Inventing a place
If you’re going to invent the place where your story takes place, it makes sense to base it on somewhere that really exists. That gives you all the advantages of using a real place with none of the disadvantages. You can use the real place as a starting point to help you create a picture of the place in your head, but change as many details as necessary to make your story work the way you want it to.
I often combine several places together to create my settings. The palace in my Pony-Mad Princess series is based on a mixture of Windsor Castle and Osborne House (Queen Victoria’s home on the Isle of Wight) while the grounds are a blend of Windsor Great Park and Ross-on-Wye. In that series, the palace is in another country that I never name, but you may prefer to put your imaginary town in Colorado or Wales or some other part of the world that fits your story. Although doing that will involve a bit of research, it can help your readers create the setting in their heads.
Inventing worlds
If you’re writing fantasy or science fiction, you’ll need to invent more than just a town. You’ve got to create a whole world or universe and at least one civilization. World building is such a big topic that people have written whole books about how to do it. It’s also fun so, unless you are firm with yourself, it can easily take over all your writing time and maybe your whole life. (A bit like me buying myself a horse.)
To stop that happening, it’s best to restrict yourself to the aspects of your world that are important to the story. You don’t need to work out all the details of a new religion that you only mention in passing, and, if you need someone to speak an unknown language, you can just create a few essential words (yes, no, hello, etc). There’s no need to copy Tolkien’s efforts with Elvish and invent a complete vocabulary and grammar.
To speed up the world-building process, you can start with real facts and places and work from there. Many sword and sorcery fantasies use the Middle Ages as a starting point while Michelle Paver’s Chronicles of Ancient Darkness goes farther back and weaves a story about prehistoric hunter-gatherers in a world where magic and the supernatural are real.
Maps and records
As you create your setting, you need to keep a record of what you decide so you can avoid mistakes later. I used to resist drawing maps and diagrams because I’d seen those detailed maps authors put at the front of their fantasy novels and I didn’t feel up to producing one. But I soon discovered that quick sketches help me remember information about my setting far easier than copious notes. Mine aren’t artistic – scrappy scrawls are quite good enough as no one sees them except me.
If you’re using a real place, you can buy maps instead of drawing your own. But even then, you’ll need to draw plans of important buildings showing where the different rooms are and you may need to plan the position of doors, windows and furniture in individual rooms which feature in any action scenes. These drawings can be quite bare at first – just rough outlines – leaving you free to add details as you need them, and to make any changes that prove necessary.
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Setting in action
Let’s go back to Future Proof and develop the setting where Jane and Seb are having their adventures. So far, all we know is that it’s a small town with a museum. I’ve abandoned the idea of a university for the time being as that would make the town too big and probably mean too much help was available close by. I can always put one in later if I decide I need it, but, even if I do, it might be better to have it somewhere else so Seb and Jane have to travel to get there – a journey that could provide extra problems for them to overcome.
It’s tempting to put the town in the USA, because that’s a common setting for books of this type. However, I’ve never been there so it would take masses of research to try to get everything right and, even then, I would probably make mistakes which would get picked up by keen-eyed American readers. So I’m going to play safe and set my small town in the south of England because that’s the part of the world I know best. It will also allow me to take my characters to some real places if I want to. London is an obvious choice, but I also have a fancy to involve Bletchley Park – the home of the code breakers who helped the allies win World War II.
Of course, this is the future so England won’t be quite the same as it is now. That removes some of the need for accuracy, but I’m still going to play safe and minimize the need for research by creating an imaginary town called Deston. A quick Google search showed me this is as safe choice as there are no real places with the same name. I was also delighted to find that Deston is a French name meaning destiny. I love it when things like that happen by accident – it’s s usually a sign that I’m heading in the right direction.
I’m basing Deston on a typical English country town close to where I live, so my imaginary town currently has an old town hall that’s been turned into the museum, a market square beside the main church and a river with a bridge over it. I may change a few of those details as the plot progresses, and I’m sure to add some more.
Sorting out the world
The whole plot for Future Proof pivots on the information that Seb and Jane have discovered about the changes that have been made to history. But I haven’t just got to decide what they are. I’ve also got to work out how this society works, how the elite run it and what consequences that has for Seb and Jane.
There’s been a gap of several days between writing this section and the last one and during that gap I’ve been running ideas through my head all the time. That’s caused a burned dinner or two because I often think best when I’m doing something else. But it’s also got the story a bit clearer in my mind.
