It's All About the Setting... by Susan Elliot Wright

Author Susan Elliot Wright

As a reader, I enjoy novels with a strong sense of place because I want to be able to visualise the setting, to see the characters and events against a backdrop, whether it’s a grey, concrete city full of high-rise buildings, a wild, windswept stretch of moorland, or the golden sands of a sundrenched beach. I like the setting to provide some sense of atmosphere, too, so I can really get into the ‘mood’ of the story, and if the setting can reflect some of the themes, better still!

My novel The Things We Never Said has three different settings: south-east London, where I grew up; Sheffield, where I’ve lived for the past eight years; and Hastings, a coastal resort I’ve visited many times. The decision to use these settings was partly a pragmatic one – they were places I knew, so I’d be able to describe them effectively and they’d be easy to research. But writing about places with which I was personally familiar also allowed me to reflect on how they may have affected the way my characters acted and reacted, and also how my characters might be affected by being away from the places they felt close to.

I knew when I started the novel that I wanted to write about the sea. One of the major themes in The Things We Never Said is nature v. nurture, and I felt that the sheer, unceasing force of the tides would help reflect the power of nature. For me, the sea also represents mystery; I’m fascinated by the idea that we only see the surface, and that as we watch the perpetual movement of the waves, there is a vast, unseen world beneath, a secret place that remains hidden from all except a few curious divers - secrets are a big part of the novel, too!

The weather is, I feel, very much part of setting. Like the sea, it’s useful in evoking the power of nature as well as helping to create a particular mood. What’s more, it’s great fun to write about! But it was only as I began to write that I realised just how important the weather was going to be. As I wrote about the freak hurricane that devastated Sheffield in 1962 and the incredibly harsh winter caused the sea to freeze in 1963, it became clear that these two extreme weather events had a huge part to play in the development of the plot, creating twists and turns I hadn’t anticipated.

This has made me realise that setting in a novel should never be neglected. It can be as important as the characters themselves, and can even be a character - in fact, when I think about The Things We Never Said, I see four images at the same time: Maggie, Jonathan, the hurricane, and the vicious winter.

Setting is important to the plot in the novel I’m currently working on, too. Part of the story is again set on the South coast, only this time I’m writing about stifling, searing, suffocating heat. Which makes a change!

What's in a Name? by Paige Toon

Coming up with titles for books can be a tricky process, but it’s one of the most important things to get right. I thought you might like some insight into how we came up with my titles, starting with my first…

Lucy in the Sky came courtesy of my brother, Kerrin Schuppan, who has always been incredibly creative (he’s head of menswear at super-stylish clothing company Country Road in Australia –www.countryroad.com.au if you’re interested). I was about to have a meeting with Suzanne Baboneau from Simon & Schuster about my book idea. My heroine, originally called Meg, is on a plane to Australia and has to turn her mobile off, but before she does, she notices a text from her boyfriend’s phone, saying ‘I have slept with your boyfriend four times this month.’ I didn’t yet have a title, so I texted my bro and he came back with a few suggestions, including Frequent Liar Points and Lucy in the Sky. I loved the latter so much that I changed the heroine’s name to Lucy, saving Meg (a name I really liked) for my second book, Johnny Be Good.

Johnny Be Good was also courtesy of my brother, and it was such a good fit that we used it despite my editor saying that books with a male name in the title don’t usually sell as well. (She was right: it’s my least well selling book, even though it’s probably the one my readers are most passionate about!) I can’t remember what my rock star character was initially going to be called, but Johnny seemed to suit him so we went with that, and as he’s a bad boy, the title was set.

Chasing Daisy is one we really struggled with. I wrote an entire book about a heroine called Anna! The title Love in the Fast Lane was suggested, but I have to admit I hated it. So I called my brother in desperation and he threw around a couple of movie titles: Run Lola Run and Chasing Amy. I liked the latter, so my editor, Suzanne, suggested a bunch of ‘A’ sounding names, including Daisy. It was strange reading the book back with a new heroine’s name, but now I can’t imagine Daisy as an Anna! I do like the name though, so I think she might appear in my eighth book…

Pictures of Lily is one I came up with myself, but I had to fight for it. It’s not a well-known song title, but that didn’t matter to me. I loved the whimsical sound of it, and it fit with the story about a girl who wanted to be a photographer. I think this might be my favourite book of mine, and I’m so happy with the new redesigned cover. I would have loved green for the original cover, but apparently green books don’t tend to do as well. So far the response from my readers has been good, so fingers crossed.

