A Novel Recipe …

I am addicted to cookery books.

I have a large number and like nothing better than to waste time looking at the splendid glossy photos and scanning the ingredients.

Of course, most of the time, I never go on to cook the dish.

Or if I do, I end up adapting that ingredients list, exchanging the prescribed herb or spice or sauce for whatever I happen already to have lurking at the back of my cupboard or fridge.

Which is, with a bit of a stretch of the imagination (and after all, that’s what every writer has in abundance) a bit like writing a novel.

There are numerous ‘helpful’ articles, books, podcasts, manuals, courses, online sites et al giving out various recipes for writing a novel.

Not just that, but these days so many claim confidently to have the secrets to writing a best seller or an irresistible page-turner or a sure fire successful novel.

Whereas in truth the guidance on offer is simply one approach or method, a kind of stepping stone approach to what might or might not work for the aspiring author. For what might or might not appeal to the reading public.

For, like the experimental cook, it’s so often a case of trial and error, working out the route, the path, the recipe that works best for each individual writer. For each and every genre. Some authors like to plan meticulously, create spreadsheets, power points, possibly, for chapter contents and plot and character development. Others – and I belong in this second category – have a far more impulsive, intuitive and somewhat random approach.

But there are, surely, a few generalisations that can be made about writing novels.

Let’s call them, harking back to my cookery book analogy, the ingredients.

For a start, you can’t write a novel about Happiness.

About Contentment.

It’s too passive. Nothing is ever going to occur.

Sometimes a writer might appear to be suggesting a state of happiness in the main character, but there will, in fact, be a subtle suggestion that things are not quite as they seem.

Take Jane Austen’s eponymous heroine, Emma.

Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.

That word seems is the clue that Emma actually has an awful lot to learn before she acquires true happiness.

So if happiness is not going to work as a starting point for a novel, conflict or some sort of irresolution is needed – personal, internal or external – if the novel is to go anywhere.

And that’s rather the point, isn’t it? A story has to take the reader somewhere.

So Conflict heads our list of novel ingredients.

Then there’s the matter of Plot.

Even in the most lyrical and quietly understated novel, there has to be a plot of sorts.

And Plot is really action that has consequences. And Complications.

And really, that’s when the hard work starts for the novelist.

It’s easy to come up with some conflict, a few characters and a plot of some kind, but how to handle these elusive, slippery elements? How to blend, fold, beat and whip these parts into a satisfying dish?

Then there’s the matter of how much has taken place before the novel even starts.

The back story to a protagonist’s life, the illuminating flash backs and essential exposition to ground the reader in some sort of context.

Handling these ingredients so that the narrative does not unduly slow down, so that the reader is not bored or overstuffed but appropriately hooked and intrigued are demanding tasks.

Of course skilful writers do it so seamlessly that the reader is barely aware of being informed and guided to an understanding of what happened prior to page 1.

Charlotte Bronte manages immediately to let us know Jane’s situation in the Reed household at Gateshead. In fact, reported speech instantly spells out Jane’s inferior standing: She regretted to be under the necessity of keeping me at a distance Jane tells us of Mrs Reed, followed by dialogue What does Bessie say I have done? And pathetic fallacy has already established the mood and used to reflect Jane’s unhappiness as a result of her dependent, orphan state: the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre and a rain so penetrating …

Of course first person novels do provide the author with a direct address to the reader which can be extremely useful in sharing key information. It seems natural for the first person protagonist to tell – like a conversation – thus getting over the awkwardness of shoving in essential back story.

But in a third person narrative other methods have to be found that are not too clunky or cloying, rendering those essential opening pages as unpalatable.

There might be some sort of preface (I use this technique in three of my novels) or the exchange of letters (Forster’s Howard’s End comes to mind) or even direct authorial intrusion a la George Eliot style (who would dare to do this in a contemporary novel …it’s rare these days!)

Or perhaps the writer simply enters the protagonist’s thoughts and reflections, their inner life and consciousness, as he or she casts back over events that have brought them to this point.

But not for too long. The energy of the novel must propel forward.

A soggy bottom, a solid texture or a fallen soufflé are not what the novelist is aiming for in those key opening pages – their function is to appetize, after all!