One thing I’m now sure about is that ordinary people only know an incorrect version of history taught in schools and at museums like the one where Jane works. In order for that to work, there mustn’t be any living memories of the world as it really was, so enough time must have passed since history was changed for everyone alive then to have grown old and died. On the other hand, it seems better not to set the story further in the future than absolutely necessary because it would be convenient to have some of the same buildings around. So 1,000 years in the future is too far and 50 years isn’t enough. I’ve settled on 200 years as a first try, but I’ll change that later if it causes problems.
If the current growth in population continues until then, Deston will be very crowded, which will add complications to the story that I don’t want. To deal with that, I’ve decided that something’s happened to make the population fall. I’m not sure that a cataclysmic event like a plague will fit with my story, but a falling birthrate could work. Maybe the elite are controlling how many babies are born – they certainly wouldn’t want too big a population, using up natural resources and becoming harder to control. I’ll decide for sure later, but I definitely like the idea of having fewer people around as there will be plenty of disused buildings and deserted places that might prove useful.
The elite are dictators so they have removed any mention of democracy from history to prevent the population realizing there’s an alternative way of organizing society. However, there will be other facts missing too, including the original situation that brought the elite to power and who the elite actually are. After more thought, I’ve come back to my original idea that this was going to be a story about an alien invasion. I abandoned that earlier because I didn’t want it to be a war story, but I like the idea of a secret alien takeover of the world. That’s as far as I’ve got at this stage. It’s just the bare bones, but it’s enough to let me move on with the plotting process. I can add more details as the story develops.
The effect on the plot
The story that started off as a fairly standard (and possibly funny) alien invasion with battling spaceships now looks as if it’s going to be a science fiction thriller with political overtones, set in a dystopian future. That’s not a problem: we’re only at the plotting stage so changes are easy to make. The story is also showing signs of some deep th
emes – freedom, democracy and courage – which is great because deep themes often produce good books. A plot that runs on more than one level is much more satisfying for readers than one that’s shallow and superficial.
19
Making your story original
We all grow up with stories and, as we watch, read and listen, we store the details away in our memories. As a result, it’s not surprising that some of those details resurface as ideas when we start to create stories of our own. There is no shame in that. It’s perfectly natural, and it’s a valid source of inspiration because there is no copyright in ideas. Copyright only applies to the expression of those ideas.
However, it isn’t okay to regurgitate someone else’s complete story and call it your own. That’s plagiarism. So, if you’re inspired by themes and ideas from stories you’ve read, make sure you develop them in different ways so your story is different from the sources of your inspiration. That won’t just free you from accusations of plagiarism – it will also please your readers as they want a story that’s as original as possible.
But being original can be difficult. According to the story analysts, there are only a limited number of basic storylines in the world. They disagree on what that number is, but what matters is that it’s virtually impossible to create a new story that has no similarity at all to any other story that’s ever been written before. Plus, some genres have a basic plot structure that readers want to see – for example, a romance usually has boy-meets-girl, boy-breaks-up-with-girl and boy-and-girl-get-back-together. It’s the way those events happen that make your story different from others of the same type.
One way to ensure originality is to never accept the first idea that pops into your head. In my experience, that’s the one that’s most likely to have come from another story you have read or watched. So always brainstorm several ideas before you make a decision: it’s often one of the later ones that proves to be best.
If you do spot a worrying similarity to another book or movie, check carefully to see exactly what the similarities are.
Is your setting very similar to the one in the other book?
Are your characters like those in the other book?
Do they use any of the same methods as the other characters to try to overcome their problem?
In a detective story, are any of the clues too similar?
Is your ending the same as the other book?
Then change your plot to take those similarities away. There’s a high chance that you’ll make your story better in the process, because you’ll have given it more thought.
Putting the search for originality into action
I love science fiction and dystopian fantasies about repressive regimes, so I have plenty of ideas in my head that might creep into Future Proof. As a result, I’ve got to be alert for any tendency to slide into someone else’s plot by mistake. For example, one reason that I’ve opted for Seb to find a written message rather than a video is because I want to avoid any similarity to the importance of films in the TV series, The Man in the High Castle. The other is that I’m sceptical about whether the technology could have lasted for as long as it would need to.
The idea of alien invaders disguised as humans is definitely not original. It has so much story potential that it often crops up in science fiction and is a major component of at least one well-known conspiracy theory. That doesn’t mean I can’t use it, but it does mean I have to be careful to keep my aliens different from the ones in other stories. In particular, I need an original way to spot the difference between aliens and genuine humans. Definitely not flatulence (already used to good comedic effect in Doctor Who) or crooked little fingers (used in the classic TV series The Invaders). At the moment, I’m thinking of making my aliens tall and slim with long, elegant fingers that look human but are sufficiently distinctive to mark their owners as part of the elite.