Baby Be Mine is the sequel to Johnny Be Good, and I’m so grateful to my editor Suzanne for allowing me to write it! Johnny Be Good was left on such a cliffhanger (with Meg revealing that she’s pregnant but doesn’t know who the father is) that my readers all went a bit mental at me, so I really wanted to write them a proper sequel, even though Johnny Be Good wasn’t my best seller. Baby Be Mine has a double meaning, because Meg didn’t know who the father of her son was. We thought about calling it Be My Baby instead as it’s more recognisable, but my readers voted on Facebook for Baby Be Mine, and it also worked better on the cover.

One Perfect Summer. I loved the process of coming up with this title. I went for a meeting with my publisher and told them about the idea for the book. A group of about six of us sat around the table and brainstormed. Some ideas would spin off others, but I think my editor Suzanne was the one who actually said One Perfect Summer out loud. We all loved it, and it was a break away from the song titles of previous books, and looked great on the new cover design. The design spurned a whole new stunning look for my backlist.

The Longest Holiday was again the product of a brainstorming session with the team from Simon and Schuster. I initially thought of The Long Holiday, but Maxine Hitchcock added the ‘est’ and it immediately sounded better. Originally this book was set to be called Tell Laura I Love Her, but it was decided this felt like a step back and we should be moving away from song titles. The title, Tell Laura I Love Her, was actually suggested to me years ago after Chasing Daisy came out, by an old colleague from heat magazine, Charlotte Ward. She said one day she’d like me to tell Laura’s story. I actually came up with the idea for The Longest Holiday first and then tried to think of a heroine’s name. Laura popped into my head and I suddenly remembered Charlotte’s idea and realised the two plots could be combined. My readers love links to my other books, and I find it so much more interesting to write about characters when they already have an established back story.

As for my next book, we already have a title. But perhaps I’ll save that for another post!

@PaigeToonAuthor

Do I base my characters on real people..?

Jane Costello

One of the questions writers are asked all the time is whether we base any of our books on real-life events or people.

In my case, that bit at the front that talks about a resemblance to real people, living or dead, is spot on: virtually everything in my novels is the product of my (probably too) vivid imagination.

Nevertheless, there are occasions when I’ll stumble across something from which it’s impossible to resist taking inspiration, even if by the time it ends up in a book, it’s barely recognizable.

In Bridesmaids the idea for the breakdown of Valentina’s carriage was sparked by my best friend’s wedding, at which the bride and her bridesmaids - me included - were on our way to church in a beautiful classic car (don’t ask me what it was; I’d prefer to extract my own teeth than watch Top Gear).

We were on a dual carriageway, 10 minutes from our destination, when it emitted a series of loud explosions, before conking out in spectacular fashion. We eventually arrived in a muddy Land Rover.

By the time this nugget ended up in the novel, a huge amount of detail had been changed, less for the sake of protecting the innocent than ratcheting up the comedy (cue a handful of flatulent horses, a broken wheel, a feud between two friends and a hysterical bride).

But, occasionally, there’s enough comedy in real life to get you by perfectly well. In my latest book, The Wish List, heroine Emma has a polo lesson after she declared mastering the sport as one of her lifetime ambitions (15 years earlier, after reading a Jilly Cooper novel).

Not being entirely au fait with it myself, I decided that if I was going to make this believable I needed my own lesson. I had precisely no experience in polo – either watching or playing it - and I hadn’t been near a horse in years, unless you count holding my four-year-old still on his pony at Center Parcs.

I got through the lesson unscathed (just about), but it’s fair to say that Prince Harry doesn’t have anything to worry about.

