Crime Scene... But You Can Enter

 

For me, the writing process is a very visual one. I tend not to think about how a reader will react when reading the words I've written, I think about how they'll react when watching the movie version of my book. This isn't because I expect to get anything onto the big screen, it's because I see moving pictures when I write. Perhaps it's because I'm an artist, or maybe all writers feel like this... I haven't asked anyone, so I don't know. Perhaps I'm a script writer and haven't figured that out yet. Certainly, a fair number of people have suggested that my satirical novels would be perfect for adaptation to the stage.

Anyway, when I start work on a new book and I'm getting my characters all worked out, I have to have a three dimensional cast and environment. Maybe for the purpose of putting a book together it isn't necessary to know what a character does when they're not in a scene, what their favourite colour is, where they went to school, what they hoped to be, and so on, but I find that I want to know those things. I need to know them. Even if a character is only in one scene, shouts 'fresh fish, get your fresh fish here' and is never seen or referred to again, I want to know if he's got a family to feed, where he lives, what his wife's name is, where he got his fish from, what he had for breakfast, etc.

It's the same with the environment my characters live in. I have to have a workable map. I can't have my characters rushing around a town where they might run down a street and fall off the edge of their world because I didn't think of putting a road there. Even if they never go home in the book, they still have to have one. 

The project I'm working on at the moment is a historical detective novel set in 18th century Japan. Writing a time other than your own, especially one that ceased to exist a couple of hundred years ago, requires considerably more planning and research. I found myself needing one of those crime scene investigation type walls. Thankfully, our home still requires renovation in a few areas, so there were two completely undecorated spots to choose from. I went with the front hallway, which was half-way along being stripped of nasty old wallpaper and must now remain so until the book's finished. Now, when you enter our home, the first thing you encounter after turning right is this:

'Welcome to the Collia-Suzuki household, please turn right and make your way to the living room... don't mind the mapped crime scene with highlighted dead bodies.'

It's not finished yet. There are more bits and bobs to be added, and an expansion into the dining hall has been discussed. I may invade under cover of dark, with my blu-tack, red strings and little coloured stickies.

Sure, it means that we can't decorate for x-amount of months/years, but when I stand in front of my CSI wall I am there, standing in a shopping street in 18th century Edo (now Tokyo), waiting to be murdered. Lights, camera, action! What fun!

Comments

[caroline rose]

This is fabulous!

I use a technique I learned from Darci Pattison (NOVEL METAMORPHOSIS) called the shrunken manuscript. You print out the whole ms., single spaced and in 8 pt. font. The idea isn't to read it this way but to spread it out and mark it up (ie- different colors for different sub plots). It's an excellent way to see where things are working and where things need work.

[Gina Collia-Suzuki]

Excellent... a map of words! That will be incredibly useful when I'm looking over things to evaluate the flow of everything. I used a written out flow chart in the past, but that gets so confusing. Thank you!

[Bryan Rutt]

The Process (capital P, please) is, to me, often far more fascinating than the completed work. That may chagrin my fellow writers and other artist friends who may wish the focus to be entirely on the product, but it's true.

I know my own Process all too well: it's a hectic mish-mash of stream-of-consciousness burbling and charge-ahead, details-be-damned windmill-tilting (with, as you see, a heavy use of hyphenation), so to have the chance to glimpse behind the curtain of a far more organized writer is wonderful. Thank you for sharing!

[Gina Collia-Suzuki]

I totally agree... the Process (<- big P) is often more fascinating. When anyone who's creative starts to talk about how their work is produced, I am all ears. The ins and outs and intricacies of it all. You don't even have to like the finished product to appreciate, and be fascinated by, the work involved in putting it together.