry) that is deeply committed to instilling a love of writing and reading in its students. I had the pleasure of hosting four workshops, each with a group of eight children and the help of the wonderful school librarian. I’d like to think I encouraged them to some extent in their love of books, but I can say for sure that they inspired me.  I did something I’ve never done before – shared some early ideas with potential readers for a book I’ve just started to write. Possibly dangerous, I know. I used to be very wary of sharing new ideas with anyone, but it felt right this time, and this story is not exactly new to me anyway. It’s being doing the rounds of my head and a few other places for several years and had a number of knock-backs on the way, in particular from my publisher several years ago, who commissioned a series from me based on the idea and then, afte...