The comedy scenes virtually wrote themselves - from my ungainly bum-in-air ascent onto a practice horse called Woody, to the big grin on my face when I thought I’d hit the ball so far it was out of eyeshot . . . only to discover that I had in fact missed.

Sometimes it’s nothing that big or specific; just a funny phrase you’ve overheard in the post office . . . or closer to home. My Mum is a rich source, as I discovered when she showed me her new dress in a gorgeous floral shade called ‘Listeria’ (she meant Wisteria - and it went straight into All The Single Ladies.).

But while I’ll gladly pinch the odd character trait or quirk, what I never do is base an entire character on someone I know.

The risk of someone recognizing themselves would be at best embarrassing and at worst expensive - plus I’ve got too much on my to-do list already without a lengthy libel battle.

More importantly, if a character is entirely created in your head, you don’t have to worry about whether a person would act a certain way in real life. You simply make the character do what you want and there are no questions asked.

Which is probably why most authors find making everything up from scratch is the easiest option . . .  and significantly more fun at that.

Inside the mind of Travis Maddox - The Difference between Men and Women

My previous four books were all written from a female POV, and had a fan not suggested that I write Beautiful Disaster from Travis’s POV, I might not have made the attempt. When I was about a quarter into the book, I sent the manuscript to Abbi Glines (author of Never Too Far), who is experienced and gifted at writing male POVs to make sure I was doing it right. Her response? “You must have been a foul-mouthed frat boy in a former life.”

Truthfully, writing Walking Disaster was the most fun I’ve had writing a novel. My female main characters could never be so brash, so vulgar, so brutally honest—and still be likable. Guys punch each other for no reason, they say the most hurtful things to the friends they love most, but that’s just the way some men communicate their feelings. It’s bizarre and amusing and liberating. 

Writing Travis, though, was a heavy responsibility. He’d caught quite a bit of hell for his actions in Beautiful Disaster. And I agree that not everything he did was excusable, but flawed humans aren’t born that way, they’re made. Each experience in his life—good or bad—shaped him, and I wanted readers to understand what molded him into who he is. It’s easy to condemn damaged people, but even with his shortcomings, Travis is inherently good. All of his fighting—for love, respect, and in the underground fighting ring—stemmed from one experience in his life. An experience that is revealed in Walking Disaster.

After publishing Beautiful Disaster, I was genuinely surprised by the reactions some readers had toward Abby’s indecision. Wavering is so common, especially at nineteen and certainly when it comes to relationships. When you’re barely an adult, the inability to commit to a choice when your heart is so strongly pulling you in the other direction, is part of the journey. 

But in fiction—as in life—women aren’t given the same number of free passes to make mistakes as men. Our choices become us, even when we’re still young and learning. It’s likely this is why many readers came away from Beautiful Disaster loving Travis and feeling annoyed with Abby. When Travis made bad choices, the reader could disassociate them from him, but Abby’s choices were perceived as her inherent faults.

I would definitely like to write a male POV again. In fact, I’m partially writing from a male POV in my current work in progress, Red Hill, which is told from three different POVs: a mother who has been separated from her children, a newly single father, and a female college student. I do find it more difficult to write from the male POV though. I was already familiar with Travis, so maybe that’s why writing Walking Disaster came so naturally to me. I’ll probably write the Maddox brothers books from a female POV like I did in Beautiful Disaster, but then again I’m never sure what’s going to work until I start typing.

Walking Disaster is out now in paperback and eBook.

"Why I hate starting to write a book!"