Faced with an unpleasant dictatorship, it’s logical to suppose that there will be resistance to them, so some sort of rebellion or rebel force is a common feature of many dystopian novels. It’s such a basic idea that including rebels in Future Proof doesn’t mean I’m stealing other people’s ideas any more than a romance writer is stealing ideas if they make a boy and girl fall in love.
However, I don’t want to make my rebels overcome the elite by being superior fighters. It’s too obvious, too easy and, given Seb and Jane’s background, it’s going to be hard to make believable. As I’m not interested in creating huge action sequences, I’d prefer to make my characters reach their goal in a more imaginative way than just brute force. Two sayings are running through my head that may provide inspiration eventually. One is a verse by Percy Bysshe Shelley which I am free to use because it’s out of copyright. It says:
Rise, like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number!
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you:
Ye are many—they are few!
The other is the phrase speak truth to power which comes from the Quaker tradition of trying to solve problems without violence. It fits well with the storyline so far: Jane’s found truth in that diary and she’s somehow going to use that truth to change the world.
With all those thoughts in mind, here’s a revised step outline.
Seb is demolishing an empty house when he finds an old diary (or maybe a time capsule containing the diary and other things) hidden in a wall. It’s in a language he doesn’t understand so he can’t read it.
Seb starts to take it to his boss but hesitates. Taking it wouldn’t really be stealing because no one else knows it exists. Money is tight and this might be valuable to a collector. But it’s hard to know how much it’s worth without knowing what it says.
He takes the diary to Jane and asks her to translate it.
Jane won’t do it. The study of history is strictly controlled and she’ll get into trouble if she works on an unauthorized artefact.
Seb persuades her to change her mind by tempting her to discover some real history – not just the dull approximation that’s taught in schools. Jane agrees, although she is still worried she’ll be caught and get into trouble.
Jane starts to translate the diary and quickly discovers that it contains a different version of history from the one she’s always been told was true. The elite are the descendants of alien invaders who took power by force. They keep the ordinary population in ignorance and poverty and kill them without hesitation if the need arises.
Seb and Jane are determined to overthrow the elite. They set out to find others trying to do the same.
The elite realize they know too much and try to kill them.
Seb and Jane finally join with the others and take part in a rebellion.
The elite are overthrown.
Some of those steps are becoming so clear in my head that I could start writing them. But I’m not going to yet because my ideas may change as I develop the rest of the story.
20
Adding humour
Even if you’re not trying to write a funny book, you may like to follow the example set by Shakespeare and include a touch of comedy to lighten the mood of an otherwise serious story. This isn’t compulsory, but it can provide a welcome break for readers from otherwise never-ending tension and make painful topics easier to write about. Also, making your reader smile or laugh increases the impact when you build the tension back up again because they experience a larger emotional swing.
Adding humour to your story doesn’t involve creating strings of jokes. To make it work well and fit in with the story, the humour needs to come from the characters themselves: what they say, what they do and how they react to each other and to the events around them. Sometimes those events are funny in their own right but, with the right characters, even a tragic situation like going over the top from the trenches can raise a smile. (If you don’t believe me, watch the final episode of Blackadder Goes Forth.)
The important thing
to understand is that good comedy characters never realize they are funny. They are just being themselves and that makes them act in ways we find amusing. Although audiences roar with laughter at the antics of Mr Bean, he never laughs at himself – he is very serious all the time.
Funny characters usually have at least one strong characteristic that defines them and gets them into trouble. Buddy, the human reared as an elf in Elf, delights audiences because he is totally naïve – a child in an adult’s body – while Bart Simpson is a mischievous rebel with no respect for authority.
If you want to create a comedy character, try to think of that defining characteristic first. Think how that is going to affect what they do and say and then build their character around that. Maybe they have a phrase they often say, something that always worries them or something they always want to have with them. Once your readers have grown accustomed to that, they’ll always be expecting it and will like it when it happens at inappropriate times.
If you create a group of people with different characteristics, you can make them bounce off each other in amusing ways. (You can see this in action in any episode of your favourite sitcom.) But they don’t all have to be funny characters. It’s a good idea to include at least one fairly ordinary person in the mix as this creates even more opportunities for humour. That’s why comedy double acts are often made up of a funny guy and a straight one – Laurel and Hardy are a classic example.
Plots and Plotting Page 6