Writing #Location as #Character

 In many works of fiction, location is so vital to the heart of the book, it's essentially another ‘character’. This doesn't apply to all novels, but in others the author  creates a location, just like a character, that's incredibly memorable whether real or imaginary. To me this is part of the beauty of reading – I’m transported to Leningrad  in Helen Dunmore’s The Siege, Newfoundland in Annie Proulx's Shipping News, or to a mythical place  "off the edge of the map" in the sizzling debut novel Snake Ropes, by Jess Richards.As a writer, I think about the location almost before anything else. To me, that sets the scene, and from there the theme and characters can grow and live and become as three-dimensional as characters in a novel can be.I currently live in Brighton UK. It’s on the south coast of England and is surrounded by the chalky cliffs of the South Downs. Think ‘White Cliffs of Dover’, and that’s what they look like. There have been a number of novels and films set here, the most famous being Graham Greene’s ‘Brighton Rock’.The book was written in 1938, and the original film made in 1947 with a very young Richard Attenborough as ‘Pinkie.’The underworld of violence and crime is juxtaposed against the perception of Brighton as a fashionable resort only fifty miles away from London.  In the film,   location is key  – Brighton railway station with the beautiful arched ironwork, characteristic Brighton architecture of tall, sweeping  terraces  painted cream, and of course the pier, where many scenes, including the finale are filmed. My most vivid memory from first reading the book as a teenager, was Pinkie pouring vitriol onto the wooden railing of the pier to frighten his girlfriend - what would happen if it was thrown in her face! Scary stuff back then.There used to be two piers in Brighton – the West Pier, and the Palace Pier. The West Pier was closed in 1975, and burnt down in 2003.The remaining Pier is now simply called Brighton Pier. But the West Pier, now the town’s very own metal sculpture, stranded about 50 yards from the shore, has become an icon as well as something of a bird sanctuary. In the winter a murmeration of starlings appears and swirls between the two piers finally coming to land on the West Pier.In thinking of location as a key part of a novel, as vital as the main protagonist, I thought about the West Pier as that character. Starting as the darling of the Victorian era, coming into her heyday when the British seaside tourist trade gets under way in the 1920's and 30's. Eventually, like an aging dowager she starts to get a little tarnished and shunned by everyone. She falls into disrepair, and is closed off. Finally, in mirroring the fate of Miss Faversham in Great Expectations, the West Pier is set alight, and any thought of restoration vanishes . Once she's stripped to a skeletal structure, she takes her place in today's history as a modern sculpture, a new landmark icon for the city of Brighton.What a story you could weave around the life and death of the West Pier. Mmmm… maybe for my next novel.Now it's your turn. Is location important to you when you read a novel? If you wrote a book set in the place you live, what kind of novel would it be? I’d love to hear your ideas.

#Editing Forward

How many times have you groaned about having to go ‘back’ and edit a piece of work? And yet all writing is rewriting. I’m fortunate that for the most part I enjoy editing. In fact I often view it as a way of ‘keeping in touch’ with my work when there’s not a lot of time. Edit a short passage – even a sentence – rather than wait for the 2 hr stretch that won’t come along so easily - and it keeps your mind from losing the plot so to speak. Makes it easier to get started the next time you come back to the work. In short I’m a big advocate of little and often. But hey, no one’s perfect, and I can get ground down and see editing as something that’s dragging me back, stopping me moving forward. But no more. This afternoon I had an epiphany!Today is the start of British Summertime. The clocks went forward – which is what prompted my train of thought. It’s been a lovely weekend in Brighton, on the south coast of England, and yesterday I went down to the seafront. It could have been the start of summer. The stripy deckchairs were out, seaside kitsch was back on sale – bags of shells, flip-flops, small containers of shrimps and half shells of freshly caught crab. Men had taken off their shirts, women wore bikinis – generally a lot of pale skin that hadn’t seen a stroke of sun for many months.  There were even some people with a couple of toes in the water. And not the hardy 365 days a year swimmers.The Wurlitzer carousel, built in 1888 has been reassembled into its circle, though when I was there at 10.30 the horses were still wrapped in a giant tent of tarpaulin. There was a sense of emergence in the air, a new season, a new beginning.It was only today when I sat down to do a bit of editing, secretly wanting to press on with where I’d left off, that I realised the problem was that I was looking at editing from the wrong perspective. Editing is not going back but going forward. As you may have seen in my last post I’ve changed the title of my first novel to ‘Radio Echo’. I’ve also recently re-edited the first three chapters (rewrite 28?). Both things have been very positive in my approach to the work. When you edit a section, it’s done to make it better. You might be approaching it with some feedback from other people, or with merely a keener eye from yourself. But the chances are very good that you’re going to make the work better. So in what way is that ‘going back’? The answer is it’s not. It’s moving forward.I’m not being Pollyannaish about this, it’s simply a fact. You are moving your work forward every time you edit. There is no going back about it. So if we keep this in mind, then maybe it will help to take the groan out of having to edit. When you’re sitting down to edit a 60-100,000w bit of work, it’s going to be more than a quick ten-minute task. Inevitably there’ll come a point – or several points, where you feel jaded, bored – whatever you want to call it. But more often than not, we’re editing smaller chunks - a line, a paragraph, or a couple of chapters. All of this is moving the work forward, which is a good thing. To be a writer you have to enjoy rewriting. That’s the fact of the matter. If you don’t, then you’ll rarely get past one edit without it being an unpleasant gut-wrenching task. It’s impossible to edit everything as you go along. The work needs distance. Then you move forward. You edit.I hope that looking at it as editing forward, rather than going back to edit is of some help to those of you who dislike the task. We all have different writing habits, methods, rituals that work for each one of us. How do you approach your editing? Are there ways you make it go faster or are more economical with your time?Let me know what you’re approach is, bad habits you’d like to get out of or any good habits you want to share.I’d love to hear from you!