Characters or Plot?

Creating convincing characters is an important part of novel writing. But which comes first? Characters or plot?

If I am writing a one-off novel or the first of a series I will create the plot first. Then I will design the characters to fit the demands of that plot. I find that much the easiest way to do it.

When I come to write the second novel in a series I have no option but to begin with ready-made characters from the first book. Now I have to work the plot around those characters, and that's not so easy. I may want them to behave in a certain way in order to make the plot work, but the way I originally designed those people may make that behavior impossible. They must behave according to the character traits I gave them.

That's the problem I had to work on when I wrote the plot for the sequel to In Foreign Fields. My characters were fully formed from the first story and the plot had to accommodate them.

So my plot-line for this second book started out with two main constraints. The first was the ready-made characters. The second constraint was what actually happened back in October 1914.

All of this is part of the reason why I use a story development system.

Working on Book Two

I’m now twenty five thousand words into Book Two of my WW1 series, and it isn’t an easy one to write. This story runs from the Siege of Antwerp up to the First Battle of Ypres in October 1914. I have to marry together what actually happened in 1914 with the plot line of this novel. I also have to keep true to characters that were created for the plot of the first story.

I want these stories to depict the progress of that war in order to inform readers who might otherwise know little about it. So many readers would never pick up a non-fiction book but will happily enjoy a novel, and learn from it. That’s why it’s so important for novelists (and film makers!) to get things right. I have numerous non-fiction books to help me. I have also managed to access, via the internet, reports by American war correspondents. Being neutral in the early stages, they had valuable access to people and places other were denied.

         

In Foreign Fields

It’s now 2014, almost one hundred years since WW1 began in August 1914. My grandfather, a territorial soldier, was one of the first to cross the Channel to fight in that war. He was badly wounded twice and had shrapnel embedded in his chest to the day he died. Unfit to go back to his old job as an electrician in the Yorkshire mines, he travelled the country during the depression looking for work. He wasn’t the only one of the family to suffer because of his injuries. I recall hearing how my grandmother had to sell her mangle to pay for the family to move south. By the time of the Second World War, my grandfather was working in Devonport Dockyard and my grandmother had another mangle. That was where my parents met during that war. I had good family reason to want to write about that First World War and the terrible effect it had on the men who took part in it.

I began my research with the opening days of the war, the retreat from Mons, the Schlieffen Plan and the German advance across Belgium. I learned about the brutality suffered by the Belgian population, especially in the city of Leuven. It was an illuminating experience and taught me far more than I would otherwise have learned. I think I now understand far more about it than the simplistic concept I once had, a concept of muddy trenches and soldiers badly led. By the time I finished writing book one, “In Foreign Fields” I felt compelled to keep writing, to keep on telling the story as I now saw it. These past few weeks should have been a seasonal holiday, but I have been using my time to build up the manuscript that will eventually become book two, “In Line of Fire.”

An Action Starting Point

Research is crucial to any historical novel. Dates have to be right or someone is bound to notice. Not the average reader, but the pedantic one who will take the trouble to check up on every detail. I planned on opening my second WW1 novel with the siege of Antwerp and the military evacuation which began on 5th October 1914. That would give me an exciting start to the story. But I also needed to work in a meeting between Commander Smith-Cumming (head of the Secret Intelligence Service) and one of his agents. That had to happen before Cumming had his bad car accident on the evening of 2nd October. How could I start with something exciting when the first thing to happen was a meeting? The answer came with a bit more research. Churchill was then First Lord of the Admiralty and he was sent to Belgium to see what could be done to help the defence of Antwerp. He was there about the time Cumming had his accident and he went out to the front to see for himself what was going on. When the Belgian troops were retreating in disarray and his vehicle was trapped in the melee, Churchill took it upon himself to try to bring about some discipline. There was my starting point, action close to the front line.

Writing a Sequel

Amongst my novels, I have completed two trilogies and one five-book series. I am now working on the second of my WW1 novels. I find that writing the first book is relatively straightforward because I will create new characters specifically to fit that first plot. The third book is also relatively straightforward because I now know those characters inside out. I can readily design the plot to suit them. Book two is the most demanding one. I must ensure continuity of character with the first book. I must also design a plot to fit characters who have surfaced only in one book. I wonder if other novelists have that problem. I haven’t seen it discussed elsewhere. It means this second WW1 story may well take a little longer than the five or six months I usually need to complete a novel.

Bad Weather

Yes, of course this bad weather is terrible. Travel has been disrupted, power has been lost to thousands of homes and millions have had a thoroughly miserable day. But I try to look on the positive side. Forced to stray indoors, I’ve devised a PowerPoint presentation for the first of my 2014 Swanwick Summer School lessons on editing, and I’ve made progress with my next WW1 novel. As a pleasing extra, I’ve discovered that 2013 was a far more productive writing year than I had realised. Six old novels were re-edited and re-released by Cloudberry Books. Two complete novels were written from start to finish and were put on Cloudberry’s publishing schedule. Three partly-completed novels were finished off. And I wrote a short manual on how to construct a novel. To cap it all, “In Foreign Fields” hit the ground running just a few days ago. Reckon I’ll take a break over Christmas, if only I can keep my fingers away from that darned keyboard!

 

 

War and Violence

I’m now well into my second WW1 novel, ‘In Line of Fire’. Writing about war must lead to descriptions of physical violence. You just can’t get away from it on a battlefield, but that doesn’t mean you have to describe every violent action in blood-soaked detail. A better way of doing it is to describe just enough to allow the reader’s imagination to take over. And then, very often, that imagination will work wonders in ways you might never achieve with words on the page. It’s all a matter of balance.

Using that technique shouldn’t be limited to scenes on a battlefield. In my novel, ‘The Long Road to Sunrise’, a girl from an Amazonian tribe is caught and raped by fierce warriors from another village. I didn’t sink to describing the rape in detail. That would have been gratuitous. Instead, I chose to describe just enough for the reader to appreciate the horror of the situation and left the rest to the imagination. Once again, it was a matter of balance. The way I chose to set about it was to describe in detail the run-up to the rape, highlighting the girl's fears and her sense of extreme horror. Then, at the moment of attack, I stopped and let the reader imagine what came next. I think it worked.