As a writer, one of the questions I’m asked most is: “Where do you get your ideas?”
I write crime fiction and my plots, the actual whodunnits, tend to take seed of their own accord, often stimulated by something I’ve read or watched. I could be on a run, or falling asleep and ping, the idea will land. A dead body, a murderer and a rationale.
Most books average 80,000 to 120,000 words, however, so plot alone is not going to carry anybody.
Writing a novel is a fascinating and challenging process. Everybody might have one book in them but to achieve a second requires coming up with new material. Even the most overactive of imaginations must seek creative help from somewhere.
I take my inspiration from life – my own and the world around me. Most writers do. Consciously and subconsciously.
After I’d submitted my second novel, Beneath the Surface, to my editor, she rang me and we had an exchange that went a little like this:
“Now, Jo, this book overall is terrific, but I think we need to have a little chat about the babies. I’m not saying you’re obsessed with babies, but, well, there are a lot of babies mentioned in this novel.”
“I’ve no idea what you are on about. There are only, let me think, one, two . . . okay, there are six babies in there. I take your point.”
What followed was an edit that gave literal sense to the term kill your darlings.
I was a little obsessed and it had crept into my writing, unknown to me. I’d written my first book while pregnant on my youngest son. I wrote Beneath the Surface, a political thriller, while he was a newborn. I was caught up in a world of feeding and nappies and sleepless nights. It’s a miracle I hadn’t titled the book Beneath the Changing Table.
Mostly, I’m aware of real life giving me ideas. Writers are observant beings. I’ll often witness an interaction, or notice a tic a person has, and store it away for a future character. I mentioned this on a book tour recently and an audience member asked me had anybody ever recognised themselves in my books? The answer is no. Why? Because people generally aren’t that aware of the very behaviour that makes them so interesting. They think they’re just “ordinary”.
Yet, what people see as normal, I see as fascinating and that’s what I draw from. There’s more than enough drama in everyday life to create a page-turner, without having to invent crises for my characters that I, and my readers, would find inplausible. I do like the odd self-destructing crime-solver myself, but let’s face it, in real life, most of these fictional detectives would be on the dole after their third week on a bender.
I enjoy writing actual people with actual problems – exploring the light and dark sides of human nature. Even my murderers. The crimes in my books are evil, but the people who commit them, and those brought in to solve them, are as human as you or I. Their flaws, strengths and motivations are instantly recognisable.
My backdrops tend to stem from real life, too.
In my first novel, I set the crime in the Magdalene Laundries and Mother and Baby Homes, an issue close to my heart. I was conscious I was fictionalising a real-life, devastating history, and I hope I did it justice. But it was just fiction. When my publisher issued what are called the bound proofs (early review copies) to professional reviewers, they helpfully noted on the back that the book was “based on real-life events in the author’s life”. They were referring, of course, to the fact that my father had been adopted from a Mother and Baby Home. But I had this surreal moment when I read it, thinking, “Right. Do they actually suppose I’m offing nuns in grisly revenge? I best set the record straight.”
Thankfully, nobody thought that the events depicted in With Our Blessing were anything but the product of my sinister musings. I turned to real life again to look for ideas for the next plot. I was working in Leinster House at the time, a building so beautiful and full of history and passion that it should have jumped out at me as an obvious setting.
It didn’t, at least not straight away. I assumed that most people would find the political world boring. But one day, as I was rushing to a meeting through the tunnel beneath Leinster House, I pulled up at this sculpture that I regularly passed and paid no attention to. It was noon, the parliament complex was a hive of activity, but in that strangely quiet spot, I was completely alone. The sculpture, named Fame, had once sat under the large Queen Victoria statue that used to grace the front lawn of Leinster House. It’s a huge, impressive greenish-hued affair, a seated angel holding a trumpet across his lap.
What a great place for a murder, I thought. The death of a high-ranking civil servant; a corrupt minister and a complex plot unfolded in my head. Then it occurred to me. House of Cards. The West Wing. Borgen. The Thick of It. Yes, Minister. For all our grumbling, most of us are fascinated by politics. Set a crime in the heart of the political system – well, now you’ve really upped the ante.
But again, it’s all just fiction. The vast majority of politicians and civil servants that I met in my time in Leinster House are decent people and none of them, to the best of my knowledge, use that tunnel for anything other than staying dry on rainy days. Just so we’re clear.
And that’s how I come up with the ideas for my books. I start with a plot and take the everyday and highlight it – our surroundings, Irish people, history, politics, our humour and pathos, our wit. Facts, turned into fiction. Making the ordinary extraordinary.
It’s easy, really.
Beneath the Surface by Jo Spain is published by Quercus, £12.99