Patricia Scanlan

Let me say straight away, that even after the twenty-three years that have passed since my first book, City Girl, was published, that I still love writing and am so happy to be working in a job I love. I have really enjoyed writing With All My Love, my seventeenth novel. However, I absolutely hate starting a book!
For me, starting a book is like being at a wedding I don’t want to be at. You know the feeling: your heart sinks when the invitation comes through the door….
‘Oh no! I don’t want to go. Do I have to?’
‘Yes you do.’
Now, you’re sitting at a table with all these other guests that you don’t know… feeling quite grumpy because you don’t want to know them. You’d far rather be lying on a lounger in the back garden if it’s a sunny day, or sprawled on the sofa in front of the fire, if it’s a horrible day, reading a book. You’re not in the mood to make polite conversation. Then gradually, you get talking, and you start to find out things about these strangers. Some you connect with more than others, while some are less talkative, more reticent, until you coax their story out of them. By the end of the night, you know these people very well; some of them even feel like family because you’re so comfortable with them.
And so it is with the characters in a new novel. These strangers, who you have to get to know and who are so different from the last wedding guests you engaged with, begin to muscle in and take over. Gradually, they make themselves indispensible to you. The more you get to know them, the more you want to be with them. Your new best friends are engaging all your energies, leaving room for no one else.
They are all very different. Some have hidden pasts that you ferret through, worming secrets out of them until you can say, ‘Aha, so that’s why they are the way they are!’ Some you can dance and have fun with. Some you’d like to take to bed (especially the lean, broad-shouldered, slim-hipped, handsome ones that have twinkly eyes). Others are guests you don’t particularly care for, but they too have their stories and it’s important to be polite and listen to them.
Sometimes they cause a scene and behave dreadfully. Uproar at the wedding. Wonderful when that happens…
Sometimes they get into a snit and ignore you. You sit twiddling your thumbs, wishing they would talk to you, while you comfort yourself with an extra slice of cake until they come back and all is forgiven.
Some make a brief but interesting appearance and then leave, but many stay until the end of the evening; when the wedding is over and they are gone from your life, they still linger in your mind for ages, and you miss them and wonder what’s happened to them…
And then another wedding invitation comes through the door and you don’t want to go because you think you’ll never find as interesting a group as you encountered at the last wedding. But you reluctantly put away the books you were enjoying, doll yourself up and set off again, a tad grumpy to be sure. And slowly, slowly, you get to know the guests you are seated with and they begin to engage you. And before you know it, it becomes the best wedding you were ever at.

"Why I became such an incorrigible match-maker"

Author Helen Warner

I love February.  As an incurable romantic, it feels to me as if Valentine’s Day casts a rosy glow over the whole month.  My own Valentine is my husband, Rob. When I tell people that I met him when I was 8 and he was 11, the reaction is always: ‘Ahhhh, how romantic!’  And of course it is romantic but it also has its drawbacks.  Although I had lots of other boyfriends in my teens, I have been with him since I was 18, so my only experience of ‘grown-up’ dating has had to be gained vicariously through my friends. 

I have been there in the first flush of new love, to hear them give a gushing moment-by-moment analysis of the first date.  I have heard all the gory details as the relationship develops and I’ve been there to comfort them when it all falls apart.

It’s always at this point that my friends stop thinking that it’s a bit dull to have been with the same man since I was 18 and envy me that I don’t have to go through the agony of a messy break-up.  But I envy them too. Because despite the pain it causes when it doesn’t work out, there is nothing quite like the heart-fluttering, dry-mouthed excitement of a new relationship.

I think this is why I became such an incorrigible match-maker.  Even now, every time I meet someone who’s single, I find myself flicking through a mental rolodex of other single friends that I could fix them up with. I want everyone to find love because I’m convinced that somehow, when you find true love, everything else in life seems to fall magically into place.

And am I successful in my endeavours?  Do these mutual friends find love and race to the altar? No. Never. I am possibly the worst match-maker in history and can claim absolutely no triumphs.  In fact, now that I think about it, there are people who are no longer friends with me after my efforts...  

Well, what’s a girl to do?  I had to get my match-making fix somehow.  So I started writing novels.  It’s the perfect way to determine the romantic destiny of people I know and love (my characters) without annoying real-life details like them hating each other getting in the way.

My first novel, RSVP, was about whether we all have ‘the one’ true love. In my new novel, Stay Close To Me, I have moved on to the notion that it is possible to love more than one person. I don’t plan my books in advance, so I open my laptop each day wondering what will happen to my characters and I adore having the power to decide if they’re right for each other or not.

So maybe all of that unsuccessful match-making wasn’t entirely in vain.  It has provided me with endless inspiration for my novels and let me experience the highs and lows of love and dating, without any of the pain. In my book, that counts as a winning result.