The End is Nigh

Since the start of the year I’ve been mining a rare vein of productivity. I’ve raced my way through 80% of book four in my Rockpools series, The Island of Dragons – and it’s been easy. Good fun. That’s because I had an outline plan to follow, which meant that while I didn’t know every detail of what was supposed to happen in every scene, I knew more-or-less where every day’s writing had to get me. I just had to fill in the details.

 

And then I ran out of outline.

This shouldn’t have been a surprise. When I was writing the outline I was in such a rush to get on with writing my brilliant idea for a (nearly) complete story, I didn’t quite finish it. I left the outline at about 80% of the story, and hoped/assumed that the remaining 20% would either write itself by magic, or at least occur to me somewhere along the way.

Neither of those things happened.

Instead, earlier this week, I finished writing the final scene I had outlined, looked to see what came next, and found there wasn’t anything there. Then I searched inside my brain, and found even less.

Now you might think – it’s not that big a problem. Simply go back, outline the final 20%, then write the rest of the book. But that doesn’t take into account why I was so impatient to get started on the writing. It wasn’t just unprofessional sloppiness, though that played a part. It was also because I simply couldn’t figure out how the last 20% could work. I hoped, that once I knew the story much better from having written it, the ending (and how to get there) would all become clear. In my experience this does sometimes happen. But this time it didn’t.

I don’t want to spoil things here by giving the plot away (after all, I’m hoping I might persuade one or two of you to read it), but you could say I’d spent 80% of the book getting Billy Wheatley into more and more trouble, and now had no idea how to get him out of it.

So I was slightly concerned, especially given my most recent experience of trying to write a book. I got to about 80% of The Slaughter House, before deciding I wasn’t going to be able to finish it (albeit it for slightly different reasons). Nevertheless I was nervous. Losing one novel is bad luck, losing two is stupid.

So I went for a walk. This is what I do when I need to figure out a plot problem. I walk, and I talk, out loud, testing out possible ways forward. For example, I might sketch out in my head what happens if I kill off character A, let’s call her Anna. I’ll typically mutter, with a look of murderous concentration: ‘What if I kill Anna? Yeah, that could work. I could smash her head in with a rock. Or stab her with a knife – no, an icicle. Yeah. An icicle. That way there’d be no murder weapon. Yes, Brilliant!!!!’ Then I’ll clench my fist like Andy Murray when he’s won a point, until a few yards further on I’ll see a problem: ‘No I can’t do that. Because the FBI would catch me. Dammit.’

I walked a long way, doing my best to avoid being distracted by other people, although I usually find other people seem to avoid me – I don’t know why. But it didn’t work. Everything I tried to extract Billy from his multiple problems, just didn’t do it. Logically and inevitably, the bad guys always won. So I came home and tried writing things on post-it notes. That never works, at least for me. I’ve barely handwritten anything in decades, and I get distracted by how much my hand hurts holding a pen. So I tried the computer, making flow charts and Excel spreadsheets. That doesn’t work either, the screen is never big enough. But it was more than that – on multiple walks, brainstorming efforts, powernaps and soothing baths – there just didn’t seem to be a way to get from where I was to where the story had to end.

I often feel that writing these types of stories is a bit like making a jigsaw puzzle. You start with nothing, and can invent any shaped piece you like – a kidnapping, for example. And that piece infers other pieces, which will usually fit quite snugly around it – kidnappers, kidnappees (that’s someone who’s been kidnapped), a ransom, maybe the police, maybe not, depending if you’re like me and find it really hard to write the police bits. But as you go on adding pieces, they begin to narrow down your options for the last remaining pieces. And these are the hardest of all. They have to fit perfectly with all the other pieces already in the story. You can’t suddenly invent an ‘alien’ piece and hammer it in – readers would notice. But here’s the problem, when you’re doing a jigsaw puzzle you know that someone, somewhere began with a complete picture, and chopped it up into pieces. You know the last bits exist, or at least existed – they could be under the sofa by now. But when you have fashioned the puzzle pieces by yourself that’s not the case. It’s completely possible that no final piece exists, or ever could exist. You could be searching for something that isn’t there. And you can’t know in advance if that’s the case or not. You just have to trust, as you slot the earlier pieces into position, that something it going to appear to tie it all together.

To date, I’ve almost always found it does appear. But I’ve got a couple of unfinished books now where, so far, it hasn’t. So it’s a nervy, difficult time, searching for it.

The breakthrough came at the dinner table. I was still cracking my head against the intractable situation I’d dumped poor Billy in when my six-year-old said something – in fact he said this:

“I don’t remember saying that!”

And then his sister replied. “That’s because you didn’t.”

It doesn’t sound much, but suddenly there it was: a new possibility, a new route through the maze. And one that quickly led to the most elegant solution, hiding all along in plain sight. I still had to spend an hour writing it down, and working it through, and triple-checking it to make sure I hadn’t accidentally inserted an alien piece where it couldn’t fit. And I had to post one question on a facebook group I use called Cops and Writers. (As the name suggests it’s a bunch of police and ex-police who are interested in using their knowledge to make books better, and writers like me, who really don’t have the faintest idea of what it’s like to be a detective, but somehow make a living pretending they do.) I summarised my idea and asked if it was within the bounds of what a upstanding officer of the law might actually get away with. Within minutes I had a reply from three real detectives across the United States.

Hell yeah.

And only then did I breathe a very large sigh of relief.

I still have to write the remaining 20%, but I have the outline in place now. I know the final piece of the puzzle exists, I know what it looks like, and I’m going to enjoy writing it.

Thank you to everyone who’s pre-ordered The Island of Dragons already, it’s most gratifying. To anyone who hasn’t, and would like to, please click here or the link below. Thank you!

https://readerlinks.com/l/1667984

And as always, thank you for reading!

Gregg

Ps. Huge thanks also for all the best wishes regarding Maria’s new role as translator/whip cracker – they were lovely to read and yes, it’s going well.

Pps. I know the release date of The Island of Dragons is October, but that was just me being over cautious. It’ll be much sooner than that, but I don’t have a date just yet.

When Billy Wheatley heads off to college, he exchanges small island life for the excitement of the mainland. And while he’s able to ignore the temptations of drink, drugs, and sex which preoccupy the less able students around him, when he attracts the attention of a more sophisticated clique, he is far more at risk. 

They live within the rarefied air of exclusive restaurants, members-only clubs and exquisite privacy, where they debate the politics, art, and science that Billy yearns to master. But they also harbor a dark secret which funds it all. Except that secret is about to spectacularly implode, leaving Billy perfectly positioned to take the fall.