Building That Book: How to Shape a Novel from Idea to Memorable Scenes

How do you write a novel? Harry shares practical novel-writing tips on finding ideas, planning your plot, developing characters and writing memorable scenes.

Different authors approach major challenges in different ways. If the particular approach ends up producing a decent novel, then that approach is fine. There aren’t rules here. Only a question of what works for you.

But if you want to know how I personally build a novel, my approach is roughly this:

The Pitch: How to Find a Strong Novel Idea

Before I do anything else, I try to find the idea which animates the novel. That idea needs to be fresh, unexpected, compelling – and somehow essential: like if the book didn’t already exist, it would have to come into being.

I call that core idea the elevator pitch, because it’s the thing that lies at the heart of any appeal to agent / editor / reader. I don’t care at all about finding a sexy way to present the idea. I do care about having an idea with obvious merits.

So here are ideas of mine that I thought strong enough for a book:

• Homicide detective, who used to think she was dead. (That’s the core premise of Fiona Griffiths #1; the mystery around Fiona is almost larger than the crime mystery she’s trying to solve.)
• A double murder story, in which the two victims used to be lovers. (That’s FG #2, and honestly I’m not quite sure, looking back, if that premise was quite powerful enough. The book worked out well, but it was quite hard work to get right.)
• Detective (with deep identity issues to start with) goes undercover in a criminal gang. FG #3That’s definitely a strong idea and worked very well on the page.
• An elite climber can enter almost any premises. A criminal gang commits wire fraud via an undersea cable. That sounds a bit bodged together, and maybe it is. But I knew that the combination of climbing adventure and a massive trawler-in-a-storm-at-sea climax could be brilliant and the book certainly worked.
• Kidnap gang turn their victims into anchorites: people living in stone cells built into the walls of churches – and with no doors. The anchorite thing isn’t me making stuff up. It was a standard medieval practice. But in a modern day setting? Via kidnap? Perfect, mad detective story fodder.

The Shape: How to Structure Your Novel Without a Detailed Plan

I personally never build a chapter plan. I’m not good at doing it. I hate it. And I wouldn’t follow it even if I had one. (Again, I’m not saying you need to work the same way. I’m just telling you how I do it.)

But I do need a sense of shape. I want to know, in the broadest possible terms, what the story’s stopping points are. So I don’t need a “turn left at the A34 junction” type of direction map. I do need a “Taunton, Bristol, Cheltenham, Oxford” type map.

So take the book about the undersea cables. The map there was:

1. Two cold cases. Both looked like accidental deaths.
2. One connects to an undersea cable. The other to a climber who can apparently climb anything at all.
3. Undersea cable used by financial firms for handling unthinkably huge amounts of money.
4. Fiona starts to join the dots, is abducted, is tortured, then escapes.
5. She (undercover but without boss’s permission) boards a trawler that she suspects is up to no good in relation to that undersea cable.
6. Massive on-board drama. Fiona deliberately sinks the trawler in a storm. Everyone is rescued
7. Bad guys arrested

That map worked perfectly for me because it gave me (1) a massive, high-drama climax with a highly atmospheric setting, (2) a massive mid-book sequence (the abduction) that kept jeopardy alive in a longish book, (3) the basic pitch for the book was alive on every page. The map also worked well because it displayed Fiona’s obsessive intensity, without which those cold cases would never have been cracked open.

I didn’t have any more of a plan than that when I started writing. I never ever do.

Characters: How to Develop Memorable Novel Characters

With my first handful of novels, I used to plan out my characters in some depth. Still not massive depth, but I created a kind of character plan the same way as I wrote out a sketch of the plot.

I don’t do that any more, but not because I don’t think it’s important. On the contrary: I think it’s tremendously important.

I also, for that matter, think that the way we handle settings is tremendously important and I used to make notes on that topic too.

The reason I no longer do that is simply that I now trust myself to get those things right on the hoof. I don’t want to pre-plan, because I want to allow the character to emerge as I write. That works for me, but I am experienced. I used the pre-planning approach for my first five novels and only dropped it after that.

If in doubt, I’d advise you to pre-plan your characters, not least because that way you can find echoes between those characters and the plot: you can and should generate useful reverberations that way.

I do also suggest that you look at your emerging plot and see if it has the kind of settings that will be rich in character and atmosphere. You can of course write a decent novel that’s just spread across ordinary offices and living rooms and coffee shops … but it is a bit harder, I think.

Moments: How to Write Unforgettable Scenes

And in all this, I think you’re looking for moments too: scenes or sequences that just offer a ton of richness.

In last week’s email, I shared excerpts from a book where a Norwegian killer ended up falling through thin winter ice, and dying. I knew from the start that I’d be able to work really well with that scene and looked forward to writing it.

In that instance, the scene was powered by a lovely setting. But it can be powered by drama (for example: Fiona and a colleague get stuck in a cave, with their torches waning and no known exit …)

Or it can be powered by a simple human drama. So, for example, I absolutely loved writing a scene, in the Fiona-undercover novel, where Fiona and a woman (Quintrell) are both arrested and put in a custody cell together. Fiona has given herself a massive black eye and tells Quintrell falsely that she was beaten up by the police. Quintrell sees Fiona injured and imprisoned and now, for the first time, trusts her completely. Quintrell ends up making a full confession to Fiona thinking that she’s sharing a confidence with an ally. In practice, of course, the cell has been bugged and Fiona gets the entire confession on tape.

You only need a handful of moments like that in a book to deliver a powerful and memorable reading experience – but a book without any such moments is always going to be hard to shift.

FEEDBACK FRIDAY / Moments

Go on then: give me a 250-300 word chunk from one of the standout moments in your book. I’d prefer something quieter to something all-action. So:

• Two people in a cell together, where one is undercover
• Woman discovers her partner is an alien
• Man travelling on a train from Paris is arrested at the border and charged with a crime about which he knows nothing
• Woman goes to work and finds that no one recognises her or knows her

But whatever you want: just give us a clip from one of the standout memorable moments in your book. As ever, give us title, genre, and any context we need to make sense of the passage.

When you are ready, post in the Townhouse forum.

Til soon.

Harry