On this week’s Write Smarter Blog, I am delighted to welcome Dublin-based writer Gill Perdue. Gill worked as a primary school teacher for fifteen years and published four children’s books. She is the bestselling author of the unflinching and psychologically rich Shaw & Darmody crime series published by Penguin.
Gill’s first standalone thriller, All Of Them Lied, will be released June 11th and has been described by Liz Nugent as ‘the most compulsive reading experience I’ve had this year.’ (see below for further details)
IDEAS – HUNT THEM DOWN!
Every writer is familiar with the question – Where do you get your ideas from? And I don’t know about other writers, but I find this a difficult one to answer. In the past, I’ve tended to quote that movie title Everything Everywhere All at Once – which is just a fancy way of saying Life. I sometimes think that ideas float around in the ether, like dreams, and sometimes one lands on you and you notice, and there’s your beginning. But note the use of the word Beginning. That’s all you’ve got. A beginning.
And even if a brilliant idea somehow floats into your mind (your conscious mind, that is) you still have to interrogate the idea, work out a plot, your characters and their individual story arcs, your subplots, twists and reveals.
I think the gritty truth is this. Very occasionally, an idea might come to you fully formed, with a main character and a story arc and the question you are asking and answering. But this is rare in the extreme. If it happens, fantastic! I congratulate you and salute you. (Do I believe you, though?)
But for the rest of us, we will need to hunt down ideas like a nineteenth century lepidopterist with a butterfly net.
So, how do you really find ideas? And how will you turn the idea into a book?
Read. Read. Read. Writers love reading. It’s our nourishment, our joy, our sustenance. The more you read, the more ideas you will come up with because it’s the nature of the human brain to take something in and make it our own. When you search for ideas, look for something you loved but with a different twist. Re read it, imagine it set a hundred years earlier/later, with a completely different cast of characters. Imagine an alternative ending or a reveal that upends the whole set up. Note, I am not saying copy a great story! I am saying take what you loved from a great story and use that as a place to start. What did you love about it? What would make you keep turning the pages?
Watch the TV! Yep! I once did a writing course where the great children’s writer Katherine Johnson advised all of us to spend lots of time watching the telly! Readers, I needed no encouragement! We are living in a golden age of storytelling on streaming services, in anthologies and boxsets (remember them?). Thrillers and romcoms, high octane chases, Westerns, sci-fi, the classics from the black-and-white days. The more you watch, the more you feed ideas and twists into your brain. (Unless you start dozing off…no comment.)
Spy on the world. Yes. It’s true. Writers do eavesdrop. And we do notice things. So trust your instincts and dare to start with the single sentence you overheard. Dare to start (as a writer pal of mine did recently) with a cashmere jumper in a bright pink shade, worn by a middle-aged man. Great places for watching and listening – airports, train stations, doctors’ waiting rooms. What? I know it’s shameless, but it works. Anyone like to do anything with this sentence I overheard about five years ago between two young women in a location which shall remain secret? One woman had recently returned from a holiday. Her friend: ‘That’s the thing about the Maldives. You should go before you get married.’ What does this mean? What kind of person recommends this? Why should you go before you get married? Over to you dear readers!
Don’t give up. Do Not Give Up. An idea is nothing. I’m sorry, but many people have fantastic ideas – they really do. Creativity is all around us and humans spark ideas a zillion times per minute. But that beautiful little strand of an idea is nothing unless you sit down at your desk/laptop/notebook and get weaving. Set aside time to do this and do not give up. Stay seated. Work on your idea. Keep going. If you get stuck, watch more tv and read more books and then try again.
And best of luck!
[ About All of Them Lied ]
Thea wakes from a coma, having forgotten much of the recent past. As well as learning to walk again, she studies the list of ‘facts’ she keeps on her phone, hoping something will unlock her memory. Her top three facts are:
I was in Italy
I was with the people I love the most
I fell down a ravine and I’m lucky to be alive
But as Thea gets hazy glimpses of the lead-up to her fall, the facts stop adding up. Trapped at home in the middle of the Irish countryside, dependent on those who were on holiday with her – her fiancé, her brother, her sister-in-law and her best friend – terrifying questions surface:
Was I pushed?
Why are they lying?
Who can I trust?
As memories come tumbling back, Thea realises she is in race against time to figure things out – and that her life hangs in the balance.
